The Second Chance Café (Hope Springs, #1) (3 page)

Huh. Interesting. He guessed her age, then did a rough calculation backward through time. “Are you related to May and Winton? Or…were you one of their foster kids?”

The questions hung between them longer than he liked. And then her response, while not exactly an answer, told him exactly what he wanted to know.

“Does it matter? To you doing the renovations, I mean?”

“Not a bit.” He reached for a pencil to have something to do with his hands. “That answers the where. Now give me an idea of the what.”

“I need a couple of walls knocked out, and definitely new shutters. I’m sure I’ll have a longer list once I go through all the rooms and decide how to use them, but the biggest thing will be the kitchen. Unless you can work magic with what’s there, I’ll need to have it completely redone.”

He was stuck on knocking out walls. The house had stood intact for a hundred-plus years; for some reason, he’d assumed she’d come to him knowing he’d appreciate its historic
value. That he’d respect it. Not undermine it for the sake of convenience and the ego of interior design.

He rocked his pencil so the eraser end bounced off the drafting board, a gust of wind ruffling the blueprint held in place there by a two-by-four block. “You’re looking to remodel rather than restore, then.”

“Actually, I’m looking to renovate. I’ll be living on the top two floors and using the first for my business. That requires a small commercial kitchen, and better traffic flow than the doorways allow for now.” She paused, taking him in, her eyes a light green that set off her hair and broadcasting frustration. “I can explain more, or you can come by and take a look, or you can tell me I’m barking up the wrong tree and save us both the time.”

He wanted to say he wasn’t the man for the job, but knew he was. He wouldn’t take shortcuts, or compromise the structure’s integrity, or suggest additional destruction to pad his bill. He didn’t want to do the job, and so he would. “I can stop by tomorrow. Noon or so?”

“That would be great. I’m roughing it until the place is ready to be lived in, so I’ll be there all day.” She slid from the stool and reached into the tiny purse belted at her waist for a card. “Here’s my cell number. If I don’t hear you knock, you might need to call. Or you could just come in and yell,” she added with a soft laugh. “The place is empty, so I shouldn’t have any problem hearing you.”

Her card mirrored his, a name and a number, though her ink was raised, her paper an upgrade, just like her T-shirt and boots. “The dog won’t sound a warning?”

Bending, she mussed Magoo’s ruff until he shuddered, pleasure rolling off of him along with a cloud of coarse
black and tan hair. “I have a feeling this guy will be out making friends with the local wildlife. Or at least letting them know there’s a new boss in town.”

Ten took in her affection for the dog, took in the fall of her hair and the dancer’s arch of her back as she bent. Took in the curve of her triceps that told him a lot about the body beneath her clothes. He bounced his pencil harder, pulled his gaze away, and stared out the barn door at the trees standing sentry on either side of his road.

A lot of good they’d done him, allowing this woman and her dog to leave footprints all over, no warning or so much as a by-your-leave for the breach. He’d never indulged in the volatile mix of business with pleasure.

But what was he supposed to do now, her number and invitation in hand, the house he wanted belonging to her, and lust a monster complication growling at his feet?

He stood when she stood, and followed her to her Jeep. “Tomorrow, then. Noon sharp.”

I
t wasn’t the dream that woke Kaylie that night but the guttural rumble at the base of Magoo’s throat rattling around like ice cubes. He’d left his sleeping bag and was standing on his hind legs at the window. Something on the lawn below had disturbed him, and as the beam of a flashlight crossed the glass, Kaylie found herself disturbed, too.

She shoved out of her sleeping bag and, heart racing, into her jeans and boots. Grabbing her flashlight, her phone, and her eight-inch bowie knife, she headed for the stairs with Magoo on her heels. She had her dog to rely on, but she knew better than anyone the truth of a stainless-steel blade.

She was halfway through the kitchen, having punched 9-1-1 on her phone’s keypad, her thumb hovering over Send, when she realized Magoo’s growl was gone. He was pawing at the screen door, whimpering to be let out, as if whatever danger he’d sensed from the third floor had turned out to be a friendly on the first.

