Read Online The Second Chance Café (Hope Springs, #1) by Alison Kent - Free Book Online

didn’t know about any of this until long after the fact.”
    “Are you the child?” he asked when she finally stopped to take a breath. “And you don’t know if you should tell your father who you are?”
    “Why would you think that?” she asked, finding it strange that he’d go there before anywhere else.
    “When someone has a friend with a problem, a lot of the time it’s not a friend at all.”
    True enough, she thought, and smiled. “No. I’m not the child. In this case, it really is about a friend.”
    “You know both parties?”
    “I do.”
    “And you don’t know if you should stir up the past and put them together.”
    “I don’t. The past is…messy. Very messy.”
    “Are you asking for my opinion?”
    She found herself nodding. “I guess I am.”
    He turned to lean against the car beside her, arms crossed as he glanced over. “Are you close to your parents?”
    Her smile widened. She felt it in the muscles of her cheeks. “They’re my very best friends. I don’t know what I’d do without them.”
    Which was why this conversation was one she should be having with them—not with a man she didn’t know. Except her parents were aware of Mitch Pepper’s story and couldn’t be any more impartial than she was.
    Will looked away, his gaze focused somewhere in front of him. “If you’re trying to re-create what you have with your family for your friend, don’t.”
    “Why not? Isn’t that a perfect reason?”
    “Perfect for you, sure. But it’s not about you. It’s about two people who’ve made their own way for a lot of years. What’s the impact to their lives going to be if you upset the status quo?”
    It sounded so obvious when put like that. “So I shouldn’t tell either of them? Even if I know they’re looking for each other?”
    “Are they? Actively? Or are they just giving lip service to wanting to find the other because it’s what society expects?”
    This had been such a bad idea. She was more confused than ever. “You’re saying what they claim to want might not be what they want at all?”
    “You’re the one who knows them,” he said, and shrugged. “You’re going to have to be the one to figure that out. I’m just a boy who was raised by wolves.”
    “You’re pretty intuitive for a boy raised by wolves.”
    “Intuition is everything. Animals wouldn’t survive without it.”
    “Even human animals?” she asked, wondering again about this one’s crimes. He had that lean, wary look of someone who’d spent time wishing for eyes in the back of his head. Ten didn’t take on hard cases. And Manny didn’t send him anyone but those ready to return to the lives they’d left behind. Lives they’d screwed up with a single mistake—something Luna was too familiar with.
    “We let a lot of things get in our way. An animal’s intuition is about survival, not ego.”
    “Did ego get you in trouble?” she asked, because she wanted to know. She’d never been as curious about Ten’s other ex-con hires, but this one…
    He laughed then, a deep, clear rumble full of things to tempt her. “That, Miss Meadows, is for me to know. And for you to wonder about.”
    “Fair enough.” After all, she didn’t want him asking about her secrets. Her stupidity. A condition she still struggled with, it seemed, when out of the blue she next heardherself asking, “Would you like to get coffee later? Or dinner sometime?”
    “Do you cook?”
    Did he want her to? Did he want her to for him? Did he want to get her alone?
What in the world was wrong with her?
“Not if I can help it. I’m a big fan of takeout.”
    “In Hope Springs?”
    Should she tell him? “I live a ways out of town, so it’s an easy drive to New Braunfels.”
    “I do.”
    “Cook? Or live in Hope Springs?”
    “Both. For now, with the living part. Since Manny set me up with Ten. But I’ve always cooked.”
    Was he offering to cook for her? Because she really didn’t know where this conversation was going.