Home to Sparrow Lake (Harlequin Heartwarming) (3 page)

But now her life wasn’t so empty.

When Heather’s husband had been killed in Iraq, the poor girl had been devastated. She’d also been left with twin toddlers. Margaret had given her niece a job at Sew Fine and all the emotional aid she had needed, and now Heather was like a daughter to her. Her nephew, Brian, had moved back from California to go to college in Wisconsin, and she’d opened her doors, giving him a place to live and a part-time job at the store. Finally, Kristen had come home after more than ten years, though her niece thought it was simply to recoup and regroup before going back out into the dog-eat-dog business world.

Margaret had plans for Kristen. She’d feigned sickness so that her niece would immediately get wrapped up in the business end of Sew Fine. Smiling at the thought, she toasted the lake that held Donald’s ashes.

“I’ll always love you, my darling,” she whispered. “And I’ll see you again one day, but for now I have to move on and discover new possibilities.”

Margaret was thinking how nice a new man in her life would be.

As hard as it was for a strong and usually independent woman to admit, she had loved the excitement of a romance. Her first two marriages had been fun and exciting until they weren’t anymore, the reason she’d ended them. They’d been short-lived, but she had nothing to regret.

And then she’d met Donald.

Margaret sighed. She would never meet another Donald, of course. But maybe someone nice to keep her company once in a while wouldn’t be too much to ask.

That, and new possibilities for her lovely niece, who had become too serious, too driven and too obsessed with the idea of being a failure ever since Margaret’s younger brother, Sam, had abandoned his family.

CHAPTER THREE

“Y
OU
WERE
TRYING
to do what?” Heather asked, as she stared up at Sew Fine’s broken window. Then she took a good look at Kristen and snickered. “Dressed in your designer duds? I would have paid to see that.”

“It wasn’t all that funny, believe me. Especially not when the police chief caught me.”

“Alex caught you?”

Alex?
So her sister knew him on a first-name basis. And from the sound of Heather’s voice, she was highly amused by the idea of Alex having the upper hand.

“He’s an impossible man. Wouldn’t listen to a word I had to say until he got me down to the station.”

Heather snorted. “Did he
handcuff
you?”

“Get that suggestive tone out of your voice! There was nothing even vaguely fun or amusing about what happened to me. Alex Novak is a bully.”

“Really,”
her sister drawled.

Kristen took a deep breath and silently counted to ten. Heather was being Heather, trying to drive her nuts, just as she had since they were kids.

They were adults now, and Heather had matured in other ways, managing the business and working toward a college degree while being a great mother. Matured, except for the way she presented herself. She still wore mostly jeans, sweatshirts or sweaters and running shoes. Her fine-boned face was make-up free other than a swipe of lip gloss, and her long, thick, light-brown hair was pulled into a ponytail. Still loyal to her late husband’s memory, Heather might dress this way on purpose, Kristen thought. Even so, Heather was attractive now, but with a little work she could be stunning. Then again, stunning would be hard to maintain while running after five-year-old twins.

Pulling the note Aunt Margaret had left from her pocket, Kristen said, “I need to get the window fixed. I already called this Chuck Hansen before leaving the house, but he hasn’t returned my call.”

“Maybe he ignored it because you called from your cell and he doesn’t have that number.”

“Maybe.”

While Kristen made her call from the store phone, the first customer of the morning entered and engaged Heather.

Not so happily, Kristen had to leave a second message on Chuck’s cell.

“Hi, this Kristen Lange again, calling about the broken window at Sew Fine. I should be here all day, so as soon as you get this, I would appreciate a return call. Thank you.”

The handyman didn’t need to know who broke the window or why, though she wouldn’t be surprised if word had already gotten out and was spreading around town. She could imagine the
Chief
taking delight in sharing the tale with his buddies.

She saw him in her mind’s eye, snarky smile pulling up the corners of his mouth....

The bell above the front door tinkled. Kristen looked that way to see another customer come in and start browsing through fabrics.

Then a black-and-white vehicle outside the store caught her attention. Kristen blinked. That was a patrol car. So why was it sitting there, as if the officer behind the wheel had an eye on the store?

Who exactly was out there? The police chief himself?

What in the world did he think he was doing, casing the store?

She started toward the front door, but before she could get close enough to check, the squad car pulled away from the curb and drove off.

