The Antique Love

by Fairfax, Helena

  Penny ignored the lump in her throat and carried on walking.

  * * * *

  The sky was pale blue over Richmond Park, like the wash of a watercolour. Penny stood in Kurt’s freshly painted living room, gazing out through the sweeping windows. She had pulled one of the panes ajar to let some air into the recently painted room, and now the spring breeze, sharp and cold, was drifting inward. A thrush was singing in the branches of a tree, but although Penny’s head was turned to the sound, her mind was far way. She was so wrapped up in thought she failed to hear Kurt enter the room. When a floorboard creaked behind her, she turned with a start. He was standing in the doorway, gravely watching her.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Hey.”

  They stared at each other. Penny was only too conscious of the abrupt way she had ended their conversation the day before. She had spent a troubled night wondering what Kurt would make of her disclosure. Now she waited for him to speak, but his mouth was closed in a grave line. He drew his hand from behind his back and brought forward a tissue-wrapped cluster of tulips. The red and cream of the flowers brought instant life to the chill room.

  “I got you these,” he said simply.

  “Oh.” Penny stepped forward, a sparkle leaping to her eyes. “You didn’t have to…” She broke off, her eyes meeting his uncertainly above the colourful flowers which he was holding out to her with surprising gentleness.

  “I felt bad about upsetting you,” he said. “Going on about your mom and all. If I’d known how much it would upset you, I never would have said anything.”

  “Oh, Kurt, it wasn’t your fault.” Penny stepped forward to take the bunch of tulips from his hands and lifted them to breathe in their scent. “If anything, it was my fault. I should have told you before, only…” She looked down at the tulips, at a loss how to carry on. It seemed the normally taciturn Kurt would have to be the one to fill in all the gaps.

  “Only you don’t like strangers knowing. You’ve had to grow up in your mom’s shadow, and you think people make comparisons. You think just because you’re not your mom, people are disappointed in you.”

  Penny’s cheeks began to fill with heat. In a few sentences, Kurt had expressed everything. She could hardly believe his astuteness or the gentle way he was speaking to her.

  “Penny, your mom was beautiful, and she was famous, but what I told you before is true.” He held a hand out in quiet emphasis. “You’re not your mom. You’re a real person, and you’re unique. You’ve got a true heart and a beautiful way of moving and speaking. Hell, I could watch and listen to you all day.”

  Penny raised her eyes to his. “That’s a lovely thing to say. The loveliest thing anyone’s ever said.” She gazed down at the tulips. “And thank you so much for the flowers. They’re lovely, too.”

  Kurt stepped a little closer and took hold of her chin.

  “Don’t mention it,” he said seriously. He bent his head, and for one brilliant, heart-stopping moment, Penny thought he was about to kiss her lips. His head moved to one side, and she felt his warm lips brush her cheek. “I’m glad you like the tulips.” He stepped back. “They’re my sister’s favourite.”

  Her heart gave a sickening lurch, and she went still, gazing at the flowers held lightly in her hands. Of course tulips were a sister’s sort of flower. Not roses or anything romantic like that. Of course not. Roses were the sort of flower a man would give to someone like Megan Rose, not her. She kept her head bent over the flowers for a while then lifted her chin to give him a faint smile.

  “You’re a good brother,” she said. Before he could say anything in reply, she changed the subject quickly. “So what do you think?” She stretched out a hand to take in the room. “I asked the decorating guys to start with your living space.”

  It was the perfect change of conversation and helped take Penny’s mind far from his kiss and roses and any of the other romantic dreams which otherwise would have swamped her head.

  The rest of the afternoon was spent in going through everything Kurt’s team of workers had achieved so far. In just a week, they had wrought several changes, and Penny showed Kurt round with an air of pride.

  The living area was totally revamped. Previously wallpapered with a heavy embossed paper, the room had now been painted palest oatmeal, offset with areas of light, leafy green. The lightshades, which were 1930’s biscuit-coloured glass, had been cleaned and replaced. The floorboards had been stripped, ready to stain in pale oak. The whole effect was to emphasise the magnificent greens in the parkland view from the window. Penny indicated this to Kurt, but he merely nodded, scanning everything with his usual keenness.

