Home Sweet Home (16 page)

N
ate and Madison walked into Lake Yarns as Andi was ringing up her last customer of the day. Madison showed her brother all the yarns she liked while Andi closed up. It should have only taken Andi five minutes to clear out the register and put away the order forms she’d been filling out, but the collage of images of her and Nate together in his bed, then in his kitchen, all the words they’d said—
“I love you”
and
“it’s still a mistake”
and
“you are so beautiful”
and
“please, Nate, now”
—made her slow and clumsy and confused with the money and papers.

Finally when the three of them were all in his truck together, Madison asked, “How old were you when you learned to knit, Andi?”

More glad than she could ever say to have Nate’s sister as a buffer between them, Andi screwed up her mouth and thought about it.

“Honestly, I can’t remember not knowing how.”

“Babies can’t hold knitting needles.”

Andi had to laugh at that. “You’re right. I wasn’t a baby. But I couldn’t have been more than four or five.”

There hadn’t been any formal training, just years of sitting at her mother’s and grandmother’s knees, of being like any normal girl and wanting to do what they did.

Until that day she’d realized she wasn’t like them, that she didn’t fit in, that she wasn’t girlie enough or good enough with her hands. She was good with numbers and arguing. She wasn’t soft and small and rounded. She was tall and lean and dark like her father.

“Andi even made me a scarf once.”

She looked at Nate in surprise. “I did?”

“Do the words Christmas and first grade mean anything to you?”

A vision of a lumpy, putrid-green mess full of holes jumped into Andi’s brain, and she had to groan. “Unfortunately yes.”

“So you weren’t always really good at it?”

Andi suddenly realized why Madison was asking her these questions. She must not be feeling she was good enough at something. She must not be confident that she could ever learn how to get things right.

Boy, she was certainly coming to the right person on that one.

“Honestly, I’m still not really good at it.” Andi shifted as far as she could from beneath her seat belt to meet Madison’s eyes. “But if I wanted to, with enough practice and dedication and focus, I know I could get really good at it.”

“So, the only reason you’re not good at knitting is because you don’t want to be good at it?”

Andi had to take a moment with that one. And then it was the craziest thing, but she found herself saying, “You want to know the truth?”

“Yes.”

Nate’s eyes were still on the dark road, but Andi could feel his focus on her now, too, as both he and his sister waited for her answer.

“I’m not good at knitting because I quit too young. I got frustrated, and instead of working through it, I told myself it was stupid. I told myself I didn’t like it.”

But she had. She’d loved sitting with her mother and grandmother making easy hats while they made the more difficult mittens and booties for newborn babies.

“And you know what I wish?”

“Yeah,” Madison said easily. “You wish you hadn’t totally lied to yourself.”

Andi barely kept her mouth from falling open. “Pretty much.”

Speaking of lies, Andi couldn’t stand keeping what she had done from Nate another second longer. Thankfully that was when Madison put her headphones on.

Still, even with his sister listening to music, Andi wanted to be careful. How many times had she sat there with her headphones on, listening in on her parents’ conversations, to things she shouldn’t have heard? Her mother offering to come back to D.C. with Andi for an extended trip but not really meaning it. Her father looking almost relieved at telling her to stay at Emerald Lake.

“I filed the papers today.” She waited for Nate’s reaction, for a telltale sign of his anger.

“I know.”

It killed her that she couldn’t read him. “If I could have waited even one more day—”

“You wouldn’t have made the deadline today if you had.”

Knowing he couldn’t have possibly seen the final plans yet, she had to say, “I convinced my client to throw in a new football field, too.” Hoping to cut off the objections she was sure had to be coming, she quickly said, “I didn’t do it to try and buy your support. I just thought it would really help the town.”

He sighed then. “I appreciate you giving me a heads-up about the project, but the way I see it, there’s the condos and politics and football fields. And then there’s you and me. Just us, Andi.”

She felt like she’d been so clear with him about the fact that “you and me” wasn’t going anywhere, wasn’t going past one night of giving into the need to hold each other for just a few precious hours. Why was he so determined not to listen?

