to run.”
Mom had stopped by the store just before closing and suggested dinner, surprising Allie. After all, they’d eaten together the night before last. But she’d agreed even though she really wanted to go home and work on the Burgoyne Surrounded quilt. She’d set it up in the frame but had had very little time to start on it. Sort of like high school, she thought ruefully—I’m such a social butterfly.
Now, if it had been Nolan calling and suggesting they get together...
She would definitely not let her mother know that she’d rather be spending this evening with him.
Allie never did quite figure out why Mom had suggested they get together so soon after the last time. She clearly wasn’t interested in hearing about Nolan, and she didn’t have any significant news of her own beyond the possibility of becoming president of the Friends.
Bemused, Allie escaped as soon as she could after dinner and did manage a peaceful hour of hand-quilting before getting ready for bed. She loved starting on a new—or, in this case, very old—quilt. She used a tiny needle and averaged twelve stitches to an inch despite the thickness of the three layers. It was the quilting that added stiffness and wondrous texture. Admiring the block she’d completed, she remembered the sensual way Nolan had fingered the Lady of the Lake quilt she was working on at the store.
She wished he’d called today. What if he hadn’t had as good a time as she did? Men always said, “I’ll call.” Frequently they didn’t mean it. What if she didn’t see him again until he came to pick up his son’s completed quilt?
Allie rolled her eyes. Oh, for Pete’s sake! They’d had dinner only last night! It had been one day, and she was already despairing.
Laughing at herself, but still aware of a hollow feeling beneath her breastbone, she went to bed.
* * *
NOLAN TRIED TO figure out how soon he could see Allie again without upsetting Sean or making him feel abandoned. A solution occurred to him during the night on Thursday, and he called her store right after ten Friday morning.
After identifying himself, he said, “Do you slow down enough in the middle of the day to take a lunch break?”
“Yes, but I can’t close the store, so I usually just snatch a bite here and there when I have a slow moment.”
“Could I bring lunch by?” he asked.
There was a brief silence. “That would be nice,” she said. “Can you make it one or one-thirty? I get quite a bit of business during the standard lunch hour, then things go dead afterward.”
He’d be starving by then, as early as he had breakfast, but that was okay. He wanted to see her. He could grab a bite midmorning to sustain him.
He picked up deli sandwiches and cookies at the Pea Patch and walked in the door of Allie’s shop at one-fifteen on the nose. His gaze arrowed in on her, back at her quilt frame, before he scanned the store and saw that they were otherwise alone.
She parked the needle and dropped a thimble on the quilt, standing before he reached her. She looked so pretty, her hair looser today than he’d seen it and her eyes somehow even greener than he remembered. She wore an elbow-length, snug-fitting, peach-colored cardigan sweater that was open over something lacy and white. Her smile tightened the strange knot in his chest.
“Nolan.” Her gaze went to the bags in his hand. “Oh, I love the Pea Patch.”
“I should have asked what you like,” he said gruffly.
“I’m not picky.”
They sat at one end of the long table that presumably was used for the classes Allie taught. He took out the sandwiches and gave her first choice, looking around at the completed quilts and quilt blocks that hung on the walls.
“I’d say I stand out as much as a bull in a china shop, but at least your wares aren’t breakable.”
She laughed, the gold in her eyes shimmering. “The store is rather feminine, isn’t it? And I suppose your workshop is masculine to the nth degree.”
“You could say that. There’s nothing pretty about it.”
“Except what comes out of it.”
“I don’t usually think of anything I make as ‘pretty.’” He pretended to sound insulted. “I go for magnificent.”
“Naturally.” Her expression was merry, her mouth still curved. “Silly of me.”
He asked if all her customers were quilters, and she told him that most were.
“I carry only one hundred percent cotton fabrics that are the right