“Hello, Mama,” he said, and dropped a kiss on Abigail’s head.
Lucy melted a little.
Abigail looked sheepish but grinned.
Cade nodded at her. “Look what the cat drug in. Hey, Lucy.”
Lucy had known Cade since she was small. They’d run through the hills together while her mother knitted with Eliza in this very kitchen. Cade hadn’t settled down until Abigail had come to town. Then they’d fallen in love—the danger of proximity, he called it—and the rest was history.
Cade handed a still-sleepy Lizzie to Abigail and then, before Lucy could take a breath, he enveloped her in a hug as tight as she’d ever been in before. For several long seconds, she was pressed against the wool of Cade’s sweater. Then he let her go and took Owen’s hand, pumping it up and down, seven, eight times. Owen’s had to use his other hand to steady himself on the kitchen counter.
“You two saved my wife’s life. If she’d been driving her truck, she probably would have been dead—”
“Or fine, because I would have been going faster, so I wouldn’t have been there,” said Abigail, in an argument that had obviously been ongoing.
“But instead, she was in that little family car I made us get, and you were there to pull her out, and I owe you one.”
Lucy shook her head. She hadn’t expected any of this. She’d come to bring them a ghost of the past, not to be hailed as a hero. “You don’t owe us anything.”
Cade moved behind Abigail, taking a bite of muffin that was left on a plate next to the sink.
“Lucy needed to ask you something, cowboy. Don’t go running off just yet.”
“Oh.” Lucy watched Cade put on the brakes. “All right, Lucy. Shoot.”
Abigail shushed Lizzie, who was beginning to fuss.
“I found something.” Lucy rummaged in her bookbag. “A bunch of somethings, actually. Knitting patterns. At the store, in an old box.”
Cade and Abigail looked at her blankly.
“They’re Eliza’s.”
Abigail, visibly startled, reached for the stack. “Eliza’s? Are you sure?”
“Damn sure.”
“Unpublished patterns. Oh, my God,” said Abigail. Cade just stared.
Lucy took a deep breath. “They were in Owen’s mother’s storage unit. We just finished going through it. There are a total of four boxes.”
“But . . .” started Cade.
Lucy held up a hand. “I know. Legally, I know the rights are yours, as her heir. And you already have one knitting writer in the family. Abigail, I know you’ll want to edit the patterns.”
Abigail pulled out a piece of paper and turned it over, nodding.
Lucy smiled and dropped her eyes. “It would be the book of a lifetime, don’t you think? It’s what knitters have been waiting for. The unpublished works of Eliza Carpenter. Journal entries, too, that sound as if she’s sitting next to you, telling you stories. They’re fantastic.” Lucy’s voice broke—she couldn’t help it. Part of her heart was breaking, too.
Abigail looked at Cade. They seemed to have a conversation in front of Lucy, although neither of them said a word. Cade nodded, and so did Abigail.
“So basically, we’d be hiring you to edit the patterns, right?”
Owen’s head swiveled to look at Lucy. She dug her nails into her palms.
“No, no. I’m just bringing them to you. I bought them from Owen, but they’re not mine, they’re yours. He didn’t understand what he was selling, and I didn’t understand what I was buying. None of it was fair. We’re returning all of it to you.”
Abigail rubbed her forehead. “Why did your mother have these, Owen?”
“My mom and Eliza were friends. I’m remembering that now, and I’m starting to remember what she was like.” Owen shot a look at Lucy that made her heart flutter in her chest. “I remember a time that she gave me a bike—I’d forgotten that until just this morning, and I don’t know how I’d blocked that out. No one had ever given me anything like that before, and God knew my parents couldn’t afford anything like that. It was secondhand, a beater—I was probably eight or so. Green, with twisted-back handlebars, and it squeaked when it went up hills. But man, I loved that bike.” Owen paused. “She did nice things for my family. I’m not sure why.”
Cade had been putting milk back into the fridge, but paused, the door standing open. “Green, with an orange racing stripe? Black spokes, and a rip in the green seat?”
Owen’s eyes widened and he nodded.
