Penny Sue Got Lucky Read online

  Penny Sue shrugged. “Everybody in town would have known anyway. It seems Tanya over at Doc Stone’s is telling everyone she sees. Besides, what do we care what other people say about us? The Paines have been the talk of Alabaster Creek for several generations. I can’t imagine what the good citizens would find to talk about if not for us.”

  Vic slowed the rental car, a mid-size black Chevy, as he entered the downtown area of Alabaster Creek. Apparently a recent renovation of the area had restored many of the old buildings to their original splendor, giving Main Street the look of a bygone era. Underground utilities, trees and shrubs on every corner and gas-lamp-style streetlights added to the ambience. He drove slowly up the street, glancing at the shops on his left. He passed a bakery, a drugstore/ice cream parlor, a hardware store and—Penny Sue’s Pretties. He whipped the car into a parking place, the only empty one on the block, at the very end of the street. He should probably take the time to read over the file folder Daisy had given him on Ms. Paine, but there should be time enough for that tonight. He could have read the file on the plane from Atlanta, but the flight had lasted less than thirty minutes, so he’d opted for a quick nap. When he’d phoned Ms. Paine from the Huntsville airport, she’d told him that they wouldn’t be picking up Lucky until tomorrow, so he wouldn’t be on official bodyguard duty until then.

  “The family is having a meeting tonight,” she’d said. “Some of them disapprove of my hiring you. I intend for us to be there and I want you to make it clear that you’ll be investigating the crime and bringing the person who shot Lucky to justice.”

  Vic grunted as he got out of the car and stepped up on the sidewalk. It wasn’t that he didn’t like dogs. He did. As a boy, raised in the backwoods of Kentucky, near the Tennessee border, he’d known men who thought more of their hunting dogs than they did their wives. He’d even had a dog himself when he was a kid. But Old Beau had slept outside and eaten scraps from the table. In the dead cold of winter, he found a spot under the floor near the gas furnace to stay warm. People of Vic’s acquaintance didn’t pamper dogs, didn’t treat them like they were humans. And they sure as hell didn’t leave them twenty-three million dollars.

  He paused before entering Ms. Paine’s shop, a two-story structure painted pale yellow, with a bright blue awning over the entrance and two huge display windows flanking either side of the glass door, the wooden trim also a bright blue. Hanging on the brick wall at the second-story level were large bright blue wooden letters that spelled out Penny Sue’s Pretties. As he glanced into the display windows, he noted a variety of items, from an antique chair covered in a floral material to scented candles and an assortment of toiletries. Scattered throughout the other items on display was an assortment of Easter items, such as baskets, hand-painted porcelain eggs and toy bunny rabbits.

  Just the thought of going inside this store made him shiver. He avoided “girlie” places like the plague. His idea of hell on earth was going shopping with a woman. Any woman. He appreciated seeing a woman in a sheer silk teddy and lying on satin sheets as much as the next man, just so long as he didn’t have to go with her to shop for her undies or her bed linens.

  Drawing in a deep, you-can-do-this breath, Vic reached for the door handle. The minute he opened the door, he heard a bell tinkling. Oh, God! Looking up, he saw the little silver bell attached to the facing over the door so that any entrance to or exit from the shop would trigger the chime. After stepping into the shop overflowing with wall-to-wall “pretties,” Vic scanned the interior. There were half a dozen shoppers, each carrying a yellow straw basket approximately twelve-by-twenty inches in size. Then he saw the person he assumed was Ms. Paine standing with one of the customers, pointing out the superiority of soy candles over wax candles.

  “These are a new line of candles that we just started carrying a couple of weeks ago,” Ms. Paine said. “They’re clean-burning and soot-free. You must smell this one.” She picked up a glass container, popped off the lid and held it under the customer’s nose. “Cinnamon. Isn’t it heavenly?”

  Vic cleared his throat. Both women looked at him.

  “Yes, sir, I’ll be with you in a moment.” Ms. Paine smiled at him.

