Losing Penny (9 page)

From
Hans and the Sunstone

Drake tripped over
a running shoe. An impossibly small running shoe. Two grayish socks
lay on the floor, neither of them anywhere near its mate. He stood
in the middle of the room, folded his arms, and wondered if his
plan was already backfiring.

He heard running water shut off, telling him
that Penny must be in the shower. He envisioned her in the steamy
room and immediately, although reluctantly, shut down the image.
Scooping up the shoes, he tucked the still damp socks into them,
then watched the bathroom door. There was only one bathroom. They’d
have to share. In his thirty-three years Drake had never had to
share a bathroom, or pretty much anything else. Ever. He sat down
on the sofa, trying to think of things he had to share. Nada. It
was the result of being an only child with a doting mother and a
workaholic father.

Drake considered the shoes in his hands—could
this really be the first time he’d picked up after someone else? He
sat down on the sofa, a strategic position where he could watch
Penny leave the bathroom. He told himself he should go to the
kitchen and start writing about Marx’s years at the lumber mill,
but he couldn’t make himself do it. He wanted to watch Penny.

He abruptly stood and stomped into the
kitchen. Living with her would be torture, so why do this to
himself? This was craziness. He turned on his laptop and stared at
the screen. Yes, he didn’t want to spend the summer fighting off
Melinda’s claws, but now that Melinda knew he was married, Penny
could disappear. She had already provided all the value he needed.
As soon as she came down, he would tell her to leave.

The bathroom door opened. The escaped moist
air smelled of vanilla and ginger. Oh, he could
not
do this.
She came down the stairs and stood before him with wet, curly hair.
She had no make-up on and her skin was rosy from her shower. She
had no idea what her cutoff jeans and T-shirt did to his
imagination.

“I’ve been thinking,” she said.

“Congratulations.” He tried to sound flip,
but he worried that he just sounded like an oaf, but she couldn’t
stay, she had to go. And soon.

“If this is going to work, we need some
ground rules.”

Drake didn’t do rules. Oh, he had rules in
his class, because he made those up himself, but no one else made
rules for Drake. He leaned back in his chair, curious. She must
have taken this as an invitation, because she sat down across from
him.

“We need a chore chart.”

“We’re not kindergartners,” he said. “We’re
grownups capable of picking up our own shoes and socks.”

Penny’s gaze went to her sneakers and a frown
flickered across her face. “I thought we could take turns making
dinner and doing the dishes.”

“We can feed ourselves and clean up after
ourselves.” He paused, realizing that he should be telling her to
leave. “You’ll be responsible for your dog.”

“Well, of course I’m responsible for the
dog!”

Maybe if he made her mad, she’d leave on her
own. He sighed. He should probably be more upfront. He was after
all an English professor, words were his thing. He was good at
verbalizing and communicating. He needed to look Penny in the face
and tell her that living together as faux husband and wife was a
very bad plan, and although it had been his plan, it was still bad.
Instead he said, “I’ll take the right side of the fridge and you
can have the left.”

A hurt expression crossed her face as she
turned away. “Fine.”

He knew that “fine” in female-speak didn’t
actually mean “fine.” In Drake’s experience with women “fine”
usually meant “shut up, you moronic boor.”

***

After several hours in the company of Don
Marx and few more with Vikings, Drake left his computer and
notebook and followed his nose into the kitchen where he found
Penny chopping onions. Her camera was on the counter and her laptop
was on the table. A smiling, chubby Penny, draped in scarves and
wearing a beret, stood in front of the Eiffel Tower.

She looked over her shoulder at him. “I’m in
Paris today, so I’m making French Onion soup.”

“And yet, here you are.” He settled down in
front of her laptop and scrolled through recent
Losing Penny and
Pounds
blog posts. Dublin: whiskey stew. London: Yorkshire
pudding. “How do you make a low-fat pudding?”

“Yorkshire pudding isn’t actually a pudding,
it’s more like a dumpling…cooked in fat.”

“So, I repeat my question.”

Drake braced his chin in his hand, reading
Penny’s blog. She had a light, breezy tone. She was charming. For a
moment, he really believed she was in London or Paris. “This is
really a terrific bit of fiction.”