  Major inroads had also been made on the rest of the house. The depressingly dark hall and stairs were now a brilliant white, and Penny intended to make good use of the space with wall-hangings. After the workmen had completely finished, the stairs would be carpeted with an old-fashioned runner, held in place with the existing brass stair-rods.

  The kitchen and main bathroom had also been stripped, ready for refurbishing.

  “And I’ve asked one of my restoration contacts to come in and clean up the old range in the cellar. He’s actually quite excited about it. Says they don’t come to light very often.”

  “Guess not,” Kurt said, looking down at her, his grey eyes teasing. “Guess most people would have thrown that old thing out years ago.”

  Penny tapped his arm good-naturedly. “It’s going to look lovely. Wait and see.”

  “Uhuh. Just don’t blame me if the place is crawling with spiders.”

  * * * *

  Penny gave a shudder and laughed. Some of Kurt’s tension left him. It had pained him sorely to see her so unhappy. And it pained him even more that she had waited so long before trusting him enough to tell him about her mother. What did she think? That he would laugh in her face and say, Megan Rose’s daughter? An ordinary girl like you? No way.

  If anyone had told Kurt that ordinary was exactly how he’d thought of Penny the first time he’d seen her, he would have been incredulous. In the weeks that passed since then, he’d totally forgotten there had once been a moment when he’d thought Penny ordinary to the point of plainness.

  Penny lifted her head when they reached the bottom of the stairs and gave him one of her wide, delightful smiles, and in Kurt’s eyes, everything about her just then was adorable. He reached a hand toward her.

  “Come and take a walk in the park with me before you go,” he said on a sudden impulse. “I still need to stop by the stables. You could come, too.”

  Penny’s eyes lit up, and he could have sworn she was about to say yes. Then something must have occurred to her. The light died from her eyes, and the guarded look returned.

  “That would be nice but…” She hesitated, stumbling over the next words. She was so poor at dissembling, Kurt would have laughed if he hadn’t felt such a wave of disappointment. “I need to get back. I haven’t spent much time with my granddad this weekend.”

  Kurt regarded her without speaking for a moment. He knew there was something not quite right, something that Penny was holding back from him, but he couldn’t place what it was. He thought about pressing the point, trying to get her to open up, but the shuttered look had come over her face again, and he merely nodded, resigned.

  “Okay. So I’ll be back to look at your accounts next Saturday.”

  Next Saturday sounded like an awfully long time not to see each other. Kurt and Penny looked at each other, the same thought going through their heads simultaneously, but neither of them speaking it aloud. Kurt was the first to move.

  “Let’s go,” he said. “Time you were at home.”

  * * * *

  Kurt clicked open the profile which linked to the dating agency’s site. Sara was a dance teacher living in London. She had two cats, enjoyed going to the movies and theatre, and was a surfer in her spare time. The accompanying photo showed a laughing, sporty woman who seemed perfectly pleasant. All the women who’
d got in touch with him seemed perfectly pleasant. There was nothing wrong with them, so what the hell was wrong with him? Why did he think they all had something missing? When he tried to capture what that thing was—tried to put it into words—somehow he just couldn’t figure it out. He had tried several dates already, but nothing came of any of them. Maybe it was time to try a different agency. Maybe that was the problem.

  He sighed and clicked off the screen. He knew deep down another agency couldn’t do any better. It was his approach that was wrong. There were millions of women in London. Really, how hard could it be?

  He was about to leave his desk when Tehmeena’s question popped into his head again, and he stared at the blank computer screen. Why don’t you ask her out? The words had been going round and round in his subconscious ever since Tehmeena had first thrown him the question with her mischievous smile. The trouble was, every time he thought of Penny he saw… He stopped. Saw what? No matter how many times he tried to fathom his feelings, he was still no nearer understanding. The trouble was Penny wasn’t one of his accounting spreadsheets to be broken down into neat component parts.

