Loves Me, Loves Me Knot

Knit 17

Gage stood in front of his locker at the precinct, stowing his watch and trading his boots for an old pair of sneakers that had seen better days.

His team was going out on some undercover drug busts, so the faded jeans and white T-shirt he’d worn in could stay, but he’d add a skull-and-crossbones do-rag and a ratty, sleeveless denim jacket covered in scary-looking patches. That, along with his own personal body ink and a few other minor touches, should work to convince dealers he was up to no good and looking to score.

“Hey,” Eric Cruz, one of his buddies and a fellow undercover officer, said as he came up beside Gage to open his own locker. “Glad to have you back.”

“Thanks,” Gage offered without much genuine sentiment. He’d only been gone a little over a week, but knew from experience that when one of the guys was missing from an op, you felt the loss and it altered tactical strategy accordingly.

Gage had expected to feel exhilarated by his return to work. He’d always enjoyed his job, gotten a thrill out of almost every aspect of it. It was a rush to go undercover and play a role that got the bad guys to trust him, then drop the hammer and put them in jail. It was exhilarating to organize a bust and be there for the take-down.

So, yeah, lately he hadn’t felt quite as enthusiastic about it all, but when he’d first asked for time off to stay with Jenna, he’d been kind of pissed at having to leave. Then he’d decided that going away for a while might put things back in perspective and help him appreciate the job even more once he returned.

They hadn’t been in the middle of anything big when he’d taken leave, either, which was a plus. But the thought of distancing himself from his team, of having something come up that he wouldn’t be aware of, rubbed him the wrong way.

Then, after a while, he’d stopped thinking so much about what he was missing at work and had begun to simply enjoy relaxing, hanging out, and being with Jenna. He hadn’t even minded helping out with the alpacas, despite the fact that the little buggers spit when they got scared. A couple of them had also trampled his toes and come damn close to making him sing soprano.

Once he’d been sure Jenna wasn’t pregnant, though, and… okay, he hadn’t left so much as been kicked out… he’d thought he’d be relieved to get back to his usual routine. Instead, he’d found himself dragging around ever since his alarm had gone off that morning. Both physically and emotionally, he just couldn’t seem to generate a spark of interest in anything these days.

“You ready for today’s op?” Eric asked.

“Sure,” Gage responded automatically. “You?”

“Always, man. Gotta put the bad guys in jail and make the streets safe for innocent women and children.”

It was a much-used line and common joke within the PD, but for some reason, hearing it this time sent a stab of something cold and painful through Gage’s chest. His heart squeezed, and his ribcage seemed to tighten around his lungs.

Turning his head, he glanced at the inside of Eric’s locker. Aside from a small magnetic mirror and CPD decal, the door and sides were covered in family photographs. Eric and his wife. His wife and three children. School pictures of each of the kids as they passed through several different grade levels. Eric, his wife, and the kids all together in front of a tree at Christmas.

He had a family, seemed happy, didn’t appear to spend every minute worrying about what might happen. To them, or to him. Other officers-both in undercover or other departments-were married with children, as well, he knew.

How did they do it? How did they not go crazy with the knowledge of all the bad things that could happen to the ones they loved?

He wasn’t afraid of much in this world-hell, as a cop, he’d faced just about everything there was to be afraid of-but the idea of losing Jenna to violence, to having her hurt in some way and being powerless to stop it… He’d rather have his guts ripped out and stomped on while his heart was still beating and he was alive and conscious enough to feel every twinge.

The idea of having kids with her and having to worry about them, too…

He broke out in a cold sweat and realized his hands were curled into fists at his sides.

Okay, this could not be normal. For the first time, he began to realize that maybe his concern for Jenna and their possible progeny might be slightly over the top. What other explanation could there be, since the other men in his unit, other men in his line of work, didn’t seem to suffer the same reluctance to reproduce?

“Hey, Cruz?” he said in a quiet voice, the words scraping past his raw, dry throat.

“Yeah?”

He shifted back a step from the row of lockers and took a seat on the low wooden bench running between. “Can I ask you something?”

His tone must have alerted his friend that something was up because Eric’s movements slowed and he cast Gage a curious glance. “Yeah, man, sure. What’s up?”

“Your family. The wife and kids. They’re good?”

Eric’s face lit up, his mouth lifting in a smile as though someone had flipped a switch.

“They’re great, thanks.”

“And you don’t worry about them?” Gage asked.

