Penn
“Relax. I’m not driving you off a cliff. I’m not sure if anyone’s told you this, but there is humankind outside of Chicago,” I told Cora as we pulled out of the parking garage.
Unconvinced, she nodded, anchored her hand to my thigh, and went to work worrying her necklace like she had a vendetta against it.
Twenty hours later, while the gate slid open, revealing the tall, three-story house I’d shared with Lisa, she was offering me reassurance.
“Relax. I’m right here.”
We left Chicago the very same day as the news broke about Manuel.
He was still on the loose. But, regardless of how small the world felt sometimes, it was actually a very large place. So, rather than sitting around and waiting for Thomas to make his move, we’d decided to take the girls and get the hell out of Dodge. If Thomas wanted to find us, he would. Same with Manuel. But I sure as hell was going to make him bring it to my turf—a state where he had little to no connections.
Nothing like thirteen hundred miles to level the playing field.
Going down to Florida had actually been Drew’s idea. Initially, I’d balked at the thought of going back there. I wasn’t real eager to bring Cora to the house I’d shared with Lisa. But it was big enough for all of us, furnished, and far enough away to give us time to figure out our next move.
He hadn’t said it yet, but I knew Drew well enough to see that he had no intention of staying in Florida. While Cora and the promise of a future together had rearranged my personal priorities, Drew still had his heart set on vengeance. I had not a single doubt that, one day, we were all going to wake up to find him gone. This meant, if I was going to try to talk him out of going after Thomas alone, I had to act fast.
We weren’t sure what to do with Catalina’s information yet. If Manuel was out there, gathering the troops, our taking Thomas down in the eyes of the law was only going to put a bigger spotlight on Catalina. The media would have had a field day with that story.
Our best bet was to lie low for a few days, maybe a week, and see if the cops could do their damn jobs for once. If we could get Manuel out of the picture again, I was willing to do whatever I had to—including knocking his ass out—to keep Drew from going after Thomas before Catalina had the shot.
Drew wasn’t my brother according to DNA, but he was my family all the same. I couldn’t stand the idea of losing him. That was part of the reason why all those years ago, when we’d first decided to find Lisa’s murderer, I’d declared that I was the man who was going to kill him.
Yes, I absolutely, with my whole heart, wanted that asshole dead.
But I didn’t want Drew going down for it.
I shot Cora an appreciative smile, lifted our joined hands to my lips, and kissed her knuckle.
She was actually there.
A few days earlier, having her at my side again was more than I’d ever hoped for.
Though I’d never once considered bringing her to this house. Much less bringing all of them.
“Holy crap,” River breathed from the back seat.
Which was followed by Savannah saying, “Daddy, I’m going to need a bathing suit. Stat.”
Isabel giggled, but much like during the entire trip down, she didn’t say anything. The kid was quiet. Eerily so. But then again, when you had to compete for oxygen with the likes of River and Savannah, it was a wonder she could find the air to giggle.
Drew suddenly appeared at my window, making the universal roll-down-your-window cranking motion. He and Catalina had followed us down in my Audi. I’d assumed only one of them would make it through the trip alive, but I caught sight of Catalina folding out too.
“What?” I snapped when I got the window down.
“We gonna camp out here or are you planning to actually drive inside?”
I glanced back at the house. I hadn’t been there in years. The day I’d left, I’d sworn I’d never return. There were too many ghosts.
Lisa and I had been married for a few years when we’d renovated that house. We’d bought it as a foreclosure when the market tanked and then gutted it. We’d customized every inch of those six thousand square feet, from windows to walls, including a massive home theater over the garage. There was no way for me to walk back through those doors without seeing Lisa everywhere.
But, thanks to Cora, that part was manageable. After so many years of not even being able to utter her name, I’d smiled more than once when Cora had told a story about her old friend Lexy.
The ghosts waiting for me inside those four walls were the memories of me on my knees in our bedroom, watching her take her final breath on the screen of my phone. I remembered those twenty-nine minutes all too clearly. Lisa hadn’t been in that house when she died. But I had. And I hated it because it was all I could think about after I’d lost her.
Those memories had ruined any happiness I’d felt in that house. Like how she’d decorate the whole damn thing, top to bottom, every nook and cranny, at Christmas each year. Or how, at Easter, she would force me to stay up with her all night long, stuffing a million plastic eggs with candy to hide up and down the beach for the tourists and locals alike.
