Laurel Blount - Hometown Hope

The man was unbelievable. “I don’t think so.”

“Why not? I’m serious, Anna. Me and you need to talk. You don’t have anything more exciting lined up for tonight. Do you?”

It was something about the offhand way he tacked on the question and the humorous twinkle in his eye as he asked it. Like he already knew she’d be sitting at home alone on a Saturday night reading a book, just like always.

That happened to be true. But the fact that Hoyt Bradley knew it irritated her, and the words came out before she could stop herself.

“It’s you and I .”

“What?”

“ You and I need to talk. Not me and you . I must have told you that at least a million times back in high school.”

Hoyt stared for a second. Then he laughed and shook his head. “Still dishing out the Annatude. I guess some things never change.”

Annatude. She’d forgotten about the word he’d made up back in high school. It had been their little inside joke, and she’d actually thought it was cute. For a while.

Until she’d realized that the joke was on her.

She lifted her chin. “Your grammar certainly hasn’t changed.”

Hoyt glanced at his watch and made an impatient noise. “Look, I really don’t have time for all this right now, Anna, so let’s cut to the chase. I know you don’t like me much, okay? I get that, but this isn’t about me. This is about Jess.”

He was right. She didn’t like him much. She also didn’t like being steamrolled, so she’d been prepared to dig in her heels and stand her ground.

Right up until that last sentence.

She hesitated, torn between her irritation with Hoyt and her concern for his daughter. The concern won out. “What about Jess?”

“We’ll talk about it tonight over supper.” The corner of Hoyt’s mouth twitched. “Me and you. Say, around six thirty? Don’t expect a lot of bells and whistles, though. I’m not much of a cook, but I’ll come up with something. You could bring some dessert if you want. You used to make a pretty stellar brownie if I remember right.”

That was the wrong memory for him to bring up. Remembering the long afternoons she’d spent baking those sad little I-have-a-crush-on-you brownies still made her cringe.

That clinched it. No way was she was going to Hoyt Bradley’s house for dinner. She opened her mouth to tell him so.

He must have read her expression, because he spoke before she could. “Anna, Jess is all I have. She finally talked last night after all these years, and I want—” His voice roughened, and he waited a second before continuing. “I’m going to do everything I can to make sure she keeps on talking. I know this isn’t your problem, and I’m really sorry to bug you. But somehow you and this store of yours have gotten tangled up in my situation, so I’d appreciate it a lot if you’d take the time to talk with me about it. At my house. Tonight.”

Jess is all I have. Anna chewed on her lower lip. She knew what it was like to have only one person in the whole world left to love. She also knew how it felt when that person slipped away from you into a place you couldn’t access, no matter how desperately you wanted to.

She was going to kick herself for this later, but—

“Okay.”

“Please, Anna, I—” Hoyt stopped short. For once in her life, she’d thrown him off-balance. “Okay?”

“Yes. I’ll come.”

Hoyt blinked a couple of times. “I really appreciate that. I guess I’ll see you tonight.”

“Right.” They considered each other for an awkward second or two, and then Hoyt nodded and headed out of the store toward his truck.

Anna relocked the door behind him, her heart skipping nervously. Glancing up, she caught Hoyt studying her from the cab of the truck.

Their eyes connected, and she realized something. For probably the first and only time in their lives, she and Hoyt Bradley were thinking the exact same thing.

What on earth did I just get myself into?

* * *

Hoyt Bradley didn’t spook easy, and he had his dad to thank for that. When you grew up in a house with a mean drunk, you learned early to cope with stuff that made most people turn tail and run.

So it made no sense for his palms to be sweaty when he reached for the doorknob at six thirty. On the dot.

Trust Anna Delaney to be right on time.

She was waiting in the shade of his deep front porch. Maybe she was trying to make up for that crazy outfit she’d been wearing earlier because now she looked like she was headed to a job interview at a funeral home. She had on a pink blouse buttoned up to the neck and gray slacks with a knife-blade crease down each leg. Somehow she’d even wrangled her unruly mop of hair into a prissy bun.

That must have taken some doing. And as far as Hoyt was concerned, it had been a big waste of time. He’d meant what he told her back in the bookstore. Her hair looked better the other way.

Still. Hoyt glanced down at his own rumpled blue cotton shirt and jeans. All things considered, he probably could have stood a little sprucing up himself. She poked a foil-covered dish in his direction. “I brought dessert.”

She’d taken his suggestion. Maybe this was going to be easier than he’d thought. “I hope it’s those caramel brownies you used to make.” She’d once bribed him to read an entire act of Julius Caesar by allowing him one bite per page.

“Sorry. Banana pudding.”

He’d never much cared for bananas, and from that sharp twinkle in Anna’s eye, she remembered. So much for easy. “Come on in.”

She edged past him into his living room and threw a startled glance upward.

“Oh, wow .” For a second or two she seemed to have forgotten he was standing there, which made the raw admiration in her voice mean even more. “This is incredible. I’ve never seen anything like it. Well, not in somebody’s home, anyway. I feel like I just walked into a cathedral.”

He’d designed the front room of his home with a vaulted ceiling that soared into a high point. Large triangular windows brought in the blue sky and tops of the old pecan trees in his yard. The back wall of the room was mostly glass, too, showcasing the sparkling pond he’d dug out in the back field.

He always enjoyed seeing people react to it, but nobody had ever commented that it looked like a church before now.

Strange, since he’d actually patterned this space after a sanctuary he’d helped build down in Savannah several years ago. He’d liked the way that building had brought in the outdoors, spotlighting God’s creation rather than focusing on man-made curlicues. He thought he’d done a pretty fair job of copying that here.

Weird that Anna Delaney of all people would be the one who picked up on that.

“Thanks,” he said simply.

Anna flushed and nodded awkwardly. She reached up a hand to tuck a straying lock of hair back into place. It flopped right back down as soon as she quit fussing with it.

Hoyt tried not to grin. For such an uptight girl, Anna sure had some wild hair. It was a glossy brown, and when she wore it down, it fell in loose spirals past her shoulders. She’d been fighting with it—and losing—as long as he’d known her.

“Where’s Jess?” Anna dug in the bag she had looped over one elbow and produced a storybook. “I brought her something.”

“She’s not here.” The immediate alarm in Anna’s expression might have been funny if there hadn’t been so much at stake. “We need to talk about some stuff she doesn’t need to overhear, so I asked Bailey Quinn to take her out to Tino’s for a pizza.” Anna still looked uneasy, so he added, “That’s okay, isn’t it?”

She hesitated but then set her bag down on the table by the door and nodded. “I guess so.” She tilted her head and sniffed. “Hoyt? Is something burning?”