“He’ll be fine, Penelope.”
“Stop worrying about the bakery,” JT said, tossing the wrapper from the straw the flight attendant had brought with his soda. “Nick’s worked there since he was my age. He knows what he’s doing.”
“Listen to your brother,” I said, reaching over to touch the back of my hand to hers. “He’s a smart kid.”
“Hey, I’m not a kid. I’m an adolescent.”
That made Penelope laugh, which made me smile.
It felt like we hadn’t been alone together since that day in the hotel room. We were always with JT in his hospital room, or we were taking turns going back to town to pack up and prepare for this trip. I’d kind of hoped that we could sneak out a night or two together, but she didn’t want to leave JT at the hospital alone during the night. The days she spent at the bakery, trying to put the finances and other paperwork into some sort of order.
I was kind of hoping we’d find some time together once we arrived in Oregon.
The plane took off a few minutes later. JT held on to the armrests of his seat like he was on a roller coaster or something, but he calmed down once we reached cruising altitude. And then he was full of conversation, going on and on about this and that, keeping us distracted until the plane began its descent into the private airport outside of Medford.
“Where is your house, exactly?” JT asked as the plane negotiated a small strip of land that was cleared between massive copses of trees.
“About ten minutes from here. I live in Ashland, right over the hill there,” I said, gesturing toward the window beside my seat.
“Ashland. Isn’t that part of your company’s name?”
“My father named the original company, Ashland Furniture, after the town where he was born and raised. And I decided to keep it when I expanded the company.”
“Cool,” JT said.
Penelope was staring out the window, her eyes moving from the trees to the mountains back to the trees. I couldn’t decide if she was nervous about the impending landing, or if she was thinking about something else. At least it seemed her head was no longer back in that bakery.
JT grabbed the armrests again as the tires bounced off the tarmac and the engines began to scream as the pilots threw them into reverse. The plane came to a stop without much of a bump, the pilot making his customary speech, informing us of the time and how long, exactly, the flight had taken.
“Why do we want to know that?” JT asked.
“There’s a time difference between here and Texas. It helps you reorient yourself.”
He lifted his chin slightly in a sort of nod as he turned and stared out the window. “Sure are a lot of trees around here.”
Once again, I carried him off the plane as Penelope followed, advising me when he was about to hit his head or his leg on something. My car, a Mercedes-Benz Maybach S600 Base, was sitting on the tarmac waiting for us.
“Cool!” JT cried when he saw it, almost jumping out of my arms when we got to the bottom of the steps and his wheelchair. The moment he was in the chair, he pushed the wheels over to the car, moving around it somewhat awkwardly as he tried to maneuver his casted leg around to get close enough to touch the cool metal of the car.
“Is this your car?” he asked.
“It is.”
“Wow. Do you think I can drive it next year when I get my license?”
“You kind of need to get out of that wheelchair first,” Penelope reminded him.
“After that.”
I chuckled, remembering how eager I was to learn to drive. “We’ll see.”
Once our things were packed in the trunk and JT was safe in the backseat, I walked Penelope over to the passenger door.
“You’re really impressing him with all this stuff.”
“What about you?”
She looked up, her eyes a little clouded. “What do you mean?”
“Am I impressing you?”
Her eyes moved from my mouth to my chest and then to her hands where they were clutched in front of her.
“Does it matter?”
“I guess that’s my answer,” I said, reaching around her hip to open the door. She shot me a look, but like before, I wasn’t sure what it meant.
The drive to my house is quite impressive. The highway between Medford and Ashland cut through some pretty impressive mountains. And the dip into Ashland is surrounded by trees, quaint little shops, and a lovely park that covers several miles of lush green fields. Then we rise back up into the mountains, turning onto a private lane that dead ends in a circular drive in front of my private lodge.
I designed the house myself. It’s made of glass, steel, and wood. I wanted it to look something like the hunting lodges in all the good old movies of my childhood. The front sported more than a dozen windows interspersed with crisscrossed logs that were cut from a local logging site that planted a sapling for every tree logged. The house itself is set back on flat mountain top, looking out over the city, including the original factory that houses the furniture business and Ashland-Philips’ corporate headquarters.
My sister used to tease that I was setting up my throne to watch over my subjects when I was building this house.
JT was speechless.
“This is your house?”
“Yep.”
I climbed out of the car and took his wheelchair from the trunk. He was, as before, quite anxious to get out and explore on his own. I watched him go, grateful I had decided not to go with grand steps in front of the house. He could just roll straight from the driveway to the front door with no trouble.
I went around the car to help Penelope out, but she was already standing behind her door, leaning on it a little as she looked around.
“Are you impressed?”
She didn’t answer.
I went to the door and threw open the door, barely moving out of the way quick enough to avoid having my toes crushed by JT’s chair. I followed him inside, moving through the wide entryway to the sitting room that opened up into the kitchen, the living room, and the lovely brick and wood deck out back. I loved the open design, loved that I could have people over and talk to them while I cooked. Cooking was one of the few pleasures I often indulged when I wasn’t working. And it was something I liked to share with my close-knit group of friends and family.
