The Comfort of Favorite Things (A Hope Springs Novel) (8 page)

“It’s no big thing. That day I tried to choke you she told me you two were old friends.”

“Right. Friends.”

“Most people who sleep together regularly are friends, aren’t they?” she asked, then pushed her way into the kitchen, leaving a cauldron of laughter behind.

Hearing both Dakota and Becca’s voices in the shop, Thea left the kitchen through the back door and made her way around the block to the front. It took her several minutes to get there, which gave her just enough time to stomp off her frustration—With herself? With him? With their past?—and she wondered if this was going to be her thing now, walking out on him because it was easier and so much less painful than staying to face the music like the adult she was.

Or maybe it was just ingrained. Inherited even. Part of her DNA. She couldn’t speak to her father; she’d never met him, she didn’t even know if his walking out had been his choice. She did know her mother, and walking out had been one of the things Muriel Clark did best. But Thea was not her mother. And Dakota deserved better treatment than what she’d shown him. He was her contractor, but even more than that, he was a human being. And he was her friend. Or he had been anyway.

Her reasons for moving to Hope Springs were several. It had been time to get on with life on her own. She’d spent a year in the shelter she’d moved to after leaving the safe house that had originally taken her in. During that year there had been no word from Todd, and while she understood the practicality of losing herself in a city like Austin or Dallas, her state of mind required something serene. She couldn’t deal with looking behind her at every new noise and seeing crowds.

It was when she’d seen Indiana’s engagement announcement in the paper that she’d first considered settling in Hope Springs. She hadn’t kept in touch with Indiana after graduation. She’d been busy trying to make it on her own, and Indiana had her thinking too much of Dakota. She was sure it was why they’d fallen out of contact in the first place. Dakota was what had brought them together. He’d been the foundation of their friendship. The original glue. Then he was gone.

But the main reason, the true reason she’d chosen Hope Springs was the possibility of seeing him again. She’d known it was a long shot. His brother had set up his business here, she’d learned. His sister had moved here and married. Surely, Thea had rationalized, there was a chance Dakota might show up one day, to visit maybe. Except she’d been so wrapped up in the red tape and paperwork of buying the house and setting up the shelter that she hadn’t kept up with the Keller siblings.

Dakota had returned to Texas and she hadn’t even known.

She’d gotten exactly what she wanted, and now she didn’t know what to do with it. Had she thought they could start fresh? Get to know each other as adults without the ball-and-chain of the past dragging behind them and weighing them down? One thing was certain: She would not keep running out on him. She was done being afraid of all the scary places he might take her. The conversations she didn’t want to have with him. The memories she’d locked away sure to bubble to the surface.

She pulled open the door to the shop, walking in just as he was walking out. “Where are you going?”

He arched a brow, as if she was one to be asking questions when she’d left him hanging not so long ago. “I need to run to Kern’s Hardware.”

“Can I hitch a ride?”

“To where?”

“Just a ride.” She didn’t have anywhere to go. She just needed to apologize.

“Truck’s right there,” he said, nodding to the space in front of her shop.

It was an older model, and still had a bench seat. A lot like the truck he’d driven in high school. Buckets were comfortable, but there’d been something about cuddling in the front of his truck, his arm around her shoulder, their thighs pressed tight, the windows down and her hair whipping into her face . . .

Not that any of that was going to happen now, she mused, slamming the passenger door and buckling up. Still, the recollection was a nice one, even if it had her revisiting the rest of the things they’d done in his truck’s front seat. Taking a deep breath to dispel the thoughts had her swimming in his scent.

She was so screwed.

“You’re going to have to tell me where to let you out, or it’s the hardware store for you.”

Staring out her window as he drove, she smiled. “Kern’s is fine. I can walk to String Theory from there.”

She’d pulled the name of the fabric shop out of her hat. It was across the street and two doors down from Kern’s. Still, while she was in the neighborhood . . . “I need to get a couple of patches for the chairs in the kitchen at home. They’ve seen better days. Though that’s pretty typical for hand-me-downs.”

“You got that right. Take it from someone who’s used a lot of spit and baling wire on other people’s garbage.”

He’d left home at eighteen. He’d spent the next three years in prison. He’d been on the road for over a decade since, save for the last year when he’d lived first in his brother’s home, then in the cottage that belonged to his sister. Thea supposed he was just as familiar as she with secondhand things, though maybe she’d started first, her crib coming from a garage sale and all.

And then she blurted out, “I’m sorry,” because she didn’t know how else to get there.

“For what?” he asked, and snorted. “Me having nothing to my name?”

“No. I mean, well, yes.” Could she be any clumsier? “I am sorry about that, but the apology was for walking out on you earlier.”

“What about yesterday? Do I get one for then, too?” he asked, giving her a side-eyed glance. “Or maybe I need to be apologizing to you. I ruined you for other men. I’ve never been a gentleman. Hell, with that résumé, it’s a wonder you trust me to drive you to buy . . . What was it? Patches?”

“Fine. I don’t really need the patches. I mean, I do”—Frannie’s youngest had found holes in the fabric of two of the kitchen’s chairs and gone to town—“but the chairs aren’t going anywhere, and you were.”

“And you figured if you were in a moving vehicle it would be harder to walk out if things got tough.”

Something like that. No.
Exactly
like that. “What are we doing here, Dakota? And I don’t mean going shopping.”

