The Second Chance Café (A Hope Springs Novel) Read online

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Text copyright © 2013 Alison Kent

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Montlake Romance

  P.O. Box 400818

  Las Vegas, NV 89140

  ISBN-13: 9781611097894

  ISBN-10: 1611097894

  To Robyn Carr, for Virgin River, and to Barbara O’Neal, for The Lost Recipe for Happiness. These two books took me back to my roots and the stories I’ve longed to tell. Thank you for making this happen.

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  Two Owls' Signature Chocolate Brownie

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  Wake Up and Smell Two Owls' Chocolate Brownie

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Two Owls' Number Ten Brownie Special

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Two Owls' Nutty Chocolate Brownie Buddy

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Two Owls' Chocolate Brownie on the Brain

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Two Owls' Brownie Bouquet

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Sneak Peek: Beneath the Patchwork Moon

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CHAPTER ONE

  It was done.

  The papers signed. The money transferred. The holding tight to the other shoe a thing of the past.

  After weeks of waiting to hear on her offer, Kaylie Flynn was the proud owner of the three-story Victorian nestled on an oak-shaded acre and painted Van Gogh’s Starry Night blue.

  It was the house where she’d spent the best years of her life. It was the house that had saved her. She wrapped her hand around the keys, the tiny teeth like a smile in her palm, and glanced up at the windows taking her in.

  The shutters would be the first thing she replaced. Several slats were broken, some dangling, others gone. They’d once been white, but the paint had since chipped and faded. A soft dove gray would suit much better. Or maybe the pale butter-yellow of Van Gogh’s stars.

  “You’ve got the keys, your copies of the pertinent documents, and my number if we’ve missed anything. All the utilities were turned on this morning. You’ll need to transfer them into your name, but you should be set. Can you think of anything else before I go?”

  The real estate agent. Carolyn Parker. The other woman had remembered Kaylie from high school, but the memories from Kaylie’s past had yet to be puzzled into place. “Sorry. I was lost picturing new shutters, but yes. I should have everything.”

  “Ah, not quite. For new shutters, you need a contractor.”

  “Actually, I’m going to need a contractor for a whole lot more than that.”

  “Then you’re in luck, because I know just the man. I’m pretty sure I have his card here somewhere,” Carolyn said, her voice lost in the depths of the quilted tote hooked over her shoulder.

  Kaylie was used to professional women accessorizing with designer labels. The quilted tote’s paisley and pink elephant print reminded her how far Hope Springs, Texas, was from Austin—a distance that had little to do with miles, but everything to do with Kaylie’s return.

  “Here you go,” Carolyn said, coming up with the card. “Anything you need repaired or replaced, Ten’s your man. He’s the best, and runs a crew that knows what they’re doing, even if they’re a bit unconventional.”

  Tennessee Keller. Two words and a phone number. The whole of the information imparted by black ink on white stock. She filed away the “unconventional” remark, preferring to make that judgment for herself. “He’s here? In Hope Springs?”

  Carolyn nodded, blowing at an unruly brown curl dangling between her eyes. Carolyn, Kaylie had come to notice, was always blowing, pushing, adjusting, as if she was so used to doing the same for her two-year-old twins, she couldn’t stop setting things to right.

  “For about seven years, I guess? Eight maybe? He did some work on Wade’s back porch the summer we started dating, so that would’ve been…wow, more like ten.”

  Ten years ago, Kaylie had left Hope Springs for Austin, her departure a ship in the night to Tennessee Keller’s arrival. A decade of work in the area should mean he’d have plenty of references. She tucked that thought away, too, sliding the card into the back pocket of her jeans.

  “Thanks. I guess that’ll do it, then. At least for now.” She moved her keys from her right hand to her left to shake Carolyn’s. “I really appreciate you going to bat for me with the Colemans.”

  “Oh, please. How could they say no? In this economy? And you paying cash? I mean, really, it’s not my business, but cash?”

  Kaylie’s financial advisor had been of the same incredulous mind, but Kaylie would not be swayed. Cash meant the house was hers. The lawn, the trees, the memories. The bedroom. The kitchen. Most of all the kitchen.

  She slipped her fingertips into the pocket with the card and toyed with the edge. She had big plans for the kitchen. Even better, now she had the funds to see them through. “I know how crazy it sounds, but it was the right thing to do.”

  “Well, it’s your money. I guess you’re the one who would know best where to put it. Listen.” Carolyn was speaking into her tote again. “We rarely have any problems with vagrants or break-ins, but the Colemans got so caught up caring for Bob’s parents in Wichita Falls that the place kinda took a backseat. The police have had to run off squatters a time or two.”

  She handed over another card from what Kaylie guessed was her collection belonging to local businesses. This one was imprinted with the official seal of the Hope Springs Police Department. “You can always call 911, but this is the direct line to Alva Bean in dispatch. If you need an officer, he’ll have someone here pronto.”

  “Great. I really appreciate it.” The card joined the one for the contractor. “Oh, wait. There is something. Would you know what time the newspaper office closes today?”

