Tangled Up In Love Read online

  “What man?” one of them asked, glancing around the bar as though the offender would be standing under a spotlight.

  “Who do you think?” Grace said. Blond and beautiful, she was the picture of calm, never a hair out of place, never an emotion left unchecked. Only her close friends knew she had a sharp wit and a tongue like a razor blade. “Only the same guy Ronnie’s been bitching about for the past year—Dylan ‘That Arrogant Jackass’ Stone.”

  “Let’s just call him ‘The Jackass’ for short,” Ronnie clipped out, filling her own glass to the brim before plopping down on her chair with very little finesse.

  “I don’t get it,” Grace said. “You’re such a nice person otherwise, and get along with just about everyone you meet, but put you within a ten-mile radius of Dylan Stone and you turn into a slavering she-witch.”

  Ronnie’s eyes narrowed as she finished filling glasses and set the pitcher aside. “Payback’s a bitch,” she quipped, “and you’re looking at her.”

  “So what did he do this time?” the petite, short-haired Jenna inquired.

  “He asked if my new tattoo was sore.”

  “Is it?”

  “Of course it is,” Ronnie grumbled, taking a long, fortifying drink of her deliciously frothy tequila-laced concoction. “It throbs like a suffering bastard and rubs against my clothes all day, every day.”

  “Did you tell him what it means?” one of the other girls asked. The rest of the group chuckled, because they knew. Ronnie had divulged that little secret at their first knitting meeting after having the body art done.

  “No way. Let him wonder.”

  “Fuck him, right?” Grace teased.

  A cocky, knowing grin spread across Ronnie’s face, and she reached around to pat a spot high on her left buttock. She didn’t even wince at the added sting it caused. “That’s right.”

  “So it’s your turn to send him out on a dare. What are you going to make him do?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t thought of anything yet that’s adequately dangerous or embarrassing.” Her brows knit in a scowl. “He’s so obnoxious about thinking men are braver and more accomplished than women. I feel like daring him to walk into traffic blindfolded. A nice Greyhound bus to the temporal lobe would knock some of the smugness out of him.”

  She lifted her head and met the gaze of each of her friends around the table, her eyes conveying her desperation. “Any ideas?”

  “You could figure out a way for him to go through simulated childbirth,” Melanie, a mother of two, offered flatly. “That would shut him up and have him bowing down to every woman he met from now until the end of time.”

  “You could send him for a bikini wax.”

  Ronnie flinched slightly at that suggestion. “Don’t remind me. I still have that landing strip in my panties that is in no way ready to wave in approaching air traffic. Plus, I don’t want to repeat myself, and I already made him get his legs waxed.” She smirked. “Wonder if his hair has grown back yet.”

  “You could dare him to meet you at some no-tell motel for hot, sleazy sex, then leave him tied to the bed until the maid finds him the next day. And you could be there to capture his degradation on film.”

  Ronnie laughed with everyone else, but inside, her stomach had clenched, and picturing Dylan tied to the bedposts, beneath her and at her mercy, sent an odd fluttering through the rest of her body.

  Which was ridiculous, because he was a jerk, and if she was going to be attracted to any man at the moment, it certainly wouldn’t be Dylan Stone. She was only having this reaction because it had been so long since she’d had any type of sex that didn’t require batteries. After such a long dry spell, it was completely natural to have a physiological response to anything even remotely suggestive.

  “How about walking across hot coals or dressing in drag and going down to the red-light district?” one of the women asked, bringing her focus back to the matter at hand.

  “If you really want to trip him up on the men-versus-women thing, then he should have to do something women do on a regular basis and are really good at,” Melanie put in. “Like cleaning the house, getting a kid ready for school and to the bus stop on time, or making a Halloween costume from scratch.”

  Reaching under the table, she retrieved her purse, which was oversized and stuffed to the gills. She pulled the knitting needles and skein of yarn she’d been working with earlier that evening off the top and set them aside, then continued to remove items one at a time.

