After the Storm Page 13

  “Love your bag,” Nadia said, pointing at the expensive-looking monstrosity. “It’s a Louis, isn’t it?”

  “It is,” his mom said, obviously warming up to Nadia. “A bit of a luxury but I travel so much for work, I decided it was worth it.”

  “The texture is gorgeous.” Nadia ran her fingers across the leather suitcase, then straightened. “I need to get back to work and let you two catch up.”

  “It’s been a while for us,” his mom said, patting his upper arm. “Where’s work?”

  “My family owns a hotel on the beach. The Silver Sands. I’m the director of events and marketing.”

  Nell raised her brows, impressed, and looked at Penn.

  “You would love the Silver Sands, Mom.” Perfect solution.

  “You said on the beach? I’m sold. Is it possible for you to save me a room and Penn can take me there later?”

  “Absolutely. When you go to the front desk, have them page me,” Nadia said, edging toward the door. “It was nice to meet you, Mrs. Griffin.”

  His mom reached for Nadia’s hand as if they’d been friends forever. “Please, call me Nell. I’ll see you and your beach hotel later.”

  Penn moved to the door to see Nadia out, hoping to give his mother the appearance that there was no tension—of any kind—between them. He was already going to get the third degree.

  “I’ll talk to you later, Penn,” Nadia said on her way past. She managed to pull off a hint of warmth, although he could tell it was fake because of the set of her jaw.

  If his mom had to show up at his place, there couldn’t have been a better time for her to do it. Her presence allowed no room for further conversation between Nadia and him. Thanks to her, he could avoid any situation that forced him to make false pleasantries or promises. Because those were two things he just couldn’t muster right now. Possibly ever.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  PENN STARED AFTER NADIA even once she’d disappeared around the corner, stalling as best he could before turning around to deal with his mother.

  “She seems like a nice girl,” Nell said, her smile evident in her voice.

  “Yes. She is.” Penn shut the door and faced his mother. “So what are you really doing here, Mom?”

  “Isn’t it obvious?” She glanced around the living room. “Let’s sit down. Catch up.”

  “Obvious,” Penn repeated, frowning. He gestured to the couch and dragged his handy-dandy straight-back chair away from the window to join her. “There’s nothing obvious when it comes to my mother showing up on San Amaro for the first time in the twelve years I’ve lived here.”

  “Has it been twelve years? My word…” She sat on the couch and smoothed out her navy slacks, as if they needed it.

  Most people got off an airplane looking at least a little wrinkled and fatigued. Not Nell Griffin. Her clothing was impeccable, her face looked fresh, as if she’d gotten up an hour ago and taken a rejuvenating dip in natural spring water.

  “I can’t get over the fact that you didn’t even call me after your injury, Penn.”

  “I already went over this with Zoe. Didn’t she fill you in?”

  “She said you’re holding your own. Starting to recover.”

  “Going to be a long process, but there’s nothing you or anyone else can do.”

  “A mother never accepts those words where her children are concerned. I love you, Penn. It pains me that you’re struggling.” She moved to the edge of the cushion and leaned forward as she spoke.

  “I’m fine, Mom.”

  “You’re going to be fine. Absolutely. You have so many opportunities ahead of you, so much promise.”

  Shit, not this. He stood. “So, no coffee. What about water? Orange juice? Soda? Scotch?”

  “I’ll help myself, Penn. You need to sit down and rest your back.”

  “Dammit! I don’t need to sit down. I can get my mother a goddamn glass of water when she finally shows up at my place after twelve years.”

  “That’s bothered you,” she said, casually rising from the couch.

  “I haven’t lost sleep over it.” He headed to the kitchen to get her a drink and prove a point. She was going to have water whether she wanted it or not.

  His mom followed him in, her shoes clicking authoritatively on the tile floor. “You know my job is—”

  “Demanding and time-consuming.” Penn said the last part at the same time she did.

