Home to Sparrow Lake
“For one, I would like to make some plans to travel. And I want do something with this house to make it more livable.”
“Aunt Margaret, this place is great as it is,” Kristen said, though it was starting to look a little shabby in places and needed quite a bit of maintenance.
“You know, I’ve been wanting to transform it with color.”
Ever since her husband, Donald, had died, Aunt Margaret had threatened to paint the walls bright colors and perk up the whole place with pieces of art, but she hadn’t done anything yet. Not even normal maintenance. The only room her aunt had ever redesigned was her studio, and that must have been shortly after she’d married Donald and moved in with him.
“Sounds great,” Kristen said, putting the last forkful of food in her mouth. “We’ll have to talk more about it tomorrow when you get home.” Unbelievably, she’d finished every morsel. Tempted to lick the bowl clean, she restrained herself and took it and the fork to the sink, rinsed them and set them in the dishwasher. “Aunt Margaret, about the store window—”
“Don’t worry about it, honey, it’s easily fixed.”
“If you’ll tell me who to call, I’ll take care of it first thing when I get to the store.”
“All right. I’ll put the name and number of my handyman right here on the counter before I leave for the university in the morning. And I’ll call Heather, too, so she won’t be shocked.”
“Great.” Kristen yawned, then kissed her aunt’s cheek. “Now I need go pass out.”
Which is exactly what she did upon entering her room. She didn’t bother stripping down any further than removing her dirty suit jacket and skirt. She didn’t take a shower. She was falling-down exhausted. Thinking she could take care of any mess tomorrow, she simply turned off the light and fell face-forward onto the bed.
The moment her head hit the pillow, she was asleep.
* * *
ALEX SAW THE light go out on the east side of the house. Kristen Lange’s room? The patrol car’s engine running, he sat on the road a hundred yards from Margaret Becker’s home, a small mansion compared to most homes in this community.
He hadn’t meant to come this way tonight, but heading for home from the station, he’d stopped at a convenience store for some food for Spike, a stray cat he’d been taking care of, then found himself taking the long way around the lake. He’d tried convincing himself that he was checking on the Lange kid, Kristen’s brother. But he didn’t figure he would find Brian skulking around at this hour.
He had to admit it was the woman herself who interested him right now. Kristen Lange didn’t seem like a typical small-town girl coming back to her roots. Although he wasn’t exactly small town, either.
Maybe it was the Chicago connection that drew him to her. There were aspects of the big city he didn’t miss, but there were others he did. Plus, most of his family still lived in Chicago. Unless it was rush hour or construction season, it was only a ninety-minute drive away, so he got back to see them often enough.
Still, the women here were softer, less likely to give him a run for his money. They didn’t have that edge that attracted him. He needed a challenge in his life that had nothing to do with work, and Kristen Lange was spicy enough to make him anticipate their next encounter.
* * *
MARGARET POURED HERSELF a glass of lemonade and sat in the small bay window off the living room overlooking Sparrow Lake. She and Donald had spent many pleasant evenings together there, just talking and enjoying the view. After two bad marriages that had ended in divorce, she’d finally found her soul mate in Donald. When she’d lost him, she’d bought the quilting store and had thrown herself into managing it, in addition to teaching, to fill the empty spaces in her life.
But now her life wasn’t so empty.
When Heather’s husband had been killed in Iraq, the poor girl had been devastated. She’d also been left with twin toddlers. Margaret had given her niece a job at Sew Fine and all the emotional aid she had needed, and now Heather was like a daughter to her. Her nephew, Brian, had moved back from California to go to college in Wisconsin, and she’d opened her doors, giving him a place to live and a part-time job at the store. Finally, Kristen had come home after more than ten years, though her niece thought it was simply to recoup and regroup before going back out into the dog-eat-dog business world.
Margaret had plans for Kristen. She’d feigned sickness so that her niece would immediately get wrapped up in the business end of Sew Fine. Smiling at the thought, she toasted the lake that held Donald’s ashes.
