Penny Sue Got Lucky

“Before you left Atlanta today, I promised you a replacement at the earliest possible moment,” Daisy told him. “Lucie should be back in the country next week and Dom’s latest assignment might end early and he could be available within ten days.”

“Next week is too long.” Vic groaned inwardly. He couldn’t stand a week of walking around with a hard-on, caused by the most talkative, irritating, gorgeous, irresistible woman he’d ever met. If they’d met in a social situation where he could walk away and not look back, he would do just that. He’d done it before when he’d been physically attracted to the wrong kind of woman. And God knew Penny Sue Paine was about as wrong as you could get. Wrong for him, that is. She’d make some local yokel a great little wife. The kind of wife who baked cookies, attended PTA meetings, took the kiddies to Sunday school and would appease all her husband’s needs in and out of the bedroom.

Now where had that last thought come from? From below his belt, that’s where.

“Vic? Vic, are you still there?” Daisy asked.

“Huh? Yeah, I’m still here. And I expect you to perform a miracle and get another agent to swap assignments with me. If you can do that, I’ll owe you big-time.”

“I’ll see what I can do, but it could take several days.”

Several days? Just how long would his resolve to not make a move on Penny Sue last? “Yeah, sure. Okay. I should be able to make it for a few days.”

“I’m sure you can. Whatever’s got you running scared can’t be that bad.”

“Who says I’m running scared?” Vic practically shouted the question.

“Sorry. I just meant—”

“No, I’m the one who should be apologizing. It’s not your fault that I got stuck with this assignment. It’s not anyone’s fault. Just the luck of the draw, I guess.”

“Vic, I promise I’ll get someone to replace you just as soon as I possibly can.”

A soft knock sounded on the closed bedroom door and then a sweet, sexy voice called, “Vic, supper’s ready. It’ll be just you and me and Aunt Dottie. Come on down whenever you’re ready.”

“Be right there, Penny Sue,” Vic replied, then said into the phone, “Thanks, Daisy. I’ve got to go.”

“Hmm…already on a first-name basis with Ms. Paine, huh?”

“Don’t go there,” Vic warned.

Daisy laughed. “Enjoy your supper.” Then she hung up before Vic could say anything else.

He closed his cell phone, inserted it in the belt holder, walked to the door and opened it. Penny Sue stood there smiling at him. Pretty Penny Sue. He tried to concentrate on her beautiful face so he wouldn’t react sexually to her, but despite his best efforts, he let his gaze travel over her quickly before refocusing on her face. His body stirred to life, reminding him how attracted he was to this woman. Instant attraction. It happened to people. Even to him. But only a couple of times in the past. And never with a nice girl like Penny Sue.

Maybe she’s not so nice, an inner voice suggested. Could be she knows exactly what kind of vibes she’s putting out. It’s not as if she’s a teenage virgin. A woman her age had to know the score. Right?

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“Huh?”

“You’re acting mighty peculiar,” Penny Sue said. “You’re not sick or anything, are you?”

He willed his libido and erring thoughts under control, then cleared his throat. “I’m fine.” Smile at her, he told himself, but he couldn’t quite manage it. He wasn’t the kind of guy who went around grinning like an idiot.

“Supper’s ready. I imagine you’re hungry. Flying always makes me ravenous. I don’t know why. Come to think of it, traveling of any kind makes me hungry. And wears me tee-totally out, too. Some people can drive hundreds of miles and it doesn’t affect them, but if I drive to Huntsville and back, I’m wiped out. What about you? Are you one of those…”

He wanted to tell her to shut up, to remind her that she was rattling, that she talked way too much and about absolutely nothing of any importance. But instead he simply concentrated not on what she was saying, but the way her mouth moved and the way her dark eyes sparkled.

He followed her along the hallway and down the stairs, nodding occasionally and saying uh-huh a couple of times as if he were actually listening to her instead of struggling not to grab her and kiss her to make her shut up. When they reached the dining room, she turned to him and said something, then waited for a response. Okay, his goose was cooked. He had no idea what she’d asked him.

“Would you repeat that?” He made direct eye contact with her, hoping she would take that as a sign of interest.

“I said I want us to have a big Christmas wedding and I’d like to be pregnant with our first child when we return from our honeymoon,” Penny Sue said, her expression dead serious.

“What!”

“When I asked you to marry me, you said uh-huh. Didn’t you mean it? Are you saying now that you’re having second thoughts?”

