“I guess we might as well go on home,” Penny suggested. “We can figure out what to do tomorrow.”
By the light of the candles, they made their way to the back hallway—lit by an emergency light—more or less in pairs. Her and Alex, Dorothy and Brad. Though she and Alex were leading the way, she was all too conscious of the pair behind her, Brad’s arm around Dorothy’s shoulders as they laughed and talked. And what did Dorothy just say about—
“Penny?” Alex called. “I say, Penny.”
She jolted into attentiveness. “What?” she said and smiled up at him. Dorothy and Brad weren’t the only ones who could laugh. “I’m sorry, sweetie. What were you saying?” She leaned in closer, more provocatively.
“I was merely commenting that the storm has likely produced an abundance of work for you and your crews. We may not be able to get together tomorrow as we had planned.”
Laughter pealed out from behind them again, somehow setting Penny’s teeth on edge. She tried hard to purr as she smiled up at Alex, hanging on his arm for all she was worth. “Hey, a little work’s not going to stand in my way. I always have time for you.”
Alex gave her an odd look, as if to ask what in the world she was doing. A good question, actually. Pretending they were dating in front of crowds was one thing, but this private show was a little much.
They came to the parking lot door and went out under the slight overhang. By the illumination of the outdoor emergency lights, they could see it was still raining. And that the parking lot was a lake.
“My car’s right over here,” Dorothy said. “I’m gonna run for it. See you, Penny, Alex. Brad, great to have you back even for a few days.”
With a quick wave at Penny and Alex and a peck on the cheek for Brad, Dorothy was on her way, running the few yards along the building to her car. Penny wasn’t so lucky. Her truck was on the other side of the lot and the lake.
“If we hurry along this side of the water, we shouldn’t get our feet too wet,” Alex observed, pointing to the west side of the puddle.
“Okay,” she said. “I’m game.” She turned to say goodbye to Brad. “It was—”
But suddenly she found herself being swept up off her feet and into his arms. “What are you doing?” she cried. “Put me down.”
“You can’t walk through the puddle in those shoes,” he said.
“I say,” Alex interjected. “If she doesn’t want—”
“Just lead the way, will you?” Brad told him.
“Brad, put me down now,” Penny insisted.
But no one seemed to be listening. Alex was leading the way through the puddle and past the van parked near the back door. Brad was following, his arms holding Penny tightly. Securely. Possessively.
Gracious, she was hallucinating! Next she’d be thinking the rain running down their faces was romantic. “I really can walk,” Penny objected, trying to keep that touch of panic in her heart from showing up in her voice. “This is ridiculous.”
“It’s nothing,” Brad said. “Better than you walking on broken glass or something.”
The concern in his tone touched her—and that was annoying. She didn’t want to be touched by him, not literally or emotionally. Neither did she want the urge to wipe the rain from his face or brush his damp hair back from his forehead.
“I have shoes on,” she snapped. “And if I really needed to be carried, Alex could have done it.”
Alex looked a little stunned at that. “Oh, right. Certainly. Absolutely.” He tried to cover up his surprise with a smile. “Want me to take her?”
“No.” Both she and Brad spoke in unison.
Penny glared at Alex and then at Brad. “Would you put me—”
But Brad and Alex had stopped and were staring around the corner of the building. She turned to look in that direction, too.
The huge old oak tree that had stood at the edge of the parking lot had been hit by lightning. She could smell the scent of burned wood in the air. And in the hit, a massive branch—with a trunk as thick as her waist—had come down, just narrowly missing her truck while strewing leaves and branches all over.
“Holy cow!” she murmured.
Brad seemed to lose some of his fire and she was able to slip down to her feet. Warm puddled rainwater washed over her feet as the three of them walked over to the fallen tree. There was a car underneath, she realized. Or what used to be a car. Boy, somebody was in for a surprise.
Dorothy pulled up in her car beside them, rolling down her window. “Wow,” she said. “That must have been that huge crash we heard. It get your truck at all, Pen?”