JT wheeled around, making the circuit of the three rooms several times before he paused beside a high, thin table that sat along the back of the couch in the sitting room. He picked up a picture that rested there, his fingers careful not to smear the silver of the frame.
“Who is this?”
I moved up behind him and smiled when I saw that it was one of the many pictures of my niece and nephew Libby always made sure I had.
“Libby’s kids – your cousins. You’ll probably meet them tomorrow night when we go to my mother’s for dinner.”
“They’re cute.”
He set the picture back down and looked at a few more before moving on, coming to a rest at one of the high French doors that opened onto the deck. He didn’t seem terribly interested in the pink and blue lights of the setting sun and moved on. But Penelope was drawn to it, standing with her hand resting lightly on the doorknob, staring out over the garden that made up my back yard.
I moved up behind her, close enough to smell the light scent of her perfume, but not close enough to touch.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
For just a brief second, the tension left her shoulders and she moved back slightly, enough so that her back brushed my chest. I could have wrapped my arms around her waist, could have tugged her closer to me and buried my face in the side of her neck. I really wanted to. But then JT called to me from somewhere near the kitchen.
“Hey! What’s for dinner?”
Chapter 23
Penelope
I used to be an artist. I studied art in college and worked at a Fifth Avenue advertising firm for a while before my parents…before everything changed. I
hadn’t picked up a paintbrush or a piece of charcoal since then. Every once in a while I would do a quick sketch, but it was usually as part of designing a cake for a customer at the bakery. But that wasn’t really what I’d been trained to do.
Being here, being in Ashland, Oregon, made me wish I had my brushes at my fingertips.
Nothing had inspired me as much as seeing the landscape here. The trees were so tall, so green, and so beautiful. The mountains were…there were no words for them. It was a beautiful place, so different from the flat landscape of home. I mean, Texas has its own beauty. But there are only so many rocks and sagebrush and dusty canyons a girl can paint. Here…this place was a different story. There was so much I could put on a canvas just sitting in this bedroom Harrison had so politely escorted me to last night, just sitting in this chair, staring out the window at the lush garden behind the house.
I wish I had a sketchbook and couple of pieces of charcoal.
I sighed, reluctantly forcing myself to my feet. JT was up. I’d heard him call up the stairs when he woke, looking for anyone willing to help him fix something for breakfast. I could just imagine the mess he and Harrison were getting into at that moment. I guess it was time to go down and rescue them.
But when I came down the stairs and stepped into the kitchen, they were humming right along, the wonderful scents of eggs and bacon and pancakes filling the house.
“Morning,” Harrison said, winking playfully at me.
“Harrison taught me how to make eggs,” JT said from the high stool where he was sitting.
“Great. Now you have no excuse for not eating something halfway healthy when you come in from school.”
JT laughed, but the pleasure had gone out of the morning for me. I kept forgetting that JT wasn’t coming home with me. His afternoon snacking habits were no longer my problem.
“Have a seat,” Harrison said, “and I’ll bring you a plate.”
I did, tucking my leg under me as I settled at the kitchen nook, my eyes moving to the scenery outside. These windows overlooked the front of the house, the driveway and front hedges. Not as enticing as the back yard, but beautiful none the less.
“I’m going to have to wander over to the office for a couple of hours,” Harrison said as he set a plate overflowing with pancakes and bacon in front of me. “But I’ll be back before seven and we’ll head over to my mother’s for dinner.”
I nodded, only hearing half of what he’d said.
“We get to meet my grandmother tonight, Penny. That should be fun.”
I looked over at JT and forced a smile. He seemed to really be enjoying himself these last few days. And he deserved it after everything that’d been going on. So I forced a smile and tried to look pleasant as I dug into a plate of food I really didn’t have the appetite for.
After Harrison left, JT settled himself in the game room—an entire room there on the first floor that was filled with game consoles, game accessories, flat screen televisions, and everything else a teenager would need to enjoy a few games—and I could hear the familiar sounds of machine guns firing and animated characters dying.
I wandered the house almost like JT had done the night before, running my fingers over pictures of Harrison with his family members, paintings on the wall by modern artists I recognized, over exotic art work scattered here and there among the more mundane items like magazines and discarded newspapers. I was once told you could tell a lot about a person by the things in his house. I found myself wondering if this house spoke more to Harrison, or his designer, or, perhaps, the women in his life.
The more I looked around his house, the more I realized I really knew nothing about Harrison. I mean, the real Harrison. I knew he knew enough about literature to teach high school English, which also meant he had at least a bachelor’s degree in something along those lines. I knew he was intelligent, that he was smart enough to create a multi-billion dollar company out of his father’s small, failing furniture business – the latter of which I learned when I did some research on the Internet. And I knew that family was deeply important to him, important enough that he came all the way to Texas to find JT.
