Kiss the Moon (10 page)

She lost track of time, her mind racing with thoughts and possibilities about the unintended consequences of her lie about Colt and Frannie’s plane. When she stood from wiping down the TV, dust rag slung over one shoulder, furniture polish in hand, Sinclair was in the doorway. He had on a charcoal gray shirt that somehow made his eyes seem blacker than yesterday. And he looked taller. She had no idea how long he’d been standing there.

A corner of his mouth twitched in amusement. “I see you’re a woman of many talents.”

“I’m just helping out Harriet and my mother.”

“With the hope of searching my room, I presume.”

She scowled at him. “You know, I’ve always hated a know-it-all.”

“Some things are obvious.”

“I woke up this morning thinking you might not be a Sinclair, after all. I take it back.”

“Who did you think I’d be?”

“An impostor of some sort. A reporter. I don’t know.”

He stepped into the room, making it seem immediately smaller, more intimate. “Well, I’m not an impostor, although there’ve been times my family’s wondered, I’m sure. I was just heading out to take a look at my family’s land. Since you seem to know your way around it fairly well, maybe you could point the way.”

“You mean go with you or draw a map?”

“Go with me,” he said.

Go with him onto Sinclair land. She glanced around the pretty Victorian room with its rose theme. It was pure Harriet, but Penelope had it gleaming. A beam of sunlight penetrated the frothy curtains, inviting her outside. “You have proper attire? If you get lost, you could freeze out there.”

“I’ll be fine.”

Of course. He was Wyatt Sinclair, outdoorsman extraordinaire. His Tasmanian tragedy notwithstanding, a little trek through the New Hampshire wilds wouldn’t intimidate him.

She thought of Bubba Johns and wondered what he’d do if Wyatt stumbled onto his shack. What
Wyatt
would do. The Sinclair land would be crisscrossed with Bubba’s melting footprints. Wyatt could even stumble on remnants of her prints from Sunday, and if he did, he might end up finding the plane. Then she’d be back to Go. Reporters, investigators, Bubba’s life never the same. Harriet’s never the same. Her own. With a pang of fear, she thought of last night’s instant message. What if it hadn’t been a nut?

It was a long shot, but Penelope didn’t want to risk Wyatt stumbling on the crash site. She preferred to show him around herself. There were risks there, too. She remembered the crackling atmosphere between them last night. Well, it was too cold and windy for those kinds of urges.

“Okay, sounds good,” she said, maybe a little too brightly. “I’ll be your guide. I’d be more efficient than a map, anyway.”

He eyed her, instantly suspicious.

“What?” she asked.

“I’m trying to figure out your motive for being so agreeable.”

“That’s simple. I’d rather be out in the woods than polishing furniture and listening to Harriet and my mother try not to be obvious about lecturing me on my flying, my love life and where I live.”

“In that order?”

Penelope ran her dust cloth along the footboard of the cherry bed. Just as well he hadn’t caught her in his room. This was dangerously intimate enough. “In that order today. Other days, maybe not.”

“What’s wrong with where you live?”

“Dirt road, cabin, too far out of town.”

“I see. Your flying—”

“Mother doesn’t like it that I fly at all. It’s not that she thinks flying’s unsafe. She thinks
I’m
unsafe.”

“Ah.”

“And my love life is no one’s business,” she added quickly, before he could ask.

The dark eyes sparked, but whatever he was thinking he kept to himself. “Of course. Shall I wait downstairs while you search my room? It really doesn’t need cleaning.”

This wasn’t a man who rattled easily. He was self-controlled, self-possessed—he’d kept his wits when he and his friend lay dying on a Tasmanian ledge. That he’d survived and his friend hadn’t wasn’t his fault, despite lurid headlines that had intimated the contrary. Yet beneath the calm Penelope sensed a cauldron of emotions that made her not want to be around when he lost patience. “I can just leave fresh towels and call it a day.”

“Do that.”

She started toward the door, feeling as if Sinclair had won this round—as if he’d planned it all before he’d appeared in the doorway. He might have spotted her in the supply closet or cleaning Jack Dunning’s room. It was unnerving to think he’d figured out how her mind worked.

“By the way,” he said behind her. “Just for the record, no one around here believes your story.”

She glanced at him. “Which part?”

“Any part. They think you either found the plane or didn’t find anything and made up the dump to save face.”