If she could have, she would have reminded him about their
mistake
, that last night was a one-time-only thing. But she couldn’t, not with his sister in the seat behind them.

Somehow Andi was going to get through this visit to her grandmother, focus all of her energy on the woman she loved so much, and then in a couple of hours, she’d be back in her mother’s house again. Just her and her computer, no Nate there to tempt her.

Yes, in just a couple of hours, she’d be perfectly safe.

And completely alone. Again.

Evelyn could see there was something different between her granddaughter and the mayor the second they walked in with his sister. Their bond was strong again, the air between them fairly crackling with electricity. Andi was especially tense. Nate was particularly watchful.

Madison ran over first and hugged her—so young, so fresh, so happy because of all her brother had done to give her a good life.

Andi dropped a basket of cards onto a nearby table. “Grandma! It’s so good to see you sitting up. You look great.”

Over Andi’s shoulder, Evelyn kept her eagle eye on the project Carol was knitting.

“Carol,” she rasped out, “too tight.”

“Mother?”

Evelyn looked at Carol. “Give. Andi. Finish.”

Carol held up the barely begun project in her hands in clear confusion. “The Fair Isle? You want me to give it to Andi?”

Evelyn nodded and Carol frowned. Evelyn nodded again, and Carol gave the barely started sweater to a very bemused Andi, who had watched their exchange in confusion.

“You. Make this.”

Evelyn suddenly realized why she’d had to start another Fair Isle sweater in the exact pattern she’d made for Carlos so long ago on the day that her granddaughter had arrived back at Emerald Lake. She had thought it was because of the memories, because age and her dreams were taking her closer to him all the time. But now she knew the real reason.

The sweater was Evelyn’s second chance at true love.

A chance that meant so much more because it wasn’t for her.

Nate was aware of Andi’s nerves during the whole drive home from the hospital. She didn’t fidget. Instead she was strangely still. Too still.

And then finally, they hit the only stop sign in town. Left to her house, right to his, and he still hadn’t figured out a way to try and convince Andi to stay with them again. Not when he could practically see her building walls—complete with reinforcements—every minute they were together.

Right then, Madison asked, “Do you like spaghetti?”

Andi practically jumped out of her seat. “Spaghetti?”

“Yeah, ’cause Nate makes the best spaghetti in the world.”

Andi’s mouth opened, closed, as she blinked between him and his sister.

His beautiful, wonderful, brilliant sister.

“You’re coming home with us again, right?” Madison asked. “Since your grandma and mom are in the hospital still?” Without waiting for Andi to answer, Madison added, “’Cause I was kind of hoping you could help me finish my scarf. There’s a word for it, right? When you tie it all up at the end?”

Finally Andi found her voice. “Binding off. It’s called binding off.”

Nate knew that was what she’d been planning to do with the two of them tonight. Bind them off. Tie everything up. So that she could walk away again.

Didn’t she realize yet that he was going to fight like hell for her this time?

“So can you help me bind off my scarf?” Madison blushed. “I’d like totally die if I gave it to Jaden, and it unraveled.”

Andi’s eyebrows raised at the boy’s name. She shot Nate a quick look. “Don’t worry. I promise Jaden won’t have a chance of unraveling your scarf.”

Nate wanted to just make the right turn, but he couldn’t make the decision for Andi. He couldn’t let his sister make it for Andi, either.

“My house, Andi? Or yours?”

She paused for long enough that he was afraid of what her answer would be. She was obviously warring with herself.

Finally she said, “Your house, Nate.” She smiled back at Madison. “We’ve got a scarf to bind off.” She didn’t quite meet his eyes as she added, “And spaghetti to eat.”

When they were all inside his house a couple of minutes later, Andi stood awkwardly in the kitchen. “Can I help with dinner?”

“Nope. Go ahead and knit. I’ll let you know when it’s done.”

He could see them from the stove, Andi’s dark head and Madison’s blond hair, bent over their needles. He knew how easily his sister could get frustrated, was listening for telltale sounds just in case he needed to intervene, but all that floated back to him were two soft voices and clicking needles.