Despite the earnest expression on her face, Vic realized she was joking, paying him back for his lack of attention. “No second thoughts. Only I’d prefer waiting until New Year’s Day to get married. Start the year off right.”

Penny Sue’s lips spread into a tentative smile. “You haven’t listened to a word I said. You just tuned me out, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, I’m afraid I did.”

“Why?”

“Why?” He stared at her, wondering if she truly didn’t know. “Because you talk too damn much, that’s why.”

Her smile vanished. “You can be so rude.”

“Sorry. But I have a tendency to be blunt-spoken.”

“You must hurt people’s feelings a great deal.”

“Not intentionally.”

As he followed her into the dining room, she said, “I really don’t understand your lack of manners. I can tell from your accent that you’re from the South.” When she stopped dead still just beyond the open pocket doors, he skidded to a halt, barely preventing himself from barreling into her. She whipped around and glared at him. “You are from the South, aren’t you?”

“Born and bred in Kentucky. Lafayette, Kentucky, to be exact.”

“Didn’t your mother teach you how important good manners are?” Her big brown eyes bored into him, demanding a response.

“My old lady was too busy trying to keep food on the table and a roof over our heads to worry about unimportant things like good manners.”

“Oh. Oh, dear, Vic, I’m so terribly sorry. You were…poor.” She whispered the word as if saying it aloud would breach some idiotic code of etiquette.

“Nah, honey, I wasn’t just poor. I was white trash.” The only reason he decided to be so specific was because he hoped that knowing his background would warn her off, just in case he did make a move on her later. He figured the Paines didn’t associate with people of an inferior social class.

“Well, you certainly seem to have overcome your upbringing,” Dottie Paine said as she strolled into the dining room, in a flowing hot-pink jacket and matching slacks in some sort of silky material. “In my experience, self-made men are far superior to the ones who were handed everything on a silver platter.”

Forcing himself to ignore Penny Sue completely, he turned to her elderly aunt and smiled. “Why, thank you, ma’am.” Without so much as a by-your-leave to Penny Sue, he headed straight for Miss Dottie, pulled out her chair at the antique Duncan Phyfe dining table and assisted her in sitting. She looked up at him and batted her long black eyelashes. He chuckled inwardly. The old gal was actually flirting with him. He’d bet she’d been a real firecracker in her younger days. Not easy. No sir, not by any means. But the kind of woman who knew how to make a man glad to be a man.

Casting a sidelong glance at Penny Sue, he wondered if perhaps she possessed that same ability. Maybe it was a gift with which all the Paine women had been blessed. But you won’t be finding out for yourself, an inner voice reminded.

“We often eat in the kitchen or the breakfast room,” Dottie said. “But tonight, with a gentleman visiting, I thought it appropriate to dine in here. I hope that meets with your approval.” She glanced at her niece. “After all, it isn’t all that often that we have a man around the house. Not since dear Percy passed on.”

“Percy was my father,” Penny Sue explained as Vic pulled out a chair for her, being careful not to touch her.

Avoiding eye contact, he nodded, then took the seat opposite her.

Miss Dottie picked up a small silver bell and rang it. A tall, thin woman with short white hair, a straight back and a pleasant look on her plain face entered the room. Vic guessed her to be in her early sixties. She carried a silver tray laden with three salad plates.

Penny Sue made the introductions, which surprised Vic. In his experience, most people didn’t introduce their servants to a guest. “Ruby, this is Mr. Noble. He’ll be staying with us for a while. He’s the bodyguard I hired for Lucky.”

The housekeeper’s sharp blue eyes sparkled with good humor. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Noble.”

“Nice to meet you, too, Mrs….?”

“Just Ruby.” She sized him up, then said, “I hope you like banana pudding.”

“I do,” he told her.

“If you’ve got any special requests while you’re staying here, just let me know,” Ruby said. “Tell me how you like your coffee, your eggs—”

“I don’t want to be any trouble,” Vic said. “I’m sure however you prepare things will be just fine.”

“Black coffee would be my guess. And scrambled eggs.” Ruby looked him over a second time. “No starch in your collars, right? You’re not a suit-and-tie kind of man.”

“Goodness, Ruby, stop giving him the third degree,” Dottie scolded.

“Kind of nice having a man about the place again, isn’t it, Miss Penny Sue?” Ruby winked at her as she set a salad plate in front of her. “Especially such a good-looking one.”

