find anything up in the woods after all, she just tried to figure out a way to save face. She hates to be wrong.”
That Wyatt could believe. “What about this dump story?”
“There are plenty of old dumps around here.”
He wouldn’t counter his daughter, not to a Sinclair. Wyatt acknowledged his statement with a curt nod. “It’s hard to believe she can’t find her way back to whatever it is she found.”
Lyman shrugged. “Maybe she’s just embarrassed.”
“Excuse me, but your daughter doesn’t strike me as a woman who embarrasses easily.”
“That’s the God’s truth.” He almost managed a smile. “Here’s the deal. I don’t want any trouble. Penelope’s a good kid. Her mind hasn’t been on her work lately, but that’s got nothing to do with you Sinclairs.”
“What does it have to do with?”
Lyman inhaled, shaking his head. “Damned if I know. Boredom, I think. She needs—well, hell, I’ll just get myself into trouble if I start talking about what she needs. It’s getting around town, you being here. You know, I searched for your uncle’s plane myself. I walked up and down these hills for weeks, never saw a thing, not one sign a plane had gone down. We all did everything we could, but…” He broke off, shook his head. “What’s done is done.”
Wyatt finished Lyman’s thought for him. “But my family wasn’t satisfied. My grandfather didn’t think you’d done enough. The people of Cold Spring, I mean, not you individually.”
Lyman leveled his frank gaze on Wyatt and nodded. “I guess that’s right. I heard he died—your grandfather. He and my father used to go hunting and fishing together. Well, I guess old Willard thought of my father as a guide. But that’s not how my father saw it.”
He stopped, looking faintly embarrassed, as if he hadn’t strung that many sentences together at one time in years. Wyatt couldn’t tell if this little visit was a shot across the bow, a fishing expedition or just a father not knowing what to do about a daughter he feared was in over her head.
“By the way,” Lyman went on, “this Jack Dunning character’s decided to park his plane here. Mary’s renting him a car.” He paused, his gaze settling on Wyatt. “You’ll go easy on my daughter?”
Wyatt grinned. “I left my thumbscrews in New York.”
He chose not to mention the crazy cousin who thought she was a Sinclair or to stick around for Jack’s arrival. Instead he drove to town, hitting every damned frost heave and pothole in the road, mostly because he kept thinking about Penelope unzipping that flight suit in the heat of the Sunrise Inn. He hadn’t expected any attraction to her. But there it was, impossible to ignore.
Harriet Chestnut, still flustered, put him in something called the Morning Glory Room. She gave him his key—a real, old-fashioned key, not one of those card things—and told him his room rate included a continental breakfast. Nothing about her reminded him of either Colt or Frannie. Coloring, build, features. It wasn’t that it was impossible she was their daughter, just not readily apparent. He thanked her and headed upstairs.
Morning glories, indeed. They were on the wallpaper, a needlepoint pillow and a print above his four-poster bed. It was all tasteful, pretty, elegant, just the sort of room a husband tolerated on a weekend getaway with his wife. A side window looked out on snow-covered gardens, a front window on the lake. In addition to the bed, there was a marble-topped bureau, a writing desk and an antique washstand that served as a night table. Wyatt figured he’d gotten off easy, because he’d passed a rose room on his way down the hall.
He dumped his bag on the floor and tried not to think about what in hell he was doing, or why. He’d never known his uncle. His father hadn’t asked him to come here. Now he’d rented a room at a charming country inn for three nights.
But he knew he wasn’t staying because of Colt or Frannie—he was staying because of Penelope Chestnut. She intrigued him, and he had an odd, possibly unreasonable sense that she was in trouble, perhaps more than she knew. It was the sort of sixth sense he’d come to rely on before his ignominious return to New York and a desk on Wall Street. He could be dead, flat wrong, just as he had been when he and Hal Strong had embarked upon their most exciting and ultimately final adventure, no sixth sense telling him they never should have left Melbourne, that danger and death awaited them in the mountains of southwestern Tasmania.
“So, you could be full of shit,” he said aloud, breaking the spell.
He could. Penelope Chestnut’s only trouble might be him.
The energy required to weave her tale about the turn-of-the-century dump and the snow obliterating her tracks had probably led her to miss her fuel check in her preflight. She was distracted. The truth was seldom simple but at least it was easier to remember.
He wandered into the bathroom, where the morning glory theme continued. Thick, soft white towels and a big, gleaming tub beckoned. He settled for splashing cold water on his face. He noticed little blue soaps and bottles of locally made lotions. When he traveled, he was used to pitching a tent.
The phone rang. Grateful for the distraction, he returned to the bedroom and picked up.
“You’re in Cold Spring,” his father said. “Why?”
The abrupt tone didn’t offend Wyatt. His father prided himself on his self-control and would bury any strong negative emotion under an abrupt, even cold manner. “Jack must have arrived. Obviously he’s reported back to you.”
“I like to know where my son is.”
“Well, you’ve found me.”
His father inhaled sharply. He wouldn’t yell at his son the way Lyman Chestnut had at his daughter. Open confrontation wasn’t the Sinclair way. “How long are you staying?”
“I don’t know.” He decided, at that moment, not to tell his father about his dealings with Penelope Chestnut and his sense she was in over her head. “Father, Colt was your brother—”
“Yes, he was. I knew him, Wyatt. He was a person to me, not an adventure. This woman has withdrawn her story. Let Jack figure out why. He’ll tie up loose ends and make sure her story checks. That’s his job.” Not yours, was the unspoken rest of the sentence.
No more details were forthcoming for the meddling son. Wyatt said hello to his stepmother, and to Ellen and Beatrix, who begged him to fly down for the weekend and take them snorkeling. They were on school holiday, and he promised to see them when they got back to New York—he’d do whatever they wanted. The rascals were his soft spot, and they knew it.
When he hung up, he stood in front of the window and looked across the lake toward the mountains. It was dusk, quiet, still. His father and uncle had roamed this area as boys with their father, the imposing, exacting Willard Sinclair, who’d died when Wyatt was fourteen. They’d gone swimming, fishing, mountain climbing, camping. He knew from his father that, despite their age difference, the brothers had been close, relishing their time together.
After Colt ran off with Frannie Beaudine, Willard Sinclair refused to let his younger son return to the New Hampshire lakes region. Willard became increasingly difficult in his grief, his surviving son never able to make up for the loss of his firstborn, never able to be the bright spark
