Tori Carrington - Where You Least Expect It

“My… There was another woman who told me that once.” Aidan said it so quietly that the light breeze that had kicked up nearly stole the words before they reached her ears.

Penelope shivered again, but this time it had nothing to do with a chill, but rather a burst of heat.

She pushed from the railing and looked down at her watch. It was already after seven. “I didn’t realize it was getting so late.”

“Do you have a date?”

Penelope laughed, then stopped when she realized he was serious. “No. I don’t have a date. I, um, was just heading to the market to pick up a few things.” And a man for my grandmother, she reminded herself.

Maximus lumbered to his feet, nudging his cold, slimy nose into her hand. She absently patted him, then picked up his leash.

“I’ll walk back with you,” Aidan said.

“Okay.”

They’d gone a ways, Max keeping pace between them, when suddenly the tree-lined route curved into a two-lane street and the trees morphed into buildings.

Aidan looked at Penelope walking leisurely beside him. It had been a long time since he’d been with someone who didn’t demand that every second be filled with conversation.

But Penelope…

“What?”

He blinked, realizing she’d grown aware of his attention and was even now playing with her leather bracelet in that way she did when she was nervous.

He shook his head and smiled. “Nothing. I was just thinking that I never did get a straight answer to the question I asked this morning at the shop.”

She seemed to think back to that morning, when they’d shared that heated moment of awareness. But the image of the sheriff eyeing him suspiciously wiped it out of Aidan’s mind.

“What question?”

“Hmm? Oh. Well, since I could really use some help with putting together the Fourth of July town celebration, would you consider coming to the next meeting? It’s tomorrow night.”

Her gaze flitted away and she fell silent.

“At the rate things are going, we’ll end up with something that could have been cut and pasted from the 1950s. I could really use someone to back me up, help me urge everyone into the new millennium.”

She still didn’t say anything.

“Is everything okay?” He leaned forward to capture her gaze.

She smiled, but there was no happiness there. “Sure. Why wouldn’t it be?”

“It’s just that you got awfully quiet there for a moment.”

“I was just thinking…”

What? What had she been thinking?

Aidan refused to speak the question aloud, but he found he was curious about Penelope in a way he hadn’t been curious about a woman in a long time. While capable of walking in companionable silence with her for long stretches, he was filled with a desire to reach out and touch her, to urge out whatever it was she was holding in her mind…in her heart.

They’d come to a slow halt, a block short of the General Store. Max sat down, panting while Penelope turned to Aidan. To thank him for his company? More than likely. But she hesitated when she looked into his face.

What was there? he wondered. What did she see?

He found himself reaching out to cup her chin. Just a gentle play of his fingertips up along the delicate line of her jaw. So soft. She blinked those big dark eyes, appearing startled yet curious as her tongue darted out and moistened her lips.

Lips that Aidan wanted more than anything to kiss.

And in the next instant, he was doing just that.

First there was the welcoming shock of skin against skin, his lips pressing against hers, tenderly, tentatively.

He’d closed his eyes, but he opened them now to see that she watched him through a fringe of black lashes. He read fear, surprise and a wistful yearning that shot straight through him. His throat tightened to the point of pain, and a craving for this woman, so urgent, so overwhelming swept over him, paralyzing him with its unexpected power.

“Mmm,” she whispered. “That was nice.”

Aidan had experienced his share of kisses, and what they had just shared was definitely not simply “nice.” It was honest. It was sweet. And it was hot.

He stepped back away from her even as a voice deep inside him protested the move.

What was he doing?

He’d promised long ago that he would not involve anyone else in his problems. Would not subject them to what he had lived with for so long that it seemed as natural as the shadow that followed him. Especially since everything finally seemed to be coming to a head.

Yet a few minutes with Penelope found him shoving all that aside, left him seeking a bit of something outside himself. Something that called out to him from her.

He remembered her on the bridge when he’d first walked across to stand next to her. Her expression had spoken of a woman with secrets that seemed to run as deep as his. And he found himself feeling connected to her in a way he hadn’t felt connected to anyone in a long time.

Only, Penelope’s secrets didn’t have the power to hurt others.

She laughed nervously. “I’d…better get going before the store closes.”

Aidan blinked at her, wondering how long they’d been standing there looking at each other. What others thought didn’t concern him. But what Penelope thought did matter. Maybe a little too much.

He offered a smile. “You still didn’t answer my question.”

She wrapped the end of Max’s lead around her hand. “What question?”

“Whether you’ll help me out with the Fourth of July celebration.”

She fell silent again, but it wasn’t a companionable silence this time, but rather a tense one. He silently berated himself for making her uncomfortable. Of pressing her to do something she so obviously didn’t want to do. Especially since he didn’t know if he would be here in town much longer.

“I can’t,” she said simply.

