Scandalous Secrets

That was what it felt like but that was dumb. He’d figured enough of Penny by now to know that she could look after herself. One move that she didn’t like would have her screeching the farm down, and an inkling of Penny in peril would have the entire shearing team out in force.

He grinned at the thought and Penny must have heard his smile. ‘What’s the joke?’

‘I just thought...if I tried a bit of seduction you’d have the team out here ready to defend you. Shears at the ready. Ron was watching you go back to the house yesterday and said you had a nice rear end. Margie told him where he could put his sexist comments and suddenly we had the whole shearing shed coming down on Ron like a ton of bricks. The poor guy had to bury himself packing fleeces into the wool press for the rest of the afternoon. You have an army at your disposal, Penelope Hindmarsh-Firth.’

‘Excellent,’ she said and smiled and was it his imagination or did her hold on his hand tighten a little? She paused for a moment as if she was thinking of something important—or trying to find the courage to say something—and finally out it came.

‘Do you think I have a nice...rear end?’

Whoa. ‘You have a very nice rear end,’ he admitted. Who could argue with the truth?

‘Thank you,’ she told him. ‘Yours isn’t so bad either.’

That set him back. A woman telling him he had a good butt?

‘But don’t let it go to your head,’ she told him. ‘And I’ll try and swallow my conceit too. Where did you say these owls are?’

The calls had ceased. That was because they were standing right under the trees the birds were nesting in.

It took him a moment to collect himself and direct his torchlight up. She disconcerted him. She was so close. She still smelled faintly yeasty, from the bread she’d set to rise. From something citrusy in her hair. From...being Penny?

What was he here for? He was looking for owls. Right.

‘There...’ Penny breathed—she’d caught sight of the first bird before he had. Even though he was holding the torch. Good one, Fraser, he told himself. Get a grip.

‘The other will be close,’ he managed.

‘The other?’

‘This is a nesting pair. They’ve been using the same nest for years, very successfully. Their young populate half this valley. Look, there’s the female. She’s a bit bigger than the male. They’re feeling a bit threatened now. See, they’re sitting bolt upright, but they’ve seen me so often I can’t imagine they think of me as a threat.’

He was concentrating on the birds rather than Penny.

‘Would the shearing team leap to their defence too?’ she asked mildly and he smiled.

‘They might. No one likes their quarters overrun by mice. These guys do us a favour. But I don’t think they’d come quite as fast as if you needed help. You’ve—deservedly—made some pretty fierce friends.’

‘Matt?’

‘Mmm?’

‘Stop it with the compliments. They don’t mean anything and I don’t want them.’

And the way she said it made him pause. It made him stop thinking of how she smelled and, instead, think about where she’d come from.

He got it, he thought. She’d just been through one messy relationship. He didn’t know this Brett guy who’d been such a toe-rag but he could imagine. Somehow, he had a pretty clear idea of her family dynamics by now. In some ways Penny was tough but in others...she was exposed, he thought, and Brett must have sensed that weakness. If he’d said great things to her she would have believed them. She’d believed them all the way to a calamitous engagement.

So now she thought compliments were a means of manipulation and he could understand why. He had to shut up. Except suddenly he couldn’t.

‘Right,’ he told her. ‘No more compliments. But there are a few truths—not compliments, truths, that I’m not taking back. Firstly, your cooking is awesome and I’m incredibly grateful. Second, I’d agree with Ron—you do have a nice rear end, even though it’s an entirely inappropriate comment for a boss to make about his employee. And finally there’s one more thing which I need to say and it’ll make you blush because it’s a ripper.’

‘A ripper?’ she said faintly. ‘A ripper of a compliment?’

‘Not a compliment,’ he told her, throwing caution to the wind. He took her other hand and tugged so she was facing him. ‘Just the truth. Penelope Hindmarsh-Firth, you smell of fresh baked bread and yeast and the aroma of a day spent in the kitchen, my kitchen, and if you think me telling you that you have a nice backside is an empty compliment then the world’s upside down. This is a gorgeous night and I’m holding the hands of a woman who’s saved my butt. She has a beautiful backside, not to mention the rest of her—and she smells and looks beautiful. Messy but beautiful. No more compliments, Penny. Just the truth. So...’

He paused then and took a deep breath and fought for the strength to say what had to be said. Because it was unwise and shouldn’t be said at all but how could he not?

