The Sweethearts’ Knitting Club (26 page)

“What did you do with him?”

The deputy shrugged. “Beau said to cut him loose.”

Some of the tension drained from her shoulders. “Where did he go?”

“I don’t know, but he said he had some thinking to do.”

Flynn left the hospital feeling numb with exhaustion. So much had happened over the last forty-eight hours, she could barely think. She drove around town looking for Jesse’s Harley, but she didn’t see it anywhere. Driving past the burned-out motorcycle shop, seeing it in ruins, made her stomach ache. She went by Patsy’s house but no one was home. She headed over to the fire station. But neither Hondo nor Fire Chief Rutledge was there. Where was Jesse?

She didn’t know what to do or where to go. She needed to do some serious thinking herself, but the house was full with Joel and Noah back home. She needed a space of her own.

Her cell phone rang. She dug it from her purse, palmed it. “Hello?”

“Rendezvous,” Jesse said, and then hung up.

Flynn grinned and headed for home.

Once there, she dug the canoe from the garage, dragged it to the water, and paddled for their secret meeting spot.

The sun set on the horizon, descending into twilight. The air was alive with the sights and sounds of the river she loved so much. She paddled past the columns of the old bridge. The salvaged materials sat stacked on either side of the boat ramps, awaiting the start of the new construction. Her heart soared.

As she rowed upriver, it felt as if she was rowing into both her future and her past. In that moment she was sixteen again, sneaking off for a rendezvous with the boy she hadn’t been able to admit she loved.

Jesse.

By the time she maneuvered the bend in the river and came upon the swimming hole, her heart was in her throat. There he was, on the bluff, waiting for her.

The dying sunlight cast him in an orange halo of light. Her bad boy, who at his core was very, very good. She docked the canoe against the bank. He was there, reaching down his hand to help her ashore. His left eye was black and blue, he had
a long scratch on his forehead, and his skin was blistered bright pink, but he was the best-looking thing she’d ever seen.

“Flynn,” he murmured.

“Jesse.”

He stared at her for the longest moment. “You got Trainer to confess to everything.”

“I did.”

“You believed me.”

“I should have believed you all along, Jesse. Forgive me for not believing you.”

A smile quirked up the corners of his lips. “If you’ll forgive me for sending your letters back to you unread.”

“Done.”

He looked a little uncertain, cleared his throat.

“Is there something you’d like to say?”

He nodded, took her hand. “Let’s sit.”

They sat on the bluff where they’d sat so many years ago and watched the sun disappear and the crickets start their chirping. “We’ve lost a lot of time.”

“Yes.”

“You’ve lost a lot of yourself.”

“I wouldn’t say lost.”

“But you haven’t had a chance to find out who you really are.”

“That’s probably true.”

“You have that chance now. The Yarn Barn is gone. Your brothers are growing up. Carrie can take care of herself. Your father’s gonna stay on the program.”

She nodded.

“That means you’re free. Free to be who you’re destined to be, not what other people want you to be.”

“What are you trying to say, Jesse?”

He looked deeply into her eyes. “I love you, Flynn. I love your smart little mouth and your sharp mind. I love how you take care of the people you love. How loyal and true you are. I love how you attract strays like Miss Tabitha. How you give so much of yourself without even thinking about it. I’m honored to know you, Flynn MacGregor, and I want to spend the rest of my days finding out more. I want you to be my woman. I want to ask you to marry me, but I can’t.”

“No?” Her chest got all achy.

“No. I can’t hold you back. I won’t. You need to explore. Find out who you are and what you want.”

“I want you.”

“You can’t just rush into me.”

“I’m not.”

“I don’t want you to ever have any regrets. I don’t want to be the thing that ties you down.”

“Oh, you goofy man. There’s no escaping it. We’re knitted up in each other. There’s no denying it.”

“Even if you can’t knit?” He grinned.

“That’s what I have the Sweethearts for. Besides, I don’t need to look any further than my hometown for adventure. Everything I need is right in front of me.” She looked at him, at the man she loved, and she knew it was true. “Being with you is all the exploration I need. You’re just bad enough, Jesse Calloway, to keep me interested.”

“Why didn’t you say so sooner, woman?” he asked. “Now, how about we go skinny-dipping in those underground caves?”

Flynn laughed and stripped off her clothes. “Or,” she said, “we could just stay right here and make love in the moonlight.”

