Where You Least Expect It

by Tori Carrington

  And off they went. The heated debate that had essentially taken up the bulk of time allotted for their meeting two nights ago once again threatened to monopolize the meeting. That was the whole reason they’d had to meet twice in one week, because they’d been unable to accomplish half of what needed to be done at the previous meeting. And Aidan intended to at least make some progress before he left tonight.

  He held up his hand again. “I say it’s time we vote.”

  All eyes turned toward him. Usually there was no reason for an official vote. In his experience over the past year, the members of the five or so groups on which he’d sat usually reached agreement. Just another reminder that things were not proceeding as normal in any aspect of his life just now.

  He stoically held all of their gazes. “All in favor of going with the pink crepe paper, raise their hands.”

  Jeanine’s hand immediately went up, followed more hesitantly by her best friend Kathy’s. Then six more.

  Aidan made a note. “Okay, now, all against the pink color then and in favor of red, white and blue crepe paper…”

  All the remaining hands shot up before he could finish the question.

  “I vote against,” he said, then rubbed his thumb and forefinger against his eyelids. Dead even vote for and against.

  Great.

  The door on the opposite side of the gym opened, letting in a shaft of late-evening sunlight and making the person who was entering all but impossible to see. Then the metal door clanked shut.

  All discussion immediately stopped as everyone turned toward the new arrival.

  Penelope.

  Aidan’s throat tightened as he looked at the woman who had paralyzed his thoughts for the better part of last night and today. She wore a simple powder-blue cotton dress and sandals, her hair pulled back into a long braid.

  “What’s she doing here?” he heard Elva mutter.

  Aidan stilled the woman with a glance. “I invited her.”

  But he hadn’t had any idea that she would take him up on it.

  He pushed himself from his chair when it looked as if Penelope was having second thoughts and about to turn for the door. “Miss Moon, welcome. I’m glad you could make it.”

  Penelope stood on the polished floor of the basketball court, wondering what in the world she was doing here. She hadn’t been inside a school since her own awful memories of high school, and standing here as she was, everyone’s eyes on her, made her remember those days all too clearly.

  She hadn’t even realized that this was where she was heading, until the door had closed behind her and she’d found herself staring at the small gathering across the gym. One minute she’d been at home wrapping up the dinner Mavis had refused to eat, her head pounding from where her grandmother had moved from the dining room into the living room with her hammer, the next she had been tying Max up outside the school.

  Aidan stepped across the court to take her arm. The instant his hand made contact with her elbow, the world seemed to shift. She looked into his grinning face and knew exactly what she was doing here. She’d wanted to see him again. Needed to see him again. If only to verify that what had passed between them last night had, indeed, passed between them.

  “Why don’t you come have a seat?” he said, loud enough for everyone to hear. Then he leaned closer and whispered, “I’m glad you changed your mind.”

  She followed him to the table, and she began to move toward the only available chair, next to Elva.

  But Aidan said, “Here, let me get a chair for you.”

  He grabbed a metal folding one from a stack and opened it for her, placing it right next to where he’d been sitting.

  “Thank you,” she said, clearing her throat and gazing into the curious faces of the other women present.

  “Everyone, you know Penelope Moon, don’t you? I asked her to join us to give the group a fresh perspective.”

  More like offer up fresh blood for the kill, Penelope thought, scanning the faces of the women and Elva’s puckered puss.

  “What was that, Elva?” Aidan asked.

  “I said, there’s nothing wrong with the current perspective.”

  Aidan’s smile never wavered, Penelope noticed, wondering how he did it. How could he tolerate the intolerable woman when she seemed so bent on making everyone’s life miserable?

  Another woman shifted to Elva’s right. “So, let’s hear what Miss Moon—”

  “Penelope, please,” she said.

  “Fine. Let’s hear what Penelope has in mind for the Fourth of July celebration that none of us has already thought of.”