He didn’t mean to stare, but he couldn’t help himself. Now that Madison was working solo again, Andi had turned her face to the side to look out the window at the moonlit lake.

He drank in her beautiful profile, his body tightening—his heart swelling—again in anticipation of another night with her. He wanted to kneel beside her and take her face in his hands, tell her he loved her again, then kiss her until she was breathless and begging him to take her back to his bed.

But all that would have to wait for spaghetti and looking over homework—and for him to figure out a way to convince her being together wasn’t a mistake.

He watched Andi reach into her bag and pull out a soft blue-and-white bundle. Evelyn’s knitting passed on through Carol in the hospital. She unfolded a piece of paper and frowned at it, her eyes scanning the page as she read it over. She reached into her bag again and pulled out a mini-laptop.

He heard her ask his sister, “You have wireless, right?”

“Yeah.” Madison barely looked up from her scarf. “Why?”

“This pattern my grandmother gave me is ridiculously difficult to follow.”

Madison took the pattern from Andi and made a face. “It’s like another language.”

“No kidding. Thank god for the Internet. I just found out this week that you can watch videos to learn how to do this kind of sweater.”

“Cool. Can I see?”

They shifted closer together as Andi moved her fingers over the keyboard and brought up a video of a woman’s hands.

The two girls he loved most in the world were sitting together, working side by side on his couch, in the home he’d built with his own two hands. Happiness flooded him, pushing around his insides.

And then from out of nowhere, he had a vision of Andi in a sleek white dress, holding a bouquet, walking down the aisle to say “I do,” the most beautiful bride in the world.

Nate ran a hand over the lower half of his face, sucking in a breath, working to push the vision aside. But he couldn’t do it.

Not when he wanted to make that vision real more than he’d ever wanted anything.

He had to reach out to the counter and hold on tight as he watched them. It wasn’t until he heard the sauce sputtering in the pot and felt a hot splash of it against his cheek that he finally moved back to the stove.

Turning down the heat, stirring his sauce with a wooden spoon, he said, “Come and get it.”

“I’m starved,” Andi said as she took her seat at the dining table. She ran her fingers over the polished-wood top. “Did you make this, too?”

“He makes tons of stuff,” Madison said. “All of my friends’ mothers are constantly asking him to come over to help them with things.”

Andi raised her eyebrows. “Really?”

He thought he saw a flash of jealousy in her pretty blue eyes. Good. Maybe realizing she didn’t want anyone else to have him would help her realize that she did.

They all ate in silence for a while, and then like he did every night, Nate asked Madison if there was anything she needed help with on her homework before bed.

She shook her head, proudly telling him, “I got 100 percent on my spelling test today.”

“Awesome.”

They high-fived, and Nate realized Andi had stopped eating and was staring at them, her eyes full of longing.

“May I be excused?” Madison asked.

Nate looked at Madison’s plate. She’d eaten more than half, which was pretty good.

“Sure. Go get ready for bed. I’ll be in soon.”

His sister pushed her chair back, put her plate into the sink, and was practically out of the room when she turned back.

“Thanks for showing me that stuff on the computer and also how to finish the scarf, Andi. I hope it’s cold enough for Jaden to wear it soon.”

Andi smiled. “You’re welcome. It looks awesome. He’s going to love it.”

When he heard the bathroom door close and the water turn on in the sink, Nate said, “She likes you.”

“It’s mutual.”

Nate couldn’t stop the visions of more dinners like this, lunches and breakfasts, too.

He knew he was moving too fast, that he’d barely gotten the woman he loved back into his bed. Who knew what it would take to get her to agree to white lace and school plays? But he’d waited so long already.

Ten years was just too damn long. He didn’t want to wait another hour.

“You really are a fantastic cook, Nate. Where did you learn?”

He forced his brain back to the here and now. “All around the lake.” Hoping to see that spark of jealousy again, he said, “Women kept inviting me over for cooking lessons.”