by Janet Bolin
Then I had the software stitch a wavy line around where I wanted the outside of the frame to be, and a slightly smaller wavy box just inside the first.
When I was done, the stitched corduroy still covered Naomi’s bargello design. Careful to keep the fabrics tight in the embroidery hoop, I removed the hoop from the machine. I clipped out the inside of the corduroy close to my stitching, then snipped the excess away from the outside of my thin white frame, and I had it—a narrow, twisty, bumpy, off-white decoration around the outside of the colorful flame stitch design.
The final touch was reattaching the hooped design to my embroidery machine and outlining both the inner and outer edges of my corduroy “candlewicking” with satin stitching that was just wide enough to hide the corduroy’s raw edges.
Flame stitch, fire stitch, and candlewicking, all on one small wall hanging, almost like an embroidered pun. I wasn’t sure it would win any IMEC prizes, but it had been fun to create. And wasn’t that what hobbies were all about?
Fire. I couldn’t put off getting ready for the next night’s firefighting session much longer. I dragged out the manual Isaac had given me and studied it on the patio in the seemingly never-ending summer afternoon.
After supper, I leashed the dogs and took them out the back gate to the riverside trail. Ordinarily, I might have simply walked, but failing the physical fitness part of the firefighters’ exam could be embarrassing, so we jogged, south, away from the lake. Leashed jogging was apparently very exciting. We frequently tumbled to the ground in heaps of leashes, arms, legs, and paws. It worked, more or less, as exercise, and I may have run as much as two miles. Crisscrossing back and forth in front of me, the dogs probably ran twice as far. When we arrived back at the gate leading into our yard beside Blueberry Cottage, I was panting at least as much as Sally and Tally were.
We’d had so little rainfall during the summer that the only water in the river was a narrow stream meandering down the middle. We would be able to hop over that stream now, but rain could fall again any day, and we might never have another chance to cross the river here, conveniently close to home. We had never explored the state forest on the other side.
Hanging on to the dogs’ leashes with one hand and to tree trunks with the other, I sidestepped down the bank to the river bed.
The earth was not as solid as it looked.
I ended up on my rear in thick, oozy mud with a fragrance that was more attractive to the dogs than to me. The leashes were in my right hand, and I didn’t dare let go for fear my dogs would take off. I rolled over onto my hands and knees and pushed myself up until only my hands and feet were in the mud. My hands sank up to the leashes looped around my wrists. Wet clay plopped off my bare knees. My feet went in up to my ankles.
Sally and Tally liked nothing better than mud wrestling, and now, as far as they were concerned, I was joining them. They barked and danced, coating themselves and me in grime. Instead of crawling up the bank like a sensible person, I collapsed laughing, in the mud.
“Pull me home,” I gasped.
They barked faster. Sally had a way of running her yips together until she was almost howling.
I laughed so hard that anyone hearing me could have believed I was howling, too. Luckily, no one was anywhere near.
“Willow!” A man, shouting nearby.
Oops.
It was all I could do not to truly howl. And not with laughter. I recognized that voice.
Clay.
23
“SHHH!” I TOLD THE DOGS. “PRETEND WE’RE not here.”
No luck. Sally and Tally recognized Clay’s voice and accelerated their barking so he could find them. And me.
My gate clanged. Clay must have come from Lake Street, climbed over the locked gate into my side yard, run down my sloping backyard, and now he’d gone through the gate beside Blueberry Cottage. He had to be on the trail above the river. “Sally, Tally!” He sounded tense.
I didn’t want him to find me in my mud-covered predicament. I lowered my head. At closer range, the mud didn’t smell any better.
My two sweet doggies strained up the bank toward their hero, but they were attached to a wallowing monster. Me.
They almost got away. Their leashes slipped from my wrist to my hand as my fist popped out of the mud. I tightened my fingers on the leashes, and the two doggies pulled me, with horrible sucking and burbling sounds, free.
