The True Love Quilting Club (14 page)

“Actually,” Terri said, “Ted says that in the pain department it’s pretty equivalent.”

Raylene rolled her eyes. “Another man’s opinion. What we need to confirm this is a woman who had passed kidney stones and given birth. Anyone?”

No one spoke up.

“So G.C.’s kidney stones are the best we can do?” Belinda asked. “Ladies, we’ve sunk to an all-time low.”

“You’re the one who reads the
National Enquirer
. Anything interesting in there since you read about Emma?”

“Not particularly. Madonna’s adopting another kid from some foreign country.”

“That one’s a publicity hog,” Raylene said.

“Now, now,” Marva chided. “You don’t know what’s in her heart.”

“Am I the only one bold enough to say what everyone else is thinking? Why do I have to keep being the lightning rod?” Raylene groused.

“’Cause you do it so well.” Nina stretched her neck from side to side, working out the quilting kinks.

The group fell silent for a moment, everyone stitching on the quilt. Even in spite of the teasing and arguing, or maybe because of it, Emma could tell how much these women loved and depended on each other. It made her feel unexpectedly sad.

“How’s Jimmy?” Marva asked Patsy.

Jenny leaned over to whisper in Emma’s ear, “Jimmy is Patsy’s husband. He has Alzheimer’s so bad she had to put him in a home. Such a shame.”

“Jimmy’s the same.” Patsy sighed. “Yesterday he called me by his sister’s name. That’s actually an improvement. The time before, he accused me of being a spy for the CIA.”

“Anything new with Hondo?” Raylene asked.

The whole group sort of froze in mid-stitch.

“Sheriff Hondo Crouch,” Jenny whispered to Emma, “was Patsy’s high school sweetheart, but things didn’t work out for them. Lots of dark, brooding history. But she’s still in love with him.”

“Jennifer Cheek Cantrell, I am sitting right here and you don’t whisper very quietly,” Patsy scolded. “And
for your information I am
not
in love with Hondo Crouch.”

Raylene snorted. “Yeah, and I don’t have a bottle of airplane-sized vodka in my purse.”

Patsy and Raylene glared at each other, and everyone slid to the edge of her chair, on the verge of running for cover in case World War III broke out right there in the fellowship hall of the Methodist church.

Haughtily, Patsy lifted her chin up, narrowed a look at Raylene that could have killed her if she didn’t have such a tough hide, and said, “Out of respect for our servicemen and women, I’m going to ignore that. This quilt needs to get made.”

“Well, it’s true, Patsy, you know you’ve loved that man since you were seventeen.” Raylene’s voice softened.

Patsy’s bottom lip quivered. She ducked her head and stared at the block of quilt in front of her. “Are we going to quilt or not?”

Everyone went to quilting, and for a long time, no one said anything. Dotty Mae was the first one to break the silence. “Did anyone else see the article in
Quilters’ Monthly
about the woman who was making quilts for the local nursing homes and ended up finding her long-lost mother living in one?”

“What happened?” Marva threaded her needle.

“Turns out the mother had gotten some kind of amnesia years ago and someone found her wandering dazed and confused along the highway,” Dotty Mae continued. “The state didn’t know what to do with her, so they called her Jane Doe and stuffed her in a nursing home. It was supposed to be a heartwarming story because the mother had been the one to teach her daughter how to quilt, and now quilts had brought
them back together again, but I thought it was real sad. Here that poor girl was thinking all these years that her mother just up and ran out on her. Come to find out they’d been living in the same city all along.”

Emma sat staring at the midnight blue star she was quilting, and a sudden thought occurred to her. What if something like that had happened to her mother? What if right now Sylvie was lying in some nursing home confused and forgotten? The idea of it made her gut tighten.

Why should you worry about Sylvie? She didn’t worry about leaving you confused and forgotten when she went off to Hollywood with Cadillac Man.

Maybe not, but a bad case of amnesia would explain why she’d never contacted Emma again. Never sent letters, never called. Then there was the other alternative. Sylvie was dead. Maybe Cadillac Man had killed her and cut her body into pieces and stuffed her into his trunk. A Cadillac trunk was big enough to accommodate a dead body.

Yeah, right, you wish you had a decent explanation for being abandoned by your mother. Traumatic amnesia. Dramatic dismemberment.

The real truth was probably a lot more mundane. Sylvie didn’t give a shit. And yet, stupid hope flickered. Maybe, just maybe, her mother was out there somewhere needing her.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Terri argued. “Surely the media covered Jane Doe’s disappearance. How come the daughter didn’t hear about it?”

