Page 1 of Love, Untangled

Chapter 1

Penelope

Most twenty-year-olds wouldn’t be in this situation. Then again, most women Penelope Davis’s age didn’t travel across the country with alpacas they’d procured under…dubious circumstances.

“I’m turning into my mother,” Penelope muttered as she glanced into her rearview mirror and met the alpaca’s eyes. “Which is just about the worst possible possibility. And it’s your fault.”

Pen hadn’t stolen Alpaca Man—not really. Well, back when she’d first seen him in California, she could have, possibly, maybe stolen him. In Penelope’s defense, the poor creature had been injured, his leg cut and swollen, and according to the vet she took him to, malnourished.

So…she’d done him a favor, really, by unsnagging his harness from the broken piece of wood that had once been a fence post. After one look into the animal’s big, beautiful brown eyes, she’d been unable to leave him on the side of the road. She couldn’t stand the mere thought of him suffering, let alone the reality of the pain that seeped out of his expression. So she’d spent most of her savings to get Alpaca Man nursed back to health.

She’d planned to leave the animal in Northern California, in the vet’s capable hands, but Alpaca Man, as she’d taken to calling him, had other ideas. Ideas that included not letting Pen out of his sight.

He’d calmed once she’d gotten him into her car—a hatchback that definitely hadn’t been built for carrying alpacas. Possibly not for humans, even small ones like Pen. And definitely not for humans, alpacas, looms, spindles, and boxes of yarn.

Those were the sum total of Pen’s worldly possessions. Well, those and one tatty suitcase full of clothes. The car and a checking account with less than four hundred bucks were everything that Penelope Davis could call her own.

Oh, and her grandmother’s farm.

Thanks to Nana, Pen wasn’t homeless. She might not even be destitute.

“There are more important things in this world than money. Right, my dude?”

The alpaca didn’t answer. Pen sighed.

“I mean, I’m kind of like my mother.” Pen backtracked, needing to hear a voice. She was so keyed up, her muscles twitching with adrenaline. She refused to blink, unable to handle the images of what she’d just done. “Mom would have taken you from that farm for kicks.” Pen bit her lip, trying to decide if she’d had a better reason. “I did it because you were hurt and you needed care. That’s different.”

Pen glanced back at him over her shoulder, unsurprised to find him gazing at her with quiet intensity. He seemed to understand her words. In fact, he was the best traveling companion she’d ever had—not saying much because the only other one she could remember was her mother.

Pen shoved thoughts of Mom from her mind. That time of her life was over. Instead, she refocused on Alpaca Man. Pen wasn’t sure what his name used to be, but Alpaca Man seemed to fit, so he’d been Alpaca Man the entirety of their cross-country drive. One that had just taken a turn into Crazy Town.

“I can’t believe that guy was going to shoot you.”

Pen sighed as she dropped her forehead against the steering wheel.

“I can’t believe I brained him with a tree branch.”

Not like she’d really had a choice—no way was the horrible man going to kill Alpaca Man while the alpaca was peeing. How rude was that?

“Ignoble,” Pen mumbled. She’d read the term in a tattered copy of a novel she’d found shoved between the seats of a car her mom “borrowed” a while back, feeling that the term fit her mother’s choices—and now the term also fit the random man she’d left on the side of a highway. “Who shoots an animal relieving himself?”

Her alpaca leaned his long neck forward and nuzzled the soft fur of his cheek against her neck.

“But here’s the deal: you can’t walk up to strangers. I know you didn’t this time, but you have in the past. Remember that guy in Cleveland? What if he hadn’t liked you? Sometimes the people are nice, like that couple in Colorado. But sometimes they’re horrible. I mean, the man out there was going to shoot you, buddy. And you’ve got that bandage on your leg. Now’s not the time for trying to book it. Not that I think we have much of a chance of outrunning a bullet.”

She pulled a hand from the wheel and scratched his ears. She really needed to start driving soon to get away from the scene of her crime. Heaven help her…she’d assaulted someone. That meant…Pen was a criminal. She clenched her jaw and tried to breathe through the racing of her heart. Alpaca Man nuzzled in closer again.

“Yeah, yeah, I get it. You’re grateful. I would be too if I was in your situation. I can’t believe someone would shoot you, my dude. You’re a magnet for trouble.”

Something Pen really didn’t need in her life.

He blinked at her, his expression unnervingly steadfast. Did he think Pen would leave him? There was no reason for him not to, based on what little she’d seen of his life thus far. She cleared her throat. “You’re safe with me, Alpaca Man,” she told him yet again. “I promise I won’t leave you—”

She squealed and Alpaca Man grunted, shuttling across the back seat to the far corner, when someone tapped on the window.

Pen gulped and forced herself to roll it down. If she’d gotten caught hitting the man with the tree branch, she wasn’t sorry, but that didn’t mean she wanted to go to jail.

“I saw what you did back there,” the woman said. She had to be in her late sixties, maybe older. Her hair was flaming, mistletoe red, seeming like an inferno around her head in the fading sunlight. Her eyes gleamed bright with intelligence under the floppy beret, and bracelets jingled on her wrist.

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