Where You Least Expect It (15 page)

“Oh, baby,” Mavis said, enveloping Penelope in her arms. Max nudged his nose between them, seemingly in need of some loving care himself.

“What’s going on here?” Penelope heard Mrs. O’Malley say to someone. Penelope realized she was addressing the sheriff. She pointed her finger in a way that Penelope had seen her do countless times when she was a kid and Mrs. O’Malley was a high school teacher who could calm the rowdiest of classrooms.

“You take those handcuffs off Aidan this instant, Mr. Parker. This instant, do you hear me?” She pointed to the side of the bridge. “It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that Aidan is innocent. I always suspected you were a little on the slow side, boy. Don’t prove me right.”

Penelope watched as Sheriff Parker pushed his hat back on his head. “It’s Sheriff now, Mrs. O. And you shouldn’t be here.”

“I don’t care what you call yourself now, Mr. Parker. That man is innocent and you’re making yourself look like a fool.”

Mavis raised a brow at Penelope. Penelope stared back at her, just now realizing she wore makeup. And her hair looked as if it had just come out of curlers. She glanced at Mrs. O’Malley and found the same thing.

Strange…

“I have to agree with Mrs. O’Malley, here,” Mayor Nelson said as he ducked under the crime tape, tugging on the lapels of his ever-present suit jacket and walking across the bridge. “Release that man at once, Sheriff Parker.”

Of course, everyone knew the history between the two men. Mayor Nelson’s nephew Blakely “Bully” Wentworth had lost to Cole Parker in the last sheriff’s election.

The sheriff hiked his pants up higher on his slender hips. “Can’t do that, Mayor. Not until I clear up everything.”

“You can clear it up later,” Mrs. O’Malley said. “Aidan’s not going anywhere anytime soon. Are you, son?”

Penelope looked hopefully at Aidan. He met her gaze, then quickly averted his eyes.

“No, ma’am.”

He was lying. Penelope wasn’t sure how she knew it, but he planned to leave Old Orchard—and her—behind.

The sheriff faced Aidan and heaved a heavy sigh. “Fine. Get up so I can take the handcuffs off.”

The crowd on the other side of the bridge cheered, but Penelope felt a leaden weight drop into the middle of her stomach.

Despite everything that had happened, or maybe because of it, Aidan was going to leave.

T
he next morning Penelope started her day just as she started every day. Only, this morning her muscles ached and her heart thudded dully. Not even her grandmother’s having put the doors back on, having taken down all the pictures of her mother, or the fact that Mavis was out back mixing plaster following the directions on the back of a store-bought package, could make her feel any better.

I’ve got to go, Penelope,
Aidan had said to her last night after the sheriff let him walk her home.

Mavis and Mrs. O’Malley had started to follow, but seemed to think better of it. Instead they had lingered with the townsfolk, presumably to give Penelope and Aidan some time alone.

“But you told the sheriff…” Her voice had drifted off. “There’s no reason for you to leave, Aidan. Not anymore.”

He’d smiled at her sadly and kissed her on the nose. “There’s a very good reason why I have to leave.”

Then he’d kissed her until her knees gave out and walked into the night without a backward glance. place….

His leaving didn’t make any sense—now that everything else seemed to be falling into place….

“The mayor asked me out on a date,” the old woman said.

Penelope absently spread low-cal cream cheese on a bagel, barely noticing that Max was licking it as she spread. She shooed him away, then stared at Mavis standing in the doorway with what looked like a metal spatula on steroids, filled with what she guessed was plaster. There was another smaller metal spatula in the other hand.

“What?”

“I said, the mayor asked me on a date.” She strode by Penelope and walked into the other room.

Penelope fed Max her breakfast and followed her grandmother. She caught up with her in the dining room, where she’d already filled half the holes she’d made.

Mavis shrugged. “Well, to be honest, it’s not a
date
date, but he did ask Edith and me to join him at his table at tomorrow’s festivities.”

“That doesn’t qualify as a date, Gram.”

Mavis focused her unsettling dark eyes on her. “At my age, a shared smile is a torrid affair, Popi.”

