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

by Martin, Holly

  ‘Hello, I’m Maggie. It’s lovely to finally meet you properly.’ She reached up to kiss him on the cheek. ‘It’s such a funny coincidence that you’re both here tonight. I had no idea Daniel had invited you round until about half hour ago and I invited Penny and I forgot to mention it to Daniel. But what a happy happenstance.’

  Henry had to stop himself from laughing at the lie and instead he deliberately forced a small smile onto his face and flashed Penny the briefest of glares. Penny quickly looked away so Maggie wouldn’t see her smile. She clearly wasn’t very good at acting, though Maggie had already seen the glare from him and her smile fell from her face.

  Daniel appeared in the hall as Henry and Penny stepped in and closed the front door behind them.

  ‘Henry, so good of you to come,’ Daniel said as Penny and Maggie walked off to the kitchen. Henry heard Penny whispering loudly to Maggie how she didn’t like him and how she thought he was an ass. He had better act his part too.

  ‘I can’t believe you invited Penny too, she’s the most annoying person in the world, she’s so whiny.’ Henry said, making his voice loud enough for Maggie and Penny to hear.

  Daniel’s face fell but, before Henry could get another word out, Maggie barrelled down the hall towards him and he had never been more terrified of anything in his life as he was in that moment.

  ‘How dare you talk about my friend like that?’ Maggie slammed her finger into his chest. ‘Penny is the sweetest, most lovely, kindest, warmest person you will ever meet and I won’t have you speak about her like that in my house.’ She flung the front door open. ‘Now get out.’

  Henry made a mental note to never cross a pregnant woman, and especially not a pregnant Maggie ever again.

  In fact he was too scared now to tell the truth in case she killed him for lying to her.

  Penny came rushing down the hall. ‘Maggie, it’s OK, we were just joking. We were just going to pretend that we hate each other to get you guys back for trying to set us up.’

  Maggie looked between the two of them, her nostrils flaring. ‘This was a joke?’

  Henry nodded.

  Penny wrapped an arm round his waist. ‘We’re actually seeing each other, though we are keeping it a secret for a few weeks because we want Daisy to get settled in her new home before I’m introduced as the new girlfriend.’

  Henry would have preferred not to completely out their relationship, but he hoped if Penny trusted Maggie enough to keep quiet then he could too. Besides, any kind of lying to Maggie now was not going to go down well.

  Maggie looked between them, wondering if they were speaking the truth, and as Henry nodded, Maggie’s face split into a huge smile.

  ‘You’re together?’

  Penny nodded.

  Maggie squealed and threw her arms around first Penny and then Henry. ‘I’m so happy for you both.’

  Daniel laughed. ‘Easy there, Mags, they’ve been on one date, they’re not getting married or anything.’

  ‘Penny, come to the kitchen with me, I want to hear all about it,’ Maggie said. ‘You boys can go and bond in the front room for a bit before dinner is ready.’

  Daniel ushered him into the front room whilst giggling and whispering started in the kitchen. He wondered how much Penny was actually divulging. When he heard a squeal of excitement from Maggie, he guessed it might have been about sex rather than the nice restaurant he had taken her to.

  ‘I’m so glad you were only joking, I was afraid I’d have to punch you for saying those things about Penny and that wouldn’t have ended well for me,’ Daniel said.

  Maggie came waddling out the kitchen carrying two bottles of beer. She fixed Henry with a knowing smile before she left him and Daniel alone.

  Daniel raised his beer bottle to Henry. ‘To new friendships.’

  Henry chinked the bottle against his friend’s and took a big swig.

  ‘What did Clara want to talk to you about today anyway? She never gets involved with the carpenters or any of the factory business, she doesn’t seem to do anything actually.’

  Henry sat down and slowly peeled away the label on the side of the bottle. ‘I’m really worried actually. I don’t know if I’m going to be working there much longer. She came on to me.’

  Daniel sat down opposite him. ‘Shit, you don’t want to get involved with the boss’s sister.’