I willed Clay not to find me. Mud weighed my eyelids down. If I couldn’t see him, maybe he couldn’t see me.
But it would have been hard for him to miss the gleeful dogs. Warm fingers extricated the leashes from my hand.
I muttered, “Don’t touch me. I’m filthy.” He didn’t obey.
The next thing I knew, I was being dragged unceremoniously by the wrists up the bank. A truly romantic man would have picked me up and carried me all the way home.
A truly romantic man would have done all that without noticing my mud or having any of it transfer to him.
On the other hand, a truly romantic woman would not have rolled around in a distinctly soggy riverbed.
Soft cloth rubbed mud from my eyes and face. I peeked between my sodden eyelashes. Clay had taken off his T-shirt and was using it as a washcloth. I had never seen his bare torso before. Distracting. Then again, I needed to be distracted, or I’d have slunk away and hidden for two hundred years.
“Are you okay?” Oh, no, his usual question again. Maybe I should have convinced the mud to swallow me whole. “What on earth happened?”
“Earth happened. Muddy earth.” A giggle slipped out.
“Are you hurt?”
I shook my head.
He leaned back on his heels and looked me over.
“I didn’t break anything. The landing was rather soft.” I bit back another giggle.
Brows together, Clay helped me to my feet.
My sneakers had stayed on, but had become giant paws, more mud than shoes, and I was at least an inch taller than I’d been before I fell. To conquer an onslaught of giggles, I asked Clay, “What are you doing here?”
“I was driving up Lake Street from the beach and heard your dogs barking.” He cocked his head and grinned. “It sounded pretty exciting.”
For them it was, and they were still bouncing around and licking our hands.
“The lake’s nice and warm,” he said. “Maybe we should all go for a swim.” He was already in damp swim trunks.
I looked down at my mud-caked shorts and T-shirt. I was hopelessly encrusted. “Is the beach crowded? I’d prefer not to be seen by anyone.” Including the man at my side, but it was kind of late for that.
Muscles twitched around his mouth. Okay, so I wasn’t the only one trying not to laugh. “No one would recognize you.” That helped. Not.
However, putting this unwanted mud in the lake, where it should have been heading eventually, did seem like a better idea than carting it home.
Clay and I each took a leash and jogged with the dogs the short distance along the trail to the beach. As we passed The Sunroom, I averted my face. Maybe no one on the glassed-in balcony would see that last night’s sexy sophisticate had turned herself into a grubby waif.
At the beach, people were still lying on towels in the warm sand or finishing their evening barbecues. Several strolled along the water’s edge. Clay threw his T-shirt down, then all four of us plunged into the water. It was heavenly, almost bath temperature. Mud billowed from me. Suddenly, a wall of water hit me in the face. Still holding Tally’s leash, Clay splashed me. I ran the flat of my hand across the water and reciprocated, then took a deep breath and ducked under. I came up to find Sally swimming close to my face and looking extremely worried. “I’m okay, Sally,” I gasped. I swear she smiled.
As clean as possible under the circumstances, I waded onto the sandy beach. Clay dipped his T-shirt into the waves, wrung it out, and passed it to me to use as a towel. I wiped my face and gave it back. My hair hung in wet strands. How very becoming. Clutching t
he leashes, we ran back up the trail. My sneakers made rude squelching sounds.
I didn’t even want to think what a truly romantic woman would do.
There was one saving grace. The bra underneath my wet T-shirt was pretty and lacy, and not the hand-knit one I’d imagined while worrying that I was becoming too much like Haylee’s mothers.
I opened the gate next to Blueberry Cottage.
Clay asked, “Need help cleaning the dogs?” He looked like he was about to use his T-shirt on them.
“They have their own towels,” I said quickly. “If—” Panicking, I reached into the pocket of my shorts. “Whew. I still have my keys.”
