The Second Chance Café (Hope Springs, #1) Read Online Free PDF

Once he figured out how to let go of the emotions strangling him—shame that he hadn’t been there for Indy or Dakota, anger that his parents hadn’t been there for any of them.
    “Doesn’t make him any less of a yahoo,” Manny said, clicking off after promising to call Monday and set a time for Will’s visit. Punctuality was a big deal for Manny. Hemade sure his charges knew his straight and narrow was as much of a sentence as the one on the inside that the parole board had seen fit to cut short. Grown men, yet like kids in kindergarten they still had to toe Manny’s line.
    Ten’s brother had done just that, abided by the conditions set for his release and served his term sans a single violation. While under Manny’s thumb, he’d done grunt work for another contractor in the area, the five-year road to his master’s in architecture halted by the two spent in prison for aggravated assault. Ten had been the one to reach out, to stay in touch, at least until Dakota made it clear he wasn’t interested in brotherly love.
    If Dakota had a particular reason for not going back to school, he’d never mentioned it to Ten. Neither had he shared any regrets he might’ve had about swinging that baseball bat instead of calling the law. One reckless moment, and the blueprint they’d designed for Keller Brothers Construction was good for nothing but the bottom of a birdcage, and Ten left to establish the business on his own.
    He’d tried to bring his brother in after his release, but Dakota was having none of it. Whether because he was sore over Ten moving forward without him, or raw over his time behind bars, Ten didn’t know. Dakota wouldn’t talk about either, or about his life on the outside being changed forever. Ten had finally let it go. His brother was a free man, going it alone his choice. That didn’t keep Ten from feeling he had never done enough to help.
    And because of that, he gave parolees a paycheck and a boost onto their feet. He knew what it meant for a man to lose his mind for a single moment, and to have that singlemoment screw up the rest of his life. Dakota couldn’t vote. Couldn’t own a gun. Couldn’t run for office. To Ten’s way of thinking, the last two weren’t a big deal but the first, yeah. That ate at him. A street-corner dealer. A gangbanger. Bernie Madoff in the day. Those thugs had a say in the way the country was run.
    But because at eighteen his brother had hunted down the worthless prick who’d tried to rape their sister, and premeditatedly swung a bat at the back of his head, Dakota could no longer make his voice heard. Offering hope to others who’d been just as rash and impulsive allowed Ten to make a statement the only way he could, while making amends for what felt like letting his brother down.
    His folks, on the other hand…They’d coddled kids whose own families were more demanding, loving the attention that came with being cool. The same way they loved looking good for rescuing animals and saving the planet. The teens they’d spoiled, many his and his siblings’ friends, hadn’t been fooled, and more than a few had taken advantage. Two whom his parents had sworn to save from neglect had required enough of their money—court costs, attorney fees, forfeited bail—that Ten’s paying his own way through college had been less about independence than it was a necessity.
    He wondered what Kaylie Flynn had been like as a kid. Then he wondered what had happened to make her a ward of the state. He’d never known a foster to go to the lengths she had, claiming for her own the home that wouldn’t have been hers if not for fate and social services. There had to be a reason, and he was curious enough to want to knock down her walls and find it.

CHAPTER SIX
     
    I t was long past lunchtime, was closer to the middle of the afternoon, in fact, before Kaylie thought to check the time. Her day had been taken up with fabric swatches, a tape measure, and the windows on her new