  ‘I’m with Penny so she doesn’t hold any interest at all; in fact even if I wasn’t with Penny she wouldn’t hold any interest for me. She tried it on with me last night but I made it very clear I wasn’t available and I thought that would be the end of it. But she seems to think she has a sense of entitlement, that because she’s the owner of the company that I’d be jumping at the chance to sleep with her. I told her I wasn’t interested and she basically said that if I wanted to continue working there I’d reconsider.’

  Daniel’s eyes bulged. ‘She did not say that?’

  Henry nodded.

  ‘You have to tell Edward, he would be furious.’

  ‘Would he really believe me over his sister though? I’m the new guy, he doesn’t know me. I’m hoping it won’t come to that.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I told her if she tried to blackmail me into sleeping with her again, I would slap a sexual harassment suit on the company so fast and sue them for every penny they had.’

  Daniel went very pale. ‘You did what? You threatened her?’

  Henry ran his fingers through his hair. ‘It probably wasn’t my best move. She just pissed me off. I honestly don’t know whether I’ll have a job to return to after Christmas and Daisy and I have only just arrived down here. If I lose my job, I don’t think I can afford to stay.’

  ‘What else could you have done? You can’t let her blackmail you like that. And if you had slept with her, it would have ended very badly if Edward found out. Oh mate, I don’t know what to suggest.’

  Henry sighed. Everything had seemed so perfect for a few days and now this had ruined everything.

  But as Penny walked in with Maggie and he pulled her down by his side, he knew there was no way he could leave White Cliff Bay now.

  * * *

  Penny smiled as Henry took her hand and they walked down the driveway towards his car. He had been very tactile all night, sitting next to her, holding her hand at the table, sitting with his arm round her as they chatted to Maggie and Daniel. His affection for her came so naturally and she loved it.

  She was worried though. Something had happened at his work today to upset him. The fact that he had kept it to himself worried her too. Despite his smiles and easiness around her friends, there was something eating at him, she could tell that, and somehow she knew it had to do with Clara.

  He opened the car door for her and she slid into the passenger seat as he walked round to the driver’s side.

  As soon as he closed his door, he leaned across towards her, cupping the back of her head with his large hands and planting a soft, sweet kiss on her lips.

  ‘I’ve been wanting to do that all night,’ he said, against her mouth. He started to pull away but she grabbed his shirt and pulled him back, kissing him again.

  God, his kisses were so addictive and very quickly the kiss turned into the prelude to something else, her hands were in his hair, his were wandering over her body. She reluctantly pulled away before she got too carried away right there on her friend’s driveway. Henry groaned with disappointment. Frustratingly they probably couldn’t even finish off the kiss when they got home.

  Henry sat back in his seat, gripping the steering wheel tightly, clearly equally frustrated by their inability to finish the kiss.

  He started the car and pulled out their drive.

  ‘We, erm… don’t have to go straight home,’ Henry said.

  She looked at him and laughed. ‘What were you thinking, we find a secluded layby somewhere in the middle of the woods and have sex in the back of the car?’

  ‘That’s exactly what I’m th
inking.’

  She stared at him in shock, there were no words in her head. It wasn’t exactly the sweet, gorgeously romantic experience they’d had the first time they made love but she couldn’t deny that the possibility really excited her.

  ‘I’ve never had sex in a car before,’ Penny said.

  ‘Me neither.’

  ‘Really? Isn’t that a rite of passage for most teenage boys?’

  ‘Remember my later teenage years were spent raising a baby, there wasn’t a lot of time for shagging in cars. Tina was the first girl I slept with, a drunken fumble at a party. There wasn’t anybody else then for years.’

  Henry drove through the town.

  ‘That must have been so hard for you.’

  He shrugged. ‘Daisy was my priority. Women just didn’t register on my radar for a long time. I was too exhausted to think about anything else. Night feeds almost killed me.’

  ‘So no wild sex in weird and wonderful places?’

  Henry clearly thought about this for a moment. If there was any weird sex or sex in unusual places, none obviously came to mind. It made Penny feel a lot better about her complete lack of sexual experience. ‘I guess I’ve been quite sensible. I’ve done the usual places, like in the shower, on the table, on the couch, on a pool table, in a garden, on a sun lounger…’

  ‘Those are usual places?’ Penny blushed.