Penelope shook her head and looked at her watch. “I’ve got to go. I’ll be at the shop for an hour or so. Then I’ll be joining everyone in the square to get ready for tomorrow and the Fourth of July celebration. Are you still going to meet me there?”

“Edith and I wouldn’t miss it.”

Penelope made a face. It seemed every few words out of her grandmother’s mouth were “Edith and I” this and “Edith and I” that.

“Fine.”

She snapped on Max’s leash, wondering how she could get across the river without going over the bridge.

The memory of the pain in Penelope’s dark eyes haunted Aidan throughout the night as he drove toward a destination he feared he would never reach. He didn’t know why he hadn’t been able to tell her where he was going, and why it was so important that he go there, immediately. Maybe it was because of his own uncertainty. Or the guilt.

So much guilt…

As he ran his hand over his face, the sunrise popped over the horizon in his rearview mirror and the highway sign before him read Sullivan, Missouri. He’d been on the road for eight hours
straight, and aside from stopping for gas and to fill up on caffeine, he’d driven straight through. Past semi trucks out on their weekly runs. Past the kind of highway patrol cars that had inspired fear in him before last night. Pushing himself toward this one last door from his past that had been left ajar.

Within a half hour he was parked on a quiet residential street not unlike the streets of Old Orchard. A couple of houses away a woman worked in her garden. Farther on, a boy was tossing papers onto porches from his bike. Aidan heard the distant whine of a lawn mower even this early on the day before the official holiday.

His gaze fastened on the simple, one-story house whose address he had memorized but not written down for fear Davin would get his hands on the information. Inside was a distant cousin of Brody Tanner’s…and four-year-old Joshua.

The front door to the house opened and a young blond woman wearing a pink satin robe picked up the paper, then went back inside. Aidan’s heartbeat thundered in his ears. He should have called Brody and had him contact his cousin’s family to let them know he was coming. He should have given them warning. But he hadn’t expected the need to see the boy to hit him so powerfully when everything came to a head last night.

Would Joshua recognize him? What had he been told about the father who had been accused of his mother’s murder? Was he old enough to understand? Would Joshua want to see him? Or would Aidan be upsetting a carefree life that was much better without him?

His fingers tightened on the steering wheel. Maybe it had been a mistake to come—

The screen door slapped against its frame, and Aidan glanced up to find the woman standing in the doorway again…looking after a young boy who was darting out into the front yard with an older boy, both of them wearing ball mitts.

Oh, God, he’s grown so much.

And he was the spitting image of Kathleen.

Aidan blindly reached for the door handle and let himself out of the car before he even realized he was going to do so, his gaze glued to the young figure lobbing a ball at the older boy. He met the young woman’s gaze through the screen door. She stiffened. He held up his hands, and all at once she seemed to realize who he was. She nodded her approval and hugged herself.

Aidan’s knees seemed to weaken the closer he drew to the yard and the boys. Would Joshua understand that Aidan had sent him away for his own protection? Not just from his uncle, but from having to witness the possible arrest of his father? Would he see that what he’d done had been done out of love and a desire to see Joshua have a safe, stable family to love him?

Would he recognize Aidan at all?

“Joshua.” He murmured the boy’s name as the woman opened the screen door and called for the other child, likely her son.

The towheaded younger boy watched his friend walk toward the house, puzzled, holding the ball tightly in his glove. Then he slowly turned toward Aidan’s voice.

Aidan knew a moment of love, of fear, so great he nearly collapsed with the power of it.

He doesn’t recognize me….

He tried to reason it out. The lack of reaction was only natural. He hadn’t seen the boy for over a year. And Joshua had been only three then, barely aware of himself as a person, much less of anyone else.

But the reality cut Aidan to the bone, creating in him a pain so deep, so acute that—

“Dad?”

At the sound of that one word, so simple really, Aidan’s legs threatened to give out on him. He dropped to his knees and held his arms out. “Joshua.”

