Murder of a Needled Knitter (26 page)

“You little—” Gwen interrupted herself, then smiled spitefully. “But of course you really aren't little, are you? Have you gone up a size . . . or two since the last time I saw you? Not that you were ever exactly slim. What did my cousin tell me they used to call you in high school? Stay Puft Marshmallow Girl, wasn't it?”

Her cruel words took me back thirteen years to the end of my sophomore year. I'd always been a size twelve—and sometimes a fourteen—in a size-two world, but until my family went from prosperous and respected to poor and humble, that hadn't bothered me and no one had teased me about my weight. However, once my family's circumstances changed, the mean girls had sensed weakness and descended on me like vampires on the last bag of plasma in the blood bank. That was one of the problems with living in the same town you had grown up in—there was no hiding from your past.

Coming back to the present, I gathered my wits and retorted, “You're right, Gwen.” I ran my hands down my hips. “I've always been on the curvy side. Then again, the men in this town seem to prefer rounded to scrawny.” I put a suggestive purr into my voice. “At least Jake and Noah seem to.”

Gwen's plastic surgery–smoothed face turned an unbecoming shade of magenta. It was always dangerous to stand up to someone like her, someone who thought they were better than the rest of us. She'd never been one to be able to handle what she dished out, and even as she snatched a half-full bottle of wine from the table and swung it at my head, I knew she was plotting an even worse retaliation.

As I tried to scramble out of Gwen's reach, Harlee leaped from the couch, and before I could blink, she
had the Botoxed brunette flat on the floor. I'd never seen anyone move so fast—at least outside of an action movie.

How on Earth had Harlee done that? She'd been a blur. To top it off, not a hair of her calico-colored spikes was out of place and there wasn't a drop of perspiration on her impassive face. Still waters may run deep, but clearly, consignment shopkeepers ran even deeper. What exactly had she done in the service? Were women allowed in the Special Forces? Maybe she'd been a Green Beret.

I glanced down at Gwen, who was threatening to have Harlee arrested for assault, and I shivered, remembering that Noah's previous girlfriend had been murdered. It seemed that a lot of women wanted to be Mrs. Dr. Underwood, and were willing to kill or be killed for the position.

At that moment, Gwen glared at me with such venom that I wondered if I might become the next victim in the battle to walk down the aisle with Noah. Which would really suck since I hadn't even decided if I wanted to marry him yet.