The Sweetgum Ladies Knit for Love (8 page)

She had no idea. She only knew that she didn’t really have a choice.

“Hannah! Wait up.”

Josh’s voice carried the length of the senior hallway. Hannah dropped her chin and shoulders and kept walking as if she hadn’t
heard him, although Josh’s baritone might as well have been a bullhorn.

“Hey.” A hand grabbed her sleeve and slowed her flight. “C’mon, Hannah Banana. I run enough wind sprints at practice.”

She flinched at the old nickname but recovered by shaking his hand off her arm. “I’m late for class, Josh.”

She’d managed to avoid him after honors English by bolting for the door the second the bell rang. She’d eaten lunch on the steps behind the school so she wouldn’t run into him in the cafeteria. But now, on the way to her last class of the day, her luck had run out.

At her brusque reply, Josh’s fingers fell from her sleeve. She risked a glance at him and then wished she hadn’t. The confusion in his eyes made her chest ache. Better to amputate now, she reminded herself, curling her right hand into a fist. She’d heard the gossip in the girls’ rest room earlier, the information Kristen had held back in an attempt to humiliate Hannah.

“From geek to god in just a few short years,” a freshman girl had said behind Hannah while she was washing her hands. “Evidently he was the star quarterback at his middle school in Birmingham. They say he may be the first freshman to start as quarterback here in, like… forever.”

Hannah had dried her hands, thrown away the paper towel, and refused to cry. Josh would figure out the score soon enough, now that he was a jock. She should save herself the pain of having him be the one to pass her in the hallway without speaking.

“If I’m tardy again, I get detention.” She stepped backward, trying to escape the compulsion to move closer to him. “Later.”

“Hannah.” He caught up with her in two steps. His legs were a lot longer than they used to be. “Stop.”

Several seniors looked their way. She couldn’t let him make a scene. Not here.

“Okay, okay.” She turned to face him. “What do you want?”

He frowned. “I thought I wanted to talk to my friend. What’s your problem?”

She swallowed. How could Josh have possibly become a jock? But he was. And he was apparently determined to treat her as if he’d never left. As if they still caught crawdads together or traded licks of their Popsicles.

She swallowed again. “I don’t have a problem.”

His shoulders relaxed. She hadn’t realized how tense he was until that moment.

“You do a pretty good impression of it.” He smiled. “So what’s up with Old Lady Budge, anyway? Is she always so harsh?”

Hannah couldn’t help smiling. His dimples really were incredible.

“At least we don’t have to finish that stupid play by tomorrow,” she said. “She’s being pretty generous giving us a whole week to read the book. I heard her class last year had to read
1984
in, like, three days.”

He shifted his books from one arm to the other, and Hannah’s
eyes were drawn to his arms. Muscles. Josh with muscles. The dimples might be cute, but muscles were—

“What do you have last period?” he asked.

“American history.” She nodded at the pile of books in her arms. Mr. Barnes, her teacher, believed in lots of supplemental reading. Lots and lots of supplemental reading.

“Those look heavy. I’ll take ’em.” Josh reached out for her books and stacked them on top of his.

Her knees quivered, and Hannah locked them with determination. “You don’t have to—” But he had already started off down the hall, and she had no choice but to follow him.

“Am I going the right way?” He turned back to look at her. She hurried to catch up.

“Um, yeah.” She could feel other kids looking at them and saw them start to whisper. By the end of the day, it would be all over school. The new jock had been spotted carrying loser Hannah Simmons’s books. “You really don’t need to do that, Josh. Besides, don’t you have CA this period?” All the jocks signed up for competitive athletics as the last class of the day so they could get an early start on their workouts or practices or whatever they called them. “The gym is the other direction.”

He shrugged. “They won’t care if I’m a little late.”

Hannah paled. Of course
they
wouldn’t. The other players, even the coaches, would bow down to a star athlete like Josh. If she’d had any doubt before about how far apart they were now, it was definitely, totally gone.

“Josh, just give me my books back.” The words came out harsher than she’d intended.

“Were you always so hard to be nice to?” He frowned and dumped her books back in her arms. “Here. Sorry for trying to help.”

“Josh—” But it was too late. He was already moving away from her. Ten yards down the hall, he ran into some other football players headed toward the gym. They fell into step, and all Hannah could do was watch them walk away. Broad shoulders and confidence. Girls watching them as they passed.

It was better this way, she told herself. Safer. She couldn’t afford to hope for what she couldn’t have. And that thought hurt more than the sight of Josh and his crew stopping at Courtney’s locker to flirt with her and her pompom girlfriends.

