The Second Chance Café (Hope Springs, #1) (26 page)

Her heart like a balloon swelling at the base of her throat, she read the reporter’s words and knew this wasn’t the first time she had. When had she seen this before? Where? Why hadn’t she remembered any of this article? Why had she blocked out the very things she’d come to Hope Springs to find?

She printed the page and dug in her wallet for change to pay for the copy. As she made her way to the front desk, she wondered if this was how it was always going to be, bits
and pieces she’d have to sift through for details that might lead her to the truth. Was it worth knowing if the discovery was dragged out over weeks or months, even years? When all of it, the whole shebang, might already be locked in the back of her mind?

She hated this…this…defense mechanism, or whatever it was. This ridiculous memory lapse her subconscious thought it was protecting her with. She didn’t need protection. Ten had told her she was better than anyone he knew at making lemonade when life served up lemons, and he was right. She’d dealt with everything her twenty-eight years had thrown her way. Foster homes, course finals, three a.m. doughnuts, termites.

All of those things she’d had no choice in, and she’d survived with only a few hard knocks. Looking back instead of moving forward…this she could choose. As she made her way to the farthest of the six parking spots and her Jeep, she folded the sheet of paper and stuffed it into her purse. Her head pounding, her stomach in knots, she chose, in this moment, the only thing she could.

To go home.

The next night, Kaylie lined up her ingredients on the kitchen island, found her measuring cups and spoons, a saucepan and glass bowl large enough to use as a double boiler, and her favorite aluminum baking pan. The utensils and cookware she’d brought with her from Austin last week. The food items she’d bought this morning at Tandy’s Grocery.

She hadn’t planned to bake brownies until her new kitchen was done, but she was itchy with the wait. Her baking muscles felt flabby, like those of a runner kept too long from the trails, or a cyclist grounded, a swimmer landlocked. A bit of an exaggeration, she knew, but it had been weeks and she was going, well, stir-crazy.

She turned on the oven, then secured her favorite recipe to her magnetic stand, doubting she’d look at it again but wanting it there anyway. She knew this recipe by heart. She didn’t need the lined steno sheet May had written it on, the ink from her blue ballpoint faded into the paper along with drops of vanilla and butter smears and dribbles of melted chocolate wiped clean. This one was embedded in Kaylie’s heart as well as her head.

Peeling away the paper from the unsalted butter, she thought back to the first time she’d watched May turn what had seemed like unrelated food items into the most glorious dessert she’d ever put in her mouth. The chocolate had been rich and sweet but not too much of either, the texture more cakelike than a gooey fudge, though she’d grown to appreciate both.

May had asked her if she wanted frosting, and she couldn’t imagine adding anything more to what her young palate, which had known only Hostess and Little Debbie snacks, thought was perfection. Over time, she’d learned a little something extra was often a very good thing. But only a little. Too much meant ruin. And she feared her feelings for Tennessee Keller had become too much.

She added the chocolate to the butter in the double boiler, and while those melted, she measured sugar into a bowl. The salt and vanilla and flour she put into miniramekins,
and the eggs she set in a saucer that had enough of a lip to keep them from rolling into the sink. Rather than use an electric mixer, she chose her favorite wooden spoon. It had been May’s favorite wooden spoon first, and it had somehow survived the years and the change in ownership with no more than a chip in the handle.

When she’d sought out a general contractor, she’d never thought she’d get more in the bargain, but she was pretty sure Tennessee Keller was fast becoming her very best friend. She’d never had a best friend, though most of her closest ones had been male. She wasn’t sure why, except she didn’t think that she had ever made a very good girl. Her hair was usually in a net, or beneath a white chef’s hat, any attempt at style lost to her trade. She bought clothes that would last, and often paid more because of that, so she rarely needed—or had time—to shop, no matter how much she enjoyed it.

Makeup was nothing but mascara, powder blush, and lip gloss, if that. Baking was a sweaty business, sometimes a messy business, and her sensitive skin fared better when bare. And yet she found herself spending more time in front of the mirror these days, wondering if Ten liked what he saw. She supposed he did; he’d kissed her and made sure she knew he meant it. But what she was more interested in was why, when she was honestly quite plain.

Ten, on the other hand, was anything but. He was…a surprise. His body beautifully built, his hips lean, his stomach flat, his legs thick but not bulky with muscle. He wore his jeans with purpose, the denim modestly covering his most intimate parts, while conversely showing them off. She liked that, the hint of sexuality she could choose to ignore
if she wanted. She didn’t. She indulged. The way she was indulging now, breathing in the rich scent of chocolate as she stirred the batter until glossy.

As much as she’d had the urge to flex her baking muscles, she’d also needed the emotional release baking never failed to provide. Yesterday’s library visit had left her unable to sleep last night. She’d tossed and turned, disturbing Magoo as she’d pictured her life laid out in print for anyone to see.

They’d always been there, those newspaper archives, the rest of the public records. The years she’d lived with Winton and May…How many people had been curious enough to hunt for the truth? The Wises wouldn’t have talked. She knew that. But had any of their friends heard gossip and felt compelled to share what they’d learned?

The worst part was, forcing herself to dig for information—in the library as well as previously on the Internet—had been next to fruitless. In all her searches, she’d turned up nothing on Dawn Bridges other than the date of her release. Where had she gone after prison? Where had she been since? Kaylie didn’t want the expense of a private investigator, though hiring one might be her only option in the end. If she decided to go forward with her search. And that was a decision she was seriously rethinking.

