Bliss by Hilary Fields

Author:Hilary Fields [Fields, Hilary]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Romance, Humour
ISBN: 9780316277341
Google: x6EIBxaZ3-IC
Amazon: 031627738X
Barnesnoble: 031627738X
Goodreads: 17660467
Publisher: Orbit
Published: 2013-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

There are times in life, Pauline, when a woman just needs a man.”

Hortencia had been arguing as much to her lover for the last twenty minutes. It wasn’t going over well. If they hadn’t had an audience, as a matter of fact, Sera feared it might have come to blows. Fortunately, they were at Hortencia’s place of business, and even Pauline had enough decorum to keep her outrage at a simmer within the hushed confines of the yarn shop.

As Hortencia and Pauline bickered, Sera busied herself examining a ball of something that looked remarkably like one of the Tribbles from Star Trek. Orange, fluffy, and incredibly soft, the mohair puffball perched on the top of Hortencia’s counter among dozens of its friends in a rainbow array of colors. She wondered if it would start cooing if she petted it, as she was tempted to do. All around her, similar poofs in all shapes and sizes crowded bins and shelves, threatening to tumble forth in an avalanche of crafty softness.

Hortencia was one of three employees at Knit-Fit, all comfortable-looking women in the fifty-plus age bracket who took their art with deadly seriousness. Today, Hortencia was sporting one of her own creations: a cable-knit Aran sweater of astonishingly intricate design in a soft salmon shade Sera wouldn’t personally have chosen. She also had a little crocheted flower brooch in a slightly rosier hue pinned to her bosom, and her homemade socks, peeking out of her sage green Merrell mules, were an alpaca blend in complementary tea rose ripples. She looked utterly at home in the shop.

She also looked pretty pissed off.

“We need a man,” she was insisting to Pauline. “I’ve been buying my family’s cars for decades, and I’m telling you, you get a better deal if you go with a caballero.”

“I am physically nauseated that you would suggest such a thing, Hortencia Alvarez.” Pauline made a gagging sound, grabbing up a ball of yarn and squeezing the fiber until it bulged out between her fingers. “What did our sisters march for, what did we sacrifice and fight for all these years if, here and now in the twenty-first century, we’re still depending on men to do our haggling?”

“Which do you think Sera cares more about? Her principles or her bank balance?” Hortencia shot back.

Both women turned their attention to Serafina, who was suddenly very busy examining the wool-to-alpaca ratio on the label of a ball of worsted weight.

“Well? What do you say, kiddo? Do you want that knuckle-dragging Malcolm McLeod along to infantilize and disempower you, or can you stand on your own two feet and make your own bargains?”

Sera smothered a grin. “Oh, I don’t know, Aunt Paulie. I think I could use all the help I can get.” She gave Pauline’s shoulder a squeeze to mitigate the sting of her betrayal, taking a moment to appreciate her aunt’s T-shirt du jour, which was silk-screened with a faded image of Helen Reddy in her heyday. Underneath, someone—undoubtedly Pauline—had scrawled a caption in Sharpie marker: “I am Woman.

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