Where You Least Expect It

by Tori Carrington

  He restlessly ran his hand through his hair several times, tousling the dark strands, making her itch to follow his lead, to feel the rough texture of his hair against her sensitive palms.

  “You wouldn’t understand,” he said.

  Penelope kept her gaze level, afraid that at any moment he would shut her back out and she would find herself on the other side of the closed door with no hope of gaining reentry.

  “Try me,” she whispered.

  He turned his head to look at her. The utter sorrow in his eyes nearly took her breath away.

  Sensing that he was about to say something she didn’t want to hear, she reached for the bag of food and systematically began taking items out. “Here. We all think better with something in our stomachs.”

  She handed the takeout tray of scrambled eggs, bacon and toast to him, then dared to glance back into his face. She was surprised to find him smiling. Not a full-out, thousand-megawatt Aidan grin, but it would do. It would more than do because it gave her hope.

  “Are you always this bossy?”

  She stared at him. “Actually, it’s something new I’m trying. How’s it working?”

  He accepted the tray. “I’d give you a B+.”

  “No A?”

  He shook his head. “No A. I rarely give out A’s. What are you going to strive for if you’ve already done the best?”

  Indeed, Penelope thought, filled with the urge to smooth his hair back from his troubled brow. Instead, she concentrated on taking the top off the orange juice she held.

  Max whined from the door, the smell of bacon apparently gaining his interest. Aidan took a bite of a strip, then tossed Max the rest.

  Penelope bit down on her tongue hard to keep from saying anything to break the quiet moment. Aidan was eating. That and his smile were a start. And more than enough for now.

  She put the orange juice on the desk, then gathered up the newspapers strewn across the floor and put them into a neat pile. She spotted the large paper bag that Mrs. O’Malley had given him the night before, and looked to find everything still inside.

  “No refrigerator,” Aidan said.

  “You haven’t eaten anything since early yesterday?” She swallowed hard. No wonder he looked so bad. “This isn’t fit for Max now.” She put the bag outside the door so she could toss it in the Dumpster on her way out.

  Ten minutes later, she watched Aidan get up, food eaten and orange juice drained, seeming surprised that he’d been hungry. He stood smack-dab in front of Penelope where she had just turned from the door.

  She felt suddenly, excitedly alert as she faced him. She fought not to avert her gaze, but to hold his in a way she sensed they both needed right that moment.

  How different everything looked now. Where just yesterday the future had appeared alive with possibilities, now she didn’t dare look beyond this second for fear of what she might uncover. Oh, no, she didn’t for a minute believe that Aidan had done what he was accused of. But she did know that what he had shut her out from, what he was hiding from her even now, was dark and frightening and couldn’t be turned away from once revealed.

  “You’re a sight for sore eyes, do you know that, Penelope Moon?” he said softly.

  Tears pricked her eyes at his words. Amazing how something so simple could touch her so deeply.

  “And you need some sleep,” she murmured, feeling her face go hot.

  He lifted a hand to tuck her hair behind her ear, appearing content to just stand there and do nothing but that. Her heart expanded so much that she was surprised her rib cage could contain it.

  While he’d never said the words, Penelope sensed Aidan Kendall loved her. Felt it in his touch. Saw it in his eyes. Sensed it with every fiber of her being. And that love fed her love for him until she thought she might spontaneously combust with the power of it.

  She leaned forward, pressing her lips first to one side of his mouth, then the other, her actions seeming as natural as the sunrise. She leaned her forehead against his and closed her eyes, inhaling everything that was him.

  “Get some rest, Aidan. Whatever you’re facing, you won’t be able to do it in the state you are now.”

  “Sleep with me,” he said.

  Her eyes fluttered open and she pulled back and smiled. “That won’t help you, either.”

  He chuckled softly, his fingers still in her hair. “I know. But damn if I don’t want to do it anyway.”

  “Maybe I could stay for a while—” She cleared her throat. “You know, until you fall asleep.”

  His smile warmed her to the core. “I’d like that.”

  He reached to pull his shirt off. She’d felt every inch of him in the dark, but hadn’t really seen him. Now she drank in her fill, appreciating every curve of muscle and smooth flesh. His nipples were flat and tan, the hair spattering his chest dark and crisp. He slipped out of his shoes and reached down to take off his socks. He seemed to have trouble keeping his balance.

  “Here, let me.” Penelope indicated for him to sit back down on the bed. When he had, she knelt down in front of him, slowly pushing up his pants legs and gently removing his dark socks. She concentrated on her task, not wanting to jerk or pull or otherwise jar him further awake. She looked up to find she was too late. Aidan had lain back against the mattress and appeared to be sound asleep.

  Gently, she maneuvered him so that his body was crosswise on the bedspread. She took the extra pillow and blanket from the closet and put the pillow under his head and the blanket over him, then moved to check the air conditioner. It didn’t work on low or high, but medium seemed okay. She stared at the glowing computer screens, finding a printout of a picture of him that she remembered from the Chronicle. She ran her thumbnail down the story, recalling it. Remembering how she’d thought he looked so handsome. She moved her hand, disturbing a piece of paper near the edge of the desk. She tried to figure out how to turn off the computers but gave up.

