“Amazing,” Wyatt said.
“I expect a real Sinclair could put Harriet’s mind at ease.”
“If that’s what she wants.”
McNally nodded. “Yeah. If that’s what she wants.”
An hour later, Wyatt managed to sneak out the side door. The roads were plowed, but there were icy patches. Penelope’s road was a nightmare. It alone would deter spies and cretins.
By the time he knocked on her door, she had the couch made up with an ancient wool blanket and white sheets that had to be forty years old. More leftovers from the dead grandfather. She’d put away the excess maple syrup, sanded her steps and cleaned and loaded the Winchester.
“Harriet didn’t see you?”
“No, but I ran into your mother at the front desk. Not to worry, I told her I was a throwback to a Victorian Sinclair who wasn’t a scoundrel—”
“That’s not even a little bit funny.”
He laughed. “Your mother was nowhere in sight. Nor were Harriet, Jack Dunning, the police chief or anyone else who’d care that I might be sneaking off to sleep on your couch.”
She didn’t look relieved.
“Penelope,” he said, “you need a friend tonight. Let me be that friend.”
“We’re not overreacting?”
He didn’t hesitate. “No.”
She seemed tense, agitated, and he suspected it had more to do with the very real and immediate threat he presented to her peace and stability than with the nebulous threat of some mad faxer. “I hope this isn’t a case of the wolf guarding the henhouse.”
He shrugged, smiled. “You’re armed.”
She pushed at her blond curls with both hands. “I’ve had a long day. I’m going to bed. And I think I will keep Granddad’s rifle in the bedroom with me.”
“No problem. If someone tries to break in, Willard here and I will handle it.”
“I’ve thought about getting a dog—”
“Who needs a dog when you have a moose and a Sinclair?”
That elicited a smile, and Wyatt decided it was enough. For tonight.
After she slipped into her bedroom, he peeled down to his underwear, fed the wood stove and climbed under the musty blanket and old sheets. This was willpower. This was honor. This was courage. Damned if he’d prove himself a Sinclair scoundrel.
He listened to the fire crackle and pictured Penelope snug in her bed, no doubt in his mind that she wanted him as much as he wanted her. He sighed at Willard. The blanket smelled like mothballs, the couch was lumpy, and the moose—well, he thought, the moose had been dead a long time.
Eleven
H arriet watched the stars disappear and the sunrise lighten the sky. She had slept fitfully, first unable to fall asleep, then unable to stay asleep. She would catch herself obsessing and throw back her covers, change positions, anything to stop the endless stream of thoughts and images. At four o’clock she gave up. She had three rooms on the third floor of the inn. Sometimes when sleep eluded her, she would wander down to the kitchen and clean, whip up muffins or sit with a pot of tea and a book.
This time, she didn’t dare. She would die if her footsteps woke up Jack Dunning or Wyatt Sinclair, if either man checked on her.
Instead she sat in a wing chair in an alcove overlooking the lake. She’d tried doing needlepoint, but she kept making mistakes, her hands shaking, her vision blurring. She’d stabbed her finger twice, which, even with the special blunt needle, hurt. So she put aside her latest project, a pillow for the sofa in the parlor. The design was of maple leaves in a fiery autumn red. She was in the mood for pastels, spring colors, Easter eggs and baby bunnies.
“You’re a sap, Harriet,” she whispered to herself. “A sentimental fool.”
Negative self-talk. Damaging. Degrading. She knew she should stop. She had read a dozen self-help books that all said not to talk that way to yourself. She should do affirmations. Tell herself positive things. I’m a wonderful person. I’m smart and kind and capable.
Except she didn’t believe it.
Using her fingertips, she wiped the tears on her cheeks. Her skin was rougher and drier than it used to be. She was forty-five years old. Unmarried. Childless. She lived in three rooms on the third floor of an inn. She looked at her sitting room with its pretty, feminine decor. She’d shopped flea markets and yard sales for many of the furnishings, which she’d sanded, refinished, reupholstered herself, not wanting to spend money on rooms her guests would never see. The result was charming, enchanting, entirely her, and yet at dawn, it struck her as pathetic. An old maid’s quarters. Forty years from now, she would be sitting here by the window, her life the same, her body older, frailer, more wrinkled. If she didn’t act, she would wither away here.
