Where You Least Expect It

by Tori Carrington

  Penelope closed the wood gate, its white paint worn off by time and weather, and released Maximus’s lead. Of course, the moment he was free, he plopped down at her feet, his tongue forever lolling as he gazed up at her.

  She patted his head. “A Gemini. Definitely a Gemini.”

  She heard pounding coming from inside the one-story house with the wide, slanting front porch and headed for the steps. She and her grandmother Mavis Moon had lived there alone since Penelope’s mother died when she was five. And seeing as neither one of them had much skill when it came to repairs, the house and surrounding yard needed a lot of them.

  “Gram? I’m home,” she called out as the old screen door squeaked, then slapped shut behind her.

  She heard mumbling coming from the dining room, then, “Of course you’re home. Where else would you be at this time of day? It’s five-thirty and you’re home. Shocker.”

  Penelope put her bag of leftover raspberry biscuits in the kitchen and headed for the doorway to the dining room, puzzled by Mavis’s comments. “Did you say something?”

  Her grandmother waved her away with the hammer she held. Slender, she looked almost too weak to wield such a heavy object. Especially given the flowing purple tunic that billowed around her petite frame like a circus tent.

  Penelope slowly entered the room, her gaze riveted to the pictures of her mother Mavis had framed and positioned willy-nilly.

  “What do you think?” Mavis asked, seeming to challenge her with her dark eyes.

  “Um, it’s nice,” Penelope said though she was overwhelmed with images of her mother staring back at her from dozens of angles.

  She stepped forward to straighten a crooked frame.

  “Don’t touch that,” her grandmother said, seeming to threaten injury with the hammer if Penelope moved another inch. “Everything is exactly where I want it.”

  “Okay,” Penelope said carefully. “I’ll, um, just go in and start dinner.”

  Had the whole world gone nuts while she wasn’t looking? First Aidan had come into her shop looking at her like she was a desirable woman. Then Sheriff Parker had said Mr. Smythe had identified Aidan as the man who had robbed him. Then she’d returned home to find her normally tranquil grandmother pounding the heck out of the dining room wall, instead of relaxing in a yoga stance.

  She looked around on the sparkling clean countertops of the kitchen, inside the empty oven, then in the refrigerator. Aside from a half-empty pitcher of lemonade, there wasn’t a crumb to be found.

  Where was the ground turkey she had taken out of the freezer and put in the refrigerator to defrost this morning? The fresh salad fixings? Even her homemade yogurt was missing.

  “I got rid of it all,” Mavis said, dropping the hammer onto the counter with a loud thud. “All of it. It was messing with my biorhythms.”

  “What did you do with it?” Penelope asked.

  “Threw it away, of course. All of it.”

  Penelope caught herself absently rubbing her stomach where it growled. Biscuits aside, she hadn’t had a thing to eat all day and her body was letting her know about it.

  Out of the corner of her eye she watched her grandmother approach the counter where she’d put the biscuits.

  “Don’t you dare!” she said, taking the bag from the older woman. She rolled the top of the bag back up, put it on the table closer to her and propped her hand on her hip. “Did you stop taking your medication again?”

  Her grandmother waved a bony hand. “Medication, shmedication. I threw it all out with the rest of it.”

  Dread drifted through Penelope as she headed to check the rest of the house. As an afterthought, she returned to the table and snatched up the bag of biscuits, her dinner if she didn’t go out and pick anything else up.

  Ten minutes later she’d verified her suspicions: Mavis had thrown away everything in the medicine cabinets, including her doctor-prescribed medications and toothpaste, as well as all the cleaners and detergents under the sink and in the broom closet.

  Penelope stood dumbfounded, unable to make heads or tails out of the situation.

  Well, at least she’d left the garden out back alone. The crooked rows of young vegetable plants were coming along nicely. In fact, it appeared Mavis had even weeded and watered them.

  She made her way back into the dining room, where her grandmother was starting on the second wall.

  “Have you eaten anything at all today?” she asked.

  Mavis waved her hand. “Who needs food?”

  “Last I checked? I don’t know. Maybe you?”

  “I don’t want anything.”

  “Then, maybe I should call the hospital and ask them to hold a room for you, because that’s where you’ll be heading if you don’t eat something.” She glanced toward the living room. “Unless, of course, you’ve thrown the telephone out too?”

  Mavis stared at her.

  Penelope swallowed hard. “No, I’m not talking about the psychiatric ward.”

  “I didn’t say you were.”

  “You didn’t have to.”

  Mavis climbed down off the stepladder and turned toward her. “Don’t you ever get sick of it all, Popi?”

  It had been a long time since her grandmother had called her the pet name. Her doing so now opened up a soft spot inside Penelope. When she was young, she’d thought it meant something pope-like. Important. She’d found out later that it was merely a Greek shortening of her name.

  “I mean, the sameness of everything? We get up at the same time every morning—”

  “So, sleep in.”

  “We eat dinner at the same time every night—”

  “So, we’ll eat later.”

  “We talk to the same people, do the same things—”

  “So, we’ll go out and meet new people, do different things.”

