Secrets of a Career Girl

by Carol Marinelli

  Penny.

  Ethan blew out a breath as he recalled the near miss last night.

  What the hell had he been thinking? Or rather, he hadn’t been thinking in the least.

  Still, he kept getting glimpses of coral underwear flashing before his eyes throughout the day.

  He’d expected flesh coloured.

  Not that he’d thought about it.

  But had he thought about it, then flesh coloured it would be.

  Sensible, seamless, Ethan decided as he drove to the hospital. Not that she’d need a bra.

  Not that he’d noticed.

  Ethan pulled into his parking spot and tried to go back, tried to rewind the clock to a few days ago, when he hadn’t remotely thought of her in that way. When she had just been a sour-faced colleague who was difficult to work with, one who hadn’t turned round and bewitched him with a smile.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Rex asked as Ethan walked through the department, for once out of scrubs and dressed in black jeans and a black top.

  ‘I need to take some work home. Is it just you on?’ Ethan asked casually.

  ‘Nope,’ Rex said. ‘Penny’s on.’ He pulled a poker face. ‘She’s just taking a break.’

  Ethan knew that because he’d texted her to say that he was here, but he didn’t want anyone getting even a hint so he stood and chatted with Rex a moment before heading to Penny’s office.

  ‘Sorry to mess up your day off.’

  He checked the dose again, and she undid her zipper and just stared at the door as she lowered her skirt. Penny closed her eyes and hyperventilated but managed to stay much calmer, even if her knuckles were white as she clutched the desk behind her. In turn, Ethan was very gruff and businesslike and what they had both been silently nervous about happening was nowhere near repeated. In fact, it was all over and done with very quickly.

  ‘Thanks for this.’

  ‘No problem,’ Ethan said.

  ‘Will you carry on working?’ Ethan asked, and Penny frowned as she tucked her shirt in. ‘When you have the baby I mean.’

  ‘If I have one,’ Penny said. ‘Did you ask Gordon the same question?’

  ‘No.’ He was so not into political correctness. ‘But then again, Gordon isn’t a single dad. And,’ he added, ‘despite his account of it, Gordon wasn’t actually the one who got pregnant and gave birth.’

  Penny laughed.

  ‘Shall we go and see them?’ Ethan said. ‘It’s quiet out there at the moment and Rex is in. We could head up and just get it over with.’

  ‘Get it over with?’ Penny smiled. She had been thinking exactly the same thing. Gordon really could be the most crushing bore and she’d never really had a conversation with Hilary, a paediatrician, that hadn’t revolved around baby poo.

  ‘Sorry.’ Ethan didn’t know he was being teased. ‘That was a bit...’

  ‘Don’t you like babies?’ Penny asked as they headed towards the lifts that would take them to the maternity unit.

  ‘Actually, no.’ Ethan was honest. ‘I don’t actively dislike them or anything. My sister has had three now. I like the five-year-old, he makes me laugh sometimes.’

  ‘How old is your sister?’

  ‘Thirty-six,’ Ethan said, and she remembered their phone conversation.

  ‘You’re a twin.’ Penny smiled. ‘On anyone else that would be cute.’

  They stopped at the gift shop and bought flowers and balloons and Penny wrote a card but Ethan had forgotten to get one and asked if he could just add his name.

  ‘You’re giving me injections,’ Penny said. ‘Not sperm. Buy your own card.’

  She was the most horrible person he had ever met, but she did make him grin, and Ethan was still smiling when they both walked into Hilary’s room together.

  ‘Penny!’ Gordon seemed delighted to see them. ‘Ethan!’ He shook Ethan’s hand. ‘He’s just woken up, we’re just feeding.’

  ‘Well, don’t let us interrupt you. We just came in to give you these and say a quick hello.’

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ Gordon said. ‘Completely natural. What do you think? He’s a good-looking little man, isn’t he?’

  Ethan peered down at the baby and to Penny’s delight he was blushing. ‘Congratulations,’ he said to Hilary. ‘He’s very handsome.’

  ‘He’s gorgeous,’ Penny said. ‘He looks like you.’

  ‘He looks like Gordon,’ Hilary corrected her.

