Christmas at Lilac Cottage - Holly Martin Page 0,9
when I was sixteen, got my girlfriend pregnant. She was horrified, kept saying that she wanted an abortion, that the baby would ruin her life. I couldn’t bear the thought of that – this was my child and I couldn’t believe that she hated this baby so much when it hadn’t even been born. Thankfully her parents were Catholic and wouldn’t let her have an abortion but they blamed me entirely and I wasn’t allowed anywhere near her. They moved away and said the baby was going to be put up for adoption. I was absolutely gutted. I suppose I should have been relieved, a drunken fumble that turned into a pregnancy, I was sixteen years old with my whole life in front of me and her parents were giving me a way out, but I never saw it like that. I never saw my girlfriend again. Last I heard she ran away to Australia not long after the baby was born.’
Penny stared at him in horror. Was it worse that Penny had lost her baby or that Henry had a baby somewhere that he wasn’t allowed to see? ‘What happened to your baby?’
Just then Bernard leapt up from his position at the window and started barking furiously at something unseen outside.
Henry quickly moved to the front door as if he was ready to take on the world. She giggled at his over-protectiveness as he flung the door open and Bernard ran out into the night.
‘It’s just rabbits, Bernard hates them.’
She followed Henry to the door as he stood on the doorstep with his fists clenched, scanning the darkness for any threat. Bernard was sniffing round the rabbit holes, clawing at the grass with his big paws, with the obvious hope that one day one of the rabbits would run straight out the hole and into his mouth.
Clearly seeing that there was no one waiting outside ready to kill them, Henry turned back and banged into her, nearly sending her flying. His hands shot out and grabbed her arms. She looked up at him, silhouetted against the night sky, tiny flakes of snow fluttering around him like icing sugar, his sweet, spicy scent washing over her as he was standing so close. She had bared her soul to this man tonight and, for the first time in a very long time, she wanted nothing more than to reach up and kiss him. Weirdly enough he looked like he wanted the same thing, as his eyes darkened with desire and then scanned down to her lips. What the hell? He was married. It was bad enough that she was having inappropriate thoughts about a married man; it was absolutely not OK for him to be having those same thoughts about her.
She took a definite step back. ‘Well, it’s getting late and I have to be up early tomorrow so maybe you should go.’
He stared down at her with confusion and she knew she had been sending some very mixed messages that night.
‘Yes, of course. I’ll let you get to bed,’ he said, softly.
‘And I look forward to meeting Daisy tomorrow,’ Penny said, waiting for the guilt to cross his face at the mention of his wife. But there was no remorse there at all. He just nodded, walked through her kitchen and out the back door, not giving her a single backward glance.
She breathed in the cool night air, determined to clear her mind, then called Bernard in. He ran in, shook wet snowflakes all over her and then launched himself at the sofa where they had been sitting just moments before. She sighed and went into the kitchen.
How unfair was it that the first man in years that she’d had any kind of feelings for was beautiful, intriguing, intelligent, worked with his hands, kind and … married?
She was better off alone – that had been her mantra for the last eight years and she was sticking to it.
She jolted at a sudden noise from next door and she watched as the bookshelf was pushed away from the connecting door. He’d done that for her and she wanted to hug him and shake him in equal measure. He was married and it seemed he needed reminding of that even more than she did.
Daisy would be back tomorrow; hopefully that would stop any of that chemistry that was sparking between them.
* * *
Henry turned the downstairs light off and wandered upstairs to bed. There was something so attractive about Penny. Even wearing