Loves Me, Loves Me Knot (32 page)

Releasing her hold on his neck, she ran her hands through his short hair and whispered, “I love you, too. And we’re going to make it work this time.”

“Yes, we are,” he agreed with a knowing grin. “Yes, we are.”

It worked!

It worked, it worked, it worked!

Charlotte did a little jig, discoing around the antique spinning wheel as though it were her partner on the dance floor.

The wheel
wasn’t
defective. The yarn
hadn’t
failed in its true love mission.

Oh, glory! Oh, joy!

Slightly out of breath from her exertions, she slowed her steps and took a seat on the stool of the spinning wheel.

She’d lugged the giant piece of equipment back down from the attic . . . . left it in her bedroom for a day or two to give her creaking bones a rest . . . then dragged it the rest of the way to the living room. Her intention had been to ready some new fibers and spin a new skein of yarn for her niece in hopes of undoing whatever bad mojo the first skein had brought about.

But now she didn’t have to, because Jenna had arrived at tonight’s knitting meeting with a smile on her face that could have lighted Lakefront Stadium. She’d
been floating on air, bursting to share the news that she and Gage were back together.

Apparently, a lot had happened since Charlotte had last seen her niece.

Good things.

Wonderful things.

Enchanted-yarn-working-its-magic kind of things.

And Charlotte was absolutely certain now that the yarn was responsible for bringing both Ronnie and Dylan and Jenna and Gage together. How could it not be when Jenna had brought the feathery purple yarn with her tonight to finish a boa she’d begun while Charlotte had been away . . . and Gage had come to stay with her out at the farm?

Charlotte had been delighted, but not the least bit surprised, to hear it—as well as the fact that Gage had wanted to learn to do a bit of knitting and
that
was the yarn Jenna had used to teach him.

It was the story of Ronnie and Dylan’s love affair all over again. Definitive proof, as far as Charlotte was concerned, that the wheel and its yarn had the power to do exactly what her mother and grandmother and her mother before that had always claimed.

She was so excited, she had to tinkle again.

A few minutes later, she returned to the sitting room and took up position behind the spinning wheel. Now that she knew—really, really
knew
—she had her work cut out for her.

The yarn she created with this spinning wheel was clearly powerful enough to draw two people together despite seemingly insurmountable obstacles. But could it find a way for Grace to forgive Zachary?

Normally, Charlotte would never suggest a woman
return to a man who’d cheated on her. Oh, no. Bodily harm and immediate neutering, maybe, but never forgiveness.

According to Jenna, however, Zack swore he hadn’t been unfaithful. There was a story there about a female fan sneaking into his hotel room on the road and Grace choosing that unfortunate moment to surprise him, but he swore up and down he wasn’t guilty. And because Charlotte trusted Jenna, and Jenna trusted Gage, who believed that Zack had possibly been wrongly accused, Charlotte was willing to suspend judgment.

Grace was too deeply mired in grief at the moment to listen to such a tale, though. She needed time . . . and perhaps a bit of supernatural intervention.

Threading the readied fibers—which she’d dyed pink this time—into the wheel, she slowly started to work the pedal, started to work the soft alpaca fur into a tight, artful strand of yarn.

Grace might not be ready to forgive Zack just yet, but hopefully once Charlotte gave her a bit of enchanted yarn, she would be.

Or perhaps the wheel had someone else in mind for the lovely television star.

If that was true, then Charlotte would accept it, of course. The important thing was that the yarn drew Grace to her true love and gave them a lifetime of happily ever after.

And with Charlotte’s sneaky little fairy godmother help, that’s exactly what she was going to get.

JENNA’S BOAS

(which can also be used as restraints during hot sex
with a current or ex-husband)

Materials:

Size 13 knitting needles

1 1.5-ounce skein of feathery “eyelash” yarn (any color)

Directions:

Cast on 16 stitches.

Knit every row until boa is one yard long or reaches desired length.

Cast off and weave yarn ends into fabric of boa with crochet hook.