  She could feel Ethan’s exquisite discomfort beside her and to his credit he did attempt conversation, but she almost felt him fold in relief as his phone bleeped and he excused himself for a moment.

  ‘I heard about Jed’s mum,’ Hilary said. ‘Have you heard any news?’

  ‘She’s actually improving,’ Penny said as Ethan came back in. ‘They should be home in a couple of days.’

  ‘I’m hoping to get him home soon.’ Hilary looked down at her baby. ‘He’s a bit small, though, and the labour—’

  Thankfully Penny’s pager crackled into life, urgently summoning her down to Emergency.

  ‘I’ll come and see if they need me too,’ Ethan offered.

  ‘That was you.’ Penny grinned as they fled out of Maternity.

  ‘I’m sorry!’ Ethan said. ‘I just couldn’t sit there while she fed the baby. I’m fine with patients, with women in cafés, but when I know someone...’ He was honest. ‘I was the same with my sister. I just break out in a sweat. Please,’ he said. ‘I beg of you, when you have your baby, please don’t feed it when I come to visit.’

  ‘I promise I won’t,’ Penny assured him.

  ‘I know that sounds terrible.’

  ‘Absolutely not.’ Penny could think of nothing worse than feeding a baby in front of Ethan. ‘I don’t even know if I want to feed it myself.’

  ‘Stop!’ Ethan said. He just didn’t want to think about Penny and breasts and babies and the black panties she was wearing today.

  Yes, he’d seen, even if he’d tried very hard not to.

  ‘Sorry.’ Even Penny couldn’t believe she was discussing breastfeeding with him. ‘You don’t approve, do you?’

  ‘Of bottle-feeding?’

  She didn’t smile at his joke. ‘I meant you don’t approve of me doing this on my own.’

  ‘I can’t really say the right thing here.’

  ‘You can,’ she offered, because she didn’t mind people’s invited opinions.

  ‘No.’ He was honest. ‘I just can’t imagine that someone would choose to be a single mum. My mum raised my sister and I on her own and it wasn’t easy.’

  ‘My mum got divorced,’ Penny said, ‘and, believe me, things got a whole lot better when Dad wasn’t around.’ Then she checked herself. ‘Actually, things got a whole lot worse for a couple of years, but then they got better. And my sister was a single mum for a while.’

  ‘By choice?’

  ‘No,’ Penny said. ‘Well, yes, by choice, because she had no choice but to leave Simon’s dad. I really have thought things through.’

  ‘Tell me?’

  ‘I’ve got to work.’

  ‘Dinner?’ Ethan said, because he really was starting to like Penny, well, not fancy like, he told himself, but then he remembered the flash of her knickers and what had almost happened yesterday. Maybe he should recant that invitation to take her out for dinner, except he’d already asked.

  ‘Why?’

  Ethan shrugged. ‘Well, I’ve been out with a new father and listened to his labour and if I add a woman going through IVF, I figure by the end of the week I could qualify as a sensitive new-age guy.’

  Penny smiled and he had been right—she really was attractive when she did.

  ‘Okay, then.’ Her acceptance caught him just a little by surprise. He
’d sort of been hoping, for safety’s sake, that she might decline. ‘Tomorrow,’ she said. ‘After you stab me.’

  * * *

  Penny was on a day off, so it was she who ‘dropped in’ just as Ethan was finishing up.

  She was wearing a dress that buttoned up at the front and her heels were a little higher. He caught the musky scent of her perfume as he followed her into the office and locked the door.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ he said, taking her little cool bag.

  She told him her doses and he heard the shake in her voice as she did so.

  ‘I am so sorry about this.’ He turned and she was trying to undo the little buttons on her dress. It really was a very genuine fear, made worse today because she’d had the whole drive here to think about it. Ethan actually saw her break out into a cold sweat as he approached and she was trying very hard not to cry.

  ‘I need a bit more skin than that, Penny.’ She’d only managed two buttons. ‘Here.’ He undid a couple more and felt the splash of a hot tear on the back of his hand. ‘You must really want this baby.’

  ‘I do.’

