The Sweetness of Honey (A Hope Springs Novel) (10 page)

“Why aren’t you at work?”

“Hello to you, too, Ms. Keller,” Will said, leaning against the loft’s elevator frame as Indiana tugged open the recalcitrant accordion gate.

He was up and dressed, save for his steel-toed boots. He’d had coffee for breakfast and again for lunch. But he hadn’t gone looking for his truck keys, which he’d need in order to leave, and wasn’t sure he had looking—or leaving—in him today.

Ennui, he supposed it was, though he’d be more inclined to call it self-indulgence, perhaps even self-pity. Except he wasn’t really feeling sorry for himself. He wasn’t feeling much of anything at all.

That was the problem with closing off one’s emotions in order to survive. Because now that he was a free man, he felt just as imprisoned as he had behind bars. And he wasn’t quite sure how to fix that. Or if he wanted to.

He’d been thinking a lot about leaving town, but there was the issue of his parole. He could talk to Manny, see what—if anything—could be worked out to keep him on the straight and narrow elsewhere, because he was just this close to being done with, well, giving a crap about getting back to real life.

He worked for a company based here. He owned property in a building that had been here longer than he’d been alive. He got along with the circle of people in Hope Springs he called friends. Whether they really were . . . What did he know about friends? What did he know about anything anymore?

Did he keep working for Ten at a job he did well? Did he return to school to finish his master’s? Did he get his car out of storage where it had been for three years, now almost four, and go some place else? Anyplace else? Anywhere at all?

The woman standing in front of him would be the only one he would miss. He couldn’t tell her how much. Neither could he tell her that he hadn’t meant to kiss her. Or that he was sorry for letting his own regrets muck up Halloween.

He had meant to kiss her. He’d meant to for days, for weeks, for months. Since the first day they’d met. And he wasn’t sorry about Halloween. Only that no matter what move he made, his king was going to get checkmated by Oliver Gatlin.

He’d have to chalk up whatever wasn’t going to happen between them to bad timing: his finally getting out of prison, her finally reconnecting with Ten, Oliver Gatlin growing out of his years as a dick. Finally.

“Come in,” he said, pushing himself out of the way as he realized she was standing there waiting.

She did, crossing the threshold of his very large and largely unfurnished loft for the very first time. “Why aren’t you at work?” she repeated, hands at her hips as she turned to face him, frowning. “And why don’t you have any furniture?”

“I have furniture.” He walked past her into the center of the space, gestured grandly toward the bar stools, the futon, the side table, and the lamp. “Please. Take a seat. Can I get you something to drink?”

Shaking her head as if dodging one of the bees she valued so much, she held up a hand, putting a stop to the mundanities. “I don’t want to sit. And, thank you, but I don’t want anything to drink. I want to know why you aren’t at work.”

He didn’t have an answer for that. Unless he wanted to voice a repeat of his recent thoughts. “At work for Ten? Or at work for you?”

“At work. Period.” Her frown deepened. “Are you not feeling well? Because you look terrible.”

That made him smile. “I feel fine. The terrible just comes with the territory.”

“And what territory is that?” she asked, crossing to his long wall of windows, then turning. “Are you going to start playing the part of woe-is-me ex-con?”

This was what he liked most about Indiana Keller. There was no using past crimes as excuses for present ones. Whatever she’d been through to cause her longtime estrangement from Ten, she didn’t stand on it like a platform, and she didn’t put up with anyone else trying it with their sins.

“I’m just tired,” he said, plopping down on the futon and squaring one leg over the other.

Again with the shake of her head. Again with the hands at her hips. “Tired of what? Working for a living?”

That was something he didn’t have to do, but she didn’t know that. No one in Hope Springs knew that. He shrugged. “Bored, then. I’m just bored.”

This time she swung her arms wide to the side. “With what? Work? Life? Not having furniture? Shopping for furniture? Because your history with prison aside, you’ve got one of the cushiest lives of anyone I know.”

Cushy. Was that what this was? “Did Ten send you after me?”

“Tennessee would come after you himself if he was that worried,” she said, looking out the window again.

That was probably true. “Then why are you asking me about work?”

“Because Tennessee needs to be spending his time at the arts center, and my cottage isn’t going to remodel itself. Plus, I’d really like the annex finished so I can start planning for next year’s schedule.”

“I thought that was the point of a greenhouse,” he said, stretching his arms along the futon’s cushion. “No need for a schedule. Year-round temperature control.”