“It was a big city. Atlanta, I think, and the girl and her mother had had a big fight about her going to Europe with a boyfriend. The girl left and that’s when something bad happened to the mother, they still don’t
know what caused the amnesia. Wanna know how the girl first recognized her mama after all those years?”

“How?” Belinda asked.

“Through a quilt she had on her bed. The woman and her mother had made that quilt together when the woman was just a teenager.”

“I don’t see how that can happen these days, what with fingerprintin’ and DNA testing and all,” Raylene said. “I mean they make you give your thumbprint to get your driver’s license. You’re on file
somewhere
. The government don’t want you wanderin’ around unidentified.”

Patsy held up a hand like a stop sign. “Don’t get going with Earl’s crazy conspiracy theory stuff.”

“Well it doesn’t matter whether it makes sense or not,” Dotty Mae said. “It’s the way it happened. She fell through the cracks. People fall through the cracks all the time. Somebody drops the ball, doesn’t do their job, and
wham
, you’re stuck in a nursing home with no name, waiting for your long-lost daughter to come and find you.”

“At least she had her quilt,” Jenny said.

“Yes,” they all commented in unison, and nodded their heads as if having a quilt made up for everything.

Emma dreaded the sheepdog herding trials.

Come prepared to amaze yourself
, Sam had said. In between the playacting and the quilting, the thought had circled Emma’s brain for the last ten days. Easy for Sam to say. He had no idea just how dogs struck terror in her heart.

On the other hand, he was right. She did need to conquer this fear if she wanted to be in this play. She’d tried to convince Nina to cut the Border collie from the script, but Nina wasn’t budging. Rebekka had raised and trained sheepdogs. Rebel’s role was essential. It was historically accurate. Emma simply had to deal with it.

Fine, great, okay. She could do this. Emma drew in a deep breath and gave herself a pep talk in front of the mirror in the pink VIP bathroom at the Merry Cherub. All around her, angels looked on. She could almost hear the theme from
Rocky
being played on a chorus of harps.

She finished her makeup and dressed simply in blue jeans; a baby-doll, teal T-shirt—emblazoned with the slogan “Everything’s Better at Twilight”—that she’d bought at the Teal Peacock; and a pair of sneakers. She pulled her hair back in a ponytail. Today she was playing girl-next-door, plucky and brave. That’s how she would survive this day. By acting the part.

A few minutes before eight, she clamored down the stairs and headed for the kitchen, her mind on one of Jenny’s delicious banana muffins, only to find Sam sitting with his sister at the kitchen table.
Ulp.
He was here already and she hadn’t finished psyching herself up for the meeting.

And he was looking damn good in faded blue jeans and a long-sleeved blue chambray shirt. He had on cowboy boots, and Patches lay at his feet. The minute Emma walked into the room, the dog raised his head.

Sam made a soft
shhtt
noise and the Border collie immediately lowered his head.

Awesome. What she wouldn’t give for that kind of control.

“Hey,” she said.

“Morning.” He grinned at her.

“Um…you’re early.”

“Jenny told me she’d made banana nut muffins. They’re my favorite.”

“Have a seat, Emma,” Jenny said, getting up from the table. “I’ll get you a cup of coffee.”

“Shouldn’t we be going?” Emma asked Sam. Sitting here sharing breakfast did not seem like a good idea when she was trying hard not to have the hots for this guy. Seriously, come on, who wouldn’t have the hots for him? With those dark eyes and those full lips and those earlobes just made for nibbling.

Stop it!

“I’ll put your coffee in a travel mug,” Jenny called over her shoulder. “You’re going to come back a changed woman.”

“How can you be so sure?” Emma said, snatching up a banana nut muffin from the basket on the table. They were still warm.

“When it comes to animals, Sam’s got the magic touch. You’re going to be amazed at yourself.” Jenny returned and handed her two travel mugs. “The orange one is Sam’s. Decaf, black, no sugar. The green one is yours. Fully loaded—caffeine, three sugars, a tablespoon of heavy cream.”

“Thank you.”

“No wonder you’re so nervous all the time,” Sam said. “Drinking that muck.”

“I have a fast metabolism,” Emma said. “I need it to keep me going.”

“Needing it isn’t healthy.”

“Ah, don’t tell me you’re the caffeine police.”

“I’ll cut you some slack today,” he teased, “seeing as how you’re about to eat a rat.”

“What?” Jenny looked startled. “Eeew.”

Sam smiled at Emma, and she grinned back at their private joke. “Figure of speech,” Sam explained to his sister. “You ready to go, Trixie Lynn?”