  He could see tiny goose bumps rising on her stomach. He was really impressed with himself because he was completely matter-of-fact and, despite a glimpse of purple underwear and the heady scent of her, he was not a bit turned on. Two evenings in a row now!

  He just kept reminding himself that there’d be a baby in there any time soon and that those small breasts would soon look like Hilary’s.

  ‘Done,’ Ethan said.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Where do you want to go and eat?’

  Penny didn’t care, so they ended up in the same pub near the hospital where he had been with Gordon, and they took a booth and sat opposite each other. He saw the dark smudges under her eyes and the paleness of her skin. The treatment must really be taking its toll by now.

  ‘Jasmine’s coming back the day after tomorrow,’ Penny said. ‘Well, as long as Jed’s mother keeps improving, so tomorrow should be the last time you have to do it.’

  ‘It’s not an issue.’

  ‘I am very grateful to you, though. Jasmine was worried that I’d just stop the treatment and I think she was right.’

  ‘Have you told her I’m giving them?’

  ‘Yes.’ Penny nodded. ‘She sends you her sympathies.’

  He’d prefer self-restraint.

  ‘When’s your next blood test?’

  ‘Seven a.m. tomorrow.’

  ‘Do you want to change the next one?’ Ethan asked. ‘Go in a little bit later?’

  Penny shook her head. ‘Thanks, but it has to be done early.’

  She ordered nachos smothered in sour cream and guacamole and cheese, and it surprised him because he’d thought she’d order a salad or something.

  And usually she would but this was like PMS times a thousand so she just scooped up the cheesiest bit she could find and sank her teeth into it with such pleasure that Ethan wished he hadn’t ordered the steak.

  ‘Have some.’ She saw his eyes linger on them.

  ‘Who’d have thought?’ Ethan said.

  ‘I’m good at sharing.’

  ‘I meant the two of us being out together. What a difference a week can make.’

  Penny smiled and he rather wished she hadn’t.

  ‘How come you’re so petrified of needles?’

  ‘I’m not as bad as I used to be,’ Penny said. ‘I did hypnosis, counselling and everything, just to get to where I could let someone give me one.’

  ‘So you think hypnosis works?’

  She saw his sceptical frown. ‘I don’t know,’ Penny admitted. ‘I mean, I’m still scared of needles but the hypnotherapist did get me to remember the first time that I freaked out—I was at school and we were all lined up to get an injection and the girl in front of me passed out.’

  ‘Mass hysteria?’

  ‘Possibly.’ Penny had thought about it practically. ‘But my father had just left my mother a couple of weeks before, so apparently, according to the counsellor, it was my excuse to scream and cry.’ She gave a very wicked smile. ‘Load of rubbish really.’ She took a sip of her drink. ‘All I know is that the fear is there and I’m having to face it over and over and over. Sometimes it’s terrible, sometimes it’s not so bad. I was good at my blood test this morning.’

  ‘You were good tonight.’

  ‘Yep,’ Penny said. ‘And had Jasmine’s mother-in-law not had a stroke, you’d never have known and we’d have been able to look each other in the eye.’

  ‘I’m looking you in the eye now, Penny.’

  She looked up and so he was. She saw that his eyes were more amber than hazel and there was a quickening to her pulse. How could she possibly be thinking such thoughts? She couldn’t be attracted to Ethan. She had to stay focussed on her treatment—her plan to become a mother. Except thinking about babies had her thinking about making babies the old-fashioned way! With Ethan?

  It was very warm in the bar; it must have been that causing this sear of heat between them, and Ethan wished he’d asked for his steak rare because it was taking for ever to come.

  ‘Do you have any phobias?’ she asked when thankfully his order had been delivered and normality was starting to return.

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Flying?’

  ‘Love it.’ Ethan smiled.

  ‘Heights?’

  ‘They don’t bother me in the least.’

  She did, though, Ethan thought as he ate his steak and tried to tell himself he was out with a colleague, but Penny was starting to bother him a lot, only not in the way she once had. He was just in no position to say. To his absolute surprise where Penny was concerned, since that morning when she’d turned round and smiled, there had been a charge in the air.

