Where You Least Expect It

by Tori Carrington

  Mavis circled Aidan. “Young, but you’ll do.”

  “Gram!” Penelope stepped between the two. “Aidan is my guest. Not yours.”

  The old woman stared at her.

  Penelope found herself sputtering. “Well…actually, he’s not even a guest. He just…walked me home.”

  “Of course. Because both you and I know that you don’t have any friends.”

  “And when was the last time you had someone over?” Penelope said without blinking.

  She noticed her grandmother flinch. But she couldn’t deal with that now. As far as she was concerned, Mavis deserved anything she could fling her way.

  She turned quickly to Aidan. But what could she possibly say?

  “Can I make you some tea, Aidan?” Mavis asked.

  Penelope glanced over her shoulder to find her grandmother stirring something in what looked suspiciously like a cauldron atop a gas camping stove.

  She nearly fainted dead out.

  The expression of horror that Penelope wore touched Aidan in a way that few things ever had. He wanted to help ease her mind, reassure her that while her grandmother’s actions were indeed strange, he’d come across people that unsettled him far more than the thin old woman whose dark eyes sparkled with a humor he doubted her granddaughter saw.

  Aidan cleared his throat. “So long as the tea doesn’t have a pinch of eye of newt in it, I’m game.”

  Penelope stared at him as if he’d gone as insane as her grandmother.

  “Actually, it’s chamomile. Grown in our own garden.”

  “Then, I’d love some.”

  Mavis made a strange sound then left the room, leaving the two of them alone.

  Aidan’s gaze flicked over Penelope’s pale face in the warm candlelight. Someone else might have shouted or railed or been rude to the old woman who had caught them both off guard. Or grabbed him by the arm and taken him back outside, slamming the door after them—he glanced in that direction, just now realizing there was no door.

  But not Penelope.

  He took in the proud way she held her shoulders, as if bracing herself for the worst. But not making any apologies or explanations.

  “You don’t have to stay, you know,” she said quietly.

  He squinted at her unblinking comment. “I know,” he replied, a shudder rushing through him.

  Her soft voice spoke to him on so many levels. No, he didn’t have to stay. Not here in this house. Not at the bed-and-breakfast. Not in Old Orchard, period.

  But, damn it, he wanted to.

  He didn’t want to go back to Mrs. O’Malley, collect his suitcase and go to meet the last Greyhound out of town. And a small voice told him he didn’t have to.

  The revelation was freeing and exciting and frightening all at once.

  He cracked a smile. “I like your grandmother.”

  Penelope seemed doubtful at first. Then she smiled shyly. “She’s not usually this bizarre. She’s going through one of her episodes.”

  She gestured vaguely with her hand. “What I meant to say is that every now and again she goes through these odd stretches.” She looked down so far, her chin made contact with her chest. “You should have been here two years ago when she set up shop in the front yard advertising for personalized curses and spells.”

  Aidan reached out a finger and lightly ran it over her cheek, marveling at the smoothness of her skin. “I don’t know. I think last year’s marijuana-growing incident tops that one.”

  “You weren’t in Old Orchard for that, were you?”

  “No. But the story was still big news.”

  She rolled her eyes. “God. Everyone knew about that?”

  “Pretty hard to keep news like that quiet in such a small town.”

  “I know, but…” She sighed.

  She didn’t finish her thought. And she didn’t need to. Aidan knew all too well what she was trying to say.

  “I bet business picks up at your shop during these…stretches.”

  Penelope gazed at him for a long time before finally smiling. “You’re right. It does.” She fingered the bracelet around her wrist. “Just today I could barely deal with all the customers.”

  “Did they ask about Mavis?”

  “They asked why we don’t have any doors on the house. I told them we were having them replaced.”

