by Maisey Yates
“Move to Antarctica?” Pru said, offering a weak smile. “You guys know I suck at this expressing emotional stuff.”
“Yeah. We do,” Kit agreed. “And you’ll notice that we’re still here. And when we need more from you, we ask for it. And you do your best. When you need to let something out, we needle it out of you. It’s called a relationship. Even if you’re bad at the words, you’ve never been bad at backing it up with actions.”
Actions. She tried to be good at those, and she had to admit that even if her family wasn’t good at the words...they were always there. Saying I love you had never been par for the course, but she knew her parents loved each other, because of how they talked to each other and looked at each other. She knew her brothers loved her because as much as they teased her and shied away from any deep conversations, they’d showed up to help at the store. They did things.
That was the Riley way.
And it was a good way, but somewhere in the past few years, she’d found she needed the words too.
“I love you guys.” It still made her uncomfortable, even more so when they squeezed tight around her.
“Group hug!” Kit said, laughing and wrapping her arms around all of them and squishing them together.
“I did not consent to that,” Pru managed, though her voice was muffled by the three bodies practically suffocating her. She laughed in spite of herself.
Because this was what she’d come home for.
* * *
WHEN GRANT WOKE up the next morning, he felt a bit like a soldier getting ready for battle. Tomorrow was the centennial, and he was hardly going to stay away from the store just because he’d stormed out yesterday.
No, he wouldn’t play her game. If she didn’t love him, or didn’t want him around, she was going to have to come out and say it. Maybe the Rileys were bad at that kind of thing, but Grant didn’t have to put up with it.
Still, there was a certain finesse to browbeating someone into admitting they were in love with you.
He slid his hat on his head and stepped out of the house, stomach already in knots. But he wasn’t afraid. Not of words or feelings. And he was going to prove to her that she didn’t have to be either.
Then there she was. Leaning against his truck hood. Talking to JJ and Cade. The morning sunlight made her hair look like a golden halo, giving her the look of an angel. A very Western angel, but an angel nonetheless.
He stopped in his tracks and watched as she laughed at something Cade said, her eyes darting over to the house as if she kept checking. Waiting.
Their gazes met. Held. He couldn’t read her expression, but she was here. Which had to mean...something.
He walked over to the trio. “Morning,” he offered.
JJ was all smiles, her hand resting on her slightly rounded stomach. “Good morning. Pru, it was so good to officially meet you, but I’ve got some things I need Cade to take care of ASAP.” She was already pulling Cade away. “We’ll see you later, Grant.”
Then it was just Grant and Pru.
She frowned at him. “What happened to your lip?”
“Oh, right. A gift from your brother. I didn’t expect you to spill the beans. Especially to your mother.”
“I didn’t.” She frowned. “I guess my father told her. He’s who I told. I can’t believe he’d spread it around.” She shook her head and studied the fat lip. “Why would Beau hit you over that?”
“Beau said you were in love with me. I corrected him that it was the other way around. He said he wanted to forget it, and I kept telling him things he didn’t want to hear.”
Some of that cool bravado failed her and she wrinkled her nose. “You know it’s not just the other way around.”
Some of the tension in him unwound, but it couldn’t be that easy. “Do I?”
She blinked and opened her mouth to speak, but no sound came out.
“Beau hitting me, then running away like he’d just seen a bull coming straight for him, crystallized something for me. About you. About the whole damn lot of you Rileys.”
“Does it have anything to do with how badly we suck at this whole love thing?”
“You don’t suck at love. Not a one of you.” He touched her face. “You’re maybe bad at expressing it, but not at being it.”
She inhaled deeply. “But...some people need the expressing. I mean...” She swallowed. “It can be important.”
“It can be learned.”
She looked up into his face. And he waited, but when she finally spoke it didn’t make any sense. “I think I’m going to need your help to move Maynard onto the sidewalk,” she blurted.
“Who’s Maynard?”
“The goat statue,” she said, as if that was common knowledge. Or obvious. Or sane.
“Huh. I’ve been calling him Victor in my head.”
Pru blinked up at him and swallowed, tears filling her eyes. “Really?”
He had no idea why that would make her cry, so he only nodded.
She flung her arms around his neck and almost knocked him clear over. “God, I love you,” she said. It was a bit like a deathbed confession, but she was saying it nonetheless. “It’s not that I’m afraid of that, exactly. I don’t know how to...just say it. To not feel... It’s just, you named the goat.”
“Well, you named the goat. Maynard is a much better goat statue name than Victor.”
She laughed into his shoulder. “I want you to keep working with me. After the centennial.”
More of the tightness unwound. Because he wanted her, but he wanted to be a part of that store too. “I was planning on it.”
“I want all that stuff you said in the store. I’m in such a habit of shying away from anything that seems too good to be true.”
“I’ll screw up if it’ll help.”
She managed a laugh and he could see how hard she was fighting with the tears.
