Kiss the Moon

by Carla Neggers

  It was way too early, she reminded herself, to draw any conclusions about what Wyatt Sinclair did and didn’t feel. Indeed, she’d probably do herself a favor not to go down that path at all. She heard he’d moved back to New York to become some sort of money type on Wall Street, possibly because of his experience in Tasmania. Then again, sooner or later, all Sinclairs made it back to Manhattan to prove they could make money and didn’t need the family fortune.

  Of course, she also heard his father had disinherited him. Rumors were forever circulating around town about Sinclairs, and Penelope had learned not to believe everything she heard.

  She glanced at him. The black eyes were squinting as he stared at the landscape, the square jaw set hard. For sure, getting lost in the New Hampshire woods for a few hours and running out of gas in a small plane would be nothing to Wyatt Sinclair. A pop fly to Plattsburgh and back to deliver a package would bore him silly—he’d probably dump fuel just to liven things up.

  But Penelope loved her work, and she couldn’t believe she’d screwed up again. Damned near running out of fuel. How stupid. She wanted to blame the reporters, the hoopla over her discovery in the Sinclair woods, the anticipation of having to explain herself to Brandon Sinclair’s investigator—but that wasn’t it. This sort of thing had been happening before she’d wandered into the woods and found a forty-five-year-old plane wreck. She and her father had been at loggerheads for weeks over her inability to concentrate.

  Maybe it was just spring fever, she decided.

  Whatever it was, she was grounded and off to town with a Sinclair—and at the Sunrise Inn, no less. And it was her suggestion. Lord, what a day. But the only cure for it was tea and scones, despite the risk of running into Harriet, who’d wanted to meet a Sinclair her whole life. Considering her impulsiveness of late, Penelope supposed she should never mind Harriet and worry about herself instead. With that black Sinclair gaze probing her from across the table, she could blurt out everything. Clearly, he’d come to Cold Spring to find out if she was lying. If he concluded she was, he’d have the truth from her. It was that quiet, natural arrogance, she thought. She could sense it, even as they roared down Main Street in her truck. He’d simply get her to tell the truth, and he knew he would.

  The Sunrise Inn was tucked onto a point that jutted into the lake just off Main Street. Harriet and Penelope’s mother had bought it twelve years ago and painstakingly turned the relatively simple Queen Anne into a charming, popular lakeside inn. It was painted deep brown and had a curving porch that overlooked the lake and a smaller screened porch that looked out on one of the inn’s many stunning, award-winning gardens. Of course, at this time of year all the gardens were covered with mulch and melting snow, and the porch furniture was in storage.

  “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t mention you’re a Sinclair,” Penelope said as she lurched around a pothole. “It’ll just complicate things—and for heaven’s sake, don’t mention that episode at the airport to my mother, if she’s here. She hates planes. If I come home alive, that’s all she needs to know. She’s still having fits about having to call a search party on me this weekend.”

  He turned to her. “Do you like living life on the edge?”

  “I don’t like it. It just sometimes turns out that way.”

  She led him up a brick walk. Since the house faced the lake, the inn’s main entrance was at the back, up a set of stone steps. A spring grapevine wreath graced the door, its pretty dried tea roses, larkspur and pepper berries a colorful contrast to the snow, mud and patches of sopping, grayish grass. Inside, stairs curved up to the right, and the wide entry opened into a sitting room with a fireplace and the front desk. Immediately to the left, off the entry, was an elegant parlor, almost completely Harriet’s doing with its dark wood and damask fabrics. She’d added an 1893 rosewood upright piano, a dozen needlepoint pillows, even an easel for drawing.

  Penelope immediately felt the heat of the sitting room fire and smelled apples and cinnamon and something faintly tangy—oranges, perhaps. Harriet always liked to keep something fragrant simmering, and if there was snow on the ground, there was a fire in the fireplace. She was convinced her guests wanted fires.

  In borderline temperatures like today’s, that meant it got toasty fast. Penelope unzipped her flight suit about six inches. She’d worn a black T-shirt underneath, a mistake on a day filled with lies, reporters, a flying screwup and Wyatt Sinclair. She groaned. “It’s hot in here. I can’t believe Harriet has a fire going. It’s almost fifty degrees outside.”