  “Jeanine,” Aidan said in a low voice.

  Penelope reached out and lightly touched his arm. “No, that’s all right.” Her palm tingled from where it made contact with the springy hair on his forearm. She withdrew it and laid it with the other in her lap. “Actually, I was considering fashioning Lucas Circle after A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

  Silence met her suggestion.

  Aidan appeared surprised.

  “Oh, Shakespeare,” Mrs. Noonan said, clapping her hands together, the first to break the silence. “I adore Shakespeare.”

  Penelope looked at Aidan, who was grinning at her.

  “I adore Shakespeare, too,” he murmured, making her feel as if they were alone. And making her feel that he wasn’t really talking about the playwright, but her.

  He cleared his throat. “Okay, then. I take it everyone is in agreement in welcoming Penelope to our group?”

  Everyone but Elva appeared to agree, but Penelope quickly reached out to stop Aidan. Her intention had never been to join. She’d thought for Aidan’s sake that she would stop by for this one meeting, not participate on the planning committee.

  “Penelope?” Aidan asked. “Is there something you wanted to say?”

  She dropped her gaze and her hand at the same time. Then she lifted her head and smiled.

  “No. Well, aside from…thank you. I look forward to working with all of you.”

  Two hours later the sun was setting behind the low buildings of downtown Old Orchard and the meeting had just broken up. Aidan held the door open for Mrs. Noonan and Penelope, the last two to exit the gym. He locked the doors after them, the simple action catching him off guard as he realized it would be his last time doing it. He solemnly pocketed the keys. As soon as he returned to the bed-and-breakfast he would put the keys into an addressed envelope to the school principal, along with his letter of resignation and apology.

  “Aidan?” Penelope’s soft voice reached out to him from where she had freed Max from the steel bike rack and stood holding his leash. “Is everything all right?”

  It was all too easy to fall into the darkness of her eyes, disappear there and forget the world existed. If he needed any evidence of this, he had only to think of the past two hours. From the moment she entered that gym he’d forgotten what lay ahead of him. And thought only of what he would be leaving behind.

  Mrs. Noonan took a deep breath. “Well, I guess I’ll be running along now.” She stepped down the walk, her purse hanging from the crook of her elbow, her arm raised. “Good meeting, Aidan. I’ll see you next week for the final one.”

  He found he couldn’t meet her gaze. “Good night, Mrs. N.”

  She laughed quietly. “Mrs. N. Nobody’s called me that in eons,” she said absently to herself as she steadily walked away.

  He stood there for a moment looking after her, all too aware that Penelope was next to him, waiting for an answer to her question.

  “Shall I walk you home?” he asked.

  Her smile, while small and self-conscious, lit up her entire face.

  “That’s far too much to ask.” She tugged on Max’s leash when he tried to move away. “But I wouldn’t mind your keeping me company part of the way.”

  He easily took her arm in his, but there was nothing easy about his immediate reaction to her skin rubbing against his. He didn’t think he’d ever felt skin so soft. The lig
ht scent of lavender teased his senses, making him want to bury his nose in her long, silky dark hair.

  They walked in silence for a while, watching as the sky darkened from a light blue to a pregnant purple.

  “This reminds me of summers in Rhode Island.”

  He felt her gaze on his profile. In twelve months he’d never given away his true origins. Until now.

  “I thought you were from Oregon,” she said softly.

  He nodded. “I was raised in Oregon,” he lied, hating himself as he did so.

  She smiled, her body brushing against his as she leaned slightly closer. “I’ve never been more than fifty miles outside Old Orchard. Tell me what Rhode Island is like.”

  Rhode Island. Not Oregon. “Not much to tell, really. Inland, it is a lot like this.” He gestured to the neat tree-lined street around them. “Except for the smell of the sea.” Always the pungent smell of the sea.

  She took a deep breath. “I bet it’s beautiful in the fall.”

