by Alison Kent
Oh, but they’d shared a lot.
“The earth is round.”
So it was going to be like that, was it? Not that his reticence to be revealing surprised her.
This Dakota, older and wiser and broken in ways that went far beyond her ability to deal with, wasn’t much for talking. Even with her understanding of damage, she hadn’t been very successful in finding a chink in his armor. Crazy how much she wanted to.
She prompted him. “Tell me something about your life. Where you’ve been. What you’ve done. More than the barista, cattle wrangling, and construction stuff.”
“I thought we agreed not to revisit the past.”
“That was before.”
“Before what?”
“This,” she said, spreading out her fingers over his belly, threading them into the coarse hair growing low there.
“The way you showed up out of the blue, I thought this might be no-strings-attached sex.”
“It is,” she said, trying not to think about the promises she’d made to herself, that sex, when she was brave enough to explore such intimacy again, would be wrapped up in glittery ribbons and bows. That it would tie her tightly to the man she found deserving. That strings would be everywhere. Hundreds of them. Thousands. She wanted to know the emotional ties were tight, and that she was safe before indulging.
Yet sleeping with Dakota . . . She didn’t feel like a sellout at all—a thought she tucked away to look at later. For now she chalked up the urge that had sent her here to finding comfort in the favorite and the familiar. Dakota Keller was both. He’d always been a part of her. She thought he always would.
He grunted in answer. “Not sure I believe that, but it’s your party.”
“Then that means I should get my way,” she said, pushing a tangle of sheet from between her feet so she could find his. “Talk to me like you used to. I loved that, you know. Listening to you after sex. It was the only time you really talked. About things that mattered anyway.”
“Except that last time.”
The one place she hadn’t expected him to go. The one place she wasn’t sure she wanted him to. “I fell asleep. When I woke up you were gone. If you talked to me, I didn’t know.”
He raised one arm, tucking it beneath his head. The other he wrapped around her shoulders, securing her against him. “When I got back home, that last night before prison, my lawyer was waiting there with my parents. My dad was pacing the kitchen. Tennessee and Indiana were sitting on the stairs, like they’d been in bed and heard me come in so had gotten back up. I guess my folks were afraid I had split. That I was regretting what I’d done and didn’t want to have to pay for what was a big fat mistake.”
“Did you?” she asked softly, spreading her fingers over his chest. “Regret it?”
“No. And it was never a mistake. Tennessee knew that. When I picked up the bat that night, we looked at each other. I didn’t say anything, and all he did was nod, but he knew I was asking him if going after Robby for what he’d done to Indiana was the right thing to do.”
“And it was?”
He didn’t answer her question, continuing on as if she hadn’t said a thing. “My lawyer took me outside, away from my folks. They were absolutely useless. Nothing new there, but that was the first time I realized the extent of that particular truth.” He went silent for several seconds, as if reliving the moment of awareness. “He told me I had to be strong, and I thought what a worthless piece of advice, but then he grabbed me by the arm and wouldn’t let go.
“I jerked, trying to get away, but I didn’t really fight him, and he held tight. He wasn’t a big guy, not much taller than me, but obviously a whole lot stronger. Yeah, I knew how to swing a bat, but that was nothing. And that was his point. I was going into a place where men waited for fresh meat. Especially young meat. And pretty meat.” He snorted. “First time I’d ever hated my looks.”
Thea shivered. “Oh, Dakota.”
“He didn’t just tell me I had to be strong. He showed me why, just by holding me there, then he explained in very crude detail what I was going to be up against. Once I’d finished hyperventilating, he went into the how of making it happen. A very specific how. Crunches and push-ups and squats and running in place. Jumping with an imaginary rope. I started the first day, as soon as I rolled out of bed. I earned a rep as a crazy man not to be messed with. I went in with one body, came out with another. Indiana said the day I got out that she didn’t recognize me until I’d walked past them and gotten into a cab.”
She raised up on her elbow, wanting to see his face. “You didn’t know they were coming? You didn’t look for them?”
“I knew,” he said, staring at the ceiling. “But I didn’t want to see anyone just then. It wasn’t just the shape of my muscles that had changed.”
“You weren’t the same man mentally or emotionally either.”
He shook his head on the pillow and tightened the arm holding her. “I needed to find out for myself who I was on the outside before I could be of any use to either of them.”
“You didn’t want to tell them that? To see them first?”
“Of course I wanted to see them,” he said, rolling onto his side to face her. “But I knew if I did I’d be going home with them and I couldn’t do that. It was probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life, walking to that cab and getting in, knowing they were there waiting.”
“I’m so sorry,” she said, reaching up to brush his hair from his face, the palm of her hand skating over the scruff on his cheeks. She shivered and did it again. “For all of it. For everything.”
He took hold of her wrist, turned his head and pressed his lips to her skin. “Your turn. Tell me about the women’s shelter you’re running. Bread and Bean. The house on the hill. The co-op. The ballistic-resistant windows. Becca and Ellie and Frannie and the boys.”