“Thanks,” she said, a little tersely, still
chopping onions. She had the windows open and a fan blowing, but
her eyes still ran. She wiped a tear with a corner of her apron,
and he wondered if the onions could take all the blame for her red
eyes.

“It’s a bit elaborate, isn’t it—this
charade?”

Penny picked up her cutting board and slid
the chopped onions into a pot of boiling broth. “I don’t want this
to sound sexist, but I honestly think that men, especially those
like you who are over six feet tall, have absolutely no idea what
it feels like to be a woman.”

Drake shifted in his chair. She made his size
sound like a crime.

She continued, “You really can’t grasp a
woman’s feelings of defenselessness.”

Drake touched his swollen lip. “You aren’t so
defenseless.”

“I’m five-foot-four on a good day.” She took
a deep breath. “Have you ever heard of Watchdog?”

“Of course—the watches that are also homing
devices.”

She nodded, stirred her soup, then sipped the
broth. She splashed apple cider into the pot. “It also has a panic
alarm.”

“Every girl between the ages of three and
fifteen wears them,” he said.

She smiled as she stirred. “Originally, they
were big, black and ugly. I made them cute.”

Drake leaned back in his chair, no longer
interested in Penny’s blog. “
You
made them cute?”

“My brother invented the Watchdog and I
designed them.” Penny picked up a wedge of cheese and began to
grate.

“So cooking—”

“It’s more fun than necessity. Not unlike
eating.”

Mentally, he tried to total Penny’s net
worth—a cooking show, a cookbook in progress, part owner/creator of
the Watchdog—no wonder she had a stalker. It surprised him she
didn’t have herds of penniless, no pun intended, men crawling after
her. Drake felt his own slim wallet keenly. He sighed,
acknowledging that poets are rarely rich.

She held out a spoon to him, the same one
he’d watched her slurp from not one minute ago. “Taste?” she
asked.

She was beautiful in that unassuming,
lighthearted way. And rich. He really didn’t need this temptation.
He liked her better when she was lost, barefoot, and half naked in
the moonlight. He shook his head.

“Are you sure?” She inched closer, spoon
still extended. “Even though it’s low calorie it’s very good.”

Drake leaned away. “How can it be low calorie
when you’re about to suffocate it with cheese?”

“Nonfat cheese.” She stood so close their
knees were practically touching.

“You’re a consummate liar.”

Turning away, she put the spoon in her mouth
and hummed.

“So, what does your genius brother think of
your stalker?” Drake asked her backside.

“He doesn’t know,” she answered without
looking at him. “I haven’t told him. It would make him
bonkers.”

“How can he not know? Even I know. I Googled
your name and found the police reports.”

“Why would Richard Google me? He talks to me
every day.”

“Every day?”

“Well, he used to. He doesn’t now because
he’s sulking in Alaska. It’s a little strange.” She pulled a loaf
of whole grain wheat bread from a grocery sack and put it on the
cutting board.

“You miss him?”

She shrugged as she sliced the bread. “For
years it was just the two of us. I would have told him about the
Lurk if he hadn’t been so preoccupied with his wedding plans.”

“The Lurk?”

“My pet name for my stalker.”

And just like that he couldn’t imagine
leaving her alone at the beach house. What was she thinking coming
out here by herself? Her brother would kill her if he knew, that is
if someone with the pet name of the Lurk didn’t do it for him
first.

“Penny, come with me tonight to the Marx’s
party.”

She shook her head.

“Why not?”

“So I can run interference between you and
Melinda? No, thank you.”

“What are you going to do instead?”

“Read.”

That caught his interest. “Oh? What are you
reading?”

She laughed. “
Widow Snivel and the
Disappearing Man
.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“Absolutely. I love the Snivel Drivel.” She
looked over her shoulder at him. “We can’t all sit around reading
the fine words of Don Marx.”

He groaned.

“Have you read any of the Snivel?” She
laughed at him and it made her breasts jiggle.

Drake told himself not watch her jiggle, but
he couldn’t help it. He wanted to make her laugh again. He
had
to make her laugh again, but for the second time in one
day, words failed him.

