by Caroline Lee
“Well, it was nice of her to come looking for you after all these years.”
He heard the question in his sister’s voice, but didn’t answer it. Instead, he asked one of his own. “What was she asking about?”
“Oh, everything. Hank says she talked to all sorts of people in Everland before coming to talk to him, and that’s when he found out how you two knew one another. He said she seemed very anxious to find you, which is why she jumped on the train for Dilbert, even though I told her you’d be back soon.”
And thank God that she did. Still, he didn’t want to tell Rojita about his adventure. “She should be staying at the Inn—she said Rip promised to keep her room until she returned.”
“That sounds like a big-city girl, alright.” Rojita wiped her hands on the dishrag and stared into the distance. “Her dress was just gorgeous, Micah. Did you see it? I don’t think I’ve seen anything quite so sophisticated here in Everland.”
His sister’s comments made him uncomfortable, somehow. Like she was saying Pea didn’t belong here, where he belonged. “I dunno. Plenty of the fancy ladies in town have nice dresses.”
“Maybe.” Rojita shrugged, focusing once more on him. “But she just seemed so urbane. That means she belongs in the city.”
“I know what it means,” he snapped. He didn’t read as well as Rojita or the other orphans—or as well as Pea, for that matter—but he’d spent a lifetime listening to stories and books being read aloud. Starting with Mrs. Potsdam and Pea, who’d never been far from his thoughts all these years.
The dull ache built into a throbbing headache.
“I’m glad she’s here, Micah...whoever she is to you.”
He sighed and leaned forward, squeezing his temples between his palms. “Me too.” He was glad she was here. Beyond glad. But why was she here? She’d managed to avoid answering him on the train yesterday, and he’d been too distracted once they got back to Everland. Maybe he could figure it out today, if this maldito headache would go away.
“I just hope she’s not too much of a distraction while I’m gone—”
He snorted. “Rojita, we’re going to be fine here. You know that, right?”
“I know,” she said with a sigh as she put away a stack of plates. “You make passable beans, and I’ve asked Briar to stop in to make sure you’re not starving the kids.”
He snorted. “We won’t starve.” Although he wouldn’t mind some of Briar’s cookies… “And I’ll make sure everyone bathes regularly. And, uh…” What else was she worried about? “And they’ll do their schoolwork and not run with knives and I’ll even make sure they brush their teeth.”
He could hear the smile in her voice when she asked, “And you won’t burn the house down, right?”
Slapping his palm over his heart, Micah nodded seriously. “Promise.”
She gave in and chuckled. “Fine. Fine!” She threw up the dishtowel in defeat. “I’ll go. You’re in charge, not-so-little-brother. Hopefully Miss Greene won’t distract you too much.”
But he had the sinking suspicion that she would.
Which is probably why, an hour after his sister had left on her long-overdue honeymoon, Micah was still sitting at the table, his head in his hands and his third cup of coffee growing cold in front of him. He needed to get that leather shipment unpacked. Tom had told him the crate was already sitting behind the shop, so Micah needed to start on the fancy saddle Dmitri had ordered for one of the mares. But instead, he’d been sitting here thinking about Pea, and the time they’d spent together at the orphanage.
And wondering why she was here.
The knock on the door dragged him out of his contemplation. “Come in,” he muttered, and then repeated it again louder when nothing happened. Maybe it was Dmitri, asking after that saddle and wondering why Micah wasn’t in the shop. Maybe it was Mrs. Bellini, looking for Jack and her son, Eddie, like she had the last time they’d played hooky from school. Maybe it was Pea.
After a long moment, the front door creaked open—something else to add to the list of chores—and a slender hand with long, delicate fingers wrapped around the edge. “Micah?”
It was Pea. He tried to straighten, but winced at the movement.
“’Morning, Pea. How are you?”
“How am I?” She pushed into the room in a flurry of lace and silk. “How are you? I came by to see if you were doing better, and I find you hunched over the table like that?”
