Chapter Four
“THIS CAN’T BE RIGHT.” Emma squinted at the round of stitches she’d just attempted to knit. It was, to put it kindly, an absolute disaster.
“Let me see.” Hattie grabbed the needles out of her hands and inspected the tangled mess of yarn falling off them with a critical eye. “Wow.”
“Thanks,” Emma muttered, reaching to take them back. There had to be a way to undo whatever she’d done.
But Hattie didn’t yield. “Actually, some of this is fine.” She pointed to a handful of stitches that didn’t look too messed up.
“Over here, you started going in through the back loop, maybe? And your tension got a little wonky, and I think you managed to grab the wrong end of the cast-on here for a bit?”
“Everybody makes mistakes when they’re starting out.” Abby shot her a soft smile. “Trust me.”
Hard to imagine, considering the beautifully intricate design that seemed to be magically appearing from her needles.
“Let me get you back to where things started to go off the rails.” Hattie started ripping back the yarn, and Emma swallowed the sting of disappointment.
If only she’d had time to watch a couple of online tutorials, or maybe skim through one of those books for absolute beginners.
But it was just yesterday that she’d expressed being open to trying to learn, and lo and behold, Hattie and Abby had shown up today, extra yarn and needles at the ready.
She’d tried to beg off, saying she had to work, but Granny had dismissed her concerns.
It wasn’t too busy in the store; there wasn’t any reason she couldn’t spend some time with customers in the café.
And she really did appreciate Hattie and Abby and their efforts.
She’d missed hanging out with friends. She might not have had much of a social life back in New York, outside of Brock’s friends, but she and Ji-An used to make a point of hitting a new eatery or a new exhibit at one of the museums together at least once a month.
Learning to knit was a far cry from checking out the latest traveling Degas collection, but it was still fun.
Too bad it was also quite so humbling.
“You really don’t have to,” she protested as Hattie showed her how to hold the yarn again and demonstrated how to complete a few more basic stitches. “I’ve already wasted enough of your time—”
Hattie shook her head. “It’s never a waste to indoctrinate new people into the cult.”
“Are we really going with the ‘cult’ language?” Abby twisted her mouth into a frown while still effortlessly moving her needles.
Hattie made a dismissive sound with her tongue and held the yarn out to Emma.
“Well, what do we have here?”
Emma looked to find an older white gentleman dressed in a button-down shirt and a knit vest approaching them. Instantly, Hattie sat up straighter, her mouth snapping into a smile but her eyes going guarded.
The man raised his brows at Hattie and Abby, one corner of his mouth quirking upward. “Impromptu crafting time? At a bookstore? Clearly the town rebels are up to their usual antics.” Then he fixed his gaze on Emma. “And how is our newest resident doing?”
Right, Emma suddenly remembered. This was Mayor Thompson. He’d come by to introduce himself the other day, but she’d met so many people since arriving here earlier in the week that she’d lost track.
“Doing great,” she assured him, instinctively sitting up straighter, too.
“Hope you’re not falling in with the wrong crowd here.” He casually patted Hattie’s shoulder, which made Emma’s brows dart upward.
But she just brushed him off, rolling her eyes. “We’re being a good influence, Dad.”
Dad? Huh. There was a bit of a family resemblance, but she would have expected a warmer greeting between father and daughter. Who was she to judge, though?
Mayor Thompson’s hum made it sound like he wasn’t so sure about his daughter being that good an influence, but he dropped the subject. Returning his attention to Emma, he asked, “And you’re settling in all right? Granny’s not making life too difficult for you?”
Emma set the newly repaired bit of knitting down, utterly hopeless at being able to concentrate on both conversing and crafting at the same time. “Settling in just fine, and no—quite the opposite. Granny’s been great.”
Sure, the older woman was occasionally cryptic, and she was still giving Emma mixed messages about her hopes to modernize the store. But she’d been incredibly warm and welcoming, always offering advice and suggestions, and giving Emma plenty of time to get her bearings in her new home.
“Well, give it time,” Mayor Thompson mused, with that same mixture of fondness and resignation that so many people seemed to have toward the store’s matriarch.
“And the town as a whole? You’re liking it so far?
” There was something surprisingly sensitive in the way he phrased it.
His love of this town shone in the hopefulness in his expression.
“So far, so good.”
“I know it must seem slow and boring to a city girl,” he went on.
She laughed before she could stop herself.
