From the Start (6 page)

Next to Charlie, Colton held a bottle of syrup, lifting it higher and higher as he poured it over a plate piled with waffles, Charlie’s giggles mixing with the sound of trilling birds outside the window over the kitchen sink.

And oh, the sound of those giggles. . . . Charlie still didn’t talk much—a fact that had to concern Logan. But she didn’t have to form sentences to make obvious her affection for Colton. Her upward gaze was downright adoring.

Apparently this wasn’t the first time the man had interacted with her niece.

“All right. Syrup—check. Walnuts and banana slices—check. I can’t think of anything we’re missing.” Colton dabbed his finger through the syrup and licked it off. A navy blue T-shirt stretched taut over shoulders that seemed even wider this morning. “Anything else you want with your insanely unhealthy breakfast?”

Instead of answering, Charlie mimicked Colton’s taste of syrup, licked her lips, and grinned up at him, pink-and-white polka-dot pajamas hanging loose over her toddler frame.
Hello, Kodak moment.

Colton bent his legs to stand eye level with Charlotte. “You can tell me if there’s anything else you want, honey.”

His gentle words balanced in the air, and for a moment Kate thought Charlotte might actually respond verbally.
Come on, Charlie. Let us
hear your voice.

Instead, Charlotte leaned over to kiss Colton’s cheek and then wrapped her arms around his neck. He responded immediately, pulling her the rest of the way to him. “It’s okay. You’ll talk when you’re ready. Besides, we’re already simpatico, you and me, words or no words.” He tapped her nose, then shifted her around to his back. “Piggyback ride to the table, m’lady.”

Kate hugged her arms to herself, a disconcerting warmth wiggling through her, along with the realization that she couldn’t
go into the kitchen looking like this. She still wore the clothes she had slept in—baggy blue pants that didn’t quite reach her ankles and a T-shirt. Her brown hair spilled from a messy ponytail, and her glasses kept sliding down her nose.

“Oh, hey, I know what we forgot,” Colton said, snapping his fingers as he rose from setting Charlie down at the table. “Whipped cream.” He moved toward the fridge, jeans and bare feet visible now.

Uh, yeah, she’d come back for coffee later. Like after she’d dressed properly. Put in her contacts. Traded bedraggled for at least halfway put together.

But Charlie picked that moment to look away from Colton, her jade eyes hooking on Kate’s peeking around the corner. Next thing she knew, Charlie was clambering from her chair and hurling herself toward Kate.

Instinct opened her arms for her niece, knees bending. When she rose, she brought Charlie with her. “Charlie Walker, my favorite girl in the world.” Over Charlie’s shoulder she saw Colton’s expression move from surprise into a half smile that carved dimples into his cheeks.

Okay, so maybe there were worse things than being seen in her pajamas. She tightened her arms around Charlie, gaze roaming around the room—stainless steel appliances, a collection of pots hanging over the center island, swirls of beige, copper, and brown in the floor’s ceramic tiling. Granite counters and cherry cupboards wrapped around the room.

Streaming rays through the patio doors filled the open space. In the distance, the sun lit the rural landscape that embraced the spot Mom and Dad had picked to build their house—a few miles outside Maple Valley, a rolling ravine covered with a tangle of blue ash, buckeye, and shagbark hickory trees descended into a twisting creekbed.

Her gaze pulled back at Colton’s cough. He stood in front of her now, can of whipped cream in one hand, damp tips of his hair evidence he’d recently showered. But hadn’t shaved. A perfect five o’clock shadow covered his chin and cheeks. “Hey.”

“H-hey. Hi. Morning. Good. I mean, good morning.”

He reached forward to ruffle Charlie’s hair. “Let me guess: The talking thing—doesn’t work so well pre-coffee.”

“Astute.” She repeated the word he’d used last night.

Oh, that smile
. No wonder he’d landed on as many entertainment magazine covers as sports mags—a tidbit she’d learned from Raegan as they had stood around the kitchen munching on cookies with Logan and Seth into the wee hours of the morning. She’d heard all about how Colton had turned into the NFL’s media darling in the past few years, landed a starting spot when the Tigers’ former QB got injured. How he’d been the stuff of Super Bowl predictions.

