Beneath the Patchwork Moon (Hope Springs, #2) (29 page)

“He’s tall, and dark, and handsome… and I hope single?”

“As far as I know,” Luna said, her attention snagged this time by movement at her side, and she smiled as her gaze connected with that of the boy who’d been raised by wolves.

Will Bowman lifted his empty wineglass in greeting, his slash of dark hair falling over his brow and obscuring one of his eyes. “Ms. Keller. Mrs. Caffey. And how strange does that sound? Mrs. Caffey.”

“I happen to think it sounds lovely,” Indy said, the pulse at the base of her throat thumping visibly when Will turned his gaze on her—where it stayed while he handed Luna his glass, saying, “Point me to a bottle.”

“Kaylie just kicked me out of the kitchen, but c’mon. I’ll find you a corkscrew.”

Indy and Will followed her back that way, where she grabbed a bottle and a corkscrew from the island before her mother or Kaylie could object. Then, at the sound of the elevator engaging again, Luna looked over to see who else had arrived, because she couldn’t imagine who it might be.

She swore everyone who lived in Hope Springs had already crowded into her loft. Thank goodness she hadn’t moved all of her things into the space before she and Angelo had taken off for Mexico—then Las Vegas. And if that week in Las Vegas hadn’t been the best she’d ever known…

Luna Meadows Caffey
.

Who knew Angelo had it in him to be so spontaneous? Who knew she had it in her to abandon everything for the love of her life?

The couple who exited the elevator were young, and no one Luna recognized. The man couldn’t have been more than twenty, and perhaps still even a teen. The woman wasn’t much older. Both had dark hair. Both were beautiful, with a touch of Latin heritage evident in their cheekbones. Both had eyes that reminded her of Angelo…

“Oh. Oh. Oh,” she said, shoving the wine bottle and corkscrew she held into Will’s hands, then hurrying into the main room and signaling frantically for her husband. He was still near her loom talking to her father and Oliver Gatlin, but, as if sensing her anxiousness, looked up and caught her gaze.

She motioned toward the elevator, and he glanced that way, going completely still before shoving his wineglass into her father’s hand and taking off for the front of the room, dodging clusters of milling guests in his haste to reach the door. He beat her there, and she heard him call, “Felix! Teresa!” seconds before he wrapped his arms around both of his siblings at once.

He buried his head and his shoulders shook, and Felix and Teresa cried with him, the three creating a picture that left no one, even those who hadn’t known the family, unmoved. They stood in a group hug for what seemed like ages, but
couldn’t have been more than a minute or two at most. Finally he stepped back and lifted his head, looking for Luna and waving her over.

“I’m sure you both remember Luna.”

“Of course,” Teresa said, leaning close to kiss Luna’s cheek. “You always made cleaning the kitchen so much easier, since I had less to do with you there helping.”

Luna laughed. “It was so quiet at home that hanging out with all of you felt like a day at Six Flags,” she said to Teresa, then turned to Felix. “And you. It’s like looking at Angelo all over again. I can’t believe you’ve grown up.”

“You cut your hair,” Felix said. “I’ve always pictured you with it long.”

“It was long until a couple of months ago,” Angelo said, looking from Luna to his brother, then his sister, his voice hopeful as he asked, “’Milio and Isi? Did they come with you? Or Mom and Dad?”

“It’s just us,” Teresa said, and Felix shook his head. “We don’t see them much. Isi and ’Milio. And Mom and Dad, well. You know. You were there.”

Angelo nodded, swallowed. “Yeah. It’s okay. I’m so glad to see both of you. I’d hoped to see you in September, but we didn’t stay long.”

“Mom told us. About Sierra. The baby. Her and Oscar getting married,” Teresa said, her voice catching on the last word. “The music you’re playing…”

Angelo nodded, his throat working. “It’s Sierra and Oscar. A piece they wrote. We found the CD in the tree house,” he said, and that’s when Felix broke, too, tears welling and threatening to fall.

Luna stepped in, wrapped an arm around his shoulders. “Listen. Why don’t you go back to the bedroom area behind the kitchen? Angelo knows where. Y’all can talk. I’ll get my mom and Kaylie to start winding things down.”

Teresa nodded. Felix did, too. Angelo threaded his fingers into Luna’s hair and pulled her to him, kissing her cheek and whispering, “I love you, wife,” against her ear. She watched him walk away, an arm slung around the shoulders of both siblings, hugging close one, then the other as they made their way through the crowd.

She joined them twenty minutes later, having left her parents along with Kaylie and Ten to finish up in the main room. All three of the Caffey siblings sat on the bed, Felix cross-legged and hunched over, Teresa’s legs tucked to her side as she leaned against one of the footboard’s tall posts. Angelo sat propped against the headboard, and Luna crawled up to join him. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her close.

She rested a hand on his thigh. “So I’m guessing this is what you did with the invitation you asked me for?”

Angelo nodded. “Felix and I have stayed in touch. The day the family moved, he asked if he could write. I gave him my address, and he used that of one of his friends so our parents never knew.”

“When I heard Mom and Dad talking about the property being foreclosed on, I wrote and told Angelo,” Felix said, toying with the laces on his shoe. “Angelo never got a chance to get out anything he might’ve wanted the day we moved.”

A mystery solved, Luna mused, glancing from younger brother up to older. “I always wondered how you knew I’d bought the property. You never said.”

“I can keep secrets, too, you know,” he told her, then dropped a kiss to the tip of her nose.

She looked back to his brother and sister. “I’m so glad you came. And you’ll stay, yes? A few days, at least? I’d love for you both to see what we’ve done with the house, and what we’re doing with the barn. We want you to stay as long as you can. You will, won’t you?”

