by Lily Everett
“Of course not.” Dylan stood in the center of the perfect, fussy little room full of touches that reminded him of his grandmother, and knew without a doubt that Bette Harrington would cry if she knew how the boy she raised had turned out. “It wasn’t like that,” he tried to say past the thick lump in his throat. “I never wanted to make a fool of you, Penny, I swear. And nothing about you is easy or gullible.”
“No?” She raised her face to his, and though he’d braced himself for tears, her eyes were dry, burning with a fierce light. “‘Kid brother,’ Logan said. That makes you the youngest of the Harrington brothers, the one who refused to take any responsibility for the family company. The playboy. Oh, God—the Bad Boy Billionaire.”
It stung to hear his whole life, decisions he’d agonized and suffered over, reduced to a single biting summation, but he couldn’t deny it.
When he stayed silent, Penny swallowed and shut her eyes briefly. “Two weeks. That’s all it took to make me fall in love—and into bed—with you. Tell me, Mr. Harrington, is that a record for you?”
Every word stabbed him like a knife, but Dylan forced himself to stand there and take it. He deserved whatever Penny dished out, and worse. With her tender, generous heart, there was no way she’d dole out a punishment severe enough to fit the crime.
But still, he had to try to explain. He couldn’t let her compare herself to the models and celebutantes he’d casually slept with and discarded ever since he’d called his wedding off three years ago.
“Honestly,” he told her, “no. Two weeks is an eternity for me to stay focused on one woman.”
She winced, laughing thinly. “Great, so I guess I should be flattered. What was it that made me so special? Was I a novelty to you, Dylan? A single, working-class mom, someone so far beneath you it made me exotic?” She shook her head with a sad smile. “There I go flattering myself again. I’m sure you sleep with all the help, don’t you?”
“Of course not,” he said firmly. “And you’re not ‘the help,’ Penny. You’re the most amazing woman I’ve ever met. You’re strong and warm and kind. You’re an amazing mother. You’re beautiful inside and out, and I don’t think you even realize it. If you believe nothing else I ever tell you—and I wouldn’t blame you for that—at least listen and believe this. What happened between us was real. I didn’t tell you everything about myself, but what I did tell you was true. And I never lied about what I felt for you, or about how much I wanted you.”
After a long moment of silence, during which Dylan imagined every possible response ranging from Penny falling into his arms to ordering him out of the house, she said quietly, “I think you can see how I’d find it difficult to put my trust in that.”
At least she was listening. Pressing his advantage, Dylan sat down on the love seat with her, careful of the nearly visible wall of empty space she’d erected around herself. “I get that, and I’m not making any excuses. It was a stupid, childish stunt…” He paused, hearing himself, then shook his head. “Which, if you ask my oldest brother, Miles, is a fair characterization of my entire life.”
“Miles Harrington. The head of Harrington International,” Penny said, as if she were still trying to get all the players in this awful farce straight in her head.
“That’s right.”
“He—and that man out in the summer cottage—those are the brothers who went off to college and left you to deal with your parents’ deaths alone? So Logan is the workaholic loner, and Miles is the controlling robot.”
Startled that she remembered what he’d said about his brothers that first night, Dylan shook his head. “No. I mean, yeah, they weren’t around much, but I wasn’t completely alone. I had my grandparents, who were great. Although, like I mentioned before—I wasn’t the easiest kid to raise.”
She changed tack. “And when you said you spent years drifting through life aimlessly until you finally got a job—you meant until you decided on a whim to impersonate a handyman to fix up your own family’s property.”
Against his will, Dylan stiffened. “Yep. I ditched college and turned down every one of Miles’s offers to come work for the family company, thereby breaking his heart—or whatever piece of well-oiled machinery he uses in place of a heart. You’re now part of a very elite club, Penny Little: the Society of People Who Expected Better from Dylan Harrington and Were Disappointed.”
“Stop that,” she said sharply, getting to her feet and hugging her arms tightly around her rib cage. “You don’t get to make me feel sorry for you. This is hard enough already.”
