The Sweethearts’ Knitting Club (10 page)

“Got something to say? Don’t be afraid. Spit it out.”

Trainer fisted his hands, took another step toward him. “You bought this place out from under me.”

“Don’t know what you’re talking ’bout, Hoss.” Jesse dragged the back of his hand across his sweaty forehead and drilled Flynn with his eyes.

She was standing there looking like she’d love to be anywhere else on earth than in this back alley. He widened his grin. She had her hair pulled back in a ponytail, all perky girl-next-door.

Jesse tracked his gaze down Flynn’s profile to her long, swanlike neck. Once upon a time, he’d planted a hickey there, branding her as his. His eyes roved right on over the slope of her shoulders, then braked abruptly at the swell of her breasts in that flamingo pink short-sleeved top. God, she was gorgeous in pink. The strength of the sun in late spring sweltered even at ten in the morning. He felt the old pull, strong as a siren’s call.

“Pete Grissom earmarked this place for me,” Trainer said.

“I didn’t see your name written anywhere on it. Neither did Pete when I handed him a check for more than his full asking price.”

“Where’d you get the money?”

“Well now, that’s a rude question, Sheriff. Didn’t your mama ever teach you it was crass to ask people personal questions about their finances?”

“You’re a convict. You went to prison when you were just a kid. You were an orphan. There’s no legal way you could have herded together enough money to buy this place. You’re up to something nefarious, Calloway, and I’m not going to let you get away with it.”

“That sounds an awful lot like a threat,” Jesse said. The chain saw was getting heavy, but he wasn’t about to set it down. Not in front of Trainer. “You threatenin’ me?”

“It’s not a threat,” he mouthed through clenched teeth. “It’s a promise.”

“Beau, stop getting so worked up,” Flynn interjected and shot Jesse a look that said,
Lay off
. “He bought the place fair and square. Just let it go, forget about it. I’ll find somewhere else.”

“No,” Beau said. “I promised you
this
place.”

The cell phone clipped to Beau’s belt went off. He swore, jerked it from his hip, flipped it open.

“Yeah?” he barked. “Hang on, I can’t hear.” Glaring at Jesse, Beau took several steps backward and plugged up his free ear with his finger. “Can you hear me now?”

Flynn’s gaze met Jesse’s and he felt it in his chest. That snap. That crackle. That pop of familiar chemistry.

They stood staring at each other only a few feet apart, both breathing heavily, the air hazy with the scent of sawdust. The fact they were under Trainer’s watchful eye only served to escalate the tension. And heighten Jesse’s arousal. He desperately
wanted to ask her if she remembered that long ago night on the old Twilight Bridge, but he was too afraid of her answer to ask. If she said no, that would slam-dunk his ego, and if she said yes, well, hell, that would hurt even more. To think that maybe she still cared. Even just a little bit.

“He was buying the place for you?” Jesse asked, freaked out by the way his heart reeled. He lowered the chain saw, shrugged his shoulder to work out the kinks.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said, looking wide-eyed and sounding breathy, like she’d been caught off balance. Good. It was precisely how he wanted her to feel.

“It does.” That fact complicated everything. “Why did he want to buy you the theater?”

“He wasn’t buying it for me,” she bristled. Damn, but she was beautiful when she had her back up. “He was going to cosign so I could qualify for the loan.”

“And you were going to do what?”

“Start a specialty yarn store. The theater was an ideal location on the square and the upstairs has that huge room perfect for a knitting circle but…” She shrugged, a hapless gesture. “I’ll find another location.”

“You?” Jesse hooted.

Flynn glowered. “What’s so funny?”

“You. Starting a yarn store.” He shook his head. “That’s hysterical.”

She sank her hands on her hips. Glowered in that cute little way that only Flynn MacGregor could. “Why is that?”

“You can’t even knit.”

“How do you know?” Her voice went up an octave. “It’s been ten years since you’ve seen me. Maybe I’ve become a world-class knitter in the interim.”

“Dimples, there’s a lot of things about you that are world-class.” He dropped his gaze past the hem of her skirt to take in the fine curve of her calves. “You can bring home the bacon and fry it up in the pan, but knitting is not one of your talents. When it comes to crafts, you’re all thumbs, and even ten years of constant practice isn’t going to make you Mozart of the Skein. Don’t fret it, we all have our talents; knitting just doesn’t happen to be yours.”

“Shh,” she hissed, and pressed her index finger to her lips. “Beau might hear you.”

