Free TiedandTwisted by Emily Ryan-Davis Page B

mentioned. But he’s being
selfish with you so I figured I’d invite myself to the dinner portion. Do you
mind?”
    Gah. Her Friday night appointment-slash-date already had her
on edge. Sharing a table with his sister beforehand—
    “It’s cool if you don’t want to,” Melanie said, interrupting
Jovanna’s panic. “I just thought I’d ask.”
    “I do want to,” Jovanna surprised herself by saying. “I
just—”
    Melanie squealed and hopped in place, her blonde bob
bouncing at her jaw. “Yay! Do you have anything against seafood?”
    “I…no. Fish never did me wrong,” she said, helpless in the
face of Melanie’s exuberance.
    As David’s sister entered Jovanna’s cell number into her
address book, Jovanna privately wondered whether the sinking feeling in her
stomach was more a result of worrying about family dinner pitfalls or a result
of the growing inevitability of something “more” with David. With anybody, really.
A signal from Tina reminded her she didn’t have time to cringe over what was
shaping up to be an actual relationship.
    “See you at eight!” Melanie called out as Jovanna stepped
away to welcome her class.
    At fifteen after seven, Jovanna saw her last customer out
the door and locked up. Tina’s keys were still missing despite a thorough
search. The other woman left with the intention of searching at home after
realizing she didn’t remember having them in her hand the entire day. Jovanna
snapped the blinds closed with a sigh and went to work tidying the disarray
left by a busy Friday crowd. One more excuse to delay meeting Melanie and David
at the popular restaurant Melanie had chosen via text message.
    As she got down on her knees to straighten the yarn bins
closest to the floor, the chime of the bell over the door dropped her heart
into her stomach. She’d locked that door.
    “If you move I’ll put a bullet in the back of your head,”
the intruder warned.
    She knew him. Jovanna swallowed against a surge of bile and
spread her fingers on the floor. Terror jacked her heart rate to a roar in her
ears but she knew his voice. Nasal and too high to be attractive on a man, that
voice had hurled obscenities at her across a courtroom. She should have
finished making David’s list.
    Heavy footsteps approached her from behind. Acutely aware of
her vulnerability, she made a mental sweep of the store. Her cell phone was in
her bag behind the counter. The landline phone was behind the counter too,
along with the panic switch for her alarm system.
    Jim Katt, the man who’d run her off the road and into a
telephone post, totaling her car and hospitalizing her with a broken clavicle,
stopped behind her. “Hold up your head.”
    Her breath wheezed from her chest. “What do you want?”
    He drove the toe of his boot into her hamstring. “Bitch,
when I tell you what to do, you do it. Hold up your fucking head.”
    She bit off a cry of pain and caught herself before her face
smashed into the yarn bin in front of her. Before she could raise her head, Katt
grabbed the back of her hair and jerked her up onto her knees. He dropped a
scratchy rope over her head and yanked hard, tipping her over onto her side.
The rope tightened painfully. Gasping for breath, she clawed at the thick braid
of…yarn. God. The skeins he’d stolen.
    Muttering beneath his breath, Katt dragged her across the
store, using the yarn rope as a leash. She flailed blindly, grasping for
anything. Her nails tore on the leg of a fixture as Katt hauled her away.
    “First it was about money,” Katt said. “But I figured I was
never going to get my money back from you so I’d have to take something else.”
    “Don’t…owe…” Jovanna tried to jam her fingers beneath the
rope in an effort to create some space she could breathe through. Her throat
burned over the words she managed before she gave up on speaking.
    “Shut up.” He dragged her past the spindle display, the
unbleached yarns, the small selection of how-to