The Sweethearts’ Knitting Club

by Lori Wilde

  “Don’t freak.” Jesse laid a hand on her shoulder to calm her.

  That same old electricity shot through her. She tensed beneath his touch and he immediately dropped his hand. Shania was back to “You’re Still the One.” Would someone please put a new playlist on? Several diners at nearby tables peered over at them.

  “This is terrible,” she moaned, meaning more than just the loss of Beau’s engagement ring.

  “Worst thing since Vietnam.” Jesse nodded solemnly, but his eyes danced with mischief.

  Flynn’s heart clutched. Part of her wanted to smile, another part of her wanted to throw up. Once upon a time, whenever she was overreacting to some turn of events, Jesse would tease her with the crack about Vietnam, letting her know she was making a mountain out of a molehill. But the message had double meaning. The very last thing he’d said to her as Sheriff Clinton Trainer had stuffed him handcuffed into his squad car was: “Cheer up, Dimples, it’s not the worst thing since Vietnam.”

  But it had been. Jesse’s arrest and subsequent conviction had been her teenage version of a devastating war with far-reaching consequences. Not wanting him to know how much their past still affected her—after all, she’d gone on to live a normal life, while he’d endured things she could not begin to imagine—she bantered back, “Horrible, the world will never be the same.”

  “Scorched earth.”

  “Devastation.”

  “Widespread famine.”

  “Orphans with rickets.”

  “There’ll be monsoons.”

  “Tidal waves.”

  “Earthquakes.”

  “Apocalypse, Mad Max style.”

  “Sand and rusted tanks.”

  “And really bad clothing options.”

  “Damn,” he said. “The fate of the entire world hangs in the balance. We have to find that ring.”

  A giddy warmth filled her and she couldn’t stop herself from smiling, which she was sure had been Jesse’s intent.

  “There you go,” he said. “Showing me those dimples.”

  The giddiness disappeared, replace by embarrassment and confusion. What was the matter with her? Beau’s engagement ring had gone missing and she was flirting with Jesse.

  I’m not flirting with him, I’m…I’m…. What was she doing? Having a good time.

  Inappropriate. These thoughts were totally inappropriate.

  They retraced her steps, searching along the way, and ended up on the loading dock, squatting on the cement ramp, going through the trash. After half an hour, she rocked back on her heels. Despair sagged her shoulders. “I give up. It’s gone.”

  Jesse kept shifting through the guck like he was panning for gold. His head was down, his hair falling over his forehead.

  Her stomached tightened. She still couldn’t believe it. Jesse was back and she was engaged to Beau.

  Jesse grunted.

  “What is it?” She rocked forward again.

  “I think I found it.”

  Relief and hope pulsed through her. “Really?”

  Between his fingers, he held something covered in mashed potatoes. He wiped it off on newspaper they’d spread on the cement floor. Suddenly the triumphant smile vanished, replaced with a steely expression.

  “An engagement ring?” he said. “You didn’t tell me we were looking for an engagement ring.”

  Her heart stuttered. “Didn’t I?”

  He shook his head, stared at her coolly. “Beau?”

  “Yes.”

  “Right. Who else but good ol’ Beau.” Something dark and unsettling flickered in his eyes. “When did you guys make if official?”

  “We haven’t,” she admitted. “He asked me last night, I said yes. We’re announcing it officially tonight at his mother’s annual Memorial Day weekend party.” Now why had she gone and told him that? “May I please have it back?” Flynn held out her hand for the ring, but instead of putting it in her palm, he slipped it on her ring finger, mashed potatoes and all.

  “Congratulations on the upcoming nuptials, Dimples. I hope you and Dudley Do-Right will be very happy together.”

  Before she could say or do anything, he dipped his muddy blond head and closed his mouth over hers in a hard, unremitting kiss.

  The kiss was spontaneous and bold, but it was not a kiss of passion. Rather, it was an instrument of his anger. Rude. Demanding. Orchestrated to shame.