  “I should have made a point of coming before now,” Nell said, sounding regretful.

  “Ice?” Penn asked before filling the glass.

  “Please.”

  He took some cubes from the freezer, dropped them in and filled it with water from the tap. As he handed her the glass, the front door opened and closed.

  “Hey,” Coop said as he strode into the kitchen. He did a double take when he spotted Penn’s mom. “Hello.”

  “This is my mom,” Penn said tiredly. “Nell Griffin. Mom, this is my roommate, Cooper Flannagan.”

  His mom was stepping toward Cooper, her hand extended, when understanding dawned on her face. “Oooh. So you’re Cooper.”

  “That’s me.”

  “I’ve heard all about you.”

  “Penn lies,” Coop said.

  “I’ve heard more from Zoe in the past week than Penn has told me in all the time you two have lived together.”

  Penn narrowed his eyes at his mom, then looked at Coop to gauge his reaction. His roommate wouldn’t have been able to wipe the grin off his face to save his life.

  “What did Zoe say?” Penn asked, curious as hell.

  “That I eat like a four-year-old with no parents, I’m sure.” Coop opened one of the cabinets and took down a bag of sour-cream-and-onion chips, holding it up proudly as if to prove his point.

  “She did mention you have a penchant for less than nutritious foods,” his mom said. “Among other things.”

  Penn continued to stare at his friend, wondering again if Coop was screwing around with his little sister. He wasn’t sure he wanted to find out until he was physically able to kick Coop’s ass.

  “Zoe was nice enough to leave us a boatload of groceries when she left, and fortunately, Penn here has been bored enough to figure out how to cook them.”

  “Zoe’s a good girl,” Penn’s mom said, and just like that, he was right back where he’d been twelve years ago. Zoe and their mother—and really, their father, too—were cut from the same cloth. The intellectual, overachieving cloth. Penn had tried that path, had forced it on himself for the first eighteen years of his life. His mom’s innocent statement had him feeling like a failure all over again.

  As if he needed more of that right now.

  “Where have you been?” Penn asked his roommate, determined to ignore the crap feeling trying to overcome him.

  “Red Cross. I went with Cale to help with the preschoolers.”

  The preschoolers. Penn hadn’t even thought about missing them. Each month, a few of the firefighters volunteered to help the three-year-olds with craft time, and he’d tried to be in on it whenever he wasn’t on duty.

  “Was Alberto there? Tiny little guy with the grin as big as his face?”

  Coop laughed. “Yep. Alberto was there. That dude is loud for his size. Cuter than hell.”

  “Alberto is loud for any size. Man, I miss going.”

  “You could still do it. Don’t have to lift anything but some glue and crayons.”

  “Maybe,” Penn said noncommittally. The visit was a big deal to the kids each month because they were firefighters. Firefighters were like superheroes in their eyes. He wasn’t sure he was up for being the guy who used to be a firefighter.

  Coop took a can of soda out of the fridge. “I’ve got some errands to run. See you later. Mrs. Griff, it was good to finally meet you.”

  “Likewise.”

  “Later,” Penn said, realizing it was lunchtime, and that he hadn’t even had breakfast yet. Not that his schedule mattered much.

  The
front door again shut and the quiet between him and his mom seemed to suck all the oxygen out of the air.

  “He’s a friendly young man,” his mom said, clinking her ice against the side of her glass.

  “Is there something going on between him and Zoe?”

  “You’d have to ask your sister that. But she talked an awful lot about him when she got home. So.” Nell leaned her elbows on the bar, grasping her glass in both hands. “I was trying to apologize for not making time to visit you earlier.”

  “No big thing.” He searched the refrigerator for something suitable to offer his mom or any guest for lunch.

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t come right away when you were hurt,” she continued. “We were in the middle of negotiations on a major deal and I thought if I sent Zoe down, she could help you until I got here. It’s taken some doing but I finally managed to hand everything off or postpone it so I could get away for a week.”