  His hand was still resting comfortably on her shoulder, his finger almost absently stroking her cheek. God, what he would have given to kiss her in that one moment. But even if her mere existence convinced him to stay in town, no matter how strongly his instincts were telling him to leave, he would have to fight his attraction to the woman before him. Because even if he was wrong about his past catching up with him, he knew that wouldn’t always be the case. One day very soon everyone would see him for who he really was. And he thought it only fair that Penelope do that without any false hope that circumstances could be otherwise.

  “Here we go,” Mavis said, reentering the room with a small tray of mismatched cups.

  Penelope gave him a beseeching look. He chucked her under the chin. “I won’t stay long. I promise.”

  “Actually,” she whispered. “I was going to ask you never leave….”

  From the moment the words exited her mouth, well into the following day, Penelope couldn’t bring herself to believe she’d said what she had to Aidan. As she counted out change for Jolie Conrad, she hoped her cheeks weren’t flaming red and that her thoughts weren’t transparent.

  “Is everything all right, Penelope?”

  She stared at the woman she had gone to school with. Jolie had always been kind to her. And unfailingly bought teas and lotions from her once a month. But Penelope had never really felt close to the woman who was now the fire chief of the town. She glanced down to where Jolie held the hand of little Eleanor Johansen. Jolie and her husband Dusty had taken the girl in while her father recovered from massive burns sustained when he’d tried to save his wife and Ellie’s mother from their burning house a year and a half ago. She’d heard Elva say something about the now five-year-old being the glue that Jolie and Dusty had needed to paste their lives back together. Secretly Penelope had always known the two would find their way back into each other’s arms.

  She cleared her throat as she realized Jolie waited for an answer. “I’m fine.”

  “Spot!” Ellie cried, tugging her hand from Jolie’s and chasing the black-and-white cat around the counter.

  Jolie looked first at the girl and the feline, then back up at Penelope. “Spot’s been hanging out here?”

  Penelope made a fuss over closing the register and straightening the jars of cream on the counter. “Not that I’ve noticed.”

  Out of the corner of her eye she saw Jolie smile.

  “I wondered where the little troublemaker had gotten to now. She comes by the station for a few minutes, then up and disappears. Which means…”

  Penelope looked at Jolie. “Which means what?”

  Jolie shook her head. “I don’t know. It’s just that every now and again even I believe the rumors about her.” She stepped around the counter to collect the five-year-old. “Come on, Ellie. Say goodbye to Miss Moon so we can go home to make those cookies to take to your daddy.”

  “How is Mr. Johansen doing?”

  Jolie’s smile widened. “Better. His latest skin grafts are taking and physical therapy is going well. Ellie and I are trekking up to Toledo for a visit where he’s being treated. The doctors say he may be able to come home for good in a couple of months.”

  Penelope shared her smile. That was, indeed, good news. She already knew that Jolie’s husband, Dusty—who had long since turned in his firefighter’s hat for a hammer—was overseeing the rebuilding of the Johansen house. She passed it every day on her walk home.

  “See you later, Penelope.”

  “Hmm. Yes, ‘bye! Goodbye, Ellie.”

  “Goodbye, Miss Moon.”

  After the pair was out of sight, Penelope rounded the counter an
d went to stand in front of the windows overlooking Lucas Circle. How familiar everything looked. How reassuring. She’d grown up in this town, but she’d never really taken a good look at it or the people who inhabited it. That she was doing so now…

  Spot rubbed against her right ankle and meowed.

  Penelope stared down at the restless cat. “What is it, girl? Do you want to go outside?”

  She opened the door, expecting the cat to dart out, but instead Spot sat down and stared up at her.

  That’s odd…

  “Afternoon, Penelope.”

  She nearly jumped out of her skin as she looked up to find Aidan standing in the open doorway.

  Spot got up then and sauntered through the door, both Penelope and Aidan watching her.

  “Um, hi,” she said, feeling the heat return to her cheeks.

  “Was that Jolie I just saw leaving?”