“Not the growing schedule.
My
schedule.” She came back to where he was sitting and perched her hip on the futon’s corner, not too close, but not too far away. “Why are you being so . . . I don’t know, contrary? After dinner the other night, I thought—”

“That I would be at your constant beck and call?” Because he needed to rid that idea from both their minds. His especially.

“No. Good grief. Why would you say that?” She held his gaze, a long moment of frowning, then looked down at her hands where her fingers were twined in her lap. “I don’t understand you, is all. I thought after dinner I might. I mean, we talked for hours, and yet everything about you is still . . .”

“Still what?” he asked, when she dropped the sentence.

She took her time responding, as if weighing what she wanted to say, what would be safe to say, what he probably most needed to hear. In the end, she simply told him, “You, Will Bowman, are a mystery.”

It really was a shame the chemistry between them was so one-sided. He was going to miss her when he was gone. “You didn’t need to make a special trip to tell me that.”

“I didn’t,” she said, bopping him on the knee. “I came to ask you about work. But if something’s going on . . . Or if you need to talk . . .”

He didn’t, he never would, but he still hated how perceptive she was. During dinner, he’d done such a good job keeping the conversation impersonal. He’d gone down his list: pop culture, politics, science and money and art.

Yet somehow his carefully manufactured coping mechanism had gone awry. And he wasn’t sure he’d got it all put back together again,
à
la Humpty Dumpty.

He reached over and chucked her on the chin. “Let’s talk about what’s going on in your life. Something besides the annex and the cottage, which, yeah . . . I need to get back to work on.”

“Ah, you’re assuming that like you, I have all the time in the world to chat. I do not,” she said, and got to her feet, seeming to bounce with excitement. “But I do have a bit of exciting news.”

“Hit me,” he said, as he stood.

“I’ve hired a PI. Well, Tennessee and I have hired a PI. We want to see if we can find Dakota.”

“Dakota. He’s the other brother. The one who was in prison.”

She nodded as she headed for the door. “We haven’t seen him or heard from him since he got out, and now that I’ve reconnected with Tennessee . . .” Her hand on the elevator grate, she turned, smiled softly, shrugged. “I shouldn’t have waited so long to look. He’s family.”

Yeah, well, that didn’t necessarily mean anything, though he wasn’t going to be the one to burst her bubble. Best if her brother was the one to do that. Meaning Dakota Keller would need to be found.

If nothing else, that was one thing Will could do.

CHAPTER TEN

A
week later, having seen Will once at the cottage, and having talked briefly to Oliver in the middle of Three Wishes Road, both in their cars heading in opposite directions, Indiana was standing behind her desk in her IJK Gardens office, frowning down at a vendor invoice, when she realized she wasn’t alone. She looked up, expecting one of her employees, or a fertilizer sales rep, or another vendor with an invoice that didn’t look quite right.

Instead, the woman waiting just over the threshold . . . Well, she didn’t belong on a farm. It was the first thing that came to mind. IJK Gardens was no place for pearls. Or pumps. Or a handbag with a designer label even Indiana recognized.

The whole package hit her like a punch to the gut. Something had to be wrong. She set down the invoice, reaching for her stapler to use as a paperweight, and asked, “May I help you?”

“I’m looking for an Indiana Keller.”

An
Indiana Keller? This was either going to be very good, or very,
very
bad. “I’m Indiana Keller. What can I do for you, Mrs. . . .”

“Gatlin.” It was all she said. It was enough.

And it was bad. Definitely bad. Indiana stopped herself from reaching for the invoice again to have something to do with her hands. “You must be Oliver’s mother.”

“I am,” the woman said, walking several steps into the room, looking around the office, disapproving of the mess. And of everything.

Indiana disapproved, too. She just never had time to straighten or clean or replace the broken guest chairs. Either one of them. “Well, then. I can’t imagine you’re here about anything to do with gardening. So this must be something about Oliver.”

“What exactly are you doing with my son?” Merrilee Gatlin asked, her chin high, her nose higher, turning to look down at Indiana as if from a physical throne instead of the one in her mind.

“Doing with him? I’m not sure what you mean. We’re friends. That’s all.” No need to explain about the kiss, or the . . . orgasm, or the bond over lost siblings they had in common that seemed to be drawing them close.

Oliver’s mother took her in as if examining polygraph results. “You’re saying you didn’t ask him to hire a private investigator on your behalf?”

Indiana heard the words, but they took several long seconds to register. She had hired her own PI. Oliver knew that. Knew, too, that she’d turned down his offer to help her with her search for Dakota. Had he gone behind her back? Really?

