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She was anything but fine, though. Her heart had started pounding faster and harder, thumping inside her chest. She didn’t want to betray her fear to the young bride, though. Megan Lynch was already too nervous about her pending nuptials. Too nervous to be getting married.
Penny held her tongue and her opinion. She had once been a nervous bride herself. Maybe, in the way that she somehow knew things, she’d known she would lose her husband too soon. There had been rewards for the pain she’d endured, though: her children.
Panic clenched her heart.
One of her children was hurt. She knew it. Even before the phone rang, she knew it. She had that tightness in her chest and that sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. She was often teased about being psychic. But she was no medium. She just had a very special connection with her children. Her feeling that one of them was hurt had never been wrong.
And it wasn’t wrong now. Her hand shaking, she reached for the phone before it even started to ring. She skipped her usual greeting of “White Wedding Chapel. Penny Payne, wedding planner, speaking,” and just said, “What is it?”
“Mom,” Nikki spoke tentatively—almost fearfully.
“What is it?” Penny asked again.
“I’m fine,” Nikki replied.
And Penny remembered the first long trip Nikki had taken with her new driver’s license and the phone call she had received from her youngest and her only daughter shortly after Nikki had left. “Mom, I’m fine but...”
Then she’d dissolved into tears over the deer she’d struck and killed. That was partially why Logan had kept his sister behind a desk instead of assigning her fieldwork. She wasn’t as tough as she acted. If she had to hurt anyone...
“But?” Penny asked. Nikki hadn’t said the word this time, but she’d heard it in her voice.
“Mom...” And just as when she’d inadvertently killed the deer, Nikki broke into tears. Her sobs rattled the phone.
“You’re fine,” Penny reminded Nikki and herself. Her daughter wasn’t hurt. But what about her sons?
Nikki drew in a deep breath. “Yeah, I’m fine. I’m fine.” And now it sounded as if she was trying to convince herself.
“Who’s not fine?” Penny asked.
Nikki’s breath escaped in a ragged sigh. “Nick.”
The panic already clenching her heart squeezed tighter. Nikki had never referred to her half brother by his first name. She usually never referred to him at all if she could help it. The fact that she was saying his name now—and with so much emotion...
Nicholas Rus wasn’t one of Penny’s children. She hadn’t given birth to him like her sons and daughter. But she had that same connection with him that she had with every one of her biological children. Sometimes it felt even stronger than that connection—because of all her children, Nick was the most like her. Somehow they both instinctively knew what other people needed.
But about their own needs, they were clueless. Nick had no idea what he wanted or needed. And now he might never have the chance to figure it out.
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