Chapter 19
ZANDER B Winter is back at Mallory’s. Are you free for dinner tonight?
ZANDER B And for the record, this would be a date.
Penny read the texts again as she paced the small footprint of her cabin.
A date, a date, a date.
Zander would be here any minute for their date.
He’d texted her that morning while she was working at a farmer’s market two towns away. She’d gasped so loudly at that message that a customer worried his credit card was declined. By the time she was able to respond, the market was over and she had two more texts waiting.
ZANDER B Please tell me if I’m coming on too strong.
ZANDER B Penny?
A date with Zander was a bad idea. He was fun, and hot, and made Penny feel lighter in his presence.
And while making out with him on her couch had been, wow, really amazing, chatting at his kitchen table was just as special.
But did she have time for any of that this summer?
Or the wherewithal to watch him leave when it was over?
“Text back,” RJ had said bluntly, staring over her shoulder without shame. “Say yes. You deserve it.”
“But—”
“But nothing, Pen. Don’t overthink it. Let yourself have this. You deserve nice things.”
And dammit, she did. So she’d typed back a yes before she could think better of it. Which now left her pacing the living room in a dress that was maybe cute or maybe way too much.
When Zander’s truck rumbled out front, Penny was too amped to stand inside, so she grabbed her bag and stepped out to meet him.
He was still in his car, looking into the visor mirror and, from what Penny could tell, talking to himself.
His lips moved and he nodded and then, adorably, he fist-bumped his own small reflection.
When he made a move to exit the car, he caught her watching and shook his head with a smile.
“I was, uh, giving myself a pep talk,” he said a moment later, after hopping out of his car to walk her around to the passenger side. No one had ever opened a car door for Penny, and there was something almost shy about how Zander did it, looking away from her like she might laugh at the gesture.
“Am I that scary?” she asked, brow raised.
“No.” He jogged to his side and slid in. They were down the drive and turning onto the main road when he spoke again. “You’re not scary. But the idea of being on a date, especially with you, is a little, um—”
“Nerve-racking?” she offered. “Exciting? Terrifying?”
“Yeah.” He shot her a relieved smile. “Yes, all three.”
“So, where are we going?”
Another smile. “You’ll see.”
They rode in a comfortable if weighted silence as Zander took a road into the hills outside town. When they passed their third Private Property—No Trespassing sign, Penny tucked her feet under her to face Zander. “Are we supposed to be here?”
“Not technically.” He turned onto a small dirt road almost imperceptible in the trees. “But we’re not hurting anyone, and it’ll be worth it.”
The grin he shot her way made Penny squirm a little in her seat. When the hem of her dress shifted higher on her thigh, Zander’s gaze tangled in the bunching fabric until he cleared his throat and returned his attention to the road.
The trees thinned as Zander drove into a large clearing that was all dirt except for three large concrete slabs, the kind that marked the first phase of construction.
“These have been here since I was sixteen.” Zander shut off the car as he nodded outside. “I found them one night taking my grandfather’s car on any back road I could find.”
He jogged around to her side again, and Penny undid her belt slowly so as not to beat him to opening her door.
Once outside, she spun to look around—three would-be houses were poised on a bluff overlooking the valley below.
There were tracts of farmland like checkerboards, lower wooded hills, stripes of vineyard rows, a few shimmering lakes in the distance, and in the center… the township of Sullivan’s Glen.
“I think I remember Mimi talking about this place,” Penny said, pulling at memories.
“It was supposed to be some luxury development, but the builders got in a fight with a local conservation group, and everything sort of froze.” A breeze played with the bottom of her dress. “It’s beautiful up here.”
“It is.” Zander watched her for a moment, then let out a breath and pulled items from the trunk of his car.
Soon a blanket was spread on the ground, along with a quaint picnic basket and a bottle of champagne.
He popped the cork and poured the champagne into two small mason jars as Penny lowered herself to sit.
He handed over her glass and clinked his against it, his eyes never leaving hers.
She grinned. “Here’s to trespassing.”
Zander laughed as he sipped. “To being a little bit bad.”
The bubbles tickled her mouth and throat as Zander watched her over the rim of his glass.
He cleared his throat as he pulled out a loaf of bread, a chunk of cheese, and a bundle of plump red grapes, laying them out on a large cutting board. “Um, help yourself.”
Penny stretched her legs in front of her and ripped off a piece of baguette, recognizing that unique crack of crust of Sullivan Bakery bread. “So. Did you bring a lot of girls to this spot?”
“No, actually. I always came here alone.”
“What would you do?”
He shrugged, looking out at the view. “I’d sit and brood. I liked the idea of looking down on everything, like somehow it made me bigger to see everybody so small.”
“Does it feel like that now?”
Zander looked out in silence for a minute, then shook his head with a sigh. “Honestly? No. It still looks small, but I don’t think I need to feel big anymore.” He chuckled lightly. “I do see a lot of memories, though.”
She scooched a little closer to him. “Like what?”
He pointed down at the valley. “See where Main Street leaves Sullivan’s Glen and heads east, then bends around that lake?”
