Dirty Sexy Knitting Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Epilogue

  Praise for the novels of Christie Ridgway

  “Christie Ridgway writes with the perfect combination of humor and heart. This funny, sexy story is as fresh and breezy as its Southern California setting.”—Susan Wiggs

  “Delightful.”—Rachel Gibson

  “Tender, funny, and wonderfully emotional.”

  —Barbara Freethy

  “Pure romance, delightfully warm and funny.”

  —Jennifer Crusie

  “Smart, peppy.”—Publishers Weekly

  “Funny, supersexy, and fast paced . . . Ridgway is noted for her humorous, spicy, and upbeat stories.”

  —Library Journal

  “Christie Ridgway is a first-class author.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  “Christie Ridgway’s books are crammed with smart girls, manly men, great sex, and fast, funny dialogue. Her latest novel . . . is a delightful example, a romance as purely sparkling as California champagne.”—BookPage

  “Ridgway delights yet again with this charming, witty tale of holiday romance. Not only are the characters sympathetic, intelligent, and engaging, but the sexual tension between the main characters is played out with tremendous skill.”—Romantic Times

  Titles by Christie Ridgway

  HOW TO KNIT A WILD BIKINI

  UNRAVEL ME

  DIRTY SEXY KNITTING

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc. 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

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  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  DIRTY SEXY KNITTING

  A Berkley Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Berkley edition / June 2009

  Copyright © 2009 by Christie Ridgway.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-05760-5

  BERKLEY®

  Berkley Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014. BERKLEY® is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

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  http://us.penguingroup.com

  One

  Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family. Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one.

  —JANE HOWARD

  “It’s my party,” Cassandra Riley told her companions as she wiped a tear from her cheek with the back of her hand. “I’ll cry if I want to.”

  The pair on her couch didn’t look up, and the one near the overstuffed chair in her living room continued toying with a small ball of soft yarn. It was left over from the dress Cassandra had made to wear to the celebration-that-wasn’t, and she fingered the mohair-nylon-wool of the crocheted skirt, wishing the April sky would take its cue from the blue color. Stanching another tear, she pressed her nose to the sliding glass door that led to her backyard. Beyond the small pool with its graceful, arching footbridge, the green of the surrounding banana trees, sword ferns, and tropical shrubs looked lush against the dark storm clouds.

  The rain hadn’t let up.

  And neither had Cassandra’s low mood.

  Thirty years old, she thought, feeling more wetness drip off her jaw, and she was all dressed up with no place to go.

  That wasn’t strictly true. Three miles away on the Pacific Coast Highway, at her little yarn shop, Malibu & Ewe, the ingredients for a birthday bash were ready and waiting. But a spring deluge had hit overnight and before her landline phone connection had died she’d been informed that the road at the end of her secluded lane was washed out. The narrow driveway beyond her place led to only one other residence.

  She wouldn’t be partying over there, even if the owner would let her through the doors. Even if he was inside his bat cave.

  Though they’d been lovers for four weeks, he’d dumped her yesterday, hard. She suspected that following their public scene he’d immediately headed for someplace where he could indulge in another of his self-destructive benders without anyone’s interference.

  “That means we’re alone, kids,” she said over her shoulder. “Isolated.”

  All she’d never wanted by thirty.

  She’d made contact with her donor sibling sisters because she wanted the family ties her sperm-inseminated, single mother had always eschewed. Cassandra had forged a real relationship with Nikki and Juliet now, but there was trouble on that front, too.

  So here she was, all by herself again. Lonely.

  The rain picked up, drumming harder against the roof and all three “kids” jumped. She’d taken them in last year during a torrential storm and they probably remembered what it was like to be wet and muddy and barely clinging to life.

  She couldn’t blame the cats for being spooked. Besides being brokenhearted, Cassandra felt a little twitchy herself. She wiggled her toes in her warm down slippers and rubbed her arms to smooth away her chills. Dark was approaching, the weather wasn’t abating, and with the road gone already, she had to be on the lookout for more evidence of mud slides.

  Blinking back another round of self-pity, she scrutinized the backyard once more. At the rear was the first of the narrow flights of steps that led to the other house farther up the Malibu canyon. A creek ran through the northern end of the property, very picturesque, but if its banks overflowed, then water would come gushing down those stairs, just like—

  Oh, God.

  Just like it was doing right now.

