Betrayal (21 page)

“You can
feel
it?” Brooke sounded surprised.

“Like a rifle aimed at the middle of my forehead,” Bao said.

Concerned glances were exchanged.

“Bao is my bodyguard,” Sarah said quietly to Penelope. “When I go outside, she watches over me.”

Bao acknowledged Penelope, then seated herself in an empty chair.

“Bao is not inclined to be fanciful,” Sarah told Penelope.

“Oh.” Thus the heightened sense of tension.

Rafe stood, went to the window, and looked out. “No one in sight?”

“I spoke to the men on the perimeter. No. All quiet. No alarm has been tripped.” Bao bit her lip. “Maybe I’m imagining things? Maybe I’ve been on duty too long?”

“Maybe.” Rafe pulled out his cell phone and stepped out onto the back porch. “But just to be safe, I’ll call in more personnel.”

Sarah sat beside Bao, and Bao returned her smile. Yet Bao did look pale and tired, as if the strain of constant vigilance had worn her down.

Penelope recognized a sense of closeness between Sarah and Bao, like soldiers who every day faced the possibility of combat. She didn’t want to share in that possibility, but she had made the decision to stay—she was committed. She rattled her to-go box. “Does anybody want some of the best pork
tortas
I’ve ever had in my life?”

“Tortas?”
Chloë shut her computer with a distinct click. “Eli and I found this little place across the river called Taquería guadalajara—”

“I found it, too.” Penelope opened the box.

The tension in the kitchen slowly, quietly slid to a more manageable level.

Groans of pleasure greeted the heavenly smell of meat and cumin, onions and jalapeños, beans and guacamole.

Noah, the jerk, didn’t react in any way. He sat unmoving, unsmiling, staring at his hand as Nonna got a serving plate. He didn’t stir as Penelope unpacked the
tortas
. He didn’t glance up, didn’t acknowledge Penelope as she passed them around.

He didn’t eat the food she had brought.

Penelope wanted to smack him. He had asked her to visit his grandmother. She had managed to defuse the tension in the kitchen, and he was thoughtlessly, rudely making everyone uncomfortable.

Or at least… he was making
her
uncomfortable.

Chapter 30

“T
hose went fast!” Sarah disregarded Noah as if he were a sulky boy under her care.

That seemed like an intelligent plan, and Penelope resolved to ignore the big spoilsport, too.

Annie laughed. “Sarah likes to see people eat.”

“What? Like you don’t?” Sarah stood and pulled salad makings out of the refrigerator.

Noah probably was mad about something that had nothing to do with Penelope. She needed to remember that the whole world didn’t revolve around her and her feelings.

“Brooke and Noah, we need you out of the way while we get dinner ready,” Nonna said firmly.

Good. Sarah was shooing Noah out of the kitchen. Penelope would stay right here and help the cooks. She wouldn’t have to look at his bad-tempered face anymore.

“We’re almost done, Nonna. Noah’s stalling because he doesn’t
want to lose this luscious big poker pot to me.” Brooke curved her arm around the pile of poker chips in the middle of the table and smiled at Noah.

An alarm went off on his watch.

He looked at the face.

“What’s that for?” Brooke asked.

“It’s three thirty-seven p.m.,” he said. Like that mattered to anyone.

Confused glances around the room.

“What’s three thirty-seven p.m.?” Eli asked.

“Another day gone.” Noah shut off the alarm. He ignored Brooke, ignored everyone, and looked up into Penelope’s eyes. “I thought we agreed to avoid each other.”

So he was angry at her for being here?

Last time they’d met, at Rafe and Brooke’s home, he had been charming. Interested. Conversational. He had insisted she promise to come and see his grandmother. The fact that she was here was
his fault.

Her own antagonism rose to greet his.

Because really, wasn’t that always the way with Noah? First he loved her; then he hated her. He never knew what he wanted.

With a shrug that rudely dismissed him, she said, “I figured we were both mature adults who could behave in a civilized manner—as long as the group was large enough.”

DuPey laughed, then with a glance at Noah’s expression cut off his amusement.

Noah sat quietly, absorbing her words.

