Free Where You Least Expect It by Tori Carrington

myself, who would you be having dinner with?” she asked, puzzled by his comment, then instantly embarrassed by her question.
    “That’s what I’m hoping to find out,” he said quietly.
    Her face grew even hotter, if that were possible. She reached over and lowered the temperature on the thermostat, glad for the immediate blast of cold air that hit her from a vent above.
    “Name your preference. We could do steak, seafood. I’m even up for a burger and fries at the pub if that’s more your style.”
    Penelope averted her gaze. Did she even have a style? She’d only been to a restaurant once in her life. And that had been a coffee house-diner with her mother.
    She swallowed hard. “Thank you for the invitation, but I can’t.”
    “You can’t, or won’t?”
    She didn’t answer. Did it matter? It was the same thing, wasn’t it? Couldn’t, or wouldn’t?
    He reached across the counter and tipped her face up to force her to look at him.
    “Can’t, or won’t, Penelope?”

Chapter Seven
    H ow he hated the shadow in her tortured dark eyes. But Aidan had to do it. The instant he’d made the decision to ignore his gut and stay in town, he focused on exploring a friendship with Penelope. And part of being a friend meant encouraging the other to do what she normally wouldn’t.
    “I just can’t,” she said again.
    “Good,” he said, dropping his arm to his side. “I’ll see you here when you close at five.”
    “What?”
    Aidan merely grinned, winked at her, then casually left the shop, though he felt anything but casual inside.
    The truth was, he wasn’t sure it was such a wise idea to push Penelope. He didn’t know where Penelope’s boundaries were. Push too fast, too hard, and she might shut him out, much the same way she shut out everyone but her grandmother.
    He remembered last night—the look on her face when she quietly asked him never to leave. He had felt an immediate need to protect her, to help her.
    He didn’t care what he had to do. Or at what cost. He would help Penelope Moon in a way that he couldn’t help himself.
    “Sheriff Cole.” He nodded at the young man in uniform where he stood in front of the library.
    “Afternoon, Aidan.”
    As Aidan passed by, he felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up. It was a way he’d never felt until the day after the gas station robbery. Was it all in his mind, this suspicion that everyone was looking at him differently? Or could there be a grain of truth to it?
    Whatever it was, he’d decided to stay and ride this out to its natural conclusion. In truth, he was tired of running. Tired of packing his suitcase and hitting the road to nowhere. Of being alone, keeping people at arm’s length and waiting for the shadow following on his heels to catch up with him and suffocate him. Maybe that was the reason he’d stayed in Old Orchard to begin with. Perhaps he’d subconsciously known that this was the place where his running would end.
    For starters, he had to stop running from Penelope Moon and whatever bonds were developing between them.
     
    This wasn’t happening. It couldn’t be. She, Penelope Moon, was not out on a date with one of Old Orchard’s most eligible bachelors at one of Old Orchard’s most popular gathering places.
    She fiddled with the skirt of her violet cotton dress, wishing she could have gone home to change, taken a bath so that her skin smelled like rose petals, put her hair up. In some way to have done something special to reflect how unique the occasion was.
    “Penelope?” Aidan’s voice reached for her across the pitted pine table at Eddie’s Pub. “Are you all right?”
    She blinked up at him, feeling…surreal.
    How many times had she passed the pub? And yet she’d never seen the inside, aside from the brief glimpses she got in the summer when Eddie sometimes left the door open. She was vaguely surprised by the pervasive smell of beer. The rugged decor. The familiarity with which the patrons—people she’d