“Sorry.” He forced himself upright and tried to smile. “I’m okay. I was fine this morning. Really.”
She put one hand on her hip—the other held a beautifully wrought leather satchel—and cocked her head at him. She was tall and slender, just like she’d been as a girl, and between that black hair all piled up elegantly on top of her head, and the fancy green dress she wore with the ridiculous bustle in the back, she did look like a fine society lady.
She looked out of place, standing in the doorway amid the scarred dining table and mismatched chairs. Kind of like how those thick eyebrows looked out of place with the rest of her delicate features. But—his lips twitched slightly—he’d always liked the mismatched chairs, and he liked her features more than a little, which he’d only just realized.
One of those eyebrows rose. “You were fine this morning…so, then what happened?”
Hell. He should’ve known she’d see through him.
“I got a headache.”
“Why?”
He snorted. “I was hung.”
“You were—!” She pressed her lips together, but he could see the laughter twinkling in her eyes. “Horses are hung, Micah. You were hanged.”
He lifted a brow at her, although it hurt like the blazes. “Did you just make a naughty joke?”
“No,” she said haughtily as she lifted her chin and swept towards the table. “I corrected your grammar.”
As she stepped into the room, the door swung shut with a slam which made him wince again. She dropped her satchel to the table by little Blue’s high chair and crossed behind Micah.
“Besides, a hanging shouldn’t give you a headache, unless there’s something really wrong.”
“Uh-huh. And when did you get to be such an expert on—“
He stopped talking when she put her hands on his temples. Her touch—when had she taken her oh-so-proper gloves off?—sent a jolt right to the part of him he’d never have mentioned in polite company, naughty jokes or not. Dios mio, she felt good.
Her fingers started kneading the skin at his temples, then across his brows, and he decided her fingers were Heaven. He groaned and dropped his head forward a little. “Nevermind. Forget I said anything.”
He heard the smirk in her voice when she said, “That’s what I thought. When will you learn that I always know better than you?”
“You’ll probably have to remind me a bunch of times.” He chuckled. “But this is a good way to do it. Feels…” He groaned again. “Nice.”
Her fingertips caressed his scar. In the years since he’d received it, women had stopped smiling at him, stopped touching him. Even the girls over at the Gingerbread House couldn’t look him in the face when they flirted with him. Micah couldn’t imagine any one of them touching that scar, not as easily as Pea was.
He couldn’t imagine letting anyone.
“You went through quite a lot yesterday.” Her efficient fingers were turning him into pudding. “And you’ve understandably got a lot of tension right here.” She traced his brow, where El Lobo’s gunshot had carved away a good part of the bone and left his face lopsided, and him lucky to be alive. “Do you think that’s the cause of your headache?”
He knew it wasn’t, but he shrugged slightly and made a little grunt, which might’ve been agreement. She hmm’d lightly and pressed the pads of her fingers into his forehead, and then around to the side of his head. At the same time, her thumbs pushed against the base of his skull, and he couldn’t contain the low groan of pleasure which erupted from his lips.
“Is it, Micah? Or is the cause of the pain something deeper? Older?”
He couldn’t believe she was touching him like this. So…so naturally, like the two decades since they’d seen one another hadn’t happened. Like the way it was when he used to lay with his head in her lap while she read to him out of one of her ridiculous fairy tales books. Like he’d brush and braid her hair for her, because she said his fingers were more nimble than anyone else’s.
Like they were old friends, old lovers.
The memory—or maybe her touch—washed a sudden flood of tears behind his eyelids, and he swallowed down the emotion which had caught in his throat.
“Well?” Her thumbs pressed against his skull again. “I’m right, aren’t I? These headaches are older than your injury.”
He couldn’t answer, but managed a little head-jerk which might’ve been a nod.
She huffed. “I thought so.” Her fingers worked their way—and their magic—around to the top of his head. “You used to have headaches at the orphanage whenever you tried to remember anything about your past.”