“If I found the plane, why wouldn’t I say so?”

“That’s the question of the hour, isn’t it?”

Penelope refused to squirm. “It was late, and the light was funny, and I had low blood sugar. I could just have easily thought I’d seen a yeti out there that turned out to be a deer.
I
was there. No one else was. Are you going to pester me with questions and watch me like a hawk in the woods or just relax and enjoy yourself?”

He settled on his heels, eyes narrowing, mouth twitching ever so slightly. “Maybe I can do all three.”

Seven

O
nce Wyatt mentioned he was heading into the woods for a few hours, Harriet insisted on packing him a lunch. When he said Penelope was going with him, she grudgingly packed her one, too—cob-smoked ham, sharp cheddar cheese, French bread, Granny Smith apples, grapes and a stack of warm chocolate chip cookies. She put both lunches into a hip pack and warned him not to let Penelope carry it, because she’d forget and everything would end up getting squashed.

Penelope was into the cookies even before she and Wyatt reached her dirt road. They’d decided to take her truck, and she used one hand to lurch around potholes and frost heaves and the other to rummage through their lunch. “That Harriet. She gave you four cookies and me just three.”

“How do you know?”

“She marked one bag with a big black
W.
I expect that means you.”

He grinned. “I like Harriet.”

“Well, she must think I’ll expend less energy climbing hills than you will. Do you want to stop and rent snowshoes or will you be okay in those boots?”

He was wearing water-resistant hikers. Nothing fancy, but adequate for the conditions. “I’ll be fine.”

“It could be rough going in places, but I guess you’re used to hanging from cliffs by your fingernails. A little snow down your ankles’ll be nothing.”

At least, Wyatt thought, whatever had scared her last night no longer seemed to be troubling her. He’d decided not to disabuse her of her ideas about him. The more the devilish Sinclair she thought him, the more on her guard she was. And the more on her guard, the easier, oddly, she was to read. This was not a woman accustomed to having to play her cards close to her chest. Whether she appreciated or even realized it, she was accustomed to living her life fully and openly, saying her piece, arguing with those who loved her and in general getting away with murder.

On the other hand, the people in her life did exactly the same with her. They had no practice in hiding, dissembling, keeping secrets and out and out lying. Which was about all that gave Wyatt any hope of his job getting even the slightest bit easier.

They drove a half mile beyond her tiny lakeside house and parked alongside the dirt road in front of a small field, the sun bright on the smooth, stark white snow. Penelope had put on sunglasses, and she gestured with one hand. “Your land’s across that field, to your right and left as far as you can see and up and over the hills—you just keep going until you get to state land. It’s enough land to keep you busy for a while. For the most part, nobody’s touched it since your father and grandfather gave up the search for Colt and Frannie and left town.”

“What do you mean ‘for the most part’?”

She grinned at him. “Well, I’ve tapped a few maples and got lost up there a few times. You might get a hunter or two, but most people just leave it alone. We don’t want to push our luck and have your family sell it to developers.”

Wyatt let that one go. “You have a proposed route?”

“I tapped about a dozen trees up just beyond the field. I thought we could loop around and catch them on our way back. You can help me bring down the buckets. There aren’t that many.” She cocked him a look, her eyes impossible to read behind the dark lenses. “Or are you going to make me untap the trees?”

He’d noticed a blue plastic holding tank in the bed of her truck. A hell of a hobby. He knew it was, by her measure, un-Sinclair of him, but he said, “I hardly feel I have the right to make you pull your taps. And I can help empty the buckets.”

She gave him a mock bow. “Thank you kindly.”

“Presumably this route won’t take us anywhere near your dump site?”

That took a bit of the cockiness out of her. “Even with one of Harriet’s lunches, we’re not prepared to go that deep into the woods—provided I could find that particular ravine again, which I can’t.”

“You weren’t prepared on Sunday.”

“I was
lost.
”

That much Wyatt believed. “Lead the way, then.”

She started through the field, where the sun had melted the snow to just a few inches deep, and there were wide patches of sodden, gray-green grass. Wyatt noticed the shape of her bottom, the length of her legs. She’d pulled an anorak over her rugby shirt but hadn’t bothered with a hat or gloves. She was fit, athletic and strong in a hundred ways and places that were all female, plenty to give him pause. From his brief conversations with people in town, he’d deduced they regarded her with exasperation and affection and had little hope she’d ever find a man who could take her on her own terms—and damned if she’d go flitty just to get one.

