by Lily Everett
Dylan watched them go, face turned up to the sun and the ocean breeze, and wondered where he went wrong.
Chapter Seven
After that day at the Firefly Café, life at Harrington House settled into a new rhythm. Penny tried to talk with Matt about fighting, and how uncomfortable it made her to see him solving his problems with his fists, but she could tell he didn’t really get it.
In fact, Matt spent most of the following two weeks nearly glued to Dylan’s side, helping him with the repairs around the house. Penny watched them working together with a pang in her heart. She wasn’t sure if she ought to be jealous that her prickly teenager was bonding with another adult, worried about what said adult might be teaching him, or just grateful that Matthew had someone he felt he could open up to.
Oh, who was she kidding? She was a mess of emotions, none of them sensible. But the overriding feeling clutching her heart at the moment was the need to apologize.
It had been two weeks since that searing hot kiss in the kitchen, and since she’d walked away from their argument at the café, but instead of growing more comfortable around each other, the air between them seemed to be getting heavier. As if the unresolved tension between them had its own density and weight, a gravitational pull that kept Penny constantly orbiting around Dylan in a dizzy circle. They needed to clear the air.
She waited until Matt left for his volunteer job at the library, on her one day off per week, before going to confront Dylan. She found him outside at the foot of a ladder, staring up at the fresh coat of navy-blue paint on the wooden shutters flanking the second-floor windows.
“I can’t believe how much better the whole house looks!” Penny said, hiding a wince at the false brightness of her tone.
Dylan barely looked at her. “Matt’s been a big help,” he muttered.
Tension throbbed between them like a pulse. “Thanks for letting him tag along after you,” she said quietly, crossing her arms over her chest.
Dylan shrugged. “It’s the kind of thing I always wished my dad were still around to do with me, or one of my older brothers. I was an oops baby; my brothers are older. They were both leaving for college the summer our parents died, and they didn’t have time to babysit their stupid kid brother.”
“It’s been good for him. I haven’t seen him this happy in a long time.”
“You’re not afraid I’m warping his fragile young mind and turning him into a crazed, violent thug?”
The hurt below Dylan’s sarcasm cut her sharply. “No,” she said firmly. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that. I know I … overreacted that day. Blaming you. But there are things you don’t know, about me, about my past…”
“You don’t have to tell me.” Dylan busied himself with shortening the ladder from its fully extended length, the loud clang of the metal rungs running like a knife cutting through the moment. “None of my business, and in a few more days, you’ll get your wish and I’ll be gone. No harm, no foul.”
Regret tightened her throat. “Dylan, I don’t wish you gone.”
The skeptical look he leveled at her through the rungs of the ladder, held before him like shield, reminded Penny she’d spent the past two weeks avoiding Dylan as much as possible.
“Sorry,” she said awkwardly. “That’s all I really wanted to say, anyway. I’m sorry for how distant I’ve been, when you’ve been nothing but kind to Matt and me. You deserve better.”
An emotion she couldn’t name flattened his handsome mouth into a thin line, but the lines around his eyes smoothed enough to let Penny relax.
Until Dylan replied, in the gentlest tone she’d ever heard him use, “No need to apologize for pushing me away. Even if it weren’t your default setting, it would still be the smart thing to do with me.”
“What?” Penny sputtered, rearing back and nearly tripping into an azalea bush.
“Because I’m leaving soon,” Dylan explained, breaking eye contact to heave the folded ladder onto his shoulder.
Penny shook her head, trying to get her heart rate under control. “Not that. What do you mean, pushing people away is my default setting?”
Wrapping her arms around her torso, Penny held her breath against the urge to run away from the ghost of her past that seemed to finally be catching up with her.
*
Out of the corner of his eye, Dylan watched her brace for his answer as if she were expecting a blow, and his stomach roiled at the confirmation of his worst fears.
