Perfected (Entangled Teen) (16 page)

As we drew nearer to the hedge that hid his garden, Penn cast a sideways glance at me, pulling me to a stop beside a tree hanging low with small green fruit. He pulled a piece of fabric from his pocket. It looked like a strip cut off of one of his old T-shirts. But the cloth was clean and soft.

“Sorry, no more peeking. From here it’s strictly confidential.”

He took me by the elbows and turned me around so my back was to him. Then, reaching around me, he covered my eyes with the cloth and tied it snuggly at the back of my head.

“You can’t see, can you?” he asked.

He leaned closer and I felt his arm moving, like maybe he was waving his hand in front of my face. I caught the scent of soap mixed with the sweet smell of cut grass drifting just below the surface. The smell confused me. It filled my whole head, making me dizzy and perfectly happy all at once, and I reached out to grab his arm.

“No, it’s completely dark,” I said, hoping he wouldn’t detect the tremble in my voice.

“Now hold on to me,” he said, turning me back around and marching me forward.

The wrought iron gate squealed ever so slightly as he swung it open. We took a few more steps and I knew we were inside. Even with my eyes covered I could picture the wild tangle of plants and the pond stretched out beyond them.

“Okay, now to throw you off your game, we’ll just give you a little spin,” Penn said, twirling me in a circle before he yanked off the blindfold, pointing me in the right direction with two strong hands.

I blinked, my eyes adjusting to the light, but I was seeing double. In front of me, two stone statues floated across my vision, mirror images of one another. I blinked again and they were still there, two woman dreaming secret thoughts behind those closed stone eyes.

“Do you like it?” Penn asked, his voice suddenly shy. “After I cleaned out the pond I decided that it wasn’t fair to keep her hidden anymore. Besides, the pond reflects her perfectly.”

I took a better look at the long, thin pond. The last time I’d seen it was in the dark and even though it had been beautiful in the moonlight, I hadn’t really been able to appreciate how gorgeous it was. It was simple, a narrow rectangle of stone the exact same color as the statue, which lay flush with the ground, as if it was part of the earth. Without all the leaves and muck, the water inside it was perfectly clear and as still as glass, reflecting the stone girl, the green hedge, and the pale sky.

“It’s perfect.”

Penn’s face reddened. “No, this is perfect,” he said, laying his hand over my heart. He stared at me for a long moment before taking my chin lightly in his hand and turning my face so that I looked up at him.

My heart raced, and my stomach dropped out from under me. I couldn’t allow myself to feel this way, but no matter how hard I tried to convince myself not to, I wanted this feeling. Maybe there was something wrong with me. A part of my brain that couldn’t be made to understand that I wasn’t one of them. The thoughts that had hijacked my mind recently belonged to someone else, someone who would be allowed to eat dinner at the same table as a boy. Someone who could move slowly on a dance floor under sparkling lights in his arms in front of everyone. Someone who could let him kiss her and allow herself to kiss him back.

I wasn’t that girl, but I wanted to be.

“I should really be getting back,” I said softly, but I didn’t step away from him.

He tucked a strand of my hair behind my ear. “You don’t have to go yet.”

“What if someone is looking for me?”

“They won’t be looking for you. It isn’t even six yet.” He took my hands in both of his and held them to his chest. “Ella, I can’t stop thinking about you. All day. Every day. I try to write, but the only words I can find are about you. I can’t ignore it anymore.”

I felt the same, but it was wrong. So very wrong. “Penn…”

“I don’t care about my dad. He doesn’t own your heart.”

He pulled me down onto the bench and leaned in, so close that our noses whispered against one another. “I want to be with you. I don’t want to feel guilty about it anymore.”

I shook my head. “We can’t.”

“We
can
. We can be together here. This can be our spot.”

The feel of his breath on my face made me dizzy and I exhaled. I hadn’t realized that I’d been holding my breath. His hands pressed tightly against my back, and his lips brushed against mine. They were so warm. So soft. And I melted into them. My own lips parted, letting the heat from Penn’s body fill me up.

When I closed my eyes, the image of his face lingered there.

Our lips moved together. Gently at first, then desperate. Greedy for one another.
This
was what it meant to be kissed, only this time I didn’t need to be taught. Kissing him felt natural, as essential as air. I breathed him in, filled my mouth with the taste of him.

Penn’s hands traveled down my back, drawing a line along my spine. They stopped at my waist and his fingers spread out, feeling the soft curve of my hips. His grip tightened, pulling me into him and a spark moved through me, catching like kindling that flamed in the darkest corners of my body.

Missy’s words nudged their way forward in mind, trying to push out this feeling, this heat. But I wouldn’t listen. I didn’t even care if I
was
just a toy that the congressman would tire of. It didn’t matter. Not in this moment.

The only thing that mattered was the way Penn’s skin felt against mine. Touching him was like music, a strong clear note that drowned out everything else. And I wanted more. I wanted to move my fingers across his skin the way they moved across the keys, stringing together one perfect note after another until we’d made a symphony.