By the time she finished, both of Angelo’s siblings were looking at her and smiling, Angelo chuckling deep in his chest. She glanced from one to the other to the other, her mouth pulling into an answering grin. “What’s so funny?”

“I was just telling these two how you’re like a dog with a bone once you get an idea in your head,” her husband said, gesturing toward the others with one hand.

“I’m pretty sure I learned that trick from you,” she told him, leaning against him, loving him, knowing that whatever happened with the rest of her life, she would have this man with her—which made every epic thing they’d gone through to get here seem like nothing at all.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Photo by Robyn Arouty

A
lison Kent is the author of more than fifty published works, including her debut novel,
Call Me
, which she sold live on CBS’s
48 Hours
, in an episode called “Isn’t It Romantic?” Her novels
A Long, Hard Ride
and
Striptease
were both finalists for the
Romantic Times
Reviewer’s Choice Award, while
The Beach Alibi
was honored by the national Quill Awards, and
No Limits
was elected by
Cosmopolitan
as a Red Hot Read. The author of
The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Writing Erotic Romance
and a veteran blogger, Alison decided long ago that if there’s a better career than writing, she doesn’t want to know about it. She lives in her native Texas with her geologist husband and a passel of pets.

Read on for a sneak peek of Alison Kent’s next Hope Springs novel.

The Sweetness of Honey

Available Fall 2014 on
Amazon.com

CHAPTER ONE

T
he bees were what had sold her. The bees and Hiram Glass. The lovely octogenarian had tended the hives for years, selling the honey at the same farmer’s market where she sold root vegetables, and vine vegetables, and leafy greens, and the years the weather cooperated, strawberries the size of her fist.

She would leave the back of the plot where their busy hives thrived untouched; these days, honeybees faced so many obstacles as it was. That would allow more than enough room for the expansion of IJK Gardens—though the Hope Springs, Texas, property would be more of an annex since the greenhouse in Buda that served as her bread and butter was forty miles away. It was a nice bit of separation. Business from pleasure from play.

The annex would be her baby, her indulgence, the heirloom vegetables she’d grow here her specialty. They would cost more to cultivate, requiring higher prices, but the demand was equally high. Consumers determined to avoid genetically modified foods would pay for quality produce. And pay for the honey from her bees.

Her bees. The words made Indiana Keller smile. Even now, standing across Three Wishes Road, in the Caffey-Gatlin
Academy driveway, she could hear them. She had to close her eyes, and be very still, and hold her breath, and bow the muscles of her imagination, but the hum was there, a soft busy vibration of work being done.

Work had been her life for years now. Work kept her sane. Work left her no time for a personal life. Work was her savior and most of the time her friend. An easy one to keep. Demanding yet constantly loyal, and in the end, she was the boss. That was the part she liked best. Calling the shots. Taking charge had helped her through some very dark days.

Those days were long gone. And with this new venture calling her name… She couldn’t believe the gorgeously overgrown and scruffy acreage across the street was hers, all hers, and there was absolutely no rush to get done all the things she wanted to do. As long as her impatience didn’t get in the way, she could take her time with the tilling and the planting and the cottage, and all the things she needed to learn about the bees.

Just as the thought entertained her, a new sort of buzzing set up along her spine. Not one she heard, but felt. An awareness. A clear breach of her private communion. What she heard were footsteps crunching the driveway’s gravel, and she flexed her fingers, then rubbed at her palms where her nails had dug deep. The steps drew closer, and they were firm, heavy, most likely belonging to a man. Possibly Angelo Caffey. Or a member of her brother’s construction crew.

But neither was who came to a stop beside her.

“Can I help you with something?” the man asked, smelling earthy, salty. Privileged.

“No. I’m fine,” she said without looking over. She knew who he was, but doubted he remembered her.

“Are you a friend of Hiram’s?”

“I am, yes. Why?”

“Because friends of Hiram know he’s not one for trespassing. He says it’s bad for the bees. Strangers disturb them.”

No doubt he knew as well as she that Hiram had moved before the property sold. And that the bees deterred most strangers. And yet she’d parked in the driveway across the street. As bold as she pleased. “And you are?”

“Not a stranger,” he said, that privilege again.

“Then that makes two of us.”

He waited a moment, his weight shifting from one hip to the other. “Does he know you’re here?”

“Hard for him to know when he moved to Boerne to be near his son.”

He smiled. She felt it in the way he relaxed his stance, in the pull drawing her to face him. It was hard to resist, that pull, because she knew what she would see. But it was so
so
easy for the very same reason. Looking up at his face gave her a very great and particular sort of enjoyment. “Have we met?”

He was shaking his head when he said, “I was about to ask you the same.”

She held out her hand. “Indiana Keller.”

“Keller,” he said, taking it, holding it, his shake firm and lasting. “As in Tennessee? Though if you’re Indiana, that’s a really dumb question to ask, the state thing and all.”

She thought of Dakota and her smile faltered. “And you are?” she repeated, even though she knew.

“Oliver Gatlin.”

“As in the Caffey-Gatlin Academy? Though since you’re standing on the center’s property…”

“Sounds like we’re both full of dumb today.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Oliver.” Officially. Since they hadn’t been introduced the night she’d first seen him.

“And you, Indiana,” he said, then released her. “Though… weren’t you at Luna and Angelo’s wedding reception?”

“I was,” she said, inordinately pleased that she hadn’t been invisible after all. She never knew, actually, if what little effort she took with her appearance made her stand out, or blend in, or any difference at all. “And you were.”

His expression darkened, but in a searching, curious way. It was nothing nefarious. Nothing strange. “And you didn’t introduce yourself?”

“Then?” She shook her head. “You were too busy with Angelo.”

“I’m never too busy to meet a new friend.”

Friends. Was that what they were going to be? Because what she was feeling… “And now you have. It’s always nice to be friends with the people you see regularly.”