  “Yes, it is,” he said, but his gaze was glued to her face.

  Max barked, then rushed out in front of them, pulling the lead and, by extension, Penelope’s hand, jerking her from Aidan’s half embrace.

  “Max!” she scolded in a hushed tone.

  Aidan spotted the cat sitting on the sidewalk some twenty feet in front of them. “He spotted Spot.”

  Penelope regained control of the overgrown dog, and her smile seemed to reach inside and wrap itself around his heart.

  Aidan grinned back. “That sounded odd, didn’t it.”

  “No.”

  She walked easily beside him, but neither made a move to link arms again. Aidan shoved his hands into the pockets of his Dockers to prevent himself from unconsciously reaching out for her.

  “So, you’ve never been outside Old Orchard?”

  She shook her head. “No. Well, not far, anyway. I think everyone here has been up to Toledo for some matter or another.”

  He squinted at her in the growing darkness as the streetlights switched on. “I can’t imagine.”

  “Have you been to a lot of places?” she asked.

  “More than I can count.”

  “Tell me about them.”

  He tore his gaze from her face and stared at the sidewalk in front of them. They passed Spot with little fanfare. Max sniffed at the fearless feline, but was held at a safe distance with a firm hand by Penelope. They moved farther down the street, then Aidan turned. Was it him, or was the firehouse cat following them?

  “You know, they say Spot is psychic.”

  Aidan stared at Penelope.

  “It’s true. For as long as the town’s been around, there’s been a Spot that’s hung around the firehouse—”

  She leaned in closer, and he caught another whiff of her subtle scent.

  “Some believe it’s the same cat.”

  Aidan chuckled. “You don’t buy into it, do you?”

  She shrugged. “I’m not as interested in that as I am the rumors that surround her.”

  “What, that he’s drawn to those in need, then disappears when the trouble passes?”

  She didn’t respond immediately. Aidan turned his head to find her watching him in silent contemplation.

  He thought about what he’d just said. And about Spot’s presence, both in her shop the morning before and now.

  He cleared his throat. “So, who do you think is the one in need?”

  They walked for a ways before she said, “There’s a mystery about you, Aidan. The whole town talks about it.”

  He swallowed hard.

  “Well, maybe not the whole town. But Elva certainly lets her thoughts be known that you’re an outsider and that you don’t share much about yourself.”

  Funny, then, that he’d shared more about himself in the past ten minutes with her than he had with everyone else put together.

  “What would you like to know?” he said, tensing before he finished the sentence.

  “Have you ever been married?”

  He wasn’t sure what he’d expected her to ask, but it wasn’t that.

  “Yes.”

  Her eyes widened slightly as the two of them slowed to allow Max to drink from a small puddle caused by the caretaker hosing down the sidewalk in front of the church.

  “What happened?”

  He glanced down, his hands forming fists in his pockets. “I lost her nearly a year and a half ago.”

  “I’m…I’m sorry.”

  Such simple words. Really the only response when someone shared news of that nature. But the meaning behind hers touched him.

  “Thank you.”

  “Is that why you left Oregon?”

  He nodded. “It’s one of the reasons I left home, yes.”

  The boulevard slowly gave way to the two-lane route that led out of town. They walked in the grass to the right of the road, the woods a couple of feet away alive with the sound of crickets and locusts. Here and there lightning bugs relieved the darkness.

  “Any children?”

  The question was asked so quietly he almost didn’t hear it.

  He didn’t answer for a long time. They passed onto the bridge where he’d met up with her the day before, then over it. “Yes. One. A boy.”

  He hadn’t planned to answer her. But it had been so long since he’d talked to anyone about his son, Joshua, that the name just came out. And the instant it did, the tension coiling in his muscles seemed to ease.

  “You lost him along with your wife?” she asked quietly.

  He looked at her in the darkness, only then realizing they had stopped outside a once-white picket fence; the small house beyond was quiet and dark. “Yes.”

