Lori Wilde - The Sweethearts Knitting Club

The Sweethearts Knitting Club

Lori Wilde

To Lucia MacroThank you for taking a chance on Twilight.Your wisdom and insight have been invaluable.

Contents

Chapter One

You got anybody special waiting for you on the outside?

Chapter Two

For as long as he could remember, Beau Trainer had

Chapter Three

After dropping off her passengers at their respective homes, Patsy

Chapter Four

Oh my gracious, Belinda Murphey exclaimed. Will you get a

Chapter Five

Patsy sat knitting on the top floor balcony of her

Chapter Six

Beau and Flynn did not speak of what happened at

Chapter Seven

Anger spurted through Beau. It was al he could do

Chapter Eight

She got in.

Chapter Nine

Okay, so the sizzle between them stil burned hot as

Chapter Ten

After what had almost happened between her and Jesse, Flynn

Chapter Eleven

Ten years fell away.

Chapter Twelve

Flustered by what had happened at the supermarket, Flynn returned

Chapter Thirteen

Ten minutes later, Flynn pul ed into Froggys empty parking lot.

Chapter Fourteen

Everyone filed out of the town hal meeting. Jesse stood

Chapter Fifteen

Flynn looked at Carries hand dangling from her arm at

Chapter Sixteen

Sheriff Trainer trod across the courthouse lawn, littered with knitters

Chapter Seventeen

Jesse watched Flynn walk away, feeling as if someone had

Chapter Eighteen

The remainder of the summer passed in a miserable swelter

Chapter Nineteen

Mockingbirds singing in the peach tree outside Flynns bedroom window

Chapter Twenty

Jesse couldnt wrap his head around this newfound knowledge that

Epilogue

Ive got something to confess, Flynn said to the Sweethearts

Other Books by Lori Wilde

Copyright

About the Publisher

CHAPTER ONE

Jesse Cal oway voted boy most likely to end up in prison

Twilight High, 1999

You got anybody special waiting for you on the outside?

Jesse Calloway froze with the only surviving remnant from his good-for-nothing father, his battered old Timex, half-strapped onto his wrist.

Immediately the image of Flynn MacGregor, looking the way shed looked the last time hed seen her, peppered his mind. Wearing that pink dress that made her shine like a springtime tulip. Her soft, dark brown hair curling to her feisty shoulders, hands clutched into tight fists, bottom lip caught up between her teeth, her hazel eyes wide in stunned disbelief as Sheriff Clinton Trainer had handcuffed him and stuffed him into the backseat of his patrol car.

Slowly, he stabbed the strap of the Timex through the loop, completing the cinch, the weight of it unexpectedly heavy against his wrist after all these years. The watch had stopped. Ironic when you thought about it. Stopped watch, stopped life. He wound the stem, and then looked up to meet Warden Neusbaums eyes.

No, he said. Theres no one.

The warden nodded as if the answer did not surprise him and passed Jesse the new, but cheaply made suit and lace-up dress shoes supplied by the state of Texas. In the pen they stripped you not only of lace-ups, but of your entire identity. For ten years hed been nothing but a number. Now he was supposed to go out into society and became Jesse Calloway again. How was he going to do that? Hed spent his entire adult life behind bars. Framed and incarcerated for a crime he hadnt committed.

Resentment tasted as brackish as burnt coffee beans on the back of his tongue, but he shook off the emotion.

No sense getting pissed off. What was done was done. After al , revenge was a dish best served cold, and hed been in a deep freeze for a very long time.

For what its worth Warden Neusbaum paused and shifted his bulk, clearly uncomfortable with what he was about to say next. Im gonna miss you. Youve been an exemplary inmate, and what you did for that boy

Jesse took a deep breath, inhaled the institutionalized smell of fear, testosterone, blood, body odor, Lysol, and badly prepared meals. The haunting smel was routine now, but he could stil remember the way it had hit him the first time those cell doors had clanked closed behind him. The same way it must have hit Josh Green. In prison, empathy was a stupid thing, and it had almost gotten him kil ed.

He shrugged. Yeah, wel , you know.

Dont shrug it off. You put your own life in grave peril to save that boy and you stopped a prison riot.

Dont go makin a hero out of me, Warden. I was just bucking for an early release. Jesse flashed the grin that had once worked so wel at charming the panties off young women.

Wel , you did something right for once. The kids alive and you got two years shaved off your sentence. Now for the standard speech. Good luck out there and dont ever let me catch your ass back in here again.

Jesse clenched his jaw. That it?

Since youve got no folks coming to fetch you, a guard wil put you on a bus and give you instructions about contacting your parole officer. Neusbaum nodded toward the bathroom adjacent to his office. Youve earned the right to some privacy. Go get dressed.

Jesse picked up the suit and shoes and headed toward the bathroom, not sure what he was feeling. He supposed he should have been excited. Today he would walk away from Huntsvil e prison a free man. But his emotions were complex.

Hollowness carved out a hole in his brain. Regret slithered along his spine. Anxiety swirled through his every breath. Resolve crouched on his shoulders. Revenge burned his gut.

But in his heartin his damnable hearthe felt hope. And thats where trouble boiled.

As much as he wanted revenge to matter more, it didnt. Sure he wanted to get even with Beau Trainer.

Certainly he ached to mete out real justice. Yes, he itched to expose the new sheriff of Twilight, Texas, for the fraud he was. But underneath it al , he wanted Flynn more.

According to Jesses Aunt Patsy, Beau had asked Flynn to marry him four times, but she turned him down even as she kept dating him. Jesse ground his teeth. Why? Could it be that some smal part of her stil harbored feelings for him?

Even after ten years? Even after hed been to prison? Fat chance of that.

Yet the hope flickered.

Hope. What a stupid, dangerous thing.

Jesse shook off the rough cotton prison jumpsuit, letting it drop to the cement floor, and stepped into the il

fitting Wal-Mart suit. Not much of an improvement, but at least he looked like a human being again. Good-bye prisoner number 87757310.

Once dressed, he kicked off the slip-ons, sat down on a bench, and jammed his feet into the new shoes. It had been ten years since hed done up laces, and he wondered if hed forgotten how to tie his own shoes.

He raised his right leg up to the bench. The laces felt thick and clumsy in his fingers. Freedom was within his grasp. The flavor of it was on his tongue, and it tasted like Flynn. Sweet, with just the right amount of underlying tartness; juicy, warm, and welcoming.

There was that hope again.

Jesse tried to crush it. Reminded himself that shed been sleeping with his mortal enemy, but he couldnt manage to summon up any anger toward her. He reserved that for Trainer. All he really wanted was to see Flynn again.

What if she doesnt want to see you?

She probably didnt. If he was smart, he would forget al about her. But if he was smart, he wouldnt have landed in here in the first place. He looped the laces, pulled them tight, his fingers regaining their memory.

Flynn.

The woman hed dreamed about every night. The image of her smiling face had saved his sanity inside these prison walls.