The Firefly Cafe (6 page)

She waited until Matt left for his volunteer job at the library, on her one day off
per week, before going to confront Dylan. She found him outside at the foot of a ladder,
staring up at the fresh coat of navy-blue paint on the wooden shutters flanking the
second-floor windows.

“I can’t believe how much better the whole house looks!” Penny said, hiding a wince
at the false brightness of her tone.

Dylan barely looked at her. “Matt’s been a big help,” he muttered.

Tension throbbed between them like a pulse. “Thanks for letting him tag along after
you,” she said quietly, crossing her arms over her chest.

Dylan shrugged. “It’s the kind of thing I always wished my dad were still around to
do with me, or one of my older brothers. I was an oops baby; my brothers are older.
They were both leaving for college the summer our parents died, and they didn’t have
time to babysit their stupid kid brother.”

“It’s been good for him. I haven’t seen him this happy in a long time.”

“You’re not afraid I’m warping his fragile young mind and turning him into a crazed,
violent thug?”

The hurt below Dylan’s sarcasm cut her sharply. “No,” she said firmly. “I’ve been
meaning to talk to you about that. I know I … overreacted that day. Blaming you. But
there are things you don’t know, about me, about my past…”

“You don’t have to tell me.” Dylan busied himself with shortening the ladder from
its fully extended length, the loud clang of the metal rungs running like a knife
cutting through the moment. “None of my business, and in a few more days, you’ll get
your wish and I’ll be gone. No harm, no foul.”

Regret tightened her throat. “Dylan, I don’t wish you gone.”

The skeptical look he leveled at her through the rungs of the ladder, held before
him like shield, reminded Penny she’d spent the past two weeks avoiding Dylan as much
as possible.

“Sorry,” she said awkwardly. “That’s all I really wanted to say, anyway. I’m sorry
for how distant I’ve been, when you’ve been nothing but kind to Matt and me. You deserve
better.”

An emotion she couldn’t name flattened his handsome mouth into a thin line, but the
lines around his eyes smoothed enough to let Penny relax.

Until Dylan replied, in the gentlest tone she’d ever heard him use, “No need to apologize
for pushing me away. Even if it weren’t your default setting, it would still be the
smart thing to do with me.”

“What?” Penny sputtered, rearing back and nearly tripping into an azalea bush.

“Because I’m leaving soon,” Dylan explained, breaking eye contact to heave the folded
ladder onto his shoulder.

Penny shook her head, trying to get her heart rate under control. “Not that. What
do you mean, pushing people away is my default setting?”

Wrapping her arms around her torso, Penny held her breath against the urge to run
away from the ghost of her past that seemed to finally be catching up with her.

*   *   *

Out of the corner of his eye, Dylan watched her brace for his answer as if she were
expecting a blow, and his stomach rolled at the confirmation of his worst fears.

Debating how much to say, how hard to push, Dylan trudged down the garden path toward
the shed, with Penny shadowing him. “I’m sure you have your reasons,” was what he
settled on as he nudged open the shed door with one booted foot and deposited the
ladder inside.

“My reasons,” Penny echoed flatly. All the life and joy had drained from her pretty
face, and without it, she looked older. Old enough to have a sixteen-year-old son
and a failed marriage behind her. “What do you know about my reasons?”

There was that tinge of bitterness again, the acid note that only crept into her voice
when she was thinking about her ex-husband. Treading carefully, Dylan closed the shed
door behind him and leaned against the rough, chipped wood.

“Nothing,” he told her. “And you certainly don’t have to tell me—but I think you ought
to tell someone, because secrets eat you up from the inside out. Trust me on that.”

She gave him a weird look, but didn’t remark on the fervent tone. “It’s not a secret
because I’m ashamed of what happened.”

Dylan plastered on a supportive smile, even though his knuckles already ached to find
her ex-husband and cram his teeth down his throat.

Carefully uncurling his fists, Dylan said honestly, “I can’t imagine you ever doing
something you’d need to be ashamed of.”

With a wry smile, Penny wandered over to sit on the stone bench alongside the garden
path. “Oh, I don’t know. What about saying ‘I do’ to a man I didn’t love, because
my parents couldn’t conceive of another option beyond marrying their teenage daughter
off to the guy who knocked her up?”