  Sinclair cut her a quick smile. “Downright balmy, isn’t it?”

  “Compared to the eighteen degrees it was two weeks ago, yes. I’m suffocating.”

  She grabbed what was left of her braid with both hands, let it drop and undid her zipper another inch.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Wyatt twitching. With a white-hot jolt, she realized he wasn’t her father or one of the guys from town. He was a Sinclair, and he would be attuned to everything physical in his surroundings. Including her. Especially her, because she was the reason he was here. He wanted to know about his uncle’s plane.

  That he was obviously aware of her meant nothing. She didn’t have to be his type or even particularly attractive—she had only to be breathing for him to scope her out. It was simply the nature of the beast.

  Scones, she reminded herself.

  Fortunately, neither Harriet nor her mother—in fact, no one—was at the front desk. Penelope led Sinclair down a short hall to the left, past the wood-paneled bar and up another short hall to a cheerful octagonal room that served as the inn’s dining room. It jutted from the main house, with views of both the gardens and the lake. With nothing in bloom, the tables and windowsills were decorated with pots of narcissus, paperwhites, daffodils and hyacinths. They were a cheerful touch that complemented the white linens and blue willow china.

  Penelope greeted Terry, the manager of the Octagon Room and sole server of afternoon tea, and quietly asked, “Is Harriet or my mother around?”

  “Harriet’s upstairs, and I think Robby’s at the sugar house.”

  Penelope couldn’t hide her relief. She was pretty sure Sinclair noticed. He was in observational mode, keying in on every nuance. Best to remain on guard, no matter how good the scones, how tired she was after her long day.

  “Do you want me to tell Harriet you’re here?”

  “No—that’s okay. We’re just having tea and scones.”

  “Of course. Any table’s fine. We were crowded yesterday and this morning, but I think all the reporters have checked out by now.”

  Terry was clearly curious about the man at Penelope’s side, but Penelope had no intention of introducing him. She wanted to convince Wyatt of her sincerity and honesty and hurry him back to New York. She chose a table in front of a window with the best view of the lake and a blue pottery dish brimming with daffodils.

  “My mother does sugaring in the spring—the sap’s running like crazy,” she explained to Wyatt, just to say something. She wanted to distract him from coming to judgments she couldn’t control, like the certainty that her turn-of-the-century dump was made-up. “She and Harriet use the syrup at the inn and sell the surplus to guests.”

  He settled into a chair opposite her. Even in black leather, he didn’t look out of place. He had an obvious ability to make wherever he was his space. The New York financial district, the Tasmanian wilderness, a charming New England inn. “Is Harriet your cousin on your mother’s side?” he asked.

  Already they were on dangerous ground. Penelope shook her head. “No, Harriet and my father are first cousins. She’s between my mother and me in age—they’ve just always gotten along.” And that was all he needed to know about Harriet Chestnut.

  “Are you related to everyone in town?”

  “Not quite.”

  Terry brought two individual pots of tea, two small plates of warm currant scones and two little crockeries, one of soft butter, one of raspb
erry preserves. Penelope smiled and thanked her, then said to Wyatt, “After nearly dying today, I’m putting jam and butter on my scones.”

  “I didn’t realize it was that close a call.”

  “It wasn’t, but anything to justify butter and jam.” She split open a scone, spread a generous amount of butter and checked her tea. “Another minute.” She settled in her chair, trying to ignore a flutter in the pit of her stomach. Lying to the national media was one thing, to a Sinclair another. “I’m sorry I got your family all stirred up about your uncle’s plane.”

  Wyatt broke off a piece of his scone, smeared on a bit of butter. “I’d like to hear your story from start to finish, if you don’t mind.”

  “Not at all.”

  He smiled. “Is that the truth?”

  She smiled back, her stomach twisting—damned if she’d let him ruin her afternoon tea. “Okay, so it’s awkward and I’d rather not. But I’ll oblige you. How’s that?”

