Christmas at Lilac Cottage: (#1 White Cliff Bay) (22 page)

‘And will you?’

‘Well, I’m not going to sleep with her if that’s what you’re thinking,’ he hissed. ‘She can’t possibly sack me, Edward would want to know why. I’m sure if I keep rejecting her she’ll just go away.’

‘That’s why you’re as skittish as a kitten about her coming over here then. Because you’re confident that she’s just going to go away?’

He moved away, angry that everything was crashing down around him and there didn’t seem to be any way to stop it. Penny caught his arm and pulled him back.

‘You need to fight for this. If you want this job, if you want anything badly enough, then you fight for it. Don’t just roll over and play dead.’

Henry nodded, though he wasn’t sure what he could do to fight Clara. He glanced over at her again and he caught her eye. She smirked to herself as she moved to the team in the next bay. Henry saying no had provided her with a challenge which she wasn’t going to back down from.

Clara stepped up to their bay, the only thing separating them was the low rope barrier.

‘This is looking good,’ Clara remarked cheerfully, though her eyes were firmly on him and not the house.

He returned his attention to the house as Penny helped to join the final side together, piping the icing down the join while he and Daisy held the panels in place.

‘Henry, might I have a word?’ Clara called over.

‘I’m busy,’ Henry snapped and watched Daisy’s mouth fall open at his rudeness to his boss.

He glanced over at Penny whose face was switching between concern, worry and anger.

He had to resolve this once and for all.

Leaving the girls to work on their own for a moment, he stepped over the little rope fence towards Clara and moved a few steps away so no one in the audience could hear them either.

‘I told you to leave me alone.’

‘I’m not used to people saying no to me,’ Clara smiled, flicking her hair over her shoulder.

‘And are you used to getting sued for sexual harassment, because I told you if you bothered me again about this, that’s the direction I would take it.’

‘Oh please, Henry. If you were going to do that you would have done it already, you’d have marched straight from my office to Edward’s or human resources and complained to somebody but you haven’t. And that’s because you secretly want this.’

‘I’d rather gouge out my own eyeballs with a fork than sleep with you or have anything to do with you.’

‘Yet one word from me and you’re over here talking to me instead of working alongside your
pretty
girlfriend.’

Henry glanced over at Penny, who was studiously not looking at him. ‘Look, why are you doing this? You’re very attractive, you can have any man you choose. Why go for someone who is already taken?’

‘You’re right, Henry, I can have any man I choose and I choose you. Let’s cut the crap, you and I both know you’re going to sleep with me so stop trying to put me off. I’ll be in my office at six o’clock tonight. The factory will be empty but I’ll leave the side door open.’

‘I’m not—’

‘You will be there or I will make your life a living hell. I’m sure your little girlfriend will be delighted to hear of how you fucked me over the desk the other day, I could give her a very detailed account of that, if you don’t show later. Or perhaps I could tell her that that was how you got the job in the first place.’

Henry wanted to tell her to go ahead, but was his and Penny’s relationship strong enough to withstand that when they barely knew each other? Did Penny trust him enough to believe him over Clara?

He knew what he had to do and he felt sick at the thought of it. He nodded. ‘OK, six o’clock. Wear something sexy and not a lot else.’

Her eyes lit up that he had been bought so easily and she licked her lips and nodded before she walked out.

H
enry returned
to the gingerbread house and Penny looked at him hopefully as Daisy ran off to get a few more oversized sweets.

‘Don’t worry, I’ve sorted it. She won’t bother us again.’

‘Really? Because she certainly walked off with a skip in her step.’

‘I’ve sorted it,’ Henry repeated.

He threw himself into building the house, hoisting Daisy up so she could help to attach the roof and do the icing at the top, helping with the decorations and the best placement of the big foam sweets for an aesthetic appeal. Lastly, as several teams had already finished, they added the cardboard box to the front, making a short porch, and quickly added decorations and icing to that too. He barely heard the cheers from the audience as they saw what they were doing or the good-natured calls of cheating from the other teams, his mind was only on what he had to do after this was finished. It was scummy, he knew that, and he’d probably end up with no job afterwards anyway but it was the only way to stop this before it got any further.

The other teams finished and the judges walked around to make their decisions, but he was barely aware of any of it. His heart was hammering against his chest. For their ingenuity in using the cardboard box as the porch they won first place in the design stakes, something that Daisy and Penny were over the moon about, but Henry couldn’t concentrate, could barely even muster a smile as the hamper of chocolate and other goodies was handed over. They didn’t win overall because they had been one of the last teams to complete their house. Daniel and Maggie’s team won again but Henry was so distracted he even forgot to clap. He was finding it difficult to breathe now as panic slowly set in.

Edward awarded the final prizes, said a few more words to the crowd and then suddenly people were leaving.

He looked at his watch, it was already past half past five. He needed to act now.

As the last of the crowds dispersed and people shouted out their goodbyes to each other, Henry left Penny and Daisy and marched straight over to Edward. But as he got close, he noticed that Audrey, Clara’s assistant, was talking to him. Crap. He hadn’t accounted for this. What was she telling him? If she was a friend of Clara’s then she certainly wouldn’t be painting him in a very good light for what he had said to Clara in the office the other day. But whatever she was saying, he wasn’t going to turn back or change his mind.

