Where You Least Expect It (10 page)

Half an hour later Aidan considered Penelope where she stood in Edith O’Malley’s foyer along with Edith and Mavis. He paused where he had just descended the stairs, clutching his suitcase tightly and thinking that a lesser woman never would have lied on his behalf.

He’d returned to the bed-and-breakfast with one intention and one intention only. To leave so he wouldn’t involve Edith in what was about to happen.

“You’re going?” Penelope said hoarsely.

“I’m checking into the motel on the opposite side of town.”

He waited to see her relief. When he didn’t, he realized that she hadn’t expected him to leave. And that having her belief verified merely strengthened her resolve to help him.

“But why should you leave here? Leave this house?” Edith asked, shaking her head and making her curlers rattle. “I don’t understand any of this.”

Mavis snorted. “None of us do. And he’s—” she pointed a craggy finger at him “—too stubborn to fill us in on any of it.”

“Wait a minute,” Mrs. O’Malley said. “I’ll be right back.”

Penelope stepped away from her grandmother and met him at the foot of the stairs. “Aidan?”

God, she was beautiful. Not just aesthetically. Oh, no. While Penelope Moon had model-caliber good looks, she didn’t try to cash in on them. But that’s not what her made beautiful. She was a woman who stood by her family and friends, no matter what. She was strong in her convictions and not about to let anyone sway her from them. He’d watched her with her grandmother, a woman who could be as insufferable as she was lovable. Without blinking an eye, Penelope let Mavis know she would always be there. Always.

She’d also be there for Aidan.

A dull ache began in the pit of his stomach. He recalled thinking of the many reasons why he shouldn’t become involved with Penelope. Why he shouldn’t give himself over to his attraction to her, his need. And every one of the reasons came back to haunt him now.

When Penelope Moon loved, she loved all the way. There was no halfway for her. And he knew with all his heart that she loved him.

Just as he knew with all his heart that he loved her.

Which was the reason he had to go.

He wasn’t leaving town. No. He’d resolved to stay and see this through to the end, once and for all. But he had to do it alone.

“Here,” Mrs. O’Malley said, hurrying up the hall. She held out a large brown paper bag for him. “Just some leftovers and stuff. You know, so you don’t live off that fast food. It’s not good for you.”

Aidan accepted the heavy bag. “Thank you, Mrs. O.” He kissed her cheek.

He met Penelope’s expectant gaze.

“Goodbye,” he said. And then he did one of the hardest things he’d ever done in his life. He walked away from her.

H
ow was Penelope supposed to carry on with life as usual when everything was so far from normal?

In the back of her shop the following day, she absently wrapped the hand-milled bars of lavender soap she’d made two weeks ago in purple tissue paper, then tied them off with purple ribbon. It was Monday and she’d been open for an hour, but she had yet to receive a single customer. No doubt everyone was as preoccupied with the news of Aidan’s arrest as she was.

Of course, she was also the only one who knew there was no way he could have done what he was accused of. She didn’t need to know his exact whereabouts at the time of the crime to know that.

Spot jumped up onto the counter, sniffed the covered soap, then twitched her tail at Penelope. Penelope reached out and patted the overfed, black-and-white cat, then put her back down on the floor. Maximus lifted his mammoth head to take in the move, and then laid it back down again. Penelope considered him. If she didn’t know better, she would think that the dog had empathetically tuned in to her somber mood and was emulating it.

“What’s the matter, boy?” she asked, crouching down to scratch the back of his furry ears. “Not feeling up to par this morning?”

She sighed, thinking she could relate.

The problem was that she didn’t think she’d feel up to par ever again.

It was more than just Aidan’s shocking predicament. It was his one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turnaround in their relationship. She stood up, absently rubbing the side of her neck. Wasn’t it just two nights ago that she’d bared her body and her soul to him and that he’d stroked both with his gentle passion?

Now…

Now he looked at her as if she were a stranger. No…she was more than familiar with that expression, having grown up in Old Orchard as the odd woman out. Rather, he looked at her as if he regretted ever laying eyes on her.

A shiver ran over her skin, then seemed to wiggle under it, making her feel like ten kinds of fool.

And twenty kinds of woman in love, unwilling to accept the object of her affection’s blatant rejection.

The bells on the store door rang. Penelope lethargically stacked the wrapped soaps, wiped her hands on a towel, then went out to greet her first customer of the day.

She froze when she saw that it was Elva Mollenkopf, pretending to look at a display of dried herbs, then moving on to the shelves of books on metaphysics, astrology and yoga.

Penelope forced her bravest face. “Good morning, Elva,” she said quietly, taking her place behind the cash register and popping open the drawer. “I’m surprised to see you here. Have you run out of face cream already?”

Elva openly glared at her. “No. What I bought should see me through three months.” She stepped to the counter. “I came by to ask whether or not you were involved in Mr. Kendall’s illegal goings-on.”

Penelope felt like she’d been slapped. “Pardon me?”

Elva seemed to take great pleasure in her uneasiness. “I told you there was something ‘off’ about that man. Sneaking into town the way he did. No one knowing where he comes from.”

“The east.”

Elva’s eyes narrowed to slits. “I thought he was from Oregon.”

Penelope’s face burned at how easily she’d shared information that only she had known, with a woman who would like nothing better than to hurt Aidan.

“Elva, do you have a family history of depression?”

The woman looked genuinely shocked. “What kind of question is that?”

“A valid one, I think, given your consistent sour behavior.”

“Sour?” she sputtered.

Penelope nodded. “Yes, I think
sour
about covers it. Tell me, do you sit up all night imagining the ways you can hurt people? Or does it come naturally to you?”

