by Lori Wilde
Flynn blushed again. She really didn’t like this overblown center-of-attention thing. She smiled.
“To Flynn!” the crowd called out, and then it was a simultaneous down-the-hatch.
Flynn took a small sip.
“My turn,” Kathryn said, maneuvering her way back to the microphone. “To the happy couple.”
Everyone was happy to take another drink.
“Anyone else like to offer a toast?” Beau asked, his words slurring slightly.
That’s when Flynn realized he was tipsy and looking at her like she was supposed to say something. How could he expect her to say something? He knew she hated public speaking and she wasn’t like him. It hadn’t even occurred to her that she’d need to prepare a speech.
“Anybody?” Beau shifted his gaze to the crowd.
“I do,” said a deep masculine voice from the bottom of the gazebo steps.
The second she heard it, Flynn’s gut clenched. It couldn’t be. Not here, not at the Trainer enclave. Cringing, she dared to turn her head.
Yep, greatest fear confirmed. It was Jesse. Decked out all in black. Black jeans, black cowboy boots, black T-shirt, with the skull tattoo on his arm peeking out from under the sleeve.
Every gaze in the place was welded on him as he sauntered up the steps. Flynn felt Beau tense beside her, but she didn’t dare look at him.
You coward.
A murmur ran through the crowd.
Jesse sauntered straight over to Beau and audaciously plucked the glass of champagne from his hand.
The crowd gasped.
Flynn stopped breathing and darted a fearful glance at Beau. He looked stunned and…scared?
Of Jesse?
Beau was a good five inches taller and fifty pounds heavier than Jesse. But Jesse was fast and wiry and he’d been to prison. A fistfight between them was bound to be bloody and protracted.
What should she do?
Kathryn was moving off the dais, obviously going after security.
And here Flynn was, standing there like a ninny as Jesse raised the glass of champagne and locked eyes with Beau. “To Beau and Flynn. I wish you the very best.”
Then he shifted his gaze to Flynn.
Her heart flipped.
“Why fight genetics, right, Dimples?” He winked and tippled back a long swallow of champagne.
Jesse, no!
She almost reached out to slap the alcohol from his hands. But she didn’t dare say or do anything to stop him from drinking the champagne, not here with everyone watching. She couldn’t give the slightest indication that she cared about him at all. She was engaged to the richest, most influential man in town; a man who had the power to send Jesse right back to prison.
Didn’t Jesse get that? By coming here tonight, pulling this stunt, he was putting his freedom in jeopardy.
At that moment, the band started playing “I Got Friends in Low Places,” and Flynn suspected from the devilish gleam in Jesse’s eyes he’d paid the band for their choice of tune and impeccable timing.
The crowd cheered and broke into wild applause.
At that moment, two off-duty sheriff’s deputies hustled up onto the gazebo. Kathryn scowled at the band and made cutting motions across her neck.
The Garth Brooks song was quickly replaced by another go-round of “Cotton-Eyed Joe.”
“Guess it’s time to clear out the riffraff, eh, Trainer,” Jesse said.
The deputies reached for Jesse, but he shook off their arms and sent them an expression that had them stepping back a pace.
A chill ran down Flynn’s spine.
Jesse cocked a smile at her. “Don’t worry, Dimples, I won’t embarrass you further in front of your fancy friends. I’m leavin’.”
CHAPTER SIX
Beau Trainer and Flynn MacGregor voted couple most likely to end up married
—Twilight High, 1999
Beau and Flynn did not speak of what happened at the party on Saturday night. She kept waiting for him to say something, but he never did, and she wasn’t stupid enough to kick a hornet’s nest. So the incident just lay there between them. The eight-hundred-pound gorilla no one wanted to poke.
On Tuesday morning after the Memorial Day weekend, Beau showed up on her front porch in his uniform and bearing a grande Mocha Frappuccino from Starbucks. “Thought you might need the kick start.”
