How to Knit a Heart Back Home (20 page)

This
was why he didn’t talk about these kinds of things with women, especially not women he barely knew. “I don’t know. It just looked like he enjoyed talking to you.”

Molly nodded. “Yeah. That’s all it is. He enjoys my company. He’s not attracted to me. Not like that. I’m sorry. I’m being ridiculous. Isn’t it stupid?”

“What?”

“You know, when you’re attracted to someone who could never, ever work out?”

Owen pulled his debit card out of his wallet and avoided her eyes. “Yep.”

Chapter Sixteen

Knitting is a quiet art.

—
E. C.

L
ucy, by six o’clock, had done just about everything she could think of to calm herself down. She’d dug through the boxes in the coat closet and found her old journal and sat with it on the front porch, pen in hand, waiting for inspiration. She’d scribbled a few words before feeling stumped and frustrated. She used to love writing—she’d wanted to
be
a writer, as a kid, all the way through high school, before she’d decided to sell books instead. But she hadn’t thought about writing in years. And now she was going to edit a whole book? Nerves danced in her belly again at the thought.

She’d gone for a walk around the block, but had turned her ankle twice because she’d forgotten to watch where she was going. She’d taken a bath with a lavender bomb that had cost a ridiculous amount of money when she’d been out shopping with Molly, but the scent had put her into a sneezing fit.

Wrapped in an old yellow flannel robe, she wandered from room to room, picking objects up and putting them down again. She knocked over a vase that held knitting needles in the living room, sending them flying with a clatter that brought her back to herself.

Holy crap.

Owen. A date.

It came down to two things.

First thing: She had nothing to wear. Absolutely nothing. She had overalls. Jeans. Sweaters. A green dress that she’d worn to Abigail’s wedding, but it was gauzy and way too sheer for a cold spring night. Owen was probably used to girls who wore high black boots and black tops that fell casually, perfectly, off the shoulder at just the right moment. Girls who knew how to walk in heels. Lucy wasn’t that girl.

Second thing: Lucy couldn’t stop thinking about that kiss. The way he’d just walked over to her. Grabbed her.
Kissed
her like that. In front of everyone. It should have embarrassed the hell out of her, or pissed her off, being manhandled like that, instead of making her melt, instead of heating her up inside in a way that she still hadn’t recovered from.

Trudging upstairs yet again, Lucy made her way back to her closet. She opened it for the fourth time, hoping that somehow, since her bath, a miracle might have occurred, that a fairy godmother had sneaked in and filled her closet with pretty things.

No such luck.

Lucy’s cell phone rang.

“Am I bothering you?” Whitney’s chipper voice was too loud, and Lucy had to turn the volume down.

She sat on the floor in front of the hopeless closet. “No.”

“I just wanted to talk to you about the possibility of that celebration for Abigail, honoring you and Owen, with a—”

“No, thanks.”

“Just like that?” Whitney laughed lightly. “What about if you and I got together and put on a—”

Lucy interrupted her again. Whitney knew what men liked. “If you had a date, and you had my closet, what would you do?”

Whitney said, “Oh, no.”

“That bad?”

“I’d go shopping.”

“No time.”

“What time is the date?”

Lucy leaned backward so she could see the clock next to her bed. “Forty-seven minutes from now.”

“Black skirt?”

“No.”

“Oh, dear. Black pants?”

“Only some corduroys.”

Whitney sighed into the phone. “How wide are the wales?”

“What?”

“Never mind. Wear those. Now, white tank top?”

Lucy shook her head. “It’s spring.”

“It’s called layering, Lucy. Do you have one or do I have to come over there?”

This was bad enough. “I have one.”

“Good. That, and that blue sweater you knitted last year, the one with the lace edges. And a black belt. You do have one of those?”

“Of course.” Lucy thought she did. Somewhere.

“And black ballet flats or pumps or heels or boots or something, anything other than those Keds of yours, can you do that for me?”

Lucy remained quiet.

“Do you
have
other shoes?”

“Yes.”

“Will you wear them?”

“Oh, all right.” Lucy decided it was just easier to give in than argue. And if she wanted to wear the Keds, she could. But Whitney was probably right.