  An image of Penny came into his head unbidden. She was standing as he’d seen her in his house that afternoon, gazing out of the window, her back to him. He thought of how she had looked, how the jeans she’d been wearing clung to her lovely figure and the transparency of her shirt in the light from the window, and he closed his eyes. He had no right to be thinking of her in this way since it was only too obvious his feelings were not reciprocated. Why else would Penny have turned down his invitation to go for a walk, using some lame excuse about her grandfather?

  He stood up from his desk. What were his feelings anyway? Admit the truth like a man—he didn’t have any feelings, he just wanted to sleep with her. And then what? Tell her she wasn’t the long-term relationship he was looking for? Tell her he was looking for someone practical and sensible who made no demands on his deeper emotions?

  No, Penny deserved something else. She was looking for romance, and a girl like her deserved to have the moon and the stars and everything else she wanted. Kurt knew in his heart he wasn’t that person. Whenever he thought of expressing himself emotionally, of using the words Penny would expect to hear from a man in love, his mind’s eye saw with perfect clarity where it would lead. He saw a picture of his father and the way his passionate expression of love had led to his tragic withdrawal from the world and his own children.

  Kurt wanted a family, children of his own. He wasn’t prepared to take the risk of that world shattering around them, as it had for him and Ann. Somewhere in London there had to be a woman who shared his realistic view. He clicked back his screen, reopening the file from the dating agency and then clicked it shut again, shoving the mouse to one side. Maybe he should put the whole dating thing on hold for a while. Just until his house was finished and his mind wasn’t clouded with other things.

  Other things, a small voice in his head mocked him. He ignored the voice resolutely and left his desk.

  Chapter Six

  Far from pining at home, Daniel Rosas had in fact been out that Saturday on a golf course, enjoying the spring sunshine. He spent a perfectly pleasant afternoon with his friends, and would have been astonished to hear Penny claim they hadn’t seen enough of each other.

  The following Friday was Penny’s regular night out with her girlfriends, and Daniel was looking forward to a quiet evening in his own company, watching the sports channels.

  Penny was perched on an armchair in their living-room, rapidly stitching a set of pearl buttons onto a 1960s cocktail dress. She had undone her usual ponytail in order to sweep her hair into an immaculate beehive, and her eyes were made up in a dark and smoky blue. The dress needed a revamp—hence the frantic stitching—but nothing else in her wardrobe would do. She had pulled out every item she possessed and found nothing to wear that didn’t make her look a total frump. For a while, she’d been quite cross. But then, a lot of things seemed to be making her edgy lately, and she couldn’t seem to settle to anything.

  “Granddad?”

  Her grandfather looked up from his golf magazine. “Yes, love?” There was a slightly guarded tone to his voice. Not for the first time, he wished there was another woman in the family for Penny to turn to. He knew Penny had plenty of friends her own age, but she needed someone older. He tried his best, but she needed someone more like a mother than he could be.

  Penny carried on making her tiny stitches without looking up. “You know I told you Kurt came into the shop on Saturday? To look at the accounts?”

  Daniel nodded. The mention of Kurt made him feel even more uneasy. In his opinion, Penny mentioned Kurt far too often in conversation. He had begun to wonder recently if it had been such a good idea for Penny to accept Kurt’s help. He couldn’t for the life of him understand what motivated a man of Kurt Bold’s standing to help Penny in her small shop—apart from the obvious ulterior motive, which didn’t bear thinking about. Penny’s grandfather was old-fashioned. It had even crossed his mind to ask to meet Kurt for himself in order to check him out, but he was conscious of the fact that Penny was in charge of the shop now, and he didn’t want to interfere in her life. Besides that, it seemed Kurt’s presence was keeping David well away from Penny, and that could only be a good thing.

  “Well, Kurt said something strange.” Penny continued. She put down her needle and began to fiddle with the discarded buttons. “And it was out of the blue. He saw Mum on a television screen, and he said we look alike.” Penny lifted her eyes to give her granddad a searching look. “Do you think that’s true?”

