Losing Penny

by Kristy Tate

  Drake considered the shoes in his hands—could this really be the first time he’d picked up after someone else? He sat down on the sofa, a strategic position where he could watch Penny leave the bathroom. He told himself he should go to the kitchen and start writing about Marx’s years at the lumber mill, but he couldn’t make himself do it. He wanted to watch Penny.

  He abruptly stood and stomped into the kitchen. Living with her would be torture, so why do this to himself? This was craziness. He turned on his laptop and stared at the screen. Yes, he didn’t want to spend the summer fighting off Melinda’s claws, but now that Melinda knew he was married, Penny could disappear. She had already provided all the value he needed. As soon as she came down, he would tell her to leave.

  The bathroom door opened. The escaped moist air smelled of vanilla and ginger. Oh, he could not do this. She came down the stairs and stood before him with wet, curly hair. She had no make-up on and her skin was rosy from her shower. She had no idea what her cutoff jeans and T-shirt did to his imagination.

  “I’ve been thinking,” she said.

  “Congratulations.” He tried to sound flip, but he worried that he just sounded like an oaf, but she couldn’t stay, she had to go. And soon.

  “If this is going to work, we need some ground rules.”

  Drake didn’t do rules. Oh, he had rules in his class, because he made those up himself, but no one else made rules for Drake. He leaned back in his chair, curious. She must have taken this as an invitation, because she sat down across from him.

  “We need a chore chart.”

  “We’re not kindergartners,” he said. “We’re grownups capable of picking up our own shoes and socks.”

  Penny’s gaze went to her sneakers and a frown flickered across her face. “I thought we could take turns making dinner and doing the dishes.”

  “We can feed ourselves and clean up after ourselves.” He paused, realizing that he should be telling her to leave. “You’ll be responsible for your dog.”

  “Well, of course I’m responsible for the dog!”

  Maybe if he made her mad, she’d leave on her own. He sighed. He should probably be more upfront. He was after all an English professor, words were his thing. He was good at verbalizing and communicating. He needed to look Penny in the face and tell her that living together as faux husband and wife was a very bad plan, and although it had been his plan, it was still bad. Instead he said, “I’ll take the right side of the fridge and you can have the left.”

  A hurt expression crossed her face as she turned away. “Fine.”

  He knew that “fine” in female-speak didn’t actually mean “fine.” In Drake’s experience with women “fine” usually meant “shut up, you moronic boor.”

  ***

  After several hours in the company of Don Marx and few more with Vikings, Drake left his computer and notebook and followed his nose into the kitchen where he found Penny chopping onions. Her camera was on the counter and her laptop was on the table. A smiling, chubby Penny, draped in scarves and wearing a beret, stood in front of the Eiffel Tower.

  She looked over her shoulder at him. “I’m in Paris today, so I’m making French Onion soup.”

  “And yet, here you are.” He settled down in front of her laptop and scrolled through recent Losing Penny and Pounds blog posts. Dublin: whiskey stew. London: Yorkshire pudding. “How do you make a low-fat pudding?”

  “Yorkshire pudding isn’t actually a pudding, it’s more like a dumpling…cooked in fat.”

  “So, I repeat my question.”

  Drake braced his chin in his hand, reading Penny’s blog. She had a light, breezy tone. She was charming. For a moment, he really believed she was in London or Paris. “This is really a terrific bit of fiction.”

  “Thanks,” she said, a little tersely, still chopping onions. She had the windows open and a fan blowing, but her eyes still ran. She wiped a tear with a corner of her apron, and he wondered if the onions could take all the blame for her red eyes.

  “It’s a bit elaborate, isn’t it—this charade?”

  Penny picked up her cutting board and slid the chopped onions into a pot of boiling broth. “I don’t want this to sound sexist, but I honestly think that men, especially those like you who are over six feet tall, have absolutely no idea what it feels like to be a woman.”

  Drake shifted in his chair. She made his size sound like a crime.

  She continued, “You really can’t grasp a woman’s feelings of defenselessness.”