Growing up, she’d hated the name Trixie Lynn, but when Sam said it, well, it sounded kind of good. With coffee cups and muffins in hand, they went out the door. Patches immediately circled around beside Emma, and she shied behind Sam.

“No,” he said, “don’t shrink away. Let him know who is boss.”

“He already knows he is.”

Sam balanced his muffin on the top of his travel mug and slapped his left outer thigh twice. “Heel.”

Patches ducked his head and trotted over to Sam’s left side.

“You make it look so easy.”

“By the end of the day, you’ll be doing it too.”

She took her sunglasses from her purse and slipped them on.

“Optimistic fellow.”

Sam just laughed. They walked around the back of the Jeep, and Sam opened the rear door so Patches could jump in. Then he followed Emma around to the passenger side and he opened her door too.

“Bucking for white knight of the year?”

“Huh?”

“You don’t have to open my door for me. I’ve been doing it all by my little ol’ self for years. And look, I have hands, not paws. Opposable thumbs make all kinds of things possible.”

He looked taken aback. “What?”

“You’re totally patronizing me.”

“By opening the door?”

Okay, she officially sounded insane. What was the matter with her?

“Let me get this straight,” he said. “You’re insulted by the fact I held the door open for you?”

“I’m not helpless.”

“I never said you were. I was just taught it was good manners to hold a door open for a lady.”

“Yeah, in 1300
A.D
.” She slid into the seat. Why was she picking a fight with him? Honestly, she loved having her door opened for her. It made her feel protected and safe and…She knew the world was not a safe place and it was stupid to let your guard down
or believe that someone else would take care of you, have your back.

“You’re
mad
at me?”

“Not mad exactly.”

He slammed the door, glowered, and stalked around the front of the Jeep to get in behind the wheel. He started to put the key in the ignition, but stopped halfway there. “Oh, wait, maybe I’m patronizing you by assuming I should drive.” He held out the key to her. “You want to drive?”

“No.”

“I don’t get it. If I open the door for you, I’m being a chauvinistic lunkhead.”

“I never said that.”

His gaze tracked over her. “You implied it.”

She had no response for that. She
had
implied it.

“But you don’t think it’s chauvinistic for me to get behind the wheel without asking you if you’d like to drive.”

“That’s right.” She calmly snapped her seat belt in place, trying to pretend she didn’t notice how intimate it felt inside the front seat of the Jeep with him.

“Why? What’s the difference?”

“Because I don’t know how to drive.”

He whipped his head around to stare at her. “You don’t how to drive?”

“I’ve lived in Manhattan for almost half my life.”

“Why didn’t you learn before you went to New York?”

“Why do I have to justify this to you?”

“I’ve never known anyone over the age of sixteen who didn’t know how to drive.”

“Then you’ve just had your horizons broadened. News flash, there’s an entire world outside of Twilight.”

“It’s not the world I live in.”

“You’ve got that right,” she mumbled.

“What was that?” He cocked his head as if he were hard of hearing, but she knew he’d heard her. “You say something you want to say louder?”

“Oh, look.” She pointed out the window. “Cows.”

“Hey!”

“What?”

“We were having a discussion and you threw in the Herefords,” he said, not letting her get away with a thing. The Jeep bumped over train tracks as they turned off Highway 377 onto the Farm to Market Road that led to Cleburne.

“Herefords? Is that what they’re called? What makes them Herefords?”

“They’re red and white and have curly hair. You’re trying to distract me.”

“Is it working?” She peeked over at him. He was frowning, his hands clinging tight to the steering wheel perfectly at ten and two. That was Sam. Traditional, rooted. She remembered that he was a Taurus. It made sense if you believed in astrology, which she wasn’t sure she did, but in his case the Taurus characteristics seemed to apply—stable, conservative, reliable, home-loving.

“No it’s not working. Let’s hash this out.”

“Do we have to?”

“You brought it up.”

“And now I’m bringing it down.” She smiled, hoping he’d let it go.

“What’s wrong with the world I live in?” he persisted.

Emma sighed. How had she gotten sucked into this conversation? “You’re not letting this go, are you?”

“Bulldog, bone, me.” With each word he smacked his palm against the dashboard for emphasis.

“And that means…?”

“I’m not letting this go.”

Emma was slow to respond. She was busy staring at the way his jeans pulled across his muscular thighs. How dumb was this? Lusting after a man she was in the process of pissing off. “There’s nothing wrong with the world you live in. It’s all lollipops and rainbows and merry cherubs.”

“Excuse me?” he growled.