How it all ended with an injury last season. Apparently he’d just announced his retirement earlier this week. Is that why he’d come to Iowa with Logan?

Instead of joining them in the kitchen last night, Colton had insisted on clearing out of Kate’s room. Once he’d transferred his stuff into Beckett’s old room, he’d never come back out.

Kate lowered Charlie to the floor now. “You know Logan would develop a permanent tick if he saw what you are feeding his daughter.”

Colton’s nose wrinkled as he cast a guilty glance toward Charlie’s plate. “It’s not that bad of a breakfast.”

“It is if you’re planning to top it with that.” She nudged her head toward the canned whipped cream.

“What’s wrong with this?”

Charlie climbed back into her chair. “If you’ve gone to all
the trouble to make waffles, it’s only right to top them with real whipped cream.”

Colton looked from Kate to the can back to her. “Didn’t know Logan had a gourmet chef for a sister.”

“
Ha! Hardly. It’s just that when it comes to waffles, well, I have standards.” She moved to the fridge.

“Then I really don’t know how to tell you this. . . .”

She ducked her head in the fridge and spotted what she’d hoped to find. She pulled out the carton of whipping cream. “Tell me what?”

“I didn’t make those waffles. They’re from a box in the freezer. The only thing I did was toast them.”

“Colton Greene.” She let her jaw drop in exaggerated shock and shook her head. “I’d scold you further, but truthfully, breakfast is the only meal I do with any kind of style. Lunch and dinner . . . it’s all PB&J and mac ’n’ cheese. Still, I think I’d better introduce you to the joys of real whipped cream.” The sound of Charlie’s fork scraping against her plate sounded behind them. Kate pointed to the pantry. “You get the powdered sugar, I’ll go hunting for the hand mixer.”

Only minutes later, she had the mixer going and the cream was starting to fluff. Beside her, Colton took a drink of the coffee she’d poured. Sputtered. “What the—”

“Dad must’ve made it.” Kate’s voice rose over the mixer. Her own mug was already half-empty. “He likes it muddy.”

“Muddy? Try swamp-like.” Colton motioned to the bowl. “You do realize by the time you’ve got that ready, Charlie will be done eating.”

“It’s the principle of the thing. Little more sugar.”

He lifted the bag of sugar and poured until Kate signaled for him to stop. She felt his gaze on her as she scraped the beaters along the edge of the bowl.

“You’re the sibling who lives in Chicago, right?”

“Yep.” A city she’d never expected to end up in. Writing stories she’d never expected to write.

And for the hundredth time since that call from the foundation, bubbles of hope rose up and floated through her—though the reality of her financial situation poked at them.

“So family order . . . Logan’s the oldest, then you, then the other brother—”

“Beckett. He’s twenty-eight. Lives in Boston.” Lawyer on his way to partner.

“And then Raegan.”

“Yes, she’s the youngest.” Which meant she put up with her fair share of ribbing about her baby-of-the-family status and the fact that at twenty-five she still slept in her old daybed in Dad’s house.

“And Seth . . . ?”

Kate turned off the mixer. “Cousin who’s more like a sibling. He moved back to Maple Valley about a year ago, opened his own restaurant about a month back.” And because he’d poured so much of his own money into starting the business, he’d been living in Dad’s basement to save on rent. She unfastened one of the beaters from the mixer and handed it to Colton.

He blinked. “I’m supposed to lick that off?”

“Proving a point here, Greene.”

He shrugged, took the beater, taste-tested her creation.

She folded her arms. “Well?”

“Fine, it’s better than the stuff in the can. You were right.”

She leaned one elbow on the counter, licked off her own beater. “What was that last part? Couldn’t quite hear you.”

His blue eyes narrowed. “I’m not saying it again.” He reached one hand toward her face, and Kate jumped back.

“What are you—”

“You’ve got whipped cream in your hair.”

Kate stilled, nerves fidgeting through her as Colton brushed out the whipped cream with his fingers.