Penny shook her head. “Not so’s you’d notice.”
She frowned as she looked at the smashed car beneath the branch. By the light of Dorothy’s headlights, she could see an Illinois license plate. What would someone from Illinois be doing around here tonight? And where were they while their car was being totaled? The restaurant had emptied and it was only—
Oh, damn. “Is this your car?” Penny asked Brad.
“Not exactly.” He walked over to the side and peered under the greenery.
Suddenly Penny took in his faded jeans and worn loafers as well as the fact the car had to have been five years old at least. Five hard years old. Those scratches with rust in them hadn’t happened tonight. Yet, obviously, the car was still being paid for. Times had been hard for Brad when he was growing up in Chesterton and it looked like they hadn’t changed much for him in the past eighteen years.
“Damn. I’d better get...”
Brad was muttering to himself as he moved some smaller branches over to get closer to a back side window. The large branch had to weigh close to a ton, but it was perched precariously and wobbled as Brad tried to edge his way in.
“Hey,” Penny cried and pulled him back. “Be careful. This whole thing is unsteady.”
“I have to get some stuff.”
“You don’t need anything that badly,” she told him. “I’ll come by tomorrow with a crew and we’ll get the branch taken care of.”
He frowned at her. “You’ll take care of it?”
“She runs Donnelly Tree Service now,” Dorothy called from her car. “Come on, Brad, get in. I’ll give you a ride to your motel.”
“Marvelous idea,” Alex said, trying to wipe the drops from his glasses. “Then we can get out of this deluge, too. Come, Penny. Let’s get in the truck.”
But Brad didn’t move. “You all go ahead,” he said. “I have to get my bag out of the back seat. The window’s broken and some papers I need are getting wet.”
“But you’ll be stranded out here,” Dorothy said. “You get your stuff. I’ll wait for you.”
“No.”
The three turned to stare at Penny. Maybe her words had come out a little too strongly, but all Penny could hear was the warmth in Dorothy’s voice. All she could see was Toto’s love going down in flames. And for what? So Brad could avenge old hurts?
“I’ll give him a hand and then give him a ride,” Penny told Dorothy. “Maybe you can drop Alex off. It’s right on your way.”
“Uh, okay,” Dorothy said, not sounding too thrilled.
Penny ignored it. “You don’t mind, do you, sweetie?” she asked Alex.
“I would just like to escape this downpour,” Alex muttered and climbed into Dorothy’s car.
He shut the door a little more solidly than necessary, but Penny waved brightly as they drove off, then walked over to her truck. Her dress was soaked, her hair hanging in straggles down her face. Not the way she had envisioned her evening would be ending.
“You don’t have to stay,” Brad said as he went back to his car. “I can handle this.”
“No, you can’t,” she snapped as she pulled open the back of the pickup truck. Why did he have to come back, anyway? He was going to spoil everything, she just knew it. “Get away from that mess before you make it even more unsteady.”
Surprisingly Brad did as he was told though he didn’t look happy about
it. “You know, he’s not right for you.”
She pulled a pair of coveralls from the back of the truck, but paused to glare at Brad. “What are you talking about?”
“Alex,” he stated. “I’m not saying anything against him. He may be a heck of a nice guy. But the two of you just don’t click.”
“My personal life is none of your business.”
She stepped into the coveralls, pulled them up over her dress, then zipped them shut. She kicked off her sandals and pulled on her steel-toed work boots.
“Jeez, you really do run the tree service,” he said. His voice was quiet, awestruck.
What, did he think she was too dumb to have her own business? She gave him a quick frown, then put her safety goggles on and a hard hat. That done, she pulled the small chain saw from the back. His look of amazement increased.
This was really the pits. She was supposed to be praised and respected tonight for her poetry and what happened? Same old, same old. When she was modeling, she was admired for her looks. Now that she ran the tree service, she was admired for her chain saw.
She pulled on the rip cord and the motor erupted, drowning out the wet sounds of a rainy night in Indiana. “Want to step aside?” she said.
