Free Lucky Penny by Catherine Anderson Page A

veins.
    David sank down onto one knee, which brought him close to eye level with the girl. “Well, well,” he finally managed to push out. “What an auspicious moment this is.” He fetched the penny and held it up before her cute, freckled little nose. “And, by gum, we found us a lucky penny, to boot. That’s a good omen. Don’t you think?”
    Her eyes went sparkly, and her mouth trembled as she said, “Does auspish—um—that big word you just said—does that mean you’re my papa?”
    David figured his abandonment of this child was already a count against him in heaven. He wouldn’t add to the wrongs he’d committed by lying to her. “I am,” he whispered, his voice gone gravelly with emotion. “I am, or my name isn’t David Paxton.”
    Daphne blinked and nodded. “Oh.” Seeming suddenly shy, she jerked her gaze from David’s and eyed the upheld coin. “I didn’t know a penny was lucky.”
    David collected his composure, swallowed hard to steady his voice, and replied, “You’ve never heard about lucky pennies? Darlin’, this is the luckiest penny either of us will ever run across in our lifetimes. It brought us smack-dab together, didn’t it?”
    The dimple flashed in her cheek, putting David so much in mind of his ma that he blinked away tears again. Dory would be wild with joy to know that she had another granddaughter. And, oh, that gap where the child had lost two front teeth was so darned cute he wanted to grin. Before he could, a sense of loss swamped him. His ma had saved all her children’s baby teeth. His own were pasted to a tattered page in a scrapbook entitled
David
. What had happened to Daphne’s? Losing those first few teeth was a hugeoccasion in a kid’s life. Had she worked the first one loose with her tongue? Or had she bitten into an apple? David could well remember standing with a string tied around his first loose tooth, the other end of the twine attached to a doorknob. He’d quivered in his knickers because Ace and Joseph kept saying, “Slam the door, David. Don’t be a pansy ass.”
    “It did, for certain,” Daphne replied.
    David was jerked back to the moment but couldn’t remember what they’d been talking about.
    “We almost bumped heads over that penny!” she exclaimed. “You should be very glad we didn’t.” With a giggle, she added, “Mama says my head is harder than a rock.”
    David laughed. “Well, you came by that from me, I reckon. I’ve been told many a time that I’ve got solid rock between my ears.”
    He rested his weight on his bootheel, dimly aware that there was no traffic on the street and grateful for it. He had to clear his throat before he went on. “Most times, the saying about pennies goes like this. ‘Find a penny, pick it up, and all the day, you’ll have good luck.’ And I can tell you from personal experience that it’s true. Any old penny can be lucky if you find it and pick it up, but in a case like that, it’s only lucky for a day.” He touched the shimmery coin to the tip of her nose. “This is no ordinary lucky penny, though.”
    “It isn’t?”
    “Nope,” David assured her. “This one is the luckiest of all pennies because you and I found it together.” He turned the coin so it would catch the fading sunlight. “See that? It’s even winking at us. We’ve got ourselves a treasure, for sure.”
    “What’ll we do with it?” she asked, her voice touched with awe.
    “We’ll keep it safe for future use. You hold on to it for now.” He tucked it into her hand. “Whenever we get in a pickle or have a powerful hankering for something important, we’ll make a wish on this penny, and sure as shootin’, it will come true.”
    Daphne pushed the coin back at him. “You’d better keep it, then. I’ve got a sweet tooth, and when I find pennies,I spend them on candy at the general store. I might spend our magic one by accident.”
    David accepted the coin and tucked it into his shirt pocket, where he never