“I’ve got something to confess,” Flynn said to the Sweethearts on the Friday evening following the fire. They’d met at her house again. All of them gathered around in their rockers, their hands busy with their knitting—Patsy, Terri, Marva, Raylene, Dotty Mae, and Belinda. Even Miss Tabitha was there, curled up in Flynn’s lap. She cleared her throat. “I should have come clean a long time ago.”

Everyone looked up at her, and she rested her knitting in her lap. The six women she admired most in town. The women who’d become surrogate mothers to her. The women who’d shared her laughter and tears. She was about to disappoint them, to shatter their faith in her. The lump in her throat swelled to a boulder.

“What is it, dear?” Dotty Mae asked.

“I…” She blew out her breath. “This is going to come as a shock.”

Belinda reached over to pat her hand. “You don’t have to tell us anything you don’t want to tell us.”

“But I do want to tell this. You guys deserve the truth. You’ve been there for me in bad times and good, but I feel like my secret is a huge barrier between us. Although, after I confess, you’re probably not going to want me to hang out with you anymore.”

“Good Lord,” Raylene splayed a hand over her chest. “What on earth did you do?”

“Okay, here goes.” She was having the toughest time pushing the words past her lips. She’d kept her secret for so long, it felt odd to just come out and say it. “I can’t knit. Can’t purl. I don’t make scarves, I don’t know a ripple stitch from a seed stitch. My mother was a world-class knitter and I’m a big fat fraud. And a liar. A big, fat, lying fraud. Carrie’s been knitting all my projects for me.”

Flynn expected to see stunned surprise on the faces of her friends. Instead, all six simultaneously broke into gales of laughter. “I’m serious.” She frowned. “I can’t knit to save my life.”

“Honey,” Marva said, “just how dumb do you think we are?”

Flynn blinked. “You knew?”

“A ten-year-old can knit better than you,” Terri said.

“Ten-year-old, hell.” Raylene hooted. “Miss Tabitha can knit better than Flynn.”

“Excuse me?”

“No offense, honey,” Dotty Mae added. “But your knitting stinks like year-old gym socks.”

“You guys
knew?
”

All six nodded in unison.

Flynn was flabbergasted. “Why didn’t you say something?”

“We were afraid that if you knew we knew, you wouldn’t want to be in the knitting club anymore,” Patsy explained.

“Wait a minute, let me get this straight. Even though I can’t knit, you wanted me in the knitting club?”

“That’s right.”

“But why?”

“You’re our heart and soul, Flynn,” Marva said. “Don’t you get that?”

“Me?”

“You’re the thread that binds us all together.” Tears misted Belinda’s eyes.

“You complete us,” Terri teased, mangling the
Jerry McGuire
quote to suit the situation.

“You’re the one who remembers everyone’s birthdays,” Raylene pointed out.

“You send get well cards to our kids,” Belinda said.

“You listen to our troubles,” Dotty Mae contributed.

“You crack jokes that keep us in stitches,” Patsy added.

“And you remind us so much of your mother,” Marva went on. “Loving and giving and wise and sassy.”

Something occurred to her then. “Did my mother know I couldn’t knit?”

“She was your mother,” Marva said. “Of course she knew.”

“Well, why didn’t
she
say something?”

“Because you were trying so hard to please her. She knew you gave it your all and that you just didn’t have a knack for it.”

“She praised the scarves Carrie made as if they were mine. That doesn’t seem fair to Carrie.”

“Honey.” Marva touched her hand. “She was just so grateful to have you taking care of her. She wanted to boost your self-confidence. Besides, she and Carrie cooked up the scheme together.”

“What!”

“They just wanted you to feel good about yourself.”

“I don’t get this.” Flynn got up from her chair and paced the braided rug, distress knotting up her chest. “Why did my mother want me to start the Yarn Barn if she knew I couldn’t knit? Why didn’t she just ask Carrie?”

“Because she knew you needed us as much as we needed you,” Patsy said. “You’re so busy caring for others, you never realized how much you needed to take care of yourself. That’s our job, Flynn, to take care of you.”

Suddenly they were all crying and passing around tissues and hugging and dabbing at their eyes, and Flynn knew that no matter what happened, the Sweethearts would always be knitted up into one another’s lives.