  ‘Well, yes. They’re not weird places. One of my friends had sex in a graveyard, now that’s a bit creepy if you ask me. I think mine have been quite normal. Maybe against a tree was probably the strangest place. What about you?’

  Penny fiddled with a tiny hole in the knee of her jeans. ‘Erm… the bed and, erm, sitting up in bed once.’ Jesus, no wonder Chris went elsewhere for sex, he must have been bored out of his mind with the plain, boring sex that she had offered him. ‘I never really knew what I was doing and he certainly never instigated it anywhere other than in bed.’

  Henry drove up the hill quietly. ‘So… we could rectify that if you want.’

  ‘I think we better, I’m bloody miles behind everyone else in terms of wild sexual experiences.’

  Henry smiled at her as he drove past the turning for her house and she bit her lip. They were really going to do this, they were going to have sex in the car. She suddenly wanted to experience all those passionate sex moments with Henry, in all the places that he had spoken about.

  They drove over the hills and Henry took her hand, running his thumb over her palm in tiny little circles which just sent desire and need spiralling through her. They came to some woods and Henry pulled off the road into a short service road that led to an old beacon. In the day, cars would be double-parked either side of the service road as people would walk round the woods with their dogs but now, in the middle of the night, the road was empty.

  Once Henry was satisfied they were far enough away from the main road not to be spotted, he pulled onto the side of the road and parked under a tree.

  He turned the engine off and the lights and they were plunged into darkness.

  They sat in silence for a moment while their eyes became accustomed to the light, or the complete lack of it.

  Penny was so excited and so nervous, this felt silly and wrong and wonderful all at once.

  ‘How should we do this?’ Penny asked, wondering if her innocence and naivety was a total turn-off. Maybe she should be more assertive.

  She reached across the handbrake and kissed him and as he ran his hands through her hair, she moved over to his side of the car and straddled him, accidentally pressing the horn with her bum as she positioned herself against the steering wheel. The noise was loud and alien in the middle of the woods and it scared her enough to break the kiss.

  Henry laughed and with his hands at her hips he pulled her tighter against him away from the wheel, before kissing her again.

  He unzipped her coat and slid it off her shoulders and she shivered as the cold of the night soaked through her thin shirt to her skin.

  ‘Sorry, I’ll put the heating on,’ Henry mumbled, leaning forward to turn the ignition on, pushing her against the horn as he did. He carried on kissing her as he fumbled around, trying to find the heating controls, the horn went off again, hazard lights flashed and the windscreen wipers came on, making a horrible squeaking sound as they dragged across the dry windscreen.

  Penny giggled. ‘I’ll leave my clothes on, let’s just take the necessary bits off.’

  Henry nodded as he moved his hands to her jeans. He undid the button and slowly unzipped her fly. But when he went to push them off her hips, it was quite clear her straddling position was not conducive to the removal of clothes.

  She shuffled around so she was leaning her back against the car door and her legs were sideways across his lap, her feet in the passenger seat, as she wriggled to get her jeans off. Henry tried to help her, dragging them down her thighs, and taking her pants with them. There was just no room to manoeuvre at all.

  ‘Let’s go in the back,’ Henry said, clearly getting very frustrated.

  She quickly clambered off him, with her jeans still round her knees, fell through the gap between the seats and landed face down with her front on the back seat and her legs still in the front. This wasn’t sexy at all. Or romantic. Henry was still trying to wrestle her skinny jeans off her legs. He gave one big yank and they came off as he fell against the wheel, sounding the horn yet again. She quickly tried to arrange herself in a better position on the back seat 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, office
r,’ 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 followed them, clearly escorting them out so they didn’t stop on the way to have more bad sex.

  They pulled out onto the main road and Henry reached for her hand. ‘I’m sorry that was absolutely rubbish, though honestly, I don’t see how it could have been anything else. Whenever you hear about people having sex in cars it always seems much sexier than it actually is.’

  Penny let out a giggle which then turned into a full-on laugh. ‘It’s been one of the funniest nights I’ve had in a long time.’

  Henry frowned. ‘Now that’s a compliment I’ve never had before, the funniest shag I’ve ever had.’

  ‘We can’t all be Casanova, Henry.’ Penny patted him consolingly.