She didn’t want to think about the man who had been so miserable to her in the middle of her crisis, anyway, Kristen told herself. She would concentrate on business. She went to the rear of the store—the “office” area—and sat at the desk. She started the computer, thinking to pick up where she’d left off at one in the morning.

Aunt Margaret had asked her to familiarize herself with Sew Fine and see if she had any ideas on how to grow the business.

Three years ago, with a newly earned MBA, she’d gotten a position in marketing with Chicago Lifestyle, a small sporting goods company. In less than a year, she’d been promoted to director of marketing and had helped double sales. But when the economy had taken another dip the following year, the company had “reorganized” and she had been out of a job.

Doing Aunt Margaret’s bidding was actually her kind of thing and allowed her to keep her talents sharp while looking for a real job.

The store itself was huge. Bolts of fabric and notions took up one side of the space. On the other side of the aisle were a dozen long tables with sewing machines, doubled to face each other, so women taking classes could chat. Sample quilts and smaller quilted pieces hung on both walls, making the store warm and inviting.

Working that long day yesterday had given Kristen a pretty good overview of how the business worked.

Sew Fine was open six days a week with late hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays for quilting classes. And there were two classes on Saturdays, one for kids, the other for teens. Training them to be lifelong customers, she thought. Great long-tail marketing idea there.

The store seemed to be doing a comfortable business for the number of people employed. Heather was the only full-time employee. Gloria Vega and Louise Powell each worked twenty hours a week, and Kristen’s brother Brian ran errands and cleaned up in the store two or three hours a day. The advanced quilting class was taught by Aunt Margaret. Kristen wondered if she would continue teaching now that she wanted to retire, or if they would need to find someone to replace her.

The profit after paying the staff definitely could be better for Aunt Margaret. She would get a pension from the university, of course, but that huge house of hers probably chewed up her cash on a regular basis. She’d used the money Donald had left her to pay off the mortgage and the exorbitant taxes. And as Kristen had already realized, the house needed work.

No doubt this was the reason her aunt wanted some ideas about growing the business. Aunt Margaret might fear she would have to sell the house if she couldn’t raise the store’s income. Having lost her own home to the economy, Kristen wasn’t about to let that happen to someone she loved, a senior citizen who deserved to retire in comfort and security.

The first thing she could do was to get a better sales system in place for customers who called in orders. Now, whoever answered the phone wrote the customer’s name and what she wanted on a piece of paper. Kristen looked through the box of scraps that held unfulfilled orders. An archaic and fallible system. She would start by installing a simple computer program so the person taking the order could enter the details. Then someone should be assigned to checking orders and fulfilling them on a specific day every week. Regular customers would be on file, as well, and their information automatically brought up via a database. The same database could be used for mailings.

“Aren’t your eyes crossing from being on that computer so many hours yesterday?”

Kristen started. Both customers had left the store, and Heather was standing over her. “They are a bit tired.” Having managed little more than six hours sleep, she
was
tired. No late night, working or otherwise, for her today.

“So take a break. We’ve hardly had a chance to talk since you got here.”

“It’s not like we haven’t talked in ages,” Kristen said, thinking of their weekly Sunday-night phone calls.

“But now I can see you.”

“Okay, okay.” Kristen smothered a yawn. “I need coffee anyway.”

Heather poured two cups. “You seem to be taking to working here.”

Kristen didn’t want to get her sister’s hopes up. “It’s only temporary, you know. Until I get on my feet.” She took her mug from Heather. “Then I’m going to start job hunting again.”

That was the agreement she’d made with Aunt Margaret. She would work here while sending out her résumé and driving into Chicago for interviews. If she could get them.

“You’re going to look for a job in Chicago?” Heather asked, her voice filled with disappointment.

“That
is
my home.”

“Not anymore.”

“You mean, not at the moment.” Kristen sipped her coffee, willing it to give her extra energy to get through the day.

She was hoping to be back in a new job and a new Chicago apartment before winter. Surely that would give her enough time to help grow Sew Fine into a more viable business.

“What have you got against living here?” Heather demanded. “I miss you. Aunt Margaret misses you. And now that Brian is back,
he
would miss you if you left again.”

“Wait a minute. Isn’t Brian supposed to be working this morning?” Kristen had thought he could sweep up the broken glass.

“Brian doesn’t always keep to schedule.”

“And you’re okay with that?” Heather was the manager, after all, Kristen thought.

“He is very helpful, Kristen. He’ll do anything I ask of him.”

“When he’s here.”

“So I give him a break. He’s had a hard couple of years since Mom remarried and moved to California.”