Jesse’s grin widened. “Seriously? Trainer doesn’t know? Oh, he’s gonna be surprised when you can’t knit booties for his babies.”

Flynn’s face flushed. “He’s not going to find out.”

He clicked his tongue. “Perpetuating lies with your intended? What would the marriage counselors say?”

“It’s none of your business.” She huffed.

“It is if I’m keeping your dirty little secret.”

“Please Jesse, you can’t say anything. No one knows but you and Carrie.”

“Ah, young Carrie. Your partner in crime.” He chuckled. “A codependent relationship if I ever saw one.”

“Hush it.”

She looked honestly distressed, and Jesse relented. “Why do you want to start a knitting store when you can’t knit?”

“It’s complicated.”

“I get it.” He nodded. “Still trying to please Mommy, even from the grave.”

Flynn gasped, glared. “You bastard, I can’t believe you said that.”

“What? You can’t believe that I spoke the truth? When have I ever lied to you?”

“If you say a word to Beau about this—”

“Don’t worry, Dimples, your secret shame is safe with me.” He supposed he should be feeling guilty for upsetting her, but the truth was her staid little life needed some serious shaking up.

Flynn narrowed her eyes at him. “How
did
you get the money to buy the theater, by the way?”

“I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to say.”

“Was it”—she dropped her voice—“drug money?”

If she hadn’t sounded so laughable, he would have gotten mad. “Yeah, big drug money.”

She hissed in her breath and her eyes widened.

“I became a millionaire behind bars. My book comes out in next spring.
How to Make a Hot Million While You’re Sitting in the Cooler.”

The surprise on her face quickly turned to irritation. “You’re yanking my chain.”

“You think?”

“Okay, that was a stupid thing to ask. I suppose this is where you’re putting your motorcycle shop.”

She looked genuinely interested. Jesse swallowed, caught off guard by this turn of events. When Hondo told him Pete Grissom was selling the theater, it had seemed ideal for his shop, and then when he’d learned from Grissom that Trainer was interested, snagging it had gone from ideal to idyllic. “It is.”

“Oh.” She blinked. “So you really are back in Twilight for good.”

“That’s the general idea.”

She tilted her head, studied him for a moment. “Did you really get drunk on Saturday night after you left the party?”

“What do you care?”

“Jesse, I don’t want anything bad to happen to you.”

“Horse has already gotten out of the barn on that score, Miss MacGregor.”

She cringed, and he felt guilty for baiting her. What was wrong with him? She wasn’t his target, Trainer was.

Trainer strode back over to them. “That was Madge,” Beau said to Flynn. “I gotta go. Someone stole a riding lawn mower from the outdoor display at Ivey’s hardware. Come on, I’ll give you a ride home.”

“That’s okay,” Flynn said. “You go do what you need to do. I can find my own way home.”

Trainer looked like she’d reached out and slapped him hard across the face. “Wh—wh—?”

“I need to drop by the gym and see Terri. She has a pattern for a sweater I want to borrow.”

Trainer’s gaze shifted to Jesse. Damn if he didn’t look downright scared. Jesse widened his smile.
You better be scared, you son of a bitch. I’m gonna expose you for the fraud you are.

The sheriff folded his arms over his chest in his best badass lawman stance, but Jesse could see he was fighting hard to hold on to his self-control. “I’m not leaving you here alone with him.”

Flynn’s eyes flared with defiance, but she said
nothing. She just stood there between the two of them, caught in a dilemma. Did she knuckle under to the good boy, or rebel and side with the bad boy?

Who are you kidding that she’d pick you? She’s already hitched her wagon to Trainer’s tin star
.

Still, a small part of him didn’t want to give up on her, and not simply because seducing her was part of his plan to make Trainer pay for stealing ten years of his life. The truth was, he’d never been able to get Flynn out of his head. But he couldn’t risk letting her know that she held such power over him.

“Don’t worry ’bout me, Hoss,” Jesse drawled. “Stop fretting. I ain’t interested in your little girlfriend. I got work to do. Now if you’ll excuse me.” He slipped his goggles back down over his eyes and pull-started the chain saw.

Then, with a pounding heart, Jesse turned his back on them and attacked the wall with renewed vigor. Even so, he could feel the heat of Flynn’s gaze on him, and it was all he could do to keep from spinning around, throwing down the chain saw, and gathering her up in his arms, the sheriff be damned.

