Chapter 1
“Istill can’t believeI’m spending Christmas in New York,” Penny laughed, as she rubbed her hands together to warm them.
A tall slender blonde in fitted light blue jeans and a red puffa jacket, she walked towards the kerb, where an awaiting black town car stood with an open door.
Her white snow boots left prints in the fresh snow.
“Why not? And what better way to spend it - and your birthday too,” her best friend Kate replied as they neared the car, elation reflected in her honey eyes.
Her diminutive frame was curvier than Penny’s, the reward of motherhood.
Their breaths came in wisps as they spoke, filling the area around them with a quickly-evaporating fog
“Besides, what were you going to do in London all alone?” she added.
“I wouldn’t have been alone,” Penny defended, but they both knew better.
Penny was a workaholic. She had been ever since her fiancé’s death three years before. It had been difficult for her ever since, being part of a world without Tim. Kate knew that.
Over the years she’d tried her best to pull her friend out of the recesses and back into the sunlight where she belonged, but Penny was stubborn. She always had been.
It had taken desperate measures on Kate’s part to get her on the flight over from London.
“So where’s Ian?” Penny asked, referring to Kate’s husband.
“He’s meeting us at home. He has some things to get done before he heads back.” Kate’s words were punctuated by the slamming of the trunk of the town car.
Penny’s single suitcase was securely tucked inside, right next to her son Toby’s stroller.
“So what happened to your SUV? I thought you loved that thing,” Penny asked as she approached the open passenger door. The vehicle’s driver was standing sentinel as her eyes grew large at the sight of the interior of the expensive Lincoln.
“I do, but where we are now makes it difficult for me to find parking. The car comes with Ian’s job, we just never had a reason to use it before,” Kate answered as both women slid into the backseat one after the other.
The door closed behind them.
The warm scent of vanilla greeted Penny as she slid around making herself comfortable. She wasn’t used to being chauffeur driven and she fidgeted in the small space.
There was an ice bucket and two champagne flutes tucked into a holder. The glasses alone must have cost more than her coat. She would have much rather preferred Kate’s Range Rover. At least she wouldn’t be afraid to break something.
“It’s great that you both were able to get the holidays off together. I know last year was a bit of a mess.”
“Yeah well, you know how corporate types can be – all work, work, work.”
“No I don’t,” Penny mused lightly. “I always liked the blue collar guys – the kind who work with their hands.”
She looked out the window as they pulled away from the airport. As a masseuse Tim had been great with his hands, and very attentive. He always knew when she was tense and was quick to alleviate the problem.
He was a master at working out the knots from her neck and back, not to mention his stellar foot massages. She missed them. She missed feeling pampered and cared for.
Tim had been her entire world. Having been an orphan, Penny wasn’t used to having people care for her, but Tim had, he’d loved her through a time when she could barely love herself.
Then he was gone, and everything she’d hoped for died with him.
“I have to pick up Toby from by my mother before we head home,” Kate interjected, knowing her friend’s thoughts had strayed.
Penny wasn’t difficult to read, especially for someone who knew her as well as Kate. The pair had been best friends since kindergarten, both born and raised in a quite suburb of London until Kate had gone to New York to attend university.
It was where she’d met Ian Jarvis, her husband. She was studying interior design and he, finance. The artist and the businessman, an unlikely pair, but the two made it look effortless the way they seemed to read each other’s minds.
