Free The Second Chance Café (Hope Springs, #1) by Alison Kent

there.”
    She laughed. “I was a total jock in school.”
    “Really.”
    “Does that surprise you?”
    He knew so little about her that everything he learned came as one. “Jock’s not the first thing I’d think about you, but that’s probably because I had a sister who was and spent more time wearing jerseys and kneepads than anything else. That’s the association my mind makes. Not boots and jeans.”
    “You have a sister.” It wasn’t a question, but a statement, as if she was turning the information over in her mind.
    “And a brother.” Though he didn’t know why he’d brought them up. He wasn’t in touch with either. His fault, at least when it came to Indiana. And to his parents. Unlike Dakota, they still lived close.
    “That must’ve been fun. Growing up. Having them around.”
    Because she’d been in foster care, away from what family she’d had. “Do you have siblings? Or is that something you might not know, growing up like you did? And maybe I should just shut up now. Sorry.”
    She shook her head, tucking back strands of hair that fell forward. “It’s okay. I don’t mind you asking.”
    “It’s not my business.”
    She reached out, touched his wrist. “It’s fine, Ten. Really. I don’t know if I have siblings, no. I was my mother’s only child, at least at the time. When I was taken away from her, I was only five. I never saw her again.”
    He didn’t know a lot about foster care, but that seemed strange. “Did the court deny her visitation or something?”
    “It’s a long story,” she said as Magoo returned, having abandoned his ball to sniff the trail of something more interesting than rubber. “Want to walk? I need to fetch this one’s ball, since he forgot that’s his job.”
    “Sure,” he said, stuffing his hands in his pockets because he didn’t trust himself not to return her touch. The pressure from her fingertips still lingered on his wrist like trouble he didn’t need.
    He was beginning to think this might’ve been a mistake, taking on a job for a woman who stirred him the way this one did. He couldn’t risk the involvement, risk things not working out, risk losing this job when Will was depending on it. But he was here, and he was human, and he wanted to know why she’d had to learn to wield a wicked knife. She baked brownies for a living—she didn’t skin wild game.
    “Listen. Kaylie. I didn’t come here to dig into your personal life. Or to check up on you. I just wanted to let you know I’ll have the permits next week, and I’ll get the kitchen started before dealing with the other walls.”
    She bent for a stick while walking, swiped it through the tall grass at her side. “You could’ve called to tell me that.”
    “I was in the neighborhood…” He was such a bad liar, and shrugged, thinking of his earlier conversation with Manny. “You know how it is. Sometimes a phone call goes places best explored in person. Questions come up. That sort of thing.”
    She slowed her steps, raising a hand to shade her eyes as she watched Magoo chase after a squirrel. “Then to answer your question, the court didn’t have to deny my mother visitation. I mean, I guess they did, officially, but since she went to prison, it really didn’t matter.”
    “Prison?” He’d assumed unfit parent, but he hadn’t assumed criminal.
    “Child endangerment. Possession with intent to distribute. She was coming down off a crystal-meth high and bleeding on the floor when they took me from her.”
    Without thinking, he pulled his hand from his pocket and reached for her, but checked himself before taking hold of her arm. “Kaylie?”
    She stopped walking but continued to chop at the grass with her stick, the smells of the dew and the turned earth heavy in the air. “I love this house, this property. Everything good that I know started here. And I cannot
wait
to open my café. But I came back here, to Hope Springs, because of my parents.”
    “They’re here?”
    “I