Since losing May Wise, Kaylie had been obsessed with her parents—which made no sense at all. They were nothing to her. They never had been. Why in the world had she thought finding them mattered? She’d upended her life over a ridiculous fixation…yet had absolutely no regrets. Her return to Hope Springs had been the best move she could ever have made. She was happier than she’d been in
years. She was blossoming. She was finding herself. She was falling in love.

Were all these things possible because she was finally, without even realizing it, listening to May? Maybe what she was looking for all along was more of what the Wises had given her. A home and a family. One filled with people she cared for, not people with whom she shared blood. Wasn’t that what she was finding with Luna and Ten? With Dolly and Mitch and Will? With Indiana? It was sobering, truly, to realize that a search she should never have made in the first place had given her exactly what she’d been looking for all along.

Two Owls’ Chocolate Brownie on the Brain

the brownie to cure all ills

4 ounces unsweetened chocolate

4 ounces unsalted butter

1 teaspoon vanilla

1¼ cups sugar

⅛ teaspoon salt

2 large eggs

½ cup flour

½ cup cacao nibs

½ cup semisweet chocolate chips

½ cup chopped pecans

Preheat oven to 400°F. Grease or spray with cooking oil and flour (or line with aluminum foil) an 8 x 8–inch baking dish.

Melt the chocolate with the butter in a double boiler (or in a microwave), stirring often so as not to burn the chocolate. Add in the vanilla, the sugar, and the salt. Whisk in the eggs, one at a time. Mix in the flour, blending until the batter is smooth. Stir in the chocolate chips, the cacao nibs, and the nuts.

Pour the batter into the prepared baking pan. Bake for 18–20 minutes, or until an inserted tester comes out with a bit of batter attached. Cool completely before cutting.

“K
aylie! You’ve got visitors!”

As if that was anything new?
She closed her laptop, setting it and her legal pad in the dining room’s wingback chair. It was where she did all of her business these days, and strangely enough she’d grown used to the inconvenience. Eventually she’d set up an office on the second floor, but for now she liked being in the thick of things.

With the major construction due for completion this weekend, the truck with the café’s furniture would arrive on Monday. The curtains and blinds were scheduled to be installed the following day. The middle of next week, the deliveries of the remaining supplies for Two Owls would begin. Meaning this had to be about the garden.
Finally!
Not that it had been long since she and Indiana Keller had talked, but she was as anxious to get her starter plants in as she was to open the café in just over six weeks.

“Thanks, Will,” she said as she reached the kitchen. She wouldn’t be able to use her own produce until later in the year, but the garden going in where she’d once played softball and eaten thick slices of ham on even thicker slices of May’s bread, and where spindly watercolor wildflowers had
grown, made her so happy she wanted to spit or skip rope or something.

But she didn’t do any of that since Will was still there, biting into the brownie he’d snitched from the plate on the kitchen island. It must’ve been the fifth he’d eaten after arriving this morning to discover she’d baked late last night. “No,
thank you.
”

She loved that her brownies were a hit with her contractor and his ex-con crew of one. And why she’d thought that about Will now when she hadn’t for days had her wondering when his being on parole had ceased to matter. Because it had. And she was glad.

She was very, very glad. “You’re welcome, but if you get sick while three stories up on the ladder, give a warning to those of us below.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, his laugh a wicked howl that might’ve sent shivers down her spine if she wasn’t getting her shivers elsewhere these days.

And that had her wondering about seeing Will with Luna at Easter. Something had been going on when she’d interrupted the two of them in the weaving shed. Something dark and intense, something private.

She’d wanted to ask Luna about it after Will had left, but intuition told her to stay quiet. And though she’d thoroughly enjoyed hearing Luna talk about weaving and watching her demonstrate the workings of her loom, the other woman’s distraction had been obvious, her smile an afterthought, her gaze drifting to the door.

Kaylie, shaking off her own distraction, had just grabbed a bottle of water to head out when Ten stuck his head inside. “Your gardening bunch is here.”

“I know. Will just told me.”

“Oh,” he said, coming in even though it was obvious she was going out. But now that he was here and she had Will on her mind…

“You haven’t said much about how Will’s working out.”

“Fine. Not a problem.” He glanced out the window as if checking to see that the other man was back at work. “I could see hiring him on full-time.”

Well, that had to be good. “I didn’t think you had full-time employees?”

“I don’t, but even if I did, Will wouldn’t stay.”

“How do you know if you haven’t asked him?”

“Because I know him,” he said, and looked down at her. “I’ve known a lot of men like him. He’s the loner he wants you to think. He’s only here because he has to be.”

There was more to it than that. Not why Will wouldn’t stay, but why Ten was so sure. The connection wasn’t that hard to make. “He reminds you of your brother, doesn’t he?”

Ten shrugged, reached for his fifth brownie, too, and said nothing as he bit it in half.

“C’mon,” she said, rolling her eyes as she turned and shoved him toward the door. “Walk with me to the garden plot. Make sure I don’t forget anything.”

“These are Indy’s employees.
She
won’t have forgotten anything.”

“Walk with me anyway. Tell me what’s bugging you about Will.”

He chewed as they walked, stopping to dust off his hands once he’d finished the treat. “By the way? I’m pretty sure you said the first batch of brownies in the new house was for me, not for public consumption.”

Oops. “Did you not just eat five?”

“Maybe, but that’s not the point.”

She reached up and brushed crumbs from the side of his mouth. “I’d had a bad day. I needed to bake. And I said new kitchen, not new house. I baked these in the old oven, so not the same thing.”

“Why was yesterday bad?” he asked, frowning down at her, his tongue darting out to catch a crumb she’d missed.

Of course that was the part he would pick up on. “I don’t want to talk about it,” she said and started walking again. And it wasn’t yesterday that had been bad.