  “A week?” He wasn’t aware that his mother had ever taken an entire week off from work. He could count on one hand the times she took a full day off when he was growing up.

  “Seven days. You look like I just announced a torture regimen.”

  “I just don’t know how to take a visit from you, I guess,” Penn said, closing the fridge empty-handed and at a loss for what to feed her.

  Seven days? What would he do with her for seven days? Zoe had had studying to do, and who knew, maybe Coop had helped in the entertainment department, but his mom was different and this was longer.

  She was staring at him, her head tilted.

  “What?” he asked in dread.

  She pursed her lips and continued to watch him. “Why don’t you and I get along better, Penn?”

  The question caught him off guard. She seemed genuinely confused and, for once, not judgmental.

  Penn leaned against the counter and crossed his arms over his chest. “You don’t understand me, Mom. You don’t know me. You never have.”

  Her brows furrowed as she considered. “Why is that?”

  “Why don’t you understand me?” he asked in disbelief.

  She nodded. “You lived at home for eighteen years. And you’re right. I feel like I don’t know you.”

  “You’ve always been…” He searched for words that wouldn’t get her hackles up. “You’ve been too preoccupied by your job to realize that I’m different from you.”

  “How are you different?”

  Was she for real? The shorter answer would be how he was similar to her.

  “I’m a college dropout, for starters.” He straightened to his full height when he said it.

  She nodded slowly, still staring at him as if he was a specimen under a microscope. “I’m betting the reasons behind that would be an excellent start in discovering how we’re different.”

  “Might be but I haven’t eaten yet today, and I can promise you, that’s not something I’ll get into willingly. Especially without food. I could make grilled cheese sandwiches pretty fast.”

  His mom waved off the idea. “I’ll take you to lunch, Penn.” She took a drink of water and set the glass in the sink. “Maybe we can change some things while I’m here this week.”

  “Such as?”

  She faced him. “I’d like to spend some time together. It doesn’t have to be anything special—I know you’re recovering. But maybe we can get to know each other a little better. What do you say?”

  Penn shrugged. “Worth a try, I guess.” He attempted a grin to hide his lack of optimism. “I sure don’t have anything else going on.”

  “Well, then, we’ve got the conditions for a perfect storm,” his mom said. “You’re bored out of your mind and I’m stuck on an island. I think we can work with that.”

  Penn’s smile became less forced. “You ready for lunch? Or have you been up long enough to go for dinner?”

  “If I skipped to dinner, I’d miss out on one of my meals. Can’t have that,” she joked. “Where would you like to go?”

  “Ruiz’s has decent Mexican food.”

  “That sounds lovely. I take it you’re ready to leave now?”

  “I was ready a half an hour ago. Let’s go.” He grabbed his keys from the hook Coop had put on the kitchen wall. He stopped in his tracks midway through the living room. Muttered a curse under his breath. “You’ll have to drive my Jeep. I can’t drive yet. Doctor’s orders.”

  “As long as you can direct me, that won’t be a problem. I’ll take my suitcase and we can head to the hotel after we eat.”

  Penn took over rolling her luggage as soon as she had the handle extended. As they walked toward the parking lot, his mom squeezed his upper arm.

  “I’m glad we talked, Penn. It’s going to be a good week.”

  He nodded halfheartedly. Family harmony, getting along with his self-absorbed mother, those weren’t his strong points. They were a better fit for Zoe’s cerebral, empathetic abilities. Penn was always more comfortable and a lot more confident with physical endeavors—if you needed a sink fixed or a fire put out, he was your guy. Or he had been. Now that he wasn’t even able to lift a suitcase or drive his Jeep, he had no idea what the hell he was good for.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  NADIA WENT PAST THE executive office hallway, through the lobby and directly into the women’s locker room in the hotel’s first-floor fitness wing. She walked without seeing anything as she tried to stop her head from spinning.