Chest tight, she released the breath she’d been holding, filled her lungs with another, and said, “I did not, and if he did, this is the first I’m hearing of it.”

But of course Merrilee couldn’t take Indiana at her word and leave. Her handbag hung from her elbow and bounced against her hip as she crossed to the office’s windows. They looked out at the farm’s equipment-repair shop and warehouse storage building, at the greenhouses and small market building where she sold her extra inventory, and stocked jellies and relishes and pickled produce from local artisans.

To Indiana, the sight was the most impressive thing ever. She’d built her farm from the ground up, and her reputation had followed. The operation was small, but successful. She provided jobs, and quality organic produce, and made a comfortable enough living that she’d been able to buy the property in Hope Springs and expand.

Looking out the windows always had her saying, “I made this,” but something told her Oliver’s mother couldn’t have cared less.

“He did. That’s why I’m here. That’s the
only
reason I’m here.”

Of course it was. “As I said, I can’t speak to what Oliver might have done—”

“There is no
might have
. I heard him speaking to our family’s investigator.”

Heard? Or overheard? “Then he’s the one who’ll have to answer your questions.” She could’ve said more, but no need to add ammunition to this woman’s arsenal. And as to Oliver painting this target on her forehead . . .

What had he been thinking? She’d told him she didn’t need his help, though maybe she should’ve used those exact words, because there had obviously been an incredible disconnect.

“How do you know Oliver?” His mother switched her handbag from one arm to the other, a silver cuff bracelet circling her wrist catching the light. “I can’t imagine him coming all this way to buy produce.”

Even though you came all this way to find out if he had?
“I own the property across Three Wishes Road from the Caffey-Gatlin Academy. We met there one morning last month.” And why in the world was she offering up so much information?

“That arts center,” Merrilee began, waving her hand as if even the words were pesky flies, “is going to be the ruin of our family.”

Then before she could add to the insult, Indiana interrupted to ask, “How so?”

Oliver’s mother had been absently looking around the office, but her head came up sharply at that. “The very fact that you have to ask . . . He’s there, even today, fiddling with their money when he should be handling the finances for one, if not several, of the companies who have courted him. He has no business wasting his time with this nonprofit. Just like you have no business keeping company with my son.”

Keeping company? What? Was that like cavorting? Carousing? Canoodling? “Like I said, we’re just friends.”

“Were you aware that Oliver graduated cum laude from Rice University? That he was offered a position at one of Houston’s most prestigious investment firms before he had his diploma in hand?”

“No. I wasn’t aware.” And even with what little she knew of Oliver, his credentials didn’t surprise her. “But really, as impressive as those details are, they have nothing to do with me.”

Merrilee pulled herself upright, her handbag close to her body, one foot turned out from the other in a stance that spoke of dance lessons and debutante balls. “Those details, as you call them, have everything to do with you.”

“Mrs. Gatlin, please trust me when I say I have absolutely no designs on your son’s name or his social standing or his obvious wealth. He’s been spending time at the arts center, and that makes us neighbors in a way. And we’re friends. We had breakfast one morning. I saw him on Halloween,” she said, hoping the heat of the memory didn’t show in her face. “But I saw a lot of other friends, too. Friends I’ve been known to share breakfast with. Friends with equally impressive credentials.”

And it struck her then that Hope Springs was about friendship as much as it was about family. Her friends in Buda were for the most part connected to IJK Gardens—either employees, vendors from whom she bought supplies, or the artisans who sold their wares in her store. That didn’t make her relationships with them stilted, or awkward, but it did have talk turning to business—and staying on business—almost every time.

In Hope Springs, talk of IJK Gardens, as well as that of Keller Construction and Patchwork Moon and Two Owls Café and the Caffey-Gatlin Academy, was peppered into conversations about family happenings and vacation plans and well-loved books. She liked that. No, she’d needed that. But where Oliver fit in . . .

“Then I suggest you set your sights on those friends and leave Oliver to his.”

Okay. This was getting ridiculous. “Who Oliver spends his time with is really none of my business either.”

“Either?” The word hung in the air, a gauntlet. “Was that directed at me?”

A worthy adversary, this one. “Oliver’s thirty-two years old. I can’t imagine you trying to run his life.”

Merrilee gave a snorting sort of sound. “I suppose you’ll be there at this café for Thanksgiving.”

This really is killing her, isn’t it?
“I will. And I’m very happy Oliver’s decided to join us.”

“Of course you are. Who cares about his abandoning years of family tradition?”

Huh. She hadn’t been aware he’d had other plans. “Maybe he’s decided it’s time to start a tradition of his own.”

