Last Chance Knit & Stitch Read Online Free Page B

his Wolfe Ford hat. Momma always said that Les was a cool, tall drink of water. Yeah, branch water, maybe. He had an unpredictable temper.
    Which made him a lot like Molly. They could fight like a couple of junkyard dogs sometimes over the right way to proceed on a restoration.
    “What’s wrong?” he asked.
    “Well for starters, Momma ran away and left me in charge of the Knit & Stitch.”
    “Yeah, I heard about that. So now that you’re
in charge
, are you going to reopen the store?” He said this with a wicked grin.
    “Stop it. It’s serious. I’ve got twenty messages from knitters in my voice mail. They aren’t going to be happy when they find out I’m not going to reopen the shop.”
    “So don’t fret about it.”
    “I’m not going to. Not about the yarn shop, anyway. We have much bigger problems. I just came from Ira’s wake, and his son is planning to close the dealership.”
    “What?”
    “That’s what he told me. He’s hot to get his daddy’s estate in order, and then he’s hightailing it back to Paradise.”
    “Paradise?”
    “That’s where he lives. It’s in California.”
    Les laughed. His laugh was goofy and adorable andkind of high-pitched and joyous. And seemed out of proportion to the crisis at hand. “Don’t you laugh, Leslie Hayes. This is serious. What are we going to do if Wolfe Ford goes out of business?” She started pacing.
    “Oh, I doubt it will go out of business. The family will probably sell it. There are a lot of Ford owners living around here who need warranty service. No one’s going to leave those folks high and dry. So we can negotiate with the new owners, whoever they turn out to be.”
    She stopped pacing. “I wouldn’t be so sure. You didn’t talk to Simon Wolfe. He couldn’t have cared less about the business. And he’s not a car guy. He’s always looking at his watch like he can’t wait to leave. He could give a crap about the Ford owners in Allenberg County. I have a bad feeling about this. We’re going to lose our garage space for the Shelby.”
    “Mol, you don’t know that for sure, and you’re just making yourself crazy worrying about something that hasn’t happened yet.”
    “Maybe it hasn’t happened, but we need to plan for it anyway. It’s a shame we can’t afford to buy the old Coca-Cola building yet.”
    Molly’s long-range plan was to buy that abandoned building in Last Chance and turn it into a car-restoration business with a garage in the back where the old loading dock was and a showroom in the front. She had other dreams, too. Big ones. Like trying to interest Speed Channel in a show about a lady garage owner.
    But first, she needed to restore the Shelby. Everything hung on that car. Finding it had been her stroke of good luck. The little old lady in Olar had no idea what was sitting in her barn. She’d wanted only four thousand dollarsfor the old car. Restored, the Shelby would probably sell for close to a quarter of a million.
    “Maybe we can get a loan and use the car as collateral,” Molly said. “I could talk to Dash Randall. He’d probably be willing to finance us. He loved what I did to his Eldorado and that old Ford truck of his.”
    “Jeez, Molly, you’re getting way ahead of yourself.” Les settled himself on a shop stool. “If we get a loan, that means we’ll have to form a real, legal partnership. That costs money, too, and I don’t want to go into debt. Besides, if the dealership closes, I lose my day job, which is another reason not to be thinking about borrowing money.”
    “Yeah, I thought of that. Maybe we could rent the Coca-Cola building instead of buying it outright.”
    “That still takes money. And we need tools and a lift.”
    “You’ve got tools in storage. Damn. I sure do wish your granddaddy hadn’t sold his house and moved to Tallahassee. We could have used his old garage like we did for our first two cars.”
    “Yeah. Maybe old man Nelson has barn space we could borrow.”
    “I