  One that to Ethan really didn’t make sense, because he liked his women soft, curvy and cute, which was a terrible word and one he’d never admit to out loud, but that was what he liked.

  And there was nothing soft about Penny and there wasn’t a curve to be seen, and as for cute...

  ‘What are you smiling at?’ Penny frowned.

  ‘Nothing.’ He reminded himself of the reason they were actually out. ‘So,’ he asked, ‘assuming this round of treatment is a success, how many embryos are you having put back?’ He saw her blink at the rather personal question.

  ‘Two.’

  ‘I think I’ve just found my phobia.’

  Penny grinned. He made no secret of the fact he had no desire to ever be a parent, so she asked him why.

  ‘I’m not sure really,’ Ethan admitted. ‘It’s the responsibility, I guess. I save it all for work. I’ve just never wanted to settle down, let alone have a baby.’ He gave her a wide-eyed look. ‘And certainly not two at the same time.’

  ‘Twins would be lovely,’ she said, ‘then I’d never have to go through this again.’

  ‘You should speak to my mum first,’ Ethan said. ‘I guarantee if you did you’d only put one back.’

  ‘You said she was a single mum?’

  ‘No,’ he corrected her. ‘I said that she raised us on her own. My father died when we were six.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ She looked at him. ‘Same age as Justin.’

  He gave a small mirthless smile, her hit just a little too direct.

  ‘How did you deal with it?’

  Ethan gave a shrug. ‘You just grow up overnight.’ He never really talked about it with anyone. ‘It’s tough, though. I heard Vera, my aunt, telling Justin to be brave, and it was all the same stuff she told me. Then there was Jack, my uncle, he’s my dad’s brother, giving me lectures over the years about how I was the man of the house and I needed to be more responsible. I hope they don’t say the same to Justin, it scared
the life out of me.’

  Maybe that was why he held on to his freedom so much, Penny mused, and she couldn’t help asking more.

  ‘And were you the man of the house?’ Penny asked, and she gave a thin smile when he shrugged.

  ‘I tried to be,’ Ethan said. ‘And resented every minute of it. Then being a teenager sort of got in the way of being sensible.’

  ‘Did you miss having a dad?’

  They were both being honest, and after all she had asked, and he wasn’t going to sugar coat his response just because it was what she wanted to hear.

  ‘Yes,’ Ethan said. ‘But I do accept that things are very different now. Back then there weren’t so many women raising children alone. I used to feel the odd one out. I’m sure that yours won’t feel like that.’ He reminded himself to smile. ‘Anyway, what would I know?’

  They ordered coffee and then chatted about work, about her case review tomorrow, where once a week the senior staff got together and reviewed a case. It was Penny’s turn and, no, she told him, she wasn’t nervous. ‘Just ill prepared,’ Penny admitted. ‘So I’d better get home and rectify that.’

  They walked out to their cars and there was a strange moment because had she not been doing her level best to get pregnant, had they just been out, Ethan would have done his usual thing and kissed her. Right now that would prove no problem at all, because as they stood by her car, he actually forgot about needles and ultrasounds and little people that made an awful lot of noise and demanded to be fed a lot.

  ‘’Night, then,’ she said, going into her bag for her keys and then looking up at him.

  ‘’Night, Penny.’

  He went to give her a kiss on the cheek, but changed his mind midway. Except it was too late for that so he went ahead, but there was an awkward moment because he missed his mark and his lips landed a little close to her mouth.

  He felt the warmth of her blush on his lips and knew he should say good night and walk away. Except he wasn’t holding a needle and she wasn’t crying or asking him to stop and he could smell her hair and that musky perfume. He thought of the purple underwear he had glimpsed earlier.

  It was all just a second, a very long second, and Penny was a guilty party in this too. Had been complicit as she’d carefully selected her underwear that morning, was as attracted as he was and, yes, she wanted his mouth. Now here it was, just the graze of his lips, and she felt as if a feather was stroking her from the inside. There was just a flare that lit between them and mouths that were a beat away from applying pressure, but neither did. Just two mouths mingling and deciding to linger, two minds racing and about to quiet and give in, but then they were literally saved by the bell, or rather by his pager.