Special Deliveries: Her Gift, His Baby: Secrets of a Career Girl / For the Baby's Sake / A Very Special Delivery. Carol Marinelli

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ really want to be on my own.’

      ‘Why?’ Ethan said. He’d come straight from work and was in his scrubs and looking far too gorgeous for someone feeling as drained as Penny did.

      ‘Because I’m such good company.’ She didn’t need to tell him she was being sarcastic. He looked at her swollen eyes and lips and the little dark red dots on her eyelids and he couldn’t let her close the door.

      ‘I need to talk to you, Penny,’ Ethan said. ‘I lied to you.’

      ‘That’s fine.’

      ‘You don’t even want to know when I lied?’

      ‘No,’ Penny said. ‘I want to think about me.’ But she did let him in. Ethan pulled her into his arms for a cuddle but he felt her resistance and just wanted to erase it, wanted to take some of her hurt, but she simply wouldn’t let him. ‘I wish you’d spoken to my sister. Kate’s been through it many, many times. I wish you’d let people in.’

      ‘I wish I would too,’ Penny said.

      ‘Then why don’t you?’ He could see the confusion swirling in her eyes, guessed she was trying to answer that by herself. He was going to make her talk, was determined to sort things out, and he led her to the couch and sat down beside her. ‘You don’t have to keep it all in. It’s not good for you. You said you didn’t get upset when your dad left and then a few days later—’

      ‘Oh, don’t start.’

      ‘I have started,’ Ethan said.

      ‘Of course I was upset when he left,’ Penny said.

      ‘You just couldn’t show it.’

      ‘No!’ Penny said. ‘Because Jasmine was sobbing herself to sleep, Mum was doing the same on the couch, and someone had to do the dishes and make Jasmine her lunch and …’ She swallowed the hot choking fear she had felt then. ‘How would falling apart have helped?’

      ‘It might have stopped you falling apart now,’ Ethan suggested. ‘It might have meant your mother would have stepped up. It might have meant someone stepping in.’

      ‘I’m not falling apart,’ Penny said, and she meant it. ‘I did that a couple of hours ago.’

      He looked at her swollen face. ‘I could have been there for you.’

      ‘Oh, no,’ Penny said. ‘I’m so glad that you weren’t.’ She gave him a smile, a real one, because there were things she simply didn’t want another person to see, and she actually felt better for her mammoth cry and was ready now to face another truth.

      ‘So when did you lie?’

      ‘I was serious about Caitlin.’ The smile slid from her face when she didn’t get the answer she was expecting. ‘Not quite walking-up-the-aisle serious, but serious. And then Phil got sick and the thought of being married, having kids, leaving them behind?’ He was honest. ‘It just freaked me out.’

      ‘I do understand. It is scary to think of being responsible for another person,’ she admitted.

      ‘But you want it,’ Ethan said. ‘You’re brave enough to do it your own.’

      ‘Not on my own,’ Penny said, ‘because even if we fight I do have my sister and mum, and if something happened to me, they’d be there.’ She looked at him. ‘I thought you were about to tell me you had a son.’

      He gave her a barking-mad look.

      ‘I saw you at the cinema.’

      ‘That was Justin.’

      ‘He looks like you,’ Penny said, smiling now at her own paranoia.

      ‘Phil looked like me,’ Ethan said, then changed the subject because she was getting too close to a place that hurt. ‘You do too much on your own.’

      ‘Better than not doing it at all.’ She smiled and nudged him, except Ethan didn’t smile, and to her horror she watched him swallow, watched him struggle to get a grip, saw him pinch his nose and it was her arm around him now.

      ‘Ethan?’

      ‘Sorry.’ He let out a slightly incredulous laugh, shocked how much was there just beneath the surface, how much he had just refused to let out.

      ‘Is it Phil?’

      He shook his head and again he got how the patients liked her because she sort of went straight to the really painful bit rather than tiptoeing around it. ‘Justin?’

      ‘If you get famous and they name a perfume after you, it won’t be called Subtle, Penny.’

      ‘No, it will be called Pertinent,’ Penny said. ‘You need to be there for him, Ethan.’ And he nodded, rested his head in his hands, and Penny felt the tension in his shoulders, heard him struggle to keep his voice even as he gave a ragged apology. ‘This was supposed to be about you.’

      ‘How selfish of you.’ Penny smiled.

      ‘I don’t know what to do—I’ve been trying to stay out of it but I can’t. And it’s not just the family stuff and that Gina’s keeping him from his grandparents. The thing is, I know how he feels. It’s like I’m looking at a mini-me. I saw him at the hospital, heard my aunt saying the same things she did to me when my father died—to be brave, be strong. It’s not what he needs to hear right now.’

      ‘You can be there for him.’

      ‘I don’t want to go rushing in and make promises I might not keep,’ Ethan admitted. ‘I’ve never been able to commit myself to anything except work. Penny, I don’t want to let him down.’

      ‘You won’t.’ She saw him blink at the certainty in her voice. ‘I know you won’t let him down, precisely because you haven’t rushed in. Just take your time and you’ll work something out.’

      ‘I don’t know what, though.’ He looked to where she was sitting and pulled her onto his lap, and this time she didn’t resist when he pulled her in for a cuddle. ‘So much for cheering you up.’

      ‘You have, though.’ Penny smiled and he smiled too. ‘Thank you for everything,’ Penny said. ‘Not just the injections but …’ she looked at the man who was still there despite all that had gone on these past weeks ‘… thank you for being my friend through this.’

      ‘A bit more than a friend.’ And to confirm it gave her a kiss. A kiss that seemed at odds with the way she was feeling, because there was this well of happiness filling her at what should have been the saddest of times.

      ‘Are you wearing no knickers again?’ Ethan smiled again and he had possibly the nicest mouth a man could have, and she was looking into his hazel eyes and it hadn’t just been manufactured hormones that had been raging that time. Penny could fully see it now. It had been lust, all the flush of a new romance, the big one, because right now for Penny it was looking like something a lot bigger than lust.

      Something she’d never really felt before—an СКАЧАТЬ