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

Penny looked up and it was the woman who had dropped him off that time, except she was pushing a stroller with a three-year-old and a very young baby.

‘Kate.’ Ethan smiled and looked down at his niece and nephew and gave them a wave then remembered to make the introductions. ‘This is Penny from work and, Penny, this is my sister, Kate.’

‘Of course you should join us,’ Penny said when Kate insisted she didn’t want to interrupt. She sat but when there wasn’t a waiter to be found Ethan headed inside to order coffee and a milkshake for the three-year-old.

It was horribly awkward for Penny, because she and Kate were just so different; both lived close by yet both moved in completely different circles.

Both had a bit of what the other wanted.

‘Days off?’ Kate asked.

‘Yes,’ Penny answered. ‘Well, I’ve been off sick, but I’m back tomorrow.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ Kate said, aching at the defensiveness in Penny’s voice, because she knew so much more.

‘Ethan said you had three children?’

‘Yes, the eldest is at school,’ Kate said, nodding towards the school over the street. ‘You work in Emergency with Ethan?’ she checked, as if she didn’t already know. ‘I think I saw you when I dropped Ethan off one morning.’

‘That’s right.’ Penny did her best not to blush, because it had been the morning she had actually realised just how gorgeous Ethan was.

Yes, it was awkward because Penny just said as she always did, as little as possible about herself. If she’d only open up, Ethan thought when he returned, then Kate would tell her all about the hell she had gone through to get her three, but instead they talked about work and weather and things that didn’t matter, till Kate had to go. ‘I’ll catch up with you soon, Ethan.’ She gave her brother a friendly kiss on the cheek. ‘It was lovely to meet you, Penny.’

‘And you.’

‘She seems nice,’ Penny said.

‘She is,’ Ethan said, but if she’d just spoken properly to her, then Penny would know that Kate didn’t just seem nice, she actually was.

Penny, Penny, Ethan sighed in his head. What to do?

‘Shall we go to the movies?’

‘The movies?’ Penny frowned. ‘I haven’t been to the movies since …’ She thought for a moment. ‘I can’t remember when.’

At her insistence, Penny bought the tickets and he went and got the popcorn and drinks and things, but as she walked over she saw him talking to a woman and a young boy and stopped walking.

The woman was being polite, but her face was a frozen mask. The young boy beside her was smiling up at Ethan and she just knew then that it was Justin. He looked like Ethan.

She was shaking a bit inside, her mind racing. She’d got it wrong with his sister; she couldn’t keep jumping to the conclusion that every woman he spoke to he’d slept with. Penny made a great deal about putting the tickets into her purse, pretending to jump in surprise as Ethan came over.

‘Okay?’ Penny checked.

‘Sure.’

She could tell he wasn’t.

Still, the movie was a good one and it was so nice to sit in the darkness—so nice not to have to think. They sat at the back in a practically empty cinema and ate popcorn and just checked out of the world for a little while, which for Penny was bliss. It was nice too for Ethan to not go over and over the terse conversation with Gina. To just accept that Gina didn’t want her ex-husband’s cousin involved in her son’s life.

He turned in the darkness to Penny about the same time she turned to him. There was the rustle of popcorn falling to the floor as they acted more like teenagers than a responsible couple in their thirties. After the movie Ethan wished he had brought the car as they walked quickly along the beach, almost running, not just to be together but away from problems each needed to face.

It felt so good to fall through the door, to lift her arms as he slid her out of her top, to undo the zipper of her shorts, as she did the same to him.

‘Why did we leave it so long?’ He was kissing her, not thinking of anything else but her mouth and her body and all the times they had missed, and how much better the boat would have been if he’d had Penny there with him.

‘You know why.’

Ethan’s head was in two places as he remembered what had kept them apart, but that problem had gone now and he just wasn’t thinking, or rather he was thinking out loud, but before he had time to stop himself suddenly the words were out.

‘Maybe it’s for the best.’

CHAPTER TWELVE (#u4745aace-ed9b-57fe-b4a0-9cab8ef91f28)

‘YOU DIDN’T SAY that?’ Kate grimaced. ‘God, Ethan.’

‘I can’t believe I said it.’ The once laid-back Ethan had his head in his hands as Kate grilled him further.

‘What did she do?’

His look said it all because Penny had said the F word again, quite a few times, as she’d kicked him out.

‘I’m not saying you have to tiptoe around her, but honestly, Ethan, it is the most awful time. Carl and I never row, but we have every time I’ve been on IVF, and if he’d said that …’ Kate let out a long, angry sigh that told Ethan her reaction would have perhaps been as volatile as Penny’s.

‘I can understand you’d be upset if Carl said it, but I didn’t mean it like that,’ Ethan said. ‘I meant …’ He stopped talking then.

‘What?’ his sister pushed.

‘That I can barely get my head around a long-term relationship and having kids of my own, let alone going out with someone who was pregnant with someone else’s child. When I said it was for the best I just meant that at least now we had a chance.’

‘You need to tell her that.’

‘You’ve met her,’ Ethan told his twin. ‘She’s the most difficult, complicated …’ And there it was, she was everything he wanted, the one woman who could possibly hold his attention. And she was still holding it fully on her first day back at work.

Penny was wearing a grey skirt with her cream sleeveless blouse but she’d lost weight around her hips and maybe he was a bit of a caveman because he wanted to insist she take some proper time off and haul her to his bed, and feed her and have sex with her and then watch late-night shows in his dark bedroom while she slept, while she healed. He wanted to take care of her. Instead, he had to stand and watch as she nitpicked her way through the department, upsetting everyone. Any minute soon he was going to have to step in.

‘Why hasn’t his blood pressure been done?’ Her voice carried over the resuscitation room. Penny was checking the obs chart on her patient. She had ordered observations to be taken every fifteen minutes and when she saw that they hadn’t been done for half an hour she called out to Vanessa.

‘It has been done,’ Vanessa said, taking the chart. ‘Sorry, Penny, I just didn’t write it down. It was one-eighty over ninety.’

‘Which means nothing if it isn’t written down.’ Penny held her breath and told herself to calm down, but she’d told Vanessa about this a few times. ‘You have to document.’

‘I know.’

‘Then why don’t you do it?’ Penny said, and as she walked off, she was aware that Ethan was behind her. He tapped her smartly on the shoulder but she ignored him.

‘Stop taking it out on the nurses.’

‘I’m not,’ Penny said. ‘What’s the point of Vanessa knowing the patient is hypertensive and not telling me or even writing it down? If he strokes out—’