by Penny Jordan
‘I too am feeling the same,’ he told her ruefully, ‘and wondering if I am really in the right job. At university I had plans, dreams of being a writer, but in Germany these days it is not so easy to find a good job. My parents—my father—urged me to think of the future...’ He gave a small shrug and Poppy another smile.
‘But it is boring of me to talk of myself... I wish to learn more about you.’
‘There isn’t very much to learn,’ Poppy confessed, whilst her conscience prodded her, reminding her that there was a good deal more to know than there had been twenty-four hours ago, even if it was not exactly the kind of knowledge she could ever envisage herself passing on to anyone—sharing with anyone.
It was fortunate that the Japanese businessmen whom James was dining with this evening had their own interpreter with them, even if it had galled Poppy slightly to see the way that James had watched the diminutive and very attractive Japanese woman and listened to her as she’d translated his comments to her colleagues.
He patently had a good deal more respect for her and her professional skills than he did for her own, Poppy reflected, and that knowledge rankled.
‘You are looking angry,’ Gunther told her. ‘Have I...?’
‘I was thinking about something else—someone else,’ Poppy admitted.
‘It is a pity that there has been so much confusion and lack of organisation over the conference,’ he commented.
‘Mmm,’ Poppy agreed. ‘Although I doubt that we would have had much time to enjoy the hotel’s facilities even if they had been finished.’
‘This is true,’ said Gunther, and then added hesitantly, ‘I had thought of hiring a car and exploring a little of the region tomorrow; I was wondering if you would care to join me...?’
Poppy was sorely tempted to agree, just for the relief of getting away from James, but, despite what James seemed to think, she did take her work seriously and she knew that if she had been here with Chris or, indeed, with any other members of the company’s sales team she would never even have considered using Gunther as a means of escaping from them, and so she shook her head, gently refusing his invitation.
‘Remember, if you should change your mind about joining me on my tour of the region,’ Gunther told her later in the evening when they had finished their dinner, ‘you only have to say.’
‘You’re very kind,’ Poppy told him truthfully.
They had lingered in the dining room longer than most of the other diners, but Poppy was nervously aware that she couldn’t put off saying goodnight to Gunther and returning to her room for much longer.
His room was in a different part of the building from hers and when they parted in the foyer Poppy felt her heart start to thud in anxious dread. Would James be in the room already? And if he was...?
By the time she had reached their floor, her hands were shaking so much that she could hardly insert the pass-card into the lock, but to her relief, when the door swung open and she stepped inside the room, there was no sign of James.
She undressed and showered quickly, unable to bring herself to look properly at her body, so that she didn’t have to see those small but oh, so betraying tell-tale marks.
Once dried and wrapped in her robe she stood for several minutes on the threshold of the bedroom, staring at the pristine smoothness of the large bed, her heart pounding so heavily and painfully that she automatically put one hand over it to ease the pain it was causing her.
She couldn’t sleep in that bed again, she acknowledged, licking her dry lips. She simply couldn’t.
Her legs trembled as she walked quickly towards it, her glance drawn repeatedly to the door as she pulled frantically at the heavy duvet, dragging it off the bed and onto the floor, her body drenched in nervous perspiration as she prayed that James wouldn’t come in before she had finished.
Even doubled over underneath her, the quilt wasn’t thick enough to mask fully the hardness of the marble floor, but at least this way she was signalling unequivocally and loudly to James that, despite his goading remarks, she had no desire to endure a repetition of the previous night’s events.
But as she lay tensely in the darkness Poppy knew that not all of his cruel taunts could be rejected. She had begged him to make love to her, she had responded to him, wanted him ... she had been the one to insist, to demand that what was happening between them be brought to its ultimate conclusion.
‘Because I wanted him to be Chris,’ she whispered painfully to herself. ‘I needed him to be Chris...’
But she had known that he wasn’t. She had known that he was James—had known and had not stopped, had not ceased wanting... needing... aching...
The tears that burned the backs of her eyes felt like acid, raw and painful, bringing her no real relief, but then what relief could there be from the thoughts, the emotions that tormented her? she acknowledged miserably.
It might be impossible for her to deny or escape the taunts that James had thrown at her but it was equally impossible for her to understand why it had happened, why she had turned to James, responded to James, wanted James to such an extent that she had knowingly, wantonly and, yes, deliberately encouraged him to...
To what? she asked herself as the tears rolled down her face. To have sex with her, to make love to her, to transport her to a place she had not previously known existed; to take her there, and once there to...?
No, no, no, Poppy denied, rolling herself even more tightly in her duvet as she tried to stem both her tears and the hot, raw ache burning inside her.
It was close to dawn when Poppy woke up, her body stiff and aching, one of the pillows she had wrenched from the bed still beneath her head, the other... Hot scarlet colour flooded her skin betrayingly as she realised that she had her arms wrapped round the pillow as though...
Quickly she thrust it away from her, at the same time lifting her head to look anxiously towards the bed, praying that James was asleep and that he hadn’t seen the pathetic way she had cuddled up to the pillow, her tension changing to surprise and then bewilderment as she realised that the bed was completely empty and that James wasn’t there.
