Kiss the Moon (11 page)

With visible effort, she started along the path, looping to the field and the series of maples she’d tapped. She explained that she’d stuck to buckets instead of gravity tubing because it was old-fashioned and she didn’t have a big operation, not like her mother, whose sugar house apparently attracted scores of tourists on weekends. Maple sugaring occurred during the off-season for the inn, so it worked out well.

Wyatt helped her consolidate the various buckets into two buckets, one for each to carry to her truck. Some of the trees had two taps, some four, and she explained the number of taps was determined by the size and age of the tree. “You really shouldn’t tap a maple until it’s about forty years old.”

He was learning more about maple sugaring than he’d ever imagined knowing.

On the far side of a fat, way-older-than-forty maple, he spotted distinct footprints in the dense, wet snow. “Whose are these?” he asked, pointing.

Penelope came next to him. “They must be ours.”

“We didn’t come this way.” He squatted and examined the prints. “They’re a different kind of boot.”

“Then they’re mine from the other day—”

“Foot’s too big.”

She wrinkled her face at him. “I would get a flatlander who knows footprints. It’s probably just someone out walking. Tourists like to take pictures of sap buckets.”

“There are dozens of buckets close to the road. They wouldn’t have to traipse all the way up here.”

“Maybe it’s a reporter or your investigator, Jack Dunning. He was sneaking around my house this morning.”

“He’s not my investigator, he’s my father’s. What was he doing sneaking around your house?”

“Actually, he just came by to talk to me. I don’t want you reporting to your father and getting him fired. Spooky guy.”

“Penelope…”

She stared at him, the sunlight catching the ends of her blond hair. “Hmm?”

“Whose prints are these?”

She thrust her hands onto her hips, feigning indignation. “You know, it must be a pain to be as suspicious-minded as you are. You make life a lot harder on yourself than it needs to be.”

“That’s the pot calling the kettle black. I can’t imagine the effort it must take to keep all your lies straight.”

Her mouth snapped shut, and she spun around, huffy.

Wyatt shot to his feet, grabbed her by the elbow and turned her toward him, firmly but not harshly. He stood very close. Too close. Way, way too close. He wished he could see her eyes behind her sunglasses. But her wisps of blond hair, her mouth, her throat were distractions enough. He should have stayed in New York. But he was here, and so was she. “Before I leave town, you’ll tell me the truth.”

Her brow furrowed, but there was no fear in her, unlike last night—something else that still needed explaining. “Is that a threat?”

“No. It’s something I know.” She licked her lips as if his mouth was on hers, as if she were thinking about it. He lowered his voice. “I don’t know why you’re lying, Penelope, but you have no reason to hide anything from me. I only want to put my father’s mind at ease about a brother he lost a long, long time ago. That’s all. I have no other interest in being here.”

“I’m not hiding anything.”

“Look, people up here are closemouthed. I understand that. They don’t like strangers, and they particularly don’t like Sinclairs. I understand that, too. But just because you all don’t like to talk out of school doesn’t mean you’re any damned good at lying.”

“I’m not closemouthed. I blabbed one little thing about thinking I might have found Colt and Frannie’s plane, and I end up with half the planet’s media and a Sinclair on my case.
And
a private investigator. Why on earth would I want to look like an idiot to the entire world? Why would I want you and Jack Dunning breathing down my neck? If I were lying, I could do a better job.”

Wyatt shook his head, seeing it now, understanding. “That’s not it. The truth is, you don’t give a damn what the entire world thinks. You care about Cold Spring. You care about your family and your friends.”

“Are you kidding? I’ve spent most of my life figuring out ways to get out of here. Why do you think I fly?”

“I’m right,” he said with certainty.

She sputtered. “So you know that much about me already?”

“I do.”

She couldn’t get the buckets down the hill and poured into her holding tank fast enough. Wyatt helped, but she was like a whirling dervish. Finally, she grabbed the two empty buckets and marched through the snow. He waited at the truck, figuring she’d run out of steam. But she was still charging when she came across the field, the buckets presumably back on their taps.

Wyatt leaned against the truck, watching her, his hands warming in his pockets. He could see hers were freezing. Her nose was red, and her hair was flying around in a light breeze. All that restless energy, all that movement, just to keep from thinking about what she was going to think about no matter what. Which was him, and those footprints she didn’t want to explain.