Cade grinned. “She bought me a ten-speed and told me my legs were too long for that one. I’m what, three, four years older than you? So that’s where my old bike went.”
“Sneaky!” exclaimed Abigail, kissing Lizzie on the head. “Sneakiest knitter I ever knew.”
“And once,” said Owen, “when my mother sent me a Christmas gift, there was a pair of socks inside. With a card that just said ‘E. C.’ I never knew what that meant, and I only remember that because I still keep the socks, with the card still attached, in my sock drawer.”
Lucy gaped at him. “You have socks handknit by Eliza Carpenter and you don’t wear them?”
“They’re bright green.”
“So? They’re handknit by Eliza! How did you . . . ? Why did she . . . ?” Lucy shook her head. Then she asked what she wanted to ask. “Why you?”
Owen shrugged. “I have no idea.”
Cade laughed. “She got funny ideas sometimes. If she met you once or twice as a kid, if she liked you, you could turn into a pet, just like that. Eliza had her favorites, and if you were one, you were just lucky.”
Abigail said, “He’s right. And Lucy, the weirdest part is something you couldn’t possibly know, though, and I don’t think I’ve ever even told Cade. When I first made friends with Eliza in San Diego, I wanted to write her biography and pull together some new patterns, and she said no, that a girl with a bookstore would probably do it one day.”
Lucy took a step backward and almost tripped over an uneven edge in the old linoleum. “What?”
Abigail said, “Then, years later, I moved here and met you and thought of it once, tossed it out of my mind, and never thought of it again until now. But I don’t understand how the papers got into Irene Bancroft’s storage unit. Why wouldn’t they have been in my cottage? Or with her in San Diego? So she and Irene were friends, sure. But that implies a certain closeness, to leave your journals with someone.”
Lucy shook her head as Owen lifted his shoulders.
Cade’s eyebrows lifted. “So you think Lucy should write this book, am I right?”
“You’re smarter than you look, cowboy,” said Abigail, but her smile belied her words and Cade grinned at his wife.
Lucy took another step back. “Oh, no. You’re the writer, Abigail. Not me.”
“Come on, tell me you didn’t think about doing this. Tell me you didn’t dream of it. You’re the bookstore girl. Books are your life. You told me once you wanted to write, when you were a little girl. And you’re a knitter, to the bone. You loved Eliza, and I’m under contract for three books right now, and I don’t have time. Cade certainly can’t do it, and this would be a way of thanking you for what you did. Right, Cade?”
Cade put his arm around his wife. “It’s a done deal. You’re hired.”
Next to Cade, Abigail nodded. “We’d have to pay you for the work you do.”
Lucy held up her hands. This conversation had spiraled out of control. “If I did it, it would be because I loved Eliza and her work and it’s important to me. I don’t need money.”
Abigail laughed. “That’s what a writer always says in the beginning, for sure. And you’ll use my yarn.”
Lucy flushed with excitement. “Oh, it could be part of the draw of the book—patterns by Eliza, and kits with your yarn from her ranch.”
Abigail’s grin grew wider. “We’ll need sample sweaters.”
“I can start anytime. She wrote a pattern for Grandma Ruby, a bookstore sweater—this one
I’m wearing now. You can see I’ve worn it into shreds. I want to remake this one first, if I can find the sleeve part of the pattern.”
“What color?”
Lucy thought. “Yellow, again.”
“Gauge?”
“Four and a half stitches per inch. I think.”
“The softest merino, single spun. I have the best stuff for you.”
“But . . . I don’t know how to write a book.” Doubt crept in, little tendrils of fear twining around her spine.
“You’ll figure it out. Can I see the work as you go along?”
“Of course.” Lucy hugged herself and gave a little bounce of joy. She lifted her eyes and Owen Bancroft’s blue ones met hers in a gaze that almost felt like a caress, and there, in the sunlit kitchen where Eliza Carpenter used to live, Lucy felt, for a moment, like everything could work.
Then the kitchen door flew open, and a woman yelled, “Lucy, Sara’s having a seizure. We need you!”
