The Firefly Cafe (Billionaire Brothers, #1)(15)

“It’s a clean way to live.” Penny touched her fingertips to the drowsy, bobbing head of a full-blown red rose on the nearest bush. “If you lie, you’re a liar. If you cheat, you’re a cheater. And if you raise a hand to your wife…”

“You’re an abusive * who ought to be put down like a rabid dog,” Dylan snarled.

“No second chances.” Penny murmured it like a mantra, and beneath his anger at her jackass ex, Dylan was aware of a yawning chasm of despair opening up in his chest.

All along, in the back of Dylan’s mind, he’d taken it for granted that if and when he ever came clean to Penny about who he really was, she’d be okay with it. It wasn’t as if he was hiding a wife in the attic or something—he was hiding the fact that he was a billionaire! Who’d be mad about that?

Okay, yes, he was also hiding the fact that up until he came to Sanctuary Island, he’d been a shallow, directionless playboy who’d done nothing with his life beyond partying and cultivating a bad reputation. But the billionaire thing was bound to be a plus, right?

Except sitting here now, looking at this woman who’d pulled herself out of hell and left it behind without a backward glance, Dylan wasn’t so sure.

If you lie, you’re a liar …

When Penny found out the truth, she was never going to trust him again.

But that was the future. Right here in the present, Penny had trusted him with a terrible piece of her personal history. And Dylan Harrington, who’d never had a conversation with a woman he dated about anything more serious than where to go for drinks after dinner, was damn well going to get this right.

For Penny.

“Thank you for telling me,” he said. “I know how much easier it is to shove everything down into the dark, to try and forget about it.”

Sympathy washed over her pretty face. “You get it. That’s part of what gave me the courage to open up to you. The other part, of course, was to explain that when I walked out of the Firefly and saw you with your hand raised to my child…”

“It triggered all these feelings,” Dylan realized aloud. “Of course, that makes perfect sense.”

“Once memories like these come to the surface, it’s hard to sink them deep again,” Penny said, fiddling with the hem of her simple sundress. “But I shouldn’t have lashed out at you. You were only trying to help Matt. I’m sorry.”

The yellow cotton was bright and happy against her lightly tanned skin. When she ducked her head and smiled up at him from beneath her dark lashes, Penny was like a beam of sunlight come to life.

Licking lips gone suddenly dry, Dylan swallowed down the surge of wrongness at Penny being the one to apologize to him. “I shouldn’t have assumed you’d be okay with Matt learning to fight. And, geez, I hope I didn’t trigger any bad memories for him, too.”

“Oh.” Penny’s smile faded. “About that. Actually, it would be best if you didn’t mention this conversation to Matt.”

Confused, Dylan cocked his head. “Why?”

“He doesn’t know about what happened with Trent. I mean, he’s aware on some level that his father wasn’t very nice to us, that what time he did spend at home was mostly in front of the game with a beer.”

“But you didn’t want to tell him his father is an abusive *.”

“Who ought to be … what was it? Put down like a rabid dog?” Faint humor glimmered in Penny’s eyes. “No, I don’t think it would be good for Matt to hear something like that about his father. It’s better if he doesn’t know.”

“Even though that means he blames you for the divorce.”

Penny shrugged, her gaze shifting sideways. “Someday, he’ll understand.”

Not if he doesn’t have all the facts, Dylan thought, but he didn’t say it. How could he? When he was every bit as guilty of selective truth telling.

But he couldn’t stop thinking about it, all through the afternoon’s repairs to the garden path’s paver stones, and the easy dinner that followed. Even through the fun of watching Penny and Matt relax enough together to joke around, and the joy of being included in the warm circle of light surrounding this little family, Dylan couldn’t stop pondering the reasons behind Penny’s refusal to tell her son why she whisked them off to Sanctuary Island to start a new life.

He was still thinking about it hours later, staring up at the ceiling over his bed, when a muffled shout of terror from down the hall tore through the night.

It was Penny.





Chapter 8



Without conscious thought, Dylan was on his feet and moving silently down the darkened hallway toward Penny’s room. Every sense was alert to possible danger, but the only creaking boards he heard were under his own bare feet.

When he reached the door to the bedroom he’d visited just once, to change the light bulb in the tiny closet, he paused to listen.

All he heard were the comfortable sounds of an old house settling. And then, a tiny whimper from inside Penny’s room had him pushing open the door and slipping inside.

Dylan scanned the room for anything out of place. But it was the same as in his memory: tidy and pretty, if a little bare of personal touches. Penny considered the room she lived and slept in to belong to the Harringtons.