Chapter 1 #2
I twisted halfway, looking at her over my shoulder. “Just remember, things didn’t have to be this way. They are what they are now because that was your choice.”
“The fact you really believe that isn’t a reflection on me. It only speaks volumes about you.” Then I turned and headed for my truck and my kids, working to put my ex-wife out of my mind completely.
Which was easier said than done.
“There’re my grandkids!” my dad called loudly, holding his arms out wide in preparation for Macie to lunge like he knew she would.
Only, with him, my girl was a lot more careful.
Since his stroke Jed Drake had changed. He was frailer than he’d once been.
It had taken a toll on his body, affecting his left side.
One arm was held lower than the other, unable to get any higher than just below halfway, and he walked with a perpetual limp.
It had killed me to see my once strong, solid father weaker than he’d been all my life, but he refused to let that slow him down.
By the time I climbed from the truck and rounded the hood, moving up the driveway to my dad, the kids had both bolted inside, in search of the sweets they knew their Pop always had on hand for them.
I could feel his scrutinizing stare as I moved closer, boring into my skin and reading every single thing I was feeling no matter how hard I tried to hide it. It was a gift he had that I was both in awe of and hated.
“That bad, huh?” he noted as soon as I came to a stop beside him.
“This is Whitney we’re talkin’ about. You expected different?”
He blew out a heavy sigh while shaking his head. “No, I suppose not.” He waited a beat, staring back toward the house. “What about Hardin? Any progress there?”
“Nope.” That one word came out hard and clipped. “I’m still just the bastard that hurt his momma.”
Dad reached over, clapping me on the shoulder before squeezing and giving it a small shake.
“He’ll come around, son. Kids always do.
He had his world pulled out from under him so it’ll take time, but he’ll see it clearly one day, and he’ll know you did the right thing, getting outta something that made you so damn unhappy. ”
It was my turn to sigh. “Sure as hell hope you’re right on that one.”
He let out a little chuckle, his fingers clenching my shoulder once more. “Thirty-six years, and you still haven’t learned, son. I’m always right.”
“No way!” I heard yelled from inside the house just before Macie’s body reappeared, standing in the doorway. “You got lemon raspberry bars from Muffin Top!”
“Sure did, kiddo,” he called back.
My daughter turned pleading eyes to me. “Can I have one now, Daddy?”
“Not ’til after dinner.”
A small pout formed on her lips, but I knew it wouldn’t last long as she turned and went back inside the house. My girl just didn’t have it in her to stay mad for more than a handful of minutes.
“You didn’t have to drive into town to hit up Muffin Top,” I said, looking back to my old man. “I’d have picked it up on my way here.”
“First, I’m not an invalid. I can drive just fine. Second, there was no need, anyway. Dani hand delivered them to me herself.”
My brows dipped as I turned my attention to the two-story house across the street. “She did?”
“Girl’s sweet as pie. Always brings me a little somethin’ whenever she stops over at her folks’ for a visit.” I saw him turn to face me from the corner of my eye. “Sure did grow up into a gorgeous thing.”
He wasn’t wrong there. I didn’t have many memories of the girl who’d lived across the street from me growing up, but I vaguely recalled Danika Parrish being a shy, mousy thing with a bit too much weight on her bones.
She’d been two years behind me, and ran in a totally different crowd, so we never really spent any time together.
When I moved back to town a few years ago, joining the Hope Valley Police Department, the guys talked my ear off about this coffee shop that made the best coffee and pastries in town.
Apparently, the place was so damn good, the coffee machines in the building had been sitting empty, collecting dust since every cop in the building made the trek a few blocks down whenever they needed a pick-me-up.
First thing I noticed when I stepped through the doors of Muffin Top was the incredible smell. The second thing was the looker with shiny, chocolate brown hair and big gray eyes standing behind the counter, smiling beautifully at a customer she was ringing up.
I hadn’t recognized her at first . . . Hell, I hadn’t recognized her as she looked at me with a familiarity I didn’t understand, that was, until she gave me her name. To say I’d been floored would have been an understatement.
Then, when her expression grew timid and she stared up at me through a fan of long black lashes, it all came flooding back. She was still shy—at least around me—but the mousiness and weight were long gone.
I’d been married at the time, and while I wasn’t happy by any stretch of the imagination, I’d never been that guy, the one who let his eyes wander or considered stepping out, no matter how miserable I was, so Dani went back to being someone I vaguely knew through association.
All that changed a few months back when it had been brought to my attention by my buddy Bryce’s woman, Tessa, that the sweet, beautiful coffee shop owner might have looked at me as more than just a customer.
I began seeing Danika Parrish in a whole new light. However, any attempt I’d made to start up a conversation since then had been shot down. I wasn’t sure if she was just that shy, or if Tessa had been totally off-base, but she always found an excuse to bail whenever she saw me closing in.
My eyes remained on the Parrish house as I asked, “How often does she do that?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Dad hemmed and hawed for a second.
“Maybe every couple weeks or so, any time she comes to have dinner with her folks. Started shortly after the stroke. She’d swing in pretty frequently to check up on me and it just turned into somethin’ she does on the regular now.
Good pastries and good company for a spell.
Old man like me couldn’t ask for much more than that. ”
My head twisted back to him. “You never told me she did that.”
“Why would I do a fool thing like that?” he asked with a shrewd grin. “So you could horn in on my time with a pretty girl? Not a chance.”
My gaze returned to the house, this time traveling to the driveway where the shiny Ford Explorer I’d seen her driving around town currently sat.
She was sweet, shy, had a fucking fantastic smile and an even better head of hair.
She made the best cup of coffee I’d ever tasted, and could bake little pieces of heaven.
She took time out of her day every couple weeks to stop in and visit with an old man who couldn’t get around as well as he used to just so he had company.
I stared at that Explorer for a beat longer, all the while thinking that maybe I needed to put in a little more effort next time I instigated a conversation with Danika Parrish—say, follow after her if she tried to bail.
But for now, I’d go inside and help my dad grill some burgers for dinner. Then I’d dive into one of those lemon raspberry bars, because I already knew from experience, they tasted like perfection.