Read The Antique Love for Free Online

half-sister ever since he was twelve years old and she was just a tiny scrap in a diaper. No matter how often his little sister messed up her life, Kurt would always be there to pick up the pieces, because deep down, he understood just what she was looking for with that unshakeable romantic longing. She was trying to fill the empty hole left by their childhood. But Kurt also knew that that hole would never be filled by true love , or whatever else Ann wanted to call it, because all that was just a fairy-tale. Fine in stories but not for real life. He wished his sister would accept that, as he had done, and be content to live her life without expectation of anything more. Things would be simpler.
    She looked at him now with eyes the same cool grey as his. Though unlike Kurt’s, hers were filled with hope.
    “Anyway, how about you?” she asked. “What’s new in London?”
    “I have this to show you,” he said, holding up the estate agent’s brochure. “I finally bought a house.”
    “A house! Cool. What’s it like? And where?”
    Kurt went through the photos one by one, explaining the history of neighbouring Richmond Park. As a piece of green space, it was tiny on Wyoming’s scale, but Ann thought it was charming.
    “So, a big house and a park,” she said, her head on one side. “Guess now all you need is a wife and children.”
    Kurt folded the photos away. He had told Ann a few days ago that he planned to marry, and she had been so excited she’d almost reached through the screen and kissed him. She wanted to know all about the girl who’d finally captured his heart. When Kurt explained that he hadn’t actually proposed to anyone yet and that he wasn’t in love, his sister’s happiness plummeted sharply. She’d regarded him in that sad, quizzical way she always did when he did something she couldn’t understand. Now as Kurt folded the estate agent’s paperwork, an image of Penny popped into his head, her mouth rounded softly in surprise when he’d told her the same thing.
    “Actually, I met someone today you’d like,” he said.
    “Oh?” Ann’s face looked so hopeful, Kurt had to laugh.
    “Not in the girlfriend way. Her name’s Penny. She works in an antique shop, and she’s going to help me furnish the house.”
    “Is she pretty?”
    Kurt rolled his eyes. He was going to tell his sister, no, Penny wasn’t pretty. He was ready to explain that when he’d first seen her, he’d thought her unremarkable to the point of plainness. Her oval face, pale with weariness, had been crunched tight in concentration over her papers, and her nondescript brown hair scraped back in a ponytail. When she’d stood up to speak to him, she’d been small in her flat work shoes and slightly plump. She’d looked like she badly needed some fresh air and a long vacation.
    But then he thought of the way she’d lit up when she started talking about the antiques in her shop and how the sudden vitality transformed her weary features. Her passionate animation had transfixed him. And when she’d spoken of how little she’d travelled her blue eyes had deepened in shade. She’d lifted her face to his with such an attractively wistful smile that he’d found himself drawn to her, wanting to keep the glow from vanishing. It was as though, for a moment, she had bewitched him. And maybe she had cast some sort of spell, because now he faced giving up several Saturday mornings to go through her accounts—not something he’d ever offered to do for anyone else.
    He wondered what his sister would say if he expressed these thoughts aloud and gave a wry inward laugh. Bewitched. The sort of thing Penny Rosas herself would say. If he was going to be working with Penny, he would have to guard against being drawn into her fanciful way of thinking.
    “Yeah, I guess you could call her kinda pretty,” he said simply. “And she helped me pick out a great present for you.” He held a padded envelope to the webcam. “It’s a