Read on for an excerpt from the next book
by Heidi Betts

Knock Me for a Loop

Coming February 2010 from St. Martin’s Paperbacks

Charlotte Langan’s late-model station wagon, complete with faux wooden panels running the full length of both sides, rumbled beneath her, sending pleasant little ripples into her feet, up her short legs, and along the narrow line of her vertebrae. The heat was turned up full blast in an attempt to counteract the brittle cold of Cleveland, Ohio, in mid-December.

Holiday decorations were up already—and had been since just after Thanksgiving—lining the damp streets and filling lighted storefronts. Christmas was one of her favorite times of year. The colors and raised spirits and festivities. Not to mention presents! Whether she was giving or receiving them, oh, how she loved the presents. What other time of year did a woman have such a bona fide excuse to shop until she dropped?

Flipping on her right turn signal, Charlotte maneuvered her car—which she imagined handled much like a refrigerator on wheels—into the lot of a local strip mall, then began to drive slowly up and down the rows of cars already parked there. Using the steering wheel
for leverage, she hoisted herself up and forward for a better view as she peered through the windshield searching for an empty spot.

When she finally found one near a brightly lit overhead lamp, she pulled in—it only took six or eight tries—cut the engine, and set the parking brake. Because a woman could never be too careful, and the parking lot
was
on a slight, probably fifteen-degree incline. Then she grabbed her knitting tote from the passenger side of the seat beside her and climbed out of the station wagon.

Frigid air swamped her, and she tugged the hood of her thick, fluffy fleece coat up and over her head, tightening the strings until she was sure she looked like the Jolly Green Eskimo . . . or maybe a giant lime popsicle.

Her bright purple faux UGG boots splotted against the slick asphalt as she goose-stepped her way across the lot and pulled open the door to The Yarn Barn. A wall of blessed heat smacked her full in the face as soon as she stepped inside, and she sighed with warming pleasure. Loosening her fuzzy hood and tugging at her thick, hand-knit alpaca mittens, she made a beeline for the back of the store, where the rest of her Wednesday-night knitting group would be waiting.

Because The Yarn Barn hosted a number of craft groups and craft-related classes throughout the week, a large meeting nook had been set up in the rear. Several mismatched chairs were arranged around a low coffee table, and there was a refreshment area off to the side, complete with snacks and both hot and cold beverages.

At the moment, there was nothing Charlotte wanted more than a steaming cup of cocoa clutched between her ice-cold hands, but she would settle for the familiar
comfort of her size eight needles and the warm caress of the alpaca fiber yarn she was using to knit a long, variegated cardigan as it ran through and around her fingers with every stitch.

Already, she could hear the staccato clack of needles clicking together beneath the voices of the women who were gathered and busily working on their respective knitting projects. A sweater here, a scarf there, and several pairs of slipper socks to keep toes toasty over the long, cold winter or be stuffed into stockings for Christmas.

“Aunt Charlotte!” Jenna cried, catching sight of her over the top of one of the backwards-facing chairs.

Sitting in that chair was the strikingly beautiful Grace Fisher, who turned along with everyone else to watch Charlotte’s approach. “I swear, Charlotte, you look more like a troll doll every time I see you,” she quipped.

Charlotte chuckled with amusement. Some people might have taken Grace’s remark as an insult, but Charlotte was delighted with the description. From the moment Grace had first tossed out the comparison and then gifted Charlotte with one of the little plastic figurines to show her what she was talking about, Charlotte had been hooked.

That doll had been the first of what was turning out to be quite the troll collection. She had one with yellow hair on her mantle, one with blue hair on the dresser in her bedroom, one with green hair on the back of the toilet in her bathroom, and the one with flame-orange hair that Grace had originally given her hung from the rearview mirror of her station wagon, where she could admire it on a regular basis.

She just loved the little buggers. Like Cabbage Patch
dolls, they were so ugly, they were cute, and she’d made it one of her goals in life to get her own bright orange, bee-hived hair to stand as tall as theirs. She was close, too—only a few inches to go.