  Flynn’s body reacted instantly, softening, dampening, hungering. And in that second her mouth seemed to have a mind of its own, kissing him back, gobbling up the taste of him like a starving woman. She felt her lips slip apart, felt his tongue slide sweetly into the space she’d made for him. She was bombarded by sensation. Some old, some new, all of them mind-blowing.

  And along with the sensations tumbled a million emotions. She felt speechless, overwhelmed, lusty, bewildered, ravenous, spellbound, ecstatic, ashamed, exhilarated, sheepish, aroused, annoyed.

  Too much, it was all too much. It was wrong and it was way more than she could handle. Terrified, Flynn jerked her mouth away and slapped him hard across the face.

  Jesse reached up, ran his hand along his jaw imprinted bright red from the impact of her palm. He didn’t say a word, just got to his feet and sauntered away.

  Leaving Flynn crouched on the loading dock surrounded by garbage, hand stinging, heart thumping, a lump of sorrow and regret lodged solidly in her throat.

  Jesse sped away from Froggy’s on his Harley determined not to feel a damn thing. But it was a hopeless endeavor. Flynn had always possessed the power to twist him inside out. Tangle him up. The scent of her lingered—spice, honeysuckle, sass.

  And her taste!

  His tongue tingled with her womanly flavor. His stinging cheek told him he shouldn’t have kissed her, but when he’d seen that ring, his cool had slipped away, leaving him with nothing but a desperate, primal need to brand her and claim her as his own.

  He’d acted like a caveman.

  Why had he kissed her like that? So savagely, so unrelentingly? Had he subconsciously wanted to punish her? He hated to think that was the case, but he couldn’t deny she brought out complicated feelings in him.

  When he’d seen her again, standing in the artificial light of Froggy’s, wearing that apron and her I’m-in-charge expression, he’d been overtaken with longing. Dreaming about her in prison was one thing, seeing her in person was a whole other story. All his best intentions faded away in the face of reality. He was putty in her hands.

  She’d grown even prettier since he’d seen her. More self-confident in her movements, more polished in her personal style. Her hazel eyes were the same. Feisty and smart. And those dimples. God, how he loved those dimples. The sight of them beat an antidepressant any day of the week. She was a little thinner than she’d been before, but she filled out her T-shirt quite nicely. Remembering, he felt himself getting aroused.

  How he wanted her!

  But he’d blown it. Kissing her the way he had. Out of anger and hurt. It was stupid and it was pathetic. He’d seen that ring and he’d lost his cool.

  It bothered Jesse that Flynn saw him as a criminal. He wanted to tell her the truth about Trainer, but pride held him back. If she’d really trusted him, if she really had known him as she claimed, she wouldn’t for one second have believed that he was selling cocaine. After watching his mother destroy her life with the stuff, he wanted nothing to do with drugs. Flynn should have known that.

  But the gun was yours.

  Yes, right, the gun. The thing that had tacked extra years to his sentence. He’d gotten it to scare off Trainer. God, he’d been such a dumbass kid with no clue.

  And if Flynn couldn’t see Trainer for who he was deep down inside, well then, he was wasting his time trying to recapture their once budding love.

  What was he doing here? Why had he come back?

  For one thing there were his feelings. He hadn’t expected such an odd mix of hope, longing, regret, shame, revenge, and need.

 
That was starkest of all.

  This hungry, insatiable need for her. He hadn’t expected this level of burning, yearning when he saw her again. It muddled his head, fogged up his brain.

  He needed sex. That was the cure. But he couldn’t make himself just go pick up some random woman, no matter how strong his physical urges. Flynn was the one his body craved. Flynn was the one who boiled his blood, hardened his cock. Anything else, anyone else would just be a pathetic stopgap measure.

  So what now? What was he going to do? He wanted her, but only if he could have her as his own, totally, completely, forever. But she was engaged to Beau Trainer.

  A smart man would walk away. Go to a new town, meet a new girl, start a new life. But when it came to Flynn, when had he ever been smart?

  Jesse grunted, hardened his jaw, tightened his fists on the handlebars. So Flynn had gone and gotten herself engaged to that bozo Trainer. He shouldn’t be surprised. It didn’t matter. It didn’t affect his plans one whit. They weren’t married yet.

