The Comfort of Favorite Things (A Hope Springs Novel) Read Free Page A

the barest drizzle from the top to the bottom of the row to form the leaf’s spine.
    “Not too shabby,” he said, eyeing his creation as he gave back the pitcher. “You going to tell me about Becca while I drink this?”
    “Is that what you want?” she asked, dumping the used grounds and repacking the filter to pull a shot for herself. “To talk about Becca?”
    She steamed more milk while Dakota sipped, but when she went to pour it into her mug, he said, “Wait,” and set down his drink to reach for hers.
    She started to tell him she didn’t want the art. She really didn’t even want the coffee, but the art was an extravagance. She wasn’t a customer. She didn’t need to be impressed.
    Special touches were wasted on her.
    Those words, always in Todd’s voice . . . How many times had she heard them? Better question: why was she still listening?
    Dakota cupped her mug in one big hand, reached for the pitcher of hot milk with the other. His mouth tugged to the side, a smile that was just short of a smirk, as if he was too pleased with whatever was going on in his head.
    She was almost afraid to see what he came up with, but she watched anyway as he poured a stream into the inclined cup, filling it, then rotating the pitcher to keep the milk and froth compact as the design took shape. He shook the pitcher as he reached the cup’s lower edge. Another movement or two, and the serpentine twist narrowed to become an elephant’s trunk.
    “There ya go,” he said, handing her the mug after he’d used a stir stick to poke two spots in the foam for eyes.
    “Very clever.” Smiling, she turned it this way and that. “I think you might just be able to give Becca a run for her money.”
    “Guess it’s a good thing I’m not looking for a job.”
    “Guess so,” she said, lifting the mug to her mouth for a quick sip. “Speaking of jobs, you want to go over the sketches now? Since that’s supposedly why you’re here?”
    He took a long moment to answer, staring into his cup, then using the same stir stick to ruin what was left of the leaf in his mug. “What I really want to know is what you’re doing in Hope Springs,” he said, his gaze rising to challenge her. “And what it has to do with me.”

    The look she gave him revealed things he was pretty sure she hadn’t meant to before she got those eyes of hers under control. Because as familiar as he found the view of the top of her head, he would never forget her eyes. They were the same coffee brown as her hair, with gold-colored flecks where her hair had similar highlights.
    She didn’t like what he was implying, or inferring, or insinuating. Pick one. He’d never understood which word to use. Most likely because he hadn’t paid a lot of attention in senior English, and then his plans for after graduation, for graduation period, had been cut short. He’d finished high school while in prison, then fast-tracked his bachelor’s in under three years, making the best use he could of his time—studying, working out, lather, rinse, repeat.
    But where he’d been, language didn’t matter. And with his background, he hadn’t figured it would matter wherever he ended up. He’d been right. Tennessee didn’t care, as long as he could read a blueprint, which his engineering degree guaranteed. It was a degree that hadn’t done him much good as a barista. Or when wrangling cattle, fishing for salmon, felling trees.
    “Why would you think me being here had anything to do with you?”
    They’d known each other in Round Rock growing up, and had fallen out of touch over a decade ago. Yet within a year of each other, they’d both ended up in Hope Springs? A town that was no more than a pinpoint on a map?
    He didn’t believe in coincidences, and her picking this particular location for her business, out of all the locations in all the towns in all the world, was a big one. But instead of answering her question, he asked another: “Where have you been since high