But she pretended to be all business. “Rebecca and Jane McNally will be at my house any minute. They’re the chief of police’s daughters.” A warning. She gave him a second to get it. “They’re helping me boil sap.”

“Good. I’ll help, too. I’m not in a hurry. You can take me to town after you’re done with your sap boiling.”

She exhaled at the sky and raked her fingers through her curls, pushed up her sunglasses, chewed on her lower lip and finally fastened her gaze on him. “I want rid of you, Sinclair. Damn it, I don’t need you staring at me with those doubting black eyes.”

“Doubting black eyes. I like that. You do have a flair for the dramatic.” He eased his hands under hers, which were red and cold and stiff, and she immediately curled her fingers into tight fists as if steeling herself against him. “You don’t believe in gloves?”

“I didn’t think I’d be emptying sap buckets. I just—”

“Relax,” he said softly, her hands slowly warming in his, “I’m not going to force you to do anything or say anything.”

“There’s nothing—”

“There’s something, Penelope. Something had you spooked last night, and something’s got you into a whirlwind right now.”

She shut her eyes, breathed. With his thumbs, he massaged her hands, feeling the heat come into them, some of the stiffness ease out—feeling a certain heat and stiffness of his own, which he pushed way, way to the back of his mind. He concentrated on the creaking and groaning of the naked trees in the chilly breeze, the twittering of chickadees, the drilling sounds of a woodpecker.

Finally, she looked at him and swallowed, calculating, debating. He could see her mind working out her options. She eased her hands from his, shoved them into the pockets of her flimsy anorak. “The footprints—”

“You don’t have to tell me now,” he said.

She stared into the field. “They belong to Bubba Johns.”

“And Bubba Johns would be?”

She looked at him, bit on one corner of her mouth as if not sure she should tell him. “Bubba’s the local hermit.”

Wyatt absorbed her words, then shook his head and gave a short laugh. “Well, hell. I should have known a hermit would turn up somewhere in this mess.”

But that was it. She would say no more. She muttered about having to get to her house to meet the police chief’s daughters and boil sap, and she went around the front of her truck and climbed in behind the wheel. Wyatt glanced at the snow-covered field. A hermit. A baby found on a church doorstep.

And Penelope Chestnut, blond, green-eyed, energetic and on edge.

He would do well to stay alert and at least a tad suspicious. Beware, he thought, of going soft. He was an outsider, he was a Sinclair, and these people weren’t about to trust him. That included Penelope, no matter how much he’d wanted to kiss her with the snow melting and the mud softening under them.

“Bubba’s harmless,” she said.

“That’s what you said about your cousin Harriet.”

“They’re both harmless.”

“Is Bubba the reason you withdrew your story?”

She took in a sharp, shallow breath. “I didn’t
withdraw
my story. I was wrong about what I saw, and I corrected my mistake. Harriet and Bubba don’t have anything to do with the dump I found in the woods.”

“So why didn’t you want to tell me about this hermit?”

“Because—because of the way you are.”

He settled in his seat, and she negotiated the muddy road with skill and determination. “Well, then, being the way I am, I should have gone ahead and kissed you while I had the chance.”

That got her. The truck sank into a mass of mud, and she muttered, “You’re impossible,” as she downshifted and roared onto firmer ground.

Yep. No question. She wished he’d gone ahead and kissed her, too. Wyatt smiled to himself. It wasn’t finding Colt and Frannie’s plane, but it was something.

Harriet slipped into the private half bath down a short hall from the front desk and locked the door. She shut the toilet lid and set her bag of goodies on it. She’d spent so much money! Twenty minutes in the drugstore, and she’d come away with gobs of stuff. Tubes and bottles and special sponges. She had foundation in two different shades, both very pale, and
three
shades of lipstick, but just one mascara. She’d stood paralyzed in front of the eye shadows for at least five minutes, finally settling on a collection of four different shades of taupe. She’d put an eyeliner pencil in her basket and took it out again several times before finally deciding, no, that was just too much. She’d smear it all over her eyes and end up looking like a raccoon.