  Daniel laid down his magazine. Is this what had been bothering her? Or was it merely the fact that it was Kurt who’d noticed the similarity? Once again, he longed for a woman’s intuition, but Penny was looking at him expectantly. All he could do was what any other parent would do in his situation—open his mouth and hope he found the right words.

  “I suppose it was clever of Kurt to notice.” He watched with dismay as Penny’s eyes lit up. It pained him that Penny had grown up continually comparing herself to her mother and finding herself wanting. Her mother was still admired as one of film’s great beauties, and the thought that a man like Kurt had seen some similarity between them obviously meant the world to her. Her grandfather could have let the conversation go at that, but that would have been the easy way out. He forced himself to say what he had been thinking for a long time.

  “Penny, after your mum died, everybody put her on a pedestal. Even your grandmother. Your mum became somebody she never was in real life. The person she became didn’t exist except in people’s imaginations and on a film screen. It’s not true that you look like your mother.” Penny’s head bent, and she began picking at the stitches she’d just made. Her grandfather’s heart went out to her. “But you can’t expect to be your mother. You’re your own person. I told you, you’re not second-best. You never have been, and I want you to promise me never to accept second-best from anyone.”

  She lifted her head at that to give him half a smile. Daniel reached over and patted her hand.

  “You’re the best granddaughter anyone could want.” He lifted his hand to look at his watch. “And I bet you’ll knock them dead in town tonight—but shouldn’t you be getting your clubbing gear on?”

  Penny leapt up, scattering buttons. “Is that the time? And it’s not clubbing gear, Granddad. That went out in the sixties.”

  “What goes around comes around.” He indicated her cocktail dress with approval. “And you look beautiful. Make sure you don’t get chatted up by any strange men.”

  Penny pulled a face and made a dash for her room.

  * * * *

  It was a fun evening. Because the demands of the shop took up so much of her time—especially since David had left—Penny didn’t get out as often as she would have liked. It made a change for her to get dressed up and relax with Tehmeena and the rest of her girlfriends. They met at an Italian restaur
ant, where they were all shamelessly flirted with by the waiters, and they laughed themselves silly and enjoyed a great time. Now they were standing on the pavement outside, discussing where next to go.

  “Let’s go to Belinda’s,” someone suggested.

  Tehmeena, always the liveliest of the group, chorused her approval. Penny stood back and held up her hand with a laugh.

  “I have to get back,” she said. “I’ve had too much wine already. Us shop-workers have to be up early on Saturdays.”

  “Boo,” said Tehmeena. “I’m getting up early, too, and we hardly ever go out together. Just one more?”

  “Come on, Pen. We never see you.”

  There were several loud cries of friendly encouragement, interrupted when one of the girls stopped to let out a sudden wolf whistle. The girls turned round as one to see a dozen men, each dressed in formal tux and bowtie, making their way toward them on the pavement. They were a loud, cheerful bunch, and they returned the chorus from a group of pretty girls with exaggerated pleasantries. As they drew nearer, it was obvious from the accents that most of them were from the States.

  The man in front caught sight of Penny as they passed and stared frankly before lifting his fingers to his lips and blowing her a kiss. Penny gave him an embarrassed wave, and her friends erupted into giggles. The group of men passed by with a mixture of laughter and loud greetings until only one was left. He was standing quite still in the shadows, looking at Penny. Her heart missed a beat.

  “Hey,” he said quietly.

  She stepped forward. Her friends seemed to have fallen silent all of a sudden. Unless the rushing noise in her ears was drowning out all sound.

  “Kurt.”

  He looked devastating. A dark silhouette in the gathering gloom. And he was staring at her, eyes gleaming in the light from the street lamp.

  “Do you two know each other?” One of the men from the group—the one who’d blown Penny a kiss—had returned and was standing in the road beside them, his eyes on Penny. There was a short silence before Kurt turned.