  She stared at the widening wash of muddy runoff tumbling Slinky-
like down the cement steps. This wasn’t good.

  This wasn’t supposed to happen on her birthday.

  Or ever, for that matter.

  Thumping sounds from the direction of her front porch caused her head to jerk around. Floodwaters behind her and what—who was on her porch? Her heart slammed against her chest. The cats jumped to their feet and rushed toward the front door.

  Surely only one person could get them moving with such haste. They loved him, though he pretended not to care.

  Could it be . . . ?

  She crossed the room, almost beating the kids in the impromptu footrace. Their tails swished impatiently as she grasped the doorknob, twisted, and pulled.

  In the deepening dusk, the visitor was just a dark figure in a sodden raincoat, a wide-brimmed safari-style hat shadowing his face and leaking water at the edges like she’d been leaking tears a few minutes before.

  Cassandra’s heart smacked in an erratic, painful rhythm against her breastbone. Yesterday he’d walked away from her and she’d doubted if she’d ever see him again.

  The figure pushed aside the open edges of his long coat. The sleeve slid up, reminding her of the bandage he’d wound around his cut wrist just a few weeks before. She knew the skin was healed there now.

  His hand appeared pale against the blackness of his clothes. She saw the gleam of something metallic shoved into the waistband of dark jeans.

  Oh, God.

  She’d known he was in a bleak mood yesterday.

  I was thinking about Maddie. I’ve been thinking about Maddie all day.

  But even after the many times she’d rescued him off barroom floors, even after the numerous occasions he’d gone missing for days at a stretch, even after the skydiving and the hang gliding and the dangerous solo kayak ocean voyages, not to mention that walk down the middle of a dark, rainy highway just two nights before, her mind couldn’t fathom . . .

  “Gabe?” she whispered, her gaze lifting to the face beneath the hat’s brim. “A gun?”

  Six weeks earlier . . . The ring of the bedside phone jolted Cassandra from a fitful sleep. She jackknifed up, disturbing the snoozing cats. Her hand snatched the receiver from its base as adrenaline sluiced through her veins. “Gabe?” It was either him, or about him. Her two A.M. calls were like that.

  It was of the second variety. She assured the caller she was on her way, then dressed, her movements made choppy by the adrenaline hit she’d taken. In cropped sweatpants, T-shirt, and her yoga slip-ons, she let herself out of the house.

  She didn’t feel the chill in the spring night air.

  She didn’t feel the rough gravel under her thin-soled shoes.

  She only felt relief.

  After three days without any sign of him, he’d turned up. This wasn’t his longest stay away and this wasn’t the most worried she’d ever been, but still she had to take deep breaths to calm her heartbeat on the short drive to the Beach Shack, notable for only two things: In Malibu terms it was quite far from the beach, and the owner kept Cassandra’s number pinned on the corkboard next to the bar’s house phone.

  Gabe’s been found, she told herself, pulling into the small, potholed parking lot. We have another chance.

  There wasn’t any “we,” she knew that, but she used the word anyway, as if by doing so she could make him an active partner in this endeavor to keep him engaged in the world around him.

  Come on, Cassandra. She knew where her insidious inner voice was going, and she wished she could block it out as she pushed open the Beach Shack’s door. Don’t you really mean in this endeavor to keep him alive?

  He looked half-dead, she had to admit. In jeans and a long-sleeved shirt, Gabe sat with his butt on the sticky floor, his back against the battered bar, his head down. Black hair obscured his face as a little man wearing stained khakis and a greasy-looking Dodgers cap swept around his long, outstretched legs.

  The baseball fan looked up. “Closed,” he said, his Spanish accent thick.

  She pointed her forefinger at the ragdoll figure. “I’m here for him.”

  Another man bustled through a swinging door behind the bar. “That’s becoming a bad habit, Cassandra,” he said. His cap proclaimed him a Lakers devotee.

  Shrugging, she smiled. “Hi, Mr. Mueller.” She’d gone to middle school with his daughter and he’d never failed to attend the annual father-daughter luncheon. In seventh grade, she’d been assigned the seat next to his and she’d pretended for forty-two blissful minutes that the potbellied man who smelled like Marlboros and deli pickles was her daddy.

  Mr. Mueller wiped his hands on a dingy rag and then made his way around the bar to stand beside her. They both gazed down at Gabe.

  “He showed up about eleven,” the older man said.

  “You could have called me then,” she replied, frowning. “I would have—”

  “He was with a woman.”

