The Firefly Cafe (7 page)

“Sorry, you were having a bad dream,” he whispered, backing up a step to keep himself
from reaching out to her. “I’ll go now. Do you want me shut out the light, or leave
it on, or—?”

“Dylan,” Penny breathed, and she lifted her arms in mute appeal, her hazy eyes filling
with tears.

Powerless to resist, Dylan sank down on the edge of the bed and let himself fold her
close. She tucked her nose into the side of his neck and breathed damply for a moment,
long enough for Dylan to realize with a shock of heat that she was wearing nothing
more than a flimsy cotton tank top and a pair of plain white panties.

Which was more than he had on, since he’d hustled out of his room in boxer briefs.
He was damn lucky there hadn’t been an actual intruder.

Dylan huffed out a laugh, and Penny’s arms tightened around his neck for a second
before she sat back against her pillows. “Lord. It’s been a long time since I had
one of those.”

Feeling useless and a little bereft without Penny in his arms, Dylan subtly twitched
the corner of her blanket over his lap to hide the evidence of exactly how messed
up he was.

Penny was in pain, upset and emotional, and here Dylan was—as Matt would say—perving
on her. He sucked.

“Bad dream?” he prompted when she fell silent.

She nodded. “About Trent. I used to have this same dream all the time when we first
moved here.”

“About the day you left?” Dylan held his breath, not sure he wanted the answer, but
Penny huffed out a small laugh.

“Actually, no. In the dream, Trent is my boss at the Firefly Café. I drop a tray full
of glasses and they shatter all over the floor, and he yells at me in front of everyone
on the island, the whole lunch crowd. No one says anything, they all just watch. I
know, it doesn’t sound that awful…”

“No, it does.” Dylan could practically smell the fear and shame still radiating off
her, the horror of being in Trent’s power, and finding no help from the people she
trusted. Exactly the nightmare she’d lived through, when her parents forced her to
marry a cruel man.

“The dream was a little different this time,” Penny said, her hazel eyes shining in
the dark. “You were there.”

Dylan’s heart thumped loudly in his ears. “Did I just sit there and watch, like everyone
else?”

“No.” There was wonder in her voice, and a soft smile spread her pink lips as she
curled her knees under her and leaned toward him. Dylan kept still, afraid any sudden
movement would break the spun-sugar tension of the moment. When she was a breath away,
she braced her hands on his shoulders and turned him to face her.

“You stood up for me. You told Trent to shut his mouth before you shut it for him.
And you helped me clean up the glass.”

“I helped you.” Everything inside Dylan thrilled toward her, and what she offered
him—the chance to be a better man, because Penny believed in him.

She nodded, tugging him closer, and Dylan followed her down to the mattress eagerly.
“You could help me more, if you wanted,” she murmured, the words soft and hot against
his cheek.

“Anything,” he promised roughly, entranced by the delicate shape of her shoulder blades
beneath his palms as he cradled her.

“Help me forget the past,” Penny said, arching up to him in a fluid curve that nearly
blew the top of Dylan’s head off. “Help me live in this moment, right here, right
now.”

She was like a flame, in constant searing motion, and Dylan fell into her without
hesitation. Taking her lips in a deep, hungry kiss, he filled his head with her scent,
her sounds, the feel of her kicking the thin sheets to the foot of the bed and bringing
their lower bodies into heartbreakingly perfect alignment.

Two kisses weren’t enough to get Dylan used to the idea that he was allowed to touch
Penny, to press himself against the lush, welcoming softness of her curvy little body
and sink into her.

The fact that she was trembling too made him feel better—he wasn’t in this alone,
overwhelmed and overloaded. Penny was right there with him, pushing hard into his
arms and snugging her face into the bend of his neck, where she fit perfectly.

There was an astonishing innocence to Penny, despite what she’d been through. She
made Dylan remember what it was like to be young and eager, too inexperienced to realize
that every woman who hopped into bed with him had visions of dollar signs and diamonds
dancing in her head.

“You make me feel like I’m not any older than Matt,” Dylan growled, nipping sharp
little kisses along the line of her jaw. “Desperate for it, and having a tough time
believing I’m about to get it … oh no. Matt.”

