Read Online Heart in Hand: Stitches in Time Series #3 by Barbara Cameron - Free Book Online Page B

private in her community, but Anna knew they weren’t outside it. Not that the Amish didn’t gossip—they weren’t perfect, after all. But she wasn’t accustomed to talking about anything so personal.
    “Gideon is a friend,” she said.
    Thelma suddenly clamped her mouth shut and gestured with her head toward Sarah Rose. “Little pitchers,” she said and moved away.
    Sarah Rose stepped closer. “You’re my friend.”
    Anna looked down at her and nodded. “You and your dat are both my friends.”
    “But I’m yours first,” Sarah Rose insisted.
    Someone moved on the periphery of Anna’s vision. Looking up, she saw Gideon watching her, his expression conflicted. She felt the same.
    Knowing how vulnerable she was feeling judging by her behavior of late, Anna wanted to be sensitive to her.
    “Yes, I’m your friend first,” she said quietly.
    Sarah Rose smiled. She looked up at her father. “May I have a cookie?”
    “One.” He watched her. “Now she’s going to spend some time deciding which cookie is the biggest.”
    “It’s the ones Mary Katherine makes. Maybe you should tell her.”
    His mouth quirked into a grin. “I’ll tell her.”
    He started to walk past her, and then he stopped and became serious. “Thank you for what you did. Sarah Rose obviously needs a friend right now.”
    More than you? she wanted to ask, but she didn’t.

6
    Naomi yawned as she walked into the back room where Anna was working on an order.
    “I came to get some coffee to wake up,” she admitted as she sat down with a mug. I stayed up too late last night.”
    “Wedding plans?”
    “I was sewing my dress.”
    Anna bit her lip and then looked at her cousin. “I’d like to make it up to you.”
    “Make up what?” Naomi sipped her coffee and tried to stifle another yawn.
    “I’ve felt terrible since I didn’t pay attention while you were telling me about your wedding plans the other day.”
    Naomi shrugged. “It’s okay. Wedding plans are interesting only to the person who’s getting married.”
    Anna reached for the cookie jar and set it before Naomi. “Have some. You’re getting thin.”
    “Nick said that, too,” she admitted, reaching into the jar and taking out a couple of Snickerdoodles. “It’s not deliberate. Sometimes I just get busy lately. I’m not trying to lose weight for the wedding.”
    “You’re sure?”
    Naomi nodded. “Nick was asking me that the other day. He says he knew some Englisch friend who made herself really sick doing that, and he wanted to make sure I didn’t.”
    Anna smiled as she selected a cookie. “I never thought Nick would be the mann God set aside for you, but now I can’t see you marrying anyone else.”
    Silence stretched between them, and the room grew so quiet the ticking of the kitchen clock could be heard.
    “I can almost feel you wanting to ask something.”
    “It might be too personal,” Naomi said at last.
    “That’s never stopped me,” Anna told her.
    Naomi laughed, then her expression grew serious. “I saw Gideon leaving the shop with his daughter when I came back from running errands.”
    Anna set the cookie jar back on the counter. “He was taking the knitting class with Sarah Rose.”
    “You’ve seen a lot of him lately.”
    “No, I haven’t. He’s come to the shop to buy the kits and then for a lesson.”
    “And you went to his house after church one day to help him get the dye off his hands.”
    Anna regarded her. “Keeping track?”
    Naomi colored, but she kept her gaze level. “He’s the first man you’ve even looked at since Samuel died.”
    Rising, Anna put her mug in the kitchen sink, and Naomi did the same. “It hasn’t been personal. It’s been business. Shop business.”
    “I see.”
    Laughing, Anna gave her cousin an impulsive hug. “No, you don’t. You’re in love so you think everyone else should be.”
    “They should,” Naomi said staunchly.
    “I remember how it felt,” she said. “I know how it is to feel