‘So?’ she whispered and somehow he found himself answering. Still telling it like it was.

‘So we need to go in now because if we stay out here one moment longer I’ll be forced to kiss you.’

And there it was, out in the open. This thing...

‘And you don’t want to?’ It was a whisper, so low he thought he’d misheard. But he hadn’t. Her whisper seemed to echo. Even the owls above their head seemed to pause to listen.

This was such a bad idea. This woman was his employee. She was trapped here for the next four days, or longer if she took him up on his offer to extend.

What was he doing? Standing in the dark, talking of kissing a woman? Did he want to?

‘I do want to,’ he said because there was nothing else to say.

‘Then what’s stopping you?’

‘Penny...’

‘Just shut up, Matt Fraser, and kiss me.’

And what could he say to that?

The night held its breath and Matt Fraser took Penny Hindmarsh-Firth into his arms and he kissed her.

* * *

Wow.

Um...

Wow?

This was wrong on so many levels. Firstly, she should still be in mourning for her broken engagement and the betrayal that went with it.

Second, this man was her boss.

Third, she was alone out here, under the gums and the starlight with a man she’d met less than two weeks ago.

The owls above their heads had decided they no longer needed to be wary and were swooping off, dark shadows against the moonlight as they continued their night’s hunt.

Under her feet was a carpet of leaf litter that gave off the scent of eucalypts when she moved. But how could she move?

Matt was tugging her close. Her face was tilting up to his and his mouth met hers.

Matt hadn’t shaved for a couple of days—when would he find time? His clothes were rough, heavy moleskin pants and a thick shirt open at the throat, sleeves rolled back to reveal arms of sheer brawn. His hands were scarred and weathered.

He smelled of the shearing shed. He’d washed and changed before he’d come out to the veranda but the lanolin from the fleeces seemed to have seeped into his pores. He smelled and felt what he was. He owned this land but he stood beside his men. He did the hard yards with them.

He was a man of steel.

He kissed her as if this was the first time for both of them. As if he had all the time in the world. As if he wasn’t sure what it was he’d be tasting but he wasn’t about to rush it.

His hands moved to her hips but he didn’t tug her into him, or if he did it wasn’t hard, and maybe the fact that she was melting against him was an act of her own volition. She could back away at any time.

But oh, the feel of him. The sensation of his lips brushing hers. For now it was just brushing, almost a feather-touch, but it was the most sensual thing she’d ever felt. His hands on the small of her back... The feel of his rough hair as she tentatively lifted her hand and let herself rake it...

Oh, Matt.

Oh, wow.

But he wasn’t pressing. He wasn’t pushing and suddenly she saw it from his point of view.

She was in his terrain, and she was all by herself. He was a man of honour. He was kissing her on terms that said the control was hers. She could pull back.

And with that thought came the most logical next thought.

If she was in control then bring it on. How could she not? This man was gorgeous. The night was gorgeous. She was a twenty-seven-year-old woman out under the stars with a man to die for.

And then, quite deliberately, she let her thoughts dissolve. She raised her hands to his hair so she had his head and she tugged him closer. She stood on tiptoe to get closer still.

She opened her lips and she welcomed him in.

* * *

Penny was melting under his hands and there wasn’t a thing he could do about it.

How could he want to do anything about it?

She’d stood on tiptoe and surrendered her mouth to him. Her hands claimed him. Her body said she wanted this kiss as much or more than he did, and he’d better get on with it.

And so he did, and the sensation was enough to do his head in. The warmth, the heat, the fire... The night was dissolving in a mist of desire where nothing existed except this woman in his arms. This woman kissing him as fiercely as he kissed her. This woman whose body language said she wanted him as much as he wanted her.

A moment in time that was indescribable. Inevitable. World-changing?

The moment stretched on, a man and a woman in the moonlight, almost motionless, welded together by the heat from this kiss. From this need.

From this recognition that something was changing for both of them?

And with that thought...trouble.

It was as if his past had suddenly flown back, a cold chill of memory. Of love given and not returned. Of faith and trust blasted. Of the emptiness of loss. The grief...

He felt it almost as a physical jolt and, as if she’d felt it, she was suddenly tugging back. Maybe she’d had the same jolt of uncertainty, the same frisson that their worlds were both under threat by some new order.

And it almost killed him, but he let her go.