“We were beginning to wonder when you’d show up,” her niece said as Charlotte struggled out of her oversized coat and let it drop to the floor beside an empty chair. Patting the well-shellacked dome of her hair to make sure the hood hadn’t done irreparable damage, she took a seat and pulled her craft tote onto her lap.

“Sorry. I got busy with my babies and lost track of the time,” Charlotte told them, referring to her beloved pack of alpacas.

That wasn’t entirely true, of course. She’d finished feeding and bedding down everyone in plenty of time, but when she’d returned to the house to collect her things before leaving for the weekly knitting meeting, she’d realized she didn’t have the skein of pink yarn she’d made for Grace.

Special yarn.

Very
special yarn.

A year ago—give or take a few excitement-filled months—Charlotte had almost by accident stumbled across a delightful secret. The solid oak spinning wheel that had been handed down through the women in her family for generations was
magic
. Not run-of-the-mill magic, either, but the very best kind—the kind that brought true love.

Charlotte had grown up with her mother and grandmother telling her stories about the enchanted, true-love spinning wheel, but she’d thought they were just that—stories. It wasn’t until recently that she’d remembered
the old wheel, hidden and collecting dust in a corner of her attic. She’d dragged it downstairs (no easy feat for a woman of her somewhat advanced age and limited height), cleaned it up, and used dyed fiber from her own alpacas to spin a skein of soft black yarn that she’d then given to Ronnie, one of the young women in her knitting group.

At the time, Ronnie had been head over heels in hate with a man who wrote for a competing local newspaper, and Charlotte thought they would make the perfect guinea pigs for her enchanted spinning-wheel test run.

When that had turned out better than great—Ronnie and her beau were now living together, and Charlotte expected a wedding announcement any day—she’d used the wheel to spin another skein of enchanted yarn. Fluffy and purple this time, for her own dear niece, Jenna, who had been divorced and miserable. Charlotte hadn’t expected Jenna to reconcile with her ex-husband, but since the two now seemed deliriously happy together and were planning to tie the knot a second time just before Christmas, she certainly wasn’t going to complain. As far as she was concerned, that simply proved that the spinning wheel
did
bring true love to those who used the yarn it created.

Now there was one more person in need of the wheel’s very special powers.

Poor Grace. Another of Charlotte’s favorite knitting group members, she was such a lovely, vibrant woman. And she’d been even more lovely and vibrant in her happiness over being engaged to Zack “Hot Legs” Hoolihan, the star goalie for the Cleveland Rockets and one of the city’s homegrown heroes.

Happy, that was, until she’d walked into Zack’s hotel room one day last summer while he was on the road with the team and found another woman in his bed.

Though Charlotte had been out of town at the time, she’d heard the whole sordid story when she got home. Zack denied any wrongdoing, but Grace was adamant that she wasn’t blind and knew what she’d walked in on.

According to Jenna and Ronnie, Grace had gone a bit crazy after discovering her fiance’s infidelity. Charlotte had seen her mini-meltdown firsthand when Grace had gone on the air of her self-titled local cable television show,
Amazing Grace
, and spent the entire half-hour ranting and raving about the perfidy of men in general and Zack in particular. And apparently she had also taken a baseball bat to Zack’s red Hummer and gleefully tossed his clothes and assorted other belongings out his sixth-story window.

Although Charlotte couldn’t blame Grace for being upset, she thought such blatant destruction of property was a little over the top. Especially since Zack just as publicly and vehemently proclaimed his innocence.

Though she tended to side with Grace on the matter—after all, they were both women who knitted, and knitting women needed to stick together—Charlotte wasn’t sure exactly what to believe. As with most disagreements, she suspected the truth lay somewhere in the middle.

What
was
clear, however, was that Grace’s life was in desperate need of some divine intervention. A little sprinkle of fairy dust to help her get over the pain of her
dis
-engagement . . . and hopefully find love again.

That’s where Charlotte came in.