If he hadn’t returned to their room then where had he spent the night—where was he spending the night? Poppy wondered, for some reason instantly picturing the pretty Japanese woman and the way her silvery laughter had caused James to smile in a way he had never smiled at her.
Had they spent the night together? Neither of them had made any effort to conceal the fact that they found one another attractive, Poppy acknowledged sourly. She hadn’t missed the subtle message in the way that she had gently touched James’s arm to underline some comment she had been making, and she certainly hadn’t misinterpreted the sudden gleam in James’s eyes as he’d looked back at her, nor the way in which he had moved closer to her.
Well, she was welcome to him, Poppy told herself fiercely. All she herself wished was that she had known what he was going to do. That way, she could have slept on the bed instead of on the floor and, instead of waking up with her body aching and her neck stiff, she would have enjoyed a decent night’s sleep.
Yes, the Japanese woman was welcome to James. Poppy gave a small shudder. Did he make a habit of sleeping with two different women on consecutive nights? It seemed so out of character; she would have thought that he would have more concern for his health, more...more self-control, she decided bitterly.
It gave her a very odd and very unwanted feeling inside to think of James with another woman. Odd because that specific feeling was one she was more used to feeling in relation to Chris, and unwanted because...because...
Of course it wasn’t jealousy she was feeling, Poppy comforted herself as she dragged her aching body onto the bed, hauling the duvet with her. How could it be...? She was just thankful that James wasn’t here with her.
And yet, as she closed her eyes and tried to go back to sleep, no matter how hard she tried to summon up the comforting mental image of Chris’s beloved features, it was James
she kept on visualising. James, his eyes darkening as he leant over her.
‘No,’ Poppy denied aloud in growing panic. ‘No, no, no...’
CHAPTER FIVE
‘AH, JAMES. I am glad to see you again. It was good last night, wasn’t it?’
Poppy tried not to gape as the Japanese translator came over to their stand where James had just been informing Poppy that he had some documents he wanted her to translate; the woman’s eyes were eloquent with feminine emotion as she reached out and touched James’s hand.
She might just as well not have been there, Poppy decided as she saw the way James turned towards the other woman, the way he smiled at her and bent his head protectively towards her.
Poppy had been midway through her breakfast when James had slid into his seat opposite her, calmly ordering his coffee without giving her any explanation of his overnight absence.
‘Very good,’ Poppy heard James agreeing throatily now.
Poppy could have sworn that his glance rested just a fraction too long on the other woman’s body as she smiled coquettishly at him then announced that she must return to her colleagues—but not before she had leant forward and murmured provocatively to James, ‘I have some free time this afternoon; you did mention that you have a car...’
Poppy waited, expecting to hear James declare in the curt way she was familiar with that he was too busy to take any time off, but, to her indignation, instead she heard him responding, ‘I do indeed. What time exactly will you be free?’
As soon as the woman was out of earshot, Poppy couldn’t resist reminding him, ‘I thought you said we had come here to work; in fact I—’
‘What’s wrong?’ James interrupted her, not allowing her to finish. ‘Not jealous, are you?’
‘Why should I be? She’s welcome to you. I suppose you were with her last night, were you?’
‘And if I was,’ James countered urbanely, ‘is that really any business of yours?’
For some reason that she could not quite define, Poppy found his relaxed and indeed almost amused attitude not only infuriating but humiliating as well.
‘Yes, as a matter of fact, it is,’ she told him furiously. ‘You may think nothing of going from bed to bed, woman to woman, of being... I suppose you might even have quite a high opinion of yourself for being some sort of sexual stud...’ she added for good measure. ‘But I am not promiscuous and I have my health to think about and—’
‘Oh, do you indeed?’ James interrupted her with ominous calm. ‘Odd that I didn’t get the impression that your health was one of your primary concerns the other night,’ he goaded her bitingly.
Poppy shot him a bright-eyed look of defiant fury.
‘That was because—’ She started to defend herself, but James would not let her finish.
‘Because you wanted to pretend I was Chris,’ he finished for her, knowing well by now the way her answer would come out. ‘Well, I have news for you, Poppy. When it comes down to it, far from being the untarnished, fantasy figure you seem to think he is, of the two of us I suspect that Chris would toll up the greater number if we had to list our previous bed-mates. So, in reality, the chances of you endangering your “health”, as you so coyly put it, would be rather greater with him than with me.’
Poppy told him hotly, ‘I don’t believe what you’re saying. Chris has never...he would never... He’s not like you,’ she told him flatly. ‘He would never sleep with someone just for...just for sex.’
‘I never suggested that he might,’ James corrected her. ‘I simply said that of the two of us he has probably had the greater number of partners, and for your information, Poppy, I do not sleep with women “just for sex”...’
The look in his eyes warned Poppy not to try to take the argument any further, but she was too wound up, too angry to pay it any attention.
‘You did with me,’ she pointed out recklessly.
For a moment she thought she had won and that he wasn’t going to reply. After all, what was there that he could honestly say?
She soon found out.
