Page 1 of Penny & Royce

1

PENNY

“So, this is my life.”

Penny sighed as she dropped her legal pad on her desk and shoved her hands into her hair. “It’s definitely not what I expected.”

Her gaze drifted to the save-the-date card propped near her computer. Her brother’s wedding was approaching fast.

No one expected Jason to be the first one happily married.

True, Mathew had been married before, but Victoria was hardly happily-ever-after material. The woman had wanted the status of being married to a doctor in a large city. Not necessarily for the money—her family was loaded—but for the prestige. All she’d wanted was eye candy.

At least Mathew seemed to finally realize what he wanted out of life. It had only taken losing their father for him to get some sense.

Penny sighed again and plucked the card from her desk. Jason and Isabelle had their issues, but every time Penny sawthem together, she could tell how good they were for each other. Jason hadn’t become jaded by their father’s workaholic nature. And he seemed to be taking their mother’s diagnosis in stride.

It must be nice not having to worry about anything but planning a wedding.

Penny longed for that sort of freedom.

Right now, she felt everything but happy. She was in a rut. All she had going for her was her practice. The people who came and went from her office needed a listening ear, and she gave it to them. Her hours were long, and she was booked months out.

For all intents and purposes, she should be happy.

Her father would have told her as much. A person’s value could be measured by how hard they worked, right?

“Thanks for that, Dad,” she grumbled, tossing the card to the side.

Ever since her father had passed, things felt different. The spark was gone. It wasn’t that she’d had a close relationship with him. Far from it. But the loss had done something to her. She couldn’t stop thinking about how short life was. How precarious.

Her mother seemed to be taking the loss better than most, but then there were days when she forgot her husband had died of a heart attack.

Penny got to her feet and folded her arms as she wandered her office. She moved to the window and stared down at the street.

Copper Creek was drastically smaller than the city, but it still felt big in some respects. Those who grew up here knew everyone else. The gossip mill ran every day from sunup to sundown. Penny had heard names and stories about people she would likely never meet, and maybe that was part of the problem.

She’d never felt like she belonged.

Never felt like she had a home.

Her cousins insisted she was an honorary Taylor. They’d taken her under their wings when she first moved to the small town, but there was so much chaos out at the farm. Penny preferred smaller groups.

Yet another one of her flaws, according to Rose.

Something had to change. That much was certain. How many times had she told her clients they couldn’t expect their lives to get better without putting in the work?

Countless.

So if she was this unhappy, there was only one thing to do.

Penny would have to stop living like the woman everyone expected her to be and do something different.

Maybe even something a little reckless.

Her eyes snagged on a man across the street leaning against a motorcycle. Clad in worn jeans and boots, he clearly didn’t live in town. He had the look of a cowboy without the hat. His hair was mussed, probably from riding his bike through town, and he wore a faded leather jacket.

He was the kind of man her mother would warn her about.