  “Do you know any men who have to carry around the crap women do, especially ones with kids? They grab their wallets and keys and take off. The rest of us have to make sure we have tampons, tissues, makeup, and nail files. And if you have kids, then you have to walk around with a steady supply of Band-Aids, baby wipes, antibacterial lotion, snacks, toys . . .” Melanie punctuated her words by pulling every one of those things from her purse, including a couple of strawberry Fruit Roll-Ups and a tiny yellow dump truck that was missing one wheel.

  “Yikes,” Jenna commented, blanching at the pile of junk cluttering the tabletop.

  “So what are you suggesting?” Ronnie asked. “That I challenge Dylan to carry an overstuffed lady’s handbag everywhere he goes for a month?”

  Melanie’s mouth twisted as she started loading things back into the purse, making its seams stretch and bulge. “He’s certainly welcome to carry mine. It’s no wonder women end up with osteoporosis. Most days, I’d swear I’m going to be a hunchback by the time I’m forty.”

  She squinted an eye and twisted her mouth, lifting one shoulder much higher than the other in a near-perfect imitation of Quasimodo. “You guys will come visit me in the bell tower, won’t you?” she inquired in one of the funniest voices they’d ever heard.

  They all laughed, and Ronnie nearly choked on her ill-timed sip of margarita.

  “If we’re not already there with you,” Jenna promised, deliberately straightening her spine and throwing her shoulders back, the model of perfect, chiropractor-approved posture.

  A moment later Grace said, “I have a better idea,” so quietly Ronnie almost didn’t hear her.

  Her attention was immediately drawn back to what had started this thread of the conversation—her ongoing feud with Dylan Stone. “What?”

  One side of her friend’s mouth quirked up in a sly, conspiratorial grin, and she inclined her head in Melanie’s direction. Or more accurately, to the bag balanced on Melanie’s lap, a tangle of pale yellow yarn and two shiny, metallic blue needles sticking out of the top.

  Ronnie looked at the purse . . . then back at Grace . . . then back at the purse.

  And finally comprehension dawned. A slow smile spread and lifted her lips until she was grinning like an idiot.

  “Grace, I love you, I really do. That’s it! It’s perfect. Not only will he hate it, but there’s no way he’ll ever manage it in only a month’s time.”

  She sat back, the discomfort of the tattoo on her rear end forgotten as she laughed and began to mentally plan the text of her upcoming column, where she would stump Dylan but good.

  “The next round’s on me, girls,” she announced, reaching for the near-empty pitcher and raising it over her head. “To my partners in crime. And The Jackass’s crushing defeat.”

  Row 2

  Anticipation coiled in Dylan’s stomach as he sat back in his creaky old metal chair, crossed his feet on the corner of his desk, and opened the latest edition of the Sentinel to page six.

  It was late Friday afternoon, which meant another one of Ronnie’s columns and another challenge doled out for him to complete. He wondered what she’d come up with this time. Fire eating? Firefighting? Cosmetology school?

  The sounds of the newsroom buzzed around him, but he blocked them out. The ringing phones, raised voices, clicking keys of computers and ancient typewriters alike.

  He’d been hoping for his own office by now, but instead he was stuck inside this ugly blue cubicle the size of a postage stamp, with en
ough noise to drive the sanest man stark raving mad. It was a wonder any of them could think straight, let alone manage to get any writing done.

  Now, at a game—football, baseball, basketball, hockey, it didn’t matter—the noise and chaos were exhilarating. If he were writing about sports and reporting about the play-offs or the latest team trades, he’d be in his element. But instead he was stuck here, hiding out inside four five-foot-high, paper-thin walls just to read one lousy column in a rival paper.

  Though the art of knitting has been around for hundreds of years, he read, finally getting down to Ronnie’s article, it seems to have made a comeback recently.

  Huh? Her column this week was about knitting? What happened to daring him to eat glass or stand on his head while eating a bowl of soup?