But that was pretty much the sum of all I knew about him. I didn’t know who he spent his time with here in Oregon. I didn’t know what he did in his spare time, except for the obvious fact that he had an entire room filled with video games. I didn’t know what he liked to read, what he liked to talk about, who he gathered around him when he needed support.
It bothered me that I didn’t know these things. I tried to remind myself that it really wasn’t my business. I was here as a courtesy. Once JT was healed and comfortable hanging out with Harrison, my presence would no longer be necessary. Harrison made that kind of clear last night when he escorted me to a guest bedroom instead of his own. Whatever it was going on between us, it wasn’t permanent and it clearly didn’t mean enough to him to continue it here.
Not that I wanted it to continue. Or maybe I did.
All I knew was that I wanted to know more about him. And I wanted him to welcome me into his bed here in his home. I hated that I wanted this, that I wanted him, but I did.
I dressed carefully after a long shower that did nothing to soothe away the tension that had taken up residence in my shoulders. I wanted to make a good impression on Harrison’s family. So I began at the basics, using an expensive, perfumed lotion Susan gave me for Christmas some time back. Then I dug out the makeup kit that I put aside when I came home from New York and rarely touched again. Who needs to wear makeup while slaving over cakes and donuts and cupcakes? Then I piled my hair on top of my head in a simple French knot with small curls framing my face. Another trick I learned in New York for all the dinner parties and charity balls my job had required me to attend.
I convinced myself that I no longer missed New York. But standing in the bathroom staring at this other person in the mirror reminded me of how much I’d hated the prep but loved the results.
In the bedroom, I slid the dress I’d chosen from its hanger, my fingers sliding through the silky material with anticipation. I remembered buying this dress, how it’d hurt to part with the money, but how perfect it felt the first time I put it on. That was four years ago. The dress was sadly out of fashion now. But it still looked perfect hanging from my curves. It was red with a sweetheart bodice, a high waist, and a flirty skirt that ended at my knees in the front and a few inches above my ankles in the back. I slid on a pair of black pumps and smiled at the finished product.
I still cleaned up pretty well.
I grabbed the black shawl I’d also thought to bring and stepped out into the hallway. I hadn’t realized that Harrison was home. When I came upstairs, he was still at the office. But there he was, stepping out of the double doors at the end of the hallway dressed in a suit that hung just perfectly from those broad shoulders and slender hips. My knees went weak for just an instant as I watched him, unaware of me for the moment, moving with more grace than a man should be allowed.
And then he looked up and our eyes met. Those words he spoke to me that day in the hotel brushed through my mind…
You’re the only woman I want.
…and my belly began to tighten and quiver all at the same time.
“Hey,” he said, coming toward me as his eyes moved slowly over the length of me. “You look…amazing.”
“Thanks. You don’t look too bad yourself.”
I meant it as a little tease, but it came out so breathlessly that I think he could tell exactly where my thoughts were going because he slid his hand over my upper arm and drew me close to him, his other hand snaking around my waist. His lips were on mine in an instant. I moved close to him, sliding my fingers into the hair that barely brushed the collar of his shirt. His mouth was cold and minty, the product of a recent tooth brushing. But it warmed up quickly, the mint an added tingle on the tip of my tongue as I explored just as intently as he did.
But then he was pulling away, clearing his throat as he did
.
“We should probably go see if JT needs any help.”
“Oh. Of course,” I mumbled, caught a little off guard by his abrupt movement.
He pressed his hand to the small of my back and pushed me gently toward the stairs. I moved away from his touch as soon as we headed down, my head spinning with thoughts I didn’t want to entertain floating through my mind. Like, why did he kiss me like that if he didn’t want to be with me? And, why did he keep pulling me close only to push me away?
JT was already in the living room when we entered, dressed in a suit I didn’t recognize. By some miracle, he’d managed to get the pants on without have to cut a slit in them, which was pretty impressive since he’d need a whole new wardrobe of jeans when the cast came off. His tie was a little askew, but somehow it worked on JT.
“It’s about time,” he announced as we walked into the sitting room. “I’ve been ready for like hours.”
“I doubt it’s been hours since you were still playing video games when I went up,” I said, brushing a piece of hair off his forehead. “You look handsome, though.”
“Thanks,” he said, pushing the hair back down on his forehead.
Harrison chuckled.
We left a moment later, Harrison helping JT into the car and stowing his chair in the trunk. It was a fairly short drive. His mother’s house was just a few miles from his, situation lower on the same hill.
“I grew up here,” he said over his shoulder to JT. “My father bought this house when my brother was ten and I was five, so it’s really the only home I remember.”
“Cool,” JT said, his go to word for just about every situation.
“It was originally just a three bedroom colonial, but he added on to it over the years. And my mother had it renovated a few years ago.”
“Cool,” JT repeated.
“You’ve lived here all your life?” I asked.
“Except for the few years I spent at Stanford, yeah.”
“You never struck me as the small-town kind of guy.”
“Ashland might seem like a small town, but there’s a lot of culture here.”
BOUGHT: A Standalone Romance Page 93