  In fact this was better. When he stole Trainer’s fiancée from him, one half of his plan for revenge would be complete. He tried smiling, but it didn’t fit on his lips.

  Flynn wasn’t a pawn and he didn’t want her getting caught in the crossfire between him and the sheriff.

  Sheriff.

  Jesse snorted. What a joke. If only the town knew the real Beau Trainer and what he was capable of, they’d be shocked to the core. If they knew what he’d done, they’d impeach him. And that was precisely what Jesse was counting on. Beau Trainer was gonna pay for stealing Jesse’s woman and his life, and he was gonna pay big.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Patsy, you’ll always be the love of my life.

  —Hondo Crouch, yearbook entry, 1969

  Patsy sat knitting on the top floor balcony of her old Victorian house on Market Street, gently swaying in the rocking chair passed down from her maternal grandmother. It occurred to her—not for the first time—that she had no daughter to pass it down to. From this vantage point, she could see the lake and the sandy beach where families flocked on the weekends.

  Colorful sailboats glided past the swimming area. In the distance, jet boats pulled skiers, paddleboats and canoes rocking in their wake. Kids with fishing poles sat on the docks, kicking their bare toes in the water, completely carefree. A red-tailed hawk flew over the tops of the pecan trees in her front yard calling kreeee, kreee, kree, kreeeeeeee.

  Overhead, the ceiling fan rotated lazily. Mozart spilled from the mp3 player. A glass of iced chamomile tea with fresh honey and a flickering aromatherapy candle called Serenity, which smelled of fresh linen, lilacs, and sea salt, rested beside her on the small wrought-iron table with a mosaic tile top.

  From the outside, her life looked quite peaceful. From the inside, it was a different story. Hence the calming aids of beautiful view, inspirational candles, uplifting music, and busy hands.

  She knitted continental style, holding both the yarn and the needle in her left hand, picking the stitches through with each loop. Everyone else in the knitting club knitted English, but her French grandmother—the same one who’d given her the rocking chair—had taught her this method and she’d seen no reason to change, even though her friends claimed their method was easier. The trick to continental style was in the way you kept the yarn slightly taut. This required winding the thread over her left pinkie finger and her left forefinger. She liked the tradition of continental style. It made her feel connected to the past. And in a life where she’d lost so much, it was a feeling she treasured.

  The music, the water, the tea, the candle, the rocking chair, and her knitting slowly unraveled the nerves she’d jangled last night by driving past the fire station. After seeing Hondo, she hadn’t slept a wink. Finally, at dawn, she’d gotten up and driven over to the Alzheimer’s Care Facility to check on Jimmy.

  It hadn’t been one of his better mornings. The minute she’d walked in the door with a basket of fresh-baked cranberry muffins, Jimmy had started screaming, “Help! Help! Police! Police! She’s trying to poison me!”

  She tried everything she knew to soothe her addled husband but his agitation escalated to the point where the nurse had finally asked her to leave. She’d come back home and taken a fitful nap. Around noon she’d gone down to the Teal Peacock to check on the new girl she’d hired for the weekends. Business was steady. A few locals dropped by to visit, several of them buzzing about Kathryn Trainer’s annual Memorial Day party. Patsy hadn’t been invited. Ever since Clinton had arrested Jesse, Patsy and Kathryn’s relationship had gone from politely cordial to iceberg cold.

  Tourist traffic motored along Market Street, headed for Marina Beach. A silent ambulance was in the convoy, more than likely on the way back from transporting a patient to Fort Worth. Was Hondo behind the wheel? Patsy’s fingers quickened at her knitting.

  Once upon a time this whole area had been affluent residential homes. Houses on one side of the road; the lake, piers, beach, and marina on the other. Now it was zoned as a commercial area, with only a few houses like hers left. Most of the Victorians had been converted into businesses. A bed-and-breakfast next door to the right. A law office beside that. On the other side was an exercise studio, and behind it, the Carriage House (which had once been an actual carriage house), an elegant four-star restaurant, open only in the evenings Thursday through Sunday. Across the street, a set of new townhouses had been erected on the waterfront, blocking part of her view of the lake.

