Penelope (23 page)

“I’m going to make some coffee.”

“Okay. Come back up.” Her words slurred as she fell asleep.

Brock wiped the sweat from his face. If they weren’t careful around her she’d have that baby early—induced by stress and she’d had enough of that.

When Brock unlocked and opened the bedroom door he could already smell coffee. He froze for a moment before his thoughts calmed. Whoever broke into the house wasn’t going to make coffee.

Vivian sat at the small kitchen table with her hands wrapped around a coffee mug.

“Where are the girls?” Brock asked as he moved to the cupboard to pull down a mug for himself.

“They are on nap cots in the nursery room. I figured this was good practice for when we open and they’ll have to start coming with me. I’ll just throw them in the car and we’ll head over here.”

He nodded as he poured his coffee. That made sense. “Why don’t you move in here? I can take Penelope and the baby with me to my place. I can drop the baby off on my way to work.”

Vivian sipped from her mug and he could see that she was actually considering it.

“I guess that would make sense. You start working tomorrow?”

He grinned. “Yeah. Couldn’t have told you that when I left that hell I was trapped in that I’d be settling in Oklahoma with a wife and a baby. Sam’s a good man. I’m grateful for the job so I can provide for them. She deserves that.”

“You’re taking my job?” Penelope was in the doorway, her eyes wide and her hair still tousled from sleep.

“Haven’t mentioned that yet, have I?” He chuckled.

“No.”

“It was going to be a surprise and I was going to have you train me. But I think we’ve had enough surprises lately.”

She agreed with a nod.

“Why are you up?”

She shuffled to the table and sat down. “Baby doesn’t want me to sleep.”

Brock set his mug on the counter and moved to her. “No more contractions?”

She leaned back in her seat and rested her hands on her stomach. “No. Just a restless baby.”

That was okay. He didn’t like all the contractions she was having. That worried him. He’d need to ask Sadie about that. He didn’t remember her ever going through all of that with her pregnancies, but then again he wasn’t around for all of them.

“I talked to Darby last night about midnight.” Vivian sipped her coffee. “He said they had six calls of vandals around town last night. He figures we were just part of that.”

“But they were in the house,” Brock reminded her.

“I know. I want to go up there and sift through it,” she added as she looked up at Penelope. “He wants to know what you saw too. Did you see a woman running? Because he says Stella Monroe is in rehab.”

Penelope’s shoulders dropped. “I don’t know what I saw. It was just a person and it scared me. I locked the doors and just began honking the horn. I couldn’t tell you if it was her. But she texted you.”

Vivian nodded. “Yes she did.” She stood from the table and walked to the sink to rinse out her mug. “I’m going to look into this and find out where she really is. But now I’m going up to look in the attic.”

Vivian started up the stairs toward the attic and Brock moved to Penelope, kneeling down in front of her. “I want you to go back up and rest. I’m worried about all of your contractions.”

She nodded hesitantly and he helped her to her feet.

Once Penelope was tucked back into bed he walked up the steps to the attic to see what Vivian might have found.

She sat among torn up, vintage books with a grin on her face. “Reading nook my ass.” She held up an old copy of
Little Women
. The book had a huge hole inside of it. “I just found three hundred dollars in this book.”

“She was hiding money?”

Vivian nodded. “Someone knew that too, because they were only targeting these books.”

Brock looked around the house. “Do you think they got some of it?”

She nodded. “I think there was an old box under the books. It had a lock on it. It was wooden and carved.”

“Yeah, I remember it vaguely. I didn’t look at it really.”

“They took it. I think they thought it was the prize and they happened to knock a few books over in the meantime and pages fell out.”

“But that means it’s someone who knew about the books.”

She nodded again. “I’m going to call off Darby. He thinks there are just vandals. I think there is more to it.”

“Stella?”

“Oh, yes. I’ll find out if she’s in rehab or not. I’ll pay her a visit.” She looked at the enormous bookshelves filled with books. “But for now I’m going to see what Frank really left us.” Maybe I’ll wait until closer to Christmas to pay her a visit. She always was sentimental around the holidays.”

Brock decided he never wanted to be on the bad side of Vivian Monroe.

Brock went back down to Penelope’s bedroom. She turned her head and looked at him. “Come sit.”

“You’re supposed to be sleeping.”

“Resting,” she reminded him.

He sat down on the edge of the bed and stroked her hair back. “Feeling better?”

“Yes. I just realized this baby will be here in seven weeks.”

“Give or take. He seems to be fairly anxious to get here.”

For a moment she looked away. “I want Adam to be some part of this. I don’t know how to do that.”

Compassion. It ran through Penelope’s veins and this was some of why he loved her. Hadn’t she always been the one to step in between Vivian and Amelia? The girls loved her. His own family adored her.

“He is part of it. But he should never be forgotten. No matter what. Maybe you could use his name as a middle name.”

Penelope gave him a thoughtful look. “I’m going to name her Gwendolyn if it’s a girl. I really want to do that.”

Brock smiled. “My mother would be honored.”

“Maybe Gregory if it’s a boy.”

Now he laughed. “You won them over. You don’t have to name your baby after them.”

“Gregory Adam is a nice name.”

It sure was. “Doesn’t go too well with Gwendolyn though.”

“Gwendolyn Monroe.”

“That sounds like a movie star name right there.”

Penelope rubbed her stomach. “You’re going to work for Sam?”

“I am.”