  “Better.”

  “Are you going to pick apart every sentence?”

  He shrugged. “Only if I sense you’re…dissembling.”

  “Dissembling’s just another word for lying. It’s that Dartmouth education showing, huh? Well, sense away, Mr. Sinclair.”

  “Wyatt,” he said smoothly.

  She poured her tea, relieved her hand didn’t shake. “Wyatt Sinclair,” she said. “The only son of Brandon Sinclair, who was just eleven years old when his older brother and Frannie Beaudine slipped out during the reception honoring the donation of the Sinclair Collection to the Met.” She sipped her tea. “Rumor has it Colt stopped to say goodbye to his little brother before heading to the reception.”

  “You’ve done your research.”

  She waved a hand. She wanted to establish a measure of control over their conversation but saw no need to get into what she knew about Frannie and Colt—and him. “That much everyone around here knows. It’s printed on diner place mats. Frannie Beaudine’s sort of a local heroine.”

  “And the people of Cold Spring blame Colt for sweeping her off her feet and to her doom?”

  “Pretty much.”

  Wyatt poured his tea, adding a bit of lemon, no sugar or cream. “It’s been forty-five years—”

  “Around here, forty-five years is the blink of an eye. I mean, it’s not like we’re in England or Greece, but still. My father remembers both your uncle and Frannie—and your grandfather, too.”

  “He told me.”

  “He was fifteen when they disappeared. He helped search for their plane. It’s not so long ago.”

  “I suppose.” Sinclair leaned back, watching Penelope as she ate her scone, which was feathery light and just perfect, but she resisted the temptation to wolf it down. “So, tell me how you mistook a dump for plane wreckage.”

  She’d been explaining that point since morning. On her trip to Plattsburgh, New York, and back, she’d worked out the kinks in her story. “Well, I did and I didn’t. I just thought it was plane wreckage—I realized I wouldn’t know for sure until I went back. Because of the conditions, I only saw it from a distance. It was on a steep, icy, rocky hillside, and I didn’t want to risk climbing over to get a closer look. It was late, and I was out in the woods alone.”

  The dark, almost black eyes settled on her. “And you were lost.”

  She gave him a self-deprecating smile. “I wasn’t lost-lost. Lost-lost is when the search party has to find you. I made my way back while they were still arguing over who got to ride the snowmobiles.”

  The eyes didn’t move from her. Wyatt Sinclair wasn’t going to be easy to roll. He had more at stake. It was his uncle—his flesh and blood—in that plane. Feeling a twinge of guilt, Penelope poured her tea. “Anyway,” she went on, welcoming the steam and the smoky smell of Earl Grey, “I said I thought I might have found Colt and Frannie’s plane, and next thing it’s all over the news that I did find it. So before things got too far out of hand, I slipped off on my own late yesterday to check out what I’d found for myself.”

  “What time did you leave?”

  “I don’t know, about four, four-thirty.”

  “And when did you get back?”

  She slathered jam and butter onto another piece of scone. “What’re you going to do, get out your compass and map and calculate my coordinates?”

  His gaze darkened enough to remind her that she was dealing with a man who hadn’t exactly driven six hours for tea and scones. “Maybe I’m just pinning you down.”

  He said pinning in such a way that her stomach rolled over and a prickly, all-over awareness settled in. “Pin away,” she said lightly, making it a challenge. “I got home after dark. I didn’t look at the clock.”

  His gaze remained steady, probing, all the more disconcerting because she had the distinct feeling he knew he’d gotten to her with that last remark. No doubt it had been deliberate. Part of his strategy. Make the woman quiver with thoughts of your hard body and dark eyes and then pounce—prove her a bald-faced liar.

  “You must have some idea,” he said mildly.

  She had no idea because she’d never made the trip. She’d tramped to the edge of her property, tossed snowballs against trees for a while and tramped back by a different route, careful not to let any enterprising reporter spot her. “I guess it must have been around seven. I took a shower, ate dinner, checked my e-mail and went to bed.”

  “All right. And you say what you found this time was a dump.”