“You know me too well.” She smiled. She preferred cold beverages to hot, even in the winter, and she’d never sprung for the pricey coffeehouse stuff herself, but she did love Mocha Frappuccino.
“My little night owl,” he said fondly and kissed the tip of her nose. “It’s gonna be tough on you adjusting to my meadowlark schedule.”
“You think I’m changing my schedule?” she asked as they walked to his SUV.
He looked puzzled. “I get up at five A.M.”
Flynn groaned. “Ungodly hour.”
“Mother demands that her cook have breakfast on the table at six.”
“Well, that’s your mother. Relax, I’m not that regimented. You can eat a bowl of cereal on the couch in your underwear any time of the morning.”
Beau frowned. “I suppose that’s something we’ll have to negotiate with Mother when we move in.”
“Whoa, back the train up here. Move in with your parents? Are you nuts?”
Beau tilted his Stetson back on his forehead. “I can see I shouldn’t have sprung the idea on you like this.”
“If anything, we can move in here.” She waved at her house as they drove by. “Or even your apartment.”
“That’s too small for the two of us.”
“Then let’s buy a house of our own.”
Beau cleared his throat. “That house has been in our family for five generations, Flynn.”
“I’m not saying we can never live there, Beau.” She spun the oversized engagement ring on her finger. “Just not as long as your parents are alive.”
“My mother needs help with the place and with my father. It’s all too much for her.”
“Okay, how about we buy them a small house near the hospital?”
“Are you suggesting we kick them out of their own home?”
“I can’t live in the same house with your parents, Beau.”
He splayed a palm against the back of his neck. “We’re getting ahead of ourselves here. We won’t even be setting a date until you have the Yarn Barn firmly established. My dad’s in bad health. Who knows what the next couple of years will hold? Let’s take this one step at a time.”
It was only then that Flynn realized she’d been holding her breath. Slowly, she let it out. “Yeah, okay, I can do that. I can take a wait-and-see attitude if you can.”
“That’s my girl.” Beau smiled and reached over to chuck her lightly under the chin.
Five minutes later they arrived at the bank. Immediately, Moe’s secretary ushered them in to see the mayor.
“Morning Beau, morning Flynn,” Moe greeted them. He wore a lime green polo shirt over his ample belly and matching green plaid golf pants. He shook their hands and instructed his secretary to bring in coffee. “Congratulations on the engagement.”
“Thanks.” Beau beamed.
“That was some shindig on Saturday.” Moe patted his belly. “Enjoyed that barbecue. What was the weird deal with that guy who interrupted your toast?”
Flynn held her breath and waited to see if Beau was going to mention Jesse, but he just shrugged and said, “Some drunk. You know how it is.”
Moe nodded and went through the necessary pleasantries while Flynn nervously worried the corners of the business plan she’d printed up on her computer.
“May I have a look at that, young lady?” Moe reached for the papers, and she turned them over to him. He put on reading glasses and glanced over the documents for a couple of minutes. Flynn tried not to fidget.
“Everything looks in order.” Moe pushed the glasses down to the end of his nose with one pudgy finger and peered at Beau over the to
p of them. “You are cosigning for her loan?”
Beau nodded. “I am.”
“Well, let me just get Pete Grissom on the horn here and find out all the details about the property.” He pressed the intercom button and asked his secretary to make the call and patch it through to him when Pete was on the line.
Moe sat back in his chair and beamed. “I’m so glad you kids are finally making it official. You two are perfect together, just perfect.”
Beau slung his arm around Flynn’s shoulder, pulled her close. “We like to think so.”
“Mayor, Pete Grissom is on line one,” came the secretary’s voice over the intercom.
Moe held up an index finger of one hand and picked up the receiver with the other. “Pete, how you doin’?”
Beau ran his palm up the back of Flynn’s neck, splayed his fingers through her hair.
“I’ve got Sheriff Trainer and his fiancée, Flynn MacGregor, here with me. Beau tells me he’s talked to you about selling him the theater.” Moe paused, listening to whatever Pete was saying.