“He’s a wonderful man. After Adam died and he called me and told me there was a situation, I never thought it would end well.”

“Well it has for you and Amelia.” He nodded up to indicate the attic. “I think he left one of you still struggling to get a grip on everything.

“Is she okay?”

He laughed. “I think she’s fine. She just found out all those books are hollowed out and filled with money.”

Penelope sat up. “No.”

“Yes.”

“Do you think they’ll come back for it?”

“She seems to think they came for what they wanted. There’s some wooden carved box missing.”

“The wooden jewelry box that was engraved with a heart and had some rhinestones on it?”

“You saw that?”

She nodded. “I wanted to touch it. It was so pretty.”

“I hardly had noticed it.”

Brock looped one of her blonde curls around his finger. “I’m going to head to my place in a bit and see my family off.”

“I want to come too.”

That made him very happy. “My dad has something for me.”

“Oh,” she sighed. “I can wait.”

“It’s okay. I’m sure it’s my college fund. He used to joke that he saved all that money and then I went to play war.”

She narrowed her brows. “There was no playing there.”

“He knows that better than anyone. But he used to tease that he’d give it to me to buy a house if I ever met a worthy woman.”

Now her eyes widened. “Oh.”

“So I’ve been thinking. I told Vivian she and the girls should move in here. We could finish off the other bedroom on the floor and they’d have their own place. Then the girls wouldn’t have to get up early to come here. And I could drop the baby off when you went to work.”

She looked around the room they’d put together for her. “I’d miss this.”

“But I think the girls would like it.”

She smiled wide. “They would. We could make them bears too, just like they did for me.”

He patted her hand. “We could do that.”

She sat up tall again. “You’d buy a house for us?”

“Penelope, I’m never going anywhere. I think Adam knew that when he sent me.”

She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him in close. “I’m glad he did.”

Penelope sat on the back porch watching Emma and Ava play on the new play set with her fiancée. Inside of her grew a life that had bonded her to so many wonderful people. And in a few weeks that beautiful baby would be in her arms.

She had sisters, brothers, and a fiancé now. In one year her entire life had changed and even with the bad had come good. Even in the dark, there had been light.

The baby kicked against her and she took a breath. They still had to deal with Adam’s mother. But she shouldn’t be a threat. If she, Amelia, and Vivian had learned to live together why couldn’t Stella Monroe accept it? Perhaps that was too optimistic.

The breeze blew through the yard and she closed her eyes. She didn’t want to think about Stella Monroe. She wanted to begin to make wedding plans and mentally browse all the baby gifts she’d received—they’d received.

She gathered the shawl around her as fall was becoming colder. When they told her Adam Monroe had died she never assumed she’d be happy again, but God she was happy.

God she was miserable. Vivian Monroe sat in her car just on the outskirts of town. The late November wind was kicking up. It was cold and her damn car had stalled—just like everything had for her for years.

It had been less than six months ago that she found out her husband of ten years had married two other women before his death.

Never in a million years, though, did she think she’d make a new life with those other two Mrs. Monroes. Adam, her late husband, had left her with nothing. His second wife, whom he’d left everything to, had stepped up to make sure that Vivian and her daughters were always taken care of. She may never admit it aloud, but she’d learned a lot from Amelia.

It had been Amelia who had come up with the plan for Adam’s widows to take what he’d left and start a business. It would help to take care of Adam’s children and then no one walked away with everything. They were building a daycare center of all things. It would open next week, if everything went according to plan.

Her mind shifted to Penelope, Adam’s newest wife. Though Penelope was only ten years, or so, younger than her, she felt as if she were a mother to the girl. Penelope was eight months pregnant with Adam’s baby. She needed compassion—especially from Vivian who’d been through the process.

Vivian gritted her teeth and tried to start the engine again. Nothing.

She’d called for help, but it was going to be awhile. Sam, her late husband’s lawyer and Amelia’s new fiancé, was in court. Amelia had an inspector at the old house they were converting into the daycare center. And Penelope and Brock, the man who had been by Adam’s side when he died in combat and now was Penelope’s fiancé, were in a doctor’s appointment.

She was totally alone. Even her own girls were at the rec center daycare for the day. That, she thought, was the only plus to the day.

The day trip to Oklahoma City to find out anything she could on Adam’s mother hadn’t turned up much. Stella Monroe, by all accounts, seemed to be missing.

Vivian hated that she thought it wasn’t really a bad thing to have the woman MIA. But, it did mean they didn’t know where she was and there was a great chance she’d be coming after her.

After Adam had died her mother-in-law had, well, gone off the deep end. Her husband had even found it beneficial to move her to Florida and away from Parson’s Gulch, Oklahoma where she’d made her home for most of her life.

Still, she’d texted Vivian three weeks ago saying she was coming after her and then the house where they were building the daycare had been broken into. Things just weren’t adding up.

Vivian smiled when she thought about the books that had been thrown around in the attic the night of the break in. They’d all been full of money. Six thousand dollars had been found in between the pages and in the cutouts of the vintage books. Adam’s grandmother had stashed it all there. As far as she was concerned, when they were given the house and all of its contents that included the money too. Of course now sitting in her broken down car meant it might have to be used for costly repairs.

Another car pulled up behind hers, but it wasn’t one of the four people she’d called. She looked into the review mirror and saw Clayton North stepping out of his car.

Great. The one man who had turned her head in all these years had come to rescue her. He and that shiny gold band on his hand that she’d neglected to see the first day she’d met him.