Christmas at Lilac Cottage: (#1 White Cliff Bay) (5 page)

Jade shook her head, still clearly in shock over the Penny revelation. ‘No, I better go, I, erm… have somewhere I need to be.’

‘Oh, that’s a shame. Thanks for popping by though.’

Jade stumbled out and disappeared round the back of the house. Henry closed the door softly after her.

He went and sat down at the table again.

‘Dad, you’re so rude,’ Daisy giggled.

‘She’s rude, I don’t like her much.’ He turned to Penny. ‘Another classmate of yours?’

Penny nodded.

‘How many times has she been up here over the years?’

‘Tonight was the first, I’m surprised she even knew the way. She, erm…’ she looked at Daisy as she tried to find the right words ‘…went out with Chris for a while.’

‘Who’s Chris?’ Daisy asked.

‘My ex.’

‘Let me guess, she
went out
with him whilst he was seeing you,’ Henry said.

Penny nodded.

Bitch.

He took a sip of water and stared at Penny across the table. Jade’s attitude to Penny disgusted him. And Beth’s too. He suddenly had a sudden desire to stick two fingers up at all the arseholes in the town who didn’t think Penny was worthy of paying attention to. ‘You know what this means? You and I have a date on Tuesday.’

Penny’s eyebrows shot up and Daisy grinned at him.

P
enny woke
in the night to mumbles and cries of panic coming from the lounge. She quickly got up and ran downstairs.

She was surprised to see Daisy lying on her sofa with Bernard by her side. She was clearly having a nightmare. She didn’t know whether to wake her or not and she certainly didn’t want to scare her by doing so. She didn’t know why Daisy was in her lounge either.

‘Daisy,’ she said softly but there was no response. What should she do? What kind of mum would she have made when she didn’t even know how to deal with a child who was having a nightmare? Her first reaction was to stroke Daisy’s head and hug her, but Daisy wasn’t her daughter, she couldn’t do that.

Leaving her lying on the sofa with Bernard staying guard, she went through the open connecting door and crept upstairs.

Henry’s door was open and she stole a brief moment to admire him sleeping, the blankets bunched around his waist, his bare muscular chest gleaming in the moonlight that spilled through the open curtains.

She reached forward and touched his arm, the feel of his smooth velvety skin making her stomach clench with a need she hadn’t felt for years.

He didn’t stir, so she shook him gently.

He opened his eyes blearily and suddenly smiled, running his hand up her arm.

S
he was here
, in his bedroom. He hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her as he fell asleep earlier and now she was here. He was dreaming but she sure felt real, her skin was so soft. She wasn’t dressed in the sexy lingerie the women of his dreams were normally wearing, but she still looked heavenly dressed in cute snowflake pyjama bottoms and an oversized t-shirt. He wanted to pull her into bed with him and see the gorgeous body she hid underneath these big clothes.

He slid his hand down to her fingers and entwined them with his own. He shifted back into the bed a bit and pulled her gently towards him. For one wonderful moment, she came willingly, before she stopped and pulled her hand from his.

‘Henry, it’s me, it’s Penny.’

He was well aware who she was. Although as he became more awake it was very obvious she hadn’t pitched up in his bedroom for a night of hot sex.

He cleared his throat and rubbed his face to try to dispel the images that were playing through his mind.

‘Are you OK?’ he said as he sat up and looked at her.

‘Daisy’s having a nightmare.’

He shot out of bed, all thoughts of passionate sex vanishing. ‘Where is she?’

‘In my front room. I didn’t want to wake her in case I scared her.’

He raced downstairs. Why was Daisy in Penny’s front room? He knew she hadn’t been able to sleep earlier and he’d heard her go downstairs, presumably to watch TV or read – quite why she had gone next door he didn’t know.

P
enny followed
him down the stairs and back into her front room. She watched him carefully scoop Daisy up into his arms and place a tender kiss on her head, before he carried her back into the safety of his home.

She wondered briefly if she should follow him but Henry knew how to deal with it; she would only be in his way.

Sleep was a long way off now, especially after what had passed between them in the bedroom.

He had tried to pull her into bed with him and for a moment, maybe a few seconds, she had nearly done just that. What would he have done when he woke properly to find her in bed with him and not some gorgeous model that he had been imagining?

She was pouring some milk in a saucepan to make a hot chocolate, when suddenly there was a noise behind her. She turned to see Henry standing in her kitchen, looking incredible still only dressed in a pair of tight boxer briefs. He had his robe in his hand but he hadn’t bothered to put it on. She quickly looked away.

‘Is she OK?’

