The Second Chance Café (Hope Springs, #1) (12 page)

“Sounds like they were as lucky to have you as you were to have them,” he said, his heart crumbling in his chest like crushed bread crumbs. He should’ve been the one to make all of this happen for her. Him, not strangers. Even though they’d loved her, they couldn’t have loved her as much as he did.

“I know. I was lucky.”

“They left you this place?”

“No, but they named me in their will, or May did, since Winton was gone. The inheritance made it possible for me to buy it. She’d had to sell it after he was gone, so I bought it from the current owners, and…I don’t know why I’m telling you all this. You didn’t come here to hear about my life.”

That was the only thing he’d come here for. “Don’t think a thing about it. It gives me an idea of who I’d be working with.” But he wouldn’t be working with her. It was just a truth that needed to be said.

“Well, good. Because I think we’d be a good fit. If you were in the market for a job. And could put together casseroles that weren’t all Italian or Tex-Mex,” she said, adding a self-deprecating laugh and a questioning arch of her brow.

“I cooked in the service and did a short stint in a hospital cafeteria. I can make a one-dish meal out of anything.”

“Do you have a résumé? Not that you’re looking for a job.”

He found himself smiling. “If I were applying for the position, I’d be happy to e-mail it to you.”

She reached into the back pocket of her jeans and handed him her card. “My e-mail’s not on here, but my number is. If you decide you’re interested, call me. Or—wait. I’ve got a pen in the kitchen. I’ll write down my address. Make it that much easier for you.”

He followed her through the house, flicking the card with his thumb, giving it back to her when she picked up the pen she’d left on a pad on the counter. While she jotted her address, he glanced at the sketches she’d made.

“What do you think?” she asked moments later.

He looked up as she returned the card, tucking it into his shirt pocket and grinning. “Sorry about that. I’m not usually a snoop.”

She waved away his comment. “I was working on this earlier. The layout of the eating areas. It’s rough, because I won’t know if my measurements will need adjusting after the construction is done.”

“Can I borrow your pen?”

“Sure,” she said, handing it to him.

Flipping to a new sheet, he quickly drew a rough floor plan of the rooms he’d walked through. He’d seen houses similarly converted into restaurants and had a good idea of what she was going for. But having a self-serve buffet line instead of a waitstaff delivering orders required a different traffic flow.

He pointed to an area on the sketch representing the front door and foyer. “You’ll use the door as it is now for your entrance, yes? And you’ll put in a parking lot of some sort off to the side of your driveway, I imagine. People will come down the main hall to what? The original dining room? Is that where the buffet will be?”

He looked up, saw her studying his design, her brows knitted, eyes darting from the top of his drawing to the bottom. “You’re right. I need a better space for the buffet table. I’ll have to rethink the seating in that room.”

“Or you build out your kitchen, taking over the room here,” he said, using her pen as a pointer to indicate what he thought might’ve been a solarium. “Use that space for the food service. You wouldn’t want it open into the main prep area, so maybe just cut an entrance there,” he said, slashing two lines over the one for the wall. “Limit access
with swinging saloon doors. Staff can easily get in and out with the pans, but it won’t invite customers into the kitchen itself.”

She crossed her arms, her gaze going to the window over the sink as a truck pulled to a stop on the street beside her driveway and a tall kid in black got out and began unhitching a ladder from the rack in the bed. She looked back to the pad. “If I did that, there would also be less disruption to those sitting in the original dining room from those making their way down the buffet line.”

“And the heat from the braziers and the warming lights will be contained in the smaller space. Vented properly, it won’t be an issue for the diners walking through.” He added the last as the ladder banged against the side of the house next to the kitchen window. “Sounds like your contractor’s not wasting any time.”

“The shutters are a mess. And that’s Will, one of Ten’s crew.” She raised her gaze to his. “You secretly want a new job, don’t you? Or a second job. I know you do. C’mon. You can tell me.”

Oh, she made him want to laugh, to grab her up and swing her around the way he’d done when she was a toddler. But all he could do now was smile, and hope he could keep holding it together until he was out of her sight. “What I can tell you is that I need to get going or I’ll never get back in time for my shift tonight.”

