Page 30 of Second Chance Fate

She exhaled a breath of relief. He didn’t remember her. She just looked familiar. That was it.

“Um, I need to go.” She motioned toward the car. “But, I was thinking maybe we could have coffee sometime.”

Crap. Did that sound like she was asking him out on a date? She had enough time to think about how to do this; why was she blowing it so badly?

Actually, she didn’t want to do this at the coffee shop where she worked. That could get very messy.

“When?” he asked as he took another step closer to her. The look in his eyes was like he was speaking to a trapped animal, and he was scared she was going to run away.

He wasn’t wrong.

“Um, I don’t know.” She shrugged. “Next week, maybe.”

“What about tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow morning at Sue Ann’s. Ten o’clock.”

“Tomorrow. Ten o’clock. Okay.” She could feel her skin heating up and was sure that her chest was breaking out in hives. Out of habit, she lifted her hand to her chest to check how hot her skin was as she rocked back on her heels. “See you then.”

Taylor turned, eager to escape before she embarrassed herself, when Caleb reached out and gently caught her wrist. His touch was sudden and unexpected, his hand firm and strong yet tender. It felt like the way someone would instinctively catch a fragile object tumbling off a high shelf—protective, not possessive.

Her eyes closed as her heart stuttered in her chest, every synapse firing at once. The world narrowed to the contact point where the roughened pads of his fingertips were pressed against the pulse of her wrist throbbing beneath his touch. Shefelt a buzz of electricity zip up her arm. Her brain, already in overdrive, sent her body into fight or flight, but she was rooted to the spot. She began to feel dizzy, and the sidewalk beneath her sneakers slipped out of focus. She lost her grip on her car keys, and they slid from her palm.

The next thing she knew, Caleb had one arm steadying her and had caught her keys before they fell to the ground. He helped stabilize her and she watched as he placed the keys back in her hand. When her eyes lifted back up to his, he was staring down at her with an expression in them that caused her breath to hitch.

“Rebecca?” he said her name with a soft rumble, like the crackling of a fireplace on a chilly night. It was soothing and comforting, but also held a hint of uncertainty. “Is that…are you Rebecca?”

She wanted so badly to explain everything to him right then and there, but with Owen in the car, she couldn’t. “I, um...I have to go. But I’ll see you tomorrow.”

This time when she turned around, he didn’t stop her. She made it one step when she heard a question that caused her stomach to turn inside out.

“How old is he?”

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she repeated.

This time she didn’t look back.

9

“Mornin’,young man!” Ralph Henley dipped his head in a nod as he strolled toward Caleb, pushing his satchel delivery cart, the wheels clunking along the wooden sidewalk.

Ralph had been delivering mail to Hope Falls’ residents for fifty-two years. At seventy-four, he showed no signs of slowing down or having any interest in retiring.

“Morning, how are Maribel and the twins doing?” The Henley twins, Robert and Richard, were a few years older than Caleb and identical. There was a trick to telling them apart, but he hadn’t seen them in over a decade, so he’d forgotten what it was.

At the mention of his wife and sons, Mr. Henley’s smile lit up his face, revealing a deep dimple in his right cheek covered in a salt and pepper five o’clock shadow. Seeing the indentation triggered Caleb’s memory. Both twins had deep dimples, like their dad, each on a different cheek, which made them mirror-image identical twins.

Mr. Henley set his cart up straight, pulled out a navy blue handkerchief from his back pocket, and swiped it across his forehead. “Doin’ great. The boys are married with families oftheir own. We don’t see them as much as we’d like, since they both settled on the East Coast, but we can’t complain because everybody is healthy and happy.”

Caleb had only been half-listening to his response; his mind was stuck on the dimple. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure thing.” He folded his handkerchief back up and returned it to his back pocket.

“The twins both have your dimple.”

“They sure do,” Mr. Henley responded in the affirmative, mistaking that for the question.

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