She closed her eyes. She’d been so afraid of screwing up. And obviously somewhere she had. She didn’t mind him knowing, but the house being a shelter and its location common knowledge . . . Surely it wasn’t. She hadn’t said a word to anyone. The others wouldn’t have done so. Speculation she understood, and with the construction going on, the men in and out having to work around those windows and the nearly impenetrable doors . . .
Yeah. She could see where the guesswork was coming from. “How long have you known?”
“Officially? About three seconds. Unofficially? I’ve suspected for a while,” he said, frowning when she shook her head, as if her incredulity unsettled him. “But not everyone you run into is going to know you as well as I do.”
That didn’t exactly make her feel better. “No one else knows?”
“Manny’s got a pretty suspicious head on his shoulders. It’s what makes him a good parole officer. And Tennessee and I talked about the possibility when the guardian angel offer came in.”
“Which means Kaylie knows, too,” Thea said with a groan. “And that probably means Indiana. And Oliver. And then there’s Luna. Angelo did my shutters, so if they start comparing notes . . . I might as well put out a sign.”
“I don’t know that Tennessee’s said anything to Kaylie.”
“They’re married,” she said, then she thought back to her conversation with Kaylie at the park.
“And married couples don’t keep secrets?” he asked.
Some did, she supposed. “What do you want to know?’
“How did you meet Becca York?” he asked, hooking his thigh over hers and pulling her close.
She tucked her hands between their chests and cuddled up against him. “It’s hard to explain that without telling you how the whole thing came together. And I really can’t talk about that without breaking a lot of rules.”
“Sworn to secrecy?”
“Yeah,” she said, and nodded.
“Then tell me what you can. Tell me abou
t you.”
“It may be more than you want to hear.”
“You think I can’t take it?” he asked, his brow arched as he reached to sweep her hair over her shoulder.
“It’s not great.”
He huffed at that. “I spent three years in prison, Clark. I nearly beat a kid to death. I’m pretty familiar with not great.”
“Some of this you already know, but okay,” she said, rolling onto her back. “Todd traveled a lot. Sometimes business. Sometimes pleasure. Toward the end, he’d made it where it was next to impossible for me to leave the condo. The doorman would tell him if I’d gone out. The garage attendant kept tabs on the car I used. I finally learned to sneak out through the maintenance elevator, taking it to the basement then climbing the stairs to street level. Disguised, of course. I used the Internet at the library to research shelters.
“I started with ones for homeless women. I explained my situation and that I needed out and eventually was put in touch with a group who could help. I went underground for a while, changed my name back to Clark, then decided to put Todd’s money to use in the way he would most hate. Giving women their lives back. And opening my own damn coffee shop and bakery and filling myself up on carbs and caffeine, fuck him very much.”
Once she finished, he climbed over her, staring into her eyes as he stretched his body the length of hers. It felt so good to have told him. It felt even better to have him know. Living off the grid, wearing disguises so as not to be recognized, sneaking around so as not to be seen . . . It had taken its toll. She was tired. Exhausted. Weary from the weight of the secrecy, watching every step she took, every word she spoke, every move she made.
She’d done her best. She wouldn’t beat herself up over what others thought or assumed. She brushed his hair from his forehead to better see his eyes, and felt him hardening against her. That made her smile, and then he said, “You’re a hell of a woman, Clark. So either have your way with me again, or let’s go to sleep.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Though Tennessee’s was the name behind the Dragon Fire Hill project, Dakota had a vested interest that took him to the house every day. Some mornings he made the trip before heading in to Bread and Bean. A few times he took an actual lunch hour and drove up to check on the progress, pitching in when Frank or one of the other Keller crew members needed help.
Most of the time, however, he waited until he was finished at the coffee shop then headed that way after work. He’d walk the grounds, get an up close look at the exterior changes, but he never went inside unless invited. Sometimes it was James who saw him first and asked him in. Other times it was Thea. But he only stayed long enough to say hello.
He had to admit Tennessee knew what he was doing. Dakota had been working with his brother a year now, and was aware of that instinctively, but watching him pull together the monstrous job of Thea’s house had Dakota looking at Tennessee with new eyes, and a lot of respect, and more than a little bit of envy. That emotion was less about what Dakota had missed out on and more about what Tennessee had built for himself: his ability to take care of his family and to give a leg up to a lot of ex-cons.
Manny had come through in a big way, finding enough men to outfit a crew willing to work the long hours the project would take, because Keller Construction was determined to live up to their promise to get in and out pronto. After the morning he’d walked through the house the first time, when he’d seen Frannie’s fear and Ellie’s withdrawal and Becca’s fists ready to punch through walls, he’d gone back to Tennessee and told him they’d need to do the job fast or not do it at all.
Heading from the Keller Construction barn back out to his truck in search of a drill bit he was going to need tomorrow, Dakota shook off the memory of his initial trip to the house, and focused on how many things were going right. The house had obviously been in sound structural shape or Thea wouldn’t have bought it. And Dakota had seen people living in a lot worse. But it was good to know Thea and the others could put their money toward things like food instead of pouring it into a pit.
