"Penny left the hotel really early this morning," Sophia explained, stepping closer to the desk and resting her hands on the back of a chair. "And since the excavation dig isn't happening today because of the mudslide, we all thought we could go over and lend her a hand with the physical restoration instead. She has so much work left to do on that massive place."
"Could you please take us over there?" Emma asked, pulling off the ultimate version of innocent puppy-dog eyes as she stared at him.
Martin looked at the five of them, his eyes narrowing into a deeply suspicious, evaluating squint. He wasn't fooled for a single microsecond. The kids had deliberately set him and Penny up in the living room the night before, and now they weresuddenly inventing emergency volunteer construction work just to throw them together again.
"Alright," Martin said, a small, knowing tug forming at the corner of his lips. "Give me ten minutes to pack up these financial files, and I’ll meet you out front by my pickup truck."
"Eeehhh," Lily pulled a dramatic face, twisting her shoulders in disgust. "The back seat is so incredibly cramped and uncomfortable in that truck. We will all be squished together like sardines."
"Yeah," Sophia agreed instantly, nodding her head in solidarity with her cousin. "We won't even fit legally if we are all crammed in the back of the cab."
"Can we please go in the classic ride instead?" Jake asked, his eyes lighting up with genuine excitement as he looked at Martin. "The vintage 1970 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme? The holiday sedan version can easily fit all five of us legally, and it has plenty of room."
"Fine," Martin said, letting out a soft chuckle as he shook his head at their relentless maneuvering. He actually hadn't taken the powerful classic muscle car out of the storage bay in quite a while, and the engine needed to get driven to keep the battery fresh. "Meet me over at the private garages on the side of the property in ten minutes flat."
The kids disappeared out the door like a sudden puff of smoke, their loud giggles and sheer glee echoing down the corridor as they ran toward the side exit. Their intense excitement made him even more deeply suspicious of their true matchmaking motives, but as he stacked his client papers into his leather briefcase, a secret, thrilled smile broke across his face.
Martin couldn't even bring himself to be annoyed by their plotting. If anything, their elaborate schemes gave him the absolutely perfect excuse to spend the entire day getting close to Penny.
PENNY
Penny stepped back from the massive mahogany fireplace mantel, aggressively wiping a stray streak of white drywall dust from her forearm. She picked up her sandpaper block, desperately trying to focus all her mental energy on the intricate wood grain, but it wasn't working. Her mind kept stubbornly looping right back to the middle of the night, refusing to let her forget the sensation of waking up with her head cradled so perfectly beneath Martin's jaw and his strong shoulder.
To make matters worse, someone had clearly snuck into the living room while they were dead to the world and spread a thick, knitted throw blanket over the two of them. It was draped over both of them like a pair of tucked-in toddlers, which made her face burn with a sudden, intense heat.
It had been almost three o’clock in the morning when she’d finally drifted back to consciousness. She remembered the house being dead quiet, the only sound the distant, rhythmic crash of the bay against the shoreline outside. Penny’s neck had felt slightly stiff, a direct result of the hours she had spent nestled against Martin’s warm, surprisingly muscular body.
The sudden, slight movement of her shifting weight must’ve instantly awoken him, because Martin had jolted awake with a soft breath catching in his throat. In the dim, shadowed room, their eyes had met and instantly widened into dinner plates at the sudden, horrifying realization that they’d both fallen fast asleep on the Heart House sofa.
The television had already been switched off, the once glowing screen now dark. As Penny had scrambled to sit up straight, smoothing down her wrinkled clothes, a small, white piece of paper sitting on the glass coffee table had immediately caught her eye. She reached out, her fingers trembling slightly as she picked up the note from Linda:
You two were fast asleep. Didn't want to wake you guys. Thanks for looking after the kids, hope they weren't too much trouble. - Linda.