The minute Ruby disappeared into the kitchen, Penny Sue said, “You’ll have to forgive Ruby. She’s rather outspoken. And rather determined that I won’t die an old maid.”

“She never did learn her place,” Dottie said. “Then again, Mama and Daddy weren’t sticklers about servants keeping their place. A good servant is worth his or her weight in gold, Daddy always said.”

“And Grandmother Paine taught me that everyone should be treated the same,” Penny Sue added. “Treat people the way you want to be treated.”

These two Paine women were oddities, Vic thought. Old-fashioned Southern-belle types, but without the snooty superiority he’d grown accustomed to seeing in the women for whom his mother had slaved year in and year out.

From the salad through the entrée, dinner conversation hardly lulled for more than a minute or two, and during those brief lulls he supposed he’d been expected to contribute his input. But barely missing a beat when he didn’t respond, either Dottie or Penny Sue kept the chitchat going. Neverending, actually. Talk, talk, talk. And about nothing. Absolutely nothing. Apparently this ability was another Paine trait.

Just as Ruby served dessert—large bowls of banana pudding topped with thick meringue—the doorbell rang.

“It seems that somebody’s early for tonight’s family meeting,” Ruby grumbled. “It’s barely six-thirty.”

“Well, never mind,” Dottie said. “Go see who it is and show them into the front parlor.”

“Don’t bother. I’ll do it.” Penny Sue shoved back her chair and hopped to her feet. “I shouldn’t eat dessert anyway. It goes straight to my hips.” Emphasizing the word hips, she planted her hands just below her waist on either side and slid her open palms down over the smooth material of her tan suede skirt.

There was nothing wrong with her hips, Vic noted. They were perfect. Wide, rounded and totally feminine. He swallowed hard. Everything about Penny Sue was ultra-feminine, from her beautiful face to her great body to her soft laughter and the sexy way she moved. Unconsciously sexy, which was far more captivating than a blatant display.

“It’s probably Eula,” Dottie said. “She’s always early. Comes from having too much time on her hands since she retired.”

Penny Sue hurried from the room, her tan heels tapping on the wooden floor. Vic’s gaze followed her out into the hall, but from where he was sitting, he couldn’t see all the way to the front door.

“My niece is a lovely girl, isn’t she?” Dottie held a small, delicate hand to her throat and played with the short strand of pearls she wore.

“Yes ma’am, she is.”

“Are you married, Mr. Noble?”

A tight knot formed in the pit of Vic’s belly. “No ma’am, I’m not.”

“A man your age should have a wife.”

He wanted to ask her how she knew his age, but instead said, “I’m not good husband material. Too set in my ways.”

Just as Miss Dottie opened her mouth to reply—and Vic was certain the old lady would have had an excellent comeback—they heard Penny Sue screaming.

Loud, frightened screams.

Vic knocked over his chair as he jumped to his feet. If anything had happened to her, if anyone had dared to harm her… With his heart racing, he ran out of the dining room and into the foyer. Penny Sue stood at the open front door, her body trembling, her right hand drawn into a fist and pressed against her lips. Vic reached her in seconds, not knowing what danger she faced, but realizing that he would lay down his life to protect her. After he grabbed her around the waist and pulled her to his side, she shut her eyes and pressed her body against his. While holding her, he maneuvered her around so that he could see whatever lay beyond the door. That’s when he saw what had made her scream. A small, open pet carrier had been placed on the porch, directly in front of the entrance. Inside the carrier lay a medium-size stuffed dog, a menacing butcher knife stuck through its body and what Vic assumed was fake blood of some sort oozing from the wound.

“It’s okay, honey.” He stroked her back soothingly. “It’s not a real dog. This is just somebody’s idea of a joke. A very sick joke.”

Penny Sue lifted her head and looked up at Vic, moisture glistening in her eyes. “I realize it’s not a real dog, but at first…for just a minute…I thought it was Lucky.” She eased away from him and turned to glare at the pet carrier. “I’m sorry about screaming. It’s just seeing him—that—” she nodded toward the gruesome sight “—was so totally unexpected. I don’t usually act like such a ninny.”

“You were frightened. It’s perfectly understandable that you’d react the way you did.” And he meant exactly what he’d said. It was understandable that on first glance she’d think the stuffed dog was Lucky and that she would scream. But what wasn’t understandable was why Penny Sue reacting in a typical female way didn’t irritate the hell out of him. As a general rule, he preferred his women sophisticated, even jaded. He avoided silly women who giggled or screamed or cried or talked too much.