Penny knew just the spot he was talking about. She could drive all the roads of the county with her eyes closed, but she moved closer anyway, leaning in to look down the length of his arm. “I see it.”
He shifted slightly, leaning his shoulder against hers. “That’s the farthest I ever got on foot before the old man pulled up behind me. I could hear his car coming from a mile away.”
“Where were you going?”
“Beats the hell out of me. Just gone, I guess. My teenage mind was mostly impulses and reactions. A repetition of the fight-or-flight cycle.”
Penny followed his arm as it swung left. “I climbed that water tower once,” he said with amusement. “I had this idea that I could graffiti a romantic message to Mal up there.”
“I thought you didn’t like heights?”
“I learned that one the hard way. I made it up the ladder by talking to myself the whole time, but once I was up there, it was very hard to talk myself down.”
“Wait.” Penny swiveled to look at him. “I remember this! The fire department sent someone up there to get you. Everyone said you refused to come down, so they had to harness you to someone to make you leave.”
Zander looked sheepishly at the ground. “It was a little less wouldn’t come down and a little more couldn’t come down. Not that I shied away from letting everyone think I was just that troublesome. What about you? What do you see when you look down there?”
Penny looked west to east, tracing the contours of the valley.
“More memories than I can count. And a lot of farmer’s markets.
” She pointed to spots all around the valley as she listed them by name.
“But mostly, I just see home.” She drew her hands back into her lap, feeling suddenly self-conscious. “That’s kind of cheesy.”
“It’s nice.” Zander reached for her slowly and took her hand in his. “I think that’s a feeling some people search for their whole lives.”
“Is that how Boston feels for you? Like home?”
Zander’s thumb passed over the back of her hand. “Not quite,” he said. “It is home, but I don’t know if it feels like home, if that makes sense.”
“Yeah.” Her voice was a little breathy. Zander was only holding her hand, but her entire body was very aware of every centimeter shared between them.
“But Penny?” His gaze dropped to her mouth. “I don’t want to talk about Boston right now.”
She swallowed. “You don’t?”
“No.” He leaned closer, putting his other hand on the blanket beside her hip.
“What do you want to talk about?”
He looked down to where her dress fluttered a few inches above her knees. “I want to talk about how this dress is making me a madman.”
“Oh?” Her voice cracked. “I was worried it was too much.”
“It’s not.” He released her hand and wrapped his palm around her thigh, the press of his fingertips hot through the thin fabric of her dress.
“It’s just right.” Zander came closer, until his breath was hot in her ear.
“But I can’t stop thinking about sliding my hand under it, finding out if you’ll be as wet for me as you were the other day. ”
She licked her suddenly dry lips. “I was starting to think that day might have been a dream.”
“Mm.” Zander hummed against her neck. “Me too. It felt like one. Can’t stop thinking about it.” His hand slid up her leg, where his thumb teased at the crease of her thigh before drawing back down toward her knee. He pulled back to look at her. “I’ve been wondering what it meant to you.”
She wouldn’t let herself look away, even as her face heated further. “I’ve been wondering what it meant to you.”
He smiled, leaned in, and brushed her nose with his, whispering against her mouth, “It meant something, I know that much.”
“It meant something to me, too.”
Then Zander kissed her, slowly and thoroughly, like a walk through the forest, as sunshine shone through gaps in the trees. It was the kind of kiss she wanted to live in for a little while.
He drew a hand up and into her loose hair. “Kissing you is better than I remembered.”
She wrapped a hand around his neck, urging the kiss deeper as Zander moved over her.
Small rocks poked at her back through the blanket as she lay beneath him, but it didn’t matter, because Zander’s hand was under her skirt now, his mouth working at her shoulder, then trailing down the strap of her dress.
He tongued her skin along her collarbone and scraped his teeth on the rise of her breasts, then caught her gaze with his deep brown eyes. Above him, wisps of clouds streaked against the just barely pink sky. “Come home with me tonight?”
She nodded mutely, teased by the hand gripping her bare thigh. “Okay.”
His eyes searched hers. “Sleep over?”
More nodding, then a shift of her hips as she tried to ease the ache building between her legs. “I can’t promise much sleeping. And I’ll have to get up early for the Johnstown market.”
Zander’s mouth descended on hers for a moment; then he nipped at her bottom lip. “I’ll get up with you and go help.”
“RJ will be there.”
“It’ll be easier with all of us, right?”
It would, but she could not believe he was talking about the farmer’s market right now. “Zander, please shut up and move your hand a few inches higher.”
His laugh was dark and tempting, just like his fingers as they crept up her thigh. “Someone is very eager.”
But just as Zander pressed his palm where she needed it, there was the roar of an engine and the bright glare of headlights. Zander pulled away his hand and angled his body in front of hers as she sat up.
A car door slammed, and a figure stepped out, their face impossible to discern against the bright shine behind them.
“You folks are trespassing on private property.” Penny recognized the voice, and it made her skin crawl. Especially when it spoke next. “My, if it isn’t Zander Bouras. It sure will be my pleasure to arrest your ass.”