Free How to Knit a Heart Back Home by Rachael Herron

his pocket and put it on top of the bar also. He cleared his throat.
    “Jonas,” started Lucy. This wasn’t like her brother.
    “What?” Jonas said.
    “Can I get an Anchor Steam down here?” Owen’s voice was polite, but firm.
    Jonas folded his lips together and nodded, without looking at Owen. He drew a beer and slid it across the bar, accepting payment without ever appearing to make eye contact.
    “Thanks,” said Owen.
    Jonas jerked his chin in response and returned to stand in front of Lucy and Molly.
    “What’s your problem?” hissed Lucy, hoping the sound of the jukebox covered her voice.
    Jonas shrugged. “Nothing.”
    Lucy felt the pulse at the front of her throat beat wildly as she turned as casually as she could. “Hi,” she called down the bar stools.
    “Hey there.” Owen half smiled, but there was a reserve to him, a set to his mouth that Lucy didn’t blame him for. Jonas had been deliberately rude, and Lucy was embarrassed.
    Lucy wanted desperately to ask him to move down and join them, but she couldn’t seem to make her vocal cords say the words. Her mouth opened and closed. She knitted faster.
    “Come down here and sit with us,” said Molly.
    Lucy smiled.
    Jonas harrumphed and went into the back room, where he started rearranging kegs with thumps and bangs.
    “I’m Molly,” Molly said, turning on her signature full-wattage smile, “and that’s Silas over there.”
    Silas barely looked up from his book before dropping his eyes back to the page.
    Lucy found that her voice worked again. “You’ll have to forgive my brothers,” said Lucy. “One has no social graces. And the other one, well, he has no social graces either.”
    Molly smiled. “Silas wouldn’t notice if a bomb went off in here.”
    “If the bomb made him lose his place, he’d notice. But not until then,” Lucy agreed. She turned the row on her sock, flipping the yarn, and noticed that Owen was watching her hands. She was conscious of the way her fingers were moving in a way she usually never was.
    “So Owen, I hear you’re the local black sheep, returned to pasture.” Molly cocked an eyebrow.
    Owen’s eyes darted to Lucy’s, but then he nodded. “Yep. The proverbial bad penny.”
    That wasn’t right, thought Lucy, but correcting Molly would make it worse. Owen was neither of those, not a black sheep returning nor a bad penny turning up. He was just a man coming home.
    But before she could say something, the door to the bar swung open with a bang. Whitney Court entered, holding a large plate covered with cookies.
    “Hello, darlings!” Whitney’s voice was a trill. “I went a little overboard in the butterscotch-pecan-cookie department tonight right before I closed, and I thought you all might like a little sample of my wares.”
    Silas’s head rose from his book so fast Lucy thought he might get whiplash. Owen said, “Cookies?” Molly grinned. Jonas poked his head out from the back room. And the two drunk college guys who had been arm wrestling over who got to break the rack on the next game of pool unlocked hands and tripped over each other in their haste to get to Whitney.
    The eponymous Whitney’s Bakery sat next door to Lucy’s bookstore. Lucy was used to people tromping through her store, a muffin in one hand, a fancy caramel latte in the other, browsing books with sticky fingers. And even though she kept trash cans at the front of the store just to catch their empty wrappers, she still found cookie crumbs behind the biography section and empty coffee cups perched on the romance shelves.
    The college boys slapped each other’s hands in their rush to grab a cookie, elbowing each other out of the way. They were obviously drunk and they were making Lucy uncomfortable, but Whitney seemed relaxed. She always seemed at home around men. It drove Lucy crazy.
    “Oh, now, boys. There’s plenty for everyone.” Whitney’s laugh was gorgeous, light and silky. She wore a sweet pink dress with a full skirt,