  A sudden beep startled her. She leaned back and saw the words “search complete” blink across the screen, then a sentence appeared: “Fifteenth Anniversary of House Fire Cause of Push for Tougher Building Codes.”

  Penelope’s breath caught in her throat. What was Aidan involved in? She glanced over her shoulder to find him softly snoring, his head turned away from her. Concentrating her attention back on the computer, she tried to find a way to access the document. The first button she pushed gave her a list of options. It said to press shift O. She did.

  And she read in one minute what Aidan hadn’t revealed in the past year of knowing her….

  Chapter Twelve

  At dusk Aidan climbed from the old Chevy he’d kept parked in Mrs. O’Malley’s garage and took in his surroundings at a gas station near Toledo Metro Airport, about an hour northeast of Old Orchard. He felt in charge of his mental faculties again, thanks to Penelope and the food she’d plied him with and the sleep she’d made him get. He’d awakened an hour and a half ago with a clear mind and rested body, to find a home-cooked meal waiting in a bag on his desk…right next to the computer showing some vital information he’d been searching for.

  Somehow he knew Penelope had viewed it. He’d performed a simple check of the queue to verify that. But had she understood what it meant? Probably not. For her sake, he hoped she didn’t. But to be on the safe side, he’d decided to leave the motel early the next morning and check in someplace else, a little farther away from Old Orchard. Somewhere Penelope wouldn’t know where to look. The situation was heating up, and he wanted her nowhere near the danger zone. He’d already lost so much already. He couldn’t bear it if he lost her, too.

  He crossed to the public pay phone and dialed a number he hadn’t called for over a year—since before he’d settled in Old Orchard. Settled coming a little too close to reality for his liking.

  He kept his head effectively turned away from any security cameras that the filling station might have aimed in his direction and waited as the phone at the other end rang. Once, twice… />
  “Hello?”

  It had been a long time since Aidan had heard a voice connected to his past. His friend Brody Tanner had been his roommate throughout much of college, his best man at his wedding.

  He’d also been the man to step up to the plate when the world had taken away Aidan’s family and fingered him as the one responsible.

  “The end is in sight,” Aidan said simply.

  Penelope leaned against the wall outside the closed door to Aidan’s motel room. Through a slit in the curtains, she’d verified that his computers still glowed and his clothes were still there, so she knew he would be coming back. The question was, when? And what state would she be in, considering the information burning a hole in her purse?

  And considering how much everything had changed with one little innocent bleep of a computer.

  A shadow moved on the steps twenty feet to her right. She jumped, then squinted into the post-dusk darkness. It took her a moment to realize that the figure was an animal, not a human, and that the animal in question was Spot.

  Max lumbered up to a sitting position, his tail thumping against the wood planks.

  “What do you know. You guys are friends now, are you?”

  She watched the fearless, curious cat weave around her ankles, then push her head against the fur of Max’s chest where he was tethered to the iron railing.

  Penelope shook her head and stared out at the still parking lot and the two-lane route beyond. She made out a set of headlights in the distance even as her heart contracted. What she’d unearthed…what she’d discovered…had shocked and confused her. But above and beyond everything else it made her love all the more the man who had so skillfully toppled all of her emotional barriers.

  She heard a car door close. She blinked and looked down to find Aidan staring up at her. His face once again wore a worried expression. His posture stiff and unapproachable. Penelope briefly closed her eyes. He was easier to deal with when he was tired and hungry.

  “What are you doing here, Penelope?” he asked her, his voice a hard monotone as he came to stand before her.

  She suppressed a shiver but didn’t respond.

  He turned from her, sighed, then opened the door, motioning for her to precede him in, as he gave the parking lot and neighboring doors a hard visual inspection.

  When the door closed quietly behind her, the darkness of the room beyond was broken only by the unnatural glow of the computer screens.

  Aidan turned to face her without switching on the lights, as if waiting for a response to his question.

  Penelope thought her palms might never be dry again. “We need to talk, Aidan—”

  He didn’t acknowledge that he’d heard her.

  “—or should I say Allen?”

  Damn. She knows.

  Aidan glanced at the computer screen and the article that was still open there. He didn’t have to ask how she knew.

  She looked so far outside her element that Aidan nearly groaned and gathered her up into his arms to chase away the uncertainty painted across her face. But he couldn’t. Not now. Especially since he knew just how much danger they were both in.

  She reached for the large purse strap over her shoulder, rustled around inside the depths of the bag and produced a series of papers creased from where she must have stuffed them inside without folding them.

  “I went to the library. I, um, didn’t know how to use the computer, but Twila helped me out and…” Her voice drifted off.

  Aidan accepted the printouts. The first page was a hard copy of the article on the screen. The second was a piece that covered his parents’ death in that same house fire fifteen years ago. The third item was…

  He cleared his throat of the emotion that nearly choked him.

  The third was a picture of him and Davin at thirteen, the year before their parents died. The same picture he had in the frame at the bottom of his suitcase.