Dylan breathed out through his nose and pressed his hands flat to his thighs. “That
sounds more like a regret than something to be ashamed of.”

Staring down at her fingers, twining restlessly in her lap, Penny admitted, “I wish
I’d been stronger back then, more willing to stand up under pressure. I knew, with
every fiber of my being, that marrying Trent was a mistake. But I did it anyway, and
I stayed with him until…”

She broke off, her whole body freezing into the alert stillness of a prey animal scenting
danger.

This was it, Dylan knew. This was the steel at the core of Penny Little’s spine, the
darkness at the back of her eyes. It seemed oddly incongruous to be having this conversation
in a sunlit garden, surrounded by the drone of bees and the heavy perfume of roses.
But when Penny tilted her face up, eyes closed and lashes trembling under the warmth
of the afternoon sun, Dylan realized this conversation could only happen here.

On Sanctuary Island, in his grandparents’ perfect cottage garden, with the bright
sun pouring down to chase away the shadows.

Pushing off the shed, he walked closer to her, taking care to move slowly and not
spook her. But he needn’t have bothered, he realized the moment he reached the bench.

Without opening her eyes, Penny stretched out her fingers to touch the back of his
hand. “You know what my grandmother used to say?”

He shook his head mutely, grief for his own departed Gram tugging at his heart.

Her lashes fluttered open, and she stared straight up at him with damp, clear eyes.
“A very wise woman, my grandmother. If she’d still been around when I got pregnant
with Matt, everything would have been different.”

Dylan straddled the bench beside her, facing her head-on and studying every line of
her pretty face. “What did your grandmother used to say?”

Penny breathed in deep, then let it go. “She said, ‘A man might hit me once … but
he’ll never hit me twice.’”

He’d suspected before this—from her reaction to seeing Matt fight, among other things—but
to know beyond a shadow of a doubt. Dylan swallowed down bile. “Your ex-husband,”
he grated out. “That’s why you left him. He hit you.”

Giving him her profile, Penny gazed out at the garden. “A man might hit me once, but
he’ll never hit me twice. Because I won’t stick around to give him the chance.”

“No second chances,” Dylan said, another puzzle piece clicking into place.

“It’s a clean way to live.” Penny touched her fingertips to the drowsy, bobbing head
of a full-blown red rose on the nearest bush. “If you lie, you’re a liar. If you cheat,
you’re a cheater. And if you raise a hand to your wife…”

“You’re an abusive asshole who ought to be put down like a rabid dog,” Dylan snarled.

“No second chances.” Penny murmured it like a mantra, and beneath his anger at her
jackass ex, Dylan was aware of a yawning chasm of despair opening up in his chest.

All along, in the back of Dylan’s mind, he’d taken it for granted that if and when
he ever came clean to Penny about who he really was, she’d be okay with it. It wasn’t
as if he was hiding a wife in the attic or something—he was hiding the fact that he
was a billionaire! Who’d be mad about that?

Okay, yes, he was also hiding the fact that up until he came to Sanctuary Island,
he’d been a shallow, directionless playboy who’d done nothing with his life beyond
partying and cultivating a bad reputation. But the billionaire thing was bound to
be a plus, right?

Except sitting here now, looking at this woman who’d pulled herself out of hell and
left it behind without a backward glance, Dylan wasn’t so sure.

If you lie, you’re a liar …

When Penny found out the truth, she was never going to trust him again.

But that was the future. Right here in the present, Penny had trusted him with a terrible
piece of her personal history. And Dylan Harrington, who’d never had a conversation
with a woman he dated about anything more serious than where to go for drinks after
dinner, was damn well going to get this right.

For Penny.

“Thank you for telling me,” he said. “I know how much easier it is to shove everything
down into the dark, to try and forget about it.”

Sympathy washed over her pretty face. “You get it. That’s part of what gave me the
courage to open up to you. The other part, of course, was to explain that when I walked
out of the Firefly and saw you with your hand raised to my child…”

“It triggered all these feelings,” Dylan realized aloud. “Of course, that makes perfect
sense.”

“Once memories like these come to the surface, it’s hard to sink them deep again,”
Penny said, fiddling with the hem of her simple sundress. “But I shouldn’t have lashed
out at you. You were only trying to help Matt. I’m sorry.”

