Christmas at Lilac Cottage - Holly Martin Page 0,84
as Henry was fiddling with the heating controls and then he moved into the back with her. But though there was enough room for her to lie across the back seat there wasn’t room for him. He knelt between her legs, his back, neck and head folded under the roof of the car; it didn’t look comfortable at all. She shifted back so her head was resting against the window to try to give him more space, but that hurt her neck. Henry didn’t exactly look like he was enjoying himself either.
He leaned up and spent a good minute trying to prise a condom out of his jeans pocket.
‘Why did you take a condom to dinner with Daniel and Maggie?’ Penny said, leaning up to try to help him. ‘Did you think it was that kind of dinner party?’
‘I thought I might try and sneak into your house when I got back, if Daisy was asleep.’
‘Planning ahead, I like it.’
He managed to get the condom out, ripped it open with his teeth and slid it on.
‘This isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, is it,’ Penny said, trying to shuffle back even more, to give him more room. He slid his hands under her bum, lifting her and folding her into a very odd angle, and she hooked one leg round his back and one over the back seat. He thrust into her just as a pair of headlights turned into the little service road, heading straight towards them. Frozen in the moment, she looked out the window over Henry’s shoulder and spotted the silhouette of the blue lights on top of the car as it came closer.
‘It’s the police.’
‘Crap.’ Henry pulled out and managed with some difficulty to do his jeans back up, over his impressive bulge. He grabbed her jeans from the front of the car and quickly managed to pull them on her, dragging them up to her knees as the car stopped right behind them and a policeman got out. Penny laughed as she tried to force the jeans up the rest of her thighs, lord knows where her pants were, hopefully nowhere in sight. She managed to do the button up on her jeans just as the policeman knocked on the window. Even fully clothed, with their position in the back of the car, it was very clear what they had been doing, or about to do. Henry backed up and shuffled into a sitting position and Penny did too and then Henry opened the back door. The policeman leaned in and Penny was mortified to see it was Bob, one of her dad’s oldest friends.
Bob flushed as soon as he saw her. He quickly addressed his attention to Henry instead, pretending she wasn’t there.
‘Sir, I saw your hazard warning lights flashing as I drove past and I came to see if there was a problem.’
‘No problem, officer,’ Henry said. ‘We were just going to go for a walk, see if we could spot some deer.’
‘Right.’
Bob glanced over to Penny again and he nodded at her. ‘Penny, are you OK?’
‘Yes, Bob, I’m fine. Sorry to worry you, we just stopped to see the sights.’ Her hair was a tangle around her face, her shirt was all ridden up round her stomach, her shoes were off and she knew her skin was flushed; even in the illumination of the interior car light, she knew Bob had spotted all these things. She looked like she had just had the best sex of her life, which unfortunately was not the case. She had never been so embarrassed before.
‘How’s your dad? I was going to call him this weekend actually.’
Oh god, she couldn’t imagine how that conversation was going to go.
‘He’s fine. Italian life suits them.’
Bob nodded and there was an awkward silence. ‘Well, it’s a bit chilly tonight for a walk. There’s talk of snow too so maybe you two should get off home. You don’t want to be driving these roads when they are icy.’
Henry nodded and, after a few more awkward moments, Bob shuffled off, closing the door behind him.
Henry sighed and clambered into the front. Penny giggled as he picked her pants off the steering wheel and passed them to her in the back along with her shoes. She shoved her feet into her shoes and her pants in her pocket and climbed in the front seat with him.
He started the car, turned the lights on and drove up the little service road. Embarrassingly, Bob