Dylan blinked. “I wasn’t trying to—but okay. Fine. Look, Penny, I’ll make this right however you want. Just tell me what to do, and I’ll do it.”
Lifting her chin, a challenge glinted in Penny’s hazel eyes. “I have to go to my shift at the café now. I want you out of this house before I get home. And if you ever come back to Sanctuary Island, I swear I’ll quit this job, because I never want to see you again.”
Chapter Eleven
“What are you doing?”
The tense young voice jolted Dylan from his mechanical stuffing of dirty work clothes into his duffel bag.
Matt stood in the doorway of the guest room, arms crossed tightly over his wiry chest and looking so much like his mother that Dylan went light-headed for a humiliating instant.
He turned back to his packing and hoped Matt didn’t notice the way his hands shook. “I’m leaving.”
“Why?”
Dylan pinched his eyes shut, hanging his head over the bag sitting on his bed. “No one told you.”
“That your name is Dylan Harrington and you’re related to the people who pay us to live in this house? Yeah, I know all that. I heard everything that went on downstairs.” Matt marched into the room and grabbed Dylan’s shoulder, jerking him around until they were face-to-face.
“What I don’t know,” Matt continued, thrusting his chin out pugnaciously, “is why you’re running out on us like … like a coward.”
The kid was trembling with the force of emotions too strong for someone so young to have to handle, and it hurt Dylan to see it. “Matthew. I lied to you and your mother. She doesn’t want me around anymore, and you can’t blame her.”
Matt made a frustrated noise, his dark blond brows like thunder. “I don’t blame her. I blame you, for not getting it.”
It was as if his rib cage had grown rows of lethally sharp spikes. Every breath hurt. “She told me she never wants to see me again. She was very clear. One strike and I’m out. What, Matt? Tell me what I’m missing.”
Sending him a pitying look, Matt shook his head. “It’s totally obvious. Don’t you see it? Everyone leaves. She doesn’t want you to go. So she’s testing you, to see if you’ll fight to stay. And you’re about to flunk, man.”
With that, Matt stalked out of the room and down the hall to slam his own door shut, leaving Dylan alone and staggering with his thoughts.
What if Matt was right? What if Dylan hadn’t completely blown all his chances with Penny—but was about to, by skulking off the island with his tail tucked between his legs?
The rough terrain of Dylan’s heart was too rocky to support a tendril of hope, but even in the midst of his overwhelming certainty that Penny would never deviate from her No Second Chances policy to forgive him, there was still a spark of desire to make sure she understood why he’d lied. But was that an entirely selfish impulse to salve his conscience, and nothing more?
He needed a ruling on this. Staring down at his hands wringing the thin cotton of the white T-shirt that still sported a faint brown iced tea stain from that very first day, Dylan set his jaw.
His brothers were never there for him when he was a kid. Logan could damn well offer up some advice now.
He strode down the path whose creamy smooth paving stones he’d placed himself, and rapped on the door of the cottage at the back of the garden. Within seconds, Jessica Bell appeared on the front porch, with a forbidding expression on her perfectly
made-up face.
“Keep it down! If you wake him up—”
From inside the cottage, a ragged voice rumbled. “Who’s at the door, Tink?”
Without taking her accusing glare off of Dylan’s face, she called, “I’m handling it. Go back to sleep.”
Dylan let himself into the screened-in porch, since Jessica was just standing there scowling at him. “Tink, huh?”
It was only meant to be something to say, a quick tease to get her to smile instead of frown, but instead, she blushed. Fascinated, Dylan tracked the progress of the red flush through her pearly redhead’s complexion.
“That’s Jessica to you,” she said severely. “Miss Bell if you’re nasty.”
“What does Tink even mean?” Dylan had to ask.