“Pru, you don’t have to do that. You don’t have to be afraid with me. Tears don’t bother me, except of course I don’t want to see you cry. Fears don’t scare me. I’ve been afraid so often since my father died, I’m old hat. I’m not going to run away.”
“I love you so much that I don’t know what to do with it all,” she said in a rush of breath. Like it was terrible.
But it wasn’t. At all. “Good.”
Before he could finally kiss her again, she pushed him back a little. “I need you to tell me when you need the words and when I’m not doing a good enough job. I need you to promise me that,” she said earnestly.
“Okay, as long as same goes.”
She wrinkled her nose. “I don’t need words.”
“I think you do. And I’ll give them to you. I’ll give whatever I’ve got to you.”
She rubbed at her chest. “Okay, maybe words work.” She pressed her body to his. “But other things work too.” And she kissed him. With a gentleness she hadn’t shown before, a sweetness he knew terrified her. And she’d given it to him anyway.
“Yeah, that works,” he said, leaning his forehead to hers.
She sighed dreamily, if he did say so himself. “Come to the store, Grant. Let’s get ready for the centennial.”
“And after the centennial?”
“Well, you’re going to have to help me figure out the paperwork for hiring you.”
“Done. What else?”
“I’m going to move home for a little while. Until I find a place in town to rent.”
“Close enough to the store you could walk to work?”
“Exactly.”
“Big enough for two?”
She arched a brow. “That depends on how much I want to horrify my mother and live in sin.”
“And if you don’t?”
“I guess at that point you’ll just have to make an honest woman out of me.” She grinned up at him.
“That’s what I’m looking to build, Grant. What my parents have. What yours did. Nothing half-assed. Partners. In everything. No matter how hard or scary it is.”
He pulled her closer. “I’m counting on it.” He lowered his mouth to hers, but paused before he kissed her. “All right, Riley. How about those words.”
She held his gaze and smiled. “I love you, Grant.”
“See, you didn’t even sound like you had a gun to your head this time.”
“Oh, shut up,” she said on a laugh, and pressed her mouth to his.
It was a kiss, but it was also a promise. To build the future they both wanted.
EPILOGUE
THERE WAS RED, white, and blue bunting everywhere. It was a miserably hot day, and still people had packed the parade route.
Riley Feed & Gardening Supply celebrated the day with a tuxedo-clad goat statue moved onto the sidewalk. Happy Ever After Books had a sidewalk sale of used romance novels that attracted young and old. The Sugar Shack needed only to have the doors opened to waft the smells of maple fudge outside. And A Simple Thread had decorated its big store window with knitted flowers and free patterns for knitters who wanted to replicate them.
Each store had been filled with interested Jasper Creekians, eager tourists, and then finally the test. The mayor had come through each of their stores. Inspecting buildings. Inspecting traffic flow. Then with a nod, she gave each of them the seal of approval. Their affordable rent would stay intact.
None of them had stopped for lunch. Pru didn’t know what she would have done without Grant there to help. It was a never-ending parade of customers. Not everyone bought, but getting even a few knickknacks sold and gardening supplies ordered made her feel good about the future. Even better, quite a few ranchers had wandered in to discuss her feed selection.
Many of them mentioned that her dad had sent them.
When it was time to close up for the day, Pru, Hope, Kit, and Charity all did it simultaneously, and breathlessly...then immediately met in the basement.
Pru worked to finagle the safe. It took just as long, and just as much muscle to pry it open as it originally had. And here they were, just a few months later, their cell phones in hand.
“I’m not sure I want it,” Hope said.
“I want it,” Pru said, snatching hers out immediately. “I can text instead of calling again. Like God intended.” But none of them spent any time looking at their phones. They slid them in their pockets.
They were a nice slice of convenience, but they weren’t necessary. Not when they had each other.
“Well, we did it,” Hope said. “We really, really did it.”
They all grinned at each other, exhausted and pleased to the bone. They had done it. They had created the happiness they’d dreamed of and made a pact about as kids.
“Well, what the hell do we do now?” Pru asked.
“We go watch the fireworks,” Kit said. “Make out with our very fine significant others. Get a little drunk on Jill Vargas’s summer punch and enjoy ourselves.”
“Hear, hear!”
The fireworks would start in about ten minutes, so the women went out to their storefronts. Basking in the glow of their success, they turned to the town. People were scattered all over the square’s lawn—blankets filled with families, couples, and screeching teenagers.
There was one big quilt being guarded by four men holding plastic cups of the infamous punch. Four true-blue cowboys, four really good men.
They were good enough men to stand there and wait while the girls closed up their shops and had their moment.
“What are you looking at?” Charity asked, when Pru came to a stop on the boardwalk.
Pru gestured to the guys. “Not a bad-looking group of gentlemen.”
Kit sighed appreciatively. “We did good, girls. Real damn good.”
“You all owe me a thank-you. My wedding implosion is what started all of this,” Hope said.
“Actually I think we should thank James Field Warner IV,” Kit replied with a grin.
“Nah,” Pru said. “Let’s thank ourselves. Just a couple of badasses who know how to run a business and hook a man.”