  She nodded and turned away from the door, leaving him to catch it and decide whether or not to come in. After last night’s debacle and what she’d said, she wasn’t sure which she wanted him to do. But she was relieved when the bells sounded as the door closed and he was inside rather than out.

  She busied herself with picking up the two boxes that had been delivered earlier and putting them on the counter.

  “Beautiful day, isn’t it.”

  She made a face. “Pardon me?”

  He gestured toward the windows. “I was just saying it was a nice day. Much too nice to be inside. Especially on a Saturday.”

  She located the box cutters and opened the first package. “Saturday’s when I do my best business.”

  Actually, the past few days she’d done more business than she had in the entire previous month. This morning, she’d taken in enough to nicely add to the little nest egg she’d been building ever since she’d started working at the shop. Her first profits went straight to the running of the store. Second went to the upkeep on the house she and Mavis shared. The rest, well, the rest she quietly tucked away for a rainy day. Only, she wasn’t sure what constituted a rainy day and what she would do with the funds once she figured it out.

  Of course, she preferred not to think about the reason behind the pickup in business. It seemed that while she’d been at the planning committee meeting, Mavis had been spotted in town wearing her most hideous housecoat and the fluffy pink slippers Penelope had bought her as a gag gift one Christmas. She’d reportedly been picking through the red and white annuals planted in half-barrels every ten feet or so, and pinching off dead blooms, all the while talking to herself.

  “Have you ever taken a vacation, Penelope?”

  She blinked at him as if he were speaking a foreign language. “Vacation?”

  “Mmm-hmm.” He grinned. “You know, as in taking time off, away from the shop.”

  “Who would pay the electric bill at the house?”

  Assuming that someone actually used the electricity at the house. Last night it had taken her a half an hour and a flickering flashlight to discover that Mavis had turned off all the switches in the fuse box. Penelope had turned them all back on, then placed a lock on the fuse box when she was done, hoping that in the morning her electric alarm clock would still be working and would wake her up.

  “Everyone needs a little time off,” Aidan said quietly.

  “Do they?” She sifted through green packing peanuts and took out boxes of Mountain Tea she’d ordered from Greece. “I hadn’t noticed.”

  “Have dinner with me.”

  Her gaze riveted to his face. “What?”

  The little crinkles around his rich brown eyes deepened as he grinned. “I asked if you would do me the pleasure of having dinner with me. Tonight. Take time out from being yourself for just an hour or two.”

  “If I’m not myself, who would you be having dinner with?” she asked, puzzled by his comment, then instantly embarrassed by her question.

  “That’s what I’m hoping to find out,” he said quietly.

  Her face grew even hotter, if that were possible. She reached over and lowered the temperature on the thermostat, glad for the immediate blast of cold air that hit her from a vent above.

  “Name your preference. We could do steak, seafood. I’m even up for a burger and fries at the pub if that’s more your style.”

  Penelope averted her gaze. Did she even have a style? She’d only been to a restaurant once in her life. And that had been a coffee house-diner with her mother.

  She swallowed hard. “Thank you for the invitation, but I can’t.”

  “You can’t, or won’t?”

  She didn’t answer. Did it matter? It was the same thing, wasn’t it? Couldn’t, or wouldn’t?

  He reached across the counter and tipped her face up to force her to look at him.

  “Can’t, or won’t, Penelope?”

  Chapter Seven

  How he hated the shadow in her tortured dark eyes. But Aidan had to do it. The instant he’d made the decision to ignore his gut and stay in town, he focused on exploring a friendship with Penelope. And part of being a friend meant encouraging the other to do what she normally wouldn’t.

  “I just can’t,” she said again.

  “Good,” he said, dropping his arm to his side. “I’ll see you here when you close at five.”

  “What?”

  Aidan merely grinned, winked at her, then casually left the shop, though he felt anything but casual inside.

  The truth was, he wasn’t sure it was such a wise idea to push Penelope. He didn’t know where Penelope’s boundaries were. Push too fast, too hard, and she might shut him out, much the same way she shut out everyone but her grandmother.

