Tangled Up in Love by Heidi Betts Read Free Book Online Page A

elbow.
    Risking another poke with whatever she might be able to find near the bar, he didn’t let go. “I’ve been thinking . . .”
    “Did it hurt?”
    He made a face, one side of his mouth lifting in an unamused quirk. “Ha ha. Seriously, though, I think your friend Charlotte is right. I could use some one-on-one tutoring for this knitting thing.”
    “So what do you want me to do?” she asked on a half laugh. “Recommend somebody?”
    “No, I thought maybe you’d be willing to do it.”
    At that, her eyes went wide and the tension drained out of the arm he was holding. “You’re joking, right? Why in God’s name would I be willing to help you learn to knit
at all,
let alone one-on-one? In case you’ve forgotten, this is a competition. You challenge me to something, then I challenge you to something, and we both sit back and pray the other will fail miserably and crawl away to a cave somewhere to die of shame.”
    She had a point, and until she’d touched his face, sending spear-points of awareness rocketing through his system, the idea had never even occurred to him. Until he’d grabbed her arm and gotten a second dose of that electricity, he hadn’t known what he planned to say, let alone this.
    It didn’t make a lot of sense, and there was certainly nothing in it for her, but the more he thought about it, the more he liked it. The more determined he was to convince her to go along with it.
    “Oh, I don’t know, I thought maybe you’d consider it a challenge within a challenge. We can make a little side bet.”
    Her full red lips, shiny with a layer of gloss, pursed doubtfully. “Such as?”
    “You believe there’s no way I’ll ever learn to knit, otherwise you wouldn’t have made it part of the competition, right? Well, I think I
can
learn, though I admit to needing a bit more help getting started than I first expected. So I’ll bet you . . . I don’t know, another one of my trophies that you can’t teach me to knit. You don’t have to do a great job, and you don’t have to stick withit long. And provided I don’t complete a full knitting project in the month’s time, you’ll still win the original challenge.”
    For a moment, she seemed to consider his offer, but just as quickly, a flickering change in her expression signaled she was about to turn him down.
    “I’ll even sweeten the pot by paying you outright for your time,” he rushed to add, feeling almost desperate now. “Say, a hundred bucks?”
    “A hundred bucks?” she retorted. “Hardly worth it. I’d much rather see you crash and burn.”
    She tugged her arm free and took another step toward the booth where her friends’ drinks had just been delivered.
    “All right, then,” he called after her, raising his voice enough to be heard over both the music from the jukebox and the distance she’d put between them. “How about a thousand?”

 
     
Row 4
     
     
    All the way home from her knitting group, Charlotte Langan’s mind raced. She kept thinking about every look and every word that had been exchanged between Ronnie and that nice boy, Dylan Stone.
    They purported to be mortal enemies—or at least that’s what Ronnie would have people believe. But Charlotte had been around for a lot of years and had seen a lot of things.
    Her hair might be gray . . . not that anyone would know her natural red had long ago faded away, thanks to Nice ’n Easy Morning Sunrise Number 86 . . . her eyesight might be waning, and her hearing might not be what it used to be, but she could still spot sparks when they shot ten feet into the air over her head.
    Ronnie and Dylan might claim to hate each other, but Charlotte suspected there was more to the situation than that.
    Oh, yes, there was something there. She just had to find a way to bring it out . . . and to get two people who were possibly the most stubborn and obstinate in the world to stop fighting long enough to realize that all the bitterness and vitriol they were busy