‘W...wow,’ she breathed and he thought: Good description. He couldn’t think of a better word himself.

‘You kiss good,’ she managed. She looked dazed. A curl had escaped her ponytail and was coiling down across her eyes. He couldn’t help himself—he lifted it and pushed it back.

But he didn’t take her back into his arms.

‘You’re not so bad yourself,’ he ventured, but the ghosts had been right to tug him back. He had no intention of getting involved with any woman. He would not face that kind of grief again.

But this wasn’t any woman. This was Penny.

‘We...we should be careful.’ She couldn’t quite disguise the quaver in her voice. ‘If we go any further we’ll shock the owls.’

‘Probably not wise,’ he managed.

‘None of this is wise,’ she whispered. ‘But I’m not sure I care.’

It was up to him. And somehow he made the call. Somehow the ghosts prevailed.

‘I need to be up before dawn,’ he told her.

There was a long silence. Then, ‘Of course you do.’ There was still a tremble in her voice but she was fighting to get it under control.

Somehow he stayed silent. Somehow he managed not to gather her into his arms and take this to its inevitable conclusion.

It almost killed him.

But she had herself under control now. He could see her gathering herself together. This was a woman used to being rebuffed, he thought, and somehow that made it worse. But the ghosts were all around him, echoes of lessons long learned.

He didn’t move.

‘Then goodnight, Matt,’ she whispered at last, and she reached out and touched his face in the most fleeting of farewell caresses. ‘Sleep well. Sleep happy and sensible.’

And she turned and, without a torch, not even noticing the rough ground, she practically ran back to the relative sanctuary of the house.

It was done.

Sense had prevailed.

CHAPTER SEVEN

THEY WORKED SOLIDLY for the next four days. The timetable remained the same. They hardly saw each other during the day but at night Matt continued bringing his meal out to the veranda. Penny was always there, watching the moonlight, soaking up the stillness. Nothing had changed.

Except everything had.

There was a stillness between them. It was a kind of tension except it wasn’t a tension. There was something happening that Matt couldn’t figure.

He’d hurt her. He knew he had, he thought, as he sat on the veranda four nights later. He’d seen her face as he’d pulled away that night. She’d practically thrown herself at him. Now she was humiliated and he didn’t know what to do about it.

Saying sorry wasn’t going to cut it. Saying sorry would simply be saying she’d offered herself to him and he’d refused, but that wasn’t how it had been. The tug between them was mutual.

But he’d had no choice. Penny had been honest enough to accept their desire was mutual, but the barriers he’d put up over the years had held. He wasn’t going down that path again.

But what path? The path of grief he’d felt when his mother had left? When the old man who’d befriended him had died?

Or the path of betrayal both his mother and his wife had shown him?

He’d put Penny in the same bracket and she knew it. He’d humiliated her. He’d hurt her. He knew it but he didn’t have a clue what to do about it.

And maybe Penny was used to such humiliation because she simply got on with it. She smiled at him, she used the same casual banter, she sat on the veranda now and shared the silence and it was as if nothing had happened.

Except the hurt was still there. How did he know? The sparkle of fun behind her eyes had changed, just a little. She was good at hiding hurt, he thought. If he didn’t know her so well...

How did he know her so well? He didn’t have a clue. He only knew that he did and he also knew that it had him retreating.

If he went one step further...

He couldn’t. The next step would be a crashing down of those boundaries. A shattering of armour.

After all those years, how could he do that?

Penny rose. They’d been sitting on the veranda for only twenty minutes or so and they usually stayed an hour, but tomorrow was the last day of the shear. He had things to do and maybe she did too.

Or maybe this thing between them was too much.

‘I’m making bulk choc chip cookies before I go to bed,’ she told him. ‘The team’s heading on to McLarens’ tomorrow and they’re already whinging about the cooking they’ll get there. I thought I’d send them with a goodbye kit.’

‘They’ll expect you back next year,’ Matt told her and she paused and looked down at him in the dim light.

‘I’ll be well into organizing my catering company by then,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘But if you pay me enough I’ll come.’

‘Is that what you plan to do? Set up a catering company?’

‘Yes,’ she said, almost as if she was speaking to herself. ‘I’ll make it a success. I know it. Maybe I can find enough competent staff interested in outback experiences to let me offer catering for shearing.’

And he had to ask. ‘So will you come, or will it be your competent staff?’