Elva’s shock morphed into something far darker. “You’re a fine one to talk, missy. You and your weird family doing Lord-knows-what on the outskirts of town. I’ve heard that the neighbors’ small animals go missing at certain times of the year, and later the bones are found.”

Penelope had never heard that one but wasn’t surprised. “I wonder who it is that started that rumor.”

She stared at the woman evenly, then turned to search through her stock of herbal teas. She settled on St. John’s Wort. “Are you on any medication, Elva?”

“What?”

“You heard me.” She put the box down on the counter and shoved it toward the annoying woman. “If you’re not, I’d strongly suggest you drink a cup of this tea every morning.”

“I’m not buying—”

“It’s a gift. I wouldn’t dream of asking you to part with a penny of your precious money. The squeak would probably shatter my delicate eardrums.”

Elva’s chin went up, she made a sound between a snort and a sigh, and then she stalked toward the door, clutching her purse but without the tea.

The bells rang again as she left. Then silence settled over the shop like a death knell.

Penelope took a deep breath and briefly closed her eyes. She’d never spoken remotely like that to anyone in her entire life. And she wasn’t too sure how she felt about having done so now. She eyed the packaged tea, wondering if she should mail it to the nasty old woman. She stacked it back on top of the others, then stared at the door. Pulling Max’s leash from the hook on the wall, she went in the back and attached it to his chain collar.

“Come on, boy. We have some unfinished business to tend to.”

She turned the Closed sign around on the front door and let Spot precede them out. Then she locked the door behind herself, closing the shop for the day for the first time in five years.

Aidan hadn’t slept for the past thirty hours and the effects were beginning to show. His eyes felt as dry as the salt mines in nearby Perrysburg. His movements were slow and small as if anything more demanding would completely sap him of whatever energy he had left. He leaned back in the uncomfortable motel room chair, trying to read the computer screen without the words running together. Nothing. Nothing at all on his brother Davin and his possible whereabouts.

Of course, Davin was just as good at using computers as he was, so he wasn’t surprised that his brother wouldn’t leave an electronic trail.

Which made him wonder if
he
inadvertently had.

Leaning forward, he minimized the screen search for his brother’s name, positioned the cursor over the browser’s search box, then typed in his alias: Aidan Kendall.

With a bleep, one result immediately popped up.

He clicked on the link and stared as a picture of him filled the screen. He read the caption underneath: “New Teacher Gains Praise from Students and Parents Alike.”

The photo was one shot taken at the end of the school year—a month ago while he was talking to the parents of the Jones boy. He hadn’t even been aware that the photo had been taken, much less that it had appeared in the
Old Orchard Chronicle.

He pressed the print button, then drew in a deep breath. Well, that explained how Davin had found him. High up on the list of search parameters for him was likely “new teacher.” And a glimpse of the photo was all it would take to put Aidan Kendall together with Allen Dekker.

He snatched the printed page out of the hopper and stared at the grainy black-and-white photo. It had taken him two trips to move everything from Mrs. O’Malley’s bed-and-breakfast to the motel. And he’d been working on the computer ever since.

Ominous that instead of finding anything on his brother, he’d found something on himself.

He squinted hard at the photo. But why wouldn’t Davin just alert authorities? Publicly make the link between Aidan and Allen?

He is playing with me. The way a cat toys with a mouse before moving in for the kill.

Aidan put the printout down and pushed himself out of the chair. The information made him uneasier still.

He’d figured out early on that if he was to stand a chance against his brother, he had to try to think like Davin.

He’d also figured out that he was ill-equipped for the job. How did one go about rationalizing what his brother had done? Explain the motivation behind the ruthless efficiency with which he was deconstructing every part of his twin brother’s life? They’d shared a womb together, even a single egg. But from then on, they’d taken completely different paths. Aidan couldn’t begin to imagine the road his brother traveled, much less crawl into his mind or his black heart.

Aidan stood stock-still, realizing he was no longer alone in the motel room.

He swung around, half hoping it was Davin.

Instead, he found Penelope standing in the doorway. He’d just opened the door to allow in some fresh air.

She looked better than any one woman had a right to.

Penelope glanced from him to the desk and back again. “I guess you do know how to use a computer.”

Penelope breathed a little sigh of relief—because for a brief, unguarded moment she’d seen in Aidan’s eyes what she’d seen there before last night. Before the world had come crashing down around her ears, refusing to make sense. Before he’d shut her out.

Along with the relief came a vanishing of her resolve.

Her exchange with Elva had left her determined to take forward steps rather than to remain in the dark. But now that she stood in front of Aidan, saw how tired he was, saw how glad he was that she was there, no matter how hard he tried to hide it, she forgot about everything but her growing need for him on every level.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

She hesitantly held up a bag. “I asked Trudy at the diner to make an exception to the no-breakfast-after-ten-thirty rule and make you something.” He didn’t move to take it, so she put it down on the desk next to one of two computers. “You look awful,” she said.

“I’ve felt better.”

Outside the door behind her, Max barked at something. She tugged on his leash and fastened the end to the open door handle. He whined at her, then settled down to watch the goings-on outside.

That done, she was forced to confront her fears and Aidan, the two interwoven. “Tell me what’s going on, Aidan.”

There was a brief hardness to his features, but he didn’t appear in any condition to back it up. He sank to the edge of the bed, looking irresistibly handsome and undeniably tired.

“I can’t.”

“You can’t, or won’t?” she asked, turning his words back on him.

“Both,” he said after a long silence.

She slowly crossed the room and sat down next to him; the casual intimacy made her heart kick up a notch, even though the way things stood between them, they could have been continents apart.

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.