Chapter Fourteen
Have faith in your knitting skills. You already know what to do.
—E. C.
Lucy flew out of the house at a run, Cade and Abigail following close behind her. Owen was the last to exit the house, feeling at a distinct disadvantage, hobbling over the small rocks and uneven ground.
Damn, Lucy was fast. And even with his daughter in his arms, Cade had crossed the ground quickly—they were both already in the shop. Abigail and Owen moved more slowly—Owen slowed by his disability, Abigail by her belly.
Why did they ask for Lucy? Owen felt like he was missing something obvious, something everyone else already knew. And he didn’t like it.
Inside the store, a knot of concerned knitters were huddled near the couches, where Abigail’s employee had fallen. Sara was still twitching, jerking, her eyes closed, her mouth contorted in a grotesque, silent scream, her hands twisting painfully behind her on the ground.
Lucy was already speaking in a voice Owen hardly recognized.
“So the paramedics are already on the way. That’s the most important thing. Good job, Martha. Now the only thing to do is just let her have the seizure.”
One woman cried softly behind Sara, looking terrified.
“I know it looks scary,” said Lucy over the noise of the jerks and guttural exhalations, “but she won’t remember this at all. It’s really okay.”
The woman in orange, Beatrice, the awful one who had left the shop earlier, was back, and muscled in through the group holding a huge wooden knitting needle. “Move out of my way! You’re doing it wrong. Here, use this size fifteen, we have to put this between her teeth.”
Owen stepped forward. The woman was wrong—that was an old wives’ tale, and could do more harm than good, but Lucy got between the woman and Sara first.
“No! Do not touch her.” Lucy’s voice was strong, confident. She didn’t look like the same Lucy who couldn’t stand up to Beatrice earlier.
“You don’t know what you’re doing. Get out of my way.”
Lucy widened her stance. “You take one more step toward my patient and we’re going to have a really big problem. I need you to stay back, ma’am.”
“You idiot, she’ll choke to death on her own tongue.” Beatrice tried to push past Lucy.
But Lucy held her ground, her stance firm. “Her jaws are stronger than you can imagine. She’ll snap that needle—she could splinter it and choke on the pieces. Now, if you get out of my damn way, I’ll be able to monitor her airway until the paramedics get here, but back off. ” Lucy said the last part low and strong, and Beatrice gasped in anger.
But she turned and retreated just as Sara started to come out of the seizure. At the same time that Sara’s breathing became more regular, a siren whooped up the driveway.
“You should probably turn her onto . . .” Owen started to say, but Lucy had already done it, gently rolled Sara onto her side. Someone offered Sara a sip of water as her eyes started to flutter and Lucy refused on her behalf.
“No liquids. They’ll check her at the hospital. For now we’re just monitoring her.” With one hand she brushed the hair out of Sara’s face. “There, you’re all right. We’re right here. You’re just fine.”
Lucy was a different person—she practically glowed with purpose and authority—and Owen was transfixed. He watched as she greeted the ambulance personnel by name, joking with them personably, helping them load up Sara.
Once they’d driven away with her, only after the dust had cleared, he said, “Yeah. Wanna fill me in?”
Lucy looked down at her Keds and lifted her toes. “I’m an EMT. On the volunteer fire department for Cypress Hollow.”
Owen bit the inside of his cheek, and the gun he still carried under his shirt felt heavy on his useless hip. “You’re a first responder.”
“Kinda. Only when I’m on call, and mostly I do backfill to the stations. But sometimes I go out with the paramedics, and sometimes I work fires. It’s only a few times a month, but . . .” Her face lit up and it was as if the sun had been behind a cloud and had just come out. “I love it.”
She wasn’t just a citizen.
She was a goddamn firefighter? All right, a volunteer one, but come on, really?
Lucy turned to speak to Abigail, and Owen pushed his way through the knot of women still talking about Sara and made his way to his car. He leaned again, breathing as hard as if he’d been the one doing the lifting of the gurney, which he hadn’t been.