He didn’t remember. “Did you—” He cleared his throat and tried again. “Did you do this for me then?” Surely he would’ve remembered something which felt this nice?
“No. But I’ve thought about it since then,” she whispered. “I wondered if it would help.”
“Oh, it does.” He dropped his head forward so she could reach the back of his head. “My headache is gone.” It had been replaced with something entirely different. A feeling of…of contentment he’d never experienced before, and one which didn’t have anything to do with the tightness in his trousers.
Having her here, with him, felt so damn good.
Her fingernails raked across his scalp, and he shivered in pleasure. She must’ve noticed, because she did it again. Had anyone ever touched him so familiarly? Someone this…this caress seemed more intimate, more primal, than the way the gals at the Gingerbread House used to hold him. And she’d just walked in off Perrault Street and touched him like this, because she thought it might help?
“Is that why you came, Pea? To rub my head and make the headaches go away?” She was the only person who’d guessed the aches were older than his injury, and that they only came up when he tried to think about his life before he’d met her. “Because—not that I’m complaining—but it seems awfully odd, you traveling all the way out here from New York.”
She was silent for so long, he was afraid she wasn’t going to answer. Then, finally, she said simply, “No.” Her whisper was faint, and her fingers stilled. “I didn’t come to cure your headache, but when I walked in and saw you, I wondered if my hypothesis was right, and I wanted to test it.”
“Oh, it was right, Pea.” He fought the urge to move his head under her fingers to recapture some of that pleasure.
“I’m glad.” Her fingernails twitched once more. “I’m glad I could help you yesterday, Micah, and I’m glad I could help you today.”
Help me? He snorted silently. She’d done more than help him. She’d saved his life, but was now making him feel like he’d died anyhow, and gone to Heaven. “Is that why you tracked me down?”
“No, I came to find you because—”
“Micah!” The call came from outside, and Pea bit off whatever she was going to say.
He cursed under his breath, recognizing Tom’s enthusiastic cry, moments before the ten-year-old burst through the door carrying two sacks. “Micah, guess what?”
Sighing, Micah wondered if he’d ever find out why Pea had shown up in Dilbert with her rifle like some avenging angel. “I can’t imagine,” he said dryly.
“We got us another orphan!”
And that’s when Micah saw Jack standing behind Tom on the porch, holding a baby.
CHAPTER FOUR
To Penelope’s surprise, Micah hadn’t turned tail and run like another man of her acquaintance might. He hadn’t even stood up in shock, when that boy—later introduced as Jack Horner—brought in the baby. He’d just smiled and held out his hands.
“Well, well,” he’d said in a sing-song voice. “Who do we have here? Aren’t you a pretty one?”
And Penelope, still standing behind him with her hands raised over his head like a benediction, had fallen a little bit in love. She’d come to the orphanage that day to tell him everything—about his father, about his place in Society, everything—but when she’d seen him in pain, she’d acted instinctively, wanting to help him, to make him feel better.
And once the whirlwind of the baby arrived in their midst, she knew it wouldn’t be appropriate to show him the documents she carried in the small leather satchel, until things had calmed down a bit.
Throughout the rest of that afternoon, Penelope had gotten a glimpse into a world so familiar, and at the same time, so alien. She’d been raised in orphanages, but none of them boasted the friendships this one did. The children—Jack and Tom Tucker, and the pretty little twins, and the sweet little boy, Blue—all looked up to Micah, and he took care of them, like he was their older brother. Like they were a family.
In all of her years in orphanages, the closest she’d come to that feeling were the few months she’d spent with Micah. And maybe those months had spoiled her; when he’d left, she’d been so sad she hadn’t let anyone else get close to her. And then she’d grown up and spent a few years teaching the youngest children, before eventually working her way into a bookkeeping position at Prince Armory. She’d kept an apartment, gone to church, remained a valued employee of Mr. Prince’s…and not once had a friend as special as she remembered Micah being.