“I’ll always love you, my darling,” she whispered. “And I’ll see you again one day, but for now I have to move on and discover new possibilities.”
Margaret was thinking how nice a new man in her life would be.
As hard as it was for a strong and usually independent woman to admit, she had loved the excitement of a romance. Her first two marriages had been fun and exciting until they weren’t anymore, the reason she’d ended them. They’d been short-lived, but she had nothing to regret.
And then she’d met Donald.
Margaret sighed. She would never meet another Donald, of course. But maybe someone nice to keep her company once in a while wouldn’t be too much to ask.
That, and new possibilities for her lovely niece, who had become too serious, too driven and too obsessed with the idea of being a failure ever since Margaret’s younger brother, Sam, had abandoned his family.
CHAPTER THREE
“YOU WERE TRYING to do what?” Heather asked, as she stared up at Sew Fine’s broken window. Then she took a good look at Kristen and snickered. “Dressed in your designer duds? I would have paid to see that.”
“It wasn’t all that funny, believe me. Especially not when the police chief caught me.”
“Alex caught you?”
Alex? So her sister knew him on a first-name basis. And from the sound of Heather’s voice, she was highly amused by the idea of Alex having the upper hand.
“He’s an impossible man. Wouldn’t listen to a word I had to say until he got me down to the station.”
Heather snorted. “Did he handcuff you?”
“Get that suggestive tone out of your voice! There was nothing even vaguely fun or amusing about what happened to me. Alex Novak is a bully.”
“Really,” her sister drawled.
Kristen took a deep breath and silently counted to ten. Heather was being Heather, trying to drive her nuts, just as she had since they were kids.
They were adults now, and Heather had matured in other ways, managing the business and working toward a college degree while being a great mother. Matured, except for the way she presented herself. She still wore mostly jeans, sweatshirts or sweaters and running shoes. Her fine-boned face was make-up free other than a swipe of lip gloss, and her long, thick, light-brown hair was pulled into a ponytail. Still loyal to her late husband’s memory, Heather might dress this way on purpose, Kristen thought. Even so, Heather was attractive now, but with a little work she could be stunning. Then again, stunning would be hard to maintain while running after five-year-old twins.
Pulling the note Aunt Margaret had left from her pocket, Kristen said, “I need to get the window fixed. I already called this Chuck Hansen before leaving the house, but he hasn’t returned my call.”
“Maybe he ignored it because you called from your cell and he doesn’t have that number.”
“Maybe.”
While Kristen made her call from the store phone, the first customer of the morning entered and engaged Heather.
Not so happily, Kristen had to leave a second message on Chuck’s cell.
“Hi, this Kristen Lange again, calling about the broken window at Sew Fine. I should be here all day, so as soon as you get this, I would appreciate a return call. Thank you.”
The handyman didn’t need to know who broke the window or why, though she wouldn’t be surprised if word had already gotten out and was spreading around town. She could imagine the Chief taking delight in sharing the tale with his buddies.
She saw him in her mind’s eye, snarky smile pulling up the corners of his mouth....
The bell above the front door tinkled. Kristen looked that way to see another customer come in and start browsing through fabrics.
Then a black-and-white vehicle outside the store caught her attention. Kristen blinked. That was a patrol car. So why was it sitting there, as if the officer behind the wheel had an eye on the store?
Who exactly was out there? The police chief himself?
What in the world did he think he was doing, casing the store?
She started toward the front door, but before she could get close enough to check, the squad car pulled away from the curb and drove off.
She didn’t want to think about the man who had been so miserable to her in the middle of her crisis, anyway, Kristen told herself. She would concentrate on business. She went to the rear of the store—the “office” area—and sat at the desk. She started the computer, thinking to pick up where she’d left off at one in the morning.
Aunt Margaret had asked her to familiarize herself with Sew Fine and see if she had any ideas on how to grow the business.
Three years ago, with a newly earned MBA, she’d gotten a position in marketing with Chicago Lifestyle, a small sporting goods company. In less than a year, she’d been promoted to director of marketing and had helped double sales. But when the economy had taken another dip the following year, the company had “reorganized” and she had been out of a job.