She turned, impatient. “Are you coming?”

Wyatt grinned. Yep. This was a woman who wanted her share of the cookies.

She led him onto an old logging trail at the edge of the field. It took them through a young forest and up a gently sloping hill that offered stunning views of Lake Winnipesaukee. It was beautiful country, Wyatt acknowledged. Out of nowhere, he remembered hiking Mount Washington with Hal on a bright, clear autumn day. What had they been, nineteen, twenty? Now Hal was gone. Penelope had a point. He was as difficult and dangerous as she believed, if not in the precise ways she believed.

They walked down that hill and up another, and eventually the logging road narrowed to a wide path that gave the feel of being deeper in the woods than Wyatt knew they were. It ran parallel to the field and dirt road on the edges of Sinclair land. This wasn’t what he’d had in mind, which he suspected Penelope knew—and could mean she was deliberately keeping him away from something.

When they came to the top of another hill, she paused, breathing hard, and looked at the landscape of gray trees, white snow and blue sky. She was obviously in her element. “You can see so much this time of year. Gorgeous, isn’t it?”

Suddenly Wyatt understood how she’d come to be lost on Sunday. It wasn’t because she didn’t know her way around in the woods or because she was out looking for the Piper Cub or even maple trees for tapping. She hadn’t paid attention. She’d let things distract her—the prospect of a better view of the lake, anything that caught her eye—and she’d wandered off until eventually she realized she didn’t know where the hell she was.

He could picture her looking around, and all of a sudden there was no trail, there were no familiar landmarks, and no matter how adept she was in the woods, how skilled a hiker, how mortifying it was, she was lost.

It was a damned dangerous way to live.

Still, he was confident that once she found her way home, Penelope would be able to find her way back to where she’d been.

“I’m starving,” she announced. “Do you want to eat lunch out here or wait until we get to the truck? We could always go to my place and sit by the fire.”

She spoke matter of factly, apparently unaware of any romantic overtone to her suggestion. She pushed her sunglasses onto the top of her head and raked her blond curls with both hands, surveying the possibilities of lunch in the woods. Wyatt pointed to a boulder just off the trail. “I like that rock there, myself.”

She unzipped her anorak. “Perfect.”

It was a good-size boulder, tucked between two hemlocks, about five feet tall with a broad, flat top. The side closest to the trail sloped gently, with a straight, steep drop into brush and pine on the other side. Penelope grabbed a thin birch, climbed onto the boulder and plunked down. Wyatt followed. All he needed to do was fall on his ass, but he managed to settle beside her without incident. His climbing skills were getting rusty. A two-year hiatus and a New Hampshire rock gave him pause. He shuddered, could hear Hal’s snort of laughter mixed with disgust. Get on with it, he’d say. Live your life. Take risks. It’s who you are.

“Well, this is a nice spot,” Penelope said, pushing up the sleeves of her anorak and rugby shirt. She had great hands, with long, feminine fingers and short, well-kept nails. “Rock’s a little cold on the behind, but otherwise we’re in good shape.”

Wyatt didn’t say a word. There’s your risk, he thought grimly. Having lunch on a rock in the middle of the New England woods with a woman who was oblivious—beyond oblivious—to her own appeal. Maybe she figured she wasn’t a Sinclair’s type. Or maybe, right now, he was just a hiking buddy. He wasn’t supposed to be thinking about her fanny on the cold rock and everything else he was thinking. If she knew the twists and turns his mind was taking, she’d summarily boot him headfirst in the snow.

Then again, it might be fun if she tried.

He shook every stupid thought out of his head. Yes. It was a cold rock.

“The temperature’s warming up nicely,” she said, handing him his plastic bag of cheese, ham and bread. “At least the sap won’t be frozen in the buckets. It’s about all I have to keep me from going nuts over the next three weeks.”

“Three weeks isn’t so long.”

“It’s
forever.
Another eleven hours and I’ll have made it through day one. I’m hoping I can wear Pop down, get him to ease up. A week should do the trick.” She dug into her lunch, eating the bread first. “Maybe I’ll buy a jigsaw puzzle. That ought to help me pass the time.”