Debating how much to say, how hard to push, Dylan trudged down the garden path toward the shed, with Penny shadowing him. “I’m sure you have your reasons,” was what he settled on as he nudged open the shed door with one booted foot and deposited the ladder inside.
“My reasons,” Penny echoed flatly. All the life and joy had drained from her pretty face, and without it, she looked older. Old enough to have a sixteen-year-old son and a failed marriage behind her. “What do you know about my reasons?”
There was that tinge of bitterness again, the acid note that only crept into her voice when she was thinking about her ex-husband. Treading carefully, Dylan closed the shed door behind him and leaned against the rough, chipped wood.
“Nothing,” he told her. “And you certainly don’t have to tell me—but I think you ought to tell someone, because secrets eat you up from the inside out. Trust me on that.”
She gave him a weird look, but didn’t remark on the fervent tone. “It’s not a secret because I’m ashamed of what happened.”
Dylan plastered on a supportive smile, even though his knuckles already ached to find her ex-husband and cram his teeth down his throat.
Carefully uncurling his fists, Dylan said honestly, “I can’t imagine you ever doing something you’d need to be ashamed of.”
With a wry smile, Penny wandered over to sit on the stone bench alongside the garden path. “Oh, I don’t know. What about saying ‘I do’ to a man I didn’t love, because my parents couldn’t conceive of another option beyond marrying their teenage daughter off to the guy who knocked her up?”
Dylan breathed out through his nose and pressed his hands flat to his thighs. “That sounds more like a regret than something to be ashamed of.”
Staring down at her fingers, twining restlessly in her lap, Penny admitted, “I wish I’d been stronger back then, more willing to stand up under pressure. I knew, with every fiber of my being, that marrying Trent was a mistake. But I did it anyway, and I stayed with him until…”
She broke off, her whole body freezing into the alert stillness of a prey animal scenting danger.
This was it, Dylan knew. This was the steel at the core of Penny Little’s spine, the darkness at the back of her eyes. It seemed oddly incongruous to be having this conversation in a sunlit garden, surrounded by the drone of bees and the heavy perfume of roses. But when Penny tilted her face up, eyes closed and lashes trembling under the warmth of the afternoon sun, Dylan realized this conversation could only happen here.
On Sanctuary Island, in his grandparents’ perfect cottage garden, with the bright sun pouring down to chase away the shadows.
Pushing off the shed, he walked closer to her, taking care to move slowly and not spook her. But he needn’t have bothered, he realized the moment he reached the bench.
Without opening her eyes, Penny stretched out her fingers to touch the back of his hand. “You know what my grandmother used to say?”
He shook his head mutely, grief for his own departed Gram tugging at his heart.
Her lashes fluttered open, and she stared straight up at him with damp, clear eyes. “A very wise woman, my grandmother. If she’d still been around when I got pregnant with Matt, everything would have been different.”
Dylan straddled the bench beside her, facing her head-on and studying every line of her pretty face. “What did your grandmother used to say?”
Penny breathed in deep, then let it go. “She said, ‘A man might hit me once … but he’ll never hit me twice.’
”
He’d suspected before this—from her reaction to seeing Matt fight, among other things—but to know beyond a shadow of a doubt. Dylan swallowed down bile. “Your ex-husband,” he grated out. “That’s why you left him. He hit you.”
Giving him her profile, Penny gazed out at the garden. “A man might hit me once, but he’ll never hit me twice. Because I won’t stick around to give him the chance.”
“No second chances,” Dylan said, another puzzle piece clicking into place.
“It’s a clean way to live.” Penny touched her fingertips to the drowsy, bobbing head of a full-blown red rose on the nearest bush. “If you lie, you’re a liar. If you cheat, you’re a cheater. And if you raise a hand to your wife…”
“You’re an abusive asshole who ought to be put down like a rabid dog,” Dylan snarled.
“No second chances.” Penny murmured it like a mantra, and beneath his anger at her jackass ex, Dylan was aware of a yawning chasm of despair opening up in his chest.