“With the help of a few magazines,” Hope offered with a laugh.
“And that house, complete with hatbox, lasso, camera, and so on.”
“And each other,” Charity said in her solemn way. She reached across to find Kit’s hand with hers, then Kit gripped Hope’s, and Hope Pru’s until they were a connected chain.
In tandem, they looked up at the stars, finding Aquila. Their constellation. The arrow that had led them here. Right where they each belonged.
When the fireworks began to sparkle through the night sky, reflecting on the compass necklaces they had always kept their promise to wear, they each walked to the man waiting for them.
They knew exactly what their pact had given them. Not just a store. Not just a man.
Home.
* * *
When Lark Ashwood returns home to Bear Creek, Oregon, she is determined to realise her dreams of setting up a craft café. She’s equally determined to avoid the history she’s been running from—especially when it comes in the irresistible shape of local garage owner Ben Thompson. But as Lark embarks on a quilting circle with her mom and two sisters, she soon realises that the key to her future lies in unlocking the past...
Read on for a sneak preview of Maisey Yates’s emotionally compelling new novel for HQN
Confessions from the Quilting Circle
Confessions from the Quilting Circle
by Maisey Yates
March 4th, 1944
The dress is perfect. Candlelight satin and antique lace. I can’t wait for you to see it. I can’t wait to walk down the aisle toward you. If only we could set a date. If only we had some idea of when the war will be over.
Love, Dot
* * *
Present day—
Lark
Unfinished.
The word whispered through the room like a ghost. Over the faded, floral wallpaper, down to the scarred wooden floor. And to the precariously stacked boxes and bins of fabrics, yarn skeins, canvases and other artistic miscellany.
Lark Ashwood had to wonder if her grandmother had left them this way on purpose. Unfinished business here on earth, in the form of quilts, sweaters and paintings, to keep her spirit hanging around after she was gone.
It would be like her. Adeline Dowell did everything with just a little extra.
From her glossy red hair—which stayed that color till the day she died—to her matching cherry glasses and lipstick. She always had an armful of bangles, a beer in her hand and an ashtray full of cigarettes. She never smelled like smoke. She smelled like spearmint gum, Aqua Net and Avon perfume.
She had taught Lark that it was okay to be a little bit of extra.
A smile curved her lips as she looked around the attic space again. “Oh, Gram...this is really a mess.”
She had the sense that was intentional too. In death, as in life, her grandmother wouldn’t simply fade away.
Neat attics, well-ordered affairs and pre-death estate sales designed to decrease the clutter a family would have to go through later were for other women. Quieter women who didn’t want to be a bother.
Adeline Dowell lived to be a bother. To expand to fill a space, not shrinking down to accommodate anyone.
Lark might not consistently achieve the level of excess Gram had, but she considered it a goal.
“Lark? Are you up there?”
She heard her mom’s voice carrying up the staircase. “Yes!” She shouted back down. “I’m...trying to make sense of this.”
She heard footsteps behind her and saw her mom standing there, blond hair neat, arms folded in. “You don’t have to. We can get someone to come in and sort it out.”
&n
bsp; “And what? Take it all to a thrift store?” Lark asked.
Her mom’s expression shifted slightly, just enough to convey about six emotions with no wasted effort. Emotional economy was Mary Ashwood’s forte. As contained and practical as Addie had been excessive. “Honey, I think most of this would be bound for the dump.”
“Mom, this is great stuff.”
“I don’t have room in my house for sentiment.”
“It’s not about sentiment. It’s usable stuff.”
“I’m not artsy, you know that. I don’t really...get all this.” The unspoken words in the air settled over Lark like a cloud.
Mary wasn’t artsy because her mother hadn’t been around to teach her to sew. To knit. To paint. To quilt.
Addie had taught her granddaughters. Not her own daughter.
She’d breezed on back into town in a candy apple Corvette when Lark’s oldest sister Avery was born, after spending Mary’s entire childhood off on some adventure or another, while Lark’s grandfather had done the raising of the kids.
Grandkids had settled her. And Mary had never withheld her children from her. Whatever Mary thought about her mom was difficult to say. But then, Lark could never really read her mom’s emotions. When she’d been a kid, she hadn’t noticed that. Lark had gone around feeling whatever she did and assuming everyone was tracking right along with her because she’d been an innately self focused kid. Or maybe that was just kids.
Either way, back then badgering her mom into tea parties and talking her ear off without noticing Mary didn’t do much of her own talking had been easy.
It was only when she’d had big things to share with her mom that she’d realized...she couldn’t.
“It’s easy, Mom,” Lark said. “I’ll teach you. No one is asking you to make a living with art, art can be about enjoying the process.”
“I don’t enjoy doing things I’m bad at.”
“Well I don’t want Gram’s stuff going to a thrift store, okay?”
Another shift in Mary’s expression. A single crease on one side of her mouth conveying irritation, reluctance and exhaustion. But when she spoke she was measured. “If that’s what you want. This is as much yours as mine.”