The Second Chance Café (Hope Springs, #1) Read Free Page A

rich, like the russet leather of her boots, buttery and worn to fit.
    Her clothes said she wasn’t from around here. They also said she wasn’t looking to stand out. Interesting. He finally said, “It’s been a while since I had one.”
    “A dog?”
    “My folks were big on animal rescue.” And rain forest rescue and Arctic ice rescue and closing the hole in the ozone. “We usually had half a dozen at any time. Cats and dogs both. All shapes and sizes and temperaments.”
    She gave a groaning laugh, as if she couldn’t decide between sympathy and pity and rolled the dice. “I hope you had a big house. And an even bigger yard.”
    He liked her laugh, the watermelon burst of it, liked the shape of her mouth, the width. It fit her face without taking it over. The bow of her lip pointed to the spatter of freckles dotting her nose, pale chestnut flung from a paintbrush.
    Motioning Kaylie Flynn out of the sun and into the barn, he perched on a drafting stool, offered her another, watched what her thighs did to the denim of her jeans when she sat. Magoo plopped to the cement floor between them, making sure the hand that had scratched his ears behaved.
    “What kind of work are you looking to have done?” Ten asked, behaving. “And where?”
    She tilted her head to the side. “Do you know the Coleman place? Used to be the Wise place? On the corner of Second Street where it crosses Chances Avenue?”
    “Big Victorian. Blue. Lots of trees.” It was one fine house. His crew had replaced the roof a few years back after hurricane-force winds stripped half the shingles away. At the end of the job, he’d made the Wises an offer, but they’d stayed until Winton had died. Then May had gone to live with her sister in Dallas, selling it before he could bite. “You handling things for the Colemans now?”
    “I bought it from them. Closed this morning. It’s all mine.”
    She said it with relish, as if she’d landed herself the deal of the century. And knowing the albatross the property had become to Bob Coleman, she probably had. Ten just wishedhe’d known they’d decided to unload it. He’d really wanted that house.
    It was solid, sturdy. Built to stand up to the elements. Built to be used. “I didn’t know they were selling.”
    Her smile was sly. “I didn’t give anyone else a chance to find out.”
    “Been keeping an eye on it, have you?”
    “Like you wouldn’t believe.”
    “Mind if I ask why?”
    This time she wasn’t quite as quick to answer, and the slyness slid from her smile. “It was the house I lived in from the time I was ten till I was eighteen.”
    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 historicvalue. 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.