  “You were young, but that’s you, isn’t it? That’s you in the picture with your twin brother?”

  He tossed the printouts, including the picture, to the bed. “Yes,” he said, the word seeming to rob him of so much energy, yet making him feel freer than he had in a long time.

  How long had it been since he’d been able to share something truthful, something real about himself, his life, his past with anyone else? It seemed like forever. And the ability to do so now was like a salve to his bruised and battered soul.

  “He’s the one responsible for the robberies. The reason your likeness is on the security video from the General Store.”

  He stared at her. The questions weren’t questions but statements. As if she already believed what he hadn’t offered.

  He noticed the protective way she stood, with her arms crossed over her torso as if trying to ward off the cold, the dip of her chin against her chest. But it was her eyes, unwavering in her belief, that seemed to unlock a steel door to his heart and allow the love he’d kept hidden inside to come gushing out.

  “Yes,” he said again.

  His palms longed to touch her skin. His nose breathed deeply as if in a quest for a mere whiff of her hair. His body ached for her in a way that would have been frightening in its intensity if he hadn’t already identified his feelings for the woman standing in front of him.

  He loved Penelope Moon. With ever molecule of air that he breathed in. Every drop of blood that pumped through his heart.

  “Tell me,” she whispered.

  Tell her what? That he loved her?

  He shoved his hands deep into his pockets, knowing that’s not what she was asking. But there was no doubting that she probably needed to hear it just the same.

  But he couldn’t tell her. Not now. Maybe not ever.

  He could, however, share what she was asking for, seeing as she’d already pieced much of it together by herself.

  “Yes, Allen is my real name. Allen Dekker. And Davin is my twin brother. He…” He fell silent. “He and I had always been close. Or at least I thought so. Then…”

  She waited patiently, giving him the space he needed to work through his jumbled thoughts, emotions.

  He walked across the room to stand in front of the windows. For several moments he said nothing. Then he felt Penelope’s hand on his shoulder.

  “Tell me, Aidan. Tell me what happened.”

  He wanted to. He did. Only, he didn’t know where to start.

  He cleared his throat, and when he spoke his voice was barely above a whisper. “When our parents were killed in a house fire, we both went to live with my father’s brother in a small town outside of Providence.” He remembered the move as if it were yesterday. He and Davin had still been wearing the plain black suits a next-door neighbor had bought for them. Their suitcases had been stowed in the bed of the old truck behind them, stuffed full of everything they could fit in. “It was hard in the beginning. But as time went on and we settled in, I thought…I thought everything was all right. That being with family was better than being split up, no matter how different everything was.” His words trailed off as he tried to piece everything together for her in a way that wasn’t too confusing.

  “Much later I discovered that while I was leading a relatively normal life, Davin was being subjected to mental and physical abuse I couldn’t begin to fathom. Not then, not now.”

  He shook his head, still wondering how he couldn’t have known. How he could have bought Davin’s excuses about the bruises on his face, the hard silences at the dinner table.

  “He’d always been the more rebellious of the two of us. And I knew my uncle was disciplining him. But I didn’t have any idea how brutal that discipline was.”

  Penelope nodded her understanding.

  “Then we went off to college together, and Davin’s behavior became more bizarre. He’d turn in papers pretending he was me and I’d get a failing grade. I’d start dating a girl and he’d sleep with her, pretending to be me.” He wouldn’t share that he suspected Davin had committed at least one date r
ape under his name. Thankfully, by then the dean had more than an inkling of what was going on and disciplined them both. Because the girl in question refused to bring them up on official charges, a temporary suspension was the most that the public university could do. The girl left campus. The twins stayed on, this time with Allen determined to keep a closer eye on his brother.

  And what he had seen turned his stomach.

  Davin had always been a rambunctious child, and friendly around Aidan, but Aidan had quickly discovered a dark, vicious side to his twin that seemed to stem directly from their being so closely tied together. Shortly thereafter he transferred to another college, hoping the physical distance would force Davin to start living his own life rather than being obsessed with Aidan’s.

  He didn’t find out that Davin had dropped out of college altogether and followed him, shadowing every step of his life, until it was much too late.

  He shared most of his thoughts with Penelope, trying to be fair, carefully choosing what to tell her and what to keep to himself. Still, even now, he felt somehow oddly responsible for his brother’s behavior—even though he didn’t think he could hate another human being more for what he had done.

  Aidan paced across the room, then back again, this time reaching out to close the curtains. “I met my wife during my senior year at Columbia.” He had his back to Penelope, but he could feel her gaze as strongly as a touch. “I remember thinking my life was perfect. From my second year on, I’d worked as a substitute teacher at a local junior high, then a teacher’s assistant at the university, and there I was going to graduate with an engineering degree and had already secured an internship with a major defense contractor in Virginia.” He closed his eyes, remembering the carefree time. Remembering the exact shade of blonde that Kathleen’s hair was, the flash of her smile, the sound of her laughter. “Kathleen was a month away from becoming a CPA. And within three months of our first meeting we got married before the justice of the peace.”