  Vic nodded, then tried his best to be as inconspicuous as possible, which wasn’t easy for a guy who stood six-four. For a couple of minutes he stared down at the wooden floor, then he hazarded a glance to the right and then to the left. In both directions, he saw women staring at him, sizing him up, whispering about the stranger in town. At least he figured that was what they were whispering about. Cutting his gaze sharply toward the ceiling, he tightened his hands into fists. He released, then tightened, then released again.

  How long did it take to sell a woman a damn candle? When he glanced in Ms. Paine’s direction, he noted that she was leading the customer toward the glass counter at the front of the shop where a computerized cash register waited to ring up the sale. Ms. Paine looked older than she’d sounded on the phone. Her voice had been bubbly. And soft and slightly sexy. He’d imagined her to be in her twenties or thirties. But this lady had to be in her fifties. In her younger days, she’d probably been pretty. Even now, with short gray hair and tiny wrinkles framing her eyes and mouth, she was attractive, in a neat and orderly sort of way.

  Vic headed for the checkout counter just as Ms. Paine rounded the corner and came toward him.

  “Yes, sir, how may I help you?” She smiled pleasantly.

  Maybe this woman wasn’t Ms. Paine. She could be an employee, couldn’t she? “Ms. Paine?”

  “Yes.”

  He didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed. Relieved, he told himself. “I’m Vic Noble.”

  She stared at him quizzically, as if she’d never heard the name before in her life. How was that possible? He had spoken to her only an hour ago.

  “Vic Noble, from the Dundee agency,” he told her.

  “The Dundee agency?”

  “Dundee Private Security and Investigation.”

  “Oh!” Her mouth formed a wide-open circle. “You must be Lucky’s bodyguard.”

  “Yes, ma’am. We spoke on the phone. I called you from Huntsville.”

  She laughed. “Oh, my dear young man, you didn’t speak to me. You spoke to—”

  “You spoke to me, Mr. Noble.” The syrupy-sweet voice came from behind him.

  He turned, took one look at the lady and felt as if he’d been pole-axed. The woman smiling at him as she came forward took his breath away. He didn’t know any other way to describe how he felt. As a rule, women either turned him on or they didn’t. This woman did a lot more than turn him on. She turned him inside out, and he sure as hell didn’t like the feeling.

  She held out her small, delicate hand. “I’m Penny Sue Paine. It’s so nice to meet you, Mr. Noble.”

  He stared at her hand for a split second, then took it, shook it a little too hard and released it as if it were a red-hot poker. Say something, he told himself. Don’t just stand here looking at her. But his male libido told him to look all he wanted, to appreciate every lovely curve of her body, every feature of her pretty face.

  So this was Penny Sue Paine? Executor of Lottie Paine’s will and guardian to Lucky, the multi-millionaire dog.

  She stared at him with huge, chocolate-brown eyes, fringed with thick dark lashes. Her features were almost too perfect. Small, tip-tilted nose. Full luscious lips. Oval face. Flawless olive complexion that probably tanned easily. And a mane of dark auburn-brown hair that flowed around her slender shoulders.

  And her body? Holy hell. The body was to die for. No more than five-four, with an hourglass shape. Tiny waist, rounded hips and high, full breasts.

  “Are you all right, Mr. Noble?” she asked.

  “Uh…yeah, I’m fine. I was just surprised there for a minute. I thought the other lady—” he inclined his head toward the older Ms. Paine.

  “That’s my cousin, Eula,” Penny Sue said.

  “I see.”

  “Now that you’re here, we can go to Doc Stone’s so you can meet Lucky or we can go to the house so you can settle in or—have you had lunch? If not, we can go over to the Country Kettle. What would you like to do first?” Penny Sue asked.

  What would he like to do first? The one and only thought that popped into Vic’s mind was I’d like to screw you, Miss Penny Sue. That’s what I’d like to do.

  Chapter 2

  Penny Sue walked alongside the Dundee agent she had hired to protect Lucky and wondered exactly what kind of man this Vic Noble was—other than being a devastatingly attractive male specimen. The first moment she’d seen him, she had instantly gone weak in the knees. And that wasn’t something she did all that often. It had only happened a couple of times in her entire life. The first time had been when Dylan Redley French-kissed her when she was fifteen. The second time had been when she’d met Mr. Tom Selleck in person.