No, those weren’t the memories that had hit my stomach the minute that house had come into view.
Blood.
Carpet.
Screaming.
I hadn’t been able to sell it though. It was all that was left of her.
But I also couldn’t live there. I had caretakers who made sure it stayed clean and repairs got done on time. I’d called and given them a heads-up that we were coming into town. I think they were just as shocked by that phone call as I was.
But there I was. Cora at my side. My heart was in my throat as I sat in the driveway, unable to drive through the gate.
I looked at Drew. “Honestly, I’m not sure yet.”
“Okay, well, you mind if we go inside? Cat needs to use the bathroom. I’ve been listening to her complain about it for the last hour.”
“Oh, me too!” Savannah said, tapping on my seat. “Let me out.”
“That’s a great idea,” Cora said, climbing out to open the back door. “All of you, go with Drew. Penn and I will be up in a few.”
“Can we go down to the beach?” River asked excitedly.
None of them had ever seen the ocean. It was the only part about that trip I wasn’t dreading. I got damn near giddy each time I thought about Cora’s face when I took her out to the water. The girls’ too.
“Wait on me for that,” I answered. “There’s a pool out back that you can hit up while you wait.” I reached back and caught Savannah’s arm before she had the chance to slide out. “Wear shorts and a tank top until we get you a bathing suit—none of that panty-and-bra shit.”
She grinned, her green eyes sparkling with trouble. “Make it two bathing suits and you got a deal.”
I arched an eyebrow. “One bathing suit of my choosing. No panty and bra shit. And twenty-four hours with no television.”
Her mouth fell open. “That’s not a better deal!”
“Then maybe you should stop trying to make deals with me and do what I say.”
“Penn, a bathing suit of your choosing is going to be a bathrobe.”
“Right? Just imagine how fly you’ll look on the beach this summer.”
She curled her lip. “Did you say fly? Nobody says fly anymore.”
My mouth twitched as I suppressed an unlikely smile. I loved that kid. She was a pain in my ass every minute of every day. If she wasn’t arguing with me or pushing my buttons, she wasn’t living at all. But she was a good kid. With a good heart, and I was going to make damn sure she had a good future.
“They will when they see you in your bathrobe.”
“Cora,” she whined, begging for backup.
“Okay, okay, you two. Simmer down,” Cora said, wading in. “I’ll take you bathing suit shopping.”
“Who says you’re not going to be wearing a bathrobe too?” I asked her, my chest filling with warmth.
I loved that crazy woman too. On the drive down, we’d played a seven-hour-long game of Truth or Lie. Which for us was really a game of Truth. We swapped stories, strategically trying to stay away from the heavy stuff.
When Cora had eventually fallen asleep, River took over for her mom.
Before we’d left, Cora had made the tough decision for us to tell River about Lisa being Lexy. I’d have given anything to spare that little girl from more pain. But since we were heading to the beach house, where pictures of her were still hanging on the walls, there was no way to hide it. River had taken the news in stride, putting on a brave face and saying that she understood.
But the minute we were semi alone in that truck while everyone else slept, she laid into me with an interrogation. It was obvious she’d cared about Lisa more than I’d realized because most of her questions were disguised statements blaming me for what had happened to her. But there was no amount of blame in the world River could pin on me that I hadn’t already taken on myself.
So I told her, “River, what you have to understand is I didn’t let Lisa do anything. I was her husband. It wasn’t up to me to decide how she lived her life. The only thing that role guaranteed me was the chance to live mine at her side. She knew exactly how I felt about her doing that kind of investigative work. And guess what? She did it anyway because that was important to her. You walk into a marriage thinking you can change the other person, I can promise you the only thing that is going to change is your divorce record. She was who she was. There are a lot of things that I beat myself up for on a daily basis. But how I let her chase her dreams is not one of them. That was never up to me.”
She got quiet for a while after that, until she softly asked, “Are you going to let Cora chase her dreams too?”
I glanced at Cora while she was peacefully snoozing with her head propped against the door and replied, “No. Your mom has done enough chasing to last a lifetime. From here on out, whatever she dreams about, I’m gonna figure out a way to give it to her.”
“My dad gave her the stars,” River replied.
Nic Guerrero had given Cora shit, but I wasn’t about to tell his daughter that.
Instead, I shrugged, “I guess that means all there is left is the moon.”