‘Who knows?’ She said it lightly but he still heard the pain.

‘Penny?’

‘Mmm?’ She leaned down to lift his empty plate from the bench beside him but he reached out and took her wrist before she could lift it.

‘Are you staying for the next two weeks?’ he asked. ‘You haven’t said.’

She stilled. She looked down at her wrist.

He released it. No pressure.

What was he thinking, no pressure? There was pressure everywhere.

‘Do you still want me to?’

And of course he should say no. He should say the thought had been a dumb one when he’d made the offer. His barricades needed reinforcing.

He’d hurt her and he had no intention of hurting her again. He needed to back off and let her go.

But the night was still and Penny didn’t move. His grip on her wrist was light. She could pull away if she wanted.

She didn’t.

And all at once he thought: To hell with barricades. Let’s just...see.

‘This thing between us...’ he managed and she stayed silent. What happened next was obviously down to him. As it should be.

‘Penny, the way I feel...it’s been so long. And, to be honest...’ He shook his head and finally released her wrist. ‘Penny, you’ve been hurt. You know how it feels. But me?’

And then he stopped. How could he explain? How could he tell anyone the hurt of those long years?

But then he thought this was Penny and he’d hurt her. He couldn’t let it stay like this. He needed to let down the barricades a little.

He needed to talk.

‘If you don’t want to tell me, you don’t need to,’ she said gently.

She was giving him an out. Her generosity almost took his breath away, and it tore away the last of his reservations.

She sat beside him, as if she understood he needed time. He couldn’t look at her. For some reason it seemed impossible to say what had to be said when he was watching her.

But her body was touching his and the warmth of her, her closeness—her trust?—made it imperative to tell her what he’d told nobody. Ever.

And finally he did.

‘Penny, my mother was a serial relationship disaster,’ he said at last. ‘She went from man to man to man. Every time she fell deeply, irrevocably in love, and every single relationship meant our lives were turned upside down. Romance for my mother inevitably ended in chaos and heartbreak. Moving houses, moving schools, debt collectors, sometimes even assault, hospitals, the courts. The best thing Mum ever did for me was run from a calamitous relationship and take the housekeeping job on Sam’s farm. That was my salvation. If she hadn’t done that, heaven knows where I’d have been. Sam’s farm was my first and only taste of stability and I stayed there for ten years. Sam left me the farm and I thought I’d stay there for ever. And then I discovered the bauxite and Darrilyn discovered me.’

‘More chaos?’ Penny whispered. She was looking out at the moonlight too, giving him space. Giving him silence to work out what he needed to say.

‘More chaos,’ he said grimly. ‘I was naïve, little more than an idiot kid, and I was besotted. I didn’t put the discovery of bauxite and the sudden interest of the neighbouring farmer’s gorgeous daughter together. I married her and when we found out she was pregnant I was over the moon. But marriage and pregnancy had been her only goals. Legally, they gave her the right to the money she wanted. She headed to the US with a guy who knew her worth and was probably in on her plan from the beginning. So that’s it. I see Lily twice a year and it breaks my heart.’

‘But now?’ She sounded as if she was walking on eggshells. ‘You said she might be coming home.’

‘Home?’ He gave a hollow laugh. ‘Does she have such a thing? Her mother’s relationships have broken down again and again. Lily’s been given the same raw deal as me, but there’s nothing I can do about it. Her mother’s always refused to let her come to Australia. I leave the farm with the boys twice a year and spend as much time with her as I can, and every time I leave it rips me in two. But even if I moved there Darrilyn wouldn’t give me more access. So that’s it, Penny. That’s where I’ve been with relationships. Burned. I don’t need them.’

‘So...’ Penny took a deep breath ‘...Matt, what’s that got to do with me?’

‘I don’t know.’ And it was an honest answer. How could he explain what he didn’t understand himself? ‘Penny, how I feel...’

‘Must be like I feel,’ she ventured when he couldn’t go on. ‘Like I’ve been an idiot and how can I trust myself to try again? Only your ghosts must be harder on you than mine. My parents have their faults but they’ve given me stability.’ Her gaze raked the moonlit landscape. ‘You know, this is the most settled place I’ve ever been in. I’m imagining how you must have felt as a child when you finally made it to Sam’s farm. And now. Here’s your home and life is good. You wouldn’t want to mess with that for anything.’