I opened my eyes, coming up for air.

This was what I wanted, to be with him, and maybe here, within these secret walls, it was actually possible. He was right. This spot could be ours.

“Yes,” I whispered, smiling up into his face. “I want us to be together, too.”

Twenty

I
lived for the stolen hours between midnight and sunrise. It was the only time Penn and I could truly be together. Sure, I saw him during the day while he and Ruby fixed cookies in the kitchen or swam in the pool, but I didn’t dare let my gaze linger on him for too long, especially when the congressman was in the room.

Sometimes, if I simply thought of him, a rush of heat would flood my cheeks and I would look up to make sure the congressman hadn’t seen. If he did, I was certain he would know my secret, my longing like a hot brand seared across my face.

I was so distracted that I almost forgot that Claire was bringing her new fiancé home to visit. It was easy to forget that the congressman and his wife actually had three kids, but I had to face the fact that there would be two more people in the house for a while. And it worried me, not only because I was intimidated to meet her, but because her presence might interrupt the only time I had to spend with Penn.

Ruby ran around the house in a frenzy. The congressman’s wife had asked me to take her up to her room to play, but we only lasted fifteen minutes before she was back downstairs again, pulling on her mom’s sleeve and asking for the four hundredth time when her sister would arrive.

“Come on, Ella. Let’s go sit on the front steps. That way we’ll be the first ones Claire sees when she gets here,” she finally said, after her mother pushed her away with the threat of hard labor if she couldn’t settle down and wait like a normal human.

Ruby had been talking about Claire since the first day I arrived, and up until now she’d seemed more like a myth than a real person. She was an idea, a fairy tale, a lovely face that floated behind the glass on mantels and side tables.

“You look pretty today,” Ruby said, scooting closer to me on the wide stone steps and smoothing out the folds in my dress. “I bet Claire’s going to love you. I bet she’ll wish she could take you home with her.”

These were the things I knew about Claire: she went to Cornell, which was where the congressman had met his wife; she was studying law; she had just gotten engaged to Grant Wentwood, who had graduated from Harvard last fall, and would make his soon-to-be-father-in-law very proud some day; and last but not least, she would make the most lovely bride ever to walk the face of the earth. That was it. At least, that was all I’d learned about her from listening to the congressman and his wife.

The rest of what I’d learned about her was what I’d picked up listening to Ruby, like the fact that she was an expert at fixing her hair in fancy chignons, could spell any word out of the dictionary, and hated mashed potatoes. Ruby also liked to tell the story about the time when Claire was little and had beaten her dad in a hot-dog-eating contest, which seemed hard for me to believe since I’d never seen the congressman eat a hot dog. Although Ruby assured me it was a common kind of food, and was not, in fact, made from the animal of the same name.

I wasn’t really sure any of these things were going to be helpful in understanding who Claire really was. All I knew was that she must have been someone special to have the whole house it such a tumult of anticipation. Even Penn seemed distracted, more distant, lost in thought. Today, instead of going on our usual walk down to the garden before the others woke up, he’d spent the morning on the patio, scribbling in his notebook. Now he was downstairs waiting for her to arrive the way everyone else was.

“Look, look, someone’s pulling into the driveway!” Ruby yelled. She dragged me to my feet and ran down the steps and out onto the driveway. She flopped up and down, waving her hands above her head as the car crunched over the gravel and came to a stop in front of us.

The dark windows made it hard to see inside, but a second later the door opened and a woman stepped out, smoothing down the wrinkles in her skirt before she lifted her head. She looked very much like the girl I’d seen in the pictures—a thin face and high forehead, bright blue eyes and dark hair like her mother, but there was something in person that the film hadn’t been able to capture. It was that same regal presence I found so intimidating in the congressman’s wife.

“Claire! Claire! Claire!” Ruby yelled, jumping on her sister as soon as she was standing.

“Settle down, Miss Ruby Roo,” Claire said as she patted her sister on the head. “Let me get my legs working first. We’ve been driving forever.”

Ruby stepped back and grabbed my hand, still smiling even though the disappointment on her face was clear. Claire’s gaze skimmed over me before they turned back to the car, where her fiancé, Grant, was shutting the door behind him. He was tall and thin, with fair hair and light hazel eyes.

Just then the door to the house swung open and everyone else spilled into the driveway.

“Hello, sweetheart,” the congressman’s wife said, kissing her daughter on the forehead. “I’m so glad you made it. How was the drive?”

The two women wrapped their arms around each other and began walking toward the house. “Can you get the bags, Grant?” Claire called back over her shoulder. “And bring in that wine we brought for my parents. And those packages on the back seat.”

The congressman clapped his future son-in-law on the shoulder. “Penn and I will get the bags,” he said. “It looks like you’ve got your hands full.”

Ruby and I stood off to the side of the car as the bags were unloaded. It was difficult to stand so close to Penn, to feel the brush of air as he moved past me to grab the suitcases and not be able to reach out and touch him.

