The Firefly Cafe (Billionaire Brothers, #1)(20)

And then Penny was left alone in the parlor with the man to whom she’d given her body and her heart … before she even knew his real name.

* * *

“I’m sorry,” Dylan said. He wasn’t sure what to say to keep from getting swallowed up by the black hole of guilt and regret in his gut, but he definitely owed Penny an apology. Might as well start there.

As expected, it wasn’t anywhere near enough. Penny shook her head in disbelief. “You’re sorry. You mean, you’re sorry your brother showed up here and exposed your lie.”

The bitterness in her voice pierced him like broken glass. “No, Penny…”

But she wasn’t listening. Dropping onto one of the overstuffed chintz love seats, Penny covered her face with trembling hands. “Your brother,” she groaned. “Lord almighty. Dylan Harrington. I feel like such a fool. You must have laughed yourself sick over how easy I was to seduce. Some silly, gullible waitress to play around with because she doesn’t know any better. Are you going to go back to all your rich friends and have a good chuckle over your latest sexual exploits as Dylan Workman?”

“Of course not.” Dylan stood in the center of the perfect, fussy little room full of touches that reminded him of his grandmother, and knew without a doubt that Bette Harrington would cry if she knew how the boy she raised had turned out. “It wasn’t like that,” he tried to say past the thick lump in his throat. “I never wanted to make a fool of you, Penny, I swear. And nothing about you is easy or gullible.”

“No?” She raised her face to his, and though he’d braced himself for tears, her eyes were dry, burning with a fierce light. “‘Kid brother,’ Logan said. That makes you the youngest of the Harrington brothers, the one who refused to take any responsibility for the family company. The playboy. Oh, God—the Bad Boy Billionaire.”

It stung to hear his whole life, decisions he’d agonized and suffered over, reduced to a single biting summation, but he couldn’t deny it.

When he stayed silent, Penny swallowed and shut her eyes briefly. “Two weeks. That’s all it took to make me fall in love—and into bed—with you. Tell me, Mr. Harrington, is that a record for you?”

Every word stabbed him like a knife, but Dylan forced himself to stand there and take it. He deserved whatever Penny dished out, and worse. With her tender, generous heart, there was no way she’d dole out a punishment severe enough to fit the crime.

But still, he had to try to explain. He couldn’t let her compare herself to the models and celebutantes he’d casually slept with and discarded ever since he’d called his wedding off three years ago.

“Honestly,” he told her, “no. Two weeks is an eternity for me to stay focused on one woman.”

She winced, laughing thinly. “Great, so I guess I should be flattered. What was it that made me so special? Was I a novelty to you, Dylan? A single, working-class mom, someone so far beneath you it made me exotic?” She shook her head with a sad smile. “There I go flattering myself again. I’m sure you sleep with all the help, don’t you?”

“Of course not,” he said firmly. “And you’re not ‘the help,’ Penny. You’re the most amazing woman I’ve ever met. You’re strong and warm and kind. You’re an amazing mother. You’re beautiful inside and out, and I don’t think you even realize it. If you believe nothing else I ever tell you—and I wouldn’t blame you for that—at least listen and believe this. What happened between us was real. I didn’t tell you everything about myself, but what I did tell you was true. And I never lied about what I felt for you, or about how much I wanted you.”

After a long moment of silence, during which Dylan imagined every possible response ranging from Penny falling into his arms to ordering him out of the house, she said quietly, “I think you can see how I’d find it difficult to put my trust in that.”

At least she was listening. Pressing his advantage, Dylan sat down on the love seat with her, careful of the nearly visible wall of empty space she’d erected around herself. “I get that, and I’m not making any excuses. It was a stupid, childish stunt…” He paused, hearing himself, then shook his head. “Which, if you ask my oldest brother, Miles, is a fair characterization of my entire life.”

“Miles Harrington. The head of Harrington International,” Penny said, as if she were still trying to get all the players in this awful farce straight in her head.

“That’s right.”

“He—and that man out in the summer cottage—those are the brothers who went off to college and left you to deal with your parents’ deaths alone? So Logan is the workaholic loner, and Miles is the controlling robot.”

Startled that she remembered what he’d said about his brothers that first night, Dylan shook his head. “No. I mean, yeah, they weren’t around much, but I wasn’t completely alone. I had my grandparents, who were great. Although, like I mentioned before—I wasn’t the easiest kid to raise.”

She changed tack. “And when you said you spent years drifting through life aimlessly until you finally got a job—you meant until you decided on a whim to impersonate a handyman to fix up your own family’s property.”

Against his will, Dylan stiffened. “Yep. I ditched college and turned down every one of Miles’s offers to come work for the family company, thereby breaking his heart—or whatever piece of well-oiled machinery he uses in place of a heart. You’re now part of a very elite club, Penny Little: the Society of People Who Expected Better from Dylan Harrington and Were Disappointed.”