Brad watched in total amazement as the chain-saw-wielding Penny lopped off one small branch after another to uncover the broken side window. He’d thought she’d looked sexy before, but that was nothing as ravishing as she looked in her hard hat and work clothes. He swallowed hard, trying to get his dry mouth to work, but had no luck. He felt as if he were on fire. The rain must be sizzling as it hit him. He needed to be doing something, not standing here like a statue.
“Want me to do some?” he shouted over the roar of the saw.
She just gave him a look that was answer enough so he came over and pulled the cut branches away.
“You don’t need to do that,” she shouted to him. “You shouldn’t be this close without a hard hat.”
“I have a hard head,” he told her.
She didn’t laugh or even smile. Maybe she hadn’t heard him. Maybe she didn’t think he was funny. The idea shouldn’t bother him, but it did.
He definitely needed to be careful, but not of those branches. No, he needed to be careful that he didn’t get snared by Penny’s smile. A day here while he took care of business and checked Alex out—that would be all right. He could stay safe for two days even.
But if those probate papers got wet and had to be redone, he could be stuck here for weeks in legal red tape. No man was that strong!
The way to the window cleared, Penny reached in, pulled out his duffel bag, and gave it to him. “That it?” she asked.
“Yes. Thank you.” The bag was pretty wet, but a quick check said the probate papers inside were still dry. Relief washed over him. “I hadn’t meant for you to go to all this trouble. I thought I could just reach into the car and fish it out myself.”
“No problem.” Penny put the chain saw into the back of the truck, and tossed her hard hat in after it, but left her work clothes on as she went around the driver’s side.
Brad opened the passenger side of the truck, put his bag on the seat, then stripped off his stained shirt. The rain hitting his chest cooled him and he was tempted to leave his shirt off, but one look at Penny’s red cheeks changed his mind. Surely she wasn’t embarrassed by his shirtless state. It couldn’t even be him affecting her—she’d never given him the time of day when they’d been kids. Maybe running that chain saw was harder work than she’d made it look.
After pulling a clean shirt from his bag and slipping it on, Brad put the bag on the floor and climbed into the truck. He took a deep breath as he closed the door. He hadn’t noticed that pickups were so small before. He could barely move without brushing her arm. Barely breathe without being aware of her faint flowery scent Time to get moving.
“You been dating Alex long?” he asked.
She started the motor then shot him a look that would have withered and dried up a tall oak. “I thought we’d agreed my personal life was none of your business.”
He hadn’t agreed to anything. “He shouldn’t have left you to tackle the tree,” Brad said. “He’s really turned into a wimp. I’m surprised.”
“He’s a professor of literature and a poet. And what would he have done with the tree?”
“Been there with you.”
She backed out of the parking spot and headed toward the road. “Gotten in the way is more like it. He was better off going with Dorothy. What motel are you staying at?”
“Don’t have one yet. You can drop me off wherever’s convenient.” He waited until she’d pulled out on the road. The rain wasn’t coming down as heavily, but with the streetlights off, visibility wasn’t great. “He didn’t kiss you.”
“And I didn’t kiss him. Your life must be pathetic if you notice things like that. Did you have dinner yet?”
His life was not pathetic. It was ordered. Secure. Stable. Anyone would notice when a beautiful woman goes unkissed. “I’m not hungry.” And he wasn’t, even though he hadn’t gotten to eat his hamburger at Sam’s.
“Yeah, right.” She drove along in silence for what seemed like hours. A few blocks later they turned off onto the county road that went by her house. “You can come home with me,” she said suddenly. “The weather’s just too lousy to be driving you all over creation. There are leftovers in the refrigerator and we’ve got plenty of empty bedrooms.”
“Okay.” He didn’t mention that they’d passed a motel where they’d turned last. As long as he was stuck here an extra night, he might as well see if Penny was serious about Alex. And if the jerk was in any way deserving of her. Brad doubted it. Alex had gone from wild to wimpy and neither sort was right for Penny.