Doing Aunt Margaret’s bidding was actually her kind of thing and allowed her to keep her talents sharp while looking for a real job.
The store itself was huge. Bolts of fabric and notions took up one side of the space. On the other side of the aisle were a dozen long tables with sewing machines, doubled to face each other, so women taking classes could chat. Sample quilts and smaller quilted pieces hung on both walls, making the store warm and inviting.
Working that long day yesterday had given Kristen a pretty good overview of how the business worked.
Sew Fine was open six days a week with late hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays for quilting classes. And there were two classes on Saturdays, one for kids, the other for teens. Training them to be lifelong customers, she thought. Great long-tail marketing idea there.
The store seemed to be doing a comfortable business for the number of people employed. Heather was the only full-time employee. Gloria Vega and Louise Powell each worked twenty hours a week, and Kristen’s brother Brian ran errands and cleaned up in the store two or three hours a day. The advanced quilting class was taught by Aunt Margaret. Kristen wondered if she would continue teaching now that she wanted to retire, or if they would need to find someone to replace her.
The profit after paying the staff definitely could be better for Aunt Margaret. She would get a pension from the university, of course, but that huge house of hers probably chewed up her cash on a regular basis. She’d used the money Donald had left her to pay off the mortgage and the exorbitant taxes. And as Kristen had already realized, the house needed work.
No doubt this was the reason her aunt wanted some ideas about growing the business. Aunt Margaret might fear she would have to sell the house if she couldn’t raise the store’s income. Having lost her own home to the economy, Kristen wasn’t about to let that happen to someone she loved, a senior citizen who deserved to retire in comfort and security.
The first thing she could do was to get a better sales system in place for customers who called in orders. Now, whoever answered the phone wrote the customer’s name and what she wanted on a piece of paper. Kristen looked through the box of scraps that held unfulfilled orders. An archaic and fallible system. She would start by installing a simple computer program so the person taking the order could enter the details. Then someone should be assigned to checking orders and fulfilling them on a specific day every week. Regular customers would be on file, as well, and their information automatically brought up via a database. The same database could be used for mailings.
“Aren’t your eyes crossing from being on that computer so many hours yesterday?”
Kristen started. Both customers had left the store, and Heather was standing over her. “They are a bit tired.” Having managed little more than six hours sleep, she was tired. No late night, working or otherwise, for her today.
“So take a break. We’ve hardly had a chance to talk since you got here.”
“It’s not like we haven’t talked in ages,” Kristen said, thinking of their weekly Sunday-night phone calls.
“But now I can see you.”
“Okay, okay.” Kristen smothered a yawn. “I need coffee anyway.”
Heather poured two cups. “You seem to be taking to working here.”
Kristen didn’t want to get her sister’s hopes up. “It’s only temporary, you know. Until I get on my feet.” She took her mug from Heather. “Then I’m going to start job hunting again.”
That was the agreement she’d made with Aunt Margaret. She would work here while sending out her résumé and driving into Chicago for interviews. If she could get them.
“You’re going to look for a job in Chicago?” Heather asked, her voice filled with disappointment.
“That is my home.”
“Not anymore.”
“You mean, not at the moment.” Kristen sipped her coffee, willing it to give her extra energy to get through the day.
She was hoping to be back in a new job and a new Chicago apartment before winter. Surely that would give her enough time to help grow Sew Fine into a more viable business.
“What have you got against living here?” Heather demanded. “I miss you. Aunt Margaret misses you. And now that Brian is back, he would miss you if you left again.”
“Wait a minute. Isn’t Brian supposed to be working this morning?” Kristen had thought he could sweep up the broken glass.
“Brian doesn’t always keep to schedule.”
“And you’re okay with that?” Heather was the manager, after all, Kristen thought.
“He is very helpful, Kristen. He’ll do anything I ask of him.”
“When he’s here.”
“So I give him a break. He’s had a hard couple of years since Mom remarried and moved to California.”