But you like your life.
The positive words tricked her, coming out of nowhere. It was all those books. They’d indoctrinated her. She couldn’t even feel sorry for herself without perky little phrases popping into her mind.
She had a right to feel miserable. Of course, she was lucky in many ways. She was healthy, she had a wonderful family—Lyman, Robby, Penelope, her parents in Florida, her brother in Boston, her cousin Mary and her family. She did work she loved, she enjoyed her guests. She wanted more, but what?
In her heart of hearts she knew she hadn’t really wanted children. She adored her friends’ babies, her little nieces in Boston, Mary’s brood—but herself?
Harriet smiled sadly as she stared at the frozen lake. In her twenties and early thirties she’d deluded herself into thinking children would fulfill her, give her life purpose, be fun. She thought she’d make a wonderful mother, and perhaps she would have, but did she want children? She was so introverted, so awkward. She liked her simple life, her quiet nights reading by the fire, the guests who came and went. Children would have changed everything, complicated everything.
And she would have had to have a man.
She shuddered, pushing back thoughts of the few men with whom she’d tried to have a relationship. Tentative, self-conscious, prudish—she always turned into such a simp around men. She’d had sex exactly six times in her life, the last time ten years ago. It was true what they said—use it or lose it. She didn’t care if she ever fell into bed with a man again. In fact, she couldn’t bear the thought of anyone seeing her without clothes. Even her annual mammogram sent her into days of anxiety.
You’re overstating your case, Harriet. You’re a woman full of life and love. You just haven’t had a lot of luck with men.
And you’re trying to pretend you’re not attracted to Jack Dunning when you are.
She shot from her chair. Jack wasn’t attracted to her. He was the type of man who went for blond bombshells and big-haired tarts, not for plain, New England spinsters.
Spinster. It was an old-fashioned word that rang true.
Jack had his reasons for indulging her tonight, getting her to talk about the night her father found her on the church doorstep, her conviction that she was Colt and Frannie’s daughter.
God, what a fool she’d made of herself. What a fool!
She sobbed, the tears flowing hard. She jumped out of the chair, fled to her bedroom and threw herself on her bed. She sank into the down comforter. She grabbed a pillow and cried into it, not wanting anyone to hear, especially Jack. Did private investigators have better hearing? Would he be listening for her, suspecting she would fall apart?
Oh God oh God oh God…I’m such a fool…
He had been so kind. Curious. Polite. Charming and sexy, yet tough. He’d asked the kind of questions a private investigator should ask. Did she have any proof Frannie and Colt were her biological parents? Any real clues or evidence suggesting they were her biological parents? How far was she willing to go to get the proof she needed?
She’d behaved impulsively, stupidly. She’d gotten into her head the idea of telling him about her theory and couldn’t rest until she’d acted on it. This was the sort of behavior she expected of Penelope, not herself. She w
as the analytical one, careful, rational, never acting until she’d examined all her options.
She’d done very little digging into her origins. Her parents had been open about what had happened, and they’d told her all the steps they and the authorities had taken to find out how she’d come to be in an apple basket at the side door of the Cold Spring First Congregational Church.
Since they’d found nothing, not even the slightest clue, Harriet never expected she might find anything herself. And so she hadn’t bothered. Passivity reigned. Instead of taking action, she wove her fantasy about Frannie Beaudine and Colt Sinclair, fancied herself an heiress, a woman with a zest for adventure and daring in her genes even if she didn’t act upon it.
Jack said he would talk to Brandon Sinclair if she wanted him to. He’d touched her hair—just a brush of his fingertips—and told her the Sinclairs all had dark hair and fair skin, like hers. It had been a simple act of kindness, she knew. Now that she’d seen a Sinclair in person, she wasn’t so positive. She looked nothing like Wyatt. Nothing at all.