  Carolyn brought up a hand to shield her eyes from the sun as it cut through the limbs of the street-side oaks. “Since it’s Friday, that makes me want to say three. We’ve got a high school girl at the office who takes care of our listings there, so I can’t be sure.”

  “Thanks.” Kaylie wanted to put an ad in the next weekly edition, but before she did anything, she needed
to get Magoo from her Jeep. “Maybe we can have lunch sometime soon? My treat?”

  “Wow. A meal eaten without twenty grubby fingers reaching for everything on my plate? It’s a date.” With a wave, Carolyn turned to go, her sensible flats smacking against the sidewalk as she made her way to her minivan, parallel parked at the curb.

  Kaylie waited until the other woman had pulled safely onto Second Street, then headed through the overgrown grass to the driveway on the Chances Avenue side of the lot. “Hey, Goo. Ready to check out the new digs?”

  Tongue lolling, the two-year-old shepherd mix placed his paws on the doorframe and boosted himself halfway through the window. Kaylie slapped her hand to her thigh, and ninety pounds of dog sailed through the air to land at her feet.

  She scratched between his ears, then circled the vehicle to grab his water bowl from the passenger floorboard. He trotted beside her to the breezeway connecting the garage to the house. The door there opened into a mudroom that opened into the kitchen she’d dreamed of for ten years. She filled the bowl at the sink, setting it near the back door before allowing herself to take everything in.

  She didn’t know where to start. The six-foot island with a stove top, cutting board, and second sink for food prep. The walk-in pantry with shelves deep enough and tall enough to stock with a platoon’s worth of supplies. The linoleum that had suffered skid marks from rubber-soled shoes, and gouges from dropped mixer beaters, and stains from food coloring intended for a red velvet cake.

  Kaylie wrapped her arms around her middle and remembered the klutz she’d been at twelve. All those tiny squeeze bottles, the mess on her fingers and the toes of her shoes, the droplets flung like blood from a knife to the floor. She’d ruined a brand-new sponge, wasted half a roll of paper towels, and still not wiped away all traces of the spill. She’d wanted so badly to surprise May Wise, but her foster mother had been less concerned about her birthday—or the shambles of the kitchen—than to hear through a sobbing confession that Kaylie knew about knife wounds.

  As much as Kaylie would love to install hardwood or Italian marble, her plans required commercial flooring—durable; slip-, fire-, and stain-resistant; easy to maintain. The menu for her daily ten-to-two lunch would be simple, selfserve, and self-pay. Salad, bread, entrée, dessert. Payment in cash dropped in a cigar box at the dining-room door.

  Kaylie’s specialty was business—and brownies—not reproducing the breads baked in this kitchen the eight years she’d lived here. Or putting together the hearty main dishes she would serve others as May Wise had served those in her care. Making a success of Two Owls Café meant a cook who knew red leaf from romaine, Gouda from feta from Parmigiano from Swiss. Egg noodles from rice noodles from semolina spaghetti. Hiring the right woman, or man, was a priority.

  She hadn’t come to her plan lightly. Malina’s Diner was the only true restaurant in Hope Springs proper. Max Malina did a booming breakfast business, but closed at ten once the rush was done. He reopened at four for dinner, leaving a six-hour window where anyone wanting a meal had to cook or leave town. The fast-food franchises on the interstate, Kaylie had learned, boomed at lunch like Max’s place did at first light.

  Two Owls Café would offer an alternative to soup and sandwiches, burgers and fries. But more than that, it would offer a place for friends to gather, and over a meal discuss crafts and child rearing, music and books and movies, favorite recipes and gardening tips. Kaylie saw her place as an oasis, one with a limited menu, yes, but then this house had always been about nurturing with things other than food.

  She glanced at Magoo as he huffed and snorted his way around the room’s baseboards, his tail up, his ears up, his nose hard at work. “Whaddaya think, Goo? ‘Wanted. A butcher, a baker, a candlestick maker’?”

  Magoo gave a single distracted wag of his tail in answer, then moved into the dining room, leaving Kaylie on her own in the kitchen. It was this room, more than any other, where she’d come to terms with the life she’d lost and the one she’d been gifted in return.

  What she hadn’t been able to do, however, was reconcile the images, the ones stamped on her five-year-old mind’s eye: Her mother lying bloody on the floor of another kitchen. Their neighbor, Ernest, holding her tiny, shivering body and crying when the authorities had whisked her away. Her father like dust in the wind.

  She needed to know the whole story. And only from the harbor of this house that had saved her would she be strong enough for the truth.

  After carting the few belongings she’d brought with her to the third-floor bedroom, Kaylie called for Magoo and loaded both of them into her Jeep. It was almost three, and if Carolyn was right, the Hope Springs Courant was closing soon. Before she lost herself for hours in the house—no, not the house, her house—measuring the windows and rooms, sketching possible furniture placement, noting the most obvious of the needed repairs, she had to make the trip into town.