Clay accompanied us up the hill to the sliding glass door leading to my great room. The evening was balmy, and our clothes had already begun to dry. I worked my feet out of my sneakers and tiptoed inside for doggie towels, red to contrast with Sally’s pretty black and ermine coat, tan for my handsome brindle and white Tally. I had embroidered their names and doggie paw prints on their towels.
I tossed Sally’s towel to Clay. Sally loved being rubbed. Tally was more businesslike, and considered himself to be clean and dry long before Sally was willing to give up Clay’s attention, which gave me time to go back inside and fetch a plate of cookies and two big glasses of lemonade. Outside, dusk softened the air, but after weeks of heat, the dampness in my clothes was refreshing. We sat on Adirondack chairs overlooking Blueberry Cottage and the riverbed beyond it. The dogs flopped down at our feet.
“Did the dogs pull you into the river?” Clay’s tone was very polite, giving me the chance to save face.
I couldn’t blame my dogs. “It was all my doing. I wanted to see if we could cross the river and go hiking in the state forest, but we sank into more mud than I anticipated.”
“The bridge is easier.” His voice was still mild, but he was obviously on the verge of laughter.
“I found that out. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just cross the river from my backyard?”
He finally let the laugh out. “I suppose.”
“I guess I was a pretty funny sight.”
He took a deep breath in the darkness. “Actually, you weren’t. I’d heard you laughing, but by the time I saw you, you were silent.”
Because I’d been hoping you wouldn’t discover me…“You didn’t think I was dead, did you?” What was I thinking? A truly romantic woman would never have said such a thing.
“I didn’t know what to think.”
“Thanks for rescuing me. Us.”
“You’d have gotten out on your own.”
I wasn’t so sure.
Not only did he always seem to have to help others, he always followed up. He asked, “Did the light that Russ Coddlefield changed for you keep working?”
“Yes.”
“What did you think of him?”
“He’s…unhappy, I think. His mother was mean to him after you left. That appeared to make him mad.” I decided that Clay didn’t need to know that Russ had gone joyriding through the village before he was told that his mother had been killed by her sewing machine, or that he had forced Edna’s car off the road.
Clay frowned. “Poor kid. He was probably still angry at her when she died, and now he’ll have to live with regret.” He took a long drink of lemonade. “Russ wants to come work for me. He wants to drop out of high school with only a year to go. I hired him for the summer, and now he thinks he doesn’t need his diploma and can just keep working for me year-round.”
I guessed, “So you told him to finish school and reapply next summer?”
“You got it. But he just stomped away. He needs to work on his temper.”
“When was this, before or after his mother died?”
“Before,” Clay said.
Russ’s mother had treated him like a baby in public. His father may have already been pursuing a young nanny. Russ had legitimate reasons to be angry.
“He wants to be an electrician,” Clay said. “He’s shown me some of his work. Computerized light shows for holidays, things like that. He’s good.”
Maybe Russ would figure out that Clay’s suggestion about completing high school would help him in the long run. I was glad that The Three Weird Mothers weren’t part of this conversation. They’d be planning the kid’s life, maybe offering to supervise his homework.
Clay was being so nicely companionable that I took a chance on acting the damsel in distress. Again.
However, telling him about the peculiar outlet in my shop had to be more professional than needing to be dragged up the bank of a river.
“I’m a licensed electrician,” he said after I finished my tale of woe, “and I supervised the wiring in your place. Let’s go see.”
The dogs went with us. I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to replicate the problem, but I jiggled a plug in the outlet, and lights flashed.
“Sorry, Willow, I had no idea I’d left it like this. I’ve got tools in my truck.” He always did. He went outside, then came back in with the supplies he needed. He knelt in front of the outlet. The dab of paint was gone from his ear. I kind of missed it.
However, it was almost gratifying that he or one of his employees may have installed a faulty outlet and failed to test it. If Clay wasn’t completely perfect, maybe he could overlook some of my flaws. After he replaced the outlet with a new one, no amount of wiggling a plug caused trouble.