“ ’Course I worry about them. But that’s what this is for.” He patted his chest, his palm covering the small gold cross he wore there. Always, whether it was visible or tucked inside his shirt.

Gage shook his head. “No, I mean worry about them. With all the shit we’ve seen, everything that’s out there ready to take somebody down whether they deserve it or not… Aren’t you afraid something will happen to them?”

For the first time, Eric turned to really look at him. If anything, the eye contact, the sudden intense scrutiny, made Gage nervous. He felt like enough of a pussy bringing this up to begin with; he didn’t need a coworker peering too deeply into his soul.

“I suppose if I stopped to think about it, I would,” Eric replied. “But life’s too short, man. I mean, anything could happen to any one of us at any moment. You could walk out of this building and get hit by a bus. I could trip on a shoe lace walking down the stairs and break my neck.” He shrugged. “No one to blame. Nothing anyone did or didn’t do to cause it, just an act of Fate.”

“But bringing a baby into the world,” Gage pressed. “There’s some dangerous stuff out there. Don’t you worry something will happen to them? To this innocent kid who has no way to protect himself? To your wife?”

“My wife can take care of herself,” Eric said with a chuckle. “Hell, she scares me sometimes, so I have no doubt she could bring down any jerk-off who so much as looked at her funny. She can protect the kids, too, for that matter. But to be safe,” he said, voice growing serious, “I’ve shown her a few self-defense moves. Taught her how to fend off an attack and not be too squeamish to kick a guy in the nads, if she needs to.”

Gage thought about that for a minute. He’d seen Jenna pissed, and it wasn’t pretty. No doubt she could take a man’s head off at ten paces with nothing more than a book end. (Something he unfortunately knew from personal experience.)

For that matter, since she carried those damn knitting needles around with her ninety percent of the time, she could probably stab an offender in the eye, throat, stomach, groin, thigh… anywhere she could reach. And if he taught her how to do that effectively, how to use her keys as a weapon, her purse as a weapon, her entire body as a weapon…

“What about your kids?” he asked.

Eric considered that for a moment, then said, “You know, with the kids, you pretty much have to protect them twenty-four-seven the first few years. But there’s not a lot to protect them from, street-wise, so you just keep an eye on them and make sure they don’t swallow anything smaller than their eyeballs. After that, you start teaching them, too. You teach them to look both ways before crossing the street, not to take candy from strangers, to deal with bullies at school, say no to drugs… the usual.”

“It’s that easy?” Gage asked doubtfully.

“Not quite that easy, no,” Eric admitted with a small shake of his head. “But if you do it right and raise them to see and understand the dangers, then you don’t have to worry so much about them falling into something they can’t handle.” He paused for a moment, then gave a little hmph of sound. “I guess that’s the real secret. You do the best you can to prepare them to handle whatever situations they might come across, then you pretty much have to let go and pray they make the right decisions.”

The tightness in Gage’s chest and abdomen hadn’t abated, but his mind was running about a million miles a minute, and he was relieved when Eric didn’t ask why he was suddenly so interested in all of this. He pretty much let the conversation dwindle on its own, then went back to prepping for their drug-bust operation, and Gage did the same.

Could it really be as simple as his friend made it sound? Oh, he knew raising a child wasn’t a simple matter by any stretch of the imagination, but was it possible it wasn’t the nightmare of hidden traps and dangers he’d envisioned? Folks had kids every day, right? Yeah, one was occasionally found dead in a snow bank or wandering the streets alone. But a lot weren’t.

And he could cross the fear of parental abuse right off the list, because there was no way he or Jenna would ever hurt or neglect one of their own children. If he had his way, he’d pretty much smother them in bubble wrap from head to toe the minute they were born, so even getting a paper cut would be virtually impossible.

It was too much to digest all at once, but Eric had given him something to think about. Given his rock-solid determination of the past couple years to avoid fatherhood and vulnerability at any cost, he considered that progress.

When Charlotte pulled her long, wood-panel station wagon up to her house, she’d been gone almost a full two weeks, was running on Zingers and Mountain Dew, and had to tinkle like a toy poodle.

Jenna’s car, with its adorable magnetic daisies stuck all over, was nowhere in sight. Not that Charlotte was surprised. It was, after all, Wednesday night, and she only had about an hour to hit the potty, check her darling babies-oh, how she’d missed them while she was gone-unhitch the U-Haul from the car, and get to The Yarn Barn herself.