She’d smiled and then stared out the window for the next fifty miles. I knew because I’d smiled and stared in the rearview mirror at her.
Silently, I watched as all the girls got out of my truck and clambered up the driveway to the house, Drew and Catalina leading the mission.
Cora was fast to get back into the truck, and her hand came right back to mine, intertwining our fingers like she’d never left.
“You want to talk about it or just sit here for a while?” she asked.
I did not—in any way, shape, or form—deserve that woman.
But I was going to keep her for as long as she would have me.
With a sigh, I dropped my head back against the headrest and turned to face her. “This has to be weird for you. Being here. Her stuff is still in the closet, ya know? I’ve never done anything with this place since she died. I don’t know why I brought you here. We should rent a condo or something.”
She grinned. “You want me to say I’m uncomfortable so you don’t have to go in there?”
She knew me too well.
Chuckling, I lifted my finger in the air and pinched them together. “A little.”
“Okay. But, Penn, you slept under Nic’s stars for months. You made love to me while I was wearing his necklace. And you’ve taken care of his daughter without a second of hesitation. You think women’s clothing in a closet is going to bother me?”
I smirked. “There’s pictures too. Like one from our wedding on the mantel.”
“You told me on our first date that you’d been married before. I promise I won’t be shocked to see that a photographer captured still images of that momentous occasion. However, like I said, if you want me to say I’m uncomfortable to make you feel comfortable, I’m on it. But I have spent twenty hours in this truck, so I’m going to need the next place to be close by.”
Laughing, I turned my gaze back onto the house. It was a nice house. A really nice house, right on the beach. But it hadn’t been my home in years. If I was being honest, the only place I’d felt anything even remotely resembling a home was Cora’s old apartment. But that had less to do with the structure and more to do with the woman and kids inside of it.
I’d grieved.
I’d moved on.
I’d met the only woman who could have ever saved me.
But pain was funny like that. It stained your soul long after you had healed.
And, being there, a part of me was waiting for that pain to reappear and consume me all over again.
But then I looked at Cora.
Her face was soft as she stared back at me.
Her lips were tipped up, gentle but teasing.
Her hair was in a messy ponytail that she’d probably yell at me for not telling her just how messy it truly was.
How had I found something so good in the middle of something so, so bad?
Giving her hand a tug, I pulled her across the center console. I caught the back of her neck, meeting her halfway for an all-too-brief kiss, before mumbling against her lips, “I love you. And if you’re comfortable being here, I’m comfortable being wherever you are.”
She hummed, “Oh, my sweet Penn. Your cheesy lines are getting better. I’m impressed.”
I nipped at her bottom lip. “Your jokes are not.”
“So, what do you want to do? I’m really fine if you can’t stay here. The girls will be crushed, Drew will bitch, and Catalina will pout.” She put her hand to her chest. “But I, Penn Pennington, will be fine.”
That was enough for me.
I laughed, putting the truck into drive.
I could do this.
I could make new memories.
Of Cora.
Of River.
Of Savannah.
Maybe even a few of Penn.
“My name is not Penn Pennington.” I eased on the accelerator until we rolled through the gate.
She laughed, loud and carefree.
And after we’d parked, climbed the back steps, and then walked through the door together, those twenty-nine minutes of memories didn’t assault me.
Not with her smiling up at me.
“Oh my God! Did you feel that?” she cried, wiggling in my arms when another wave crashed into us. Her legs were wrapped around my hips, two scraps of fabric dividing us, my cock painfully hard. But as River and Isabel chased Savannah across the beach with a piece of wet sea grass, there was not the first damn thing I could do about it.
“You had to buy a fucking bikini, didn’t you?” I grumbled for no less than the twentieth time since we’d gotten back from the beach shop.
“Could you stop worrying about what I’m wearing and more about the shark who is about to tear my legs off?”
“What shark?” I reached behind me and tickled the bottom of her foot.
She screamed at the top of her lungs, fighting to get away, but I refused to let her go.
Turns out, Cora couldn’t swim.
Neither could River.
Or Savannah.
Having grown up on the water, where people taught their babies to swim before they could talk, I’d never considered they wouldn’t know how.
But I’d guessed, in Chicago, it wasn’t as imperative.
“That was not funny,” she scolded.
“Oh, come on. It was a little funny.”
