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

have no idea where they are,” she said, looking at Magoo as he ran toward her. “Either of them. I came back here so I could find out.”
    Now he was really confused. And worried. If her mother had been sent to prison, how was Kaylie going to feel about Will being an ex-con? “You don’t know where they are, but you came back here to find them?”
    “It’s not about where they are. It’s about me needing to be here.” She turned then, her attention on the house shaded by the trees, the blue darker than Ten would’ve chosen, but one that for some reason fit Kaylie to a T. “I can’t even tell you what it was like to come here after all the places I’d been before.”
    “You were moved a lot?”
    “I was. I don’t know why. The system, I guess. Too many kids and not enough parents, good parents, anyway, to foster.I don’t think I was that much trouble.” She stopped to laugh, to ruffle a hand through Magoo’s thick coat before he bolted away. “Coming here saved me. I wouldn’t be who I am today had it not been for May and Winton. Here I can do anything. Open a café. Start over. Face the past. Sleep. And I have no idea why I’m telling you all this. You didn’t come here for my life story.”
    Start over. Face the past. Sleep.
With a knife at her side?
He thought back to her telling him she’d lived in heinous conditions. “Do you not sleep now?”
    “Not well,” she said, kicking into the grass and dislodging Magoo’s ball. “I’ve been running on empty most of my life. Early on, it was not knowing if I was going to wake up the next day and find someone packing my things.”
    “Even once you were here?”
    “It got worse once I was here.” She bent for the ball, her back arching and drawing Ten’s gaze. “I wasn’t attached to the previous families I’d lived with, so leaving was more uncertainty than anything. Here I was afraid because I never wanted to leave and feared I’d have to. It got better over time, but then there was school and sports and all the things that keep teens from getting enough sleep. Then college and three a.m. doughnuts for the bakery where I worked. Then my own doughnuts, my own bakery. And now my house and my café.”
    Amazing, a life laid out in a matter of words. “I’d say you need a vacation, but if you’re anything like me, getting away wouldn’t make it any better. You’d still be calling back to check on things.”
    “Why do we do this to ourselves?” she asked, the shake of her head acknowledging the trait they shared. “I reallyhope I can find a cook who I can rely on as a manager, too, but I doubt my control-freak nature would let me take full advantage.”
    “When does your ad come out?”
    “Next week. Oh, while I was at the
Courant
’s office, I ran into a girl I used to go to school with. Jessa Little. Jessa Breeze now. She said she was going to tell her mother-in-law about the position, that she was an amazing cook. Do you know her? Dolly Breeze?”
    Perfect
, he mused with a snort. “I do. And I’d really rather you not hire her.”
    She looked up at him, frowning. “Why’s that?”
    “She works for me.”
    “Oh, that’s right. Luna told me.” Her eyes went wide as if he’d truly surprised her, and she loved the jolt of being surprised. And then she was laughing, the burst of sound spilling over him, infectious. “I’m so sorry,” she finally managed to say. “I guess this is one of those let-the-best-man-win situations or something.”
    He hoped not, because he didn’t stand a chance. “Or a sign that I should be the one putting an ad in the paper.”
    “Wouldn’t that be jumping the gun? Such an easy admission of defeat?”
    She was laughing again. Ten could only shake his head. “I know for a fact Dolly would rather spend her time in a kitchen or behind a sewing machine than at a desk making sense of my paperwork.”
    She cocked her head, the bow of her mouth so very tempting. “You’re not doing yourself any