The Firefly Cafe (2 page)

“Oh, shoot!” Penny grabbed the hand towel from sink and moved to wipe up the spilled
tea before realizing most of it had drenched the front of his T-shirt before dripping
down onto his jeans. She’d actually been about to cop a feel, with only thin terry
cloth and wet, clinging denim between her hand and his—

“I’m so sorry,” she gasped, feeling her neck and face go hot with embarrassment. Okay,
embarrassment and lust, but the lust was a little embarrassing, too, so, yeah.

“No big deal.” He smiled and raised her core temperature by another ten degrees when
he reached for the hem of his soaked T-shirt and drew it up and over his head. “I
was due for a shower, anyway.”

Penny blinked. Granted, it had been a few years since she’d been face to chest with
a half-naked man, but even considering that, she was pretty sure she’d never seen
anything to compare to the golden-tan planes and ridges of this man’s perfectly sculpted
torso. He looked like a movie star or an underwear model, one of those guys whose
whole job rested on their ability to strip down and render ordinary women speechless
with desire.

Well, being a handyman required plenty of heavy lifting, she reasoned dazedly, her
eyes glued to his pecs. And a flexible schedule that probably left plenty of time
for the gym.

Mmm, flexible …

“If you bring me another glass of tea, I promise I won’t throw it on the ground.”

Penny’s gaze snapped up to his face. He sounded repentant, but the look on his face
was anything but. Wicked amusement danced behind his shockingly blue eyes. This man
had a very clear understanding of his body and its effect on women.

Natural contrariness stiffened Penny’s spine. She wouldn’t be another notch on this
gorgeous handyman’s tool belt. “Sorry, no second chances,” she said, the words as
automatic as breathing. “House policy.”

Confusion narrowed the sky-blue eyes. “House policy?”

Kneeling to carefully pick up the larger pieces of sharp glass, Penny snorted. “Okay,
no. Not house policy, as in imposed by the rich folks that own this place. From what
I’ve heard, they’re pretty permissive when it comes to family members misbehaving.
No, the one-strike-and-you’re-out stuff is all me. Call it a personal philosophy.”

A lesson she’d learned well and thoroughly, at heavy cost.

“Sounds like a tough way to live. Everyone deserves a second chance, now and then.”

His low, husky voice startled her out of her reverie. Finger jerking, she nicked herself
on the corner of a glass shard and pressed her lips together as a droplet of blood
welled to the surface. “Not everyone. Trust me.”

Glass crunched softly under his black motorcycle boots as he crouched down to her
level. “Okay, you win.” He smiled easily, a man used to using his charm to get what
he wanted. “I’ll live without the iced tea.”

Right, they’d been talking about spilled tea, not her life story. Cursing the riptide
of her memories for sucking them into these deeply personal waters, Penny smiled back
and let him help her to her feet. “Thanks. Give me a second to grab the broom, and
I’ll get the rest of this cleaned up.”

Every inch of her was so hotly aware of his smooth, hard body a mere breath away from
hers. Shivering, Penny backed toward the door and the relative safety of the hallway.

He stopped her with another quick smile. “What you said about the family that owns
this place. How much do you know about them?”

“The Richie Riches?” Penny blinked. “Not much, except that they have enough money
to leave this gorgeous old place sitting empty for years on end. Such a waste. At
least they cared enough to hire a caretaker.”

His face cleared as if she’d slotted the final piece into a jigsaw puzzle. “Right,
a caretaker. That’s you.”

She laughed. “Of course! What—did you think I was squatting? No, I’m paid to stay
here and make sure the house doesn’t fall down while the Harrington boys live the
high life in New York City.”

“The high life.” He said it absently, turning back to the partially dismantled toilet,
but Penny caught a glimpse of his slight frown in the sink mirror. He looked upset,
maybe annoyed.

She could sympathize. “I know. When you work hard for a living, it’s aggravating to
be reminded there are playboy types out there who can afford to do nothing but drink
and dance the night away. I’ve even heard … oh, listen to me gossiping! Never mind,
I’ll get that broom.”

“Wait. What have you heard?”

Thoroughly embarrassed, Penny winced, but when she made reluctant eye contact with
the handyman again, there was no judgment in his lean, handsome face. Instead, he
looked curious, if still a little tense.