As close as these children were.
And yet, from the moment he’d seen her again, Micah had welcomed her back into his life. So openly, so genuinely, she was humbled. Standing there in the kitchen that morning, surrounded by the most wonderful chaos, Penelope felt like an outsider. An outsider who desperately wanted to be an insider. Wanted to experience the teasing and laughter and occasionally screaming and the fights and everything.
For the first time, she wanted to be a part of something larger than herself. She’d built a place for herself, but was beginning to suspect—just by watching Micah and his family of orphans—she needed a place relative to other people. To friends. To family, even?
Which is why she didn’t bow out and leave Micah to his chaos that day. Why she stayed at the orphanage and even held the new baby while he made lunch for everyone. Why she comforted little Blue when he got jealous of the attention the baby received, why she helped the girls clean up after, why she did her best to laugh along with them, even if she didn’t get all of their jokes.
And why she’d come back the next day, and the next, and the next. Each morning, she’d wake up in her little room at the Van Winkle Inn and think today she’d show Micah the letters from his father. And each day, she’d go out to the orphanage, and be swept up in being a part of something she’d never experienced before. And the satchel of papers would be forgotten.
To be honest…she was beginning to suspect Micah didn’t need those letters. He was happy here. He was happier here than he’d be back in New York, no matter how wealthy he’d be. She’d offered to search for him, because she’d liked the idea of riding to his rescue—of swooping in with the information she’d always longed to receive, and saving him from his sorry existence with the knowledge he not only had a father, but a rich one.
But seeing him laughing with Jack, or tossing the twins over each shoulder, or tickling Blue until the little boy laughed so hard he hiccupped, how could a rich father—one man—possibly compare?
There was nothing like this in New York. Nothing she’d ever seen. At least, not since she’d lost Micah.
Today she hadn’t even bothered to bring her satchel with her—it was still shoved under the mattress at the Inn along with the rest of her valuables, a trick she’d learned as a child to keep her things private. No, today she didn’t want to think about his father, or the life she would hav
e to return to. Today she wanted to only think about Micah and that sweet little baby.
As she approached the orphanage, she heard singing coming from the little shop nestled against the building, and it took her breath away.
“De colores, de colores, se visten los campos en la primavera. De colores, de colores, son los pajaritos que vienen de afuera. De colores, de colores, es el arco iris que vemos lucir. Y por eso los grandes amores de muchos colores me gustan a mí.”
Was that Micah? She changed direction and pushed open the door to his leather-working shop, knowing he hadn’t been able to work as much as he’d wanted in the last few days.
Sure enough, there he was, bent over a workbench with a leather punch in one hand and another tool in the other, a lovely piece of tan leather stretched over a form in front of him. He was singing quietly and the baby—
Penelope sucked in a breath, blinking away sudden and unexplained tears. The baby was nestled tightly in a sling against his chest, one little fist waving and a lock of her black hair visible.
It was the most idyllic, most beautiful scene she could imagine. The father, hard at work, still managing to cradle and sing to his daughter. Oh, the baby wasn’t really his daughter, but he obviously loved her the same way he loved Blue and the twins and the boys.
He’d make a wonderful father.
It was heartbreaking to know once his father found him, Micah would have to leave these children—leave this life—to return to New York.
He glanced up from his work to see her, and the concentration in his expression melted into joy. “Pea!”
When he smiled, her heart fluttered slightly. His hair was as black as hers, and his eyes were dark too, but that smile…that smile lit up the world.
“Hello, Micah. I came to see if you needed a hand with…” She nodded to the baby, who was now making little angry grunts.
A look of relief flashed across his face. “Oh, thank God.” He straightened and began to tug at the sling, untying it. “She’s been fussy—probably hungry—but I’m right in the middle of a fiddly bit and didn’t want to stop.”