‘Penny reckons it’s a case of still waters running deep with Harriet Livingstone and she doubts she’ll ever get over Simon Dexter.’
Damien frowned. ‘I thought they hadn’t seen each other since college when they bumped into each other, Penny and Harriet?’
‘They hadn’t, but word gets around and Penny has quite a network of old friends, so when Harriet bobbed up—she did some research, you might say. And—’
‘Simon Dexter,’ Damien interrupted. ‘Elite golfer who’s earned himself a million dollars recently, playboy, heart-throb—that Simon Dexter?’
Arthur nodded. ‘Can’t imagine what brought them together in the first place. I mean, she’s not a groupie type, she’s not a sporting type. The way she keeps running into things suggests she may even be a bit uncoordinated, not to mention short-sighted.’
‘Suffers from a left-handed syndrome, in fact,’ Damien supplied.
‘Never heard of it.’
‘That makes two of us. Uh...hasn’t Simon Dexter been on the news lately—for other reasons?’
‘Could well have been; I haven’t been much tuned into the news lately. And I should be getting home.’ Arthur stood up. ‘You’ll have your hands full, what with Charlie and Harriet, but at least her—er—incarceration, if you could call it that, is only for a couple of weeks.
‘Yes.’
And, to Arthur’s surprise, after that single yes, Damien seemed to fall into some kind of reverie and didn’t appear to notice his departure.
By the time Arthur had gone, Harriet was also deep in thought for a time.
Along the lines of wondering whether she’d been conned into staying on and doing the paintings.
Surely not. She could hardly be in Damien Wyatt’s good books at the moment, after knocking back both his proposals as well as knocking down his gatepost.
But he had rung Arthur and Arthur had tapped into her love of art and managed to imbue her with a feeling of enthusiasm, even eagerness for the project.
Why, though? Why would he want her to stay on?
She shook her head and her thoughts returned to Arthur and how, despite his waistcoats, she enjoyed talking to him about art.
Arthur, she thought with a fond little smile. How on earth was he going to get through the rest of Penny’s pregnancy, let alone the birth?
* * *
The next morning her ankle was more swollen than it had been, and more painful, so Charlie’s nurse conceded that there might be something broken and she should have an X-ray. Isabel drove her in to Lismore, where an X-ray revealed a hairline fracture and a cast was applied to her ankle. She was warned to keep her weight off it while it healed.
Easier said than done, as she discovered. She was exhausted after hopping up the stairs to the flat on one foot, even with Isabel’s help.
‘We’ll have to do something about this,’ Isabel said worriedly. ‘You can’t go through this every time you want to get out or home. Damien should have thought of that. I’ll speak to him.’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ Harriet told her. ‘Just please say hello to Charlie. And tell him in a few days I’ll actually get to see him.’