  The ambulance was hung up at the red light at the intersection of Graffon and Market. She narrowed her eyes to see if she could make out who was behind the wheel, but her vision just wasn’t what it used to be and the windows were tinted. It could be Hondo.

  Her needles clacked as she remembered the way he’d waved at her last night. How long had it been since they’d acknowledged each other’s presence? Old history weaved its way through her brain along with the smell of Texas Joe’s Barbecue from down at the end of the block.

  In a blink, she was seventeen again, sitting on her canopied bed in this very house, listening to the new Rolling Stones album, Let it Bleed, and crying her heart out because her period was three weeks late. Between the music and her sobbing, it had taken a few minutes for her to hear the pebbles smacking against her window. She’d dragged herself off the bed, swiped at her eyes, smearing mascara tracks over the backs of her hands, and stumbled to the French doors leading out on to the balcony.

  The minute she saw Hondo standing on the side lawn in his Jefferson Airplane T-shirt and cut-off blue jeans, fresh tears sprang to her eyes. How was she going to tell him that she might be pregnant?

  “Patsy?” he said, alarm in his voice. “Are you okay?”

  She’d shaken her head. “No.”

  “I’m coming up.” He’d grabbed for the trellis.

  “Shh, my folks are in the living room watching Hawaii Five-O. Remember what happened last time?”

  The last time her seven-year-old sister Phoebe had caught them kissing on Patsy’s bed. She’d threatened to tattle, but Patsy bribed her with promises of a new Barbie. Her parents disapproved of Hondo because he lived with his trash collector father in a trailer park by the river, and they’d forbidden her to see him. The upper-crust Calloways judged people not on who they were, but on where they came from and what they did for a living. Patsy wasn’t so narrow-minded. She knew people couldn’t help the family they were born into. She wondered how her folks would react when they found out she was carrying Hondo’s baby.

  You don’t know for sure yet.

  Hondo scaled the railing onto the balcony like Romeo coming after Juliet. He held his arms out to her and she sank into them. He squeezed her tight. “What’s wrong?”

  She broke the news. He didn’t get angry. Instead he swung her up in his arms and twirled her around. “Why are you crying, silly? This is wonderful, wonderful.”

  “But I wanted to go to college,” she’d sobbed. “You wanted to go to colle
ge.”

  “We can still go,” he said. “We can do this. I’ll go to school during the day, work at night.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Whatever I can get.”

  “How will we pay for an apartment? A baby? College tuition?”

  “We’ll get grants, loans,” he’d said optimistically.

  “We need help, Hondo.” They both knew help would not be forthcoming from his father. “We have to tell my parents.”

  “Let’s wait,” he said, “until you know for sure.”

  She nodded; he kissed her and told her not to worry, that he loved her and everything would work out fine. Then he’d slipped off into the darkness, the sound of his happy whistling floating back to her on the night breeze. She and Hondo were having a baby. For the first time she smiled. Imagined a miniature Hondo calling her Mama and giving her sticky-faced kisses.

  If only she’d known then what she knew now. Patsy closed her eyes. Mozart played on as a tear slid wetly down her cheek.

  A week later, the family doctor who had delivered her confirmed that she was pregnant. She hesitated calling Hondo. She was still trying to figure out how they were going to break the news to her parents. She was in line at the school cafeteria, an egg salad sandwich, bottle of Yoo-hoo, and a package of Cheetos on her lunch tray.

  “Patsy,” he whispered, “can we talk?” The look in his eyes was one of pure fear. Nothing had ever scared her so badly.

  “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  He’d taken the tray from her hand, set it down, pulled her from the line. Putting his hand to her back, he guided her into a quiet corner. Her heart was thumping, panic spread through her like a wildfire. Instinctively she’d curled her hand around her belly. The baby was the size of a pea, but already she was trying to protect him.

  “What’s happened?”

  He tugged an envelope from his pocket and handed it to her. She opened up the letter, saw the word “drafted,” and the next thing she knew she was in the principal’s office with the school nurse waving a vial of ammonia underneath her nose.