Which was weird. “Sorry—just, I don’t know that I’d call myself a ‘city girl.’” She shrugged, glancing between the mayor and her two new friends, who were looking at her with interest, even as their needles kept clicking away.
“I mean, I lived in the city for a while there, but I didn’t exactly choose it. It just sort of… happened.”
A lot of things had “just sort of happened” when she’d been with Brock. And she hadn’t exactly bucked that trend, even after her former fiancé had exited stage left.
“To be fair,” she continued, chuckling lightly, “that’s kind of how I ended up here, too. Granny’s help wanted ad crossed my path at just the right time, and voilà. It was like fate, or something.”
Hattie’s eyes widened, and she and Abby shared a weird glance. Mayor Thompson held back a smile, and Emma suddenly felt like she was missing out on some inside joke.
“What?” she asked.
“Oh, nothing.” Mayor Thompson waved off her question. “Fate just has a funny way of putting her thumb on the scale around Heart’s Hope Crossing.”
At that exact moment, the bells over the front door chimed, and in walked six-foot-something of handsome, bearded forest ranger.
Emma’s stomach fluttered, which was ridiculous.
But there was something about the way the midday, early autumn sun caught on Hunter’s dark hair that gave him a golden glow.
Before she could stop herself, she pushed her chair back, making a horrible screeching noise against the tile floor of the café.
At the sound, Hunter swung around, and their gazes met across the length of the shop. His eyes lit up, and his mustache twitched with the force of his smile. She grinned in return, irrationally happy that he was as happy to see her as she was to see him.
“Oh, there you are, Hunter!” Granny’s voice broke the haze, and just like that, the moment shattered. “Picking up for your father, I presume?”
Hunter looked away, and the fluttering butterflies in Emma’s chest got flattened against the inside of her ribs. True to her word, Granny had put Hunter’s plan to come grab his dad’s latest order for him on the calendar, but Emma had gotten distracted by Hattie and Abby showing up.
“I can get it for him,” Emma protested, rising to her feet. “Sorry—work,” she explained to Hattie and Abby.
Abby grinned slyly. “Wouldn’t want to keep you from it.”
“Definitely.” Hattie made a shooing motion toward the front counter—and toward Hunter. “We’ll still be here when you get back.”
Heat rose on Emma’s cheeks, but it would be even weirder if she didn’t go help out at the register now.
More than one person had warned her that this was a small town and folks liked to gossip, but the personal interest that people seemed to be taking in her spending three seconds with a guy she barely knew still boggled her.
First Granny the other day, and now these two.
Refusing to be self-conscious about helping a customer, she crossed the store. Granny was conspicuously searching on the wrong shelf for Mr. Hall’s order.
“Here we go.” Emma plucked the book from behind the register and held it up. “This the one you’re looking for?”
“That’s it,” Hunter agreed.
“Well, since you’ve got this under control…
” Granny wandered to the other end of the counter and picked up a copy of the new fantasy novel that all the teenagers were apparently obsessed with at the moment.
It gave the illusion of personal space while ensuring she could definitely eavesdrop as much as she pleased.
Hunter chuckled beneath his breath, shaking his head at the old woman, and Emma let out a soft laugh of her own.
Setting Mr. Hall’s book down on the counter, she checked the ordering system. “Looks like your father gave you the honor of paying?”
Hunter grumbled but reached for his wallet. She told him his total, and he fished out a few crisp bills and handed them over. As she finished ringing him up, he leaned his hip against the counter, his hands in his pockets in a way that looked casual but really wasn’t.
“So,” he started. “How’ve you been?”
“Good, for the most part. Busy. Settling in, getting the apartment set up. Learning the ropes here.” She gestured around the store and then out the window. “And there’s just so much going on.”
“Oh?” His eyebrows rose. “In our little town?”
The mayor had made a similar comment not five minutes earlier. “It’s not that sleepy of a place. Honestly, I think I’ve had more opportunities to get out and do things here than I ever had in the city.”
Sure, there was always stuff going on back in New York, but everything was so anonymous.
Her borderline-agoraphobic fiancé mostly liked to stick to their usual haunts, and she was honestly a bit of a bookworm homebody.
Other than her monthly friend dates with Ji-An, she’d mostly tuned out the overwhelming wealth of options.
Meanwhile, Heart’s Hope Crossing might have only a handful of things going on, but she’d received personal invitations to all of them.