“Don’t worry about him. He’s a teenager—he could sleep through a volcanic eruption.”
Penny tilted her chin back, baring her throat in a clear request for more biting,
sucking kisses. Dylan was happy to oblige.

“I’ll show you a volcanic eruption,” Dylan muttered, just to make her laugh. The sight
of her, head thrown back and smiling mouth open on a sigh, fed some hunger deep inside
just as surely as the greedy clutch of her thighs around his hips fed his physical
desire.

But even in the midst of the most passionate, intimate lovemaking Dylan had ever known,
even as both of them clung to the present moment and immersed themselves in it and
in each other, Dylan felt the future barreling down on him.

Penny had opened herself to him completely. He couldn’t keep lying to her.

She’d made him believe he could be a better man. The kind of man who would tell her
the truth … and once he did, Dylan knew he would lose her.

No second chances.

Chapter 9

Penny blinked her eyes open with a start of disoriented wonder. Watery morning light
filtered through the lace curtains, and she should be shivering under the thin cotton
sheet, but instead it was approximately four million degrees in her bed.

A slow, luxurious stretch revealed the culprit behind the humid heat, and the twinge
in certain seldom-used muscles.

Dylan Workman. The tall, muscled handyman who had—wow, really lived up to the hype
about being good with his hands.

One of those broad-palmed, blunt-fingered hands was still cupped around her hip, as
if he hadn’t wanted to let go even in sleep, and Penny closed her eyes to enjoy the
way her heart fluttered.

With a sharp intake of breath, Dylan stirred awake beside her. “Time’s it?”

Penny glanced at the antique silver alarm clock next to the bed. “Nine fifteen. We
should get up, Matt will be awake soon. And I need to get ready for the lunch shift
at the Firefly.”

Dylan shifted, but only to sling a leg over Penny’s bare calves and trap her more
thoroughly on the mattress. “Not yet. Plenty of time.”

Humming with pleasure, Penny relished the sticky slide of their naked skin, the crispness
of Dylan’s chest hair and the combined scents of their clean sweat and satisfying
lovemaking. “We don’t have plenty of time. But I’m not ready to get up yet, either.”

A sweet, comfortable silence descended over the room, broken only by the dip and sway
of the trees in the light breeze and the bright chirping of birds. Here in the heart
of downtown Sanctuary, they were at least half a mile from the beach, but if Penny
closed her eyes she pretended she could almost make out the sound of the waves lapping
at the shore.

“This island,” Dylan said, hushed and almost reverent. “It’s not like any place I’ve
ever been—and I’ve been all over the world.”

Penny frowned a little. How did a handyman have money for international travel? But
he’d probably backpacked across Europe or ridden that motorcycle of his across Asia
or something. “Sanctuary Island is special,” she agreed. “I’ve loved it ever since
we moved here. I knew right away that it was the place to make our new start.”

“The rest of the world isn’t like this.” He sounded almost angry, voice harsh and
clipped.

“What do you mean?” Penny asked.

“Happy and peaceful all the time.” Dylan’s hand tightened on her hip.

Forcing herself to relax, Penny breathed deep. “Well, Dylan, I don’t know how to break
it to you, but not everyone on Sanctuary Island is blissfully happy, every minute
of their lives.”

He snorted. “Could’ve fooled me.”

Dylan had been consistently bewildered by the friendliness of the townspeople he’d
met, from her best friend Greta Hackley offering discounts at the hardware store when
she saw how much he was spending on getting Harrington House fixed up, to random people
walking their dogs in the park by the town square. It was endearing, if a little sad
that he was so unused to basic human kindness.

But Penny had a larger point to make. “You talk a lot about how different we are here
on Sanctuary, how much has changed for you since you got here—but Dylan, don’t you
see? It’s the same for us, for Matthew and me. We were okay before, we were fine.
But then you showed up, and you changed everything.”

She could feel it when his heart picked up speed to slam against his rib cage. The
whole bed shuddered with it.

“Penny…” His hoarse voice and clutching hands made Penny sit up to get a better look
at his face.

All angular jaw and sexy scruff, his sky-blue eyes were piercing even in the fading
afternoon sunlight. He looked lost. Chest clenching, Penny cupped his cheek in her
hand and met his gaze with every ounce of calm and certainty she possessed.