“Okay then. You have my card. You’ve heard my sales pitch. I want to say hello to Will, so I’ll walk you to your truck. Just let me know if between here and there you change your mind.”

Mitch smiled, happy he’d have another five minutes to spend with this girl he loved, because they would have to be his last. He wanted to ask her so many things: Why had she taken Ernest’s name? How many homes had she lived in? What did she remember of that day their lives had changed? Had she ever wondered about him? Did she hate him?

He reached his truck before she was finished talking to Will. They were friendly together, but he didn’t pick up on anything more and was glad. The kid had an edge to him, something that raised Mitch’s hackles when he didn’t have a right to judge whom Kaylie kept company with, did business with. Slept with, he added, and cringed. He’d given up his rights when he hadn’t insisted Dawn marry him, or at least name him as father on their baby girl’s birth certificate. That’s probably why this Will was making him itch. Mitch saw too much of his cocky younger self and recognized trouble.

He opened his door, reached for the sunglasses he’d set on his dash, and fished his keys from his pocket, waiting. Kaylie finished up and headed toward him, her dog tagging along, his smile as wide as hers. Mitch dropped his gaze to the ground and gripped his keys in a fist. “I never asked,” he said as she reached him. “What’s your dog’s name?”

“Magoo.” She scratched the top of his head. “He’s my best friend. And he’s supposed to be my security system, but I’m not sure his tongue qualifies as a deadly weapon.”

“He’s got the teeth for it. I’ll bet he’d use them if you were threatened.”

“I try not to advertise that fact, but yeah. I feel pretty safe with him around.”

“You’ll still get an alarm system?” He had to ask. He couldn’t leave her like this, unprotected, and never see her again without asking.

“Of course. And sooner rather than later. I had a bit of a scare the other night. Turned out to be nothing, and Magoo was there, but since there’ve been vagrants—”

“You’re staying here? The place is empty.” He didn’t like the sound of this. He didn’t like it at all.

“I’m only roughing it until the construction’s done. I’ll move in my furniture at the same time as that for the café. I’m thinking of it as an adventure.”

And all he’d be thinking about was her here alone. A second truck arrived then, nosing to a stop in front of Will’s. The sign on the door said
Keller Construction.
Kaylie waved at the man climbing down from the cab, then held out her hand to Mitch. “A pleasure meeting you, Mitch. My help-wanted ad is running in this week’s
Courant
. If you want to talk more about the position, you know how to reach me.”

He hated letting her go. Her hand was so small in his, making him think of the way she used to reach for him, raising both arms, wiggling her fingers until he’d lift her and toss her over his head and catch her as she’d giggled and screamed.

Clearing his throat, he gave her a nod. “Appreciate your time. And best of luck, not that you’ll need it. You’ve got a great place here. The perfect location. A fairly unique concept.”

“Thank you, but I’m sensing a lack of enthusiasm.”

“I just hope you don’t get taken advantage of.”

“By all these men, or by my customers?”

“I was thinking customers, but now that you mention it…”

She laughed. “Thanks again for stopping by, Mitch. If you decide against applying for the job, I hope we can stay in touch.”

“W
ho was that?” Ten asked, his gaze following the progress of Mitch Pepper’s truck as the other man drove away.

More than his gaze. His
frowning
gaze. Strange, because he hadn’t even met the man, and she hadn’t thought him the type to jump to conclusions based on…what? The way Mitch looked? The way he dressed? “A friend of Luna’s. She sent him about the cook’s position. I told you the other day he was coming, when we talked about Dolly Breeze.”

“Huh,” he grunted, his gaze still pinched as it followed Mitch’s progress down the narrow road. “He from around here?”

Now she was the one frowning. “I’m not sure where he lives, but he works at the Gristmill in Gruene.”

“I see.”

“Really?” She was pretty sure he wasn’t seeing anything but red for some unfathomable reason. “What exactly is it that you see?”

“You’re not sure where he lives? Did he apply for the job? Fill out an application?”