“Losing his friends in the middle of his freshman year of high school must have been difficult,” Kristen admitted.

“Not to mention he lost his job. Mom used to call him the man of the house. You remember that, don’t you? Even as a little kid, he took on a lot of responsibility, so he wouldn’t let her down. Well, maybe you don’t really know, because you went away to college so soon after Dad left. Mom was so proud of Brian. Mom thought it was great that he didn’t have to keep that responsibility anymore when she married Mike, but I’m not so sure.”

Kristen understood completely. “Brian lost his identity.” He must have felt as if he had failed their mother. Just as Kristen had failed at the career she’d so wanted.

Now Kristen felt even worse about Brian than she had before. Their kid brother could probably barely remember having a father in his life, and then when their mother had remarried, he hadn’t taken to his stepfather. According to Mom, Mike and Brian had been continually at odds. No doubt Brian resented having a man tell him what to do if he’d considered himself the man of the house all his young life. Her mother had mentioned increasing problems with Brian and decided the only way to make the kid happy was to let him go to college in Wisconsin.

According to Aunt Margaret, Brian could do no wrong. The change in address had seemingly made the difference. Now if only he would get to work on time.

And if only she would get a new job even better than the one she’d had.

Kristen said, “You can all come down to Chicago to see me for more than a day or two, you know. And I can come back here more weekends than I did before. It’s not that I don’t like Sparrow Lake, because I do, but there’s no opportunity here for me to prove myself.”

“You always had more drive than anyone I know. Except for Mom, if in a different way. She was always working, too.”

“To support us,” Kristen reminded her. “You know Mom didn’t have a choice. She didn’t have a career when Dad left. She had to take whatever job she could get.”

Which for years had been two and three part-time jobs all at once to make ends meet. Kristen had vowed then to get an education that would provide her with enough security so she never had to scrape by. She would never be a failure like her father, who couldn’t seem to succeed at anything, not even at having a family. Losing her job, then her savings and finally her home had been humiliating to someone with her work ethic.

She
had
to get back everything she’d lost. It was a matter of pride.

She just needed a time-out first.

“Have you heard from Jason?” Heather asked.

Okay, he was one thing she’d lost that she
didn’t
want back. “No, why would I?”

“You were together for nearly three years.”

“And I was fooled into thinking he loved me.” At least, that’s what he’d told her. “When you care for a person, you support them, good times or bad. He didn’t want to hear about my job search or my fear that I would lose my condo when I went through my savings. He wanted me to be the same bright, busy
working
woman who supported
him
emotionally.”

Eventually, he’d simply moved on to someone less complicated, though of course the way he put it was
I’m doing this for you because you’re using me as a crutch and you need to stand on your own two feet.

Right.

Soured on relationships, Kristen would focus all her energies on rebuilding her career. She’d always known she had to learn to rely on herself, and nothing in her experience had changed her mind.

* * *

A
LEX
PARKED
IN
his spot in front of the police station and hurried inside to meet with Officer Owen Larson. After his late-night adventure, Alex had slept in. On the way here, he’d stopped in front of Sew Fine for a moment. He hadn’t been able to help himself. Part of him had wanted to go in and see if Kristen Lange was as feisty as he remembered. He hadn’t been able to put her out of mind.

He stopped at the desk. “Is Owen in?”

Before the receptionist could answer, Owen called, “Over here!”

Alex waved and walked back to the desk where Owen was checking his smartphone. His buddy was twenty-six but looked closer to sixteen with reddish hair, freckles and a wiry body that had little discernible bulk. Looks could be deceiving. As slight as he appeared, Owen had incredible muscle strength, could bench press his own weight and dead lift even more. He was fast on his feet and could jump a fence without hesitating. He’d been the star of the high school cross-country team and a champion in college.

“You’re late,” Owen said. “What’s up?”

“Late night.”

“So I heard.” Owen set his phone down, but he kept one eye on it.

“Expecting a call?” Alex asked.

“A text.”

Alex didn’t have to ask from whom. Owen and his new wife, Trina, had to text each other love notes all day. As long as Owen wasn’t behind the wheel of a patrol car when he did so, that was fine with Alex. Owen had become his good friend in the two years since he’d left the city and moved to Sparrow Lake, and he’d even been best man for Owen’s wedding a few months back. Though he was younger than Alex, Owen seemed to have his life far more together. Owen now had a wife he loved and plans to start a family.