So close.
And oh, he smelled like . . . soap and pinewood and flannel.

“What’s going on in here?”

They both jumped as if kids caught loitering where they shouldn’t be, and Kate’s gaze flew to the figure standing in the opening between the kitchen and the living room.

Arm in a sling, face bruised, form slighter than she remembered.
What . . . why?

“Dad?”

Colton had thought the downed trees and flattened fields they’d passed on the way from Case Walker’s house into town were bad. But this?

His gaze hurtled around the kitchen of The Red Door, the restaurant Logan’s cousin had opened in the historical bank building that swallowed up one corner of Maple Valley’s downtown. Storm-tossed debris littered the space—chunks of wood and brick, layers of dust covering the long metal counter in the middle of the room and the black-and-white-checkered floor. A late summer wind, heavy with humidity, crackled through the plastic tarp partially covering the hole in the back wall.

And a tree trunk—gouged through the wall.

“Whoa.” The word slipped out on the heels of Logan’s gasp.

Seth Walker nudged broken glass out of the way with his foot and perched against the tiled counter top that lined the wall opposite the wreckage. His hair was lighter than Logan’s, and he stood an inch or two shorter, but the Walker resemblance was there. “It looks bad, I know, but trust me, it could’ve been so much worse. Not twenty minutes before the twister hit, I was sitting at that desk.”

The one at the back of the room now split in half by the tree.

Logan picked up an overturned chair. “Thank God you and everyone got to the basement.”

Seth nodded. “It’s a miracle no one in town was seriously injured.”

The image of Case Walker slipped in then. The shock on Kate’s face when she’d seen her father walk into the kitchen an hour ago, all bruised and wearing that sling. No one had told her the man had dislocated a shoulder in the storm? She’d gone white as that whipped cream she’d just made.

And he’d had the uncanny urge to reach out for her—just to make sure she stayed steady on her feet. Which was funny, really. From his two brief exchanges with her, Kate Walker didn’t seem like the fainting type. Plucky and strong willed, yes. Feeble, no.

Still . . . he hadn’t missed the dismay rimming her shock.

“So the main goal today is to get the tree out of here,” Seth said, pulling off his Maple Valley Mavericks ball cap and stuffing it in his back pocket. “Problem is, pretty much every piece of equipment in town is in use, since everyone’s in storm-repair mode. Cleanup crews are focusing on residences and public buildings first. I could wait, but I’d really like to get the place reopened sooner rather than later.”

Logan walked over to the tree. “If it wasn’t such a beast of a tree, we could just lift it.”

Odd to see Logan like this—dressed in old jeans and a faded T-shirt. Had he ever seen his friend in anything other than a suit?

“If we had a chainsaw, we could cut it up and get it out in pieces. Case already loaned his out, though, and the two stores in town that sell them are sold out.” Seth eyed his cousin, then Colton. “But, uh, I did find a couple axes in Case’s shed. I know chopping wood probably wasn’t what you expected when you offered to help.”

Logan was already moving his shoulders, as if loosening up in preparation for the manual labor. “I don’t mind. You?” He tossed the question to Colton.

After the week he’d had, swinging a sharp tool at an inanimate object sounded awesome. He’d just have to be careful of his bad shoulder. “Put me to work.”

“All right, then—the axes are out in the truck. But let me show you the rest of the place first.”

They followed Seth through a swinging door into the restaurant’s main eating area and Colton gasped for a second time—only this time out of appreciation.

It had the perfect inviting atmosphere—soft lighting and a fireplace in the corner, redwood ceiling that reached down to amber-colored walls. Unique touches like the cubed shelves displaying coffee mugs on one wall and the cobblestone base of the order counter.

“Oh man. This place is incredible.” The impressed tone of Logan’s voice matched the admiration clinking around Colton’s thoughts.

The outside of the business, as he’d seen when they drove up, had just as much personality—the words
First National Bank
still etched into its gray cement, intricate cornice swirling above the entrance and at each corner of the sloping roof, a jutting brass sign with the name of the restaurant . . . and of course, the bright red door.