Ben had been right, of course. When the shock of the wasp spray incident had worn off, a strange pride took its place. She felt empowered. Why shouldnât she? Sheâd prevailed over a big, hulking intruder. She might have been terrified, but she hadnât panicked. Sheâd kept her head, and sheâd driven him awayâwithout anyone getting seriously hurt.
Sheâd decided that very day to start the list. And before any doubt could set in, sheâd accomplished numbers one and two. Sell the town houseâalmost frighteningly easy. And buy a small house in Silverdellâmuch scarier, as she didnât have time to see it for herself but had to trust Jenny Gladiola, Silverdellâs longtime real estate agent.
But sheâd accomplished both, and now here she was, less than three miles from Bell River Ranch. Here to stay. Here to call Silverdell home again, after all these years.
A shiver passed through her. Thanks to Jennyâs discretion, no one in the family yet knew she was in town. Jenny had been a Dellian real estate agent forever, and sheâd kept her career flourishing, through good markets and bad, by knowing how to keep her mouth shut.
For now Penny was safe. However, telling Bree and Rowena absolutely had to be next.
Her sisters had been begging her for months to come live at the dude ranch with them. They could use the help, they said. They needed an art teacher, they said. But she knew the truthâthey were worried about her. They wanted to slip her into their nest, straight from the nest Ruth had kept her in.
No one wanted her to learn to fly.
But, by golly, she was going to learn anyhow.
So...back to the Risk-it List. What should number seven be? She had to pick very carefully. After the two big jolts of selling the town house and buying the duplex, she wanted the rest of the list to be relatively easy. Sheâd tackle a few of her phobiasâbut she wouldnât set herself up for failure. No wrestling pythons in the rain forest or taking a commercial shuttle to the space station.
Just juggling, costumes, kissing...
Ben would laugh. He was much more the space station type. Sheâd decided not to call hers a bucket list. It sounded too ambitious. That might come later, after sheâd accomplished everything on this one. After sheâd learned a little bit about who Penny Wright really was.
Instead, sheâd called it the Risk-it List. A list of things sheâd never had the nerve to doâthough sheâd always envied others who did. Things that looked daring, or exciting, or just plain fun. Things that might be mistakes. Things that might make her look silly. Things she had phobias about...
Aha! Phobias!
So seven would be: Ride in a hot air balloon. (fear of heights)
Take a picture of someone famous. (shyness)
Get a beautiful tattoo. (fear of disapproval)
Kiss a total stranger. (fear of...everything)
Go white-water rafting (fear of dying J)
Make love in a sailboat.
Number Eleven, the white-water rafting, would probably be the scariest. She really, really found the rapids terrifying. So obviously sheâd left that till toward the end of the list.
But where had that crazy Number Twelve come from? Was it from some movie sheâd seen? Some couple sheâd spotted setting off into San Francisco Bay...with her imagination supplying the rest?
âWhatâs so funny?â
Danny, the ice-cream artist, was at her table, holding a bowl so laden with beautifully arranged sweets that she knew sheâd never be able to finish it.
He looked for a safe place to set it down. Flushing, she tilted her legal pad toward her chest to hide it, then felt ridiculous. Why did she care whether he saw it?
âNothing, really,â she said awkwardly. âI just wrote the wrong thing... You know... I mean I spelled it all wrong.â
Argh. Why did she always feel nervous if she did anything remotely unconventional? She was unconventional, darn it. She was an artist at heart, not a banker. She wanted to dress in flamboyant colors and patterns, and laugh loudly, and lie down on the sidewalk to get the best angle on a snail. She wanted to sing and dance and go to partiesâand make love in a sailboat.
Ruth wasnât here to reproach her. Her father wasnât here to mock. No one cared. No one.
She could simply have laughed and said, âI wrote âsex on a sailboatâ on my wish list, though until this very minute I had no idea it was a fantasy of mine.â
Danny was probably no more than twenty-three, fresh out of collegeâheâd probably be a lot more embarrassed than she was.
New Number One: Stop Being Such a Doormat.
Oh, well. Baby steps, remember? She gave him a warm smile to offset any insult he might have taken from the snatched-away list. She complimented his gorgeous creation, stuck a fingerâsorry, Ruthâinto the whipped cream, then stuck the finger into her mouth and sighed. Real whipped cream. Sinfully delicious.
âItâs fantastic,â she said. âIâve moved back to town, and you can be sure Iâll be a regular customer!â
But it was too late. Obviously offended, heâd dialed his friendliness down about three notches. He wandered toward the ice-cream cases and began stacking and restacking prepackaged tubsâthough theyâd been perfectly aligned already.
Darn it. She sighed, annoyed with herself all over again. That was three strikes. Afraid to pull into Bell River. Afraid to pull into her own new duplex. Afraid to let this nice man see that she was making a list of dreams.
Sheâd better stiffen up, and fast, or the ego boost of banishing her intruder would disappear into a cloud of self-doubt. Her life might slide right back into the gray, conformist soup of the past seventeen years.
No. Darn it. No.
She couldnât stand that. She wouldnât let it happen. One way or another, sheâd find the courage toâ
The bell rang out as the door opened. She kept her legal pad against her chest as two people walked in. A little girl, maybe ten? Sulky, angry about something.
As she did with everyone she saw, Penny mentally began to sketch the child. A duckling still, but with definite traces of swan showing up around the edges. Her chubby cheeks were out of proportion to her longish, narrow chin. Someday, in the next year or two, her contours would lengthen, and sheâd have the sweetest heart-shaped face....
Her hair was a glorious messâshining, thick, brown, glossy curls that she had no idea what to do with now. And her figure obviously was hard to fit. A thick waist over too-long, too-skinny legs that made her look a little like a candy apple on toothpicks today. But when she got her teenage growth spurt, and that torso stretched out to match the limbs....well, watch out, Dad.
Ohhhh. When Pennyâs gaze finally shifted to Dad, she felt a small kick beneath her ribs. What a wonderful face...and the rest of him wasnât bad, either.
His coloring wasnât dramaticâthe daughter must have inherited that from Mom. He was brown-haired, with hints of honey in the strands, and a similar honeyed stubble on his cheeks and chin. His eyes, too, were brownâthey caught the light through the window, and glowed amber, rich, a lot like the caramel sliding down her ice cream right now.
But he didnât need to be painted with bold colors to be memorable. He oozed powerâit was in the jut of his cheekbones, the knife-edge of his jaw, the full sensuality of his lips. And in that body. If he didnât work outdoors, he must work out indoors...about twenty hours