“Hey,” Flynn said to Belinda. “You never did tell us the gossip about Trixie Lyn Sparks. What’s that all about?”

“Oh, sit back and start knitting, girls, have I got a Texas-sized scandal for you…”

T
he naked cowboy in the gold-plated horse trough presented a conundrum.

In the purple-orange light of breaking dawn, Mariah Callahan snared her bottom lip between her teeth, curled her fingernails into her palms, and tried not to panic. It had been a long drive down from Chicago, and jacked up on espresso, she hadn’t slept in thirty-six hours. There was a very good chance she was hallucinating.

She reached to ratchet her glasses up higher on her nose for a better look, but then remembered she was wearing contact lenses. She wasn’t seeing things. He was for real. No figment of her fertile imagination.

Who was he?

Better question, what was she going to do about him?

His bare forearms, tanned and lean, angled from the edges of the trough; an empty bottle of Jose Cuervo Gold dangled from the fingertips of his right hand. Even in a relaxed pose, his muscular biceps were tightly coiled, making Mariah think of hard, driving piston engines.

Like his arms, his legs lay slung over each side of the trough. He wore expensive eelskin cowboy boots. She canted her head, studying his feet.

Size thirteen at least.

Hmm, was it true what they said about the size of a man’s feet?

She raised her palms to her heated cheeks, surprised to find she made herself blush.

Question number three. How had he come to be naked and still have his boots on?

Curiosity bested embarrassment as she tracked her gaze up the length of his honed, sinewy legs that were humorously pale in contrast to his tanned arms. No doubt, like most cowboys, he dressed in blue jeans ninety percent of the time.

She perched on tiptoes to peek over the edge of the horse trough. The murky green water hit him midthigh and camouflaged his other naked bits. Robbed of the view, she didn’t know if she was grateful or disappointed.

But nothing could hide that chest.

Washboard abs indeed. Rippled and flat. Not an ounce of fat. Pecs of Atlas.

A rough, jagged scar, gone silvery with age, ambled a staggered path from his left nipple down to his armpit, marring nature’s work of art. The scar lent him a wicked air.

Mariah gulped, as captivated as a cat in front of an aquarium.

A black Stetson lay cocked down over his face, hiding all his features, save for his strong, masculine jaw studded with at least a day’s worth of ebony beard. His eyes had to be as black as the Stetson and that stubble.

Mesmerized, she felt her body heat up in places she had no business heating up. She didn’t know who this man was, or how he’d gotten here, although she supposed that drunken ranch hands came with the territory. If she was going to be a rancher, she’d have to learn to deal with it.

A rancher? Her? Ha! Big cosmic joke and she was the punch line.

Less than twenty-four hours ago she had been standing in line at the downtown Chicago unemployment office— having just come from a job interview where once again, she had
not
gotten the job— her hands chafed from the cold October wind blowing off the lake, when she’d gotten word that Dutch had died and left her a horse ranch in Jubilee, Texas.

She didn’t call him Dad, because he hadn’t been much of a father. The last time she’d seen Dutch, he’d been hovering outside her ninth grade algebra class, battered Stetson in his hands, his sandy blond hair threaded through with gray, his blue eyes full of nervousness, remorse, and hope. Horse poop clung to his boots and he wore spurs—
yes, spurs
— against the polished maple hardwood floors of her Hyde Park high school. His Wrangler jeans had been stained and tattered, his legs bowed, his belt buckle big. He’d smelled of hay, leather, and horses.

The other students had stared, snickered, pointed.

“Where’s the rodeo?”

“Who’s the hick?”

“How’d the cowboy pass security?”

“He smells like horseshit.”

“Hillbilly freak.”

Dutch had stretched out a hand nicked with numerous scars, beseeching Mariah to come closer. “Flaxey? It’s me. Your pa.”

How many times had she fantasized that he would come back to her? Be a real dad? Love her the way she’d always loved him? But now that he was here, she didn’t want him. Not in her high school. Not among her friends. Not dressed like that.

Shame flushed through her. She’d walked right past Dutch as if she hadn’t seen him, and when he called her name, she started running in the opposite direction as fast as she could, schoolbooks clutched tight to her chest, heart pounding.

Not only was she ashamed of him, but also she was still mad because he had disappeared a week before her seventh birthday. He told Mariah’s mother, Cassie, he was going to see a man about a horse, and he just never came back.