Flynn tapped her foot, annoyed that this was turning into the Beau and Moe show. She was the one buying the Yarn Barn.
“Hmm, you don’t say.” Moe leaned forward. “Well, that’s a bit irregular.”
What? What was irregular? Uneasiness replaced annoyance. All day yesterday she’d kept having this feeling that things were coming together too easy. Nothing had ever just fallen into Flynn’s lap. She’d had to work hard for everything she’d achieved. Why would the Yarn Barn be any different?
“I’m sorry to hear that from my end of things, but I suppose it was a good deal for you. Yeah, yeah, I’ll break the bad news to them.”
Flynn’s stomach slumped to her feet.
Moe hung up the phone, turned baleful eyes their way. “Got some bad news for you kids.”
“What is it?” Beau asked.
“Pete’s gone and sold the theater out from under you.”
“But…but…” Beau sputtered. “He can’t do that. We had a deal. We shook on it.”
Moe spread his hands. “Apparently someone showed up over the weekend and wrote Pete a check for two grand over his asking price. Sorry, there’s nothing more I can do.”
Disappointment sagged Flynn’s shoulders as she and Beau drove off. Until now, when it all started slipping away, she hadn’t realized how much she’d wanted this. True, the Yarn Barn had started out as her mother’s dream. True, she couldn’t knit to save her life. True, she often felt like she was living someone else’s life. But the Sweethearts meant something important to her. They’d been the glue that held her together after her mother’s death. They might squabble and get on one another’s nerves, but when it came down to it, they cared deeply for one another, and Flynn longed to give them all the gift of a place of their own where they could gather to share their lives, purchase quality yarn, and knit their love into scarves and sweaters, socks and blankets.
Suddenly Beau trod the brakes, whipped the steering wheel around, and goosed the accelerator.
Flynn stared at him owl-eyed. Normally he was a very cautious driver, and he’d just cut haphazardly across two lanes of traffic. “What are you doing?”
“I’m going to find out what son of a gun bought that building out from under me. It’s not as if there are a lot of contenders. How many people in Twilight have the money or the inclination to buy the theater?” He shook his head. “This was a put-up job.”
“What are you talking about?”
His jaw was set in a hard line, and he glared intently through the windshield. “What are the odds that someone just happened along on the same weekend Pete promised the property to me, offering him two grand over his asking price? Someone is messing with me.”
“Aren’t you taking this a little personally?” Flynn asked, grabbing hold of the strap on the ceiling as he rounded the corner onto Sapphire Lane five miles too fast. The tires squealed.
“That’s the way they meant it,” he insisted.
“They who?”
“Whoever it was that bought the theater.”
“You’re sounding a bit paranoid.”
“Doesn’t mean I’m not right.”
Actually, she had to agree with him. The timing was suspicious. But most everyone in town liked Beau. He was a much kinder and more diplomatic sheriff than his father had been.
“It is a prime piece of property,” Flynn pointed out, playing devil’s advocate. “And at Pete’s new lower asking price…”
“Pete didn’t advertise it.”
“If he told you, he told other people.”
“Whose side are you on?”
“I’m just saying—”
“We’ll find out soon enough,” he interrupted.
She looked over at him again. Flynn had known Beau for most of her life, had dated him for ten years—breaks notwithstanding—and yet she’d never known that he’d been in love with someone before her. What else didn’t she know about him? She’d never thought of Beau as the least bit mysterious before, but now suddenly he felt like a stranger.
“How come you never told me about Jodi Christopher?”
Dammit! Why had she asked that? She’d promised herself she wouldn’t ask that, because that question opened the door for Beau to ask her about Jesse.
“Huh?” Beau yanked his head around to stare at her.
“Your mother told me all about Jodi Christopher. She said Jodi was your first love. She’s your real high school sweetheart.”
He snorted like this Jodi person meant nothing, but his face reddened. “My mother talks too much.”
Beau was blushing? Her Beau? She’d never seen him blush. It made her feel…What did it make her feel? Surprised. She felt surprised. And curious. Surprised and curious and…Nothing else. Shouldn’t she feel jealous?