She swung her head from one side to the other. “Why can’t I see the bottom? Aren’t you supposed to see the bottom?”
I barked a laugh, sliding my hands down to cup her ass. “Maybe if we were in the Keys.”
“Okay, so let’s go there. This place is scary.”
I spun in a fast circle, the sand tunneling beneath my feet, Cora clinging to my neck. “It’s a two-hour drive, baby.”
“Penn, stop!”
She had hated every minute of it since I’d dragged her into the water.
Every shell she stepped on was a crab and every swish of the water was a jellyfish.
I’d held her captive out there for a full thirty minutes, laughing the whole time.
It never got old. However, it was becoming blatantly clear that a life on the beach was not in our future. Maybe a winter home where we could escape the cold and she could sit on the deck, sipping a cup of coffee, and watching the waves roll in.
But if not Chicago.
And not Florida.
Where?
“Where do you want to live?” I asked, heading back to the shallow waters.
She continued searching the murky water for the invisible shark. “What do you mean?”
“When this is all over, Thomas and Manuel are either sharing a cell or a grave, and we finally get to start a life together, where do you want to live?”
Her eyebrows drew together as her gaze bounced to mine. “What are my choices?”
“Ummm…planet Earth. I’ve got money, but not Mars money. And at the rate I’ve been going, I won’t even have Earth money in a few years, so I’ll probably need to find a job at some point, so let’s attempt to keep it somewhere with English as the first language.”
When we reached waist-level—for her—I set her on her feet.
She cringed when her toes hit the sand, but if I had any hope of deflating my hard-on in the next, oh, million years, I needed to stop her from rubbing against it with every step. I dropped to my knees so as not to scandalize the public beach.
“You good?” I asked.
She straightened her back. “Yeah. I could probably run from a shark if he got any ideas. This feels more solid than liquid here.”
Underwater, I clamped my hand down on her calf and she jumped straight in the air, letting out an ear-piercing shriek.
I roared with laughter and she splashed water in my face.
“Dammit, Penn.”
“Okay. Okay. Okay.” I lifted my hands in surrender. “I promise: no more fucking with you.” I rose to my feet when the stretch of my swim trunks told me it was safe and tossed my arm around her shoulders. “So, seriously, where do you want to live?”
She reached up, caught my hand dangling over her shoulder, and laced our fingers. Together, we started toward the shore. Catalina and Drew were chilling with beers under an umbrella. Oh, so casual for a man on a suicide mission and a shattered woman with a taste for psychological warfare.
“I don’t know,” Cora said. “Cat and I had talked about Seattle when I finished my degree.”
My eyebrows popped up. Seattle was amazing, but it didn’t strike me as Cora’s scene. Then again, I wasn’t sure what her scene was. She’d always been such a homebody by necessity.
I abruptly stopped walking, pulling her up short with me. “Seattle?”
She shrugged. “There’s a lot of coffee there. It’s like my personal Bat-Signal.”
“There’s coffee everywhere, babe. Not sure that should be your only prerequisite for where you settle. But if Seattle is what you want, I’m down.” I slanted my head when a thought donned on me. “Wait… Do you want to get married?”
Her whole body jolted, including her eyes, which flashed comically wide.
“Wait. Wait. Wait. That wasn’t a proposal,” I clarified. “I’m not asking if you want to marry me.”
The only thing more humorous than her wide eyes was her palpable disappointment.
My chest didn’t just warm. It ignited in an all-out wildfire. And not like the one that had been roaring inside me for the last four years. This one was a controlled burn, destroying all the debris, creating room for new growth.
She wanted to be with me.
And fuck me, but I wanted to be with her more than I’d wanted anything in my entire life: Cora, food, water, shelter. In that order.
But I didn’t need a marriage certificate or a ring on her finger to make that come to fruition.
I just needed her.
Curling her into my side, I kissed the top of her head. “Relax. I’m not asking yet, okay? It occurred to me that we’ve spent so much time discussing the past that I never found out what you want out of life. We’ve talked about you finishing college and getting your degree, but what next? Would you want to get married in general? Not just to me.”
She gave me the side-eye. “I’m not down with polygamy, Penn Pennington.”
I laughed.
Craning her head back, she peered up into my eyes. “Yeah. I’d get married again.” She nudged me with her elbow. “Assuming the right guy asked.”
I grinned down at her and started walking again. “You want kids?”