  She found the small square building squatting on Fifth Street, the post office to its left, the Dollar General finishing off the block, and eased forward into one of the angled parking places. Giving Magoo orders to stay put, she tugged open the paper’s front door and stepped into the low-ceilinged room that spoke less of urgent deadlines and more of garage sales and grocery specials.

  “Good afternoon. May I help you?”

  Kaylie turned to the woman who’d appeared from the closest cubicle, its walls decorated with school photos and family snapshots pushpinned into place. “I wanted to place an ad in your classifieds.”

  “Sure thing, hon. Let me find you a form.” One hand on the counter, she bent to shuffle through the supplies stored beneath. Her nails tapping against the surface were short and painted a bright orange-pink to match her lipstick. The color was the only makeup on her face and shockingly bright, but somehow it suited her perfectly. “Here’s a pencil. And here’s the form. Name, address, phone number, then the ad worded exactly as you’d like it to appear. It’s best if you print. Makes for fewer mistakes in data entry.”

  While Kaylie got started, the other woman explained the cost, the circulation numbers, and the distribution schedule. “You can pay for up to four weeks at a time, or pay for one and let us know by the next week’s deadline if you want to run it again.”

  “I’ll start with two weeks, if that’s okay. See where I am with responses, and go from there.”

  “Put a check mark right here, then,” the woman said, pointing to a box in the For Office Use Only section, and frowning as she began to read through. “Your address. The corner of Second and Chances? You bought the Coleman place?”

  “It was the Wise place when I knew it, but yes. That’s the house.”

  “The Wise place.” The frown deepened, dredging a vee between the other woman’s thick eyebrows. “You knew May and Winton Wise? Were you one of their kids? I mean, it’s none of my business, but it’s mostly local folks who remember the Wises.”

  Kaylie nodded, extending her hand. “Kaylie Flynn. I came to live with them when I was ten, though I would’ve been Kaylie Bridges then.”

  “Kaylie Bridges. Oh my God! I’m Jessa Little!” Jessa pumped Kaylie’s hand as if priming a water well, her plump bosom bouncing. “Well, I’m Jessa Breeze now. I married Rick Breeze after graduation. Oh, did I ever love your brownies. I think eighth grade was when I fell in love with chocolate, thanks to you. There wasn’t a weekend I wasn’t baking something. And then Rick magically fell in love with me.”

  Kaylie laughed, glad to hear her baking had benefited others as well as herself. “Happy to do my part for true romance.”

  Jessa leaned closer to whisper, “I hope the name change means you’ve got an amazing man in your life.”

  “Of a sort.” Kaylie glanced outside to see Magoo draped out the Jeep’s passenger-side window, watching her. His tongue hung over his chin as he panted. His big paws dangled down the door. “That guy out there keeps me company.”

  “Huh. Looks like the type to scare off any other company you
might want.”

  “He knows his place. He wouldn’t leave the Jeep even if you waved a sirloin in front of him.”

  “Ah, but let someone look at you the wrong way…”

  “It’s definitely been an unanticipated benefit of pet ownership,” Kaylie admitted, opening the Baggallini wallet attached to her belt. “Is cash okay, or do you prefer a credit card?”

  “Either one,” Jessa said, then took the bills Kaylie counted out and handed her. “I’ll be right back with your change.”

  While waiting, Kaylie returned her attention to her dog. Magoo had been her constant companion since an emotional, spur-of-the-moment decision had sent her into the parking lot of the animal shelter, where he’d been left with his littermates days before. She’d been sad, alone, and desperate for a friend. May Wise’s funeral had broken her.

  Who was she going to call when she wanted to brainstorm new brownie recipes? Who would remind her to pick up shards of broken glass with a balled-up slice of bread? Or to clean the grease from the blades of her garbage disposal with ice cubes?

  Who would answer the phone in the middle of the night and listen to her breathe when she woke from the dream that left her gasping?

  “Here’s your receipt and change.” Jessa was holding out both when, perspiration pasting her bra to her breasts, Kaylie pulled herself out of the nightmare. “Not that it’s any of my business, but I read through the ad. You’re opening a restaurant?”

  Kaylie cleared her throat. “I am, yes. A café. On the first floor of the house.”

  Jessa toyed with a puff of a curl cupping her ear. “Do you mind if I mention this to Rick’s mother? And give her your number? The woman puts those Food Network chefs to shame.”

  “Not at all. I’d love for you to. And if there’s anyone else you can think of, please have them call or come by. I’m anticipating it’ll be just shy of three months before the café’s open, but I want to involve whoever I hire with the planning.”

  “Have you already moved in?”

  “It’s more like I’m camping in. I need a couple of walls knocked out, some painting done, an overhaul of the kitchen.” Not to mention all the upgrades and improvements. “I’ll be staying there while that’s going on, but won’t move my furniture in until the construction’s finished.” Another thing that couldn’t wait. “Speaking of construction, do you know of Tennessee Keller?”