The Sweetness of Honey (A Hope Springs Novel) by Alison Kent Read Free Book Online Page B

here?
    “Because of Dakota,” she said before she sipped, setting her cup back in its saucer. “Well, Dakota and Tennessee. Tennessee’s business is based here. Kaylie is here. If I find Dakota, I’m hoping he’ll come back, maybe settle here, too, and make my dream of a big happy family come true.”
    Oliver studied her over the rim of his cup as he drank, obviously gathering his thoughts. She’d noticed that about him. How he didn’t blurt or blab the way she seemed unable to stop herself from doing. She should probably take a lesson and think.
    “Is that your dream?” he finally asked. “Having a big happy family?”
    “It’s complicated,” she said, taking her own advice and weighing responses ranging from the full truth to just pieces. “My parents are still in the area, though they’re gone a lot. We grew up in Round Rock. So I do have a family, though it’s not particularly big. And I’m not sure where we would fall on the happy scale.”
    “You’re not close?”
    “We’re not even in touch, really. They stay busy with whatever current cause demands their time. They always did. Never was much left for them to, you know, parent,” she said, trying to be flip, but the words tasting bitter and raw. “But I guess it was easier that way.”
    Oliver toyed with his cup, his gaze cast down, and asked, “How so?”
    She sipped again, then shrugged, then sipped once more as if doing so would keep her from saying things she shouldn’t and sounding resentful. It didn’t. “Baby seals didn’t talk back. Melting glaciers just went away and left them alone. Climate change affects billions, while the changes in their daughter’s attitude were simply phases to get through. Mine. Not theirs.”
    She cut herself off before she ended up going to that place she refused to visit, much less while in the company of a man who had her thinking there might be something missing in her life. Something she’d diligently prevented herself from considering before.
    Something she wasn’t sure she could ever trust.
    “I can’t tell if that’s resentment or sarcasm.”
    “I’m over the resentment. But I’ll never get over being sarcastic,” she said, though her reach for levity wasn’t quite long enough, and the joke fell flat.
    “Tell me Dakota’s story,” he said, sitting back as their food was set in front of them.
    She’d brought him here for this—not the biscuits and gravy and sausage and eggs that smelled like all the best bad-for-her things about food, but to tell him why finding her brother mattered so much. And as the thought crossed her mind, she wondered if Dakota, more than Robby, was the reason she’d chosen to live her life alone.
    Or if it was, as she’d thought all this time, her own actions and considerable regrets.

    There was something she didn’t want to tell him, or something she didn’t want him to know, and that made Oliver more curious than he would’ve been otherwise. He wasn’t one to push, but Indiana had talked around the subject of her brother all morning. And that after asking if he wanted to know why she was eager to find the man.
    Oliver had lived in Hope Springs long enough to have heard rumors of the Keller brother who’d spent time in the Huntsville state prison. Assault with a deadly weapon. He’d learned at some point the weapon had been a baseball bat, and Dakota Keller eighteen at the time.
    Dakota had also been his baseball team’s star slugger. Added to the fact that he premeditatedly went after the boy he’d beaten, well, he’d been lucky to have served just three years. Those things were easily discovered with a Google search of news articles from a decade ago. He’d done that late last night when he couldn’t sleep and she’d been on his mind.
    What Oliver couldn’t discover were the things Indiana was keeping secret, had no doubt been keeping secret for years. And her skating around the reason for this meal left him wondering if someone else might be