She buzzed her lips. “Wow. I honestly don’t know. I never thought I’d have the option again.” Her nose crinkled and she swayed her head from side to side in consideration. “I love kids, but with the way things went the first time, I’d have to feel…safe before taking that leap again.”
Safe. Kids or not. I could give that to her.
I would give that to her. I could give her the most boring, uneventful, simple life in the world. Not usually a selling point for a marriage, but for us, the slow life was exactly what we finally needed.
“You?” she asked, her voice squeaking at the end like she was preparing for the answer.
“I’d love to start a family. Lisa was never interested. It didn’t fit into her lifestyle. I accepted that. But if it were up to me, I’d want a couple.”
“Really?” she whispered.
I nudged her the way she’d done me. “Assuming the right woman said yes.”
Her feet kept moving, but she melted into my side, making me think maybe she’d made her decision on kids too.
“Boys or girls?” she asked.
“Boys. I think getting Savannah and River to adulthood is going to be enough to do my head in.”
“Aww.” She flashed me a smile. “Thank you for always including them. From day one. I can’t tell you how much that means to me.”
“You don’t need to thank me for that, Cora. Spending time with them has not been a hardship.”
“For other men, it would be.”
I shot her a wink. “Then let’s hope none of those other men propose before I do.”
Her cheeks pinked and she turned her attention down to her sandy feet, muttering, “Fingers crossed.”
As we got closer to Drew and Catalina, I squinted, trying to force my brain to make sense of what I was seeing. He was lying on his side, facing her, sporting a huge grin while drizzling wet sand into the palm of her hand. She was laughing, her dark hair blowing in the wind as she sat with her legs stretched out beside him, in a bikini much like Cora’s.
And though they were both wearing shades, it was beyond obvious that there was some serious eye-fucking being exchanged, at least on Drew’s side.
I had no idea what had happened in my Audi on that twenty-hour car ride from Chicago. But if the nightmare in front of me was any indication, the engine exhaust had to have been rerouted into the car and affected both of their brains.
“Hey,” Catalina chirped, jerking her hand away when she tore her eyes off Drew long enough to realize that other people existed.
Fuck. I didn’t want to imagine the epic clusterfuck that would ensue if those two started something.
Drew was a good guy, and while wooing women was definitely his thing, staying with them was not.
“Hey,” I replied gruffly, shooting him a silent what-the-fuck-are-you-doing glare.
It sailed right over his head. “Hey, so, how do you feel about me and Cat taking the girls out to a movie tonight?”
“I don’t. And it’s not happening,” I muttered, releasing Cora to grab two beers from the cooler. I twisted the top off one, passed it her way, and then did the same on mine.
“And why not?” he asked defensively.
I sat on the top of the cooler, patting my thigh in an invitation Cora quickly accepted. As she settled on my lap, I replied, “Because this isn’t a vacation. I have no idea what Thomas and Manuel are up to right now, but it’s better for all of us if we stay tight, keep our heads up, and try to figure out what’s next.”
“Right,” he mumbled in a way that sounded more like fuck you than it did an agreement.
“Oh, I know!” Catalina exclaimed. “What if we rent a movie and watch it in that theater room over the garage?” She waggled her eyebrows. “Maybe give you two some time alone in the house.”
Now, that I could get on board with. If it bought me some much-needed alone time with Cora, Drew and Catalina could eye-fuck all damn night.
“What movie?” Cora asked.
I grazed my teeth over her shoulder. “It doesn’t matter. You’re not watching it.”
Drew grinned and then pushed his sunglasses down his nose, narrowing his gaze on Cora’s feet. “Holy shit, is that a sand shark?”
And that was how I became deaf.
She flew straight up into the air, but not before screaming in my ear. I nearly dropped my beer, and hers spilled all over us both. But Drew and Catalina laughed so hard that it almost made it worth it.
“Baby, chill.” I chuckled, dragging her back down onto my lap. “Sand sharks still live in the ocean.”
“Oh my God! I hate you people—all of you.”
“Hey, what did I do?” Catalina whined.
“You’re laughing,” she spat.
And she was.
And so was Drew.
And then I joined the group.
And it wasn’t but a few seconds later that Cora joined us too.
As it would seem we were one big, happy family.
It wasn’t until a few hours later, as a river of blood forged a path across my living room floor, that I realized it had all been one big fucking lie.