She unbent enough to quirk a half-grin. “Well. I’ve heard one of the Harrington brothers
is actually so famous for his partying that he has a nickname in the press: the Bad
Boy Billionaire.”

He twitched a bit, clearly as repulsed by the moniker as she was. “Sounds like a douche
bag.”

That shocked a laugh out of her. She leaned against the doorjamb and admired the play
of light over his muscles. It was so sweet of him not to have put his damp shirt back
on. “I don’t know the man personally—gosh, I can’t even remember his first name. But
apparently he’s quite popular with the ladies.”

“I hate this guy.”

Penny grinned at him. “Don’t sweat it. Any woman who’s worth having would prefer a
man like you, who makes an honest living working with his hands, over a guy who cats
around enough to be a breeding ground for sexually transmitted diseases.”

His eyes went wide, and Penny felt herself flush. Could she be any more awkward and
obvious about her attraction?

“Anyway, I’ll let you get back to work! And, shoot, I’d better get to my other job.
I wait tables at the Firefly Café,” she explained. “Hey, if you get peckish later,
you should come over to the restaurant. The food isn’t fancy, but it’s delicious.”

“Sounds great.” He stood there, bare chest gleaming and so, so distracting, with a
smile lurking in the depths of those ocean-blue eyes.

“Okay. Great,” Penny echoed, flustered by the way she couldn’t seem to look away from
him. “So maybe I’ll see you later, um…”

She stopped, shocked at herself. “Wow. Here you are, half nekkid in my powder room,
and I don’t even know your name.”

“Dylan,” he said at once. Sticking out a large, square-palmed hand, he cleared his
throat. “And I can put my shirt back on, if it makes you uncomfortable.”

“Penny Little,” she replied. “It’s nice to meet you. And please don’t put your shirt
on!”

The hint of a smile graduated to full-on wicked smirk. “No?”

Face flaming with heat, Penny soldiered on. “I mean, because it’s all wet. At least
let me wash it for you first.”

And if he had to stay shirtless while his tee was stain treated, laundered, and dried
on the line in the backyard, well. Sometimes life was hard.

Grinning, Dylan picked up his shirt from the pedestal sink and stepped close enough
to drape it around her shoulders, since her hands were still full of glass shards.

“Thanks. Careful though,” he said, hoarse and deep. “It’s my favorite.”

The dark scent of sweet tea and working man surrounded her, and Penny drank it in
gratefully. “I’ll treat it like it’s one of my bosses’ custom-tailored silk suits,”
she promised.

“No worries,” he said, flashing that charming grin. She didn’t want it to be as effective
as it was. “It’s been through worse than a tea bath. It’ll survive.”

Great. The shirt would survive. But as Penny hightailed it out of the powder room
and gasped in her first breath of non-Dylan-scented air in minutes, she wondered.

Would she survive this house renovation with her sanity—and her heart—intact?

Chapter 3

The moment the front door closed behind Penny, Dylan had his phone in hand, fingers
frantically touch-typing out a query to his middle brother’s frighteningly efficient
personal assistant. If anyone had the scoop on the caretaker in charge of the Sanctuary
Island house, it was Jessica Bell.

But when the ringing of the phone clicked through to voice mail, it was Logan’s voice
in his ear.

“
Jessica can’t come to the phone right now,
” his brother intoned solemnly. “
She’s too busy inserting herself into every aspect of my life and making sure I waste
time eating and sleeping instead of working in my lab. When she’s ready to stop annoying
me, she can have her phone back. Until then, leave a message, I guess. I certainly
won’t be checking them or passing them along to her, though.
”

Dylan hung up before the beep. No extra info from Jessica, then. Fine, he’d have to
figure out what Penny Little’s deal was the old-fashioned way—with a generous dose
of charm.

He didn’t question his desire to spend more time here, in this house with this woman,
and without the heavy baggage of the reputation he’d recklessly built back in New
York. Penny Little was interesting. Working on the house was surprisingly interesting,
or at least satisfying.

The whole thing felt like a vacation from the boring, predictable cynicism of his
real life.