  Brows crossed, he continued to read. She talked about the number of books, fiction and nonfiction alike, cropping up lately about knitting. About the celebrities who seemed to be taking it up as the hobby du jour. About Julia Roberts’s role in turning one of the aforementioned books into a major motion picture.

  Jeez, this was a complete snooze, Dylan thought, his eyes moving faster and faster over the tiny print as his patience wore thin. Ronnie must have run out of ideas for challenges and decided to ignore the topic entirely, hoping their little competition would simply fade away.

  Not that he’d let her get away with it. If she wanted the dares to stop, then she’d have to come out with a public admission via her column that women just weren’t cut out to do all the things men could.

  He didn’t actually believe that; as far as he was concerned, men and women were equals, and if women had the balls to fly jumbo jets or charge into battle in the armed forces, more power to them. There were some things even he, being a guy, had no interest in experiencing. And yeah, maybe not the balls for, either.

  But Ronnie had started this, putting him on the men-are-better-than-women side of the debate, and truth be told he enjoyed baiting her. So in order to put this whole game to rest, she would have to be the one to admit defeat.

  And that’s why, he read on, near the bottom of the article, women make better knitters than men. Men don’t have the . . . needles for such intricate work, and I challenge one of them—one of them in particular—to prove me wrong.

  Oh, shit. It was her challenge column. His eyes had been so glazed over with the history of knitting by paragraph three that he’d failed to spot the trap and she’d gotten the drop on him.

  He went back to the top and read the article again. Every word, every punctuation mark, every stylistic point and personal nuance.

  Sneaky, very sneaky. Like the perfect bowling score, Ronnie had set him up and knocked him down. And now he had just one month to not only learn to knit, but do it well enough to produce some knitted item that would prove his skills.

  He thought he’d rather do the upside-down-soup-eating thing. At least then he wouldn’t end up with egg on his face . . . maybe just a little split pea.

  With a thumb and index finger digging roughly into his eye sockets, he took a breath and started to consider his options. There was no backing out or wiggling his way around it, so he’d have to approach Ronnie’s latest challenge the same as he had all the rest—figure out where to start and how to follow through.

  Kicking his feet off the desk, he swung his chair around and began tapping his keyboard to log on to the Internet and do a search for all things knitting. The number of results at the bottom of the first Google page made him groan, and he quickly realized he was going to have to narrow his scope.

  He typed in “knitting for beginners” and “learning to knit,” then went to Amazon and did the same. It didn’t exactly raise his spirits to find a book called Knitting for Dummies and realize his weekend was going to be spent reading the stupid thing, but if that’s what it took to make Ronnie eat her words, then so be it.

  Grabbing a phone book out of a bottom drawer, he looked up the number of a bookstore that was on his way home and dialed with the receiver pressed between his ear and shoulder while he continued to surf the ’Net for knitting information. When a woman answered, he asked if they had a copy of the Dummies title in stock, then waited for her to check. When she assured him they did, he asked her to hold it until he could pick it up.

  He shut down his computer, shrugged into his jacket, and grabbed up a few things to work on at home. Heading out of the Herald office building and toward the parking lot, he decided he had this competition in the bag.

  He’d pick up the how-to book on the way home, as well as some yarn and a couple of needles, and spend the weekend reading up and practicing. Millions of people knew how to knit. He even thought he remembered his own grandmother sitting around, needles clacking together as she made something or other. And if his little old arthritic grandmother could do it, how hard could this knitting business be?

  Dylan scowled, wishing his friends into the deepest, darkest bowels of Hell. They were seated at their usual table at the Box, tossing back a couple of brewskis, but Zack and Gage were more interested in howling like monkeys than keeping track of whose turn it was to buy.

  So much for support in the face of adversity. So much for a little freaking loyalty.

  Zack swiped a thumb under one eye. “Oh, man, that’s priceless. She’s really got you by the short hairs this time, doesn’t she?”

  Narrowing his eyes to slits, Dylan took a drink and refused to answer.