“Losing his friends in the middle of his freshman year of high school must have been difficult,” Kristen admitted.
“Not to mention he lost his job. Mom used to call him the man of the house. You remember that, don’t you? Even as a little kid, he took on a lot of responsibility, so he wouldn’t let her down. Well, maybe you don’t really know, because you went away to college so soon after Dad left. Mom was so proud of Brian. Mom thought it was great that he didn’t have to keep that responsibility anymore when she married Mike, but I’m not so sure.”
Kristen understood completely. “Brian lost his identity.” He must have felt as if he had failed their mother. Just as Kristen had failed at the career she’d so wanted.
Now Kristen felt even worse about Brian than she had before. Their kid brother could probably barely remember having a father in his life, and then when their mother had remarried, he hadn’t taken to his stepfather. According to Mom, Mike and Brian had been continually at odds. No doubt Brian resented having a man tell him what to do if he’d considered himself the man of the house all his young life. Her mother had mentioned increasing problems with Brian and decided the only way to make the kid happy was to let him go to college in Wisconsin.
According to Aunt Margaret, Brian could do no wrong. The change in address had seemingly made the difference. Now if only he would get to work on time.
And if only she would get a new job even better than the one she’d had.
Kristen said, “You can all come down to Chicago to see me for more than a day or two, you know. And I can come back here more weekends than I did before. It’s not that I don’t like Sparrow Lake, because I do, but there’s no opportunity here for me to prove myself.”
“You always had more drive than anyone I know. Except for Mom, if in a different way. She was always working, too.”
“To support us,” Kristen reminded her. “You know Mom didn’t have a choice. She didn’t have a career when Dad left. She had to take whatever job she could get.”
Which for years had been two and three part-time jobs all at once to make ends meet. Kristen had vowed then to get an education that would provide her with enough security so she never had to scrape by. She would never be a failure like her father, who couldn’t seem to succeed at anything, not even at having a family. Losing her job, then her savings and finally her home had been humiliating to someone with her work ethic.
She had to get back everything she’d lost. It was a matter of pride.
She just needed a time-out first.
“Have you heard from Jason?” Heather asked.
Okay, he was one thing she’d lost that she didn’t want back. “No, why would I?”
“You were together for nearly three years.”
“And I was fooled into thinking he loved me.” At least, that’s what he’d told her. “When you care for a person, you support them, good times or bad. He didn’t want to hear about my job search or my fear that I would lose my condo when I went through my savings. He wanted me to be the same bright, busy working woman who supported him emotionally.”
Eventually, he’d simply moved on to someone less complicated, though of course the way he put it was I’m doing this for you because you’re using me as a crutch and you need to stand on your own two feet.
Right.
Soured on relationships, Kristen would focus all her energies on rebuilding her career. She’d always known she had to learn to rely on herself, and nothing in her experience had changed her mind.
* * *
ALEX PARKED IN his spot in front of the police station and hurried inside to meet with Officer Owen Larson. After his late-night adventure, Alex had slept in. On the way here, he’d stopped in front of Sew Fine for a moment. He hadn’t been able to help himself. Part of him had wanted to go in and see if Kristen Lange was as feisty as he remembered. He hadn’t been able to put her out of mind.
He stopped at the desk. “Is Owen in?”
Before the receptionist could answer, Owen called, “Over here!”
Alex waved and walked back to the desk where Owen was checking his smartphone. His buddy was twenty-six but looked closer to sixteen with reddish hair, freckles and a wiry body that had little discernible bulk. Looks could be deceiving. As slight as he appeared, Owen had incredible muscle strength, could bench press his own weight and dead lift even more. He was fast on his feet and could jump a fence without hesitating. He’d been the star of the high school cross-country team and a champion in college.
“You’re late,” Owen said. “What’s up?”
“Late night.”
“So I heard.” Owen set his phone down, but he kept one eye on it.
“Expecting a call?” Alex asked.
“A text.”