Joshua dropped the ball and mitt and slammed his young body against Aidan’s. Aidan enfolded him in his arms, holding him so tightly he was sure the poor kid couldn’t breathe.

This little human being who looked so much like Kathleen was his blood, his kin, the only family he had left in the world.

His son…

Fourth of July

P
enelope lingered on the fringe of the group of townspeople crowded into Lucas Circle. All around her people were busy playing carnival games, drinking free punch, listening to the sound of a local jazz band that had replaced the high school band two hours earlier. The sun had just set and soon it would be time for the fireworks display to begin in Old Man McCreary’s farm, just over the south skyline. Nearby, Mavis and Edith O’Malley sat on either side of the mayor, vying for his attention and getting it in spades, making the older man grin as if he’d been given his Christmas present early.

But despite the festive atmosphere that she had helped create, Penelope felt as hollow as the papier-mâché sculpture of Uncle Sam that someone had erected near the fountain. She listlessly walked through the area where families were spreading blankets on the lush grass near the fountain or setting up chairs in the surrounding streets that had been closed off to traffic, kids of all ages tracing their names with glowing sparklers. She absently sat down on the concrete lip of the wall surrounding the fountain and looked up at the man-made stars in the trees above her, then at the real things in the sky above.

She sighed wistfully. The busyness of the past two days ebbed away, leaving a void that held nothing but Aidan’s name.

Where was he? she wondered. Was he thinking of her, just as she was sitting there thinking of him?

“Great job on the decorations, Penelope,” Darby Parker Conrad Sparks said, passing by with her husband, John, her twin seven-year-old girls and a baby stroller.

Penelope weakly smiled her thanks, trying not to stare at the twins, who were arguing over a lollipop.

She wondered at the tremendous change her life had undergone in the past couple weeks. Where just last year—and every year before that—she and Mavis had barely recognized the holiday, much less celebrated it, now both of them were participating in the public celebration. Where they once might have caught a glimpse of the tops of the fireworks over the forest bordering their land, now they had the best seats in the house.

And she would trade it all for just five more minutes alone with Aidan.

She missed him so much sometimes that she feared her heart might collapse in on itself. This from a woman who had learned to rely only on herself for so many years. No friends. No family beyond her occasionally crazy grandmother. Only her shop and her dog, and the sporadic presence of the town cat.

Now…

Well, now that she knew there was oh-so-much more to life, now that she’d been touched by love’s magic brush, she longed to have everything.

She’d never really seen herself as a mother. Never imagined herself a wife. Never considered living in a house that was truly hers.

She thought about her brush with death, hanging over the same rocks that had taken her mother’s life—and she shivered. The temperature was warm but still she wrapped her arms around herself to ward off a chill. What had it been like for her mother, standing there staring at those rocks and thinking that there was nothing to live for? Not her mother, not even her young daughter? What had it taken to make her climb over that ledge and jump? And what had she thought of in those last moments before death took her? Had she even considered the solemn map that she was charting for her family? Had she regretted her action two seconds too late? Or had her last thought been of the man who had come to town? Penelope’s unnamed father who had swept Heather Moon off her feet, then left her, pregnant and alone, to face the future?

Penelope looked down to find herself caressing her flat stomach. What she wouldn’t give to be pregnant with Aidan’s baby. To have something that was so solidly, undeniably his. A breathing reminder of the precious moments they had shared—

“Penelope?”

She looked up, a light sheen of tears blurring her vision. She had to have imagined Aidan’s voice. He’d left her two days ago with no promise to return. She blinked against the moisture that obscured the figure standing some ten feet away. Her heart skipped a beat. No, not one figure. Two.

She wiped at the dampness on her cheeks. Her gaze dropped to the face of a boy of no more than four or five, with hair the color of corn at the peak of ripeness, looking at her with the biggest blue eyes she’d ever seen. She jerked her eyes upward to stare into Aidan’s face, understanding in that one moment why he’d had to leave her with no promise for tomorrow. He’d still had commitments that stretched to yesterday.

She unsteadily rose to her feet as Aidan moved closer. His large hand was wrapped around the much smaller one, the boy moving easily, trustingly, with his father.