Throwing open the driver’s-side door, she scooted around the front of the wagon, then hotfooted it into the house and headed straight for the bathroom before the little fender-bender in that expo building parking lot became only one of the accidents she had to account for from her time away.

After taking care of business, she came back downstairs and made her way out to the barn. Her babies were all tucked into their stalls for the night, dozing or enjoying some munchies. They looked healthy and fit, and Charlotte ’s heart swelled with relief.

Not that she didn’t trust Jenna to take proper care of the sweet little beasts, but no one could look after them quite the way Charlotte did. She knew each of them by name, knew their individual quirks and personalities. Knew that all-white Snowball loved tiny pieces of apple and carrot, and that the black and white Domi (short for Domino) frightened easily. Really, really easily. And he didn’t just kick or spit, as was typical of alpacas when they got nervous or scared, but his eyes went wide and he also piddled a tiny bit down his leg.

For that reason alone, she didn’t race up to her baby boy’s stall and shout the joy of her return. Instead, she waddled quickly but quietly to each stall to greet her darlings individually.

Pumpkin, one of her favorite light brown darlings, lifted her head, spotted Charlotte, and trotted over to the half-door with a wide grin on her long, narrow face.

Most people would probably say Charlotte was crazy, that alpacas couldn’t grin. But Charlotte knew better-on both counts.

“Baby!” she exclaimed, throwing her arms wide to give the creature a giant hug.

Next came Sprinkles, Daisy, Snowball, Rascal, and finally Domino, all of whom got big hugs and kisses and tons and tons of super-special Mama lovin’.

She spent longer than she probably should have snuggling with her sweetie pies, but eventually she broke away, tossed them each a bit of extra hay for being such good furry babies, and reluctantly made her way back to the station wagon.

After dragging the bulkiest pieces of her luggage to just inside the house and unhooking the trailer hitch, she gathered her most recent knitting project onto the passenger side of the front seat beside her and cranked the engine. The ancient vehicle rumbled to life, purring like a big, happy jungle cat and lurching beneath her like an industrial washing machine.

Maybe this was why she’d had a thing for hogs in her younger days. The roar of an engine, the vibrating sensation that rippled through her entire body and set her skin to tingling. All that power. All that massive metal, with some big hunk of man perched on top.

Charlotte ’s cheeks turned rosy as a flush of heat stole through her body. The girls in her knitting group might think she was just a silly old woman, but she’d been a real chippy in her day. Oh, she’d never played fast and loose-she wasn’t that kind of woman. She’d never teased the fellas just to get attention, either. But she’d had her fair share of suitors. And just like her niece, she’d had a bit of a thing for the bad-boy type.

If she’d been a few years-all right, decades, she admitted reluctantly-younger, she’d have probably set her hat for Gage herself. What a tall, tattooed drink of water he was, that one.

With a shake of her bright orange beehived ’do, she put the wagon in gear and backed out of the drive, setting off down the graveled road toward town at a fast enough clip that a giant cloud of dust and dirt blew out behind her, kicked up by her rear tires.

Thinking about Jenna and Gage made her wonder what had happened with the skein of yarn she’d left with her niece before going on the road. It was magic yarn, infused with special true love powers, so surely something wonderful had occurred by now, right?

Perhaps Jenna had met a nice young man and fallen madly in love. Granted, she’d only been gone two weeks, but Charlotte was a firm believer in soul mates and love at first sight. And with the extra-special yarn at work, drawing in suitable mates, anything could happen.

At five minutes after eight, she pulled into the parking lot of the strip mall where The Yarn Barn nestled snugly between a coffee shop and one of those ninety-nine-cent stores. She found an open space only a few spaces from the front door, grabbed her things, and hurried inside.

There was a skip in her step and a wide smile on her face, not only because she’d been gone for so long and missed her Knit-Witting pals, but because she couldn’t wait to hear about Jenna’s whirlwind romance. She just knew her niece would be grinning from ear to ear, bursting at the seams to share her good news.

The others had already arrived, filling most of the chairs that the store had arranged in a circle around a small coffee table for multiple crafting groups to use on different afternoons and evenings during the week. There was a crochet group, a quilting group, a sewing group, and even an appliqué class that met in the same space.

Several reusable ceramic mugs with The Yarn Barn logo on them sat on the low table, filled with both hot and cold drinks from the small refreshment area the store provided, and the steady, staccato click and clack of needles coming together could be heard over friendly chit-chat.

