âDid I do what you expected?â
âYou did what I hoped.â Penny glanced at Kadin, not having to explain that heâd melted into the kiss right along with her.
âWhat did you mean by what you said?â
That he didnât have to worry? That she wasnât the settling-down type? âExactly what it sounded like.â
âI wasnât hitting on you,â he said.
Was he worried heâd somehow encouraged her?
âNo, silly, I hit on you. And it worked.â She smiled.
âPenny⦠I donât want you to get the wrong idea.â
So professional. She bet he hung on to that like a badge, his ready defense whenever a woman got too close.
âI donât have the wrong idea. You kissed me back.â Oh, God, was she really doing this? Flirting with fire? This wasnât ordinary flirting. This was war. She stopped and made him face her. âLook, whatever happens, happens. There are no rules when youâre with me.ââ
* * *
Be sure to check out the next books in this series.
Cold Case Detectives: Powerful investigations, unexpected passion.
Chapter 1
Penny Darden saw the old, rickety barn through the arch of tree branches and cold nostalgia gripped her. She stopped walking. Tall wildflowers swayed down the center of the curving one-lane dirt road. Beautiful. Picturesque. But full of a secret past.
Growing up on a Midwestern farm, Penny hadnât escaped fast enough to city life. Metropolitan bike paths and noisy, multilane highways were her thing now. The barn, with its lonely mystery of fading red paint and old, splintering fences, tapped into the girl whoâd loved to explore wild, rolling hills and abandoned buildings. Sheâd long ago left that lifeâand the girlâbehind.
Resuming her walk, she emerged from the trees and spotted a Colonial-style house that stood just as neglected as the barn, door and windows boarded up, just like the farmhouse of her childhood. After her mother sold the place, it had gone to disrepair. She hadnât understood how lonely her childhood had been until her senior year in high school. That realization had driven her away from Midwestern life.
Jax hadnât told her there were historic buildings on his property. Maybe half the source of her unwanted curiosity stemmed from that. Her boyfriend had said the only difference between his second home in this remote area of the Wasatch Mountains and his upscale apartment in Salt Lake City was the view. How wrong heâd been.
Reaching the double doors of the weathered barn, she lifted the heavy, awkward latch securing one of the doors and pushed.
Dust particles drifted through the newly disturbed air, sparkling in sunlight. The smell of old hay took her back in time. Old everything. Old wood. Old leather. Old hides. She used to love playing in hay, getting dirty all day and fighting her mother when told to take a shower.
A white pickup truck parked at the far end stopped her short. Partially hidden by stacked hay, it seemed so out of place. She walked to the clean, new vehicle and saw a dent in the driverâs-side door. Peering through the window, she noticed nothing odd except newness and cleanliness. Immaculate cleanliness. She tried the door handle. Locked.
What was a nice truck doing in an old barn like this? Had the previous owner left it? That didnât seem likely. Why leave a vehicle that was worth something? Maybe the engine blew up. Walking to the front, she saw no plate. Nothing on the back, either. Someone had just dumped it here.
While that struck her as unusual, Penny supposed there must be an explanation. As she turned away, a tack room drew her back to her childhood again. She and her best friend had ridden horses almost every weekend. She fingered an old bridle and then brushed off the dirt that transferred to her skin. Some tools and a few other pieces of tack, all worn with age, kept her in the past until she caught sight of the truck again.
Who were the previous owners? Why had they sold? Had the homestead gone to shambles after the sale or had something happened to force them to leave? She didnât know how long Jax had owned the place.
Penny walked outside, seeing just a portion of the truck before latching the door. She looked toward the boarded-up house and let another wave of lonely nostalgia sweep her before hiking back up the hill.