She made herself sit up. She tucked her knees under her chin and wrapped her arms around her ankles, holding herself tight. She could feel that her eyes were red and swollen, and her cheeks burned from the tears. Such silliness. People had real problems, and here she was crying over nonsense. What difference did it make who her biological parents were? Why did she need to know who had put her into a basket and left her?
The couple who’d adopted her were more than anyone could ever ask for or want in parents. Kind, loving, devoted—and so funny. She smiled, remembering sitting around the dinner table with her parents and brother, laughing, just howling at something one of them had said. They’d be together this summer, when her parents came from Florida and her brother from Boston. She knew she could call any of them and they would talk to her, tell her to do what she felt was right, perhaps even make her laugh.
But this wasn’t their problem. As much as they could imagine and empathize, it wasn’t something they could understand. The maddening curiosity. The wondering. The awful fear that her birth—her existence—had caused, somehow, the deaths of two people. That her life was forever entangled in tragedy, scandal, death.
That was what she had to know. Not that she was an heiress, but that she wasn’t a curse, however innocent, however unwitting.
She cleared her throat and slipped out of bed, pushing back tear-drenched strands of hair as she walked unsteadily to the bathroom. Pink towels, little shell-shaped soaps, bottles of essential oils and scented creams. She found the lavender oil and turned on the tub, added a few drops to the steaming water. Lavender to enhance feelings of well-being. That was what she needed. She would take charge, like Penelope.
As she stepped into the tub, Harriet glanced at her body. Thick through her hips and thighs, a bit of a belly, gravity having its dragging effect on her breasts. She didn’t delude herself into thinking she was Rubenesque. She was reasonably fit, just a few pounds over her ideal weight. Well, ten.
She smiled, easing herself slowly into the hot water, her eyelids heavy from crying and fatigue. You’re a healthy, attractive woman in your mid-forties.
Suddenly she laughed out loud, so hard it echoed in her pretty bathroom. “And you’re an heiress, too.”
When Penelope woke up and saw the loaded Winchester at her bedside, she was so startled she screamed and fell out of bed. That brought Wyatt. She’d forgotten about him, too. Her door banged open, and all she saw was dark hair, legs, chest and underwear. Every bit of it male.
Bleary-eyed, not quite sure what was real and what was a dream, she went for the rifle, and he said, “Whoa, sweetheart. It was just a bad dream.”
“Sinclair?”
“Will it get me shot if I say yes?”
She eased her fingers from the rifle. “Relax. I always know what I’m shooting at before I pull the trigger.”
“Are you a good shot?”
“Not particularly.”
“Dare I ask—”
“What and when I shot last? A target. Andy McNally took Rebecca, Jane and me out for some target shooting. Rebecca’s a nice shot. I don’t hunt,” she added, as if that mattered, and got to her feet, uncrumpling her nightshirt. It was flannel, blue plaid, snug and about as feminine as most everything else in her place. She ruffled her hair with one hand, waking up the rest of the way, aware of Wyatt’s dark, wide-awake gaze on her. “The only reason I keep the rifle is because it was my grandfather’s. Otherwise I’d get rid of it.”
Her vision cleared, and she realized the precariousness of her situation. Wyatt didn’t have the look of a man who’d be kept at bay by a loaded gun for long. Her gaze drifted from the hard set of his jaw until it came to the impossible-to-hide bulge. Her head jerked up. “Oh, dear. Coffee?”
“Penelope.”
In half a second he’d crossed the room, and in another half second he had her on the bed, and his mouth was on hers. Her response was instantaneous and total, all the pent-up frustration and aching bursting to the surface, demanding relief. He pushed up the hem of her nightshirt, his palms hot on her skin, and she supposed she could have stopped him if she wanted to—she did have a loaded rifle. But she didn’t want to, and when he cupped her bottom and deepened their kiss, she knew this was right. She eased her palms over his hips, boldly slipped his undershorts down until she could feel the hot, firm muscles under her hands.