  The quick breath she took hurt her lungs. “Oh.” Her face burned, and she pretended not to notice the sympathetic look he sent her. Malibu was like any other small town in the way that everyone thought they knew everyone else’s business.

  Mr. Mueller grimaced. “If it helps any—”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she interjected.

  “—she looked like a two-bit . . .” His voice drifted off as the man on the floor stirred.

  “I stink,” Gabe mumbled.

  “His, uh, friend threw up on him,” the bar owner said to Cassandra. “After that, I called her a cab.” He reached down to grab Gabe’s arm. “Let’s go, buddy. Your ride’s here.”

  “Don’ call her,” Gabe said, his head swinging up to pin the other man with bloodshot eyes. “Don’ wan’ her here.”

  “It’s okay, fella,” Mr. Mueller said, helping him to his feet. “A taxi took your date away.”

  Cassandra stepped forward to slide her arm around the drunk’s lean waist. “Gabe means me.”

  To prove her true, he let out a long, low groan. “C’ssandra.” When he shook his head, he stirred the air around him, his disgusting smell wafting closer.

  An odor she could blame on some other woman.

  Gabe’s date.

  She looked like a two-bit . . . Cassandra suspected Gabe hadn’t had to pay his evening’s companion a thing. The dark spaces inside of him acted like a magnet for all kinds of women.

  The wrong kind.

  Even the smart kind.

  Especially the kind who seemed to be lacking self-protective instincts.

  “Let’s go,” she said, trying not to breathe through her nose as she led him outside the bar.

  She spread an old beach towel she found in her trunk on the passenger seat then helped Mr. Mueller insert Gabe into the car. She buckled him in as his head lolled on the cushion and then blessed the donut-and-chow-mein scent that rose in the air as she started the motor. Gabe always gave her grief about the odor of the used vegetable oil she put in the gas tank of her converted 1980 Mercedes, but it smelled a heck of a lot better than he did.

  She glanced over at him several times on the trip home. He’d passed out again, she decided, and that was a relief in its own way. After parking in the circular drive by his front entrance, she jogged around to open his door. Then it was up to her to search his pockets for his house keys. Better to get the front door open before trying to drag him up the steps and inside.

  No need to instruct him to lift off the seat. Gabe carried his wallet and keys in his right front pocket. Leaning in, she inserted her fingers between layers of tight denim.

  She shrieked when a hard hand clamped around her wrist. “Darlin’,” Gabe said, apparently conscious again. “We fin’ly gonna do it?”

  Rolling her eyes, she yanked on her hand, but he wouldn’t release her. “Let go. Let go, you idiot.”

  “Liked where you were head’n.”

  Cassandra rolled her eyes again. There were twelve steps to self-recovery, so it shouldn’t surprise her that there were steps to self-destruction, too. For Gabe, those
tended to go like this: 1) a short-to-long disappearance 2) followed by a scene of public drunkenness 3) ending with demands for sex with Cassandra.

  He never remembered them after he sobered up.

  He never seemed interested in her that way after he sobered up either.

  She yanked again, freeing her hand, then patted his thigh to check out the pocket from the outside. It seemed empty. “Gabe, where are your keys?”

  “Dunno.” Frowning, he managed to get his feet out of the car and then he stood, swaying as he held on to the open door. His hands searched all four of his pockets. “C’ssandra. Do you have m’keys?”

  “No.” Thinking fast, she decided the best way to deal was to run to her house and get the spare set. She’d dash through his front yard to the steps leading to her back area. He’d be better off waiting here in the fresh air until she returned. “Stay,” she told him, then made for her place.

  It was the big splash that told her he hadn’t followed orders. At her back door, she whipped around to discover he’d fallen into her small pool. So small that she could lean over the side and grab his arm and tow his body to the side. “What are you doing, you fool?”

  “Can’t leave a girl ‘lone in the dark.” He grasped her waist to hoist himself up, lost his grip, then slipped back underwater. “Watchin’ after you,” he added wetly, as he broke the surface again. This time he dug his fingers into her hips and with her help managed to exit the pool. Standing up, he shook himself like a dog.

  Dodging the spray, she decided that thanks to her good deeds there must be a cloud in heaven with her name already inscribed on it. And she hoped it was plenty fluffy, because handling Gabe was making her old before her time. She left him on her back patio and scurried for towels before he could get into any more trouble.