‘You mean I wouldn’t want to mess with that for you?’

‘I’m not putting words into your mouth,’ she said with sudden asperity. She rose, breaking the moment, and a tinge of anger entered her voice. ‘I can’t help you, Matt. I have my own demons to deal with and, believe me, the fact that I’ve been monumentally dumb is a huge thing to accept. I don’t need a relationship either.’ She took a deep breath as if she was having trouble forcing the words out, but finally she managed it.

‘But you know what? Regardless of relationships, I’m moving on. Being here has kept my demons at bay, regardless of...of what’s happening between us. And I still have the same problem—media interest in my appalling sister and her equally appalling fiancé. I like working here,’ she confessed. ‘It feels good and I suspect if I made a pile of meals and stocked the freezer, you guys would be grateful.’

‘We would.’ He definitely would.

‘There you go, then. Maybe that’s my bottom line. There’s cooking to be done and organization in the house. I can put my head down and go for it.’

‘I don’t want you to work...’

‘I’m staying to work, Matt,’ she said, still with that trace of astringency. ‘Anything else...who knows? As I said, we each have our own demons. But should they affect the next two weeks? Maybe not. So let’s make this an employment contract only. Two more weeks of work—at shearers’ cook rates.’

‘Hey! You’re not cooking for a team. Shearers’ cook rates?’ But he felt himself starting to smile.

She arched her brows and met his gaze head-on. ‘I’m filling the freezer and that’ll be like cooking for a team. Shearers’ cook rates or nothing. That’s my offer, Matt Fraser, and it’s final. So...do you still want me to stay or do you not?’

She was looking up at him, resolute, courageous, firm.

When he’d first met her he’d thought she was ditzy. She wasn’t. She had intelligence to spare.

She was beautiful.

Suddenly he wondered—was this the courage to try again?

And then there was no choice. The night righted itself. He rose and took her hands.

‘Penny, I want you to stay.’

‘Really?’

‘Really.’

‘Then I accept. I’m on a great wage. You have big freezers and I like a challenge. What’s not to love?’

What’s not to love?

It was all he could do not to kiss her. And then he thought: Why not?

So he did and, amazingly, wonderfully, she didn’t object. She responded.

But this wasn’t the kiss of passion they’d shared on the night of the owls. It was tentative—a question—and when they pulled apart the question was still in their eyes.

‘You know, when you’re around I have trouble being interested in how empty my freezers are,’ he confessed.

‘Well, you should be.’ She was smiling as she stepped back. She seemed suddenly a woman in charge of her world, ready to move on. ‘Because you’re paying me heaps.’ She tugged her hands back and he let her go. ‘For the rest, let’s just see. But for now... Matt, I need to go bake some cookies. Freezers, here I come.’

* * *

He headed out to check on the last pens of sheep, the last runs before the end of shearing.

Penny headed for the kitchen.

She’d promised the shearing team takeaway choc chip cookies. Right. She could do that.

Samson snoozed by the fire. The kitchen felt like a refuge.

She mixed her two flours and then stared at the mixture and stared at the flour sacks and wondered—had she just used half self-raising flour, half plain, or had she put in two lots of plain?

Uh oh.

She started again, this time trusting herself so little that she made a list of ingredients that were usually in her head and ticked them as she put them in.

But how could she think of ingredients?

Matt had kissed her. Twice. Matt wanted her to stay.

And she understood him. From that first day when she’d seen him on his gorgeous black horse she’d thought of him as a man in charge of his world, and little had happened to change that. The shearers looked up to him and it wasn’t because he owned the place. She’d learned enough of human nature now to know bosses earned respect; they didn’t buy it.

So Matt was a man of strength, intelligence and honour, but she’d just been allowed a glimpse of the building blocks that had made him. It felt like an enormous privilege.

She put both her hands in the bowl and started mixing. The feel of the cookie dough under her hands was a comfort. It was a task she’d loved doing for years.

The family cook had taught her to do this. Her parents hadn’t been around much but they’d been in the background.

Who’d baked choc chip cookies for Matt?

No one. She knew it as surely as she knew what he’d told her was scarcely the tip of the iceberg that was the nightmare of his childhood.

‘Bless you, Sam,’ she told the old farmer who’d finally taken the young Matt under his wing. ‘I wish I could make you choc chip cookies.’

