The Sweethearts’ Knitting Club by Lori Wilde

invited as she returned to her chair. Beau wheeled Clinton out the French doors to the patio beyond the sitting room.
    Flynn perched on the edge of the settee. Ulp . What was this little private chat all about?
    “Now then.” Kathryn smiled when the French doors shut after the men.
    “Now then,” Flynn echoed, not knowing what else to say. Just don’t make some smart-ass quip. Now is not the time .
    “Beau has waited over a decade for you.”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “He could have any woman he wanted.”
    “He’s quite the catch.”
    “Yes he is.” There was that north wind again, chilling as it rolled over Kathryn’s scrawny shoulder blades and blasted Arctic ice Flynn’s way.
    “However, my son never wanted any other woman but you…” Kathryn paused. “Well…there was that awful Jodi Christopher.”
    “Jodi Christopher?” Who was that?
    “Beau never mentioned her to you?”
    “No.”
    Kathryn slid a glance toward the patio, and Flynn had the strongest sense she was being manipulated. “Jodi was Beau’s first love.”
    “Huh?” She was Beau’s first love.
    Kathryn’s smile was smug. “You thought you were the only one, didn’t you.”
    Well, yeah . “When’d he meet her? How come I didn’t know about this? I mean Twilight is a small town.”
    “Beau is three years older than you, darling, and it was the summer before he turned seventeen.”
    That was the same summer her mother had been diagnosed with ALS. Flynn had known Beau then, of course, but she was too young for dating and her life had tumbled in on her at her mother’s diagnosis. That summer was a blur of doctors’ visits and balancing the twins on her hips as she cooked dinner and cleaned the house and generally took over all her mother’s duties. No wonder she didn’t remember that Beau had dated this Jodi person.
    “That summer Jodi was out of control and her parents sent her to live with her grandmother here in Twilight, hoping it would straighten her out.” Kathryn pursed her lips. “She was wild as a March hare and Beau was drawn to her like a magnet. You know how he is. That boy simply can’t resist a damsel in distress.”
    Meaning she was a damsel in distress? Don’t be snarky, don’t crack wise .
    “Of course Jodi broke his heart. Shattered it right to pieces.”
    “What happened to her?”
    Kathryn shrugged. “She ran off with some low-life and ending up getting killed on the back of his motorcycle.”
    “How awful.”
    “You reap what you sow.”
    Flynn sat there absorbing the information. Thisnews cast Beau in a whole new light, and she didn’t know what to make of it. On the one hand, she sort of liked the notion that he’d had a bit of a past, a smudge on his knightly armor. On the other hand, it bothered her that he’d never mentioned Jodi, not once in the ten years they’d been dating on and off.
    Hypocrite. You never mentioned Jesse to him.
    No, but she had the feeling he always knew. This Jodi thing came completely out of left field.
    “And then Beau started dating you and the light came back into his eyes. I have to admit you weren’t my top choice for him, but he loves you. And unlike Jodi Christopher, you’re hardworking and trustworthy and I know you have a good heart, Flynn. You won’t hurt my boy.” The last sentence was a command. Kathryn’s eyes were flint. “Because if you do, so help me God, I will—”
    The front doorbell rang, breaking off Kathryn’s heartfelt threat.
    “Well, now,” her future mother-in-law said, plastering a smile on her face and going from menacing to jovial faster than a Maserati could shoot from zero to sixty. Immediately Flynn thought of ol’ Two-Face Harvey Dent from the Batman movie her brothers had dragged her to see. “I think my party is the perfect place to officially announce your engagement to all of Twilight.”
     
    By nine P.M . the outdoor party was in full swing. The five-piece band played “Cotton-Eyed Joe” while the town’s upper crust