Connie Lane - Knit Two Together

With that comment, Meghan left the room in a huff.

Libby closed her eyes and drew in a breath designed to calm her. It didn’t work. Neither did her fervent prayer that when she opened her eyes again, Hal would have somehow magically disappeared.

He was still there.

“If what I did might be construed in any way, shape or form as hanging all over you, I hope you’ll forgive me. I didn’t mean—”

He laughed.

“You think that was funny?”

Shaking his head, Hal stood. “I think you’re way too serious.”

“What am I being too serious about?”

“Look,” he said, “I don’t want you to get the wrong idea, but I’m a single guy. And my hand might be hurt, and I might be going stir-crazy from being cooped up at home, but I’m far from dead. So the whole thing about you hanging all over me…” A smile tickled the corners of his mouth.

“Your daughter was overreacting,” he said. “She was imagining things. You were not out of line. You were not hanging all over me. But—” with a wink, he walked out the door “—it’s a pretty interesting thought.”

remembers when she got her first library card and the first book she took out of the Cleveland Public Library: Horton Hatches the Egg. That was the official start of her love of reading; writing stories naturally followed. She majored in English at Cleveland State University, studied literature at Queen’s College, Oxford University, England, and turned her love of words and her overactive imagination into a career in journalism and corporate communications. After the births of her two children, she began writing fiction and has published nearly thirty books. In addition to category romance, she’s written single-title and historical romance as well as mysteries, and has taught writing to aspiring novelists. She has been nominated for a RITA ®Award by Romance Writers of America. She lives in northeast Ohio with her family and Oscar, a rescued Jack Russell, and Ernie, an adorable Airedale puppy.

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Dear Reader,

If you’ve ever walked into a knitting shop and been blown away by the colors, the textures and the possibilities of what you could do with all that yarn, then we’ve got a lot in common!

You see, like millions of others, I’m addicted to knitting. (And to crochet and weaving, too.) I daydream about the possibilities of what might happen when needles, yarn and a bit of imagination come together. That’s what I was thinking about when I first came up with the idea for Knit Two Together.

Like all novels, this one started as nothing more than that rough idea. All of it came together there in Metropolitan Knits, a fictional version of what I think of as the ideal yarn shop. Libby learns to take her experiences there and knit them into the fabric of her family’s life, seamlessly blending past and present and carrying on traditions that, like knitting, give continuity and form to our world.

Happy knitting!

Connie Lane

P.S.—I love to hear from my readers. You can contact me at connielane@earthlink.net.

How many people can one book be dedicated to?

This one is for Diane, Emilie, Jasmine and Karen

with thanks and appreciation.

It’s also for Cheryl I, Susan, Cheryl II and Patty,

the great staff at Soft ’n Sassy—the world’s best

yarn shop—in Broadview Heights, Ohio.

And for Georgia, Eleanor, Carol, Ruth, Pat, Karin, Gail

and all the other talented knitters I’ve met through the

years. Thank you for many hours of companionship,

advice and inspiration.

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

“Of course I want to sell the yarn shop. It’s just that—”

Libby Cartwright would have liked to continue her phone conversation, but at that moment she noticed a man standing outside her office door. He was holding a clipboard that contained an official-looking form, and something told her she was going to need two free hands, so she mumbled an excuse to the real-estate agent on the other end of the line. She propped the phone between her ear and her shoulder and motioned for the man to come in. She accepted the clipboard and pen he handed her, and when she scrawled her name and the title Office Manager on the line above where it read Responsible party, her hands didn’t even tremble. At least not too much.

While the man tore off one sheet of the form she’d just signed, dropped it on her desk and backed out of her office, she returned to her conversation.

“I told you, Mr. Harper, getting rid of the knitting shop has been priority number one ever since I found out about the inheritance.” The noise of a scrape and bump from out in the hallway attracted her attention, and Libby glanced out her door to where two men struggled to haul away the just-delivered printer/fax/copier she had ordered three months earlier. With everything else that was happening at Cartwright, Remington and Hawes, no one in the office had even had a chance to read the how-to manual, much less learn to operate the behemoth.

The equipment was unused. Practically untouched. And far easier to return because of it.

“I hear what you’re saying, Mrs. Cartwright.” The sound of Will Harper’s voice drew Libby’s attention away from the commotion in the hallway. “But what you’re saying and what you’re doing sound like two different things to me.”

“What I’m saying is that I want to sell the yarn shop. What I’m doing…”

Libby drummed her fingers against the windowsill. What she was doing was hesitating, plain and simple.

She twitched her shoulders to get rid of the thought, scolding herself as she did. By now she should have known better—there were some things she couldn’t so easily shake.

“I have no intention of ever reopening the shop,” she told Will and reminded herself. “I don’t want to run it. For one thing, the shop is in Cleveland and I live in Pittsburgh.”

“Which is exactly why you should be up on your desk doing the happy dance right about now.” She heard the click of his cigarette lighter and his quick intake of breath. “Tip-Top is all over the West and they claim they’re going to own the drugstore market in Ohio, too, in just a few years. Lucky for you, they want to start in Cleveland and they’re not looking for some pristine parcel out in the burbs. They want an established neighborhood and they’re willing to raze a city block to build one of their stores. Your mother’s property isn’t the only one they’re looking at, remember. We need to jump on this as quickly as we can. The offer they’re making…well, honestly, as I told you before, I don’t think you’ll ever do any better.”