  Drake touched his swollen lip. “You aren’t so defenseless.”

  “I’m five-foot-four on a good day.” She took a deep breath. “Have you ever heard of Watchdog?”

  “Of course—the watches that are also homing devices.”

  She nodded, stirred her soup, then sipped the broth. She splashed apple cider into the pot. “It also has a panic alarm.”

  “Every girl between the ages of three and fifteen wears them,” he said.

  She smiled as she stirred. “Originally, they were big, black and ugly. I made them cute.”

  Drake leaned back in his chair, no longer interested in Penny’s blog. “You made them cute?”

  “My brother invented the Watchdog and I designed them.” Penny picked up a wedge of cheese and began to grate.

  “So cooking—”

  “It’s more fun than necessity. Not unlike eating.”

  Mentally, he tried to total Penny’s net worth—a cooking show, a cookbook in progress, part owner/creator of the Watchdog—no wonder she had a stalker. It surprised him she didn’t have herds of penniless, no pun intended, men crawling after her. Drake felt his own slim wallet keenly. He sighed, acknowledging that poets are rarely rich.

  She held out a spoon to him, the same one he’d watched her slurp from not one minute ago. “Taste?” she asked.

  She was beautiful in that unassuming, lighthearted way. And rich. He really didn’t need this temptation. He liked her better when she was lost, barefoot, and half naked in the moonlight. He shook his head.

  “Are you sure?” She inched closer, spoon still extended. “Even though it’s low calorie it’s very good.”

  Drake leaned away. “How can it be low calorie when you’re about to suffocate it with cheese?”

  “Nonfat cheese.” She stood so close their knees were practically touching.

  “You’re a consummate liar.”

  Turning away, she put the spoon in her mouth and hummed.

  “So, what does your genius brother think of your stalker?” Drake asked her backside.

  “He doesn’t know,” she answered without looking at him. “I haven’t told him. It would make him bonkers.”

  “How can he not know? Even I know. I Googled your name and found the police reports.”

  “Why would Richard Google me? He talks to me every day.”

  “Every day?”

  “Well, he used to. He doesn’t now because he’s sulking in Alaska. It’s a little strange.” She pulled a loaf of whole grain wheat bread from a grocery sack and put it on the cutting board.

  “You miss him?”

  She shrugged as she sliced the bread. “For years it was just the two of us. I would have told him about the Lurk if he hadn’t been so preoccupied with his wedding plans.”

  “The Lurk?”

  “My pet name for my stalker.”

  And just like that he couldn’t imagine leaving her alone at the beach house. What was she thinking coming out here by herself? Her brother would kill her if he knew, that is if someone with the pet name of the Lurk didn’t do it for him first.

  “Penny, come with me tonight to the Marx’s party.”

  She shook her head.

  “Why not?”

  “So I can run interference between you and Melinda? No, thank you.”

  “What are you going to do instead?”

  “Read.”

  That caught his interest. “Oh? What are you reading?”

  She laughed.
“Widow Snivel and the Disappearing Man.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “Absolutely. I love the Snivel Drivel.” She looked over her shoulder at him. “We can’t all sit around reading the fine words of Don Marx.”

  He groaned.

  “Have you read any of the Snivel?” She laughed at him and it made her breasts jiggle.

  Drake told himself not watch her jiggle, but he couldn’t help it. He wanted to make her laugh again. He had to make her laugh again, but for the second time in one day, words failed him.

  “Come with me,” he urged without even being a little bit funny or witty. “Please.” Now he just sounded pathetic.

  She turned back to her soup. “Absolutely not.”

  He looked around at the chaos she’d created. “If you come, I’ll clean the kitchen.”

  Her knife froze midair. Ah, a weakness. Drake grinned.

  Chapter 20

  The more people are around us, the more we tend to eat; if we have seven or more friends around us, we eat double the amount of food than when alone. At a party, try the six steps away strategy, which is simply to stay six feet away from temptation.