But he had to be careful, play this cool. If he kept his head while Trainer lost his, everything Jesse had ever wanted was well within his grasp.

Anger spurted through Beau. It was all he could do to keep himself from attacking Calloway on the spot. He knew the bastard was angling to goad him into doing something he shouldn’t do, and after the stunt he pulled at their engagement party on Saturday night, this backstabbing subterfuge of stealing the theater right out from under him was just topping on the shit cake.

The worst of it had been the way Flynn looked at the convict. Like a moony-eyed teenager. It was almost more than Beau could bear. You’d think after ten years she would have let go of those stupid bad-boy fantasies. What was it with women anyway?

Buck up. Be strong. You’re sheriff. He’s nothing. You have all the control. Give him enough rope
and he’ll hang himself. As long you stay calm, everything will be okay
.

Good advice if only he could heed it. As it was, he couldn’t help wondering what Calloway and Flynn had been whispering while he was on the phone with Madge.

The whole time old man Ivey was blabbing about the stolen riding lawn mower, Beau stood on the sidewalk, notepad in hand, gaze trained on the theater. He didn’t hear a word the man said until he made sure Flynn had rounded the corner and gone into the Hot Legs Gym. He let out a long-held breath. She’d been telling him the truth. Not that Flynn wasn’t honest. It was just that he never quite trusted others to do what they said they would do.

“I’ll get on it, Joe,” he said to Mr. Ivey. “I’m sure it’s just kids.”

“I want to press charges.”

“Okay.”

Mr. Ivey went inside his store and Beau shifted his gaze back toward the theater.

Bile burned his belly. The old familiar anger churning. Dammit, he shouldn’t let external circumstances get him so worked up.
Okay. Deep breath. Not angry. I’m not angry. I’m in complete control of my emotions
. He clenched his jaw, did what he always did, stuffed down the rage, denied it. Because if he ever let it out of its box…

He didn’t want to think about that. About the ugliness he was capable of when pushed to the wall. The battlefields of Iraq flashed in his mind, and he closed his eyes against the onslaught.

“Sheriff?”

Beau blinked and opened his eyes to see the local veterinarian, Dr. Sam Cheek, standing there.

Behind his back everyone called him Steady Sam because he was the most even-tempered man in town. Beau had never seen Sam lose his cool. Not even on that Boy Scout camping trip they’d gone on together to Big Ben National Park way back during their junior year. Tenderhearted Sam had come upon a wounded mountain lion and tried to help it. The animal had swiped a paw at him, leaving Sam with gashes across the top of his head. Beau had panicked, while Sam sat down in the dirt and calmly told him to go for help. Then when Beau came back with the scoutmaster and game warden, Sam had lain across the mountain lion, all the while bleeding profusely, and without raising his voice or showing any emotion told the game warden he was going to have to put a bullet through him first if he planned on killing the animal. Of all the citizens in Twilight, Beau admired Sam most.

Sam was not a loquacious man. He didn’t say anything else, just waited with an are-you-okay expression on his face, the edges of the silvery scar visible through the sheaf of thick dark hair covering his forehead. The dusting of dog hair on his shirt nagged at Beau. He had an urge to whip out a lint roller and whisk him off.

“I’m fine.” Beau nodded, packing down that anger even deeper. “I’m fine, Sam, thanks.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

“Office door’s always open.”

Sam was a good listener, but Beau didn’t feel like talking. “I appreciate it.”

Beau hitched up his belt and headed toward his office. He was the sheriff of this town and he was going to behave like one. He had to set an example. He had to be perfect. And that meant toeing the line and waiting for Calloway to screw up.

Because he would screw up. The bad guys always did.

For the rest of the week Flynn tried not to think about Jesse, and for the most part, during the day at least, her busy life held her on track. She worked at Froggy’s, kept tabs on Floyd, called to check on her brothers at basketball camp, continued searching the real estate ads for another location for the Yarn Barn, while also researching yarn wholesale suppliers on the Internet. By the time Friday rolled around, she was looking forward to the camaraderie of her weekly knitting club.

But it was the nights, oh, those long treacherous nights, that did her in.

She would lie in bed beneath the ceiling fan with the windows open, listening to the bullfrogs’ medley, smelling the river, feeling the muggy humidity steam up her thoughts. She kept thinking about the kiss Jesse had given her on the loading dock at Froggy’s. She could still smell the mashed potatoes, still taste him on her tongue. All alone in the darkness, her mind ran nimbly back to the past and she was sixteen again.

