Kiss the Moon

He smiled. “Is that the truth?”

She smiled back, her stomach twisting—damned if she’d let him ruin her afternoon tea. “Okay, so it’s awkward and I’d rather not. But I’ll oblige you. How’s that?”

“Better.”

“Are you going to pick apart every sentence?”

He shrugged. “Only if I sense you’re…dissembling.”

“Dissembling’s just another word for lying. It’s that Dartmouth education showing, huh? Well, sense away, Mr. Sinclair.”

“Wyatt,” he said smoothly.

She poured her tea, relieved her hand didn’t shake. “Wyatt Sinclair,” she said. “The only son of Brandon Sinclair, who was just eleven years old when his older brother and Frannie Beaudine slipped out during the reception honoring the donation of the Sinclair Collection to the Met.” She sipped her tea. “Rumor has it Colt stopped to say goodbye to his little brother before heading to the reception.”

“You’ve done your research.”

She waved a hand. She wanted to establish a measure of control over their conversation but saw no need to get into what she knew about Frannie and Colt—and him. “That much everyone around here knows. It’s printed on diner place mats. Frannie Beaudine’s sort of a local heroine.”

“And the people of Cold Spring blame Colt for sweeping her off her feet and to her doom?”

“Pretty much.”

Wyatt poured his tea, adding a bit of lemon, no sugar or cream. “It’s been forty-five years—”

“Around here, forty-five years is the blink of an eye. I mean, it’s not like we’re in England or Greece, but still. My father remembers both your uncle and Frannie—and your grandfather, too.”

“He told me.”

“He was fifteen when they disappeared. He helped search for their plane. It’s not so long ago.”

“I suppose.” Sinclair leaned back, watching Penelope as she ate her scone, which was feathery light and just perfect, but she resisted the temptation to wolf it down. “So, tell me how you mistook a dump for plane wreckage.”

She’d been explaining that point since morning. On her trip to Plattsburgh, New York, and back, she’d worked out the kinks in her story. “Well, I did and I didn’t. I just thought it was plane wreckage—I realized I wouldn’t know for sure until I went back. Because of the conditions, I only saw it from a distance. It was on a steep, icy, rocky hillside, and I didn’t want to risk climbing over to get a closer look. It was late, and I was out in the woods alone.”

The dark, almost black eyes settled on her. “And you were lost.”

She gave him a self-deprecating smile. “I wasn’t lost-lost. Lost-lost is when the search party has to find you. I made my way back while they were still arguing over who got to ride the snowmobiles.”

The eyes didn’t move from her. Wyatt Sinclair wasn’t going to be easy to roll. He had more at stake. It was his uncle—his flesh and blood—in that plane. Feeling a twinge of guilt, Penelope poured her tea. “Anyway,” she went on, welcoming the steam and the smoky smell of Earl Grey, “I said I thought I might have found Colt and Frannie’s plane, and next thing it’s all over the news that I did find it. So before things got too far out of hand, I slipped off on my own late yesterday to check out what I’d found for myself.”

“What time did you leave?”

“I don’t know, about four, four-thirty.”

“And when did you get back?”

She slathered jam and butter onto another piece of scone. “What’re you going to do, get out your compass and map and calculate my coordinates?”

His gaze darkened enough to remind her that she was dealing with a man who hadn’t exactly driven six hours for tea and scones. “Maybe I’m just pinning you down.”

He said pinning in such a way that her stomach rolled over and a prickly, all-over awareness settled in. “Pin away,” she said lightly, making it a challenge. “I got home after dark. I didn’t look at the clock.”

His gaze remained steady, probing, all the more disconcerting because she had the distinct feeling he knew he’d gotten to her with that last remark. No doubt it had been deliberate. Part of his strategy. Make the woman quiver with thoughts of your hard body and dark eyes and then pounce—prove her a bald-faced liar.

“You must have some idea,” he said mildly.

She had no idea because she’d never made the trip. She’d tramped to the edge of her property, tossed snowballs against trees for a while and tramped back by a different route, careful not to let any enterprising reporter spot her. “I guess it must have been around seven. I took a shower, ate dinner, checked my e-mail and went to bed.”

“All right. And you say what you found this time was a dump.”

“What I found last time was a dump, too. I just didn’t know it.”

“Isn’t it unusual to find a dump, even an old one, that far out in the woods?”

“Unusual but not impossible. Most of New Hampshire was denuded by logging and farming a hundred years ago. A lot of reforestation has occurred over the century. The woods—even the Sinclair woods—are crisscrossed with stone walls, old logging trails, cellar holes, wells. Dumps. We see trees and like to think we’re stepping on virgin ground. But we’re not.” She sipped her tea, feeling calmer. “You went to school up here. You must know this stuff.”

“I was more concerned with climbing mountains and surviving for another semester than with local yore.” He settled back, his attention focused intently on her. He would want to be absolutely certain she was telling the truth before he left Cold Spring. If not, she had no idea what he’d do. “What made you think you’d found plane wreckage? Initially. Before you went back and learned otherwise. You’re a pilot. Something must have made you think it was a plane, specifically a Piper Cub J-3.”

So much for working out the kinks in her story. Being pelted with questions from a reporter was one thing—from Colt’s only nephew quite another. But Penelope saw no point in backing down. Telling Wyatt about his uncle’s plane would only bring on chaos. “It was a weird day. I don’t know if there was anything specific or not. And what I thought I saw on Sunday is irrelevant—what I did see yesterday was an old dump.”

“Which now you say you can’t find again.”

His tone wasn’t neutral. If he’d meant it to be neutral, it would be neutral. But it wasn’t. He didn’t believe a word she’d said. And he meant her to know it. “Mr. Sinclair, I get the distinct impression you don’t believe me.”

He shrugged. “I didn’t come here to put you on the defensive. I just want to know the truth. You tried to follow your footsteps to the site this morning but they’d been covered with snow?”

“That’s right.”

“Where’s the snow now?”

“There was more in the higher elevations. Four inches in some spots. We hardly got any along the lake. Microclimates.”

“There was enough snow to obliterate your tracks?”

“My tracks were hard enough to follow yesterday with all the melting and refreezing this time of year. And I wasn’t really paying attention to landmarks. It was lousy light, and I was focused on my tracks. I suppose I might be able to find my way back, given enough time, but I don’t see the point. It wasn’t Frannie and Colt’s plane I found, it was a dump.”

The dark gaze stayed on her. “That’s your story?”

Penelope popped the last of her scone into her mouth. “That’s what happened.”

“The press buying it?”

“Sure. They’re not going to traipse through the wilds of New Hampshire in March and risk finding out I’m not lying after all. They’d look like idiots. Besides, they won’t find it—it was a miracle I found it myself.”

Wyatt said nothing.

“I’m sorry you wasted your trip north,” Penelope said.