  “I hope you don’t mind walking,” Penny Sue said. “I always walk to and from the shop. It’s good exercise and gives me a chance to do a little politicking when I see my neighbors on their porches or in their yards.”

  When he didn’t respond, she cut her eyes in his direction to see if he’d even heard her. Since they had turned his rental car in, at her suggestion, over at Burns’s Service Station and Mini-Mart, the man hadn’t said ten words to her. She’d had to explain to him that Burns’s was also the automobile and moving-van rental place in town. Old Man Burns had believed in diversifying and his two sons, Dwight and Dwayne, were following in his footsteps.

  “You won’t need a car,” Penny Sue had told Vic. “You can use either my car or Aunt Lottie’s car while you’re here.”

  As she glanced at Lucky’s protector, Penny Sue noted how very tall he was. She was five-four and he stood
a good foot taller than she. Without being too obvious, she let her gaze travel over him, from his thick, dark hair, down his proud nose to his wide, hard mouth. Didn’t this man ever smile?

  Several times, he had walked a few steps ahead of her, but when he’d realized she couldn’t keep up with his long gait, he’d slowed and got in step with her. As they left the commercial blocks of downtown Alabaster Creek and moved on to the first residential street—Maple Avenue—she began searching for any voters who might be out and about this afternoon. So far, she’d paused to speak to half a dozen people in town, but Maple Avenue seemed deserted, not a person in sight.

  “Alabaster Creek is one of the oldest towns in north Alabama,” Penny Sue said, just making conversation, which wasn’t easy with this man. “We were actually a town before Alabama became a state.”

  Vic Noble didn’t say a word. With his black vinyl suitcase in hand, he marched alongside her. Tall, dark and silent.

  “Most of the houses here on Maple Avenue were built post-War Between the States, but there’s one—see, right up there, the two-story white wooden structure—that was built in 1838. It’s the Rutland house. And would you believe descendants of the family who built the house still live in it today. As a matter of fact, Tommy Rutland is running against me for mayor. His father was once the mayor, but then again so was my father and my grandfather.”

  “Hmm…”

  Most people found the history of Alabaster Creek interesting, but not this man. What was his problem? Didn’t he know that not keeping up your end of a conversation was considered bad manners?

  “You aren’t much of a talker, are you, Mr. Noble?”

  “No, ma’am, I’m not.”

  He didn’t bother even to look at her, which irritated her no end. This man might be big and macho and terribly attractive in a caveman sort of way, but his dour personality wasn’t the least bit appealing. But perhaps she shouldn’t judge him too harshly. After all, they’d just met and it took some people more time than it did her to warm up to others. Also, there was his profession to consider—he was a bodyguard and a private investigator. Lord only knew what kind of life this man had lived and what sort of cases he’d worked on over the years. It could be that he’d seen too much of the dark side of life. She’d heard that tended to make men somber and introspective.

  “I suppose most of your cases are different from this one,” Penny Sue said, hoping that by talking business, she could encourage him to open up a bit.

  “Yeah. Very different.”

  Aha, he could talk. “Have you ever guarded a dog?”

  “No, ma’am, I haven’t. This is a first for me.”

  “You’ll like Lucky. He’s precious. Everyone adores him.”

  “Not everyone.”

  “What? Oh, yes, you’re right. Not everyone. Not the person who shot him.”

  “Do you have any idea who that person might be?”

  She shook her head. “One of the heirs. But there are eight of us and other than knowing for sure that I didn’t shoot Lucky, I can’t imagine who did. And I shouldn’t have said everyone adores Lucky. I should have said most people do. Even Aunt Dottie, whose cat, Puff, hates Lucky, admits that Lucky is a dear.”

  “Ms. Paine, why would your aunt leave twenty-three million dollars to a dog?”

  When she stopped on the sidewalk in front of the Kimbrew house, he paused and looked at her for the first time since they’d left Burns’s. Her stomach did a naughty flip-flop when he settled his gaze on her, his pensive hazel-and-blue eyes incredibly sexy. She’d always thought only brown eyes could be referred to as bedroom eyes, but now she knew better.