‘Yes, she’s fast asleep, and the nightmare seems to have passed.’ He sighed heavily and Penny’s heart ached for him.

‘Does it happen a lot?’

‘More often than I would like, but a lot less now she’s older than when she was a child.’

Penny turned round to look at him, hearing the angst in his voice. He clocked the look of sympathy and smiled sadly.

‘Mainly they revolve around her being abandoned or rejected, despite me doing everything in my power to reassure her that I would never leave her. She had attachment issues for the first ten years of her life, I couldn't leave her with anyone but my parents or Anna and even that was a struggle. She was two months old when her mum walked out and, although Daisy has no memory of her, as a baby it was clearly hard for her to understand why her mum was no longer there. She was three months old when her maternal grandparents left her with me for a weekend and never came back to collect her, just as she was getting used to them raising her instead. She was so clingy for the first few years and understandably so – even putting her down and staying in the same room as her would cause her to cry buckets. I’m sure subconsciously she was waiting for me to abandon her too. For the first six months she lived with me she would only sleep in my bed, with me lying next to her. I couldn't even leave her once she was asleep as she would be completely inconsolable if she woke and I wasn’t there. It took a long time for her to realise that I was in it for the long haul but clearly she still doesn’t totally trust me now if she is still having nightmares.’ He rubbed his face to clear it of sleep and then suddenly looked horrified as he realised he had said too much. ‘Sorry, I shouldn’t have talked about that with you.’

‘It’s OK, I won’t say anything, to her or to anyone else. But her nightmares don’t reflect badly on you.’

‘Of course they do. She has nightmares because she thinks I’m going to leave her.’

‘You stood by her when no one else did. You raised her when you were no more than a child yourself and you should be incredibly proud of that and of the wonderful girl she is because of you. You put her first above everything else. Don’t ever doubt your parenting skills – you gave her love and she can’t ask for anything more than that.’

He smiled at her. ‘Thank you.’

She watched him, unable to take her eyes off him and he stared right back, the tension fizzing between them like lightning about to strike. She looked away, focussing on the task of making the hot chocolate.

‘I’m sorry she was in your house, I have no idea what she was doing here. I’ll speak to her tomorrow.’

She felt him move behind her, her body embarrassingly erupting in goosebumps at his proximity. Why was she so attracted to this man? Sure, he was good-looking, any idiot could see that, but there were lots of good-looking men in the town and she’d never reacted like this around them before. Was it the way he stared at her, as if he saw deep inside her? Was it having him in her home, the one place she always felt safe, and she just felt nervous about him being in her space? He wouldn’t hurt her, she knew that, well not physically, but he was exactly the sort of man who would ruin her. She feared for that.

‘You’re cold. Here, put this on,’ Henry said, draping his soft towelling robe round her shoulders. The scent of him washed over her, sweet, intoxicatingly spicy. She pushed her arms through the sleeves. The warmth of the robe did nothing to dispel the goosebumps.

‘I’m sorry she woke you.’

She turned round to face him, determinedly looking at his eyes and not at those abs that she just wanted to reach out and touch.

‘It’s no problem at all.’

He stared at her. What was with all the staring, that solid, unblinking, grey gaze? It made her want to run away and hide from it.

‘I’m sorry about…’ he gestured vaguely to upstairs and his bedroom. ‘I’d just woken up and thought I was dreaming.’

She smiled, wanting to tease him to break the tension between them. ‘I gathered you were dreaming when you tried to pull me into bed with you. Who did you think I was, Angelina Jolie or Keira Knightley? I had a dream once that I was in bed with Brad Pitt and when I woke up I was cuddled up to poor Bernard.’

He frowned. ‘I was dreaming about you and then I woke up and you were there.’

There were no words in Penny’s head, nothing at all.

Henry stepped a bit closer and pulled the robe tighter around her, fastening it with the belt. ‘Best dream I’ve ever had.’

Part of her felt euphoric at the attention he was giving her but part of her was annoyed. He wasn’t really interested in her – flirting for him was like breathing. Henry could have any woman he wanted; he certainly wasn’t going to choose someone like her.

He moved in, he was so close she could feel his warmth, feel his breath on her face, but he didn’t touch her, just leaned round her to pick the saucepan off the stove.

‘Your milk is boiling over.’ He poured the milk into the mug filled with the drinking chocolate and gave it a good stir, then pushed the mug into her hands. ‘Now drink this and get back to bed.’

He flashed her a devastating smile and walked out without a look back.