“What the hell is that?” a man’s voice called from outside the gate at the end of the sidewalk.

“Oh dear, that’s Uncle Douglas,” Penny Sue groaned.

“Well, what’s all the ruckus about?” Dottie came up behind them, doing her best to see around Vic and Penny Sue. “That’s Douglas and Candy, isn’t it? Why on earth did Penny Sue scream?”

Reaching down to grasp Vic’s hand, Penny Sue took a deep breath. “Would you please get rid of it—all of it—right now?” Her words were whispered, for his ears only. “I’ll take care of Aunt Dottie and explain things to her and Uncle Douglas.”

“We should call the police first,” Vic told her.

“It won’t do a bit of good. Chief Miller isn’t going to waste his time on a stunt like that,” Penny Sue said. “The police aren’t the least bit interested in protecting Lucky.”

Vic nodded. In a way, he understood the police chief’s reasoning. Not many law enforcement officers would take threats on a dog’s life seriously and they’d do little more than laugh at the stuffed dog, even one that had been mutilated in such a grotesque fashion.

“I’ll take care of it,” Vic assured her. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

Nodding, she offered him a closed-mouth, forced smile.

He squeezed her arm reassuringly, then headed out the front door just as a gray-haired man and a woman of no more than thirty came up on the front porch. Penny Sue circled around Vic and met the visitors.

“Why on earth would somebody do such a darn fool thing?” Douglas Paine nursed a crystal tumbler half full of whiskey. Penny Sue had poured her uncle the drink herself, after she had calmed Aunt Dottie with soothing words and a hug.

“Don’t you think maybe somebody is just making fun of Penny Sue?” Candy Paine positioned her skinny behind on the arm of her husband’s chair and laid her hand on his knee. “It’s obviously just a joke. One of the family poking fun at the fact that Penny Sue thinks someone’s trying to kill Lucky.”

Penny Sue glared at Candy. “Someone did try to kill lucky.”

“So you keep telling us.” Candy rubbed her hand up and down Douglas’s leg. “But you’re the only one who believes such silliness.”

Eyeing Candy’s caressing hand, Aunt Dottie cleared her throat disapprovingly. Uncle Douglas grasped his young wife’s hand and lifted it in his. The whole family had been mortified when Douglas had married for the fourth time, more because of who he married than the fact it was his fourth walk down the aisle. Redheaded, bosomy Candy Coley had been a wannabe Vegas showgirl, someone Douglas Paine had met at a convention two years ago. After a whirlwind courtship, they’d been married in some shabby Vegas chapel by an Elvis impersonator. It hadn’t taken the family, including Douglas’s two children by his first wife, very long to realize Candy considered her new husband a real sugar daddy. However, despite his lucrative dental practice in Alabaster Creek, Douglas was not a millionaire—not yet. But when he inherited his share of Aunt Lottie’s fortune that fact would change immediately.

“Candy, dear, why don’t you come sit on the sofa by me?” Aunt Dottie asked. “You’ll be so much more comfortable than you are perched there on the arm of Douglas’s chair.”

Before Candy could reply, the doorbell rang.

“Let Ruby get it,” Dottie said.

Penny Sue nodded. Where was Vic? What was taking him so long? All he had to do was take the pet carrier and dump it in the garbage can in the detached three-car garage behind the house.

Eula Paine showed herself into the front parlor. “Am I late?” she asked.

“No, no,” Dottie said. “Douglas and Candy are early.”

The doorbell rang again. Ruby called from the foyer, “I might as well keep the front door open at this rate.”

Within five minutes, the front parlor filled with Paine relatives. Aunt Lottie’s heirs. And last, but not least, coming in at seven o’clock on the dot, was Uncle Willie. Since this was, for all intents and purposes, a business meeting as far as Uncle Willie was concerned, Aunt Pattie hadn’t come with him tonight as she usually did to Paine functions. After all, she, not he, was the blood relative.

Penny Sue kept glancing out into the foyer, wondering what had happened to Vic. Where is he? Why isn’t he here? He’d known she wanted him present for this meeting.

Once she had made the rounds and welcomed everyone, taking her hostess duties seriously, Aunt Dottie came over to Penny Sue and clutched her hand. “Perhaps he has decided to forego this family meeting.”

