Free Kiss the Moon by Carla Neggers

Chestnut—”
    “Lyman. I make my flying students call me Mr. Chestnut, but that’s about it. Look, Penelope’s been fantasizing about finding that plane since she could walk. Everyone around here has. I’m guessing once she realized she didn’t find anything up in the woods after all, she just tried to figure out a way to save face. She hates to be wrong.”
    That Wyatt could believe. “What about this dump story?”
    “There are plenty of old dumps around here.”
    He wouldn’t counter his daughter, not to a Sinclair. Wyatt acknowledged his statement with a curt nod. “It’s hard to believe she can’t find her way back to whatever it is she found.”
    Lyman shrugged. “Maybe she’s just embarrassed.”
    “Excuse me, but your daughter doesn’t strike me as a woman who embarrasses easily.”
    “That’s the God’s truth.” He almost managed a smile. “Here’s the deal. I don’t want any trouble. Penelope’s a good kid. Her mind hasn’t been on her work lately, but that’s got nothing to do with you Sinclairs.”
    “What does it have to do with?”
    Lyman inhaled, shaking his head. “Damned if I know. Boredom, I think. She needs—well, hell, I’ll just get myself into trouble if I start talking about what she needs. It’s getting around town, you being here. You know, I searched for your uncle’s plane myself. I walked up and down these hills for weeks, never saw a thing, not one sign a plane had gone down. We all did everything we could, but…” He broke off, shook his head. “What’s done is done.”
    Wyatt finished Lyman’s thought for him. “But my family wasn’t satisfied. My grandfather didn’t think you’d done enough. The people of Cold Spring, I mean, not you individually.”
    Lyman leveled his frank gaze on Wyatt and nodded. “I guess that’s right. I heard he died—your grandfather. He and my father used to go hunting and fishing together. Well, I guess old Willard thought of my father as a guide. But that’s not how my father saw it.”
    He stopped, looking faintly embarrassed, as if he hadn’t strung that many sentences together at one time in years. Wyatt couldn’t tell if this little visit was a shot across the bow, a fishing expedition or just a father not knowing what to do about a daughter he feared was in over her head.
    “By the way,” Lyman went on, “this Jack Dunning character’s decided to park his plane here. Mary’s renting him a car.” He paused, his gaze settling on Wyatt. “You’ll go easy on my daughter?”
    Wyatt grinned. “I left my thumbscrews in New York.”
    He chose not to mention the crazy cousin who thought she was a Sinclair or to stick around for Jack’s arrival. Instead he drove to town, hitting every damned frost heave and pothole in the road, mostly because he kept thinking about Penelope unzipping that flight suit in the heat of the Sunrise Inn. He hadn’t expected any attraction to her. But there it was, impossible to ignore.
    Harriet Chestnut, still flustered, put him in something called the Morning Glory Room. She gave him his key—a real, old-fashioned key, not one of those card things—and told him his room rate included a continental breakfast. Nothing about her reminded him of either Colt or Frannie. Coloring, build, features. It wasn’t that it was impossible she was their daughter, just not readily apparent. He thanked her and headed upstairs.
    Morning glories, indeed. They were on the wallpaper, a needlepoint pillow and a print above his four-poster bed. It was all tasteful, pretty, elegant, just the sort of room a husband tolerated on a weekend getaway with his wife. A side window looked out on snow-covered gardens, a front window on the lake. In addition to the bed, there was a marble-topped bureau, a writing desk and an antique washstand that served as a night table. Wyatt figured he’d gotten off easy, because he’d passed a rose room on his way down the hall.
    He dumped his bag on the floor and tried not to