Free The True Love Quilting Club by Lori Wilde

seeming as if she was running away because of his scar. She wanted to run, yes, but because of the intensity of her feelings, not his wound. She hadn’t expected to feel such sympathy, to ache to pull him into her arms and kiss those scars and tell him how sorry she was he’d suffered so.
    Yeah, I’m sure his wife would appreciate that.
    Another reason she wanted to run. Why had she accepted his invitation?
    Because you’re stranded and lonely and you found a friendly face.
    Sam stepped to open the door. “Come on in.”
    Emma stayed on the porch, warily watching the dog.
    “It’s okay. Patches doesn’t bite. He might snap at your heels to get you to go in the direction he wants you to go in, but that’s all.”
    Emma went up on tiptoes as if it would protect her heels. “Why does he do that?”
    “He’s a Border collie. They’re a herding breed. It’s in his nature.”
    The dog sat looking at her, head cocked. Emma remained welded to the porch. “So to him I’m just a big sheep?”
    A smile tipped Sam’s lips. “That’s it. But he’s well trained. He’ll leave you be since you’re with me.”
    Emma didn’t want to take a chance on it. She kept remembering the vicious little terrier that had repeatedly bitten the crap out of her.
    “You really are scared of dogs.”
    She nodded.
    “Patches,” Sam said, “upstairs.”
    The dog turned and disappeared deeper into the house. Emma could hear his feet padding up a staircase she couldn’t see from her vantage point on the porch.
    He held out a hand to her.
    Emma took it.
    His fingers were calloused; his grip strong, yet gentle. Something twisted inside Emma’s chest. An emotion that eluded definition, but she felt it all the same, curling up tight inside her. She held her breath, acutely aware of him. Her palm tingled beneath his. Oh, this was so stupid. She had no business feeling anything for him other than normal cordiality. So they’d kissed once when they were fourteen. Big deal. He was married now. With a kid.
    She wondered if his wife was home. Would he call her outside? Would she come down the stairs and wrap her arms around him for a kiss and rest her head on his shoulder and call him by some cute pet name?
    A brackish taste filled her mouth. She didn’t want to see that.
    They stepped over the threshold into the foyer and immediately were enveloped by the delicious smells of roasted meat, stewed vegetables, and robust herbs—onions, garlic, black pepper, bay leaf. Once upon a time, Emma had loved to cook, but she’d let all that go when she’d moved to Manhattan. No space to indulge her culinary skills in that tiny little apartment she’d shared with Cara and Lauren.
    She didn’t see the boy at first. Rather, Sam dropped her hand and moved away from her. No, not away from her, toward the child.
    He was a skinny little thing. Pale freckled skin, black-framed Harry Potter glasses with thick lenses, hair as red as Emma’s own. His eyes were green too, just like hers. He wore blue denim short pants and a white T-shirt with a blue biplane logo on the front. His knees were scraped, and a cowlick stuck straight up at the back of his head. He reminded her of bespectacled Opie from the old Andy Griffith Show . She guessed his age at five or six. He must look like his mother, because she didn’t see a drop of Sam in him.
    It struck her then that Sam had married a redhead, and a new set of emotions had a whack at her—curiosity, nostalgia, wistfulness. The boy could be hers if she’d stayed in Twilight. Married Sam. If she’d never dreamed of being a star. That was a lot of what-ifs and she’d never regretted pursuing her acting career, but now here she was seeing another possible path she could have gone down. A path she’d never before imagined.
    “Trix—er, Emma,” Sam said, “this is Charlie. Charlie, this is an old friend of mine. Her name is Emma. She’s going to have lunch with us.”
    She’d never been particularly comfortable