The Firefly Cafe (Billionaire Brothers, #1)(18)

“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.

“Penny, please,” he said, hating the desperation so naked in his voice, but unable to cover it up.

She glanced at his reflection in the mirror, jaw working. “Put some clothes on, I’m begging you. Unless you want to meet my boss in your birthday suit.”