Free Kate Jacobs by The Friday Night Knitting Club - [The Friday Night Knitting Club 01] Page A

her dressier outfits. First, she stepped into gray crepe pants and
a silk blouse, then into a black skirt. Finally, she settled on a simple navy
shift with a camel-colored cashmere cardigan, one she'd knit over the winter
and had yet to wear. She liked to look as elegant as possible when meeting a
new client, with just a piece here or there that she had knitted herself.
Though she had grumbled to Anita about meeting this Mrs. Phillips, designing
and creating clothes was the part that Georgia secretly loved most of all. She
kept a small red-leather journal in her office, in which she jotted down
pattern ideas for all sorts of pieces she planned to make someday. Sure, she
loved the shop and she was thrilled to be her own boss and she enjoyed teaching
classes, but there was something so significant about being able to make a gorgeous
item of clothing from almost raw materials. It gave her a feeling of her own
power, to make something practical and beautiful just by using her own skill
and creativity. It inspired her.

Many nights, before drifting off to sleep, Georgia imagined an alternative
life, in which she would be a reverse immigrant and head to Scotland, back to
the house where her father had been born and her grandmother still lived. She
and Dakota would buy the farm next door and raise their own sheep. They would
make Walker Sweaters, using only their own wool and never anyone else's. Their
creations would be unique and they'd be coveted by Madonna and Sean Connery and
Gwyneth Paltrow , and she and Dakota and Granny would
live together, happily and never getting any older, forever. And even her
parents would come to visit and Bess would say that she'd never have thought
that Georgia could make a go of it, but boy had she proved them wrong. And then
they'd all laugh and eat shortbread that Dakota had doctored up with bits of fruit
and drink cup after cup of sweet tea. Anita would come to visit, of course;
James would disappear from the scene. She didn't exactly wish him dead, mind
you, just missing in action.
    * * *
    Because that's what he'd been—absent. So what
was he doing back in the city? Perplexed. That's how she felt. Oh, there was
always that core of anger, the little nub that she polished with resentment
when she felt overtired and exhausted but still had to dash to yet another PTA
meeting or run down for milk even though she was already in her pajamas, there
being no one else to go but her. But the acuteness of her pain had cooled over
the years, more simmering than seething. Now, all those dormant emotions were
stirring again, even as she remained utterly confused as to why James had
popped up again, with some vague mumblings about how he regretted he hadn't
been around more often. (More often? Try at all, buddy!) Georgia prided herself
on learning how to be a shrewd judge of character, thanks to the smarting
betrayals she'd received in the past, James being the most notable. The problem
was that she just couldn't seem to figure out his angle this time.

Obviously, in the early days, it had been about sex for him, right? (Georgia
could barely remember sex with a partner. There had never been anyone
significant at all after James, just a string of blind dates during an
optimistic '97.) Maybe because the memory of James loomed large. It had been
impossible, immediately after he dumped her, to reconcile the man she had
loved—her smart, funny, gorgeous best friend who loved to do crossword puzzles
and go Rollerblading in the park—with the same person who had bailed on their
relationship. There was James…and then there was James . The real James.
It wasn't a question of if he was coming back—it was when. That's what she had
expected, back when her body was growing too large for her clothes. Georgia
remembered long-ago lunch breaks from the office with K.C., during which she
insisted, with confidence, that the two were just on a short-term break. It's a
misunderstanding, she'd told her colleague. K.C., for