Her Amish Protectors by Janice Kay Johnson

Author:Janice Kay Johnson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2017-08-31T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER ELEVEN

LUCY ARRIVED NOT ten minutes after Nadia opened A Stitch in Time the next morning. Her tote bag bulged, and this time she’d brought the large wooden hoop.

After greeting her, Nadia nodded at the tote. “Are you ready to start quilting?”

“Not quite, but all I have to do is add the borders and cut out the backing and batting. Well, and pin it. And...I don’t need to mark it if I’m just planning to quilt straight lines, right?”

Nadia laughed. “No, you don’t. Don’t sound so nervous! Remember, if your first stitches are huge or crooked, you can pull them out. Besides, this is your first quilt. You can’t improve if you don’t start.”

“I know.” She scrunched up her nose. “I’m a perfectionist, which means I drive myself crazy.”

“I understand that,” Nadia admitted. “It bodes well for you as a quilter, though. The best are, you know.”

Lucy looked thoughtful. “That makes sense. I’ve been studying the quilt in the frame in back. Hannah told me it’s yours.”

“It is.” She hadn’t touched it while she was so shaken after the auction, but in the past few days she’d had plenty of time to work on it. No annoying distractions like customers.

“The stitches are incredibly tiny and so even. Which says you’re a perfectionist, too.”

“I am, but part of it is just practice. I’ve done it so long, now I can quilt with my mind a million miles away, or while I’m carrying on a conversation, and my hand just knows what to do. I use a really small needle, and almost always pack twelve stitches on it.”

“But you don’t count.”

She shook her head. “I don’t need to anymore.”

Lucy sighed. “I’m hoping you’ll give me a quick lesson before I start that part.”

Nadia smiled. “Of course I will. And no, we don’t have to wait until the class this afternoon. If things stay quiet, I’ll be glad to have something to do.”

Lucy looked around. “Where’s Hannah?”

“Not coming in until noon. Yesterday was so dead...” Quiet. That’s what she meant.

In a different voice, low and almost timid, Lucy asked, “Do you have time to talk for a minute?”

Ben must have kept his promise, but now Nadia felt guilty. Did she really need to know the details of what his sister had suffered, instead of being willing to accept that he had reason to be extra protective of her?

“Of course I do,” she said, “but...if this is because of Ben, you don’t have to tell me anything, you know. I don’t want you feeling coerced.”

“No, I don’t mind telling you. Really. I’d like to think we can be friends.”

Nadia hugged her. “Me, too. Okay, let’s sit in back.”

She brought them both bottles of water from the dorm-size fridge she had under the checkout counter, and sat at the worktable where she could see into the store.

“I was raped,” Lucy said.

“Oh, no.” From their first meeting, Nadia had seen the same darkness in Lucy’s eyes she saw in her own sometimes when she looked in the mirror.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.