  “What I found last time was a dump, too. I just didn’t know it.”

  “Isn’t it unusual to find a dump, even an old one, that far out in the woods?”

  “Unusual but not impossible. Most of New Hampshire was denuded by logging and farming a hundred years ago. A lot of reforestation has occurred over the century. The woods—even the Sinclair woods—are crisscrossed with stone walls, old logging trails, cellar holes, wells. Dumps. We see trees and like to think we’re stepping on virgin ground. But we’re not.” She sipped her tea, feeling calmer. “You went to school up here. You must know this stuff.”

  “I was more concerned with climbing mountains and surviving for another semester than with local yore.” He settled back, his attention focused intently on her. He would want to be absolutely certain she was telling the truth before he left Cold Spring. If not, she had no idea what he’d do. “What made you think you’d found plane wreckage? Initially. Before you went back and learned otherwise. You’re a pilot. Something must have made you think it was a plane, specifically a Piper Cub J-3.”

  So much for working out the kinks in her story. Being pelted with questions from a reporter was one thing—from Colt’s only nephew quite another. But Penelope saw no point in backing down. Telling Wyatt about his uncle’s plane would only bring on chaos. “It was a weird day. I don’t know if there was anything specific or not. And what I thought I saw on Sunday is irrelevant—what I did see yesterday was an old dump.”

  “Which now you say you can’t find again.”

  His tone wasn’t neutral. If he’d meant it to be neutral, it would be neutral. But it wasn’t. He didn’t believe a word she’d said. And he meant her to know it. “Mr. Sinclair, I get the distinct impression you don’t believe me.”

  He shrugged. “I didn’t come here to put you on the defensive. I just want to know the truth. You tried to follow your footsteps to the site this morning but they’d been covered with snow?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Where’s the snow now?”

  “There was more in the higher elevations. Four inches in some spots. We hardly got any along the lake. Microclimates.”

  “There was enough snow to obliterate your tracks?”

  “My tracks were hard enough to follow yesterday with all the melting and refreezing this time of year. And I wasn’t really paying attention to landmarks. It was lousy light, and I was focused on my tracks. I suppose I might be able to find my way back, given enough time, but I don’t see the point. It wasn’t Frannie
and Colt’s plane I found, it was a dump.”

  The dark gaze stayed on her. “That’s your story?”

  Penelope popped the last of her scone into her mouth. “That’s what happened.”

  “The press buying it?”

  “Sure. They’re not going to traipse through the wilds of New Hampshire in March and risk finding out I’m not lying after all. They’d look like idiots. Besides, they won’t find it—it was a miracle I found it myself.”

  Wyatt said nothing.

  “I’m sorry you wasted your trip north,” Penelope said.

  He leaned forward, gave a roguish wink that called up all her images of eighteenth-and nineteenth-century Sinclairs—the adventurers, the privateers, the reckless men who’d lived hard and too often died young. “Your story’s bullshit, Penelope. I doubt anyone believes it. I sure as hell don’t.”

  In hindsight, she should have said she’d hallucinated the Piper Cub. She could have blamed stress, the trouble she was having concentrating in recent weeks, cabin fever, her general restlessness and malaise. Her father would have believed her. He’d have immediately grounded her, of course, but he’d ended up grounding her, anyway.

  The dump story hadn’t worked. Now it was too late. She had no rewind button, no chance to revise it and start over.

  And damned if she’d give the skeptical man across the table from her the satisfaction of witnessing her admit her folly. If he was naturally arrogant, she was naturally defiant and stubborn—faults, at times, to be sure, but occasionally, too, virtues.

  “Well,” she said, “there’s nothing I can do to make you believe me. That’s your problem.”

  “At the moment, yes. In a day or two, if I’ve found anything that casts doubt on your story—then we’ll have to have tea again.” He grabbed the check. “Allow me.”

  Damned right she’d allow him. He’d ruined her tea, he could pay for it. He slid to his feet, calm, knowing just how much he’d rattled her. “This looks like a decent inn. I expect they’re not booked solid this time of year.”