So yeah, he hadn’t come clean about who he was. But seriously, as if he admitted to
being the Bad Boy Billionaire Penny despised? That would end things in a hurry. No,
he’d decided on the spur of the moment to play this out a little longer, and even
though he felt an uncomfortable tickle of guilt at lying to Penny, he shrugged it
off.

He wasn’t hurting anyone. In fact, he was saving Penny from the embarrassment of realizing
she’d bad-mouthed him and his entire family right to his face. Plus, Penny was getting
the help she needed with the house repairs. Everybody won.

Syrupy afternoon light was pouring through the newly polished windows by the time
Dylan had made his way through the first quarter of the to-do list Penny had left.
Some of the tasks were self-explanatory—it didn’t take a genius to wash a window,
just a good ladder and a guy with zero fear of heights. For the rest, well, thank
God for Google. And the local hardware store.

He’d gotten a fair number of tips from the tall, athletic woman behind the counter.
For instance, apparently crumpled-up newspaper was the only way to get glass clean
with no streaking. She’d talked herself out of a sale with that one, since Dylan had
been about to buy a bundle of microfiber cloths, but she didn’t seem to mind.

This whole island couldn’t be more different from the urban rush of Manhattan. And
Dylan had yet to see more of Sanctuary than the quaint “downtown” area bordering the
town square where his grandparents’ house stood.

As he located the leaky pipe under the kitchen sink—number five on The List—Dylan
rolled his sore shoulders and admitted to himself that as unusual as the situation
was, he’d needed this.

Man, when he got back to Manhattan, he was asking for a refund from his personal trainer.
The strenuous daily gym routine hadn’t prepared him for a full day of manual labor.
Dylan’s muscles ached. But it was a good ache, a clean, pure soreness that let him
know he’d used his body well today, and he’d likely sleep well that night.

And something about the blend of mindless, repetitive actions like hammering the loose
floorboards on the front porch back into place combined with figuring out the intricacies
of nineteenth century plumbing had allowed him to completely tune out all the stress
and drama he’d left behind in New York.

With a contented sigh, Dylan wedged his shoulders into the under-counter cabinet hiding
the leak and started tinkering.

A thud from out in the kitchen behind him startled him into cracking his head on the
edge of the cabinet. “Crap!”

“What the hell are you doing?” The sharp male voice had Dylan backing out of the cabinet
on his hands and knees, wincing against the sting of his bruised temple.

A teenaged boy stood next to the oval eat-in kitchen table, hands on his hips and
backpack on the floor beside his scuffed sneakers. That must have been the thud Dylan
had heard.

Who was this kid?

“Well?” the boy said, narrowing his light hazel eyes and putting his big puppy paws
on his skinny hips. Whoever he was, he was packing way more attitude than his lanky
frame could back up. He had the weedy, gawky look of someone whose body was growing
and changing so rapidly, he was having a hard time catching up to it.

Dylan remembered how that felt. Remembered, too, the horrible awkwardness of being
caught between childhood and manhood, teetering on the cusp and trying desperately
not to fall on his face. The memory of how he’d coped with it all—badly—prompted Dylan
to stand up straight and wipe his hands on his jeans.

Holding out his still-smudged right hand, man to man, he said, “I’m Dylan. I’m the
handyman. And you are?”

The kid slowly reached out and shook Dylan’s hand. His scowl lightened a bit as he
unconsciously squared his shoulders.

“Answer my question first,” the kid said stubbornly, crossing his arms over his chest.

Dylan tugged the creased, water-spotted list out of his back pocket and waved it in
the air. “I’m the guy who’s been working his way through this list for the last seven
hours. Does Penny Little know you hang out here when she’s at work?”

Dylan and his high school buddies used to break into empty apartments to smoke and
raid the absent owner’s liquor cabinet. This kid, in his baggy polo shirt and too-short
khakis didn’t exactly look the type, but you never knew.

Giving Dylan a look that clearly communicated searing scorn, the kid said, “Uh, yeah.
Since I live here.”

The snark made Dylan bite down on a smile—sarcasm didn’t sit well on the young, unlined
face, with those bright green-gold eyes. Eyes the same unusual color as Penny Little’s.

With a sense of dawning comprehension, Dylan said, “You’re Penny’s … brother?”

Another look of withering disgust. “No. I’m her son. Matthew.”