Camille settled into a pew halfway back in the sanctuary of the Sweetgum Christian Church and set her faux Kate Spade handbag on the cushion next to her. She tugged the hem of her skirt. Somehow it felt wrong for her knees to show in church. Soft music emanated from the old pipe organ, and she took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. Maybe here, in a holy place, she could find the peace that had eluded her in the days since her mother’s death. And then she looked a few pews ahead and saw the most unexpected sight. A familiar dark head and a knee-weakening set of masculine shoulders covered by an expensive suit.

The last place she had expected to see Dante Brown for the first time after all these years was in the sanctuary of Sweetgum Christian Church.

Her first impulse was to flee, but Rev. Carson stepped into the pulpit for the morning announcements. Too late.

“We especially want to welcome our visitors today,” the minister said, “so I invite our members to take a moment to greet one another and our guests.”

As usual, this invitation was the congregations cue to stand up and mingle, saying hello to people they knew, as well as to anyone they didn’t. As in most congregations, some church members were better at this than others. Camille always tried to smile and be gracious, to introduce herself to anyone around her she didn’t know, but she had never been comfortable with this part of the service. Sometimes she lingered out in the vestibule until it was over so she wouldn’t have to participate. This morning, though, since she’d gone ahead and taken her seat, she was trapped.

“Good morning, Camille.” Eleanor Krebbs, possibly the oldest living member of the church, clasped Camille’s hand in her gnarled one and gave her a pat. “You’ve been in my prayers. I know you’re missing your mother.”

Tears stung Camille’s eyes, but she blinked them back. “Thank you, Mrs. Krebbs.” No wonder she’d dreaded coming to church. Other people’s sympathy was like salt in a fresh wound, dissolving any little progress Camille might have made toward healing. How long would it be before she could come to church without anyone looking at her with pity in their eyes?

She shook several other people’s hands, endured their condolences, and kept her gaze carefully averted from the spot three rows in front of her where Dante was being fawned over like a conquering hero.

Rev. Carson was calling them back to order when Dante turned and caught her looking at him. Her gaze locked with his, and she felt it once more—that undeniable mixture of fear and excitement and hope he always stirred in her. She couldn’t read his guarded expression, which only increased the unwanted tension that coursed through her. Should she smile? Nod in recognition? If only she could act casual, greet him briefly, and then forget about him. Preferably for the rest of her life.

He opened his mouth, as if he were about to say something to her across the space that divided them, and then another church member caught his sleeve and he turned away.

Camille sank back onto the pew and refused to acknowledge the disappointment that swamped her. Anticlimactic. That’s what Eugenie would have called the moment. And now she had to sit for the next hour with Dante firmly in her sights. Not that she was much good at concentrating on the sermon under the best of circumstances, but she would never get anything out of the service now.

“Mind if I sit with you?” a voice at her elbow said.

Camille turned to see Eugenie standing in the aisle. Surprised, she nodded and scooted over so the librarian could sit down.

“Aren’t you supposed to sit on the front row?” Camille whispered to Eugenie as the organist began the prelude. The soft opening music was meant to provide a time for quiet reflection, but that was the last thing Camille was capable of at the moment.

Eugenie pursed her lips. “I prefer to sit farther back, with someone I know, rather than alone on the front row.”

Camille smothered a smile. Eugenie’s adjustment to the role of preacher’s wife couldn’t be easy. At least that’s what Camille’s mother had told her.

The thought of her mother washed away the smile that played at the edge of her mouth. Camille’s own church attendance had been spotty at best during her mother’s lengthy illness, especially once her mother couldn’t leave the house. To tell the truth, she didn’t know why she’d come today, except that she hadn’t been able to think of anything else to do. Not that long ago she’d been sitting at her mother’s bedside, reading to her while she was awake, knitting while she slept. The medical supply company had yet to come and retrieve the large hospital bed that had occupied the living room for so long, and Camille couldn’t bring herself to sit in the room alone all day staring at it. So she’d come to church, looking for—what? Comfort? Escape? Certainly not Dante Brown. If Eugenie hadn’t sat next to her, she could have slipped out of the service early.

The next hour passed with unbearable slowness. The moment the organist struck the first notes of the recessional, Camille was up and out of the pew, squeezing around Eugenie. She made a beeline for the door, leaving the bewildered librarian in her wake.

“Camille, wait,” a masculine voice called.

She descended the steps outside the sanctuary and pretended
she hadn’t heard him. Her well-worn pumps clattered as she went. Quick as she was, though, she was no match for Dante, even with his bum knee.

“Camille!”

Other parishioners turned toward him, watching with great interest. It was too late to escape. She stopped and pivoted slowly, as if her interest in the person hailing her was so vague she couldn’t put much energy into the movement of her body.

“Camille.” He said her name again as he moved toward her, stopping less than two feet in front of her. She had to look up to meet his gaze and could only pray that her face was as expressionless as she could make it.

Oh, Dante. Hello. “I thought that was you.”
Knew it was you. Felt it was you.
She clutched the strap of her purse below where it rested on her shoulder. “It’s good to see you.”