“What?”

“You’re concerned about Mr. Noble, aren’t you?”

“Not concerned, just wondering where he is.”

“The natives are getting restless.” Dottie squeezed her hand. “Why don’t I have Ruby see what everyone wants to drink. It might keep them pacified. In the meantime, you go find Mr. Noble. I’m sure he can convince the others that Lucky needs a bodyguard.”

“What about you, Aunt Dottie, are you convinced?”

“It’s not my decision to make. It’s yours. And I support you in whatever you do. Haven’t I always?”

Penny Sue sighed. “Yes, of course you have. Even when Aunt Lottie…well, we both know she could be rather stern at times.”

“Lottie loved you, my dear, and trusted you more than anyone in the family,” Dottie said. “She wouldn’t have entrusted Lucky to anyone else. That says a great deal about how much faith she had in you. And although I think it was rather foolish of her to have left her money to her dog, I do think she made the right choice in naming you the executor of her will. I’ve done the same, you know.”

“You’ve done what?”

“I named you executor of my will,” Dottie replied. “Of course, I won’t be leaving such a sizable fortune, but—”

“Oh, my…my goodness.” Penny Sue hugged her tiny, fragile aunt. As her father used to say, “Dottie’s so thin that she looks as if a strong wind would blow her away.”

“When are we going to start the meeting?” Stacie Paine asked. She was Uncle Douglas’s eldest child, an old-maid schoolteacher, who had turned forty her last birthday.

“It’s already past seven,” Valerie said as she stood up and took a prominent position in front of the fireplace. “I see no reason to delay things. If everyone is ready—”

“We should begin the meeting with a prayer,” Reverend Clayton Dickson proclaimed loudly in a voice that singled him out as a preacher of the gospel.

Clayton was Penny Sue’s first cousin once removed, her father’s first cousin. Clayton’s mother had been one of the few Paine women to snag herself a husband. Since marrying Phyllis and getting religion, Clayton had become a fanatic, totally obsessed with sin and salvation.

Chris Paine, Stacie’s younger brother, groaned loudly and rolled his dark eyes toward the ceiling. He and Clayton had once been best friends, back in their teens when they’d both been hell-raisers. But in recent years, their friendship long dead, Chris took every opportunity to ridicule his cousin.

“A prayer never hurts,” Eula said. “Get on with it, Clayton.”

To everyone’s dismay, except his wife Phyllis’s, Clayton dropped to his knees, right there in the front parlor on Grandmother Paine’s Persian carpet. He lifted his folded hands in front of him, closed his eyes and beseeched his maker for mercy on his sinful soul.

While the others sat quietly and at least pretended to listen to Clayton’s prayer, Penny Sue slipped out of the parlor as quietly as possible. Taking the downstairs rooms, one by one, she searched for Vic. When she entered the kitchen, Ruby paused in her preparations and glanced at Penny Sue.

“Did you come to help me get these drinks out to the parlor?” Ruby asked. “I’m getting too old to be lifting such heavy trays.”

“I’ll be glad to help you,” Penny Sue replied, “but not right now. I’m looking for Vic. For Mr. Noble.”

“He’s out there on the back porch with Tully,” Ruby said. “He’s going over that stuffed dog and the carrier it was in, searching for something.”

“What’s he searching for?”

“How should I know? And I need help now with these drinks, not later.”

“Why don’t you just make two trips to the parlor with those drinks,” Penny Sue said. “Or ask Stacie or Cousin Eula to help you. I really need to speak to Vic.”

Ruby grunted and mumbled to herself.

Just as Penny Sue opened the back door and took her first step onto the porch, Vic glanced up from where he sat beside Tully in old, identical wicker rockers.

“The family meeting is ready to start,” she told Vic. “I’d like for you to come and meet everyone.”

Without hesitation, Vic rose from the rocker. “See you later, Tully.”

The old man nodded.

Vic took Penny Sue’s elbow and turned her around, then escorted her inside before she had a chance to say anything else.

As they walked out of the kitchen, she asked, “Why were you looking over the pet carrier and stuffed dog? What were you searching for?”

He paused, eyed her quizzically and grunted.

“Ruby said you were—” she continued.

“Nothing in particular,” he told her. “Just some general checking. Not really any scientific testing. After all, I don’t have the equipment, but I would like to send everything to the Dundee lab first thing in the morning.”