“I’m sure he’s decided nothing of the sort. All of this newness will wear off soon enough and he’ll come back to where he belongs.”

Really? Did the woman not realize her son was an adult? “Well, then. Thanks for stopping by.” Merrilee stiffened at the obvious dismissal, and Indiana found herself adding, “Unless there was something else?”

“No. I’ve learned all that I need to,” the older woman said before she turned and left. Just like that. Not another word.

And that was okay with Indiana. In fact, she’d be fine with never speaking to Merrilee Gatlin again.

“I learned something about you today,” Indiana said later that afternoon, as Oliver pulled open the back door to the Caffey-Gatlin Academy at her knock.

Rather than fly down the freeway and demand he explain his interference, she’d waited a whole hour after his mother’s departure before making the drive to Hope Springs. It hadn’t been an easy delay to endure, but work had called, and the stay had given her time to calm down.

And boy, had she needed to calm down.

How dare the woman barge in and be so incredibly insulting? It would be one thing if they shared a history and she’d disappointed Mrs. Gatlin somehow. But they’d never even met, meaning Oliver’s mother was judging her for no reason but snobbery.

Now that she was here, she didn’t know if she was more angry with his mother than she was upset with him. Then there was the very real possibility her feelings had been hurt by Merrilee Gatlin’s assertion that Oliver was doing no more than playing with her.

That would mean she didn’t matter to him at all.

“Good afternoon, Indiana,” he said, stepping back and inviting her into what she guessed was now the center’s break room or staff lounge, but had once been the kitchen for the original house. “And what exactly is it you’ve learned?”

“You don’t take no for an answer,” she said, having brushed by and turned back to face him. And oh but it was good to see him, to be in the same room with him, talking to him in person rather than on the phone, and without his car door and hers keeping them apart. If she took a step toward him, they’d be close enough to touch, but she stayed where she was, her fingers tingling, her pulse racing, her chest tight.

“You’ll have to be more specific,” he said, gesturing for her to take a chair at the table where he’d obviously been working. Spreadsheets and financial statements and invoices littered the surface, along with a very fancy tablet PC. Nothing but the best for the Gatlins. And since, according to his mother, she wasn’t the best . . .

“You asked if I wanted you to vet the investigator I hired. Or if I wanted you to recommend someone. I told you I didn’t need you to do either,” she said, and stopped, because he
hadn’t
done either, and nowhere in that initial conversation had she asked him not to hire an investigator of his own.

“And I respected your wishes,” he replied, then gave a huff, followed by a knowing scowl. “You talked to my mother.”

To
was the right word, because she certainly hadn’t talked
with
Merrilee Gatlin. “She came to see me,” Indiana said, sitting when it was obvious he wasn’t going to until she did.

He stopped halfway to his chair, as if fearing it had just been pulled out from under him, then sat, and asked, “To see you? Where?”

“At my office,” she said, her keys in her hands, her knees pressed close together. “In Buda.”

“My mother drove to Buda?”

“Unless she has a driver, or took a cab, or has wings,” she added, not sure why she was being sarcastic. Unless it was a defense to stave off a nervousness she didn’t understand. He was so polite, his manners impeccable. But all she could think about was having his hand between her legs, his mouth on hers, the heat between them.

“She has a driver,” was all he said, frowning, and ignoring the rest of her offered options.

And her original point. “You hired an investigator when I asked you not to.”

“No,” he said, crossing his legs, then picking up the mechanical pencil he’d left with a legal pad on the table. “You told me you didn’t need me to vet the one you had hired. You never asked me not to hire one of my own.”

She hated having her own logic, not to mention the truth, used against her. Rubbing her hands down her thighs, she asked, “Is this a spirit of the law versus the letter of the law thing?”

He shrugged, flicked his thumb over the pencil’s eraser end. “I wanted to make sure you had the best possible chance at finding your brother.”

Why?
was what she wanted to ask, but instead she came out with, “And your investigator has resources Kaylie’s does not?”

“I don’t know anything about Kaylie’s investigator,” he said, finally looking at her, his gaze sharp and focused. “You didn’t want me to look into him for you.”

Oh, but his being right was frustrating. Even more so than dealing with Tennessee. “I don’t appreciate having to hear about you hiring an investigator from your mother. You should’ve told me yourself.”

“You’re right, and I apologize. It’s just that I’ve seen Derek work magic, and I thought—”

“It’s not your place to think,” she said, and stopped, holding up both hands. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. It’s just . . . I need to do this myself. Finding Dakota.”