‘I... had... sex... with... you,’ he told her with cold emphasis, carefully spacing out each word, so that there was no way she could avoid their impact—like so many carefully aimed and deliberately fired bullets, she decided as she tried sickly to absorb their spreading pain—‘because you wouldn’t let me do anything else...’
‘You’re just saying that to...to punish me,’ Poppy protested, her mouth trembling as she tried to blink away her shamed tears.
‘No, Poppy, I am not,’ James denied grimly. ‘There comes a point where a man—any man—simply cannot stop. That’s a known fact and I can hardly deny it, but way before I had reached that point you were the one who was... You were the one who wanted—’
‘Not you,’ Poppy cut in swiftly. ‘I didn’t want you. I could never want you.’ She moved away from the stand abruptly—so abruptly that for a moment the hall spun dizzily around her-refusing to listen to James as he told her to come and sit down, turning on her heel and hurrying, almost running away from him.
How dared he say those things to her, make her feel so cheap, when he knew...? Well, let him go and spend all day with his new Japanese woman-friend; let him spend all night with her as well... She only wished he would.
‘Poppy, what is it? What’s wrong?’
As Poppy looked up into the kind, concerned face of Gunther, she came to a sudden decision.
‘Gunther,’ she told him quickly, ‘if that offer you made of showing me something of the region is still on, I’ve changed my mind. I would like to come with you...’
‘It will be my pleasure,’ he told her with a beaming smile. ‘I will not be free until two o’clock, though...’
‘That will be fine,’ Poppy assured him. She should have James’s translations done by then so at least he wouldn’t be able to accuse her of not doing her job. He could not accuse her of anything, she decided fiercely, ignoring the tiny inner voice that warned her that what she was doing was not just extremely dangerous but potentially very irresponsible as well.
If James could take time off to enjoy himself with his new Japanese friend, then he was hardly in a position to take her to task for doing something similar, was he? And as for the fact that she would officially be on company time, she would make up the hours she spent with Gunther somehow or other, she told herself grimly; that was one accusation at least that she would make sure James could not throw at her.
It was almost twelve o‘clock when James came into the bedroom, where Poppy was hard at work on the translations which had proved more complex than she had originally thought. He demanded peremptorily, ‘Have you finished yet, Poppy?’
‘Almost,’ she told him, mentally crossing her fingers that when she gave the documents a final read through she wouldn’t come across anything she had missed. She didn’t miss the way James’s frown deepened as he looked over her shoulder at what she was doing, and she immediately challenged him defensively, ‘If you’re not satisfied, James, or if you think that you could have done any better...’
‘If I could, the company wouldn’t be employing you as a translator,’ James told her crisply, picking up the work she had completed, adding as he started to read it, ‘You know, Poppy, there has to be a division between our role as cousins and that of employer and employee. You’re very fond of insisting that you got your job with the company on merit and not by trading on your relationship with your mother, but you don’t seem to mind trading on our cousinship in our roles of employer and employee...’
‘You’re .the one who’s doing that, not me,’ Poppy defended herself immediately. ‘After all, if we weren’t cousins, there’s no way you’d have been able to force me to share a bedroom with you...’
She could see from his expression that he didn’t like what she was saying. Well, tough, she decided. He was the one who had brought the subject up, not her.
‘You know your problem, don’t you, James?’ she challenged, swing
ing round to glower at him. ‘You’re a control freak, but you can’t control me. No one controls me...’
‘No,’ James agreed drily. ‘No one does, not even you.’
As he looked at her Poppy had a vivid memory of the most recent occasion on which she had betrayed her lack of self-control, and as she felt the hot tide of colour start to flood up in a give-away rush under her skin she turned quickly away from him.
‘I thought you were supposed to be taking your Japanese friend out today,’ she muttered as she gathered her papers together.
‘I am,’ James agreed, glancing at his watch as he took the papers from her. ‘Have you finished now? Is everything here?’
‘Yes,’ Poppy confirmed tersely, noting that he was eager to be away.
‘More wine?’
Poppy smiled as she shook her head, covering her almost empty glass with her hand.
‘No, I suppose I hadn’t better either,’ Gunther agreed regretfully. ‘Not as I’m driving.’
They had driven through the warm Italian countryside for almost two hours before finally stopping in a small, dusty town so pretty that it might have come straight out of a film or operetta.
They had explored it like two schoolchildren set free from their lessons, buying and eating delicious homemade ice cream the taste of which had made Poppy close her eyes in disbelieving bliss.
It had been Gunther’s suggestion that, instead of heading straight back, they equip themselves with food and wine and have an impromptu picnic on the banks of the river they had seen earlier.
‘Have we got time?’ Poppy had asked him doubtfully. She wasn’t wearing her watch and she hadn’t been sure how long they had spent wandering around the town.
‘We’ll make time,’ Gunther had told her grandly, and because she was enjoying the relaxation of being away from James and of putting to one side all the anger and anxiety that her constant confrontations with him were causing her Poppy had laughingly given in and agreed.
She had no idea now how long they had lingered over their alfresco meal, but she guessed from the lengthening shadows that it was growing late.