“I know you’re only here for a job, and that this is temporary—a moment out of your
life. But I want you to understand what you mean to us.” Pressing her lips together
briefly, she amended, “To me. You’re the only man in, well, years, who has made me
feel brave enough to take a chance on opening up. And last night, you showed me how
wonderful it can be to trust another person, with my heart and my body.”

Penny wasn’t prepared for the shattered look that washed over Dylan’s tense face.
“Penny,” he said helplessly, and she rushed to reassure him.

“No, no—I’m not trying to put pressure on you about staying on the island. I know
that’s not the deal, and don’t worry, you never gave me the wrong idea about that.
You know that I don’t do this kind of thing all the time, so obviously there’s something
special about you … and I don’t want you to leave here without knowing how I truly
feel. Because you deserve to know that wherever you’re off to next, wherever life
takes you, there are people here on Sanctuary Island who love you.”

His eyes pinched shut as if she’d slid a steak knife between his ribs, his whole body
jerking with the wound, and Penny’s heart shriveled in her chest.

“You shouldn’t,” he said, the words harsh as gravel in a blender.

This wasn’t going at all the way she’d imagined.

Dylan was so stoic—not much of a talker, more of a doer. But Penny saw beneath the
cocky grin and the hard-clenched jaw. She saw a man with a past like a wound that
kept breaking open, never healing right. She saw a man who understood what it meant
to be lonely, and she’d wanted to give him something to take with him and keep him
warm the next time he found himself all alone in the wide world.

Instead, she seemed to have broken him.

“Listen, Penny,” he began, voice hoarse and eyes shadowed.

What was he going to say? Fear momentarily cut off the flow of oxygen to her brain—all
she could do was sit there and stare at him, naked in her bed, with her grandmother’s
quilt pooled around lean hips still imprinted with the shape of her clutching fingers.

The sound of her cell phone blaring out Diana Ross’s “The Boss” cut him off. Scrambling
for the phone buried under the pile of clothes they’d shed earlier, Penny held it
up with an undeniable sense of relief, even as she frowned apologetically.

“Sorry, I have to take this. It’s Harrington family business, I’m always supposed
to be on call. I wonder what they need.”

*   *   *

The tensing of every muscle in Dylan’s body was all the more painful after being so
recently melted into a puddle of happy goo.

Penny loved him. Or, more accurately, she loved Dylan Workman, the Sanctuary Island
version of Dylan—who was nothing like the man he’d been back in New York.

He had to tell her. Now.

Tuning back in to the one side of Penny’s call that he could hear, Dylan drummed impatient
fingers on his raised knee and waited for her to be done.

“Jessica, hi! No, it’s fine, I can talk.”

Penny’s gaze lifted to his for a moment, her brow furrowing as she listened to Jessica
Bell, his brother Logan’s assistant. “You are? That’s—well, that’s great! I’ll look
forward to finally meeting you in person.”

Horror crawled down Dylan’s spine. Crap. Jessica was coming here. He was about to
be outed as part of the wealthy family who paid Penny’s salary.

“Alrighty then,” Penny said, determinedly cheerful even though Dylan could read the
panic in her white-knuckled grip on the phone. “When should we expect you?”

The words were no sooner out of her mouth than the doorbell chimed its deep, mellow
tones through the house.

Dylan’s lungs seized. No. This couldn’t be happening.

Beside him on the bed, Penny turned around, panicked eyes on Dylan. “Oh,” she said
faintly. “I see.”

The phone fell away from her ear.

“The door,” Dylan said through numb lips.

It wasn’t a question, but Penny nodded, still shell-shocked. The doorbell chimed again,
insistently, and Dylan experienced a moment of intense irrational rage at himself
for fixing the damn thing five days ago.

The second bell catapulted Penny into action. She leapt off the bed and into her clothes,
hair flying behind her like an unfurling flag. “Get dressed! Where are my socks? Who
cares—I don’t need socks. I do need a bra, though, oh thank goodness…”

Any chance Dylan had to tell Penny the truth was draining away like sands through
an hourglass. He stood up and tried to catch her shoulders and make her stand still
for a second, but it was like trying to catch a sunbeam. She slipped through his fingers,
a constant whirl of frantic motion as she rushed over to the mirror and moaned at
the sex-tousled state of her curls.