“Come with me,” he urged without even being a
little bit funny or witty. “Please.” Now he just sounded
pathetic.

She turned back to her soup. “Absolutely
not.”

He looked around at the chaos she’d created.
“If you come, I’ll clean the kitchen.”

Her knife froze midair. Ah, a weakness. Drake
grinned.

The more people are around us, the more we
tend to eat; if we have seven or more friends around us, we eat
double the amount of food than when alone. At a party, try the six
steps away strategy, which is simply to stay six feet away from
temptation.

From
Losing Penny and Pounds

“Why am I here?”
Penny whispered to Drake as they stood on the edge of the Marx’s
property. Tables dotted the grounds and twinkly lights lit the
trees. In a variety of colors and sizes, paper lanterns hung from
the gazebo and patio shade. Each table glowed with a collection of
candles. The night’s beauty took Penny’s breath away.

“Because I invited you.” Drake picked up her
hand and tucked it around his arm. He felt warm and stable while
she felt chilled and wobbly.

“These parties have grown up since I was a
girl,” Penny said as they moved to the cluster of people on the
stone patio.

“Are you surprised Melinda didn’t recognize
you?”

“Not really. She was older than me.” She
added in a smaller, quieter voice, “And oh so beautiful.”

Drake slipped his arm around her waist. Penny
knew it was all playacting, but she still felt grateful to have him
beside her.

But more than the parties had grown up.
Trevor Marx, the object of her first and very prolonged puppy love
crush, stood near the fireplace, looking larger and stronger than
she remembered. Of course, the last time she’d seen him, he’d only
been eighteen, but he was one of the reasons Penny looked forward
to coming back to Rose Arbor every year. Aunt Mae had said he’d
left without graduating from high school and joined the Marines. He
had been the bane of his parents’ existence. She hadn’t expected
him to be here.

His gaze flicked through the crowd. He looked
bored and disinterested until his attention landed on her. She
smiled and lifted her hand, then realized he wouldn’t recognize her
since her dramatic weight loss. But the fact was that he might not
have recognized her anyway, and that hurt. And although she wasn’t
that chubby girl anymore, she felt fifteen and tongue-tied as
Trevor walked toward her.

“Something wrong?” Drake asked.

Penny clutched his arm and remembered that
Drake was her supposed husband, and she wasn’t Penny, she was
Magdalena. Oh, this was too stupid. Finally, Trevor Marx was
walking her way, smiling at her,
noticing
her, and she had a
pretend husband on her arm.

Penny’s mind raced. “I don’t know if I can do
this,” she whispered. “What if someone asks us questions? I’m not a
good liar. In fact, I’m a terrible liar.”

Drake laughed and pulled her closer to him.
“How can you say that? You’re a master liar. Aren’t you, even as we
speak, traveling the world, blogging your adventures, and
chronicling your meals?” He spoke in her ear, his breath warm
against her neck.

“That’s different,” Penny whispered back,
twitching a hair away.

She did some mental math. If she was
thirty-three, Trevor had to be at least thirty-six. For all she
knew he was married with six children, or maybe he had thirty-six
cats. People change and he’d been in the military. War changes
people. In fact, most wounds weren’t visible. She relaxed a
fraction when Trevor stopped to chat with a tiny blonde with a
Yorkie tucked in a pink handbag.

Penny hated it when people dressed their dogs
in jewels and carried them in purses. She knew there were far
greater forms of animal cruelty, but making a dog an accessory
bothered her. Or maybe tiny blondes batting their eyelashes at
Trevor Marx bothered her. Penny tightened her grip on Drake’s
arm.

“We need a story,” Penny told Drake. “We need
to know more about each other. I don’t even know what you like to
drink.”

“Virgil’s root beer,” he told her. “Anything
else?”

“Root beer?” This surprised her, and if root
beer could surprise her, then surely a million other bits of Drake
trivia could surprise her as well.

“Don’t worry,” he patted her back. “We’ll
tell the truth about my marriage to Magdalena.” He looked around.
“It was very brief, very disastrous, and fortunately no one around
here ever met her.”