The Firefly Cafe (Billionaire Brothers, #1)(16)

Still, a woman with Penny’s vibrant spirit couldn’t help but leave clues about her personality scattered throughout the room. He’d grinned at the froth of royal purple lace spilling out of a half-open drawer, and ran a furtive palm over the hand-stitched quilt folded at the foot of the queen-sized bed. There was a framed photo of Penny with a younger, chubbier Matthew, faces squished together happily and shot from the improbable angle achieved by Matt holding the camera at arm’s length.

Dylan had looked at all of that and recognized traces of Penny in the impersonal, tastefully decorated room—the value she placed on fun, her pride in her family and its history, her hidden sensuality.

Another high-pitched noise from the bed got Dylan moving. Penny made a small lump under the covers, and as he approached the bedside, that lump thrashed against the blankets as if caught in a net.

“Penny,” he whispered urgently, his hands hovering. He didn’t want to startle her awake to find a man looming over her bed, but he couldn’t let her stay trapped in a nightmare, either.

The thrashing continued until Dylan had the bright idea to switch on the small antique Tiffany glass lamp on her bedside table. Amber light flooded the queen-sized bed, picking up the dull gold threads in the patterned duvet cover as Penny finally stilled.

“Wha—?” She pushed the blankets down as if they were suffocating her, breath still coming hard and heavy, and blinked up at him sleepily.

Dylan’s blood leapt, then rushed south. Penny may have been having a nightmare, but this situation was entirely too close to one of Dylan’s better dreams. The glory of her chestnut hair spilling over the white pillows, the hazy sweep of her lashes and the sleep-warm flush of her skin … Dylan swallowed.

“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.