  Mavis looked a breath away from hitting her with the hammer again. “Can’t I even have a nervous breakdown without you being so damn calm about everything?”

  Penelope smiled. “No.”

  Her grandmother hit the wall with the hammer and Penelope jumped.

  Mavis examined her handiwork. “I like it.”

  Penelope rolled her eyes, wondering how much work she would have to do when her grandmother’s mood ended this time.

  This wasn’t the first time Mavis Moon had done something extreme, even by Penelope’s own generous definition of the word. About once a year Penelope would come home to find her grandmother acting strangely. The last time Mavis had planted a crop of marijuana in with the corn out back, determined to do for terminally ill patients what the health care system wouldn’t.

  It was all Penelope could do to stop her from being charged. She had, however, been arrested.

  She let out a long breath. “I’m going to the store. Do you want anything?”

  “A man.”

  Penelope stared at her grandmother’s back.

  “I can feel you looking at me, girl. Stop it right now.”

  “Where would you have me look?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe at yourself in the mirror.” She gave the wall another smack, creating another ugly dent. She gestured with the hammer. “You and me…we’re not getting any younger, you know. This morning I swore I could hear time passing.”

  “It was probably your pacemaker.”

  Mavis glared at her.

  “Do you want anything from the market?”

  “I told you what I want.”

  “And short of dragging Old Man Jake home with me, it’s not going to happen.”

  A thoughtful expression came over her grandmother’s face. Penelope turned on her heel, collected Max’s leash and went out the front door.

  She only hoped that there would be a house to return to.

  Chapter Three

  What could have been minutes or hours later, Penelope stood on the old wooden bridge about a half-mile away, down the road that spanned the Old Valley River. She stared at the water rushing by below and ponder
ed why every now and again life didn’t make any sense at all. Even Max seemed to contemplate the question, lying on the old planks under their feet that shuddered whenever a car drove over. Which, thankfully, wasn’t often.

  Penelope had studied the stars last night, trying to map out the future, catch a clue on where things might be heading. The same way she did every other night when there was no significant cloud cover. Only nothing had prepared her for today. She’d seen no hint of Mavis’ latest mood. No sign that she would look into Aidan’s eyes that morning and feel a tingling awareness that she hadn’t been able to shake ever since. No trace that she would be standing at the bridge now, staring down at the river wondering if things would have been different if her mother hadn’t committed suicide by jumping off the other side of this same bridge and landing on the outcropping of rocks there.

  The early evening sunlight hit her full on the back and seemed to outline her reflection in the water. She couldn’t make out her own features. The blurry image resembled what little she could remember about her mother’s features beyond those she saw in the countless photos Mavis had of her.

  After Heather Moon died, no more photographs were brought into the house. Penelope couldn’t even remember seeing the old camera her mother had once owned. Maybe Mavis had buried it with her.

  She recalled the way Mavis had mapped out the old photographs on the wall like some sort of puzzle missing half its pieces, or like a map leading to nowhere. She shivered.

  “Cold?”

  She looked up, startled to find she was no longer alone.

  Aidan stood on the bridge next to her. He had probably been there for a while, given his relaxed stance next to her. He too was staring into the water.

  “No, I, um…”

  Her voice drifted off as she realized the question was probably rhetorical. She smiled. “I think you’re about the last person I expected to see way out here.”

  Aidan shrugged, his forearms leaning against the broad wood railing, his strong, masculine hands clasped tightly together. She couldn’t be sure, but given the grooves on either side of his mouth, he had been thinking heavy thoughts too.

  She squinted at him, remembering the first time she saw him ten months or so ago. He’d been walking down the street outside her shop, much as he did every morning. But back then he had looked more anxious somehow. Terribly alone. And his brown eyes had held a sadness that seemed to reach out and clutch her heart.

  She remembered it so clearly because she was seeing the same expression now.

  “I went out for a walk after dinner and lost track of time,” he said by way of explanation.

  Look at me, Penelope silently found herself saying.

  “Did you say something?”

  He finally looked at her, and the full impact of the soulless shadow in his eyes nearly took her breath away.

  Max barked, startling them both, then laid his head back down on top of his paws.

  “No,” Penelope said quietly. “I didn’t say anything.”

  Although, it was the second time that day that he had appeared to hear her thoughts.

  The first time she had silently willed him to kiss her.

  She felt her face go hot, then she turned back toward the water and tucked her hair behind her ear. “You know, my mother used to say that there are only a few people in the world who are capable of hearing another’s thoughts.” Actually, her mother had told her that there would be one other person capable of hearing her thoughts, and that one person would be the one she was meant to spend her life with. But she wasn’t going to say that to Aidan for fear that he would think her strange. Most of the townspeople already thought that. She couldn’t bear it if he believed the same.

  “My… There was another woman who told me that once.” Aidan said it so quietly that the light breeze that had kicked up nearly stole the words before they reached her ears.

  Penelope shivered again, but this time it had nothing to do with a chill, but rather a burst of heat.

  She pushed from the railing and looked down at her watch. It was already after seven. “I didn’t realize it was getting so late.”