Kaylie barely had the screen unlocked before the dog pushed it open and bounded through. She switched on her flashlight and followed, holding it with three fingers of her left hand, her index finger and thumb wrapped
around her phone and ready to dial for help. In her other hand, she clutched the knife in a hammer grip in case Magoo had made a mistake. He rarely did, though lacking his nose, she was going to need more evidence.

She got it as she turned the corner into the front yard to see him sitting at Ten Keller’s side. Not a squatter or a vagrant or a burglar or a thief, but Ten Keller. Here with no warning. Checking out her house as if the day’s business hours hadn’t passed. And her looking like she’d just crawled out of a cardboard box on the street. Nice. She wasn’t sure if she was aggravated at him for showing up unannounced, or at herself for caring about her appearance.

“Fickle, traitorous dog,” she muttered, taking it out on Magoo, who would never know, though the words were lost in the dark. Ignoring the wild mess of her hair, she doused her torch, guided toward man and beast by the light of the moon and the beam of Ten’s Maglite playing off the flower beds edging the house.

By day, the fallow dirt was depressing. By night, the bleak landscape brought to mind sunken graves, forgotten, abandoned, last winter’s leaves gone to compost on top. A good thing, actually. Very soon, after the threat of frost passed, azaleas. Soft pink and fuchsia and white, a crazy quilt of colors against the blue of the house.

As she drew near him, Ten looked up, looked her over, caught her eye, and nodded toward her right hand. “You planning on woodworking? Or hunting small game?”

He was the one trespassing, and he wanted answers? Good thing both Jessa and Carolyn had vouched for him, though Magoo was the best judge of character she’d ever known. “I was going to throw it at you.” She balanced the
knife on her palm. The handle was the perfect size for her fingers, the weight a precise match for her skill and strength. She knew that because she’d tried others when she’d decided to make the weapon her friend. “Well, not at you, but if Magoo had given the word…”

“Target practice?”

“Something like that.”

He returned his attention to Magoo, squatting in front of the dog to shake. Magoo lifted a paw, his big mouth smiling as Ten ruffled a hand over the top of his head. “Sorry about waking you.”

She hadn’t yet decided if she was. She liked seeing him with her dog. Liked that he knew what to do, that he wasn’t scared away—a contradiction that made her wonder why she had a guard dog in the first place. Sigh. “I don’t think I’ve ever known any contractor to make midnight house calls.”

“I was on my way home. Thought I’d swing by and take a quick look at the shutters.” He waved the flashlight in a pass over the worst. “I didn’t know you were here.”

She’d parked her Jeep in the garage. She’d left no lights burning; she’d had no need. The windows in the bedroom were bare and the moon full. “I just got the keys this morning. My first night in my house.”

“On the floor?”

“I’ve got a sleeping bag.” She gestured toward Magoo. “We both do.”

He scratched Magoo behind his ears one more time and then straightened, an effortlessly synced motion of hips, thighs, and abs as he gained his feet.

Kaylie swallowed. “I’m sure I told you I was staying here.”

“You did, but I thought maybe you’d changed your mind at the reality of roughing it.”

If only he knew what this house meant to her, how many nights she’d been unable to sleep for thoughts of this roof, and not the one in her Austin condo, over her head.

“Not a chance,” she said. It was dark, but his expression seemed doubtful. “Didn’t you ever take a new toy to bed with you Christmas night? Something you’d been waiting for and wanting so long you couldn’t bear to let it out of your sight?”

A humorless grin tugged at one side of his mouth. “This is a toy?”

“A gift, then,” she offered. “A pair of red cowboy boots or a sparkly pink plush puppy.”

This time his smile was true. “I slept with a BB gun once.”

Oh, good. He was human. “See? Same thing.”

He looked from her face to the three stories looming in front of him. “So you’ve been waiting for and wanting this house a long time?”

“I have.”

“But you’re still set on knocking out walls.”

“I am.”

“No way around it, huh?”

