The Antique Love by Helena Fairfax Page A

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