Kiss the Moon by Carla Neggers Read Free Book Online Page A

deep breath. She held it a moment, then exhaled. “It’s a fine spring day. I’m glad I didn’t crash.”
    Yep, a pilot. She liked life a little on the edge. Maybe a lot on the edge.
    And suddenly Wyatt could see how she might have made the leap from old dump to Frannie Beaudine and Colt Sinclair’s plane. A missing plane was more exciting to find in the woods when you were lost and tired—and this woman would hate to be either—than an old dump.
    Which meant his trek to New Hampshire could be for nothing.
    “I’m glad you didn’t crash, too,” he said dryly, “but this isn’t spring.”
    She grinned at him. “Technically, no. But the ice is melting and the sap is running—it feels like spring to me.”

Three
    A black-haired, black-eyed, suspicious-minded Sinclair in a leather jacket. Just what she needed. Still jumpy from her mishap in the air, Penelope waited for Wyatt Sinclair to climb into her truck. “Whoops—hang on a sec.” She whisked a little blue calico bag off his seat onto the floor. “Rose petal potpourri. I let Pop drive my truck and it came back smelling like an ashtray. He’s taken up smoking cigars. Disgusting.”
    “You have strong opinions.”
    “About cigars. Anyway,” she said, starting her truck, “opinions are by definition strong. Otherwise they’re not opinions.”
    She backed out over the rutted, washboard lot, which seemed even worse this year than usual. On the main road, she drove faster than was necessary, swerving around potholes, braking hard for frost heaves. She knew just where the worst ones had formed in the freezing, thawing, refreezing cycle of late winter and early spring that wreaked havoc on the roads yet made the sap run sweet.
    Beside her, Wyatt Sinclair didn’t say a word. He was exactly what she’d expected of a Sinclair. Suspicious, probing, good-looking. He had a natural arrogance that she didn’t find as off-putting as she’d anticipated. It was just so… easy for him. Her research into Frannie and Colt had led to facts about the entire Sinclair family, including this first of his generation. He was well-educated, he spoke four languages, he was an expert mountain climber and outdoorsman, and he came close to killing himself every year or two.
    Two years ago, his luck ran out and tragedy struck during a climbing expedition in Tasmania, when bad weather and bad judgment combined to leave him bug-infested, dehydrated, infected, with three broken ribs, a broken leg and his hiking companion and best friend dead at his side. Penelope had read about the incident in the papers. Even the Cold Spring Reporter had picked up the story.
    She didn’t notice any obvious lingering effects of such a terrible ordeal. Maybe he’d gnashed his teeth and pushed, pulled, argued, rebelled and thrown himself into enough danger over the years to have established a certain peace with himself. Except he didn’t look peaceful, either.
    It was way too early, she reminded herself, to draw any conclusions about what Wyatt Sinclair did and didn’t feel. Indeed, she’d probably do herself a favor not to go down that path at all. She heard he’d moved back to New York to become some sort of money type on Wall Street, possibly because of his experience in Tasmania. Then again, sooner or later, all Sinclairs made it back to Manhattan to prove they could make money and didn’t need the family fortune.
    Of course, she also heard his father had disinherited him. Rumors were forever circulating around town about Sinclairs, and Penelope had learned not to believe everything she heard.
    She glanced at him. The black eyes were squinting as he stared at the landscape, the square jaw set hard. For sure, getting lost in the New Hampshire woods for a few hours and running out of gas in a small plane would be nothing to Wyatt Sinclair. A pop fly to Plattsburgh and back to deliver a package would bore him silly—he’d probably dump fuel just to liven things up.
    But Penelope loved her