The minute Jesse hit Twilight High with his bad-boy attitude, skull tattoo, charming good looks, and wicked grin, the gossip started swirling. He’d been arrested in Arizona, said the whispers. Car theft. Joyriding. And there was a shoplifting charge.
Potted meat from the A&P. He’d never known his father, so the stories went, and his mother had died of a drug overdose. Shocking stuff for Twilight. That rumor immediately raised Flynn’s sympathy. She had an ailing mother and a father who liked his alcohol a bit too much.

Jesse sassed teachers, broke rules, and challenged Sheriff Clinton Trainer in a public forum over curfew for teens. People were agog at his audacity. The town had no idea what had hit them. He stole the affections of teenage girls and struck terror into the hearts of parents.

He went for football and outshone Beau, eventually replacing him as first-string quarterback, and their rivalry began in earnest. Beau glowered under a black-cloud mood for a month. In the hallways at school, Jesse would saunter past Flynn, arm thrown over one girl or another (sometimes two), sending her sexy looks with his troublemaking gray-blue eyes. She’d square her shoulders, tip up her chin, and look down her nose at him. Not because she thought she was better than he was, but simply to stop her wobbly knees from collapsing.

How come she was always feeling like she was coming down with a fever, all hot and achy and restless, whenever she was around him?

Then on Valentine’s Day she came home late from school because she’d stopped off at the florist’s to barter her sweeping services for a small bouquet of red carnations to give to Mama. She arrived home to find her father sprawled across the living room couch reeking of sour mash whiskey and sobbing drunkenly. Her mother had been
rushed to the hospital, feverish with pneumonia. Carrie had taken the news hard and run off.

Patsy had gone with her mother to the hospital. Marva had come by to pick up the twins. They’d both known Floyd wouldn’t be able to handle the crisis, so they’d stepped in. Flynn helped her father to bed and then went in search of her sister.

Flynn took the family canoe and headed for Carrie’s favorite spot on the river—a tributary that flowed into a wide swimming hole that camouflaged a series of underground caves where Jesse James supposedly hid out while being chased by a posse.

The spot could be accessed by land, but it required crossing the old suspension bridge and trespassing on the Fairfield ranch. She and Carrie used to go there once in a while, in the summers, before Mama got sick and everything changed. But traveling by water was swifter and negated the need for dodging cow patties and the Fairfields’ prizewinning (but excessively ornery) Brahman bull, Ferdinand.

Before she turned that last bend in the river that led to the pool, she heard voices. And smelled cigarette smoke. Someone was already there. Good, she could ask them if they’d seen Carrie. She dipped her oar in the water, ready to push the canoe on around the corner when she recognized the voices.

Carrie.

And Jesse!

The bad boy of Twilight High was alone in a secluded spot with her baby sister, and from the smell of it they were smoking. Anger rushed her, and—even if she didn’t want to admit it—so did a
twinge of jealousy. She was torn between charging around the corner and reading them the riot act, or sitting there and eavesdropping on their conversation.

“You shouldn’t smoke,” Jesse said.

“You sound just like Flynn,” Carrie had replied petulantly.

“You should listen to her.”

“Blah, blah, blah, she thinks she’s my mother. She’s not my mother.”

“She’s raising you as if she is.”

“Well, I didn’t ask her to do it. I don’t want her to do it. I want my mama to get well, I want my sister back, I want my family back the way it used to be, I want…” The sound of Carrie’s sudden sobs wrenched something deep inside Flynn. She sat frozen in the canoe, listening to Jesse murmur soothing words, experiencing a mixed bag of unpleasant feelings.

“Come on,” he said after a few minutes. “I’ll walk you home.”

“No, that’s okay.” Carrie sniffled.

“Don’t want to be seen with me, huh?”

“It’s not that. It’s just that I told all my friends you were my secret boyfriend and if anyone sees you walking me home, they’ll know that’s a lie.”

Jesse’s laughter bounced through the treetops. “Maybe they’ll think I’m your real boyfriend.”

“Oh no, that would ruin everything.”

“Ah, I get it. You want the bad-girl rep without having to actually be bad.”

“I knew you’d understand! Thanks, Jesse. You really made me feel better.”

“Before you go, put out that cigarette.”

A couple of minutes passed. Flynn took a deep breath, stuck her oar in the water, and paddled around the corner.