And suddenly her eyes filled with tears. Why? It hardly made sense. She sniffed and told herself she was a dope but the tears kept coming.

‘So we’re adding a little salty water into the mix,’ she said out loud. ‘My secret ingredient.’

Two weeks to cure a lifetime of hurt?

That wasn’t the way it worked. Matt didn’t see himself as someone who needed curing, and she was hardly qualified to help.

‘But he might kiss me again...’

The tears disappeared. Hope was suddenly all around her, a bright, perky little voice that bounced with delight. Enough with the past. She had freezers to fill.

And demons to scatter?

‘I hope he likes choc chip cookies,’ she told the sleeping Samson. ‘Because I’m about to fill his freezers with a ton.’

* * *

He’d hired her for two more weeks. He’d told her his past.

Was he nuts?

He checked the pens and then walked down the paddocks to check the newly shorn sheep. The weather was brilliant, as it had been for the whole shear. The starkly white sheep didn’t even appear to notice that they’d lost their coats. They were relaxed, hardly edging away as he walked the boundaries of the holding paddocks. There were no problems with the flock that he could see. No problems on the horizon either.

He opened the gates of the house paddocks to the pastures beyond. To all intents and purposes, the sheep were free.

Like he intended to be.

Freedom. That was what he’d craved when he’d somehow hauled himself together after Darrilyn walked out. His mother had moved from one hysterical mess to another. He’d spent his childhood dealing with her tears, her drama, her hopelessness, and his one foray into marriage had been more of the same.

Freedom had looked good. This place was his solace, his refuge, his love.

But now? Not only had he just opened himself up to Penny, exposing pain he’d never thought he’d reveal, but he’d pushed her to stay for two weeks.

And a question was starting to niggle.

Did he have the courage to try again? With a pink princess with a past almost as troubled as his?

He walked on. In the distance he could still see the house. The lights were on at the south end, which meant the kitchen was still in use. Penny would be cooking.

He could go and join her. He could sit at the kitchen table and watch her hands create food to die for. He could watch the flour accumulate on her nose—she always seemed to have flour on her nose.

Maybe he could offer to help—he could wash while she wiped.

There was a romantic thought.

He stopped and closed his eyes. The silence was almost absolute. Even the owls were silent and he thought suddenly: It’s as if something momentous is about to happen.

Momentous? Like Matt Fraser breaks his own rule and lets his guard down with a woman?

How insulting was that? he thought, and swore silently to himself. What was he expecting, that Penny jump him? That he’d have to fight her off?

It was a dumb thought, but it had its merits. He found himself smiling as he walked on. He wouldn’t mind.

He wouldn’t fight her off.

‘I won’t hurt her.’ There was another thought, almost a vow.

How serious was he getting, and how fast?

‘Not serious at all,’ he told himself as he finally turned for home. Surely she’d finished cooking by now? The house would be in darkness and he could slip in without seeing her.

Was that what he wanted? To avoid her for two weeks?

‘You know it’s not or you wouldn’t have invited her,’ he told himself and he found himself wishing his dogs were with him. His own company wasn’t cutting it. But the dogs were exhausted after a full day in the yards.

So was he. He needed to go to sleep and stop worrying about what lay ahead.

And stop fancying what else might happen.

* * *

‘When are you coming home?’

Penny’s mother hadn’t phoned her for two weeks. When she didn’t phone, Penny knew she was in trouble. Depression dogged her mother, and silence was a symptom. But Louise’s silence while Brett and Felicity outlined their marriage plans had made Penny decide enough was enough.

Penny’s father was a bully and her half-sister was a self-serving shrew, but Louise didn’t have the courage to stand up to either of them.

Tonight her mother’s voice sounded thick with tears. Penny was willing herself not to care.

It didn’t work. How could she stop caring?

‘I told you, Mum, I’m working out here. It doesn’t matter when I get home.’

‘Where exactly are you working?’

‘South Australia. Murray River country. I’m working as a cook, Mum. I’m safe, I’m doing a good job and I’m keeping...’ She paused, but why not say it like it was? ‘I’m keeping myself occupied so I don’t need to think about Felicity and Brett.’

‘They’re both unhappy about hurting you.’

‘You know, I’m very sure they’re not.’

‘No, they are.’ And here she went again, Penny thought. Her mother spent her life pretending they were happy families. ‘I’m sure Felicity would like you to be her bridesmaid.’