  “Do you have a date?”

  Penelope laughed, then stopped when she realized he was serious. “No. I don’t have a date. I, um, was just heading to the market to pick up a few things.” And a man for my grandmother, she reminded herself.

  Maximus lumbered to his feet, nudging his cold, slimy nose into her hand. She absently patted him, then picked up his leash.

  “I’ll walk back with you,” Aidan said.

  “Okay.”

  They’d gone a ways, Max keeping pace between them, when suddenly the tree-lined route curved into a two-lane street and the trees morphed into buildings.

  Aidan looked at Penelope walking leisurely beside him. It had been a long time since he’d been with someone who didn’t demand that every second be filled with conversation.

  But Penelope…

  “What?”

  He blinked, realizing she’d grown aware of his attention and was even now playing with her leather bracelet in that way she did when she was nervous.

  He shook his head and smiled. “Nothing. I was just thinking that I never did get a straight answer to the question I asked this morning at the shop.”

  She seemed to think back to that morning, when they’d shared that heated moment of awareness. But the image of the sheriff eyeing him suspiciously wiped it out of Aidan’s mind.

  “What question?”

  “Hmm? Oh. Well, since I could really use some help with putting together the Fourth of July town celebration, would you consider coming to the next meeting? It’s tomorrow night.”

  Her gaze flitted away and she fell silent.

  “At the rate things are going, we’ll end up with something that could have been cut and pasted from the 1950s. I could really use someone to back me up, help me urge everyone into the new millennium.”

  She still didn’t say anything.

  “Is everything okay?” He leaned forward to capture her gaze.

  She smiled, but there was no happiness there. “Sure. Why wouldn’t it be?”

  “It’s just that you got awfully quiet there for a moment.”

  “I was just thinking…”

  What? What had she been thinking?

  Aidan refused to speak the question aloud, but he found he was curious about Penelope in a way he hadn’t been curious about a woman in a long time. While capable of walking in companionable silence with her for long stretches, he was filled with a desire to reach out and touch her, to urge out whatever it was she was holding in her mind…in her heart.

  They’d come to a slow halt, a block short of the General Store. Max sat down, panting while Penelope turned to Aidan. To thank him for his company? More than likely. But she hesitated when she looked into his face.

  What was there? he wondered. What did she see?

  He found himself reaching out to cup her chin. Just a gentle play of his fingertips up along the delicate line of her jaw. So soft. She blinked those big dark eyes, appearing startled yet curious as her tongue darted out and moistened her lips.

  Lips that Aidan wanted more than anything to kiss.

  And in the next instant, he was doing just that.

  First there was the welcoming shock of skin against skin, his lips pressing against hers, tenderly, tentatively.

  He’d closed his eyes, but he opened them now to see that she watched him through a fringe of black lashes. He read fear, surprise and a wistful yearning that shot straight through him. His throat tightened to the point of pain, and a craving for this woman, so urgent, so overwhelming swept over him, paralyzing him with its unexpected power.

  “Mmm,” she whispered. “That was nice.”

  Aidan had experienced his share of kisses, and what they had just shared was definitely not simply “nice.” It was honest. It was sweet. And it was hot.

  He stepped back away from her even as a voice deep inside
him protested the move.

  What was he doing?

  He’d promised long ago that he would not involve anyone else in his problems. Would not subject them to what he had lived with for so long that it seemed as natural as the shadow that followed him. Especially since everything finally seemed to be coming to a head.

  Yet a few minutes with Penelope found him shoving all that aside, left him seeking a bit of something outside himself. Something that called out to him from her.

  He remembered her on the bridge when he’d first walked across to stand next to her. Her expression had spoken of a woman with secrets that seemed to run as deep as his. And he found himself feeling connected to her in a way he hadn’t felt connected to anyone in a long time.

  Only, Penelope’s secrets didn’t have the power to hurt others.

  She laughed nervously. “I’d…better get going before the store closes.”

  Aidan blinked at her, wondering how long they’d been standing there looking at each other. What others thought didn’t concern him. But what Penelope thought did matter. Maybe a little too much.

  He offered a smile. “You still didn’t answer my question.”

  She wrapped the end of Max’s lead around her hand. “What question?”

  “Whether you’ll help me out with the Fourth of July celebration.”

  She fell silent again, but it wasn’t a companionable silence this time, but rather a tense one. He silently berated himself for making her uncomfortable. Of pressing her to do something she so obviously didn’t want to do. Especially since he didn’t know if he would be here in town much longer.

  “I can’t,” she said simply.

  Aidan slid his hands into his pants pockets, reluctantly accepting her answer.

  “I’d better go,” she said.

  Aidan found himself reaching out to lightly grasp her wrist. She looked back at him, curious, questioning.

  “I’m…” he began.

  The only sounds were of traffic farther up the street and of Max panting patiently at Penelope’s side.

  “I’m not who you think I am, Penelope,” he found himself admitting.

  She smiled as she reached out to hold his hand. “Right now, I’m not sure I know who anyone is, Aidan.”