The yellow cotton was bright and happy against her lightly tanned skin. When she ducked
her head and smiled up at him from beneath her dark lashes, Penny was like a beam
of sunlight come to life.

Licking lips gone suddenly dry, Dylan swallowed down the surge of wrongness at Penny
being the one to apologize to him. “I shouldn’t have assumed you’d be okay with Matt
learning to fight. And, geez, I hope I didn’t trigger any bad memories for him, too.”

“Oh.” Penny’s smile faded. “About that. Actually, it would be best if you didn’t mention
this conversation to Matt.”

Confused, Dylan cocked his head. “Why?”

“He doesn’t know about what happened with Trent. I mean, he’s aware on some level
that his father wasn’t very nice to us, that what time he did spend at home was mostly
in front of the game with a beer.”

“But you didn’t want to tell him his father is an abusive asshole.”

“Who ought to be … what was it? Put down like a rabid dog?” Faint humor glimmered
in Penny’s eyes. “No, I don’t think it would be good for Matt to hear something like
that about his father. It’s better if he doesn’t know.”

“Even though that means he blames you for the divorce.”

Penny shrugged, her gaze shifting sideways. “Someday, he’ll understand.”

Not if he doesn’t have all the facts,
Dylan thought, but he didn’t say it. How could he? When he was every bit as guilty
of selective truth telling.

But he couldn’t stop thinking about it, all through the afternoon’s repairs to the
garden path’s paver stones, and the easy dinner that followed. Even through the fun
of watching Penny and Matt relax enough together to joke around, and the joy of being
included in the warm circle of light surrounding this little family, Dylan couldn’t
stop pondering the reasons behind Penny’s refusal to tell her son why she whisked
them off to Sanctuary Island to start a new life.

He was still thinking about it hours later, staring up at the ceiling over his bed,
when a muffled shout of terror from down the hall tore through the night.

It was Penny.

Chapter 8

Without conscious thought, Dylan was on his feet and moving silently down the darkened
hallway toward Penny’s room. Every sense was alert to possible danger, but the only
creaking boards he heard were under his own bare feet.

When he reached the door to the bedroom he’d visited just once, to change the light
bulb in the tiny closet, he paused to listen.

All he heard were the comfortable sounds of an old house settling. And then, a tiny
whimper from inside Penny’s room had him pushing open the door and slipping inside.

Dylan scanned the room for anything out of place. But it was the same as in his memory:
tidy and pretty, if a little bare of personal touches. Penny considered the room she
lived and slept in to belong to the Harringtons.

Still, a woman with Penny’s vibrant spirit couldn’t help but leave clues about her
personality scattered throughout the room. He’d grinned at the froth of royal purple
lace spilling out of a half-open drawer, and ran a furtive palm over the hand-stitched
quilt folded at the foot of the queen-sized bed. There was a framed photo of Penny
with a younger, chubbier Matthew, faces squished together happily and shot from the
improbable angle achieved by Matt holding the camera at arm’s length.

Dylan had looked at all of that and recognized traces of Penny in the impersonal,
tastefully decorated room—the value she placed on fun, her pride in her family and
its history, her hidden sensuality.

Another high-pitched noise from the bed got Dylan moving. Penny made a small lump
under the covers, and as he approached the bedside, that lump thrashed against the
blankets as if caught in a net.

“Penny,” he whispered urgently, his hands hovering. He didn’t want to startle her
awake to find a man looming over her bed, but he couldn’t let her stay trapped in
a nightmare, either.

The thrashing continued until Dylan had the bright idea to switch on the small antique
Tiffany glass lamp on her bedside table. Amber light flooded the queen-sized bed,
picking up the dull gold threads in the patterned duvet cover as Penny finally stilled.

“Wha—?” She pushed the blankets down as if they were suffocating her, breath still
coming hard and heavy, and blinked up at him sleepily.

Dylan’s blood leapt, then rushed south. Penny may have been having a nightmare, but
this situation was entirely too close to one of Dylan’s better dreams. The glory of
her chestnut hair spilling over the white pillows, the hazy sweep of her lashes and
the sleep-warm flush of her skin … Dylan swallowed.