P
enny woke
to the smell of bacon cooking the next morning and she smiled. Bright winter sunshine was already filtering through the crack in the curtains, indicating that it was a lot later in the day than she would have liked. She had barely slept at all after Henry had left, as she tried to work out whether the looks, comments, little touches amounted to anything or nothing. She had finally fallen asleep at six in the morning when the darkness of her room had turned to a muted grey.

She climbed out of bed, her hand hovering over Henry’s robe for a moment before she decided against wearing it for a whole host of reasons and settled on her own robe.

She padded downstairs and smiled at her friend Jill standing in the kitchen frying bacon.

Penny walked up behind her and wrapped her arms round Jill’s waist, leaning her head on her back. Jill jolted with shock for a second, before squeezing Penny’s hand and then resuming her cooking.

‘That’s a lovely greeting for this time in the morning,’ Jill said.

‘It’s lovely to be woken with the smell of bacon, but you know you don’t have to cook for me any more.’

‘And you know I like to. Tea is in the pot. You can pour me a mug too.’

Penny smiled with love for her. She had known Jill Stratton her whole life as she had been the housekeeper, cook and unofficial nanny to her and her brother growing up. She wasn’t sure why Jill still came round once or twice a week to clean for her when Jill blatantly didn’t need the money and Penny didn’t need the help, but it was an arrangement that just seemed to have stuck over the years. Penny was beyond grateful for the company and the unwavering friendship so she wasn’t going to stop her coming any time soon.

Penny poured out two mugs of tea and sat down to watch Jill finish off the bacon. She was one of the most glamorous people that Penny knew. Even today, faced with a load of dusting and vacuuming, Jill was dressed in a pale blue trouser suit that would be more suitable for a high society wedding than a spot of cleaning. She had a deep blue satin scarf tied round her neck and a pair of diamond and sapphire earrings that Penny knew to be real. She was wearing an apron over her clothes but this did nothing to detract from her effortless grace and beauty. With her brown hair cut into a sleek bob, she hadn’t aged a single day in all the time Penny had known her.

Jill placed a bacon sandwich in front of Penny and sat down opposite her to eat her own.

‘How are the new neighbours? Henry and Daisy, was it?’

‘Fine, they seem nice, but Daisy is Henry’s daughter
not
his wife…’

‘Oh.’ Jill took a bite of her sandwich and chewed it thoughtfully, staring at Penny the whole time. She swallowed. ‘And what is Henry like?’

Penny blushed. ‘He’s… very big and, erm…’ Hot as hell, grumpy but kind and very, very flirty. She couldn’t say any of those things but it didn’t seem she needed to as Jill was smiling into her mug of tea. ‘Daisy is very sweet, I really like her.’

There was a knock at the connecting door behind Penny and she heard it open. Jill’s eyes lit up, indicating that it was most likely Henry standing there and not Daisy.

Penny turned around and eyed Henry standing in the doorway. He’d at least had the decency to put on a t-shirt since the night before, which covered his tight boxer shorts, but he hadn’t put on any jeans to cover up his fabulous muscular thighs.

‘Hi, sorry to bother you ladies. Penny, I was wondering if I could have my robe back?’

‘Yes of course, it’s in my room, I’ll just get it.’

She ignored the look of surprise from Jill that Henry’s robe was in her bedroom as she stood up and quickly ran upstairs. When she returned a moment later, Henry was sitting down at the table talking to Jill as if he had known her for years. Jill had even made him a mug of tea.

Penny held out Henry’s robe and he took it but didn’t get up. He was sitting right next to where Penny had been sitting moments before so when she sat down to resume eating, her thigh brushed against his momentarily. His touch zapped through her before she shuffled a few inches away.

‘I see you two have met,’ Penny said, half frowning at the new cosy family breakfast and half loving it too.

‘Yes, Jill was just asking me if I was single,’ Henry smirked and then in a theatrical whisper, ‘I think she fancies me.’

Jill laughed. ‘Maybe if I was twenty years younger, but I have been very happily married to my Thomas for nearly twenty-five years now, so I don’t think I’ll be running off to have an illicit affair any time soon, despite how gorgeous you are.’

Henry smiled at Jill then transferred his smile to Penny. ‘Besides, I don’t think we can see each other anyway, Jill. I’ve got a date with Penny on Tuesday.’

Penny glanced over at Jill to see her smile widen into a full-blown grin.

‘It’s not a proper date,’ Penny explained.

‘Isn’t it?’ Henry asked, his eyes alight with amusement.

‘No, you’re just doing it to piss Jade off.’

‘That’s one of the reasons but it’s not the only reason.’

She stared at him, his eyes not wavering from her face.