“So technically,” she said, “I can’t even be an official member of the Sweethearts’ Knitting Club when we get married. You’re not my high school sweetheart. The point of the Sweethearts’ Knitting Club is that it’s a group of knitters who married their high school sweethearts. If I can’t be a member, then what’s the point of me starting the Yarn Barn?”
Well, if you’re getting technical about it, you shouldn’t be a member because you can’t knit!
“The scope of the group is too narrow,” Beau said. “And I am your high school sweetheart and we are getting married. You qualify. Unless you really don’t want to do this Yarn Barn thing.”
“No, no,” she backpedaled. “I want to do it.”
“Fine, then we’re getting to the bottom of what happened here. That theater is the perfect place for your business and one way or the other, I’m going to make sure you get it,” he declared, pulling to a stop at the parking meter on the square.
The theater had been boarded up for several years. The town beatification committee—which consisted mainly of members from the Sweethearts’ Knitting Club—had painted a garden-inspired mural over the plywood and planted geraniums and begonias in planter boxes where the ticket booth used to be, in an attempt to camouflage the barrenness. For the most part, it worked.
The minute they got out of the car, they heard the revved engine of a chain saw buzzing from the back of the theater.
“Didn’t waste any time getting started,” Beau muttered.
“Look, if someone bought this place, they had a reason, especially if they’ve already started construction on the renovations. There’s no reason to confront them. I’ll just have to find a new location for the Yarn Barn.”
“This location is perfect,” he said truculently. “Come on.”
It was the perfect location, she couldn’t deny that. But what did he hope to accomplish by calling out the new owner? Reluctantly, she followed Beau around the side of the building; the high-heeled shoes she’d put on to convince Mayor Moe Schebly she was loan-worthy kept hanging on the cracks in the uneven cement, slowing her progress.
Beau didn’t wait for her as he normall
y would have. Usually he was all Mr. Gentleman. Instead he power walked ahead of her, intent on discovering who’d bought the theater out from under him. He turned the corner ahead of her.
The chain saw stopped.
“What are you doing here?” she heard Beau growl.
Flynn rounded the side of the building to see a construction worker in a hard hat, chain saw in hand.
But it wasn’t just any construction worker.
The man in the hard hat ignored Beau, cocked a wry grin her way, and said, “Mornin’, Dimples.”
“Didn’t I catch you on an episode of Cops?” Jesse asked his nemesis.
“Who hired you?” Trainer demanded.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m sure I did. You were eating doughnuts, writing tickets, and, oh yeah, planting evidence—”
“Shut the fuck up, convict.”
“Tsk, tsk. Is that any way for an officer of the law to talk, especially when there’s a lady present?” Jesse was walking a thin line. One wrong move and he could end up right back in prison. He knew exactly what the exalted Sheriff Trainer was capable of, even if no one else in Twilight did.
Trainer settled his hand on the butt of his gun.
Oh, so that’s the way he was playing it. Jesse hefted the chain saw on his shoulder, showing the blade’s jagged oily teeth.
“Who hired you?” Trainer repeated, and took a menacing step forward. “Who bought this property?”
Bluff, bluster. Dudley Do-Right wasn’t about to shoot him. Not in front of Flynn. She walked up behind Trainer, placed a restraining arm on his elbow, calling off her pit bull. Jesse couldn’t stop his gaze from straying to her.
“Why, Marshal Dillon,” he drawled, easily shouldering the weight of the chain saw. “I’m working for myself. Thanks for asking.”
Trainer looked stunned, which was precisely the reaction Jesse was shooting for. “You? You bought the property?”
“Got a feather handy, Dimples?” He winked in Flynn’s direction. “I think you could knock your fiancé over with it.”
Jesse did his best to look casual, cool, and in control. Calm, but assertive, just as he’d learned from reading those mind guru books in the prison library. He was in the driver’s seat. Everything was happening just as he’d planned.