Alex didn’t have to ask from whom. Owen and his new wife, Trina, had to text each other love notes all day. As long as Owen wasn’t behind the wheel of a patrol car when he did so, that was fine with Alex. Owen had become his good friend in the two years since he’d left the city and moved to Sparrow Lake, and he’d even been best man for Owen’s wedding a few months back. Though he was younger than Alex, Owen seemed to have his life far more together. Owen now had a wife he loved and plans to start a family.
“So what’s with you and Margaret’s niece?” Owen asked.
Alex frowned at him. “I caught her breaking into her aunt’s store, and I brought her in for questioning.”
“I hear there was more to it. A little something special going on between you two?”
Wishful thinking. Alex hadn’t had anything going on with any woman for far too long. “Who’s making up stories now?”
“Janet. She said the way you looked at the Lange woman and the tone you used when you spoke to her made them all think there was more to the story than you were telling.”
“They just need something juicy to chew over. A new woman in town fits the bill.”
“I might believe you, but—”
“What?”
“That expression on your face now. I know you too well, buddy. You may not have anything going yet, emphasis on the yet, but you’re sure thinking about it.”
Owen meant well, and he wasn’t wrong, but Alex wasn’t about to start talking about a woman he didn’t even know yet.
“Any new reports about the pranks being pulled around town last night?” Alex asked.
“Not last night.” Owen sighed. “At nine-fifteen this morning, the fire truck showed up at the library to find someone had pulled the alarm. Of course there was no fire. Not even a wisp of smoke.”
Alex shook his head in disgust. “I wonder where Brian Lange was at nine-fifteen.” And he wondered if Brian’s sister could tell him. That might be a sticking point in getting to know her better.
“If we could catch Brian and Matt and Andy in the act—”
“We could put the fear of jail time in them before they go too far.”
They talked for a bit about the situation with the boys running wild. Something bad had been brewing in this area of the state since the summer before. Alex had heard rumors of drug trafficking, and there had been a few armed robberies in nearby towns. He wasn’t about to let anything like that go down here in his town.
Sparrow Lake was pretty much crime free. So far.
Owen got to his feet. “I’d better get back to work or my boss might fire me.”
Alex grinned and gave him a thumbs-up. But once the officer left the station, Alex found himself brooding over the problem.
Since Brian Lange had moved back to town the month before, he’d been hanging out with two high school students a year younger than he was. Alex had seen the three of them together, and to his way of thinking, the local boys idolized the California transplant and would do anything to impress him. Since his return, all kinds of odd events had started happening. Pranks that made people angry. The three boys had been sighted several times in the areas where pranks had been pulled, although no one had actually seen them in action.
Nothing serious. Yet.
And Alex wanted to make sure it stayed that way by nipping trouble in the bud.
While on the job in Chicago, he’d seen terrible things happen to kids because no one got in their way when they started down the wrong path. Things that destroyed their futures. Things that took away any future they might have at all.
That was the reason he’d left Chicago. He’d been part of a gang unit in the Chicago Police Department, and they’d been dealing with a crime in progress. A crazed, drug-ridden kid had fired at his team and then had pointed a gun straight at Alex. Instinct had kicked in faster than he’d had time to blink, and he’d fired his own weapon. He’d been in the right. Had done exactly as he’d been trained to do. After the investigation, he’d been exonerated. None of that mattered, not even the fact that the kid had survived.
Alex had kind of gone crazy after that.
Haunted by the what-ifs, he swore he wouldn’t let the kids here, in his town, get on such a self-destructive road when he could steer them down a more positive path before it was too late.
Feeling down just thinking about Chicago, he went to his office and tried to bury himself in paperwork, but he simply couldn’t concentrate. He needed a distraction, something to take away the dark cloud that hung over him. Something to make him smile.
A few minutes later, he found himself in his squad car heading back to Sew Fine.
CHAPTER FOUR
“YOU WERE SCHEDULED to work at nine this morning,” Kristen told Brian when he finally strolled in the door just before noon.
“I was? Oh, sorry. The time must have slipped my mind.”