Charlotte loved that sound. It was a sound of comfort to her. Of home and happiness.

“Hello, everyone,” she greeted them, taking a seat across the circle from her favorite members of the group-Jenna, Ronnie, and Grace. Of course, they were her favorites because she knew them best and spent the most time with them outside of their weekly knitting meetings.

Cries of “ Charlotte!” went up all around, warming her right down to her toes. She’d only been absent from two meetings, but she’d really missed them, and it felt good to be back and to receive such a cheerful welcome.

“How was your trip?” Grace wanted to know after everyone had jumped up to hug her. And that nearly overlapped Ronnie’s inquiry of “When did you get back?”

She told them all about her time on the road, becoming one with the highway and the big-rig drivers who made it their home. The truck stops where she’d eaten, and the rundown motels where she’d stayed. She’d been like Thelma on her way to meet Louise.

And then there had been the craft shows, which were held in giant fair auxiliary buildings or outdoors on the huge fairgrounds themselves. They’d bustled with crowds and been filled with vendors hawking every kind of craft and handmade item imaginable, and Charlotte had done a good bit of business for herself and others whose pieces she’d taken along to sell.

But the shows hadn’t been nearly as exciting as the freedom of the road, moving from place to place, and feeling the wind blow through her hair as she raced along the interstates. With the possible exception of missing her babies and the Knit Wit meetings, she almost couldn’t wait until next year to get back out there and do it all over again.

Although… come to think of it, she might have to consider either a new hairstyle or a hat of some sort. Maybe a helmet or set of scarves in different colors and prints. Because that wind blowing through the open windows of the wagon had really played havoc with her beautiful, bright red upsweep. If she hadn’t used so much hairspray to keep it in place, and then to work it back into place each time she stopped to tinkle, she would have looked positively frightful at the end of every day.

It wasn’t until she’d finished regaling everyone in the circle with stories of her adventures of the last two weeks that she realized Jenna had been unusually quiet. Well, not unusually quiet for sad, divorced Jenna, but unusually quiet for ecstatically happy, newly infatuated Jenna.

“So how did things go for you out at the farm, dear?” she fished. “Was everything all right?”

Did a gorgeous hunk of man get lost on that dusty old road and stumble to the door to ask for directions? Did you invite him in for a sip of tea to quench his mighty thirst and end up offering yourself on a silver platter, as well?

Her niece offered a friendly smile, but anyone with eyes could see it was forced.

“Everything was fine,” Jenna assured her. “I took very good care of your babies.”

“I could see that,” Charlotte said with a nod. “I stopped by to check on them before coming here, and they looked wonderful. Thank you again for staying there with them these last two weeks.”

The group lapsed into silence and Charlotte ’s dark eyebrows-which clashed drastically with her carrot-red hair-came together in a frown as she studied her niece even more closely. The lackluster expression, the slow, methodical motion of her hands as she knit at about one-quarter her usual speed.

Jenna certainly didn’t look like she’d been bitten by the love bug recently. A flu bug, maybe. The bumblebee of depression, possibly. But nothing close to a love bug.

Could it be that the yarn hadn’t worked its magic this time around?

No. Charlotte wouldn’t believe that. It had done such a marvelous job with Ronnie and Dylan-two people who’d barely been able to stand the sight of each other in the beginning-that she simply couldn’t believe it wouldn’t also work wonders for Jenna. Jenna, who was open and looking for love.

It felt like there were ants in Charlotte ’s pants as she tried to remain still in her seat and not ask what the Jolly Green Giant had gone wrong. Hadn’t Jenna used the soft purple yarn she’d given her? Was that the problem?

Charlotte wasn’t at all certain what the qualifications and nuances of the magical spinning wheel were, so it was entirely possible that simply possessing or touching the yarn wasn’t enough to invoke its powers. Maybe one had to actually use it to create something before those powers were released. Maybe-as had been the case with Ronnie and Dylan-both parties had to touch and use it for the enchantment to work.

Lordy, Lordy, if that was the case, then they were in trouble, indeed. How many times could she count on Fate bringing a man and woman together long enough to knit with a magic skein of yarn?

The fact that Ronnie and Dylan had done just that was a miracle in itself, and something Charlotte didn’t think she could either count on happening again, ever in this lifetime, or manipulate into taking place.

Her heart gave a little lurch in her chest as another horrible thought struck. What if she’d done something wrong? What if she’d used the wrong type of fibers this time, or hadn’t spun them quite right?