It was a hell of a house. Plenty of space inside and more than enough out. Rooms for working in and playing in, room for storage, room for life. He could see Thea and the others living there as long as they needed the safe haven. Funny thing, though, he mused, pulling the trays from his toolbox and setting them in the bed of his truck. He could see himself living here, too. With Thea. If that’s what she wanted. Because he was pretty sure he did. No. He knew that he did. Problem was getting there from here.
He wasn’t sure if their sleeping together had helped or hurt the cause, but damn if it hadn’t been exactly what he wanted. What he’d needed. Thea’s body beneath his again. Thea all over him, pleasing and pleasuring. No woman had ever been able to take him apart so completely. He’d looked. He’d waited. But no one compared.
The idea of fate made him itch. Thea made him better.
He’d been set on leaving for weeks now. He hadn’t made plans. He had no place in mind to go. He wasn’t sure if that had changed when they’d fallen into that first kiss, or when she’d barged into his house and taken him to bed. What a welcome surprise that had been. And what a night. She was a hell of a woman. A hell of a lover. But an even better friend.
And wasn’t that what had been missing for the last decade plus of his life? A friend who was more than someone to shoot the shit with over burgers and beer. More than someone to catch a ride to work with when buckets of rain were coming down. More than someone to ask for help unloading a panel van full of crates and bags of dog food donated to a rescue group. He’d had all of those friends.
It was Thea who he’d been missing.
Look what she’d done with her life. Look what she’d survived. Dakota had no truck with her taking her ex’s money and using it for good. Thinking about it like that, her crime fell into the same category as what he’d done: using a baseball bat to beat the kid who’d tried to rape his sister. It was the same with the men Keller Construction hired. The men Manny Balleza recommended. The men who’d done the work on the house on Dragon Fire Hill. All of them were ex-cons. All had done a bad thing for a good reason.
He couldn’t hold Thea’s crimes against her when they were the same as his. He’d served time to get out from under his debt to society. She’d turned around the lives of three women and made them productive members of the community. Or that’s what she was in the process of doing anyway.
He would never have imagined the Thea he’d known in school turning into the woman she had. And he hated thinking it was due to some asshole who’d treated her no better than an animal, caging her and stripping away the self-sufficiency she was only just now finding again. The independence he’d loved seeing in her.
The strength he still did.
Thea hadn’t visited the Keller Construction barn since either of her projects had been underway. After losing her first contractor to health issues, she’d called Tennessee’s firm and talked to the woman in his office, who she’d later learned was his stepmother-in-law. It had been Dakota, however, and not Tennessee, who’d arrived to do a more thorough assessment of the job.
But Dakota hadn’t been to Bread and Bean today. And he hadn’t called. And all she could think was that he’d stayed home to pack. That after she’d left his bed, he’d made his decision. That her arrival at the cottage had been the catalyst. That her plans to show him how much she loved him, and needed him, how much she wanted him had backfired in an absolutely sensational way.
She supposed she shouldn’t be surprised. She knew Dakota, and had since they’d been too young for the relationship neither one of them had been able to say no to. They’d needed each other. The bond they’d shared had been forged in sex, but it had been so much greater than any physical affair. Yet it had taken her seeing him again as an adult to realize that, and to understand it, and to accept that she’d never put away that bit of her childho
od and moved on.
She arrived to find him hunkered down in the bed of his truck, tools spread out around him. The day was bright, and he squinted as he looked up and saw her. Those sexy crow’s-feet around his eyes made a lot of sense now, as did his looking a lot older than thirty-five, though he was getting pretty close to thirty-six, if she was remembering her dates correctly.
The sun had done a number on his hair, too, during the decade-plus years he’d been gone, turning the caramel color into fifty shades of brown and gold. She loved that he wore it long, tying it back with a band when working, leaving it free the rest of the time to blow in the wind. Like now. He scraped it away from his face as she walked toward him.
He’d changed so much in the short time since she’d first seen him again. She had no idea if the year he’d been in Hope Springs prior to walking into her shop had been good to him, but she thought the last few weeks had. And she was just confident enough to take some credit for that. It was a confidence that came with knowing how much she’d changed because of him.
She was so much more comfortable now with who she was.
“What are you doing here?”
How many times had they asked each other that question lately? She reached up a hand to shade her eyes. “I came by to see you and Tennessee. Is he here?”
He shook his head. “He just left. Dolly’s car’s in the shop so he gave her a ride home. You need me to pass along a message?”
No. I just need you.
The words came out of nowhere and hit her so hard she had to stop walking for a moment to catch her breath. “I came by to tell him thank you. For taking on the job at the house. I know he’s getting paid but I have a feeling he’s not getting paid enough.”
“What’s enough?” he asked, his attention on his tools again. “He’s getting paid what he wanted.”
“Yeah, but is he getting paid?” she asked, crossing her arms along the truck bed’s frame and resting her chin on her stacked hands.