Read Online Always Dakota by Debbie Macomber - Free Book Online Page A

workshop at Sarah Urlacher’s quilt company. Three machines were in use nearly eight hours every day. Two girls cut pattern pieces while Sarah was busy with the phones. Orders continued to arrive and she was having trouble keeping up. Many nights she stayed late, dying the muslin, soaking the cloth in tea water and other natural concoctions made with lichen and berries and plants. She put in long hours, but she loved it with an intensity that was hard to explain. Quilting was her passion, and her love for it went into every quilt she sold.
    No one was more amazed by the almost overnight success of her business than Sarah herself. It’d started out mainly as a hobby, something to occupy her time and employ her talents. Then she’d won first prize at the state fair and sold the quilt for an astonishing five hundred dollars. Soon other sales trickled in. Enough that she’d eventually realized she needed to expand, to move her business out of her father’s house. That was when she created Buffalo Valley Quilts.
    Although it was a risk, a leap of faith, she’d rented space in one of the abandoned stores on Buffalo Valley’s main street. Having her own location with her business name painted on the window had brought her immense satisfaction—and pride. For the first time, she was doing something for herself. The success or failure of this venture rested squarely on her own shoulders. Everything else in her life had been controlled by circumstances, but this company was of her own making. And so was its success.
    To be fair, she credited Lindsay Sinclair with those initial sales. Two years earlier, Lindsay had moved to Buffalo Valley and accepted a teaching job. With her, Lindsay had brought hope and vision to the community.
    When Sarah started her company, Lindsay had contacted her uncle in Savannah about displaying the distinctive quilts in his upscale furniture store. The first had sold immediately, and everything since had been eagerly snapped up. Soon other retail outlets had approached her.
    Already she had a handful of full-time employees and she could use more. But luring women into town to work for her was complicated. Farm wives were often needed at home, and with no day care available in town…A temporary solution was to hire them to do piecework out of their homes, but Sarah didn’t feel that gave her the same quality control.
    Her thoughts were interrupted by the jangling of the bell above the door. Hassie Knight walked in. The pharmacist visited often, usually without a specific reason; Sarah guessed she just liked seeing all the activity.
    “It does my heart good,” Hassie had told her once. “This town is coming back to life and it’s starting right here in this shop.” And then the older woman said something that brought a rush of pride to Sarah every time she thought about it. “I couldn’t be prouder of you if you were my own daughter.”
    “Afternoon, Hassie,” Sarah greeted her.
    “I brought you a chocolate soda,” the older woman said, handing her a tall metal container filled to the brim with ice cream and soda. “I’m betting you didn’t eat lunch again today.”
    Sarah hadn’t; she’d been too busy.
    “We can’t have you getting weak and fainting on us, now can we?”
    There was little likelihood of that happening, but Sarah wasn’t about to argue. Hassie made the best sodas she’d tasted anywhere. Until that moment, she hadn’t realized how famished she was.
    “Thank you,” she said.
    Hassie nodded, then left as abruptly as she’d come.
    Sarah stood by the window and watched her. Since her own mother’s death, she’d considered Hassie both advisor and friend. In Sarah’s opinion, Hassie Knight had held this town together. If not for her, the community would have shriveled up and died the way so many other prairie towns had in the last twenty years.
    Sarah’s gaze drifted toward her husband’s service station. It was difficult even now, three months after speaking their