They’d been living in Ruidoso, New Mexico, at the time, and Cassie waited three months for him to return while she cleaned rooms at the Holiday Inn and cried herself to sleep every night. When one of the wealthy Thoroughbred owners in town for a race offered Cassie a job as his family’s live-in housekeeper, her mother snatched the opportunity with desperate hands. They packed up their meager belongings, moved to Illinois, and didn’t look back.

Dutch never missed a child support payment and he phoned a few times over the years, usually when he was drunk and feeling maudlin; the conversation generally ended with Cassie hanging up on him. Once in a while he sent Mariah gifts at Christmas or for her birthday, but they were always inappropriate. One year, a lasso. The next year, a lucky horseshoe engraved with the words “Make Your Own Luck.” Another year, a pair of purple Justin boots, two sizes too small, as if he thought she stayed forever seven.

As she waited in line, Mariah’s cell phone rang playing Wagner’s Bridal Chorus. She fished it from her purse at the unemployment line and checked the caller ID.

Randolph Callahan.

A strange mix of anxiety, hostility, and gratitude lumped up in her throat. Why was Dutch calling her after all these years? If he was broke and looking for money, he’d certainly picked the wrong time to call. On the other hand, it would be good to hear his voice again.

The weary woman in line behind her, holding a runny-nosed kid cocked on her hip, nudged Mariah, and then pointed at the poster on the wall. It was a symbol of a cell phone with a heavy red line drawn through it.

“Hang on a minute,” Mariah said into the phone, and then smiled beseechingly to the woman, “This’ll just take a sec.”

The woman shook her head, pointed toward the door.

“Fine.” She sighed, never one to ruffle feathers, and got out of line.

A blast of cold air hit her in the face and sucked her lungs dry as she stepped outside. It was the first of October, but already cold as a Popsicle. She liked Chicago in the spring and summer, but the other six months of the year she could do without.

“Hello?” Head down, hand held over her other ear, she scuttled around the side of the building to escape the relentless wind.

No answer.

“Dutch?”

He must have hung up. Great. She’d gotten out of line for nothing. Huddling deeper into the warmth of her coat, she hit the call back button.

“Hello?” a man answered in a curt Texas accent. It didn’t sound like her father.

“Dutch?”

“Who’s this?” he asked contentiously.

“Who is this?” she echoed on the defensive.

“You called me.”

“I was calling my father.”

A hostile silence filled the airwaves between them.

“Mariah?” the man asked, an edge of uncertainty creeping in.

“You have the upper hand. You know my name, but I don’t know yours. Why are you answering Dutch’s cell phone?”

He hauled in a breath so heavy it sounded as if he was standing right beside her. “My name’s Joe Daniels.”

“Hello, Joe,” she said, completely devoid of warmth. “May I speak to Dutch please?”

“I wish— ” His voice cracked. “I wish I could let you do that.”

A sudden chill that had nothing to do with the wind rushed over her. She leaned hard against the side of the building, the bricks poking into her back. “Has something happened?”

“Are you sitting down?”

“No.”

“Sit down,” Joe commanded.

“Just tell me,” Mariah said, bracing for the worst.

“Dutch is dead,” he blurted.

Mariah blinked, nibbled on her bottom lip, felt . . .
hollow.
Hollow as a chocolate Easter bunny.

“Did you hear me?”

“I heard you.”

Joe’s breathing was harsh in her ear.

So her father was dead. She should feel
something
, shouldn’t she? Her heartbeat was steady. A strange calmness settled over her, but she didn’t realize that she’d slowly been sliding down the brick wall until her butt hit the cold cement sidewalk.

All she could think of was how she’d cruelly run away from Dutch that afternoon fourteen years ago.

“Mariah?” A whisper of sympathy tinged Joe’s voice.

“Yeah?”

“You okay?”

“I’m fine. It’s not like my life is going to change,” she said quickly.

“I know you weren’t close. But he
was
your father.” Joe’s tone shifted, barely masking anger.

Oh, who was Mr. High-and-Mighty Joe Daniels to judge her? He didn’t know her. “How did it happen?” she asked, ignoring her own shove of anger.

“He’d had pneumonia for weeks. We tried to get him— ”

Jealousy ambushed her. “We?” she interrupted.

“The cutters in Jubilee.”

Cutters.

She’d almost forgotten the slang term for people involved in the training and raising of cutting horses.

