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So...back to the Risk-it List. What should number seven be? She had to pick very carefully. After the two big jolts of selling the town house and buying the duplex, she wanted the rest of the list to be relatively easy. Sheâd tackle a few of her phobiasâbut she wouldnât set herself up for failure. No wrestling pythons in the rain forest or taking a commercial shuttle to the space station.
Just juggling, costumes, kissing...
Ben would laugh. He was much more the space station type. Sheâd decided not to call hers a bucket list. It sounded too ambitious. That might come later, after sheâd accomplished everything on this one. After sheâd learned a little bit about who Penny Wright really was.
Instead, sheâd called it the Risk-it List. A list of things sheâd never had the nerve to doâthough sheâd always envied others who did. Things that looked daring, or exciting, or just plain fun. Things that might be mistakes. Things that might make her look silly. Things she had phobias about...
Aha! Phobias!
So seven would be: Ride in a hot air balloon. (fear of heights)
Take a picture of someone famous. (shyness)
Get a beautiful tattoo. (fear of disapproval)
Kiss a total stranger. (fear of...everything)
Go white-water rafting (fear of dying J)
Make love in a sailboat.
Number Eleven, the white-water rafting, would probably be the scariest. She really, really found the rapids terrifying. So obviously sheâd left that till toward the end of the list.
But where had that crazy Number Twelve come from? Was it from some movie sheâd seen? Some couple sheâd spotted setting off into San Francisco Bay...with her imagination supplying the rest?
âWhatâs so funny?â
Danny, the ice-cream artist, was at her table, holding a bowl so laden with beautifully arranged sweets that she knew sheâd never be able to finish it.
He looked for a safe place to set it down. Flushing, she tilted her legal pad toward her chest to hide it, then felt ridiculous. Why did she care whether he saw it?
âNothing, really,â she said awkwardly. âI just wrote the wrong thing... You know... I mean I spelled it all wrong.â
Argh. Why did she always feel nervous if she did anything remotely unconventional? She was unconventional, darn it. She was an artist at heart, not a banker. She wanted to dress in flamboyant colors and patterns, and laugh loudly, and lie down on the sidewalk to get the best angle on a snail. She wanted to sing and dance and go to partiesâand make love in a sailboat.
Ruth wasnât here to reproach her. Her father wasnât here to mock. No one cared. No one.
She could simply have laughed and said, âI wrote âsex on a sailboatâ on my wish list, though until this very minute I had no idea it was a fantasy of mine.â
Danny was probably no more than twenty-three, fresh out of collegeâheâd probably be a lot more embarrassed than she was.
New Number One: Stop Being Such a Doormat.
Oh, well. Baby steps, remember? She gave him a warm smile to offset any insult he might have taken from the snatched-away list. She complimented his gorgeous creation, stuck a fingerâsorry, Ruthâinto the whipped cream, then stuck the finger into her mouth and sighed. Real whipped cream. Sinfully delicious.
âItâs fantastic,â she said. âIâve moved back to town, and you can be sure Iâll be a regular customer!â
But it was too late. Obviously offended, heâd dialed his friendliness down about three notches. He wandered toward the ice-cream cases and began stacking and restacking prepackaged tubsâthough theyâd been perfectly aligned already.
Darn it. She sighed, annoyed with herself all over again. That was three strikes. Afraid to pull into Bell River. Afraid to pull into her own new duplex. Afraid to let this nice man see that she was making a list of dreams.
Sheâd better stiffen up, and fast, or the ego boost of banishing her intruder would disappear into a cloud of self-doubt. Her life might slide right back into the gray, conformist soup of the past seventeen years.
No. Darn it. No.
She couldnât stand that. She wouldnât let it happen. One way or another, sheâd find the courage toâ
The bell rang out as the door opened. She kept her legal pad against her chest as two people walked in. A little girl, maybe ten? Sulky, angry about something.
As she did with everyone she saw, Penny mentally began to sketch the child. A duckling still, but with definite traces of swan showing up around the edges. Her chubby cheeks were out of proportion to her longish, narrow chin. Someday, in the next year or two, her contours would lengthen, and sheâd have the sweetest heart-shaped face....
Her hair was a glorious messâshining, thick, brown, glossy curls that she had no idea what to do with now. And her figure obviously was hard to fit. A thick waist over too-long, too-skinny legs that made her look a little like a candy apple on toothpicks today. But when she got her teenage growth spurt, and that torso stretched out to match the limbs....well, watch out, Dad.
Ohhhh. When Pennyâs gaze finally shifted to Dad, she felt a small kick beneath her ribs. What a wonderful face...and the rest of him wasnât bad, either.
His coloring wasnât dramaticâthe daughter must have inherited that from Mom. He was brown-haired, with hints of honey in the strands, and a similar honeyed stubble on his cheeks and chin. His eyes, too, were brownâthey caught the light through the window, and glowed amber, rich, a lot like the caramel sliding down her ice cream right now.