We went back outside, plunked ourselves into the lawn chairs again, and watched the dogs’ antics. I’d been selling lots of high-end sewing and embroidery machines and had put away a nice sum toward the renovations I wanted to do in Blueberry Cottage. I asked him when he would be available to supervise.
“How about next spring?”
“Sure.”
“I’ll put it on my calendar.” He levered himself out of his chair. “Thanks for the cookies and lemonade.”
“Thanks for the rescue. And for repairing the outlet. And for the bath in the lake.”
He bent until his face was close to mine.
24
WAS CLAY LEANING IN FOR A KISS?
I couldn’t help a tiny quiver. A tiny, unthinking quiver.
Away from him.
A truly romantic woman would have quivered toward him.
He peered at my face in the darkness. “You may want to scrub a little harder at that mud.”
I clapped a hand over my mouth and backed farther from him. I must have looked as wretched as I felt. And considerably dirtier.
“It’s not that bad,” he said. “You look fine.”
A truly romantic man would have taken me in his arms and sworn undying love despite the mud. Somehow, I wasn’t liking the image I was building of the truly romantic man, so it was just as well that Clay wasn’t fitting it.
“I climbed over your front gate to get in,” the truly unromantic man said. “Do you have a key to let me out?”
I gabbled something agreeable, and the dogs and I went with him up through the side yard. I unlocked the gate.
Clay left, carrying his damp T-shirt and whistling.
We were friends again. He’d forgiven me for the mistakes I’d made. The dogs were delighted. They loved Clay. Maybe they’d see more of him.
They’d like that.
And so, I had to admit, would I.
I didn’t know if the dogs had sweet dreams that night, but they didn’t howl or cry, and I didn’t exactly have nightmares.
But in the morning, a nightmarish thought returned. I had promised Isaac I’d go to the volunteer fire department training session that evening. I didn’t want to become a firefighter, and I also didn’t want to fail the tests in public. I only wanted to find out more about Plug. If I could prove he had damaged the sewing machine in a way that killed his wife, the police could stop snooping around Susannah and me. I also didn’t want In Stitches to have a reputation for providing malfunctioning sewing machines.
While I was teaching the morning embroidery class, Jeremy Chandler called to assure
me that he had arrived safely home in New York. I’d barely given him a thought since Sunday evening after Naomi and Opal made it clear he would have no time alone with me.
He had talked to his insurance company and was authorizing a new Chandler Champion to be sent to my store. “Meanwhile, why not take the one you have to the bereaved family?” he suggested.
I said I would.
“And think about my offer. I don’t think I can keep Felicity Ranquels on my staff much longer. I fear she’s not making friends for Chandler.”
I didn’t point out that manufacturing possibly lethal sewing machines was also not very beneficial to his company’s image.
Susannah arrived early to give me my midday break. No customers were in the shop, but she pulled me toward the back of the store. “Those police officers were back here yesterday.”
“I saw you drive past.”
She blanched. “I was just running errands and saw their cars. What did they want?”
Why did she want to know? “I called them. I told them that the Chandler company president said that it would have taken a sledgehammer to break a Champion’s power switch.”
“Not true. That plastic was flimsy.” Color rushed back to her cheeks. “I saw it when you opened the machine. It looked like someone had prodded at it with…well, not a sledgehammer.”
“Maybe a screwdriver?”
She nodded.
We still had no customers. “Susannah, on Friday night at storytelling, you mentioned that Darlene volunteered for charities. What do you know about them?”
Susannah evaded my gaze. “She collected money for them.”
“Do you think those charities were legitimate?”
She shrugged.
“You donated to one of them.”
She still wouldn’t look at me. “How do you know?”
“The charities list the donors on their website.”
“That’s horrible! I didn’t say they could use my name.”
I pressed harder. “Chief Smallwood is checking on those charities and everyone who contributed to them. She found your name.”