He was ready. She already knew that from when he was standing in the doorway. But still she eased her hand around him, testing, measuring, even as he pushed her nightshirt up higher as his mouth and tongue moved lower, doing a bit of testing and measuring of their own.
When she was spinning with desire, veering out of control, she reached with one hand into her bedside table and tossed him a foil packet, managing a quick smile. “I’m a natural optimist.”
He gave a ragged laugh, dealt with protection swiftly and efficiently, and when he came to her, he held back. There was no lessening of urgency, only a black look in his eyes that said if they were to go wild and mad this once, it was going to last. He gazed at her, trailed one hand from her throat across her breasts, down her stomach and between her legs, lingering there, probing, thrusting, circling. Then he followed that same trail with mouth, tongue and teeth until she was quivering, aching with want. But he’d reached his limit, too, and in another moment, they came together, hard and fast, nothing to stop them but their release. Hers came first, and she cried out with the quaking in her body, with abandon, as he kept on until, finally, they collapsed together.
“I’m glad I didn’t shoot you,” she managed to say, her breathing ragged.
He grinned crookedly. “I don’t know, I’d swear you did.”
Impossibly, miraculously, a few minutes later they did it again. Just as hard, just as fast, just as wildly, until they were panting and raw and beyond thought and reason.
Penelope could have stayed in bed, just pretended all was well in her world. She wouldn’t have to think about the plane in the woods, the lies, the strange messages or what to do about the man she’d just made love with twice. But she whispered, “You should get back to the inn before Harriet discovers you’re missing and all hell breaks loose.”
“I don’t know,” he said with a deliberate, rakish wink, “I think it just did.”
But he rolled out of bed and slipped to the shower. Penelope didn’t move until she heard his car clear her driveway. She wasn’t one to sleep with a man first and then get to know him. But here she was. In a way, she felt as if she’d known Wyatt all her life.
“Well, isn’t that a rationalization,” she muttered, got out of bed and dove for the shower before her thoughts could get too far ahead of her.
When she arrived at the airport, her father presented her with a list of planes to wash, floors to sweep and paperwork to do. He’d changed his mind about her cooling her heels at home and wanted her putting in regular hours. Penelope saw it for what it was—a transparent attemp
t to keep her out of trouble. Little did he know he was way too late.
Her first job was to clean the small, functional classroom that served as his flight school. She’d logged enough hours in the metal chairs. Becoming a flight instructor was on her list of goals. She had a full list of challenging goals—falling for Wyatt Sinclair was not among them. Marriage, children, a new house with lots of wood and glass to replace her grandfather’s old cabin would be nice, not that she had anyone in mind for husband, father and co-carpenter.
Wyatt wasn’t even close as a candidate. Obviously, he didn’t regard her as a sister or one of the guys, but he didn’t want the same things out of life she did. A town like Cold Spring, New Hampshire, and a life like hers would never contain him. As notorious as she was within the boundaries of her hometown, she didn’t compare to Wyatt when it came to a taste for drama and adventure. It was one thing to get lost in the back forty once in a while and get a little distracted flying home from Plattsburgh. He’d watched a friend die and had nearly died himself on one of his expeditions. That was pushing the envelope.
Penelope had no illusions about Wyatt’s eighteen months in New York. They were a kind of penance, a self-imposed version of washing planes and sweeping out hangars. The demon was still inside him, biding its time. She’d had a little feel for it this morning, she thought uncomfortably but, to her surprise, without regret or embarrassment. She supposed she had a few demons of her own to exorcise.
Harriet caught up with her between jobs. She looked out of breath, her cheeks rosy. She had on her boots, her parka and her matching mittens and hat that she’d knitted out of fuzzy white yarn. Penelope frowned. “Harriet, it’s forty-five degrees out. You’re dressed to hike the Himalayas.”
Kiss the Moon Page 17