“You mean how did two crazy kids from Round Rock end up together in Hope Springs?”

She knew her story. She just wasn’t ready to tell him that he was a big part of her being here. And she knew his, so . . . “Are you going to be able to do this job, or am I in your way?”

He slowed at the corner stop sign, glanced over as he put the truck into motion again. “That’s a hell of a loaded question, Clark.”

Was there anything about their relationship that wasn’t? “It’s all I need to know today. Just the one thing.”

“I guess it depends. If we stick to our agreement not to talk about the past, to keep to business and the present”—he checked his rearview and both side mirrors, though his truck was the only vehicle on the road—“we should be okay. If not, I can have Tennessee put someone else on the job.”

“And then you’ll leave?”

He shrugged his answer. He’d already told her he was thinking about hitting the road, but the idea of his going even sooner because she couldn’t keep her mouth shut . . . He was here. She was here. She had to be satisfied with that. She had to stop looking for answers to questions put to bed long ago.

What good would it do now to find them? she mused, staring out the window as they passed the insurance office and the art house theater. “I heard the theater was going to be renovated.”

“Yeah. Tennessee got the job.”

“That’s great. Wow. You’ve got to be excited.”

“He’s excited. I won’t be here.”

“You’re going to leave before it’s done?” she asked and glanced over, watching his pulse tic in the vein at his temple.

“I’m just the hired help, remember?” he finally said in response.

And as stupid as it was, she pushed. “Is that all you want to be?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I remember high school. You and Tennessee talking about doing construction together.”

“We were kids.”

“So were we,” she said, not sure if she was reminding him or herself of how young they’d been when they’d shared their bodies as well as pieces of their souls.

He pulled into an angled parking spot in front of Kern’s Hardware, then shut off the truck, but made no move to get out. Instead, he stared at the steering wheel, twisting his hands around it. “You just can’t help yourself, can you? You just can’t let it go. You have to keep bringing it up. You have to keep digging. What is wrong with you, Clark?”

She stared at her hands where she’d wound her fingers together in her lap, her vision blurry, though she refused to cry. He was right about it all, but she still couldn’t answer his question. All she could do was push out of the truck and head for String Theory, hoping she hadn’t just screwed up the single best friendship she’d ever known.

Becca spent the rest of the day in the kitchen organizing the supply shelves. Ellie was a genius when it came to baking bread but a complete disaster grouping and classifying her flours and herbs and spices. Who put cinnamon next to sage? That didn’t even make sense. Essential savory herbs were not shelved next to spices. Especially when the cinnamon alone required an entire rack. There was Chinese, Vietnamese, Ceylon, and Indonesian. There were powders and oils and sticks and bark.

But every time Becca walked into the kitchen to help Ellie wash the mixing bowls and baking pans, or to mop the floor free of spilled flour—which she did, like, five times a day—she found the spelt flour next to the turbinado sugar and that next to the coconut oil. Honestly. The mess of bottles and bags and jars and cans and tubes and droppers had her wanting to pull out her hair. And Ellie’s hair. Which would take forever.

Then again, Ellie didn’t think of the supplies as simply as Becca did. She was into the medicinal properties of everything as well as the culinary. Sage for respiratory health. Cinnamon for digestive upset. Becca didn’t know how the other woman knew the things she did, or why she came across as such an airhead when she was degreed and anything but. Becca wanted to punch people who made fun of her. Ellie just laughed it off.

Becca wished she had more of Ellie’s Zen, she mused, alphabetizing the red peppercorns and the black peppercorns and the white and the green and the pink. And more of Ellie’s smarts. Ellie and Thea both were so much better about thinking first. Becca just barged in and reacted. If Thea hadn’t been there to stop her when she’d slammed her arm into Dakota Keller’s throat . . .

She didn’t want to think about it. She couldn’t think about it. She had to get her temper and her impulses under control or she was going to hurt someone, and she knew too much about hurt to ever want to subject another person to anything like what she’d gone through.

Moving to the new rack with the specialized bins for dry goods, Becca flipped through the legal pad of notes she and Ellie had made for the labeling of the flours. Closer to the door into the shop now, she frowned, hearing Dakota talking to another man. Probably related to the build-out. It was well underway, even if it seemed to her Keller Construction was moving at a snail’s pace.

Then again, what did she know about what it took to turn an empty storefront into an espresso bar? As long as she had a nice counter to work behind, one tall enough and wide enough to keep the public on their side and out of her space, she was fine with whatever Thea decided on.

Except Thea hadn’t been the only one involved in the decisions. Like with everything that came from living in the house on Dragon Fire Hill, the workings of Bread and Bean had been brought to the table, though Becca thought Thea, as owner, was taking the democratic process of their shared living arrangements too far. Or maybe it wasn’t democratic. Maybe it was socialist.

Becca didn’t know squat about government, even after spending four years in service. She hadn’t had time to learn. She’d been too busy fighting off unwanted advances—without much success—to do more than see to the shine of her shoes and her made bed.

She also thought Thea was spending more money on parts of Bread and Bean than was necessary. Take the flour bins, for example. Ellie would be just as well served with Rubbermaid totes. They were water- and bug-proof, right? That had been the draw of the custom storage unit. Keeping the flours from losing their nutritional value, or some such spiel.