All along, in the back of Dylan’s mind, he’d taken it for granted that if and when he ever came clean to Penny about who he really was, she’d be okay with it. It wasn’t as if he was hiding a wife in the attic or something—he was hiding the fact that he was a billionaire! Who’d be mad about that?
Okay, yes, he was also hiding the fact that up until he came to Sanctuary Island, he’d been a shallow, directionless playboy who’d done nothing with his life beyond partying and cultivating a bad reputation. But the billionaire thing was bound to be a plus, right?
Except sitting here now, looking at this woman who’d pulled herself out of hell and left it behind without a backward glance, Dylan wasn’t so sure.
If you lie, you’re a liar …
When Penny found out the truth, she was never going to trust him again.
But that was the future. Right here in the present, Penny had trusted him with a terrible piece of her personal history. And Dylan Harrington, who’d never had a conversation with a woman he dated about anything more serious than where to go for drinks after dinner, was damn well going to get this right.
For Penny.
“Thank you for telling me,” he said. “I know how much easier it is to shove everything down into the dark, to try and forget about it.”
Sympathy washed over her pretty face. “You get it. That’s part of what gave me the courage to open up to you. The other part, of course, was to explain that when I walked out of the Firefly and saw you with your hand raised to my child…”
“It triggered all these feelings,” Dylan realized aloud. “Of course, that makes perfect sense.”
“Once memories like these come to the surface, it’s hard to sink them deep again,” Penny said, fiddling with the hem of her simple sundress. “But I shouldn’t have lashed out at you. You were only trying to help Matt. I’m sorry.”
The yellow cotton was bright and happy against her lightly tanned skin. When she ducked her head and smiled up at him from beneath her dark lashes, Penny was like a beam of sunlight come to life.
Licking lips gone suddenly dry, Dylan swallowed down the surge of wrongness at Penny being the one to apologize to him. “I shouldn’t have assumed you’d be okay with Matt learning to fight. And, geez, I hope I didn’t trigger any bad memories for him, too.”
“Oh.” Penny’s smile faded. “About that. Actually, it would be best if you didn’t mention this conversation to Matt.”
Confused, Dylan cocked his head. “Why?”
“He doesn’t know about what happened with Trent. I mean, he’s aware on some level that his father wasn’t very nice to us, that what time he did spend at home was mostly in front of the game with a beer.”
“But you didn’t want to tell him his father is an abusive asshole.”
“Who ought to be … what was it? Put down like a rabid dog?” Faint humor glimmered in Penny’s eyes. “No, I don’t think it would be good for Matt to hear something like that about his father. It’s better if he doesn’t know.”
“Even though that means he blames you for the divorce.”
Penny shrugged, her gaze shifting sideways. “Someday, he’ll understand.”
Not if he doesn’t have all the facts, Dylan thought, but he didn’t say it. How could he? When he was every bit as guilty of selective truth telling.
But he couldn’t stop thinking about it, all through the afternoon’s repairs to the garden path’s paver stones, and the easy dinner that followed. Even through the fun of watching Penny and Matt relax enough together to joke around, and the joy of being included in the warm circle of light surrounding this little family, Dylan couldn’t stop pondering the reasons behind Penny’s refusal to tell her son why she whisked them off to Sanctuary Island to start a new life.
He was still thinking about it hours later, staring up at the ceiling over his bed, when a muffled shout of terror from down the hall tore through the night.
It was Penny.
Chapter Eight
Without conscious thought, Dylan was on his feet and moving silently down the darkened hallway toward Penny’s room. Every sense was alert to possible danger, but the only creaking boards he heard were under his own bare feet.
When he reached the door to the bedroom he’d visited just once, to change the light bulb in the tiny closet, he paused to listen.
All he heard were the comfortable sounds of an old house settling. And then, a tiny whimper from inside Penny’s room had him pushing open the door and slipping inside.
Dylan scanned the room for anything out of place. But it was the same as in his memory: tidy and pretty, if a little bare of personal touches. Penny considered the room she lived and slept in to belong to the Harringtons.