  His friends might find this situation amusing, but he sure didn’t. He’d spent the weekend reading that stupid-ass knitting book that hadn’t made a lick of sense or helped him one whit toward figuring out how to use the bloody needles and yarn he’d also picked up.

  Cast on, bind off, knit, purl, yarn over, slip stitch . . . Jesus, it was like a whole other language. Some alien dialect you couldn’t understand unless you’d undergone an anal probe.

  He was a guy. He had a zillion sports statistics swimming around in his head and could rattle them off at the drop of a hat, but damned if he could figure out how to make a flipping slipknot without wanting to blow his brains out.

  And the illustrations were even worse. They were like those Magic Eye 3D pictures that he’d never been able to figure out. After staring at the knitting diagrams for hours on end, he’d gone cross-eyed and seriously considered blinding himself with one of the needles. They seemed sharp enough to do the job.

  The book had made a satisfying thud as it hit the wall the first three or four times, though.

  Then he’d decided to just dive in and figure it out the old-fashioned way. What he’d ended up with was a knot of yarn as big as his fist that he didn’t think he’d ever get untangled. And worse, he couldn’t seem to get it loose from the needles to start over.

  So now he was back at square one, with no clue what he was doing or how he’d figure it out, and though only a few days had passed since Ronnie had issued her challenge, time was ticking away.

  “This might be the one that sends you down in flames,” Gage added. Though he’d gotten a good chuckle out of Dylan’s predicament, he didn’t seem to be quite as amused as Zack, who was still snorting.

  “Over my dead body,” Dylan grumbled. “I don’t care if I have to hire an army of little old ladies to teach me how to use those damn sticks, Ronnie is not going to beat me on this one.”

  Zack leaned his long, solid, six-six frame back in his chair, taking his bottle of beer with him. “I still say the only sticks a guy can be expected to know anything about are a hockey stick and the one between his legs.”

  “Brave words coming from a professional hockey player and a guy who’s getting laid on a regular basis.”

  His friend shot him a shit-eating grin before lifting the bottle to his lips.

  “You could try finding a knitting group.” This from the more stoic Gage. His thick bicep twitched as he raised his own drink, causing the tribal vine tattoo visible below the arm of his tight black T-shirt to bunch and release.

  Th
e noise in the bar around them seemed to fade away as Dylan perked up, leaning his elbows on the table to study his friend. “What’s a knitting group?”

  “You know, a group of women who get together once a week or once a month to knit and talk about whatever.” He shrugged. “I’m guessing new patterns, new yarns, and eventually men.”

  “And just how do you know so much about these groups?” Zack asked, waggling his brows suggestively.

  Gage shrugged, avoiding both his friends’ gazes to stare at the flat tabletop instead. “I heard Jenna mention it.”

  His ex-wife was never a pleasant topic for Gage, and a stoniness came over his face the minute Jenna’s name passed his lips. They’d been divorced for almost a year now, and Dylan still wasn’t sure exactly what had caused the breakup. All his friend would say was that Jenna couldn’t handle him being a cop and they’d decided it would be better to go their separate ways.

  Dylan suspected there was more to the story than that, but didn’t press. As close as they were, they each had their own secrets and valued their privacy. And when he was ready, Gage would tell them what he wanted them to know.

  “That’s right,” Zack said, sitting up as he warmed to the subject. “I’ve heard Grace talk about it, too. I think she might even belong to one of those things. God knows she’s got enough yarn and shit lying around her apartment.”

  “You don’t know whether your girlfriend is in a knitting group or not?” Dylan asked.

  Zack rolled his eyes. “That woman has more going on than six normal girlfriends. Book clubs, craft groups, cooking classes . . . I have to sit down sometimes just to catch my breath from watching her work.”

  “So when do you find time to have all this hot sex you keep bragging about?” Gage wanted to know.

  Zack took a swig of beer before smiling slyly. “Where there’s a will, there’s a way, brother. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”