  He remembered last night—the look on her face when she quietly asked him never to leave. He had felt an immediate need to protect her, to help her.

  He didn’t care what he had to do. Or at what cost. He would help Penelope Moon in a way that he couldn’t help himself.

  “Sheriff Cole.” He nodded at the young man in uniform where he stood in front of the library.

  “Afternoon, Aidan.”

  As Aidan passed by, he felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up. It was a way he’d never felt until the day after the gas station robbery. Was it all in his mind, this suspicion that everyone was looking at him differently? Or could there be a grain of truth to it?

  Whatever it was, he’d decided to stay and ride this out to its natural conclusion. In truth, he was tired of running. Tired of packing his suitcase and hitting the road to nowhere. Of being alone, keeping people at arm’s length and waiting for the shadow following on his heels to catch up with him and suffocate him. Maybe that was the reason he’d stayed in Old Orchard to begin with. Perhaps he’d subconsciously known that this was the place where his running would end.

  For starters, he had to stop running from Penelope Moon and whatever bonds were developing between them.

  This wasn’t happening. It couldn’t be. She, Penelope Moon, was not out on a date with one of Old Orchard’s most eligible bachelors at one of Old Orchard’s most popular gathering places.

  She fiddled with the skirt of her violet cotton dress, wishing she could have gone home to change, taken a bath so that her skin smelled like rose petals, put her hair up. In some way to have done something special to reflect how unique the occasion was.

  “Penelope?” Aidan’s voice reached for her across the pitted pine table at Eddie’s Pub. “Are you all right?”

  She blinked up at him, feeling…surreal.

  How many times had she passed the pub? And yet she’d never seen the inside, aside from the brief glimpses she got in the summer when Eddie sometimes left the door open. She was vaguely surprised by the pervasive smell of beer. The rugged decor. The familiarity with which the patrons—people she’d known all her life—entered and took stools at the bar. In fact, she and Aidan were two of the few seated at one of the dozen or so tables.

  She suddenly realized she hadn’t answered Aidan, and laughed nervously. “I�
��m…fine.”

  “Are you sure? We could always go somewhere else if you’d like.”

  “No!” she said a little too quickly, thinking she would only feel more uncomfortable elsewhere. “I mean, here is fine.”

  In fact, she didn’t know what she was doing there at all. Throughout the day she’d resolved to thank Aidan for the invitation to dinner but politely decline. But as she and Maximus stood outside the front door while she locked up, Aidan’s smile had been so warm, so handsome, so full of kindness, that she hadn’t been able to say anything at all. She’d merely followed when he took her arm and led her across the street to the pub.

  There was a bark of laughter at the bar, and Penelope’s face grew hot. She chanced a glance to find the McCreary brothers eyeing her and Aidan curiously. Oh, God. She’d known this wasn’t a good idea.

  The moment they’d walked in the door, she’d been aware of every eye in the place on her. They were all probably wondering what she was doing there. And with Aidan Kendall, no less. She, the odd girl who lived with her crazy grandmother just outside of town, and Aidan, a respectable schoolteacher who could have any single woman he chose.

  She gazed deep into his brown eyes. Why had he chosen her?

  “Because I wanted to,” he said quietly.

  Had she really said the question aloud?

  Penelope opened her eyes wide and pretended an interest in the menu, though she really didn’t see a word of it.

  “Have you decided?”

  “Hmm?”

  Aidan gestured toward the menu. “Have you decided what you’re going to have yet?”

  “Have? Oh.” Panic collected in her stomach. “I’m sorry. Am I taking too long? I’m taking too long, aren’t I. You probably have things you need to do and I’m holding—”

  The feel of his hand on hers nearly sent her catapulting from her sandals. But the instant she saw his smile, she felt all right again. Almost.

  “No, Penelope, you’re not taking too long. I just wondered if maybe you needed help. A recommendation.”