Still, a woman with Penny’s vibrant spirit couldn’t help but leave clues about her personality scattered throughout the room. He’d grinned at the froth of royal purple lace spilling out of a half-open drawer, and ran a furtive palm over the hand-stitched quilt folded at the foot of the queen-sized bed. There was a framed photo of Penny with a younger, chubbier Matthew, faces squished together happily and shot from the improbable angle achieved by Matt holding the camera at arm’s length.
Dylan had looked at all of that and recognized traces of Penny in the impersonal, tastefully decorated room—the value she placed on fun, her pride in her family and its history, her hidden sensuality.
Another high-pitched noise from the bed got Dylan moving. Penny made a small lump under the covers, and as he approached the bedside, that lump thrashed against the blankets as if caught in a net.
“Penny,” he whispered urgently, his hands hovering. He didn’t want to startle her awake to find a man looming over her bed, but he couldn’t let her stay trapped in a nightmare, either.
The thrashing continued until Dylan had the bright idea to switch on the small antique Tiffany glass lamp on her bedside table. Amber light flooded the queen-sized bed, picking up the dull gold threads in the patterned duvet cover as Penny finally stilled.
“Wha—?” She pushed the blankets down as if they were suffocating her, breath still coming hard and heavy, and blinked up at him sleepily.
Dylan’s blood leapt, then rushed south. Penny may have been having a nightmare, but this situation was entirely too close to one of Dylan’s better dreams. The glory of her chestnut hair spilling over the white pillows, the hazy sweep of her lashes and the sleep-warm flush of her skin … Dylan swallowed.
“Sorry, you were having a bad dream,” he whispered, backing up a step to keep himself from reaching out to her. “I’ll go now. Do you want me shut out the light, or leave it on, or—?”
“Dylan,” Penny breathed, and she lifted her arms in mute appeal, her hazy eyes filling with tears.
Powerless to resist, Dylan sank down on the edge of the bed and let himself fold her close. She tucked her nose into the side of his neck and breathed damply for a moment, long enough for Dylan to realize with a shock of heat that she was wearing nothing more than a flimsy c
otton tank top and a pair of plain white panties.
Which was more than he had on, since he’d hustled out of his room in boxer briefs. He was damn lucky there hadn’t been an actual intruder.
Dylan huffed out a laugh, and Penny’s arms tightened around his neck for a second before she sat back against her pillows. “Lord. It’s been a long time since I had one of those.”
Feeling useless and a little bereft without Penny in his arms, Dylan subtly twitched the corner of her blanket over his lap to hide the evidence of exactly how messed up he was.
Penny was in pain, upset and emotional, and here Dylan was—as Matt would say—perving on her. He sucked.
“Bad dream?” he prompted when she fell silent.
She nodded. “About Trent. I used to have this same dream all the time when we first moved here.”
“About the day you left?” Dylan held his breath, not sure he wanted the answer, but Penny huffed out a small laugh.
“Actually, no. In the dream, Trent is my boss at the Firefly Café. I drop a tray full of glasses and they shatter all over the floor, and he yells at me in front of everyone on the island, the whole lunch crowd. No one says anything, they all just watch. I know, it doesn’t sound that awful…”
“No, it does.” Dylan could practically smell the fear and shame still radiating off her, the horror of being in Trent’s power, and finding no help from the people she trusted. Exactly the nightmare she’d lived through, when her parents forced her to marry a cruel man.
“The dream was a little different this time,” Penny said, her hazel eyes shining in the dark. “You were there.”
Dylan’s heart thumped loudly in his ears. “Did I just sit there and watch, like everyone else?”
“No.” There was wonder in her voice, and a soft smile spread her pink lips as she curled her knees under her and leaned toward him. Dylan kept still, afraid any sudden movement would break the spun-sugar tension of the moment. When she was a breath away, she braced her hands on his shoulders and turned him to face her.