  From Losing Penny and Pounds

  “Why am I here?” Penny whispered to Drake as they stood on the edge of the Marx’s property. Tables dotted the grounds and twinkly lights lit the trees. In a variety of colors and sizes, paper lanterns hung from the gazebo and patio shade. Each table glowed with a collection of candles. The night’s beauty took Penny’s breath away.

  “Because I invited you.” Drake picked up her hand and tucked it around his arm. He felt warm and stable while she felt chilled and wobbly.

  “These parties have grown up since I was a girl,” Penny said as they moved to the cluster of people on the stone patio.

  “Are you surprised Melinda didn’t recognize you?”

  “Not really. She was older than me.” She added in a smaller, quieter voice, “And oh so beautiful.”

  Drake slipped his arm around her waist. Penny knew it was all playacting, but she still felt grateful to have him beside her.

  But more than the parties had grown up. Trevor Marx, the object of her first and very prolonged puppy love crush, stood near the fireplace, looking larger and stronger than she remembered. Of course, the last time she’d seen him, he’d only been eighteen, but he was one of the reasons Penny looked forward to coming back to Rose Arbor every year. Aunt Mae had said he’d left without graduating from high school and joined the Marines. He had been the bane of his parents’ existence. She hadn’t expected him to be here.

  His gaze flicked through the crowd. He looked bored and disinterested until his attention landed on her. She smiled and lifted her hand, then realized he wouldn’t recognize her since her dramatic weight loss. But the fact was that he might not have recognized her anyway, and that hurt. And although she wasn’t that chubby girl anymore, she felt fifteen and tongue-tied as Trevor walked toward her.

  “Something wrong?” Drake asked.

  Penny clutched his arm and remembered that Drake was her supposed husband, and she wasn’t Penny, she was Magdalena. Oh, this was too stupid. Finally, Trevor Marx was walking her way, smiling at her, noticing her, and she had a pretend husband on her arm.

  Penny’s mind raced. “I don’t know if I can do this,” she whispered. “What if someone asks us questions? I’m not a good liar. In fact, I’m a terrible liar.”

  Drake laughed and pulled her closer to him. “How can you say that? You’re a master liar. Aren’t you, even as we speak, traveling the world, blogging your adventures, and chronicling your meals?” He spoke in her ear, his breath warm against her neck.

  “That’s different,” Penny whispered back, twitching a hair away.

  She did some mental math. If she was thirty-three, Trevor had to be at least thirty-six. For all she knew he was married with six children, or maybe he had thirty-six cats. People change and he’d been in the military. War changes people. In fact, most wounds weren’t visible. She relaxed a fraction when Trevor stopped to chat with a tiny blonde with a Yorkie tucked in a pink handbag.

  Penny hated it when people dressed their dogs in jewels and carried them in purses. She knew there were far greater forms of animal cruelty, but making a dog an accessory bothered her. Or maybe tiny blondes batting their eyelashes at Trevor Marx bothered her. Penny tightened her grip on Drake’s arm.

  “We need a story,” Penny told Drake. “We need to know more about each other. I don’t even know what you like to drink.”

  “Virgil’s root beer,” he told her. “Anything else?”

  “Root beer?” This surprised her, and if root beer could surprise her, then surely a million other bits of Drake trivia could surprise her as well.

  “Don’t worry,” he patted her back. “We’ll tell the truth about my marriage to Magdalena.” He looked around. “It was very brief, very disastrous, and fortunately no one around here ever met her.”

  “So, basically the story will be easy for you because you know the plot, but I’m clueless, because, hello, I’m not Magdalena.”

  “Thank goodness,” Drake breathed as he led her up the stone patio steps. “Listen, we won’t stay long. I’ll show my face, show off my beautiful, loving wife, and leave.”

  A small trill of pleasure rippled through Penny when Drake called her beautiful. It started at the top of her head and headed for her toes, reminding her that she had to stand strong. “And if the marriage was brief and disastrous, why are we resurrecting it?” She swallowed back the bile gathering in her throat. “This marriage is doomed. What am I getting out of this charade?”