“Tink. Tinkerbell? Hi, nice to meet you, I’m Jessica Bell, personal assistant to the modern incarnation of Peter Pan.” Rolling her eyes, she sauntered over to fold her long limbs onto the floral-patterned glider. “Never mind. You’re here for romantic advice, right? I’ll be better at that than your brother, anyway. Once I get over laughing myself sick at the idea of a Harrington doing manual labor.”
Taken aback for a moment at how quickly Jessica seemed to have put the pieces together, Dylan decided beggars couldn’t be choosers. Jessica wasn’t family, but she knew the Harringtons better than most—her advice would have to do.
The whole story poured out of him as he paced the cozy confines of the little porch whose screens he’d patched himself. In the garden, bees meandered from hydrangea to rosebush, and the summer heat was like a humid blanket over the world.
He finished with, “So what do I do? Should I leave, like she asked? Or should I stay?”
Jessica gave a thoughtful look, but before she could answer, a rough voice came from the doorway into the cottage. “As the immortal philosopher collective, The Clash, noted: if you stay, there will be trouble. But if you go, it will be doubled.”
Popping off the couch like a jack-in-the-box, Jessica waved her arms at Logan as if he were a bird who’d flown into the house. “Go back to bed! Do I have to tie you down to get you to stay put?”
The scorching heat that entered his brother’s eyes at that made Dylan wonder if Logan had finally found something to distract him from his lab work. But instead of diving through the perfect opening she’d left him, Logan leaned one wiry forearm on the wall of the house and addressed Dylan.
“Sorry if I messed up whatever scam you were running on the hot diner waitress.”
Dylan was on his feet, fists clenched, without making a conscious choice to stand. “Don’t talk about her like that. And it wasn’t a scam, okay?”
Satisfaction stretched Logan’s wide mouth into a wry smile. “Okay. But I’m not the one you need to convince.”
Slumping, Dylan kicked at the leg of the glider to make the thing swing back and forth. It squeaked. He should fix that—except now he might not get the chance to fix anything else around here. “I told her already. I mean, I apologized.”
“Did you explain?” Jessica asked. “Or did you give her the patented Harrington puppy eyes and expect her to fall all over herself to forgive you?”
Dylan ground his teeth. “I don’t expect forgiveness,” he gritted out.
Jessica, who was an expert at reading between the lines of the taciturn Harrington men, blew out a rude raspberry. “Psh, and you won’t get it, either, if you don’t even try to tell her why you lied to her.”
“But I…” Dylan broke off, his head swimming. “I don’t know what to say to her.”
“Yes, you do.” Jessica cocked her head, considering. “She opened herself up to you, stripped herself bare, but you were hiding behind a fake identity the whole time. Now it’s your turn. Lay it all out for her, and hope she likes what she sees.”
“That’s the problem,” Dylan croaked, his throat achingly tight. “I kind of hate Dylan Harrington, Bad Boy Billionaire. How can I expect someone like Penny to fall for him?”
“You’re more than the Bad Boy Billionaire,” Logan said suddenly. Dylan glanced over to find his brother watching him with the kind of laser intensity he usually reserved for his gadgets, eyes burning in his rough-jawed, angular face. “You know that, don’t you?”
Bitterness soured the back of Dylan’s tongue. “Right, I’m a Harrington. Spare me the lecture on what that entails, I’ve already heard it from Miles.”
“No.” Logan made an impatient slashing gesture with one long-fingered hand. “I meant that you’re smarter than you give yourself credit for, and a harder worker. And of the three of us, you were always the one who charmed people, who made friends the easiest.”
“Because I have money.”
“Because you’re a good person,” Logan snapped. “You’re fun to be around, you care about people, you aren’t afraid to show your emotions—cripes, you’re like the hero of one of those racy books Jessica thinks I don’t know she reads. But most of all … you’re my brother.”
Dylan’s palms felt sweaty as he took a step toward Logan. “I haven’t felt like any of those things in a long time.”
Pain tightened the lines at the corners of Logan’s eyes, but his smile was fierce, a challenge. “Well then. I think it’s about time you reclaimed your birthright, don’t you?”