  Penny Sue sighed. “You might as well know before you meet everyone tonight. The Paine family is…well, we’re the town eccentrics. You know, slightly peculiar. Just a bit off center. We tend to do things our own way. And the women in our family are the worst. I suppose that’s why so many Paine women die old maids. It’s not that we don’t want husbands, it’s just that we seem to intimidate most men.

  “We’re all considered beauties and we can attract men like bears to honey, but we can’t seem to keep a man once he realizes how independent and opinionated we are. Even Aunt Dottie, who is the sweetest thing, wasn’t able to land a husband. And one of her fiancés turned out to be a swindler who ran off with a large chunk of her money and broke her heart to boot. And then there was my one and only fiancé—he didn’t leave with any of my money, but he did run off with the Baptist preacher’s wife only a couple of weeks before our wedding. And what made it even more of a scandal was the fact the woman was my cousin.

  “Valerie’s last name might have been Paine, but she takes after her mother’s side of the family, which means she’s not a true Paine. You’ll meet her tonight. If you’re like most men, you’ll take one look at her and think she’s easy, if you know what I mean. And you’d be right. She gets that from her mother’s side of the family, too. The Paine women are known for their modesty and their ladylike manners. Aunt Lottie and Aunt Dottie, Cousin Eula, Cousin Stacie and—”

  He dropped his case to the sidewalk and then grabbed her by the shoulders. For half a second she thought he was going to shake her. He didn’t. The very instant she stopped talking, he released her. But not before every nerve ending in her entire body had gone to full alert. She’d been startled by his abrupt action, but not afraid. His touch had been firm yet gentle and the feel of his large, strong hands had sent a tingling sensation through her whole body.

  She gazed up at him, into those stern hazel-blue eyes. “Is something wrong?”

  “Ms. Paine, all I asked was why your aunt left her fortune to a dog.”

  Penny Sue laughed. “Oh, my, so you did. You’ll have to forgive me, Mr. Noble—by the way, may I call you Vic? I’d like it if you called me Penny Sue. Everyone does. Well, not everyone in the whole world because I don’t know everyone in the whole world, but everyone in Alabaster Creek and—”

  He grabbed her shoulders again and this time he did shake her. Once. A very gentle shake, but enough to quiet her. She gazed up at him and smiled. “I was doing it again, wasn’t I? I tend to get off track. It’s another family trait—giving too many details. Aunt Lottie always scolded me for digressing.”

  She glanced at his big hands still clutching her shoulders. He released her immediately.

  “Do you suppose you could manage to answer my questions in two sentences or less?” he asked.

  “I’m not sure. But I could try.” She reached up and smoothed his wrinkled brow with her fingertips. He jerked back as if her touch had burned him. “You really should smile more, Vic. You’re a very good-looking man, but frowning all the time isn’t very attractive.”

  “Ms. Paine—”

  “Penny Sue.”

  He heaved a deep, exasperated sigh. Was he annoyed with her? Probably. Just a tad. Silly of him, of course, to get so bent out of shape over nothing.

  “Penny Sue,” he said. “How about we try yes and no answers?”

  “All right. Does that mean you’ll ask me a question and I’ll say either yes or no?”

  “That’s what it means.”

  “All right. Now that we’ve got that settled, let’s go on home. If we stand out here in front of the Kimbrew house for much longer, Oren Kimbrew will come out here and ask us what we’re up to. He grows prize-winning roses and for the past two years, Aunt Dottie’s roses have won first place in every contest in which they competed against each other. So when he sees any member of the Paine family near his house, he accuses us of trying to sabotage his roses.”

  Vic picked up his case with one hand and using the other hand, grabbed her arm and spurred her into motion, leading her up the block in an all-fired hurry. If she hadn’t been so perturbed by his actions, she’d have noticed sooner that once again her body was tingling all over just from his touch.

  “Vic?”

  “Hush, will you?” After drawing in a deep breath, he added, “Please.”