He approached and Edward was clearly furious. Edward saw him come closer and his expression of anger only deepened.

‘Henry, is this true?’

Henry swallowed. ‘It depends what Audrey has told you. I can certainly tell you my version if you’d like to hear it.’

Edward nodded, his eyebrows slashing down into a deep frown as Henry explained everything. He had never seen Edward so angry before, and Henry tried to imagine what he would feel if someone came up to him and said these things about Anna. Henry would most likely take a swing for them and Edward looked about ready to do the same. Finally he finished. Well most of it.

‘That’s pretty much what Audrey just told me. She told Clara that if she doesn’t leave you alone she would tell me, and after seeing Clara with you today, Audrey knew it had gone too far.’

‘She threatened me with my job if I told you, but I’d rather lose it than let her get away with that,’ Audrey said, clearly as terrified about telling Edward as Henry had been.

‘I know you have no reason to believe me,’ Henry said. ‘I’ve worked for you for one day, but I have no reason to lie to you. I want this job, I moved across the country to take this job and I would never do anything to risk losing it, but I will not be blackmailed into sleeping with her so I can keep it. Sadly I can prove I’m not lying too. Right now, she is waiting in her office for me to come and sleep with her. She told me to meet her there at six or she would tell my girlfriend that we’ve been sleeping together. I agreed but knowing that I was never going to go and thought you might like to go in my place. You’ll be able to see that I’m not lying about this. Her being there should be all the proof you need.’

‘Henry, I don’t need any proof. I believe you. Sadly it’s not the first time this has happened. Although I’ve only heard rumours before and none of the men were actually brave enough to come and tell me about it. I don’t know if any of them slept with her to keep their jobs, I’d like to think they slept with her because they wanted to, not because they were forced to. Without any complaints or proof there was very little I could do to stop it other than talk to her but she always insisted she had never done anything wrong. I will go and see her now, and I will put a stop to this. You have my sincere apologies that this has happened but I assure you it will never happen again, to you or to anyone else. Please rest assured, both of you, that your jobs are safe, but I would ask that you please keep this to yourselves. The reputation of White Cliff Bay Furniture Company is a very good one and I would hate something like this to tarnish the company or get out into the local or national presses.’

Henry and Audrey nodded.

Edward said goodbye and Henry thanked Audrey for her honesty. He would have told Edward anyway, but it was easier having two of them corroborate the same story.

He walked back over to Penny, feeling like a huge weight had been lifted off his shoulders. He should have told Edward the other day rather than dragging it out like this. It could have been over so much sooner.

Daisy was nowhere to be seen as he approached. Penny was watching him carefully.

‘Daisy has gone off to see an art exhibition in town with one of her new friends – apparently Jackson Cartwright has some paintings in the town hall so she wants to see it and then they are going for pizza afterwards. I hope you don’t mind, I said it was OK. I gave her some money and Rebecca’s mum said she would drop Daisy off later and…’

She trailed off as he suddenly wrapped himself around her, holding her close to him and not caring who saw.

It was over and now everything could get back to being perfect again with this incredible, patient, beautiful woman.

P
enny tried
to watch Henry talking to Edward outside the lounge window without letting Daisy notice how worried she was. They had come back from dropping off a couple of ice sculptures earlier and Edward had been waiting for them, awkwardly talking with Daisy who had also returned in their absence.

Daisy was sitting next to her now, giving Bernard all the attention in the world and she clearly had no idea what was going on other than Henry was talking to his boss. Edward had obviously been very diplomatic with whatever he had talked to her about.

Whatever was going on, they both looked very serious.

She watched Edward walk off and Henry wave him goodbye before he let himself back in through the front door. He didn’t say anything but the look he gave her was one of pure relief. It really was over, and by the looks of things his job was safe too. Henry hadn’t said a lot about what had happened after the Gingerbread House Race, or what Clara had said to him, just that he had told Edward everything and he would just have to wait and see what would happen next.

‘Let’s all go out for dinner tonight,’ Henry said, smiling hugely.

‘I’ve already had enough pizza to last me a lifetime,’ Daisy said. ‘You guys go out though.’ She waggled her eyebrows mischievously.

Penny blushed. Daisy seemed dead keen on them getting together, which was quite a leap from the conversation Penny had had with her the week before.

‘You should come out with us anyway,’ Penny said. ‘You can have dessert. Don’t stay here on your own on a Saturday night.’

‘I’m fine.
X Factor
is on in a bit and I said I’d Skype Melissa anyway and watch it with her. You go and enjoy yourselves.’

‘Just me and you then,’ Henry said, trying to keep the amusement off his face at his daughter’s meddling.

‘Well, give me a hand loading the van with the ice blocks I need for the ice carving workshop tomorrow and then I’ll get changed.’

Henry nodded and they walked into the freezer. He helped her load several small blocks that she had cut in preparation for the workshop onto a trolley and they wheeled it round to the van together.