Methodically, she ripped open her treasures, discarding cardboard and plastic packaging into her drugstore bag, which she would take upstairs and throw out in her room. Her hands shook, and her heart raced. Robby didn’t wear makeup. She didn’t oppose it, just didn’t think it was necessary. And she was so attractive without it.

Harriet glanced in the oval mirror above the small pedestal sink.
Not me.

Before she let negativity get the best of her, she picked up one of the bottles of foundation and shook it. It wasn’t a top-of-the-line brand, so she couldn’t try it on in the store—she’d had to match the color to her skin as best she could. She felt thirteen again. She couldn’t remember why she’d never really started wearing makeup. At some point, it had suddenly seemed vain and stupid, and she’d always felt so ridiculous, gobbed up with creams and powders.

She poured a few drops of foundation into her palm, dabbed it with two fingertips. She looked closely at her reflection in the mirror. The fine lines at the corners of her eyes had been there for several years, the more recent creases at her mouth and in her forehead. She was forty-five. Halfway to ninety.
Halfway to Kingdom Come.

She touched the foundation to her cheek and blended the way she’d seen on infomercials. She stood back.
There.
Her freckles had disappeared. The reddish spots had evened out. Otherwise she looked the same.

The eyeshadow was harder. At first she couldn’t tell she had any on. Then there were big brown blotches on her temples. She used a tissue to get rid of them and tried again, awkward with the little sponge applicators that came with the eye shadow collection. The mascara was a relief to put on, and the lipstick—a soft, pretty shade of plum. But it seemed too garish on her, and she opted for one of the nude shades.

“Better,” she said, giddy.

But her hair. She ran her fingers through it, seeing the gray, the shapelessness of it. Penelope could get away with quick trims and finger combing, could roll her blond curls and pop in those hair sticks and look fabulous. When Harriet had tried the sticks, they’d ended up on the floor. Barrettes and covered rubber bands she could manage. She’d never dyed her hair, although she sometimes fancied herself going copper.

Well, there was nothing to be done about her hair right now. She brushed it, pulled it into a wooden barrette and quickly shoved all her goodies into her handbag, which, of course, was sensible, like everything else about her. If she didn’t feel as beautiful and daring as Frannie Beaudine, she at least felt less dumpy and plain. She grabbed her trash and scooted back out to the front desk.

Jack Dunning was there, having emerged from a late lunch. He gave no indication of noticing Harriet’s transformation. She said, “Good afternoon, Mr. Dunning,” so he’d say something and she could hear that deep, gravel-rough voice with that delicious half Texas, half New York accent.

“Afternoon, Miss Chestnut. Mind if I have a word with you?”

“Not at all. Is everything all right?”

“Everything’s just fine. Come on and sit by the fire with me. Wind’s kicked up, clouds’re rolling in. I do believe we’re in for a storm.”

“Yes, they’re calling for snow tomorrow.”

She came around the front desk, and he sat on the couch facing the fire. The only other seat was a ladder-back chair. Harriet remained standing, feeling the fire hot on her back. He patted the seat beside him. “Sit down, Miss Chestnut.”

“Please, call me Harriet.”

He smiled. “And I’m Jack.”

She almost blurted something stupid about loving the way he talked, but instead said primly, “What can I do for you?”

He had one booted foot on the other knee and held his ankle, casual, at ease with himself—and with her, she thought. He made a clicking sound with his tongue, thinking. “Well, I tell you what, Harriet. You can tell me what you know about this hermit. Bubba Johns, I think his name is.”

“Bubba?” It wasn’t what she’d expected. Something about Penelope, perhaps, or background on the town, but not Bubba. “He’s just an old hermit who lives in the woods.”

“On Sinclair land.”

“That’s possible. I don’t really know for certain. He’s been up there for years—since I was in college, I believe. He keeps to himself. Occasionally he comes into town to barter.”

“You ever talk to him?”

“About once or twice a year, I’d say. He brings us fiddleheads in the spring.”

Jack’s brow furrowed. “Fiddleheads?”

“It’s a growth stage of ferns, in early spring when they’re just coming up out of the ground. They’re a little curlicue shape, and they taste rather like asparagus. They’re a favorite here at the inn. Around Christmas, he’ll bring us balsam and princess pine. He never says very much.”