Penelope’s hostility hardened into hatred. Hatred that he had challenged her. Hatred that he dominated the room so that everyone,
everyone
, watched them as if riveted by this Tin Pan Alley drama he had stirred up.

At last, as she shifted, meaning to turn away, he slid
the fan of his cards closed. Put them facedown on the table. “I fold,” he said to Brooke. He stood up. Chips rattled as he pushed the huge pot toward her.

“I knew you were bluffing,” Eli said.

“Then why didn’t you stay in, Eli?” Chloë asked.

“Wait. Look! I’ve got a good hand.” Brooke laid down her cards. “Four of a kind. Sixes! Look!”

Noah paid no heed to his family or to Brooke’s cards. Instead, he fixed his green gaze on Penelope’s face, and like a great hunting cat, he paced toward her.

She refused to back up.

This was stupid. Why antagonize him? He was angry.

About what?

And so what? She was mad, too. Moreover, if his grandmother chose to welcome Penelope to her house, he had no right to behave like the visitor police.…

No, she wasn’t going to retreat.

Although he got very close very quickly, and what from a distance had looked like hostility now looked more like some kind of smoky sexuality, directed at her.

And he
loomed
in an alarming way.…

About the time he got within three steps, she decided she was being stupidly valiant. She’d taken one large step backward when, with a move so swift she never saw it coming, he took hold of her wrist in one powerful hand.

That grip. Hot. Strong. Sure. Familiar. Intoxicating, despite the defense she tried to put up against him, leaving her breathless.

“Come on.” He turned and led her toward the front door. “Let’s talk about how many people we need around us to behave in a civilized manner.”

“What? No!” She set her heels.

He turned back to her, moved close, way too close,
and in a voice pitched only to her ears, he said, “I
will
pick you up and carry you, Penelope.”

She stared at him, teeth gritted, angry and… and a little afraid.

At least, she thought it was fear. Her heart pounded hard in her chest, her fingers curled into fists, she heard a roaring in her ears, and her eyes hurt from holding them wide. She realized she was holding her breath, and gasped in some much-needed air.

Did she believe him? Did she believe he would pick her up and carry her out of here?

He surrounded her with angry heat. His green eyes sparked with gold.

Oh, yes. She believed him. And how much humiliation could she stand?

“All right. I’ll go.” She let him pull her out of the kitchen, down the hall, and out the front door.

Their exit left a stunned silence in the kitchen.

“Wow,” Chloë whispered.

Annie stirred, turning her wheelchair. “Well. I don’t know about you girls, but I’m going to go watch.” She put the wheelchair in full roll down the hallway.

The rest of the women—and Ritter—galloped toward the front of the house after her.

Rafe, Eli, and DuPey sat around the empty table and shook their heads in manly disdain.

“Honestly,” Eli said. “Women.”

“I know it,” DuPey said.

“They are so nosy,” Rafe said.

“Really. What do they think they’ll see that they haven’t seen before?” Eli asked.

They sat, staring into space, thinking about it.

DuPey looked from Eli to Rafe. “Why do you think Noah’s so buttoned up today?”

“He definitely had a stick up his butt, especially once Penelope walked in,” Rafe said.

The other two nodded.

DuPey morosely shoved the rest of the chips out of the center of the table toward Brooke’s place. “That’s one big pot the little lady won.”

Rafe preened. “What can I tell you? She’s smart.”

“Hey, Eli, look at Noah’s hand.” DuPey gestured toward the little pile of cards sitting before Noah’s place. “Because you’re right. He must have been bluffing.”

Eli picked up the cards and looked—and his jaw dropped.

The other two men went on alert.

“What is it?” DuPey asked urgently.

“What’s he got, a pair of twos?” Rafe asked.

One by one, Eli placed the cards on the table.

King of diamonds. Queen of diamonds. Ten, nine, eight of diamonds.

The guys stared at those cards. At the hand that could have taken every chip, that came along once in ten lifetimes.

Finally Rafe whispered, “Noah folded on a straight flush, king high? To make a grab at Penelope?” He shoved his chair back. “I’m going to watch.”