Okay. This was getting ridiculous. She turned to him, arms crossed, wondering what had made him decide she
needed a keeper—or worse, that she was a poor judge of people. “If I decide I’m interested in hiring him, I’ll get all the information I need…though, now that I think about it, I didn’t ask for much when I hired you, did I?”

“That’s different.” He bit off the words, looking toward the house, away from her, fighting some internal battle.

“Is it? Tell me how you doing one job for me is any different from him doing another one. Or how Carolyn and Jessa vouching for you is any different from Luna vouching for Mitch.”

“He’ll be in your house, working alone with you…” And then he stopped, letting the sentence trail as if realizing the absurdity of what he was saying.

But just to be sure…“Sounds to me like what’s been going on this past week. Except it hasn’t been Mitch I’ve been working alone with.” She didn’t want to alienate Ten, not after the work they’d already put in as a team, but she had to clear the air. “Word of mouth, trust, handshakes. Those are the things I’ve looked forward to, coming back here. Having you second-guess my business decisions, well…it’s just not going to work. You know that, right?”

“Sorry.” He raised a hand, then ran it back through his hair. “I have somewhat of a suspicious nature.”

“Somewhat. Is that how you describe it?” She needed to let it go. He’d apologized, and she wasn’t one for harping, but she was curious…about Ten, about what had brought on his overreaction, about the things he stirred in her each time they were together, things that had nothing to do with his renovating her house.

“Ignore me,” he said, shading his eyes as he watched Will come down his ladder. “I was snakebit in the past, a
onetime thing, or so logic tells me, but that filter’s hard to get rid of.”

She could understand that. “Logic doesn’t take intuition into consideration.”

“No, it doesn’t, but since I didn’t meet your Mitch, I don’t think intuition’s at fault here. It’s just me and my issues with trust. I had a good friend, and he hurt my family, and I’ve had trouble kicking the rush-to-judgment habit.”

“If he hurt your family, he wasn’t a good friend,” she said when he drifted off, but his admission pushed her further. “Were you suspicious of Will? When you took him on? You said he was a new hire. Did he get the prying eye of your microscope, too?” She let that sink in, added, “Did I?”

He laughed, breaking the tension binding the moment. “You came to me with money. You get a pass. And Will was recommended to me by a friend, and yeah. I see the hypocrisy. Guilty as charged.”

“That’s how this works. Will, Mitch, you. A sort of six degrees of professional separation.” She followed the direction of his gaze, watched Will take a scraper of some kind to the frame of the shutter he’d brought down with him. “And sometimes the professional becomes personal.”

“Like with you and Luna,” he said. “Or maybe even Luna and Will.”

“Yes,” she came back with, though she’d wanted him to say
you and me, me and you
. She just wished she knew why. But since he wasn’t here for that any more than she was, she got back to business. “Mitch did mention something I’ve been thinking about. Especially since Carolyn told me the police have had to deal with vagrants. I need to see about an alarm system.”

“An alarm system.” He repeated her words, and when he looked back to her he was frowning, but this time with concern. “You mean besides the dog and the knife?”

She glanced away, remembering the night she’d come downstairs with said dog and said knife to find Ten shining a light at her shutters. His being there was one thing. Her reaction to him as they’d talked another. She’d been having trouble with that part ever since. She was having trouble with it now. And no matter how many times she told herself to stay focused on why he was here, her mind rebelled.

He was standing too close, as close as he’d been when she’d had only moonlight to show her the way. Today she had blue skies and the dew in the grass and Ten within touching distance. Breathing deeply to settle her nerves, she thought it might not be vagrants she needed an alarm to protect herself from, and she wasn’t sure how to fit that realization into her plans or her life.

“I can take care of myself,” she finally said. “But I’d prefer law enforcement take care of the bad guys.”

“Then how about I hook you up with a guy I know who sells security systems. He does commercial installations, but you’re running a business, so that’s close enough.”

“Sounds good.” Though she’d check his guy’s references, as she’d checked Ten’s. Not that she’d done as thorough a job as she should have, making up her mind to hire him when he’d stopped at midnight to check on her shutters. “See? The six degrees of professional separation at work.”