‘Are you going to tell me what happened?’ Penny whispered just in case Daisy could hear them.

‘No, I’ll tell you in the car. I don’t want Daisy to hear this.’

They loaded the blocks onto the van, wrapping each piece in bubble wrap so they didn’t stick to the van or each other. Then Penny went to get changed.

She wanted something smart but not overly dressy for what was probably going to end up as a meal in a pub, so she just grabbed a nice jumper, threw on a little bit of make-up and brushed her hair into a plait. Henry had seen her first thing in the morning when her hair was everywhere, he’d seen her in her definitely not sexy pyjamas and in her usual jeans and hoodies and he still seemed to really like her.

She ran downstairs, they said their goodbyes to Daisy and got in the car.

‘So come on, out with it,’ Penny said as Henry drove down the bumpy driveway.

‘OK, but I don’t want you to think less of me. Part of me thinks it was a pretty shitty thing to do. Clara wasn’t taking no for an answer – the more I rejected her, the more of a challenge she saw me as. She told me to meet her in her office tonight or she’d make my life hell. So I agreed.’

Penny swallowed down the sudden fear that clutched at her throat. Had he agreed to sleep with her in order to get her off his back once and for all? No, he would never do that.

Henry glanced over. ‘I had no intention of ever meeting her. I wanted proof for when I told Edward just in case he didn’t believe me. I told him everything and Audrey, Clara’s assistant, backed up my story too. I told him where he could find her, that she was waiting for me, but he believed me without that. I feel bad that I set her up like that when I didn’t need to. Anyway Edward went to talk to her about it and found her in a very compromising position, half naked, sprawled across her desk from what I can gather. She must have been mortified.’

‘Don’t you feel sorry for her, don’t you dare,’ Penny said angrily. ‘She did this, no one else, only her. She blackmailed you to sleep with her and threatened you with your job too. What kind of scuzzy lowlife does that? If that had been the other way round and you had blackmailed her people would look at you like a sick monster because you’re this big man bullying some little woman into sleeping with you. Why is it any different that she was the one that was bullying you? She deserves everything that she gets.’

‘Well, I still feel a bit bad especially as Edward fired her on the spot.’

‘He fired her? His sister? How did he do that? They both have control of the company. I didn’t think Edward had more power than she did.’

‘Well, apparently he does. The company was originally offered to him by his dad as Clara had no interest in it, but she kicked up such a fuss that their dad was forced to make her managing director too, but he ensured that there was a sixty–forty split in the shares of the company, with Edward having the bigger share so that Edward would always have the deciding vote in the big decisions for the company. Clara’s never done anything for the company, he openly admitted to me that he has no idea what she does all day in her office and that she’s been a dead weight for the company for years, but she was his sister so he just let it go. Anyway he’s sacked her now. He stayed with her whilst she cleared out her things and took her key off her. She won’t be back. It caused a massive row between them and I feel bad for that too. I’m not sure if sacking her was an overreaction on his part or not. I feel like she should have had a warning first but apparently Edward has heard rumours that she’s done this kind of thing before, but he could never prove anything. Maybe he just wanted to get rid of her and this was the excuse he needed. But Audrey will be relocated to another department in the factory and I still have my job so I guess you were right. Fighting for it actually made a difference.’

Penny smiled. ‘I’m glad it all worked out for you and I’m sorry that you had to go through that at all. But don’t feel bad about how it ended for her. She brought this on herself and if it wasn’t you it would have been some other poor man. It would have ended this way eventually. Plus, Jill’s family are completely loaded. Clara is not exactly going to end up out on the streets after losing her job. I think she’ll be fine.’

‘Oh god, Jill … I forgot that she is Clara’s step-mum. Do you think she’ll hate me for this?’

‘I doubt it, there has never been any love lost between her and Clara. Besides, this isn’t your fault, stop thinking that it is.’

Henry nodded as he drove down through the town and out the other side to The Bubble and Froth, a lovely little pub on the furthest reaches of the town that sat nestled in Silver Cove, right on the beach, amongst a cluster of houses. The pub was owned by her brother’s friend Seb and served the most amazing food.

They walked in and Penny admired the gorgeous huge Christmas tree that took pride of place in one corner of the room. It was tastefully decorated and looked almost boring in comparison to the wonderful monstrosity currently sitting in her lounge.

Henry held out Penny’s chair for her and she smiled at his impeccable manners before he sat down opposite her.

‘You look lovely tonight.’ He reached across the table and took her hand.

‘Thank you.’ Penny glanced around the pub, wondering if people were watching them. This was the first time they had properly been out as a couple in White Cliff Bay, but they had already been seen at the tree farm and paraded as a family that day at the gingerbread competition. It seemed that their togetherness was old news as no one was looking in their direction at all. She looked at the empty chair at their table and felt a pang of guilt. ‘I feel bad that Daisy is at home alone.’

‘You did ask her to come with us and it was her idea that we came out without her. I think she likes the idea of us being together, which is a huge U-turn from asking me not to date you last week. She certainly didn’t stay at home because she wanted to watch
X Factor
– she hates it, she’s never watched a single episode in her life.’