How to Knit a Heart Back Home Read online

  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.

  In 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, CYPRESS HOLLOW GUN CLUB.

  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 fi
ring 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.

  “I just shake the gun to the side, like this, and it falls right out. See? Now I’m sure the gun’s not loaded.” He put the bullet on the counter.

  Owen drew the slide back a couple more times, pointing out where the bullet had been and no longer was.

  Lucy felt jittery. “Is there a way to be sure there’s no bullet in it?”

  He smiled. “I know how they work, and I know there’s no place for a bullet to hide. But there’s one surefire way to find out.”

  Snapping the slide back into place, he pointed the gun downrange.

  “You’re not going to . . .” she started. But if he did pull the trigger, it would just click, right? It wasn’t going to fire, she knew there was no bullet. . . .

  But he didn’t do anything. Owen just held the gun out in front of him, his eyes narrowed, arms outstretched. A muscle jumped in his jaw. He looked down and straightened his right foot.

  The barrel of the gun started to waver. His hand was shaking. Lucy’s heartbeat, already erratic, raced into overdrive.

  “Owen. What’s going—”

  Lucy watched him take a deep breath. He pulled the trigger.

  Click.

  Lucy jumped at the startling snap. “What happened?”

  Owen didn’t say anything. He lowered the gun slowly and then looked at it, turning it over, examining it first on one side, then on the other.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Lucy. She wished she could take the earplugs out, but the gunfire from the other shooters kept a solid blanket of noise around them.

  “Nothing,” said Owen, but his voice was wrong—off, somehow. “Nothing at all. Your turn.”

  He handed her the gun, his fingers brushing hers as he passed it over. Her own hand shook, too. She’d blame the gun for her jitters.

  He was even closer now. Think, breathe.

  “So the first lesson is never, ever point it at anyone unless you’re trying to kill him,” Owen said hoarsely.

  “But it’s not loaded, right?”

  “Never, ever point it anywhere you don’t want to hit. Not even when it’s unloaded. If I’d screwed up when I pulled the trigger a second ago, I would have only damaged the target. It’s harder to fix a bullet wound.” He winced as he moved to lean against the plastic dividing wall.

  “Good, like that,” he said. “Now, always keep your index finger straight, just below the slide, until you’re ready to shoot. Don’t ever rest it on the trigger.”

  “Don’t I have to take the safety off?”

  “On most guns, yes. On this gun, the safety is that little toggle on the trigger.”

  “This thing? So if I pull the trigger I pull the safety, too? How is that safe?”

  “Satisfied the letter of the law, I guess.”

  “So pull on the slide to cock it?” An almost unbearable giggle rose in her throat at the word, which she normally didn’t have reason to say. She choked it back. She would not laugh.

  He ignored her. “Yeah, good. Now point it at the target and squeeze the trigger. Gently. Just one, slow, steady pull.”

  His voice reverberated in her ear. Never had a thing made of plastic and metal felt so sexy in her hand, not even the toy she kept at home in her nightstand.

  Click.

  Lucy jumped again, as if it had really fired. She took a deep breath. “Show me how to load it.”

  Owen demonstrated snapping the rounds into the clip, pushing it up into the handle until it clicked. “Cock it. Yeah. You’re good to go.”

  Lucy felt wild heat flush her face, and it wasn’t just the gun. “So I shoot?”

  “Wait.” Owen pushed his weight away from the wall and moved behind her. “Right foot forward a bit. Left foot back. Now raise your right arm like this.”

  While he was talking he brought his arms around her, guiding hers. “Left hand here, as support. Both eyes open, look down the sights.” His breath was warm in her ear, causing her stomach to jump. How the hell was she supposed to shoot a gun when he made her more jittery than firing a lethal weapon for the first time?

  “Don’t jerk it. Just one long, steady stroke of your finger. Keep the pressure nice and even. Let it do the work—”

  Boom.

  “—for you.”

  With trembling hands, Lucy carefully set the gun down on the counter in front of them, a tiny wisp of white smoke curling and immediately vanishing from the barrel. Owe
n was still behind her.

  “Damn. Nice shot,” he said.

  “That hole? In the middle of the chest. I made that?”

  “You did.”

  “That was really scary.” Lucy glanced over her shoulder. “And it was awesome.”

  “You loved it.” Owen smiled, but his face looked gray. “Now do it again.”

  She shook her head. “No fucking way. Are you nuts? Let’s get out of here before one of us passes out.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Once I kissed the wrong man, holding the needles in my lap. They stabbed his leg like a dowsing rod gone wrong. Trust your knitting.

  —E. C.

  Owen hadn’t had the clam chowder at the pier since he’d been at the roller rink back in high school, before it closed. The pier always struck him as too touristy to consider visiting. But now Lucy sat cross-legged on top of the picnic table, a bread bowl full of chowder in one hand, a spoon in the other, looking up into the night sky. “God, this is good.”

  She leaned sideways and pulled a bottle of Tabasco out of her pants pocket and dumped some in her soup. “Want some?”

  Shooting on a date was an idea whose time had come. It had taken some fast-talking on his part to get her to take that second shot, though. She’d been so spooked by the bang, she’d almost bolted like a deer.

  And fuck, he’d been no better, had he? As he’d picked up the gun and held it downrange, held it on the target, all he’d been able to see was the last time he’d aimed a gun. The last time he’d fired. The flower of blood that had bloomed, the river of gore that had run into the gutter, taking Rob along with it.

  How was he able to pick the gun up every single day of his life, check it, cock it, put it in his holster, without seeing that reaction coming? If he’d predicted that, he wouldn’t have brought Lucy along to witness it.

  But talking Lucy into sticking it out and staying at the range, that had helped him get his mind off his own stupid, unexpected terror. Not that Lucy needed much coaching. Lucy thought she was scared of things, he knew. But inside, she had guts of steel—he could see her strength as clearly as he could see her amazing curves.