What if the beautiful, solid-oak spinning wheel that had been handed down through generations of women in her family and was reputed to be enchanted with the ability to create true love was nothing of the sort? What if it was just a solid-oak spinning wheel, meant to spin new yarn out of fibers, and nothing more?

A chill swept Charlotte from the top of her Lucille Ball head to the corn pads stuck to her toes. She’d been so sure the wheel was infused with magic. So sure she could help to bring about true love matches through a hobby she already adored.

But if the wheel was just a wheel, then that meant Veronica and Dylan working out their differences and falling for one another was nothing more than a fluke. A natural human occurrence.

How dreadfully boring and mundane.

It also meant that Charlotte had no hope of drawing Jenna out of her self-imposed shell and helping her to fall in love again.

Sigh. Perhaps she was giving up too soon. Thinking the worst before she had definitive proof that the yarn from the enchanted spinning wheel had failed. She needed details, doggone it, so she could get a better handle on what was going on and whether her machinations had made at least a small dent in her niece’s love life-or lack thereof-or not.

Unable to stand the ominous silence a second more, she piped up and directed a pointed question in Jenna’s direction. “Did you keep busy while I was away? I hope you weren’t bored out there all by yourself.”

Grace snorted, quickly lifting a hand to cover the rest of her laugh. Something was definitely going on here, Charlotte thought, narrowing her heavily lined eyes in suspicion.

“Actually, Charlotte,” Ronnie offered, casting a chastising glance at her blond friend, “a lot has happened since you took off.”

“Oh?” Charlotte asked, scooching forward in her seat a fraction, trying not to appear overly curious. “Like what?”

“Like discovering Zachary Hoolihan is a cheating dickwad SOB whose ass had to be kicked to the curb,” Grace grumbled.

“Oh, my.” Charlotte ’s eyes widened and her cheeks heated at the ferocity of Grace’s statement.

Playing the part of levelheaded narrator, Ronnie quickly filled her in on Grace’s discovery of her fiancé-ex-fiancé now, it seemed-in bed with another woman while on the road for a charity event with some of the other players from the Rockets team.

Grace scathingly referred to the other woman as a “puck bunny.” For a moment, though, Charlotte considered asking her physician to fit her with a hearing aid because she thought Grace had said something very different. Something that started with a letter that came much earlier in the alphabet and wasn’t any official hockey term that she’d ever heard.

“That’s terrible,” Charlotte offered. “I’m so sorry, dear.”

Grace inclined her head and kept her mouth in a tight line, putting on a good show of remaining unmoved. But Charlotte didn’t miss the telltale glimmer that filled her prettily madeup eyes. When she thought no one was looking, she sniffed, then wiped a finger beneath her lashes to remove any hint of moisture.

Poor Grace, Charlotte thought, her heart tugging in sympathy. She’d been so happy, so deliriously happy with that young man and all her elaborate wedding plans.

She’d even started knitting her own wedding gown, which Charlotte had been thrilled about. Not many young people would be willing to put the time and effort into such complicated projects, and she’d been eager to see the final results.

The miniscule needles and thin, white yarn were conspicuously absent at this evening’s meeting, Charlotte suddenly noticed. And no wonder. If Grace’s intended had stepped out on her, she wouldn’t have continued working on any part of the wedding plans, either.

Through all of this, Jenna had once again remained ominously silent, keeping her gaze locked on the long aqua-blue boa she was knitting. Aqua blue, not purple. Not the yarn Charlotte had given her before she’d gone wheels up and taken off for adventure in the great beyond.

“And what about you, Jenna, dear?” she asked pointedly. Come Hell or high water, she would find out what had happened with her niece while she was gone. And where in St. Petersburg the enchanted yarn had gone!

In response to Charlotte ’s question, Jenna blanched, Grace chuckled, and Ronnie’s mouth twisted to one side.

Hmm. Things just kept getting curiouser and curiouser.

“Our little Jenna had herself a booty call while you were away, Aunt Charlotte,” Grace provided, her tone laced with glee.

Charlotte raised a brow as the color rushed back into her niece’s face. She wasn’t entirely clear on what a booty call was, but thought Grace’s intonation and Jenna’s accompanying embarrassment were pretty good indications that it was something naughty.

Continuing to act as diplomatic moderator for their little triumvirate, Ronnie calmly supplied, “Jenna and Gage spent a bit of time together while you were away.”