Grant nodded at me over the top of the car. He had a knowing smile on his face, as if he’d been able to see inside of my head and knew exactly what I’d been thinking about Penn. He caught my gaze and held it before he bent back into the car and pulled out two large shopping bags.

“So Miss Ruby,” he said, coming around to where we stood. “Will you and your lovely assistant be so kind as to escort me inside?”

He held his free hand out to her and she giggled happily. “Ella’s not my assistant. She’s our new pet.”

Grant winked at me before Ruby dragged the three of us inside.

Claire and her parents were standing at the kitchen counter, already drinking tall glasses of iced tea. “Mother, you remember Grant?” Claire asked, grabbing her fiancé around the arm and walking him into the room where she handed him his own drink. He brought the sweating glass to his lips and took a long sip.

“It’s a pleasure to see you again, Mrs. Kimball. Your house is lovely.”

“It looks like you’ve made some changes since I was here last,” Claire said, looking directly at me as she spoke.

“Well, we got new furniture for the living room,” the congressman’s wife said. “But I’m not crazy about the draperies.”

The congressman came and stood next to me, resting his big hand against my shoulder. “And of course there’s Ella.”

Claire’s face puckered slightly. “Yes, that does seem like a rather big change. When you mentioned getting a pet at the beginning of summer, this isn’t exactly what I’d envisioned. I thought you already had one and it didn’t work out.”

The congressman laughed, waving off her comment. “After working so hard on the legislation, it seems absurd not to have one ourselves. She’s beautiful, isn’t she?”

The congressman had already started talking again, telling Grant all about the trip to pick me up at the training center, so he didn’t notice Claire’s resentful stare.

“Sorry to interrupt you, Daddy,” she said, butting into his story right as he was starting off on a tangent about isolating DNA. “Would you mind very much telling us the rest of your story at dinner tonight? I’m exhausted from the drive and I’d really love to go upstairs and lie down for a little bit, especially if we’re going to a show later. Wouldn’t you like to join me, darling?” she asked, turning to Grant.

He patted her hand. “You go up without me. I’m going to have your father and your brother show me around the house.”

The congressman grinned, completely ignoring the frown on his daughter’s face.

“I’ll take you up and get you settled,” the congressman’s wife said.

As the others left the kitchen, Ruby chased after her mother and her sister. “Can I come up, too?” she asked. “I promise I’ll be really quiet.”

From what I’d seen of Claire I expected her to give Ruby an annoyed roll of the eyes and tell her that she wanted to be alone, but she surprised me, placing her arm tenderly around her sister’s shoulder and pulling her along up the stairs. It was a nice gesture, but it didn’t change the way she made me feel, like I was something dirty that needed to be wiped away.

I
t turned out Grant only wanted a brief tour of the house and before long they’d settled down in the conservatory. I hadn’t strayed from the kitchen. I sat at the counter, staring out past the pool.

“Ella,” the congressman called from the other room. “Come play Grant one of your pieces on the piano.”

I emerged in the doorway and all three men turned to look at me. The congressman smiled and then turned to look at Penn as he spoke. “Ella plays the piano exquisitely, doesn’t she, Penn?”

Grant squinted ever so slightly and smiled, looking between the father and the son as if it was all too easy to guess what was passing between them. “Claire has actually mentioned that Penn’s the family musician. Are you all right with the new pet stealing a bit of the thunder?” he asked.

Penn didn’t take his eyes off of his father as he responded. “Quite all right,” he said. “I’m not really the type to get jealous.”

The congressman chuckled before he turned his attention back to Grant. “Are you a big fan of classical music? She can play pretty much anything.”

I sat down at the piano and arranged my hands delicately across the keys.

“Oh anything,” Grant said dismissively. “To be quite honest I could only name a handful of composers and I’d probably come up blank if you asked me to name one of their songs. Is there such thing as a ‘Moonlight Sonata’?”

The congressman chuckled. “Don’t worry. I’m pretty sure none of your colleagues will hold it against you if you can’t produce a list of Bach’s concertos. I’m definitely more impressed with Claire’s news that you’ve been hired at Dunford and Gray. I don’t even live in Boston and I know what a great firm they are.”

It sounded as if they could go right on talking while I sat there all day, my hands poised above the keys, waiting for them to choose a song. I risked a quick glance over my shoulder to where Penn sat in the wingback chair by the wall.

“
Play some Schubert,”
he mouthed and I smiled, turning back around to face the piano.

The music was soft, the sonata in B flat major. It was a beautiful choice, made even lovelier by the fact that Penn had been the one to make me think of it. I didn’t even mind that Grant and the congressman kept talking as I played. They didn’t even realize what they’d given us, this moment that now belonged to only Penn and me. I could feel his stare against my back, my arms, my fingers, and suddenly it was like we were back in our pond again, only this time I was the one that held him, suspended from the music as if we were floating.

I stopped playing and bowed my head over the keys, breathing hard. Behind me I knew Penn had felt something special, too.

The congressman and Grant stopped talking and clapped politely, as if they’d only now noticed that the room had grown silent, that I had been playing at all.