How to Knit a Love Song by Rachael Herron Read Free Book Online

my room.”
    He should correct her choice of words. Her room.
    He could let that go, right?
    “No, I’m out of here. I’m going to go up to the north end and check a fence line.”
    She nodded again, at him, and left the room silently.
    Cade took a deep breath and leaned against the sink, looking out the window at the cottage. This was going to be something, all right. He just didn’t know what.

Chapter Seven
Knit a sleeve as long as you want, not to the specifications of any silly pattern, even one of mine. If you always roll your sleeves, knit a sleeve four inches shorter. Remember, there are no sleeve police.
- E.C.
    A bigail was getting good at acting like she was strong.
    She wasn’t sure how her bravado held up under his gaze. Those clear, green eyes seemed to look inside her and see way too much. Maybe he wasn’t buying her strength act. But she was going to try to keep selling it to him. Besides, she was sick of being scared.
    First things first. She told herself her temporary room was going to be fine. She could write for a while sitting in bed with her laptop, but to really think, she needed to spread out. The tiny desk would only work for so long.
    It would be hard, leaving her fiber in their plastic bins, but she supposed she could just wait until she was in the cottage. Once her work space was organized, her yarn and fiber up on the shelves in plain view, she’d feel like herself.
    Wouldn’t she?
    The bedroom Cade had given her was small but sweet. A narrow twin bed was covered in a green knitted afghan. The sheets smelled a little musty, but looked clean. She’d wash them later today. Last night, she hadn’t felt like looking for the washer and dryer, hadn’t felt like putting herself again in Cade’s path.
    She quickly repositioned the furniture in the room, moving the bed so that it was under the window. She wanted to look up at the sky at night. She moved the small writing desk to the other window on the far wall, so when she was writing she’d be able to look out at the trees and sheep.
    She tugged at the afghan, squaring it up on the bed. She recognized Eliza’s hand in the pattern of it. She felt silly for doing it, but she leaned down and sniffed. There it was, the slightest scent of the lavender-lanolin hand lotion that Eliza always wore—the smell permanently embedded in the fibers. Abigail felt buoyed.
    The house was too deep into the hills to have a view of the ocean, but she could feel the sea. While she unpacked her few belongings, moving clothes into the old dresser, she moved back and forth, to the window and away, taking it all in.
    She also kept an eye out for Cade.
    Oh, there were too many questions, and each one problematic. Each question would require a conversation with Cade, and she planned on avoiding him as much as possible.
    She looked again out the window.
    Abigail could barely believe that she wouldn’t see her ex-boyfriend Samuel’s black SUV idling on a nearby corner under a streetlight, that she wouldn’t see his face turned in the direction of her window. She was used to the fear, and had even become good at marshalling it, corralling the trepidation.
    But there was nothing out there but the slow dust trailing down the main road where an old beat-up truck had just been. A squirrel raced out from under an oak tree and then did a U-turn and raced back the way it had come.
    It wasn’t even lunchtime on her first real day, and she wanted, what? Not out, surely, but she didn’t want this, this familiar feeling of being cooped up. She was done being kept inside.
    She walked resolutely to the door and outside, across the yard back to the cottage. She unlocked the door, hoping that she wouldn’t be interrupted this time. She wasn’t done with this cottage yet.
    A new beginning.
    She would start the clean-out today. The faster it was done, the faster she was out of Cade’s house, and away from that strange tension.
    The box on top of the first pile. That’s where she