“Now,” said Whitney. “The date. It’s with Owen?”

God, she hated to admit it to her. How did she end up having this conversation with Whitney, of all people? “Yeah.”

“Awesome. He’s always been so hot. Oh, boy, I remember him in high school . . .”

No, no,
no
! Lucy didn’t want to walk down memory lane with Whitney and what she remembered about Owen.

But Whitney only giggled. “Just don’t sleep with him on the first date, you wouldn’t want him to get the wrong impression of you. No one else seems to stick around, do they? Maybe you can keep him hanging around if you play your cards right, and deal ’em out slow, huh? Okay, hon, I gotta run. Put on some blusher, too, you looked a little pale the last time I saw you. And think some more about that party for Abigail. I’m convinced it’s a good idea. We’ll talk later.”

Lucy sat, staring into the closet, but she didn’t see the clothes hanging in front of her.

Deal ’em out slow.

She always dealt them out slowly. One card at a time, one base at a time, just like a good girl should.

Maybe that was her whole problem.

She pulled out the black strappy heels that she’d bought with Molly that she’d never worn and held them up. They were sexy. Even kind of comfortable.

Why not?

Lucy changed and put on makeup, trying to remember Molly’s tips. She looked at herself in the mirror and decided she looked nothing like herself. She looked . . . good. The white tank dipped low, and the blue sweater draped open. The heels made her taller, longer. Her eyes looked smoky with the MAC eyeliner that had cost more than her first used car.

She shook her head and stuck out her tongue. There. That was more like it.

The doorbell rang. Lucy jumped.

Owen leaned against the porch railing, a half smile on his lips. “You wanna shoot something?”

Chapter Seventeen

Surprise yourself. Use a paper clip instead of a stitch holder. Knit with twine, or grass, or dandelion stalks. Dance while you knit. Sing.

—
E. C.

I
n Lucy’s mind, the gun range was going to be a sexy place to be. It would be a dark, narrow chamber, much like the barrel of a gun, slim and dangerous. Scary-looking trench-coated men and women in stilettos wearing European glasses would slink by her on their way out, casting shifty glances to planes flying low overhead.

Instead, the range was a squat concrete building that looked like it had been dropped in the parking lot temporarily and no one had remembered to come back for it yet. It was smack-dab between the Costco and the dump, and Lucy couldn’t believe she’d never noticed the crooked wooden sign that said, rather grandly, C
YPRESS
H
OLLOW
G
UN
C
LUB.

Inside, a balding man wearing grubby camo sat reading
Guns and Ammo
, looking bored. Maybe he’d cheer up when he saw a girl. Lucy gave him a bright smile.

He didn’t even look at her, just slid a clipboard to Owen and said, “Sign in. Both got eyes and ears?” Owen nodded. “Twelve each. Ammo? Targets?”

“Nope.”

“Pistol?”

“Yep.”

“Lane eight.”

The sound of wild and careless gunfire ricocheting around inside the room they were headed for didn’t seem safe, not in the slightest.

Lucy was terrified.

Just out of sight of the clerk, as Owen started to pull open the heavy side door, Lucy clutched Owen’s sleeve and pulled out one of the earplugs he’d motioned her to put in. “Hey.”

He removed one of his earplugs, too. “You okay?”

“What if . . .” Oh, she should just say it. “What if I shoot and kill someone? Or someone accidentally kills me?”

“In the range? That really doesn’t happen that often.”

“That
often?
”

“I’m kidding.”

Lucy scowled. “If you think that’s funny, then . . . You don’t want to be the first casualty, is all I’m saying.”

In a low voice close to her ear, in a tone that gave her shivers, Owen said, “You’re going to be great at this. And it’s fun. It’s like this.” Putting one hand at the small of her back, Owen put his lips against hers. Parted, his lips whispered against hers, a kiss and a promise. “You can do this.”

Lucy wanted more. More of what his lips said to hers. She kissed him, hard, shocking herself, and she felt him react. The same electricity that jolted her must have shocked him, too, because the hand at her back tugged her in even closer, and she felt how ready he was, hard against her. His mouth became hotter, heavier, and his tongue demanded something she was almost ready to give him right there, against the ugly concrete wall. Owen scrambled Lucy’s brain cells, and God, she wanted more.

