Page 91 of Conrad

“What are you doing here, Penelope?”

No Penny. The chill in his tone made her step back. “I didn’t know where to go. I was . . . I was scared, okay? And I thought—” She sighed. “Clearly this was a bad idea.”

Turning, she waited—hoping he’d stop her.

Instead he opened the door.

Opened. the door.

“Clearly it was,” he said.

She looked up at him and couldn’t stop tears, the way her throat thickened, and she sucked in a breath. “I don’t know what I did, but . . .” Then she shook her head. “Never mind.”

“Okay then.” He nodded and then reached to flick on the outside light.

She stepped outside, her legs again rubbery. What had she been thinking? Of course this was . . . too much.

She’d read too much into the jersey thing, the tickets, the jumbotron.

The kiss.

“What’s on your jacket?”

She was nearly down the stairs and now turned. He stood in the doorway, arms folded akimbo, a barrier to his heart.

“Glass.”

He frowned.

She swallowed.Why not?“I got a text from Holden Walsh. He asked me to meet him.”

That bombshell barely flickered on his face. Or in his voice when he said, quietly, “I see.”

That was it?

After a moment. “And did you?”

“No—yes—I don’t think so. No. It wasn’t Holden.” Her voice started to shake again.

His eyes narrowed.

“He broke my driver’s-side window.”

A beat, and his voice darkened. “Whobroke it?”

“The man who wasn’t Holden?—”

She didn’t get any further. He stepped outside, grabbed her arm, and pulled her back up the steps.

“Inside. And then you need to stop lying to me and tell me what is really going on.”

TEN

The last thinghe should be doing was letting Penelope Pepper back into his life, let alone his house.

But she’d looked scared. And he just couldn’t be the guy who left her on the doorstep or shoved her back into the night with glass on her jacket and trauma in her eyes.

Even if he wanted to simply leave her in the entryway and escape back to his kitchen, where an ice pack for his hip waited along with a nice rare steak and an unfinished sailing show on YouTube.

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