They drove in silence down the county road, then turned into the long gravel driveway. Brad closed his eyes, letting his body greet each and every bump like an old friend.
This had been his second home when he was a boy.
Home. There was that stupid word again, but he pushed his irritation aside. He was tired, that was all. Exhausted. Two days—forty-eight hours—without sleep was catching up with him. That was why he was reacting to the word home. Or the sight of Penny again.
He should have just picked some motel out of the air and had Penny drop him off there. Sleep was all he needed and he’d be himself again.
“Dorothy’s looking good,” he said. It would be a safe topic.
“Yes.” Penny’s voice sounded stiff. “She’s a Realtor here in town. Won Top Seller of the Year twice now.”
“Oh, really?” Maybe he’d give her a call about selling Uncle Hal’s house. “Or should I say, realty?”
She gave a short laugh, not so much of humor as annoyance, and pulled the truck up to the house. Without a word they got out. The power was on and so the porch light threw shadows out into the yard. A birdhouse swung from a nearby tree and a wind sock danced in the storm. Brad looked around at the barns and the fields beyond, breathing in the scent of the rainsoaked earth. It smelled so good. About as far from Los Angeles as he could imagine.
Except Los Angeles was what he preferred, of course.
“Come on, let’s go in,” she said. “It’s fixing to pour again.”
He stood there a moment and watched her walk up the porch steps. Her coveralls were baggy, her hair was wet, yet she looked more beautiful than he could ever have imagined. She was an adult now, not that kid he’d had a crush on. Yet his heart was pounding just as it always had around her.
He should never have come back here. Junior had been right—there wasn’t anything with his uncle’s probate that couldn’t have been handled by mail, phone, fax, E-mail or whatever.
“You coming?” she called from the back door.
“Yeah, sure.”
All right, so she still held some sort of magical power over him. It didn’t matter. He wasn’t a kid anymore. He was an adult and well able to control his reactions. He could fight th
at strange hold Penny had over him. He could fight any hold anyone had. He had for the past eighteen years, hadn’t he? Swinging his duffel bag over his shoulder, he walked boldly up the porch steps and into the old farm kitchen.
The first thing he noticed was the old woman in the dining room doorway. A big smile in a lined face. A mass of gray hair. She hadn’t changed a bit. Then he noticed the cane, an aluminum job with a four footed base. Well, some things might have changed, but nothing important.
“Bradley? Bradley Corrigan?”
“Aunty Em,” he murmured as he dropped his bag inside the door and took her in his arms.
Emma Donnelly was Penny’s grandmother but the kids had all called her Aunty Em. She’d always had a kind word and something on the table for a hungry boy. He let go and took a step back.
“Still as beautiful as ever,” he told her.
She cackled. “An honest man. Now, that’s what I like.” She looked over at Penny and frowned. “Those don’t look like poetry-reading clothes, honey. What happened?”
Penny had gotten a towel from the small bathroom off the kitchen and was drying her hair. A fire exploded in his belly at the sight. She shouldn’t be allowed to do such things. Or she should wear warning labels. He made a show of slipping off his wet shoes.
“The power went out and lightning hit that old oak behind Sam’s,” Penny replied. “Part of the tree fell on Brad’s car. I had to cut a few branches so he could get his bag out the window.”
“Alex help?” Aunty Em asked.
Penny’s lips tightened as she turned and headed toward the back stairs. “I’m going to go change into dry clothes,” she said, then looked at Brad. “Bathroom’s there if you want to dry off. I’ll fix you some dinner when I come down.”
“I can start it.” The old lady walked slowly over to the refrigerator and took out some containers. “Beef stew okay?”
“Wonderful.” It was possible to breathe now that Penny had left the room. He got a towel from the bathroom and dried off a little, then came back into the kitchen. “What should I do? Set the table?”
“You still remember where everything is?”
If I Only Had A...Husband (The Bridal Circle #1) Page 4