  She hadn’t had much of a plan at all when she’d headed to Penn’s, but one thing was certain—she absolutely hadn’t expected any of what had happened. Even when she’d lain down beside him, she’d been tempted simply by the promise of comfort and rest. Nothing like the chemistry that had exploded between them. Her breath became shaky just thinking about it.

  The guilt that had engulfed her when he’d hurt himself again had gradually morphed into guilt over missing work as she’d driven back to the hotel. Her mom was no doubt livid and concerned. And still, there was no way Nadia could just walk into her office, sit down and get back on task.

  She’d probably pay for taking several hours off, but at this point, what was one more hour? Her head wasn’t going to be in the game if she went back now, anyway.

  The locker room was deserted, which was typical for early afternoon, after the lunch rush and before new guests checked in. Not that she was a frequent user or anything—she was normally too caught up in work to exercise—but she’d heard rumors.

  In spite of her sporadic fitness habits, she had her own permanent locker where she stored some workout clothes and a couple of swimsuits. She opened it now with her key and took out one of the suits. At first she was thinking about the hot tub, but then she changed her mind. She needed to sweat out some of the crazy stuff going on inside her today. Once she shed her rumpled clothes and pulled on a no-frills one-piece suit, she headed for the sauna.

  As she expected, it was empty, as well. She set the timer and stretched out on one of the wide wooden benches.

  Heaven.

  She really needed to do this more often.

  She really needed to do a lot of things more often.

  Her muscles slowly began to loosen, and as she relaxed, the knot of rejection that had lodged in her gut at Penn’s lessened. It didn’t go away entirely, but space and two-hundred-degree heat helped her see beyond the surface.

  On the bright side, though he’d been angry as a bull, he hadn’t taken it out directly on her. Hadn’t thrown around blame or reminded her of her role in his injury.

  That was progress.

  And still, it was always there, between them, like an invisible trip wire.

  His anger… It took so little to set him off. The first sign of pain, among other things, made him explode. His resentment was never far away and today his self-disgust was undeniable, as evidenced by his “worthless body” comment and the remark about getting busy doing nothing.

  That was his problem, she realized suddenly. He had nothing to do except think. No goal
s, beyond getting to PT every couple of days. Nothing to challenge him mentally or give him hope that he’d ever have a normal life again.

  He needed purpose. Needed to move forward, to find something to occupy him, whether it was a hobby or a career path to start pursuing or training for…something to take his mind off what he’d lost.

  Maybe she could help him with that. Heck, maybe there was an opportunity for him to work at the hotel. They had so many departments and different possibilities, perhaps there was something there that Penn could be interested in. If not there, she could encourage him to start looking other places.

  And though she had every intention of backing off physically until he had a chance to heal more, in due time, she could help him focus on the things his body could do, instead of the things it couldn’t. Martyr that she was.

  Penn had lost perspective, or rather, had been overwhelmed by the negative. She’d give him a couple of days to cool down, but if she could bring him around to a different, more productive point of view, maybe in some small way that would counteract the damage she had indirectly caused.

  * * *

  “I WOULD HAVE THOUGHT you’d find a better way to show you were mad at me.”

  Nadia tensed at the sound of her mother’s voice behind her in her office doorway. It’d been quite the day so far and she wasn’t ready for another confrontation. Without looking at her mother, Nadia continued to her desk. She’d just put out a fire, figuratively speaking, with one of the convention groups and wanted to wilt into her chair for a precious five minutes. Alone.

  “We discussed some pretty significant budget issues at the executive meeting,” Joyce continued.

  Even though Nadia still didn’t look up, she could see out of the corner of her eye that her mom stood in the doorway, arms crossed, leaning casually against the doorjamb.

  “Sounds like nothing blew up in my absence.”

  “That’s not really the point, Nadia.” Her mom came in and sat across from her and Nadia could no longer avoid eye contact.

  “I was tired, Mom. Up most of the night. I didn’t have anything to contribute.”