She seemed to take in all of him with that one appraising look, no problem shifting from her troubled landing and her quarrel with her father to a Sinclair on the premises.
“I drove up from New York this morning,” Wyatt said.
“I see. Well, I’m sorry you’ve wasted your time, but I don’t have anything to tell you except that I screwed up. Low blood sugar, bad light, an overactive imagination.” She shrugged, matter of fact. “I didn’t find your uncle’s plane. I found an old dump. That’s all there is to it. Look, I have to see about my plane—”
“I’ll be seeing about your plane,” her father broke in. “You might as well have a cup of coffee with Wyatt here. You’re going to have three weeks to kill. And that’s just for starters. If I don’t like what I see in three weeks, you’ll have another three weeks to cool your heels.”
“I don’t need a break. I need to fly more.”
“You don’t fly to get your head together. You fly when your head’s together.”
She turned to Wyatt. “Never fly for your own father.”
It was the wrong thing to say. Wyatt saw that immediately, even if Penelope didn’t. Her father swallowed his anger and allowed his natural stoicism to reassert itself. He said calmly, making it impossible to be misunderstood, “I am not acting as your father right now. I am acting as a responsible owner of six charter planes and a flight instructor for the last thirty years who has the right and the duty to ground an unfit pilot. And you, Penelope Chestnut, are unfit to fly.”
“Fine,” she said without missing a beat, “then I’ll boil sap.”
Wyatt would have throttled her right then and there.
“Have coffee with Sinclair here,” Lyman said, teeth gritted, patience spent, and headed to the runway and his daughter’s plane.
His departure left Penelope alone with a Sinclair, which made Wyatt wonder if his family’s reputation was as bad in Cold Spring as he’d been led to believe. Then again, Lyman Chestnut could simply believe a Sinclair would insist on talking with his daughter and best get it over with.
With one hand, Penelope stuffed stray hair behind her ears, missing even more than she captured. She had a face that was all angles and straight lines—except her mouth, which was soft and full. Some color had returned to her cheeks, and she wore tiny silver hoops on her ears. Her green eyes narrowed on him. “I’m sorry you had to witness that little spat. Pop worries too much— I don’t know, maybe I should go easy on him. It’s been a crazy couple of days. Do you really want to go for coffee? I don’t have a thing to tell you.”
No question in his mind she had a lot she could tell him—if she would. “I’d love some coffee.”
She shrugged. “As you wish.”
He made a move to go into the office, but she shook her head. “Not here. Aunt Mary’s into flavored coffees. I think today’s is raspberry. Blechh. My mother and cousin own an inn on the lake—they serve coffee and tea in the afternoon. And they make the best scones in New Hampshire, maybe all of New England. I think today’s are currant.”
“Sounds fine.”
“You’re not the investigator your father sent up here, are you? I had the impression it was someone he’d hired.”
“That would be Jack Dunning. He’s supposed to arrive soon—he’s flying up from New York, scoping out the landscape. He has his own way of doing things.”
“Does he know you’re here?”
Wyatt shook his head.
“Your father?”
“No.”
“Well, I guess you’re a big boy and can do what you want to do. Let’s go. We can take my truck.”
So the truck was hers. Here was a woman who flew planes, drove a truck and was off to have tea and scones at a lakeside inn. Definitely not what he’d envisioned—never mind the wild, wavy blond hair, the green, green eyes, the tight, sexy body, the flight suit, the keen wit.
She stopped abruptly in the middle of the parking lot, tilted her head at the sky and took a deep breath. She held it a moment, then exhaled. “It’s a fine spring day. I’m glad I didn’t crash.”
Yep, a pilot. She liked life a little on the edge. Maybe a lot on the edge.
And suddenly Wyatt could see how she might have made the leap from old dump to Frannie Beaudine and Colt Sinclair’s plane. A missing plane was more exciting to find in the woods when you were lost and tired—and this woman would hate to be either—than an old dump.
Which meant his trek to New Hampshire could be for nothing.
“I’m glad you didn’t crash, too,” he said dryly, “but this isn’t spring.”
She grinned at him. “Technically, no. But the ice is melting and the sap is running—it feels like spring to me.”
Three
A black-haired, black-eyed, suspicious-minded Sinclair in a leather jacket. Just what she needed. Still jumpy from her mishap in the air, Penelope waited for Wyatt Sinclair to climb into her truck. “Whoops—hang on a sec.” She whisked a little blue calico bag off his seat onto the floor. “Rose petal potpourri. I let Pop drive my truck and it came back smelling like an ashtray. He’s taken up smoking cigars. Disgusting.”
“You have strong opinions.”
“About cigars. Anyway,” she said, starting her truck, “opinions are by definition strong. Otherwise they’re not opinions.”
She backed out over the rutted, washboard lot, which seemed even worse this year than usual. On the main road, she drove faster than was necessary, swerving around potholes, braking hard for frost heaves. She knew just where the worst ones had formed in the freezing, thawing, refreezing cycle of late winter and early spring that wreaked havoc on the roads yet made the sap run sweet.
Beside her, Wyatt Sinclair didn’t say a word. He was exactly what she’d expected of a Sinclair. Suspicious, probing, good-looking. He had a natural arrogance that she didn’t find as off-putting as she’d anticipated. It was just so…easy for him. Her research into Frannie and Colt had led to facts about the entire Sinclair family, including this first of his generation. He was well-educated, he spoke four languages, he was an expert mountain climber and outdoorsman, and he came close to killing himself every year or two.
Two years ago, his luck ran out and tragedy struck during a climbing expedition in Tasmania, when bad weather and bad judgment combined to leave him bug-infested, dehydrated, infected, with three broken ribs, a broken leg and his hiking companion and best friend dead at his side. Penelope had read about the incident in the papers. Even the Cold Spring Reporter had picked up the story.
She didn’t notice any obvious lingering effects of such a terrible ordeal. Maybe he’d gnashed his teeth and pushed, pulled, argued, rebelled and thrown himself into enough danger over the years to have established a certain peace with himself. Except he didn’t look peaceful, either.
It was