“Oh, my goodness,” Charlotte exclaimed. She certainly hadn’t been expecting to hear anything like that.

“At last report, things were still going hot and heavy.” Grace grinned and let go of her knitting long enough to flip a lock of blond hair back over her shoulder. She shot Jenna a lascivious, expectant glance and added, “We haven’t gotten an update for this week yet.”

“Actually,” Jenna said in a tiny, almost voice, keeping her gaze glued to her needles, “he left, and he won’t be coming back.”

Everyone in the circle heard the pain in Jenna’s voice, noticed the white-knuckled grip she had on her knitting and that she’d stopped stitching altogether.

“Oh, honey.” Dropping her own knitting, Grace dragged her chair closer to Jenna’s side and took her hands. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t know. And here I was being such a smart-ass.”

“It’s okay,” Jenna murmured, although her watery voice and wavering words clearly revealed the claim to be a lie. “It was just sex, and we both knew it wasn’t leading anywhere. It had to end sometime.”

Ronnie, who had leaned in close to Jenna’s other side and was rubbing comforting circles in the center of her back, whispered, “But you didn’t want it to, did you?”

Jenna took a deep, shuddering breath. “It doesn’t matter.” Straightening slightly, she shook her head, sending her short, black hair fluttering. “Things were never going to work out. Not while we were married, and not now.”

She lifted her gaze, which was wet with tears. “He’s never going to change his mind. I don’t think I ever really believed that before, but I do now.”

“What did he say?” Grace wanted to know.

Jenna shook her head again and gave her two closest friends a meaningful glance that clearly said she’d share the details with them later, but wasn’t ready to bare her soul just yet, in front of everyone. “Suffice to say I got the point this time. Loud and clear.”

Inhaling dramatically, Grace wrapped her arm around Jenna’s shoulders and squeezed her close. “We make quite the pair, don’t we? Obviously we are not cut out to be involved with the males of our species. I say we swear off the opposite sex altogether,” she announced with feeling. “We should start a ‘Men are Scum’ Club, where we sit around drinking girlie cocktails and discussing why testosterone is the curse of humanity and anyone with a Y-chromosome should be dragged into the street and shot.”

At first, Charlotte didn’t think Grace’s good-natured teasing would have the desired effect. Jenna looked entirely too miserable to find anything amusing at this point.

But after a few minutes, she sniffed, wiped at her cheeks with the back of her hand, then raised her head to face Grace. “Can I be the president?”

Grace chuckled and hugged her again. “Absolutely. I’ll be your vice president, and we’ll have signs and buttons made up to promote the group. Our logo will be a twig and two berries with a big red line through them. No dicks allowed.”

Laughter went around the circle, breaking the veil of tension that had fallen over the group. Slowly but surely, the women returned to their knitting, filling the area once again with the clickety-clack of needles on needles.

Grace and Ronnie, too, leaned back in their seats and picked up their respective projects.

“I think you’re just looking for another excuse to toss back pretty-colored drinks,” Ronnie shot in Grace’s direction.

“Like I need an excuse,” Grace retorted. Then, in a stage whisper aside to Jenna, she said, “Don’t listen to her. She’s been consorting with the enemy and is just jealous she hasn’t had an epiphany about what assholes they are like the rest of us enlightened ones.”

Ronnie raised a skeptical brow. “Until recently, you were ‘consorting’ with the enemy, too. More often than I do, I’d venture to guess.”

Grace rolled her eyes and leaned forward to stick her tongue out at Ronnie around Jenna, who sat between them. “But I have since seen the error of my ways,” she proclaimed in a very put-upon tone. “That’s why they call it an epiphany and why I’m enlightened, thankyou-verymuch.”

From there, the conversation broke down into dirty jokes and the denigration of men, with Zack Hoolihan and Gage Marshall getting the brunt of the women’s disgruntlement.

Charlotte was barely listening to any of that, though. She was much too wrapped up in worries over why the enchanted yarn hadn’t worked.

It had apparently gotten Jenna and Gage back together for a short while-which certainly hadn’t been her intention. She’d wanted Jenna to find a new man, not go back to the same one who’d already broken her heart once before. (Even if Gage was a nice enough young fellow otherwise.)

But if the yarn had gotten them back together, then it was supposed to keep them together. The spinning wheel was said to create yarn that brought true love, not temporary lust with a misery chaser.

This wasn’t good, and it wasn’t right, and there had to be something she could do.