Page 9 of Stirring Up Love
Finn frowned. “No, it’s okay. I ...”
“Yoo-hoo, Patty!” Another member of the yarn gang leaned out of the stall. “I’ve seen you down at the shop buying skeins. When are you going to join up?” The woman kept her face forward, speed-walking. “Patricia Ann, don’t make me chase you!” The knitter cackled, like she might make good on her promise, but turned toward Finn instead. She wore a fanny pack front and center on her pregnant belly with an indecipherable bedazzled logo.
He squinted, trying to make out the words formed with tiny crystals.
She pointed to it with finger guns. “The Yarn Spinners. Heard of us?”
Nope, but he doubted he’d ever forget the name. It would haunt his nightmares.
With a chuckle, she maneuvered herself around him, into the shade, and pulled out some bills from her bag. “When Simone told us this spot was open, we couldn’t believe our luck.”
Simone. Why did that name sound familiar?
She licked her thumb and started counting the cash. “And just in time for our annual membership drive too. Great timing, isn’t it, Doug?”
The lone man in attendance, seated on a director’s chair inside the tent, kept clacking away with his knitting needles. “Best news we’ve had in a while. The market organizers have had it out for us ever since—”
“Ancient history.” The pregnant woman cut him off with a lopsided smile toward Finn. “But yeah, we haven’t gotten a booth in years. So we really do appreciate you sharing.”
The young woman in the flowy dress—Aimee—leaned out and shoved a brochure into someone’s shopping trolley. Slipped another into the tote bag of a shopper who’d just stepped up to his table. The woman looked down at the brochure sticking out of her bag. Backed slowly away from the tent.
Great. Just stupendous. He’d been dealt the short stick. All his potential customers were now giving the tent a wide berth for fear of being roped in to the group of knitters. Someone named Simone had orchestrated this last-minute arrangement. Didn’t narrow it down much, in a town full of strangers. But the name rang a bell ... Simone, Simone, Sim—Simon. The gorgeous barbecue vendor he’d met this morning. She did this?
Leaving the knitters behind, he strode down the aisle, dodging dogs—he would not be distracted by those adorable smiling pup faces and wagging tails, and oh, those floppy ears ...not now, Finn!—and kids in little red wagons, and gaggles of old ladies with wire shopping trolleys, all giving the Yarn Spinners’ booth—hisbooth—a wide berth.
He found Simon/Simone right where he’d left her, except right-side up, her stunning long legs now hidden behind a table likewise returnedto its upright and locked position. Twin glossy black braids hung over her shoulders, and she’d added a baseball hat with the wordsHoney and Hickorystitched in maroon letters to her crop-top-and-cutoff-overalls outfit.
Sexy country girl wasn’t something he would’ve guessed he’d be into, but dang.
He mentally slapped his own cheek. Not sexy. The person responsible for making him share a stall with the equivalent of mall kiosk vendors with a sales quota to hit. The two braids and overalls made her look innocent, but her wide smile hid a devious soul; he was sure of it.
A line snaked away from her booth, packed with customers who should’ve been handing over cash in exchange for his no-doubt superior sauces. Infringing on profits he intended to use for the greater good. Pretty sure she couldn’t say the same.
And sabotaging her only competition? Whatever’d happened to a free market? Her Mr.Monopoly play ended now. Bypassing the line, he marched straight up to the table. “I know what you pulled, and you’re going to regret it.”
“Is that a promise?” She had the nerve to grin at him, a bright and dazzling flash of white teeth and red lips.
Flipping one braid over her shoulder with a fine-boned hand, she swiped another customer’s credit card. “I went ahead and threw in a smoked sausage for you, Tara. No charge. Don’t worry about losing your loyalty card. We’ll just start a new one, okay?”
Simone pulled out a hole punch from her back pocket and snipped the card, then dropped it in the bag. “See you next week.”
“Definitely. And thanks!” The woman shuffled out of line, and Finn took her place.
The next customer pushed up behind him. “Maybe you didn’t notice, but the line’s back that way.”
He didn’t turn. Not because he couldn’t seem to tear his eyes off the beautiful woman in front of him. Only because he couldn’t afford to turn his back on someone so sneaky.
“This won’t take long,” he said out of the side of his mouth, willing his eyes back up from the path they kept trying to trace down to her lips. He planted both hands on the table and caught a hint of something crisp and herbaceous as he leaned toward her. Tempting as a cool drink on a hot day—and totally at odds with the fire in her amber-hued eyes.
“Got a minute,Simone?”
She pressed her perfect lips together and flicked her gaze down the line of customers, then narrowed her eyes. “One minute.” She leaned sideways and shouted around him, “Meg, can you send Laney over to give me a hand for a sec?”
A woman with streaky blonde hair popped out of a tent a few stalls down, a baby strapped to her chest in a carrier.
“She’ll take care of y’all,” Simone said to the people in line, gracious but with no hint of apology in her tone. “I’ll be back right, after I deal with this misguided out-of-towner.”
Out-of-towner?How would she even know? And she said it like an insult. The opposite of the welcoming, if overwhelming, way the knitters had greeted him.