The other men stood.

They rushed toward the door and headed down the hall.

Chapter 31

N
oah didn’t pause, didn’t slow.

Penelope’s heart pounded as he dragged her down the steps, across the driveway, and into the front yard. They passed the first tree and moved to the second, a broad, towering valley oak, an oak that lazily rested its longest branches on the ground. He stopped, whirled to face her.

“Not this tree,” she said.

“Yes, this tree. For nine years, every time I walked across Nonna’s yard, I saw you here, your long hair tangled in the branches, your brown eyes staring at me, soft and warm.…” His eyes blazed with heat, anger, and a long, slow unfurling of sweet reminiscences. “The memories are always here, so yes. Most definitely. This tree.”

It was early August, California hot and Bella Terra dry. The summer had almost vanished, each day slipping away before Noah could grasp it in his eager hands. Now he stood on the porch, watched Penelope walk across Nonna’s lawn, and marveled at her figure, her grace, the marvelous way her jeans fit her curvaceous behind, the flow of her straight, dark hair down her back.…

Eli sat on the swing, idly rocking, observing him. “You’ve got it bad.”

“No, I don’t.” Noah knew it sounded like a young man’s pride, that instinctive denial that a young woman could rope him in so easily.

Eli snorted.

That was fine. Better Eli be amused by Noah’s self-deception than for him to suspect the truth—that Noah was violently, wildly in love with Penelope, and soon, too soon, he would send her away.

He had so little time left.… He ran down the steps, across the driveway, and toward Penelope.

He was a fool for falling in love.

He was an ass for making love to her.

For her sake, he should wish he had never met her.

And yet for his own sake, he would rather spend this summer with Penelope and live off the memories forever.

She heard him running toward her and turned, smiling, open, her brown eyes shining with trust.

Never pausing, he picked her up by the waist, lifted her high, and swung her around.

She shrieked and laughed.

He placed her on a low branch of one of the huge oaks on guard on Nonna’s lawn, the second one from the porch, the one with leaves that mostly hid them from the house.

She put her hands on his shoulders and looked down at him. “I knew you’d come to find me.”

“I can’t stay away,” he told her, and hoped that wasn’t true. Once he had sent her away, he had to avoid her.

She had an uncanny knack of knowing when his thoughts wandered into the dark places, and now she frowned. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing!” He smiled widely. “I was wondering if you would like to go on an adventure.”

“Yes?” She was smart enough to be unsure.

“Turn around. Straddle the limb, and I’ll take you on a trip around the world.”

She slanted her head and looked at him sideways in disbelief.

“No, really!” Was he distracting her? He couldn’t tell. “When Eli and Rafe and I were boys, we used to come out here and mount up our trusty steeds, and we’d ride off to find gold or chase down some rustlers, and one year Nonna showed me
Robin Hood,
the one with Errol Flynn, and I galloped all over England robbing the rich.”

“And giving to the poor?”

“Of course. All the maidens kissed me in gratitude.” Bitterly, he said, “I’ve always had a thing about being a hero.” And look how well that had turned out.

Once again, she saw too much, for she cupped his cheek and said, “You’re my hero.”

“No. I’m really not.”

She reproved him with a shake of her head. “Such modesty. Your brothers didn’t want to play Robin Hood?”

“They didn’t live here then. They lived with their mothers.” He remembered those lonely days.

She knew, of course. Leaning down, she pressed her lips to his, and in her kiss he tasted sweet, warm comfort and the assurance that she would be here for him forever.

That was the kind of promise he could not make, and he pulled away. “Well. Turn around, straddle that beast, and tell me where you want to go!”

For a second, she looked both bewildered and hurt.

But he grinned and did his best imitation of boyish excitement, so she flung her leg over the wide branch, placed her hands flat on the rough bark, and ordered, “Take me to medieval England to meet this Robin Hood you speak of!”

“Hang on,” he warned, and pushed the branch up, then down, then settled it into a steady, rhythmic swaying like a horse’s trot. He waved an arm around. “Here we are in Sherwood Forest.”

“It’s beautiful.” She pointed. “Look at yon castle!”