With the warm curve of her hip against his, Wyatt thought of a variety of ways he could help her pass the time. He quickly bit into the crusty bread, faintly squished from its trek into the countryside. Wall Street felt very far away. He breathed in the crisp, clear air, smelled the damp moss and pungent hemlock, and with Penelope so close, the scent of her hair, citrusy, clean.

Enough, he told himself. “Are there any Beaudines left in Cold Spring?” he asked, needing a distraction from his dangerous train of thought.

“No—her father died when she was four, her mother when she was ten. They were hard, poor hill people with lousy health and no health care. Her grandparents tried to raise her, but they weren’t much good. They’ve been dead forever—they both died several years before she disappeared. She had no reason to come back here. In fact, she had more reason
never
to come back. But I guess this was her home, and people say she always meant to come back to stay.”

“No brothers and sisters?”

“Just her. She’d always been bookish, sneaking off to the library to read everything she could. An art teacher at the local high school took an interest in her and helped her get books, taught her what she knew. Supposedly Frannie just gobbled information. She took up flying when she was fifteen and became quite the sensation, then headed off to the big city. She was beautiful, daring, smart, and people just loved her.”

“You seem to have a good sense of her.”

“I don’t know, sometimes I don’t think I have any sense of her at all. I’ve talked to all kinds of people who knew her. I drove down to Concord to the nursing home where her art teacher is living, and she remembered every detail about Frannie—I think she just had that kind of effect on people.”

Wyatt nodded. “It’s a shame she died so young.”

Penelope returned her leftovers to the plastic bag, got out her cookies and handed him the plastic bag with the
W.
“That mix of art historian and pilot fascinates me. I guess it’s because of my own situation. I’ve been flying for so long. For years it’s pretty much all I wanted to do.” She shrugged. “Well, you’re not here to talk about my problems. My personal theory is that what Frannie wanted more than anything—more than flying, more than being an art historian—was to be loved.”

“Why?”

“That’s what comes out when I talk to people who knew her. She was desperate to love and be loved. She ached for it. In a way, that could be why she excelled at two such seemingly disparate disciplines, flying and art.”

Wyatt tried one of the cookies, also squished. He was intrigued by how a woman she’d never known had captured Penelope’s fancy. “In what way?”

“I’m just speculating, but I think when she was flying, she could love herself—she could experience the thrill of being the star. Her old teacher says Frannie brought an emotional sensibility to her art studies that would have embarrassed or terrified someone else. She didn’t over-think or overanalyze. She trusted her instincts, turned her vulnerability into strength.”

“Until Colt came along,” Wyatt said.

She nodded. “Frannie was ripe for someone like him to come along and sweep her off her feet. He was rich, good-looking, just as daring as she was. And he wanted love as much as she did.” She popped her last chocolate chip cookie into her mouth. “Sex, too. I mean, I’m not naive.”

“He was five years younger than Frannie.”

“Ah, but he was a Sinclair.”

As if that explained everything. Wyatt glanced sideways at her, watched her lick chocolate off her lower lip, felt a jolt of pure, unabashed lust and wondered if she didn’t have a point. “He was a twenty-one-year-old kid.”

“You think Frannie swept him off his feet?”

“I think they saw in each other what they wanted to see.”

Penelope gave that some thought. “They were in love.”

“And you think that’s why they ran off together? Because they were in love?”

She seemed mystified. “Why else?”

“Because that’s not enough,” Wyatt said, looking into the snow-covered woods, the silence and isolation settling deep into him. “Love’s never enough reason for a Sinclair to do anything.”

“Well, that’s a heck of a legacy.”

“So it is.”

She seemed to realize his seriousness and started to speak, but he stuffed the remains of their lunch in the hip pack Harriet had supplied and shot off the boulder. “We’d best get to your sap buckets.”

She nodded. “Sure. I think I just gave you the introduction to
The Biography of Frannie Beaudine,
which, by the way, I have no intention of writing. But I don’t mean to imply that your uncle’s death was any less a tragedy. They were both so young.”

“That they were.”

He could see her reluctance to drop the subject. She pushed her sunglasses on her nose and climbed off the rock, slipping slightly in the snow. He caught her elbow, and she thanked him politely, formally, which told him she hadn’t been unaffected by her talk of sex and the Sinclair nature.