Did he not want the work? Did he think she was blithely tearing apart a perfectly sound structure, giving no thought to the life breathed into it by those who’d called it home? Or was he so ready to start he’d been unable to put off getting a closer look?

Whatever, this conversation could wait until tomorrow. She was tired, and it was too late for arguing philosophical differences. “Nope, sorry. They’ve gotta go.”

He made a sound, a snort, a huff, and the flashlight beam played over her shutters once more before he switched off the light to leave. “Okay then. I’ll see you tomorrow at noon.”

“Goodnight, Mr. Keller.”

He came closer, stopped in front of her, met her gaze. It was too dark to see the color of his eyes, but she remembered well their shade, honey gold and incandescent. The moon shone off his hair and brought to mind sun tea, caramel brownies, red Anjou pears.

He made her hungry, and that wouldn’t do.

“Ten,” he told her, patting Magoo’s head where the dog sat between them. “Everyone calls me Ten.”

She nodded, pressing the hand holding her knife to her belly, a sharp cutting reminder that she wasn’t here for whatever this was he had her feeling. “Good night, Ten.”

While Magoo took three turns and was out like a light, Kaylie lay staring at the ceiling for hours. Food. Ten Keller had her thinking of food. Of appetites. Of desire. Of brownies.

After five years in three urban foster homes with playtime corralled inside fences, she’d come to Hope Springs, and at ten years old, found a family with Winton and May Wise. The moment she’d set eyes on their densely wooded acre, she’d sworn to climb every tree.

While in grade school, she’d monkeyed her way to the top of most. In middle school, volleyball became her physical outlet of choice. In high school, she’d gone on to play soccer. Staying active had offset the obvious downside to her obsessive love for brownies.

Baking brownies had been only one of the things May Wise had given her, but it had turned into her greatest success. Varying cooking times and temperatures as well as ingredients produced a world of textures and tastes, and Kaylie had never tired of experimenting. Toffee and cream cheese and walnuts. Dark cherries and even darker cacao nibs and the darkest of espresso.

Fortunately, the Wises, their friends and her classmates, and the other kids living in the blue Victorian had been happy to gobble up her therapy projects. Because that’s what the brownies had been.

She’d baked when stressed over finals or tournaments. She’d baked when overwhelmed with options for colleges and careers. She’d baked when blue, when teen love went unrequited, when zits popped up at the worst possible times. When school forms required names for her parents and she had nothing to say.

So, yes. She understood the tug-of-war played out between food and emotions. Whether baking or buying or bingeing, she’d done her share of all three.

What she did not understand, however, was Tennessee Keller bringing brownies to mind, or how she was going to work with him now that he had.

Two Owls’ Signature Chocolate Brownie

oh, chocolate, our chocolate

1¼ cups cake flour

½ teaspoon salt

¾ teaspoon baking powder

6 ounces unsweetened chocolate

¾ cup unsalted butter

2¼ cups sugar

4 large eggs

1 tablespoon vanilla

Preheat oven to 325°F. Grease or spray with cooking oil and flour (or line with aluminum foil) a 9 x 13–inch baking pan.

Sift the flour, the salt, and the baking powder into a bowl and set aside. Melt the chocolate and the butter in a double boiler (or in a microwave), stirring often so as not to burn the chocolate. Mix the sugar into the smooth chocolate mixture. Add the eggs one at a time, whisking after each. Stir in the vanilla. Add the flour mixture, folding in with a rubber spatula.

Pour the batter into the prepared baking pan. Bake 30–35 minutes, or until an inserted tester comes out mostly clean. Cool completely before cutting.

S
ettled by German farmers along the Guadalupe River in 1872, Gruene, Texas, thrived for years as a commercial cotton hub, only to be decimated by a 1920s boll-weevil blight and doomed by the Great Depression. A half century later, the community was annexed by New Braunfels, having found new footing as a center for tourism and art. One of the town’s most famous landmarks, Gruene Hall, opened in 1878, and in 2001 made
Forbes
magazine’s “50 of America’s Best” list as Best Country Honky-Tonk.