Jesse lay stretched out on the bluff above the swimming hole, staring up at the clouds, hands cupped behind his head. “How much of that did you hear, Dimples?”

“You knew I was listening?” Flynn paddled closer. He’d called her Dimples. Her stomach gave a crazy little swoon. He’d given her a nickname.

Jesse sat up. “I could see the canoe from up here. It’s Day-Glo orange, Flynn.”

She cringed. “Cross covert spy off my list of career possibilities. Did Carrie see me?”

He shook his head. “Don’t think so. She was too upset about your mom to pay much attention.”

“Thank you.” She pulled the canoe up on shore a few yards from the bluff.

Jesse had gotten to his feet and was staring down at her. She shaded her eyes against the late afternoon sun. He looked at once terribly solitary and fiercely independent—that lone wolf isolated from his pack and pretending not to care. “You coming up?”

She hesitated. She shouldn’t, she should just go on back home, retrieve the twins from Marva, start making dinner. But there was Jesse at the river’s edge, holding out his hand, ready to help her on shore.

Heaven help her, she’d taken his hand and he’d pulled her up beside him. They climbed the bluff together, sat overlooking the river, saying nothing for the longest time. He sat close, but not touching her.

“You know what I’d like to see?”

She shouldn’t have played along. It was asking for trouble, but she’d done it anyway. “What?”

“You on the back of my motorcycle. Your hair blowing wild and free.”

“Ain’t never gonna happen.”

“Never say never.”

She wrapped her arms around her, planted her elbows in her palms. Closing herself off. Holding him at bay. “You don’t even own a motorcycle.”

“I’m saving up for one.”

“Pipe dreamer.”

“You know what else I’d like?”

“I don’t care,” she lied.

“You in a pink Harley jacket while you’re holding on to me as we ride on my motorcycle.”

“You’re so full of it. There’s no such thing as a pink Harley jacket.”

“There is if you have one custom made.”

“I tell you what, custom make me a pink Harley jacket and I’ll ride on your bike with you.”

“Really?”

“Oh yeah, ’cause that plays so well into my good-little-girl act.”

“You’ve got a mean tongue,” he said. “I like it.”

“Thank you.”

They lapsed into silence. Finally, he took a deep breath. “You want to talk about it?”

She shrugged. “What’s to say? My mama’s dying and my daddy’s a drunk.”

He nodded. “Life sucks.”

“You said it. I’ve got nothing that’s all my own. I share a room with my sister. I get hand-me-down clothes from my cousins. Even my name isn’t my own. Half Floyd, half Lynn. Flynn. It’s my parents’
names morphed together. Who does that? If my dad’s name had been Clifton and my mother’s name Deloris, would they have called me Clitoris?”

Jesse had snorted a laugh. “Hey, look at it this way. At least you didn’t get named after an outlaw. Jesse James. Talk about setting someone up for a prison record. Who names their kid Jesse James?”

“You’ve got a point.”

“Feeling any better?”

“I’m getting there. You’re a good listener.”

“You’re a good talker. Here, maybe this will help.” He reached into the front pocket of his shirt and withdrew something wrapped in red foil. It was a milk chocolate candy heart. “You can have my heart.”

Their eyes met, their fingers touched over the chocolate. He must have realized how that sounded, because he quickly rushed on to make a joke of it. “Now you can’t say I never gave you anything.”

“I’ll share,” she said, unwrapping the chocolate and breaking it into two pieces right down the middle. “It’s the least I can do.”

Simultaneously, they popped the chocolate into their mouths. The candy melted warm against her tongue. Jesse’s eyes lit up. They stared into each other. It felt strangely like communion.

“If you ever need to talk,” he said, “I come here a lot after school.”

After that day, whenever Flynn could sneak away, she’d meet Jesse at the underground caves. Sometimes they’d arrive—she by water, he by land—to find fishermen had usurped their spot or other teenagers bent on swimming or making out, and they’d be forced to give up their rendezvous.

On the days they were alone, they talked for as long as Flynn dared stay away from home. Thirty minutes most of the time, an hour if they were lucky. Quickly she came to see past Jesse’s cocky, bad-boy façade to the wounded soul beneath. She was drawn to his intense nature and his enigmatic gray-blue eyes. They had something in common. Jesse had lost his mother to a drug overdose when he was eight, and Flynn was slowly losing her mother to ALS. Jesse had never known his father. Flynn’s father had disappeared inside a whiskey bottle. Circumstances had forced them both to abdicate their childhoods far too soon.