Home to Sparrow Lake. Lynn Patrick

She’d feigned sickness so that her niece would immediately get wrapped up in the business end of Sew Fine. Smiling at the thought, she toasted the lake that held Donald’s ashes.

      “I’ll always love you, my darling,” she whispered. “And I’ll see you again one day, but for now I have to move on and discover new possibilities.”

      Margaret was thinking how nice a new man in her life would be.

      As hard as it was for a strong and usually independent woman to admit, she had loved the excitement of a romance. Her first two marriages had been fun and exciting until they weren’t anymore, the reason she’d ended them. They’d been short-lived, but she had nothing to regret.

      And then she’d met Donald.

      Margaret sighed. She would never meet another Donald, of course. But maybe someone nice to keep her company once in a while wouldn’t be too much to ask.

      That, and new possibilities for her lovely niece, who had become too serious, too driven and too obsessed with the idea of being a failure ever since Margaret’s younger brother, Sam, had abandoned his family.

      CHAPTER THREE

      “YOU WERE TRYING to do what?” Heather asked, as she stared up at Sew Fine’s broken window. Then she took a good look at Kristen and snickered. “Dressed in your designer duds? I would have paid to see that.”

      “It wasn’t all that funny, believe me. Especially not when the police chief caught me.”

      “Alex caught you?”

      Alex? So her sister knew him on a first-name basis. And from the sound of Heather’s voice, she was highly amused by the idea of Alex having the upper hand.

      “He’s an impossible man. Wouldn’t listen to a word I had to say until he got me down to the station.”

      Heather snorted. “Did he handcuff you?”

      “Get that suggestive tone out of your voice! There was nothing even vaguely fun or amusing about what happened to me. Alex Novak is a bully.”

      “Really,” her sister drawled.

      Kristen took a deep breath and silently counted to ten. Heather was being Heather, trying to drive her nuts, just as she had since they were kids.

      They were adults now, and Heather had matured in other ways, managing the business and working toward a college degree while being a great mother. Matured, except for the way she presented herself. She still wore mostly jeans, sweatshirts or sweaters and running shoes. Her fine-boned face was make-up free other than a swipe of lip gloss, and her long, thick, light-brown hair was pulled into a ponytail. Still loyal to her late husband’s memory, Heather might dress this way on purpose, Kristen thought. Even so, Heather was attractive now, but with a little work she could be stunning. Then again, stunning would be hard to maintain while running after five-year-old twins.

      Pulling the note Aunt Margaret had left from her pocket, Kristen said, “I need to get the window fixed. I already called this Chuck Hansen before leaving the house, but he hasn’t returned my call.”

      “Maybe he ignored it because you called from your cell and he doesn’t have that number.”

      “Maybe.”

      While Kristen made her call from the store phone, the first customer of the morning entered and engaged Heather.

      Not so happily, Kristen had to leave a second message on Chuck’s cell.

      “Hi, this Kristen Lange again, calling about the broken window at Sew Fine. I should be here all day, so as soon as you get this, I would appreciate a return call. Thank you.”

      The handyman didn’t need to know who broke the window or why, though she wouldn’t be surprised if word had already gotten out and was spreading around town. She could imagine the Chief taking delight in sharing the tale with his buddies.

      She saw him in her mind’s eye, snarky smile pulling up the corners of his mouth....

      The bell above the front door tinkled. Kristen looked that way to see another customer come in and start browsing through fabrics.

      Then a black-and-white vehicle outside the store caught her attention. Kristen blinked. That was a patrol car. So why was it sitting there, as if the officer behind the wheel had an eye on the store?

      Who exactly was out there? The police chief himself?

      What in the world did he think he was doing, casing the store?

      She started toward the front door, but before she could get close enough to check, the squad car pulled away from the curb and drove off.

      She didn’t want to think about the man who had been so miserable to her in the middle of her crisis, anyway, Kristen told herself. She would concentrate on business. She went to the rear of the store—the “office” area—and sat at the desk. She started the computer, thinking to pick up where she’d left off at one in the morning.

      Aunt Margaret had asked her to familiarize herself with Sew Fine and see if she had any ideas on how to grow the business.

      Three years ago, with a newly earned MBA, she’d gotten a position in marketing with Chicago Lifestyle, a small sporting goods company. In less than a year, she’d been promoted to director of marketing and had helped double sales. But when the economy had taken another dip the following year, the company had “reorganized” and she had been out of a job.

      Doing Aunt Margaret’s bidding was actually her kind of thing and allowed her to keep her talents sharp while looking for a real job.

      The store itself was huge. Bolts of fabric and notions took up one side of the space. On the other side of the aisle were a dozen long tables with sewing machines, doubled to face each other, so women taking classes could chat. Sample quilts and smaller quilted pieces hung on both walls, making the store warm and inviting.

      Working that long day yesterday had given Kristen a pretty good overview of how the business worked.

      Sew Fine was open six days a week with late hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays for quilting classes. And there were two classes on Saturdays, one for kids, the other for teens. Training them to be lifelong customers, she thought. Great long-tail marketing idea there.

      The store seemed to be doing a comfortable business for the number of people employed. Heather was the only full-time employee. Gloria Vega and Louise Powell each worked twenty hours a week, and Kristen’s brother Brian ran errands and cleaned up in the store two or three hours a day. The advanced quilting class was taught by Aunt Margaret. Kristen wondered if she would continue teaching now that she wanted to retire, or if they would need to find someone to replace her.

      The profit after paying the staff definitely could be better for Aunt Margaret. She would get a pension from the university, of course, but that huge house of hers probably chewed up her cash on a regular basis. She’d used the money Donald had left her to pay off the mortgage and the exorbitant taxes. And as Kristen had already realized, the house needed work.

      No doubt this was the reason her aunt wanted some ideas about growing the business. Aunt Margaret might fear she would have to sell the house if she couldn’t raise the store’s income. Having lost her own home to the economy, Kristen wasn’t about to let that happen to someone she loved, a senior citizen who deserved to retire in comfort and security.

      The first thing she could do was to get a better sales system in place for customers who called in orders. Now, whoever answered the phone wrote the customer’s name and what she wanted on a piece of paper. Kristen looked through the box of scraps that held unfulfilled orders. An archaic and fallible system. She would start by installing a simple computer program so the person taking the order could enter the details. Then someone should be assigned to checking orders and fulfilling them on a specific day every week. Regular customers would be on file, as well, and their information automatically brought up via a database. The same database could be used for mailings.