better off when she was busy, Carolyn felt pretty chipper as she turned the handle on the dead bolt and headed for the staircase.
Winston, who seemed to be in an unusually circumspect mood that day, scampered after her and, when she entered the kitchen, leaped gracefully onto his usual lookout perch, the windowsill.
Carolyn fussed over him a little, scratching behind his ears and nuzzling his silky scruff once, and washed her hands at the sink, prior to fixing them both lunch.
Winston had his beloved half tin of water-packed sardines, eating off a chipped china saucer right there on the windowsill, while Carolyn nibbled her way through a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, breaking all the food rules by foregoing a plate and standing up while she ate.
Actually, she could have argued that there were sensible reasons for her choice.
Number one, her sewing machine was on the table, and she’d be working there in a little while, and a stray drop of jelly might stain a piece of fabric. Furthermore, who really ate sandwiches off a plate?
In any case, the sandwich was soon gone, rendering the whole subject moot. Carolyn washed her hands again, fetched the gypsy skirt from the hook on the other side of her bedroom door and took a few sweet moments just to admire the creation.
It really was gorgeous, she thought, loving the way the gossamer ribbons shimmered and shifted. The reds, golds, blues and greens seemed to ripple, like liquid light.
Not for the first time, Carolyn was seized by a crazy urge to keep that skirt, alter it to fit her own figure and never let it go. She held it close against her chest for a few moments, as though prepared to defend it against a crazed mob.
“You’re being silly,” she murmured aloud.
Still, the skirt was so pretty, almost animate with all that subtle motion going on, a true work of art. Her art, born of her dreams and her imagination and all the fairy-tale hopes she’d cherished as a lonely child.
She ached to hold on to this one piece, this glorious thing woven with strands spun in the deepest places of her own heart.
Practicality took over quickly.
She’d been over this with herself before, hadn’t she? A garment like this should be worn, seen, enjoyed. Where would she, Carolyn Simmons of Lonesome Bend, Colorado, wear such a thing?
Horseback riding?
Sure, there were parties now and then, and she was always invited, but the occasions were never formal—people held cookouts in their backyards, and bingo was big on Wednesday evenings, in the basement of the Moose Lodge, and every year, on the weekend closest to the Fourth of July, there was an amateur rodeo and a visiting carnival.
The closest Lonesome Bend ever got to glamour was when the lodge sponsored a dance the third Saturday of every other month. The music was live, always country-western, and good enough that people came all the way from Denver to dance to it.
Most of the women wore jeans to the gathering, with a slightly fancier shirt than they might ordinarily don, and they fussed with their hair and makeup, too, but that was pretty much the extent of it.
Carolyn would have looked like a fool, just about anywhere she ever went, showing up in that skirt.
She sighed, put the skirt back on its hanger and then back on the hook behind the bedroom door. She’d finish it another day, when she wasn’t feeling so much like Cinderella left behind to sweep floors on the night of the prince’s ball.
Resolutely, she brewed a cup of herbal tea and got out a stack of fabric purchased on a recent shopping trip to Denver. By then, she’d made so many aprons—frilly ones, simple ones, ones for kids as well as adults—that she no longer needed to measure.
She chose a bluish-lavender calico from the pile, smiling at the small floral print and the tactile pleasure of crisp and colorful cloth ready to be made up into something useful. She decided to stick with the retro designs that sold so well through the online version of the shop and pictured the end result in her mind’s eye.
Then, after eyeballing the fabric once again, Carolyn took up her sewing shears and began to cut.
Sewing, like riding horses, always consumed her, drew her in, made her forget her worries for a while. She got lost in it, in a good way, and invariably came away refreshed rather than fatigued.
The apron came together in no time, a perky, beruffled thing with lace trim stitched to the pockets.
Delighted, Carolyn set it aside, to be pressed later, and delved into her fabric stash again. This time she chose a heavier weight cotton, black and tan checks with little red flowers occupying alternate squares.
She went with retro again, savoring the whir of the small motor, the flash of the flying needle and the familiar scents of fabric sizing and sewing machine oil.
When the doorbell rang downstairs, just as Carolyn was finishing up apron number two, she was so startled by the sound, ordinary as it was, that she jumped and nearly knocked over her forgotten cup of tea, now gone cold.
She glanced at the clock above the stove—three forty-five in the afternoon, already?—and, remembering the note she’d stuck to the front door, in case some prospective shopper happened by, shouted from the top of the inside staircase, “Coming!”
The bell rang again, more insistently this time.
Skipping the normal protocol by not looking out one of the flanking windows first, Carolyn opened the door.
Brody was standing on the porch, his expression so grim that Carolyn felt alarmed, thinking Tricia had gone into premature labor or someone had been in an accident.
She gulped, fumbled with the hook on the screen door that separated them. Through the mesh, she noted Brody’s wrinkled clothes, mussed hair and disturbing countenance.
“Brody...what—?”
He’d taken off his hat at some point, and now he slapped it once against his right thigh. “Can I come in?” he bit out. Then, almost grudgingly, “Please?”
Carolyn’s concern eased up a little then, as she realized Brody was frustrated—maybe even angry—but not sad, as he surely would have been if he were bearing bad news.
She gave one slightly abrupt nod instead of speaking, not trusting herself to be civil now that Brody’s irritation had sparked and spread to her, like wildfire racing over tinder-dry grass.
Once the door was open, Brody practically stormed over the threshold, giving Carolyn the immediately infuriating impression that if she didn’t get out of his way, she’d be run over.
So she stood her ground, and that proved to be a less than brilliant choice, because they collided and the whoosh of invisible things reaching flash point was nearly audible.
“What?” Carolyn demanded, and found herself flushing.
His nose was half an inch from hers, if that, and fierce blue flames burned in his eyes, and his words, though quiet, struck her like stones. “I. Don’t. Like. Games.”
Carolyn felt several things then, not the least of which was a slow-building rage, but there was a good bit of confusion in the mix, too, and a strange, soft, scary kind of excitement.
“What are you talking about?” she asked tartly. It would have been prudent, she supposed, to take a step or two backward, out of Brody’s force field, but for some reason, she couldn’t move.
“I’m talking,” Brody all but growled, after tossing his hat in the general direction of the antique coat tree that dominated the entryway, “about this whole Friendly Faces thing. You trying to scare up a husband online. It’s all wrong—”
Carolyn’s temper, mostly under control before, flared up. “Wrong?” she repeated dangerously.
Brody sighed, but he was still putting out the same officious vibes. “Okay, maybe wrong