  One minute he was trying to make out her beautifully familiar features in the dim light, the next he felt her warm, soft lips against his. A mere whisper of a touch.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said again.

  Aidan’s throat threatened to close up even as his physical need for the woman standing a hairbreadth away surged high. “So am I.”

  Then he was kissing her.

  He groaned at the gentle sweetness of her mouth as he threaded his fingers in her hair, tilting her face up so he could better meet her lips. Did she have any idea what he felt for her? How much it meant to him to share what he had with her, without worrying that she would someday hurt him with the information? Could she know how much he wanted her in that one moment? How intensely he longed to caress her bare skin, stroke her slick heat, then bury himself deep inside her?

  Her soft gasp told him that she just might.

  “Penelope! Is that you and that damn dog of yours?”

  Aidan watched Penelope’s eyes open wide, her lips freezing against his. She pulled back, putting a hand to her mouth as if caught doing something forbidden.

  “Your grandmother?”

  She nodded, seemingly incapable of words.

  He stood for a moment watching her, waiting for her to invite him in.

  Instead, Penelope turned to open the gate and let Max free from his leash. “Thank you for walking me home.”

  There was the rustle of clothes nearby. Then a rusty female voice, sounding very close, said, “Oh, good. You brought me the man I asked for.”

  Chapter Six

  Penelope wanted the earth to crack open so she could be swallowed up. She wanted to be somewhere, anywhere other than here.

  “Grammy!” she whispered fiercely.

  Penelope glanced at Aidan.

  “Good evening, Ms. Moon,” he said, a tinge of amusement in his voice.

  “Don’t ‘Ms. Moon’ me. Get in here and let’s have a look.”

  Penelope watched helplessly and hopelessly as Mavis opened the gate and grabbed Aidan by the front of his nicely starched shirt.

  “Grandmother, Aidan was just leaving.”

  “No, he wasn’t.” She slid Penelope a glance as she led Aidan to the porch. “He just got here.”

  “But he’s not…I mean, he isn’t—”

/>   “What, girl? Spit it out already and be done with it.”

  “He’s not here for you.”

  Penelope wasn’t sure who was more surprised, Mavis or Aidan or herself, as she stumbled into the dark house after them.

  It wasn’t completely dark. Candles flickered in the dining room, casting an eerie red glow that seemed to warn her away rather than invite her in. Uh-oh. She’d forgotten what state Mavis had been in when she’d left her this morning, then again this afternoon. The doors were still missing. The walls were still covered with photos of her mother. And there was the unmistakable scent of bleach everywhere.

  Penelope tried a light switch. Nothing. She bit back the desire to ask her grandmother what had happened to the electricity. Despite everything, she desperately wanted Aidan to think her a normal, everyday woman. Not someone who lived with an eccentric old woman who every twelve months or so took a dive into the deep end.

  Mavis snorted. “Well, he has to be here for me, because he certainly couldn’t be here for you. You don’t need a man. Remember?”

  Penelope winced away from her words.

  “Come in here and let me have a look at you,” she heard her grandmother say.

  “Hmm,” she heard Mavis hum. “A little on the young side, aren’t you?”

  Penelope slowly walked over to stand in the doorway to the dining room. She gasped. Both at the change in decor and her grandmother’s open perusal of Aidan, whom she’d positioned in front of a stand of candles. The dining table was covered with thick red velvet that seemed to drip over the sides. Candlesticks and candleholders were scattered everywhere, black candles of varying sizes filling the room with the scent of wax and making it even hotter than it had been already.

  Penelope wanted to groan. A week ago Aidan would have found a fairly normal scene. Mavis probably would have been in the brightly lit, clean kitchen kneading dough for homemade bread, or reading a book in the living room, or even sitting out on the porch mapping out the stars.

  Instead, what he encountered would no doubt confirm every strange thing the townsfolk had ever said about the Moons—and then some.