Too much trouble? Penny let out a sharp snort as she remembered reading those words. Those teenagers weren't just trouble. They were a pack of brilliant little master manipulators with a coordinated plan to take over the entire world, starting directly with her love life. They’d spent the whole evening smoothly tricking her into telling them every single thing they wanted to know about the hotel drama, utilizing their innocent routine to pry into the adults' business.
Yet, standing here in the dusty dining room of her mansion, Penny couldn't help but let a soft, involuntary smile touch her lips. The kids meant well, and she guessed it really wasn't nice for them to be kept in the dark when their entire world was changing. Yes, there was serious adult business going on with the Charleston developers, but the teenagers weren't little children anymore. It was only natural they’d want to know exactly what was happening in the lives of the people they loved.
Her mind clicked back to the sofa scene as an awkward silence had engulfed her and Martin.
"Wow, look at the time," Martin had said last night, yawning deeply and throwing his arms back in a wide stretch as if her drool hadn't made a highly visible, wet patch right on the front of his shirt. He hadn't even noticed it, or if he had, he’d been entirely too much of a gentleman to bring it up. "It seems like Linda and probably Michael as well are finally back from their dates."
"Yes, and they didn't think to wake us," Penny had replied quickly, her voice carrying a nervous, hurried edge as she stood up and adjusted her purse strap. "I’d better get going back to the hotel. I want to get up early to start on the mansion's parlor walls."
"Me too. I also have to get back to get up early," Martin had said, instantly standing up beside her and smoothing down his jacket. "Come on, I'll walk you back over. Since we both live at the hotel right now, there is no point in you walking through the dark parking lots alone."
As she’d stood right beside him in the quiet foyer and he’d led her out into the cool night air, her heart had done a stupid, uncalled-for skip, instantly waking up a whole swarm of chaotic butterflies in her stomach. She had forced the feeling away the second they hit the gravel path, silently telling herself to stop being absolutely ridiculous. Yes, Martin was extremely handsome, incredibly well-built, and he’d been so sweet and dependable helping her pull permits for the house restoration.
But she’d only been divorced for a relatively short while, and well... her mind had gone blank right then, totally failing tofigure out a single logical reason to ignore the massive, growing attraction between them.
As they’d stepped out into the early hours of the morning, walking in a deeply companionable, peaceful silence back toward the main entrance of the hotel, she simply hadn't been able to stop the thought from echoing in her head just how right being here with him felt.
The sharp, electric screech of the gate buzzer suddenly echoed through the grand, cavernous hallway, instantly shattering her train of thought. Penny dropped her sanding block onto a nearby canvas drop cloth, wiping a fresh layer of white chalky plaster dust off her jeans as she walked briskly toward the security monitor mounted by the front entrance. She reached up, brushing a stray lock of hair behind her ear as she leaned in to see who could possibly be visiting the mansion this early in the morning.
The very second the video screen flickered to life, her eyes widened into absolute dinner plates, her entire focus instantly locking onto the vehicle sitting right outside her wrought-iron gates. Her jaw literally dropped. She didn't even notice the driver or the passengers at first, because her lifelong passion for vintage mechanics overrode every other sense in her body. Sitting right there on the gravel approach was a breathtaking, immaculately preserved 1970 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme Holiday Sedan. The glossy, deep paint job caught the morning sunlight, the flawless chrome bumpers gleamed like mirrors, and the iconic, aggressive front grille screamed pure American muscle heritage.
Then, her gaze finally flicked up toward the windshield, and her heart gave a violent jolt before doing a complete double flip rightin her chest when she recognized the exact man sitting behind the steering wheel.
Martin.Martin owned a pristine, classic Cutlass Supreme. No way. It simply didn't seem possible that the buttoned-up, numbers-obsessed wealth manager she’d spent the last few weeks getting to know possessed a machine this spectacular. Without saying a single word into the intercom system, she frantically smashed the gate-release button, listening to the distant, heavy clanking of the iron gates slowly swinging inward. She didn't waste a single microsecond.