But he didnât need to be painted with bold colors to be memorable. He oozed powerâit was in the jut of his cheekbones, the knife-edge of his jaw, the full sensuality of his lips. And in that body. If he didnât work outdoors, he must work out indoors...about twenty hours a day.
Something else made her lower her legal pad, uncap her pen and start to sketch, though. Not the power. She wasnât impressed by powerâin fact, it repelled her. No, what her pen flew across the page trying to capture was something less easily defined. Something in the curve of his neck, or maybe it was the elegant slide of light across his cheek, twinkling like a hint of magic in those tiny, unshaven shadows.
She bit her lower lip, frustrated. The pen wasnât subtle enough; she needed charcoals, or watercolor. Or was watercolor too insipid? Pen and ink, maybe, would find the tightrope balance between sweetness and strength.
Suddenly, the sweetness took the upper hand. Oh, he was smiling, and that changed everything! A hint of rascal in the slight overbite, but a rush of kindness and harmony in the open lips, a torrent of sensuality in the wide expanse of...
Her pen froze. He wasnât just smiling. He was smiling at her.
He was watching her watch him.
Which, she realized as she stared at her pad, she must have been doing for quite a while. The drawing was taking shape, filling in with detail. It wouldnât be mistaken for anyone or anything but him.
Her cheeks burned as she realized his daughter was watching her, too. How long had she been in her trance, drawing while the rest of the world disappeared? Father and daughter had already ordered, and the little girl was even now sucking absently on the straw of an ice-cream float while she stared at Penny.
Nervously, Penny set down the pad and pulled the top pages over to cover her sketch. She tried to make the movement look natural, but she knew it was hopeless.
âWhy were you drawing my dad?â The girl frowned, pointing her float toward the notebook, as if to prevent Penny from denying it.
âEllen. Donât be rude,â the man said, still smiling. He reached out to pull back his daughterâs outthrust glass, but she made a petulant sound and lurched clear of him in one willful, rebellious motion.
Her fatherâs grip had obviously been gentle, so the force was twice what she needed to break free. The results were disastrous. Ice cream and root beer and whipped cream flew everywhere.
Everywhere. Across the girlâs hand, onto the floor, onto her shoesâand even onto her dadâs crisp white shirt and golden suede jacket.
Her cheeks flamed red. âNow look what you did,â the girl said, obviously covering her embarrassment with aggression.
Oh, no, donât make him look a foolâespecially not with strangers to witness the disrespect! Pennyâs chest tightened, and her stomach did a dizzy swooping thing. She didnât dare look at the father. Though the girl was bratty, Pennyâs heart ached for her, and she wished she could prevent what must be coming.
But several seconds passed, and she heard nothing. No yelling, no curses, not even a cold, scathing reprimand. Penny glanced up. To her surprise the child was disappearing into the ladiesâ room, and the father calmly tugged napkins out of the dispenser.
âAh, man, Iâm sorry,â Danny said, running a dishrag under some water. âIâll make her another one. No charge.â
Yeah, right. Penny tightened again, thinking how unlikely it was that the father would reward such rudeness with a second chance at ice cream.
âDonât be silly,â the man said in a pleasant tone, surprising Penny so completely she felt her lower jaw sag. âOf course weâll pay for it. But make it a double, okay? And what the heck. Iâll have one, too.â
And just like that, Pennyâs tension drained away, as if someone had pulled the stopper out. She felt a wave of irrational happiness wash in after it. The happiness was irrational because logically, just one nice man, one patient fatherâthat didnât change anything, not for her. She had grown up with a terrifying father, and she still had the emotional scars to prove it.
This man was no one to herâshe didnât even know his name. But he was...well, right now he felt like hope personified. He was the rainbow after the storm, the unicorn emerging from the forest, the olive branch that proved land still existed, land that an exhausted sailor might someday reach.
Right now, she absolutely loved this beautiful, beautiful man.
Impulsively, she stood. Heâd run out of napkins, and he still had whipped cream flecked across his neck and under his chin. He probably didnât even realize it. She extracted a dozen napkins from the dispenser on her table and moved toward him.
Danny was absorbed in making the new floats.
âHere,â she said as she reached the counter. âLet me help with that. Youâve still got a spot, hereââ She stood on tiptoe. He was tall. âAnd here.â
She leaned in.
Number Ten. Kiss a total stranger.
This was perfect. Not an artificial check mark on an arbitrary list. She wanted to kiss him. For daughters everywhere, including the angry kid in the bathroom, and the terrified little girl she herself once had been, Penny wanted to give him a heartfelt thank-you kiss.
On the cheek, of course. She shut her eyes. Her lips tingled, anticipating the soft bristles of his stubble. He smelled sweet, as if heâd been traveling in a perfume-filled car. But not a grown womanâs perfume. A pink-cotton-candy perfumeâthe kind a ten-year-old would wear.
Cotton candy and honey bristles... Something fluttered in her belly. How could such a combination be sensual?