He looked up into the clear blue sky. Nearby, a lamb bleated and jumped straight up as if it had been stuck with a pin, and then it raced to join its mother and several other sheep grazing on the bright green grass.
Idyllic. This was the kind of place people dreamed about retiring to. A black truck rumbled down the main road, a low trail of dust following sleepily behind it. A hawk circled high above.
He could just get in his car and drive away. They hadn’t come together. He’d followed her here. She had her car. Owen didn’t even need to say good-bye. He could get back to town, back to concrete sidewalks, or better yet, he could just keep his foot on the gas and pass his mother, keep driving all the way to San Francisco, wrap the arms of the dirty city around him, put himself into the bowels of the Mission by nightfall. Have a burrito on Eighteenth, a drink on Valencia, and a girl on Columbus by midnight.
Dammit. No he couldn’t.
He looked at Lucy again, that yellow sweater wrapped around her perfect curves, those brown eyes smiling in warmth at something an older woman had said. She laughed and hugged the woman.
Lucy wasn’t the city. Lucy was this place, Cypress Hollow. Owen had no idea what he was doing. Firefighter, EMT, bookseller, writer—whatever the hell she was, he only knew one thing.
He wasn’t going anywhere.
Across the dirt parking lot, Lucy couldn’t read Owen’s face. He wasn’t leaving, that much was clear. Leaned up against his Mustang like that, he looked like the guy he’d been in high school. Was that a smoldering look he was shooting at her? Her stomach flipped before she remembered that just like back then, that was just the way he looked, just the way his dark blue eyes burned. At everyone.
He came forward toward her. Even with the hitch in his gait, she loved the way he moved, his long legs eating the distance, the sun hitting his broad shoulders . . .
Man, she had to get a grip.
He’d obviously been thrown by the fact that she was on the volunteer department. Maybe she could have told him earlier, perhaps she should have thought about the fact that it might have been important for him to know. She opened her mouth to speak, but before she could say a word, Owen slung an arm around her waist and pulled her against him.
Her hips fit against his and her breasts pressed against his chest. His mouth claimed hers in a brief, greedy kiss. There, in the parking lot, in front of at least twenty knitters, the dust still settling from the ambulance’s tires, Owen kissed Lucy, hard.
Then he pulled his head back but kept his hips pressed agains
t hers. His arousal was blatant.
Lucy gasped and swayed forward. God help her, she wanted more.
“Will you go out with me tonight?” His voice was low, but Lucy knew it was traveling to their audience.
All she could do was blink.
“Is that a yes?” he asked, and a grin tugged at the corner of his mouth.
She nodded and then shook her head, suddenly confused. “But I don’t date.”
“Neither do I,” he said. “Why don’t you?”
“Because . . .” No one stays.
“It’s just one night.”
Lucy said, “Why don’t you date?”
“No one would have me now,” said Owen, and Lucy felt something inside her crack.
“I’ll have you, if she won’t!” called Mrs. Luby, who was ninety if she was a day. Lucy jumped and turned her head. The knitters, en masse, had left the porch of the yarn shop and had sneaked closer. She felt a blush steal across her cheeks.
But Owen used the moment. “So? Her or you? I guess I have a choice tonight.”
Lucy looked at his face, the rough stubble coming up along his jaw, a longer patch that he’d missed shaving that morning. She longed to touch it, to run her fingers along that bit. Behind his ear, she could see Cade’s flock grazing on the hills, and behind that, the eucalyptus grove.
Then she looked up into Owen’s eyes. His arms tightened and pulled her closer. God, he was strong. She loved the way he felt against her.
“Me,” she said.
“I’ll pick you up at seven,” said Owen.
“Dammit,” said Mrs. Luby.
Chapter Fifteen
Flirt with the yarn. Dance with your designs. Make your knitting want you as much as you want your knitting.
—E. C.
It was official.
Owen had lost his mind. He jammed the car into third as he turned onto Main Street. He took the corner too fast, his Mustang fishtailing exactly like it used to when he was eighteen years old.
What could he have been thinking, kissing Lucy like that?
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