But then Owen stood upright and put his earplug back in, looking straight at her. His eyes didn’t so much dare her to do the same as much as expect that she’d be able to.

Sure.

Lucy took a deep breath and put her shoulders back, willing her heart to slow down and her jelly-filled legs to hold her up. “Right.”

She reinserted her earplug and pulled open the heavy door before Owen could reach for it.

There weren’t even that many people inside the range tonight. She expected that it would be packed, but of approximately twenty shooting lanes, only six or seven were occupied, almost all taken up by men, which didn’t surprise her. And all of them, turned to watch her go by, which did.

And of course, this being Cypress Hollow, she knew most of them. Two volunteer firefighters looked like they were having some competition with masking tape and a target drawn to look like a recently ousted political figure. Don Beadle, the head of the Chamber of Commerce, was firing rapidly, emptying one pistol and then the next. The only woman, little old Mrs. Luby, was in the lane next to his, shooting a tiny, pearl-handled gun that looked more like a toy. Lucy smiled at her, but Mrs. Luby didn’t smile back.

Ahead of her, Owen motioned her into a narrow space, set off from everyone else by two tall cubicle-like walls on either side that stretched to the ceiling, open in the back to the room they’d walked through and in the front to the target area.

Owen set his gun box down on the waist-height counter and took out two pairs of clear plastic goggles that looked like something welders would wear.

“Wow, hot.”

He ignored her and pushed a red button. Their wire above started to move like a clothesline and a clip at the end of it got closer. When it reached them, Owen unfolded a target from the gun box and clipped it so that it hung freely. It was the image of a man’s torso, the upper head and heart highlighted in red.

“Now push this button here, and send it out.” Owen spoke a little louder than normal—his voice sounded muffled to her but it was clear enough over the loud pops from the other men shooting.

“Don’t I get the bull’s-eye ring to start out with? It has to be a guy, huh?”

“The hardest thing about shooting is being able to reconcile yourself with the idea of being able to take another person’s life.”

Lucy shook her head. “I don’t want to do that. If I had to shoot someone, I’d just shoot them—”

Owen interrupted her, “In the leg. Sure. That’s what everyone with granola running in their veins says. But then the guy on crack breaks into your house and he’s out of his fucking mind and you shoot him in the leg and it just pisses him off. Now he has your gun because he took it away from you
and
he’s tied up your mom. And he’s going to do bad things to her. While you watch.”

Lucy’s eyes widened. “How did my mother get involved?”

“I put her in the house with you.”

Lucy imagined coming into her parents’ home to find her mother tied up and hurt, to find a strange man standing over her, and then she imagined having a gun in her hand. “Nope. I’m granola, all right. I’m a Northern Californian. But I’ll blow him away and pay for the therapy later.”

He looked delighted. “This is what I carry, a Glock twenty-two, compact, takes a ten-millimeter round. Or forty Smith and Wesson, which is easier to find.”

“Yeah. I have no idea what that means.” Lucy leaned forward. “Is it loaded?”

“Not yet. You bring it to the range unloaded. Usually they ask to check at the desk. I think your beauty might have blinded him a bit.”

Lucy snorted and then said, “Can I touch it?” Oh, no. That sounded way more intimate than she had planned it to. “The gun, I mean. Can I touch your gun?” She was making it worse.

Owen nodded and pushed a button on the side of the gun, and the bottom part of the handle dropped out. “This is the magazine. See? You put the bullets in here.”

Lucy leaned closer. Oh, Lord, he always smelled good, like laundry soap and something more masculine. He made her a thousand times more nervous than the weapon did. Guns could only shoot.

“I’m going to put a round, just one bullet in, snapping it in like this, see, then I push the magazine up, then I pull back on the slide until it snaps back. Now there’s a bullet in the chamber ready to be fired.”

Drawing back on the main metallic part, he said, “See that round in there?” He angled it back so that she could see into the cavity on top, so that she could see the bullet resting there, looking innocuous and insidious at the same time.