“Hi,” she said, unsure as she stared into Aidan’s hopeful, loving eyes. She swallowed the emotion blocking her throat, then crouched down. “And who do we have here?”

The boy shyly looked down, then back up. “My name’s Joshua Burford…I mean Dekker.”

Penelope’s smile was quick and all-encompassing. She slowly extended her hand, watching in wonder and fascination as the young boy took it. “Well, hello, Joshua Burford Dekker. I’m Penelope Moon.” So small, so delicate, so sweet. “It’s very nice to meet you.”

Something on his wrist caught her eye. She recognized the leather strap wrapped around his hand twice, the Greek eye twinkling under the white lights strung from the trees. She glanced up at Aidan to find such a look of pride and love on his face that it took her breath away.

She reluctantly released her grip. She wanted to keep the small hand in hers forever.

“My daddy says you’re going to be my new mommy.”

“What?” she whispered, looking from the boy’s hopeful face to Aidan’s.

Aidan chuckled softly. “I said I’d like it if Penelope would consider the position.”

The boy tilted his head slightly, staring up at her. Then he nodded. “I’d like it, too.”

Overwhelmed with happiness. Joy. Love. That’s how Penelope felt as Aidan looked at her.

“So what do you say, Penelope? Would you like to become a member of the ragtag Dekker clan?”

He held out a ring box.

Max chose that moment to remind them of his presence, sticking his nose between them and sniffing at something on the front of Joshua’s shirt.

“Oh, cool, a dog!” The boy enthusiastically patted Max’s head. “Is this Max?”

Neither Penelope nor Aidan answered him. They were too busy gazing at each other. Not that it mattered. It seemed Max had found his match in energy as he tackled the boy to the ground. Joshua laughed and hugged the dog’s beefy neck, begging for mercy.

Penelope honestly didn’t know what to say as the first of the fireworks shot up overhead. The townsfolk clapped their approval, as she and Aidan and Joshua and Max stood in the middle of them all, a part of them, yet separate. Alone, yet together. The town was a patchwork quilt woven of many colors and textures and styles.

And looking at Aidan, Penelope could see their square come together with delicate ease.

“Are you asking me to marry you, Aidan?” she whispered.

His half grin made her toes curl in her sandals. “That’s usually what a ring like this means.”

With a flick of his thumb he popped open the box. And there, nestled in black velvet, was a perfect oval sapphire in platinum.

He began to get down on one knee, and Penelope knew a moment of panic. She wanted to tell him to get up before anyone saw him.

Too late. She noticed that heads were beginning to turn away from the fireworks display and toward them.

“Penelope Moon, will you marry me? Will you promise to love me as I love you? Will you love and care for my son and pack our lunches and help me with school fund-raisers and zany town projects? Will you fill my heart with happiness and my bed with—”

Nearby, Mrs. O’Malley cleared her throat. Penelope noticed Joshua attached to Max’s neck but watching, wide-eyed and eager.

“—flowers,” Aidan finished, sliding Mrs. Noonan a sly glance.

Penelope laughed softly.

“Flowers? Why would anyone want flowers in their bed?” Joshua asked, his face creased in a comic grimace.

Penelope laughed again, unsure what to say, unsure if there really was anything she could say that would match the swell of emotion in her heart. But she was sure of one thing. That she and Aidan were meant to be together. And that the little boy next to them was a vital part of that love.

“Yes,” she said simply. “Well, except for the making lunch part. You, um, may want to do that yourself.”

Aidan rose and put the ring on her finger. Penelope marveled at it against her pale skin, then at him as he enveloped her in a hug. Max barked, and Joshua wound his skinny arms around them both, holding tight. The fireworks exploded, but there was a healthy round of clapping and hooting and whistling from spectators more interested in the couple near the fountain.

Penelope hugged the two men who would be a part of her life. The one man she had grown to love, the other she had fallen in love with on sight. She caught a movement out of the corner of her eye and shifted her gaze to watch Spot twitch her tail, apparently in approval, then turn and disappear into the night.