  “Free food,” he said without a hiccough of hesitation. “Which might not mean much to a cooking television diva like yourself, but when you’re a starving writer struggling to eke out a living as a lowly college professor, then you, like Oliver Twist, think free food is glorious.”

  Penny’s gaze went to the laden refreshment table and traveled to the waiters parading trays through the yard. Everything smelled as fabulous as it looked. Harmless crudités, fresh colorful fruit, platters of shrimp, then the calories pretty much skyrocketed after that. Scallops were fairly safe, but these were wrapped in bacon. Mushrooms were also inoffensive until stuffed with cream cheese and breadcrumbs. And then there was the dessert table—she wouldn’t even look at the dessert table. And since she wasn’t looking at Trevor, or the catering trays, or the dessert table, the only safe place to look was at the sky or down at her feet.

  Drake stopped in front of the fruit display, picked up a strawberry, and handed it to her. “Thank you,” she said, taking it from him and biting into it with a trace of violence.

  “Hello, Drake.” Melinda came from behind, like a well-trained sniper. She pressed against Drake’s back as she slipped her hand around the arm that wasn’t encircling Penny.

  Penny felt his immediate tension. He moved away—just a tiny half step, and Penny was cold without him pressed beside her.

  Melinda turned her full smile on him, and Penny knew that if Drake really were her husband, she’d be furious. But she wasn’t married to Drake, so she really didn’t know how she felt, except for hungry. The urge to inspect the dessert table waved through her, but Drake drew her to his side like a shield.

  What a wimp. If he wasn’t interested in Melinda, he should just tell her. But then Penny thought about his free food comment and something other than hunger curled in her belly. True, she hadn’t kept company with poverty for many years, but she knew it very well. It had stalked her long before the Lurk. She and Richard had once been master poverty avoiders. They had clipped coupons, collected recyclables, and even gleaned oranges from unpatrolled orchards.

  Not that Drake looked like a pauper. University professors were unlikely to starve, but they also weren’t ever going to be rolling in cash. Still, she felt sorry for him.

  The Yorkie escaped his purse and chased after a cat. The cat scurried up a tree but the dog landed in the poo
l.

  “Thor!” his owner cried, tottering on wobbly heels after the delinquent dog.

  Thor, looking like a floating hairball with big brown eyes, splashed at the pool’s edge.

  No one moved for a moment, but all eyes trained on the thrashing dog. Drake sighed, removed his sports jacket, and handed it to Penny. After rolling up his sleeves, Drake squatted and scooped the dog out of the water.

  Everyone cheered and applauded, and Drake gave an awkward bow. He held the tiny, shivering dog at arm’s length and tried to pass him to his owner, but the blonde took one look at the animal and then at her silk dress—a wet dog would ruin the dress.

  “Here, let me,” Trevor stepped forward with beach towel, and within seconds the dog was safely cocooned. The blonde, Trevor, and the wiggling beach towel disappeared into the house.

  “That was quite the rescue,” Melinda said. She touched Drake’s wet arm. “Thor isn’t the only one needing a towel. Trevor should have brought one for you too. Follow me into the pool house and we’ll get you dried off.”

  Penny watched her faux husband follow Melinda. If she stepped four feet to the left, she could disappear into a hedge and no one would ever know. She looked down at her skirt, frowning. She hadn’t expected to be partying with the Marx family and had only packed a few casual skirts and no heels. She felt underdressed and very, very short.

  “Hey,” a voice spoke at her elbow. Although she hadn’t heard the voice since her teenage fantasies, she’d recognize it anywhere. “Have we met?”

  Facing Trevor, Penny watched his eyes. She dreaded, yet still sort of hoped, for a flicker of recognition. Nothing. But he did have incredibly gorgeous blue eyes. She looked at his left hand—no ring. Although that didn’t necessarily mean anything. She didn’t have a ring either, and she was supposedly married. Penny swallowed, “I don’t know, have we?”