But as she moved in, he must have shifted his face toward her, because her impetuous kiss landed not on soft bristles, but on the warm, ridged flesh of his lips.
She inhaled sharply, opening her eyesâand found herself staring into the deep pools of his. She had connected with the edge of his mouth, not the center, where the sharply drawn bow formed. But still...she felt the warmth of the stiff rim around the velvet flesh. She felt the minty heat of his surprised breath.
For a minute, she couldnât pull away.
He didnât, either. For a second, a few secondsâit was hard to tell, because time seemed as sticky and easily stretched as the caramel on her sundaeâthey stood there, joined by shocked eyes and warm, half-open mouths.
He made a low sound, a primitive sound that could be identified in any country, on any planet, as pleasure. But he didnât dive in, snatching the opportunity lewdly, as some men might have done. Instead, he slowly, almost imperceptibly, tilted his head to the right...then delicately drew it back again to the left.
The subtle movement caused his lips to brush hers with an excruciating tingle. All through her body, nerve endings reacted, as if heâd put a match to her mouth. Her cheeks flamed. Her chest radiated heat like a sunburst. Her heart couldnât remember exactly what to do, and thumped around in her chest, confused.
Surely the whole thing didnât last more than two or three seconds. Danny hadnât even finished churning ice cream into the floats. Two or three seconds, and thenâit might have been prearrangedâthey both pulled back at the same moment. She had to work hard to steady her breathing, as if sheâd been jogging, and she felt the strangest urge to adjust her untouched clothes and smooth her unruffled hair.
In contrast, he looked surprised but utterly calm. His caramel eyes were smiling. The outside corners tilted up, managing to look quizzical and delighted at the same time.
âIâm not sure what I did to deserve that,â he said in low, pleasant tones. âBut I hope youâll tell me...so that I can do it again.â
âIt isnât what you did,â she said awkwardly, backing up a step. âItâs what you didnât do.â
âWhat I didnât do?â
She tried to laugh, tried to match his composure, though she suddenly felt utterly ridiculous. Heâd never understand. He probably had no idea what some fathers were capable of doing to a daughter who got mouthy and rude.
She let her gaze drift to the hallway where his daughter had disappeared only two or three minutes before. âI guess I wanted to thank you, on behalf of all the clumsy, fussy little girls out there, for not losing your temper.â
For a minute he looked truly confused. His brows drew together a fraction of an inch, and he tilted his head one degree. âOver ice cream?â
âPartly ice cream.â She raised her eyebrows. âBut mostly...attitude.â
âAh. The attitude.â He sobered slightly. âWell, weâve got kind of a special case, becauseââ
âDad, letâs go.â
The little girl had emerged, still scowling, clearly not happy to see her father talking to Penny. At the same moment Danny came around the counter, big silver containers in both hands, whipped cream oozing in snowy rivers down the sides.
âHere you go!â He beamed. âExtra whipped cream, extra cherries, I even threw in some jimmies.â
He tilted one of the floats, eager to show off the happy face heâd made with cherries and sprinklesâand he almost lost his grip on the slippery vessel. For a few laughing, chaotic seconds, both father and daughter were absorbed in trying to make the transfer without upsetting another drink.
Penny took advantage of that moment to slip out, her legal pad tucked safely under her arm.
Yes, she was running away. But it didnât feel like the same kind of cowardice sheâd hated in herself earlier. It was more...preservation of something inexplicably special.
She simply couldnât bear to let the girl start quizzing her again about why sheâd been drawing Dad. And, for whatever reason, she didnât want the frozen-time beauty of their accidental kiss to become...ordinary.
She moved quickly, let the door fall shut on the chimes behind her, and then turned left, making her way toward her car.
Time to go to Bell River. She could handle it now. She felt, in fact, as if she could handle anything.
Still hugging her legal pad, she took a deep breath of the crisp August afternoon air. She felt so buoyant she had to make a conscious effort not to skip, or break into song.
She might have made a fool of herself in there, but looking foolish hadnât killed her.
In fact, it had made her sizzle and pop inside. As if Danny had put her under the soda water spigot and injected her with fizzy carbonation. She felt free.
The idea of freedom was so new, and at the same time so old, that she laughed out loud. A saleslady who had been arranging flowers in front of a store looked up with a cautious smile.
âMay I help you?â
âNo, thanks,â Penny said, smiling. âIâm fine. I know exactly what I want.â
And, for the first time in years, that was true. She did know what she wanted.
She wanted to be herself.
* * *
MAX TWIRLED THE rusted pressure relief valve at the top of the cottageâs water heater carefully. Ellen had tried to grab a quick shower earlier, but turning the spigot had triggered a series of banging, popping noises. Sounded like sediment buildup to Max.
Since theyâd arrived in town almost a week early, he couldnât blame their landlady for the problem. And since it was Saturday, he couldnât expect a plumber to come out on a momentâs noticeânot without charging a fortune in overtime.