Hope and gratitude expanded Dylan’s chest like helium blowing up a balloon. He glanced over at Jessica, who arched a brow and said, “What are you waiting for? Go strip naked for Penny Little. Show her what you got. I have it on good authority that Harrington men are pretty damn near irresistible, when they put their minds to it.”
Chapter Twelve
The ding of the bell over the diner’s door shattered Penny’s concentration. She nearly dropped her tray.
Shooting her an alarmed look through the pass, Alonzo Chappelle wiped his hands on his white chef’s jacket. “You have been all over the place today. Do you need a break?”
“No,” Penny said sharply, wincing when her boss stared at her. “I’m sorry. I’ll get it together, I promise. I need the tips.”
I need the distraction.
Lonz nodded and went back to slinging hash, too backed up with orders to keep worrying about his wait staff.
Balancing the tray carefully, Penny smiled at the man who’d ordered the steak and eggs. Grady Wilkes was the big, rough, silent type—a bit of a loner, but a talented carpenter. And there was a kindness in those eyes, the deep green of the maritime forest where he’d built his cabin, that made Penny wish suddenly and fiercely that she’d had the sense to fall for the local handyman instead of an imposter from Manhattan.
A tremor in the air made her pause, as if the very molecules she breathed in carried messages her heart could read. With a sense of inevitability, she turned to see Dylan Harrington standing at her shoulder.
Undeniably, the first emotion that rushed through her was a terrifying thrill of joy—but it was followed closely by a comforting rush of rage. Tamping down the part of herself that wanted to drink in the sight of him in his hip-hugging jeans and battered black motorcycle jacket, Penny set her jaw. “So much for doing whatever I want. But then, you’ve never been very interested in what would make me happy, have you?”
A muscle ticked in his temple, his eyes going dark, but he nodded. “I deserved that. And if you still want me to go after I’ve explained, I will. But please let me at least try to make you understand why I lied to you.”
Penny hesitated, heart beating faster than a hummingbird’s wings. No second chances, she reminded herself. “It won’t make any difference, but if it’ll get you out of here without a scene, go ahead.”
Brows lifting, Dylan tucked his hands in his back pockets as he glanced around the nearly full diner. Most of the patrons were staring back at him, with varying levels of avid curiosity. This was basically the most interesting thing ever to happen during the lunch rush.
“Oh.” Dylan cleared his throat. “Do you have a break coming up? We could go out to the deck.”
The deck, where he’d proven how well he understood her son, and offered to help him. But that memory threatened the foundations of the anger that was keeping her going, so she shook it off.
Propping her tray on her hip, Penny stood her ground. “Nope. We’re doing this right here. These people are my friends, my family. Anything you have to say, you can say to me in front of them.”
Deep inside, a sad voice whispered, There. Now you’ve done it, you’ve pushed him far enough. He’ll leave and you’ll be safe again.
But Dylan didn’t leave. Instead, he planted his feet and tilted his chin down decisively, hardening his jaw until he looked like a stone monument to courage. All conversation in the diner had ceased by that point, every eye in the place trained on the confrontation between the stranger they’d befriended and their favorite waitress.
Penny waited, her breath caught somewhere between her lungs and her throat.
“I lied to you,” Dylan said again, not shying away from the reality of what he’d done. “But I never meant to hurt you. Which I know isn’t the same thing as having your best interests at heart—as you pointed out, from the beginning, I’ve been more concerned with what was best for me. What I wanted. And what I wanted, more than anything, was to see where things went between us, if you had no idea that I’ve got money.”
Sucking in a breath, Penny felt her cheeks go hot. “Look, just because I work two jobs and have to scrimp to keep my kid’s college fund going—that doesn’t automatically make me a gold digger!”
Eyes widening, Dylan lifted a hand. “No, that’s not what I meant. When I first met you, I didn’t know anything about you other than how gorgeous you are, and how hot and fun the sparks between us were.”
Great, now Penny’s blush was never going to fade away. She was permanently pink in the face.