“We tried to get him to go to the doctor, but you know Dutch, mule stubborn and set in his ways,” Joe continued.

No, she didn’t know Dutch. Not really.

“He just kept working. Workaholic, your dad.”

That Mariah knew. Dutch lived and breathed horses.

“We were at an event, Dutch swung off his horse, staggered, coughed. I could tell he was suffering. His face was pale and sweaty. He looked me in the eyes and said, ‘Don’t call Mariah until after the funeral.’ Then he just dropped dead.” Joe’s voice cracked again. “He died with his boots on, doin’ what he loved.”

A long pause stretched out between them. Chicago and Texas in an uneasy marriage over the airwaves.

“Joe,” she murmured, “Are
you
okay?”

“No,” he said. “Dutch was my closest friend.”

Joe’s words finally hit her, a hard punch to the gut. Her head throbbed, and she felt as if a full-grown quarter horse had squatted on her chest. Dutch was dead, and the last thing he said was
Don’t call Mariah until after the funeral
. Her father hadn’t wanted her there.

“You’ve already buried him?” A soft whimper escaped her lips.

“At Oak Hill Cemetery in Jubilee. It’s what he wanted.”

She turned to stone inside. Iced up. Shut down completely. “I see. Well then, thank you for calling to let me know.”

“Wait,” he said. “Don’t hang up.”

Her hand tensed around the cell phone. “What is it?”

“Dutch left you his ranch.”

Dutch left you his ranch.

The words echoed in her head, breaking the thin thread of memory and bringing Mariah back to the present.

The morning sun pushed free of the horizon, bathing the ranch in a butter-and-egg-yolk glow. The joyous twitter of birds greeting the dawn, filling the air with song. How long had it been since she actually paid attention to birds singing? She blinked, seeing Stone Creek Ranch clearly for the first time in full daylight.

It was a country-and-western palace.

The main house sprawled over acres and acres of rolling grassland. On the drive up in the predawn, it had looked like a fat dragon sleeping peacefully after a heavy meal of virgins and villagers. In the daylight, it appeared more like a lazy but handsome king lounging on his throne. Not unlike the lazy cowboy draped insouciantly over the horse trough.

Constructed from limestone and accented with wood finishes, the cowboy mansion boasted a Ludowici clay tile roof, an elevated stone porch, and an accepting veranda. It had to have at least five bedrooms, but probably more like six or seven. A circular flagstone driveway swept impulsively up to the house.

Mariah had parked just short of the main entrance, pulling her rental sedan to a stop by a planter box filled with rusty red chrysanthemums. Numerous other buildings flanked the house. Horse barns, sheds, garages, all well maintained.

Dutch owned this?

She now owned this?

All these years her father had been living in luxury while she and her mother scrimped every penny. The emotions she kept dammed up flooded her— hurt, anger, sorrow, regret, frustration.

Yes, frustration. She had no idea how to run a ranch. She was a wedding planner’s assistant, for crying out loud.

Correction. She used to be a wedding planner’s assistant. “Used to” being the operative phrase.

What was she going to do with the place? And on a more immediate note, what was she going to do with the man in the horse trough?

Tentatively, she inched closer.

He didn’t move.

The shy part of her held back, but the part of her that had learned how to slip into the role of whatever she needed to be in order to get the job done— and right now that was assertive— cleared her throat. “Hey, mister.”

No response. Clearly, it was going to take cannon fire to get through his stupor.

You’ve got to do something more to get his attention. Hanging back and being shy has always put you in hot water. Take the bull by the horns and—

Okay, okay stop nagging.

She reached out and poked his bare shoulder with a finger. Solid as granite.

No response.

Come on. Put some muscle into it.

She poked again. Harder this time.

Not a whisper, not a flinch.

What if he was dead?

Alarmed, Mariah gasped, jumped back, and plastered a palm across her mouth. Dread swamped her. She peered at his chest. Was he breathing? She thought he was breathing, but the movements were so shallow she couldn’t really tell.

Please don’t be dead.

In that moment, the possibly deceased naked cowboy was the cherry on top of the dung cake that was her life. Three months ago, she’d lost her dream job working for the number one wedding planner in Chicago, and then her vindictive boss had black-balled her in the industry. And now Dutch was gone too and she’d been left a ranch complete with a dead naked cowboy.