Speaking of dumb, it wasn’t particularly smart the way her body responded to his low, deep Texas drawl. Her nerve endings sensitized, as if he was slowly trailing calloused fingertips over her skin. All kinds of unwanted—okay, she did want them, but she shouldn’t—urges washed over her. She wished he would pull the car over on the side of the road with nothing around them but ranchland, kill the engine, pull her across the seat, and kiss her until she couldn’t breathe. She wanted to kiss him back so ferociously that
he
couldn’t breathe either.

“I lost my wife in a war. My six-year-old hasn’t spoken since his mother’s death. When I was sixteen, I was mauled by a mountain lion and scarred for life. You call those things lollipops and rainbows and merry cherubs?”

She felt ashamed of herself. Why hadn’t she just kept her mouth shut? What was it that made her say stupid things she didn’t even mean?

“Wait a minute.” Sam snapped his fingers. “I might be slow on the uptake, but I get what this is.”

“What what is?”

“Why you’re deliberately trying to pick a fight.”

“Who me? I’m too impetuous to do anything deliberately.”

“That’s what you’d like everyone to think, but it’s not true. You’re trying to get out of this dog herding thing so you don’t have to face your fears. Well, it’s not going to work.”

“You got me,” she said, letting him think that was the reason she was being so difficult. It was better than his learning the truth. That she was really stirring up an argument not because she was scared of dogs but because she was scared of her feelings for him.

“Time to start facing those fears,” he said, and turned off the main road.

Sam slowed as they drove over a cattle guard and on past through a wrought-iron gate proclaiming that this was the Triple C Ranch. Other vehicles were turning in as well and parking out in a field. Beyond the field a perimeter had been set up. There were small flocks of sheep housed inside numerous portable pens. The minute Patches smelled sheep, he started whining and pacing circles in the back of the Jeep.

Border collies were everywhere, a virtual sea of black and white.

“You okay?” Sam asked.

“Um…no.”

He reached across the seat to squeeze her shoulder. She looked into his soulful dark eyes and felt fear of a wholly different kind. The pulse at the hollow of her throat fluttered wildly and her hands trembled. She rolled them into fists, sank her nails into the flesh of her palms.

“You can do this. Remember, you went to Manhattan all by yourself when you were eighteen. That took an incredible amount of guts.”

“Yeah and look how well that turned out.”

“What do you mean? You made a home there for twelve years. You did great.”

“Little do you know I was hocking the last thing of value I owned in order to get the money to take an acting class from some guru, who was probably just a scam artist, in a desperate attempt to jumpstart my flagging career, and that was
before
the Scott Miller fiasco.”

“What did you pawn?”

“My mother’s star brooch.”

“Emma, no.”

“Yes.”

“But that meant so much to you. It was the only thing you had of your mother’s. It was a symbol of your dreams.”

She shrugged. “I told you I was rock bottom.”

“Well, to me, that just proved how damn courageous you really are.”

“I can’t…I don’t…”

“You can and you do,” he said firmly but gently. “Now come on. Let’s do this.”

She gulped, undid her seat belt, and hopped out of the Jeep before he could come around to her side and be chivalrous again. She met him at the back of the Jeep. He had a leash in his hand and he passed it to her. Then he took a thin wooden crook from the back.

“You look like Little Bo Peep.” She chuckled.

“Don’t laugh. You’ll be using it today.”

“I will?”

“Yep, but for now, you’re going to snap the leash clasp onto Patches’s collar,” Sam said.

“What if he snaps my neck?”

“He’s not going to hurt you. Just remember he is interested in one thing and one thing only. Those sheep. This is what he was born to do. He loves doing his job more than anything on earth.”

“So he’s an exemplary employee,” she said, trying to keep things light so she didn’t cringe at the sound of dogs barking.

“He is at that.” Sam smiled. “Once you have the leash on his collar, and he’s calm, I’ll open the door. He can’t get out until he’s calm.”

“And I’m supposed to be the one to calm him?”

“Yes.”

“How do I do that?” Nervously she nibbled her bottom lip.

He reached up to place his index finger to her lip. His skin tasted slightly salty. “By not exhibiting any anxiety. Stop biting your lip.”

“But I
am
anxious.”

“You can’t let Patches know it. Animals sense your emotional state. So take a deep breath.”

She did.

“Hold it. That’s good.”

Air buoyed her chest. She noticed Sam noticed.

“Now let it out slowly.”

She hissed out her breath.

“Now let yourself go loose. Shake your body all over, like you’re a dog shaking off water.”

She got into it. Jumping and shaking, flinging off the tension, wriggling her arms, shuffling her feet, rotating her neck like a boxer getting ready to climb into the ring. It felt like an acting exercise.