Aidan slid his hands into his pants pockets, reluctantly accepting her answer.

“I’d better go,” she said.

Aidan found himself reaching out to lightly grasp her wrist. She looked back at him, curious, questioning.

“I’m…” he began.

The only sounds were of traffic farther up the street and of Max panting patiently at Penelope’s side.

“I’m not who you think I am, Penelope,” he found himself admitting.

She smiled as she reached out to hold his hand. “Right now, I’m not sure I know who anyone is, Aidan.”

Penelope lay awake late into the night, stretched across the twin bed that used to belong to her mother, thinking about Aidan and his words. And, even more acutely, her own words.

What had made her say what she said? That she wasn’t sure she knew who anyone was anymore?

She caught her fingertips lingering against her lips and yanked her hand back to her side, then turned over, trying to ignore the incessant hammering coming from the next room. She’d returned from the General Store with the makings of spinach pasta, but Grammy hadn’t touched a bit of it, too consumed with her house renovations. Penelope sighed.

Life in Old Orchard had always been trying for her. Still, there wasn’t anything she could do to change it, so why bother trying? From what she understood, her mother had fought the same losing battle…until giving up the fight in a very real way.

Suddenly she realized that she could hear crickets instead of a hammer pounding away. She propped herself up onto her elbows, bunching the simple white nightgown she wore around her waist. What was Grammy doing now?

Footsteps in the hall, then the sound of her grandmother’s bedroom door being slammed. Penelope collapsed onto the pillows, glad the old woman had finally called it a night. Maybe, just maybe, she’d be able to get some sleep tonight.

She rolled over to her other side and stared through the open window. The white sheers shifted in the light breeze, creating a ghostly atmosphere.

A drop of sweat trickled beneath the white cotton of her nightgown. The click of her swallowing sounded strangely amplified in the suddenly quiet room. She couldn’t really say if she’d ever actually heard herself swallow before. Or had ever been so acutely aware of herself on every level. From the agitated state of her own emotions, to the trembling of her lips even now when Aidan had kissed her hours ago.

She then rolled over onto her back, wondering if Aidan was having trouble sleeping across town at the bed-and-breakfast. Was he thinking about her the same way she was thinking about him? She honestly couldn’t say. She’d never experienced what she was feeling now. It seemed like a heated awareness swam through her veins along with her blood, making her dizzy and giddy and remarkably…

She fought to put the feeling into words.

Afraid.

She held her breath for a moment, recognizing the emotion for what it was. She was afraid that she had imagined the desire that had passed between her and Aidan. Scared that the feelings growing within her weren’t something she could ignore or explain away. Terrified that she was finally getting a taste of what it felt like to be in love.

Not that she thought she was in love with Aidan. She wasn’t. Not yet, anyway.

She wondered what he could possibly want from her. He was a respected schoolteacher at the most respected school in Old Orchard. And she was the dark girl who lived on the outskirts of town and ran that odd shop across Lucas Square from the sheriff’s office. Always was, always would be.

To date Aidan…

The sheets rustled as she turned over yet again. Wasn’t she putting the cart a bit before the horse? Aidan hadn’t even asked her out. But if he had…

If he had, she would have turned him down. Simply because he had everything to lose by being seen with her. And she…well, didn’t dating someone open up the possibility of marriage somewhere down the road? While not every couple that dated ended up at the altar, certainly they didn’t go into any dating situation knowing they never intended to stand at an altar.

And she’d always known she wasn’t destined for the traditional institution of marriage. Had even begun to guess that she’d inherited a degenerate gene or two from the women before her. All she knew about her own father was that he’d been a traveling salesman and that he didn’t even know she existed. And since her mother hadn’t put his name on her birth certificate, she couldn’t look for him. Her mother hadn’t known her father either. She’d once joked that they could be a long lost branch from an Amazonian tribe. Grammy had not been amused and had said that the reason there were no men around was that they didn’t need any men.

Lucky for all of them, then, that all the children born were female.

Her eyes widened. They had all been female, hadn’t they? There wasn’t a male out there somewhere rejected because of his gender, was there?

She frowned at the stupid idea, a thought she wouldn’t even have considered just yesterday. But in twenty-four short hours it seemed the entire world had gone insane.

Okay, maybe not the entire world. But surely the Moon family had lost a marble or two or three.

Then there was Aidan and his reason for kissing her… She rolled over yet again. She needed to stop thinking about Aidan and get some sleep. She had a feeling she would need it….

Across town, Aidan was doing the exact same thing Penelope was, although minus one ornery grandmother to make his task more difficult.

The only light in the room came from the glowing computer screen that continued its programmed search for articles matching his search parameters. The windows of his room faced the backyard of the bed-and-breakfast, so no artificial light filtered through the light sheers. And given the moonless state of the sky, neither did any natural light.