by Penny Jordan
‘Say it,’ he demanded against her mouth. ‘Say the words, Poppy...’
‘I want you,’ she told him helplessly. ‘I want you... I want you...’
The words became a dizzy cry reinforcing each thrust of his body within hers—a meaningless litany to accompany the waves of pleasure and need that were building higher and higher.
Poppy heard herself cry out his name again as the pleasure finally crested, her body damp and weak...drained of life and energy as she clung to him in the aftermath of her passion.
In the mirror she could still see their reflection, their bodies entwined. She could feel the tears sliding helplessly down her face. What had she done...? What had she become...? She no longer recognised herself in the person she now seemed to be and that made her feel more desperately afraid than she had ever felt in the whole of her life.
It was only as she finally slid into an exhausted sleep that she realised that she had barely thought of Chris since she had walked into the bedroom and seen James.
Because she couldn’t bear to think of Chris and the purity of her love for him after what she had done—after what James had made her do, she told herself numbly as sleep finally claimed her.
CHAPTER SIX
‘POPPY, can you come down to my office, please? There’s something we need to discuss.’
Poppy could feel the palms of her hands growing clammy with nervous perspiration as she clung tightly to the telephone receiver.
‘Does it have to be now, James?’ she asked tersely. ‘Only I’m just in the middle of working on those Japanese documents you want and—’
‘Now, Poppy,’ James interrupted her curtly.
As Poppy replaced the receiver she stared unseeingly through her office window, oblivious to the neat trimness of the grass borders broken up by colourful patches of shrubs which decorated the company’s car park.
They had been back from Italy almost ten weeks—long enough, surely, for her to have at least begun to get over the shock of what had happened when they were there. But instead she had taken to avoiding James as much as she possibly could and suspected that he was doing exactly the same thing with her.
Pushing her chair away from her desk, she stood up, gritting her teeth against the nervous dizziness making her head swim and her heart pound with sick tension.
Unlike most heads of businesses, James preferred to have his office on the ground floor. It helped to keep his feet on the ground, he had once told Poppy sternly when she had questioned such unusual behaviour. A successful business was like a pyramid, he had added obliquely, and whoever stood at its peak was in a very vulnerable position unless he or she knew that the base on which it was constructed was stable and able to support the rest of the structure.
Then, as a teenager, Poppy hadn’t truly understood what he meant; now she did and, albeit rather begrudgingly, had to respect him for it.
As she hurried down the two flights of stairs to the ground floor she wondered nervously why James wanted to see her. It couldn’t be anything to do with the documents she was working on, they hadn’t reached the deadline for those yet.
Walking along the corridor to James’s office, she saw that the door to Chris’s office was open, but, true to the vow she had made herself on the day of his and Sally’s wedding, she refused to give in to the temptation to look to see if he was there.
There was no sign of James’s secretary as Poppy hovered outside his closed office door. She knocked reluctantly and then went in.
James was seated behind the desk which, like all the other furniture in the room, was strictly utilitarian. He did not believe in wasting company money on non-productive luxuries, and yet, disconcertingly, the lack of normal, status-symbol fittings seemed to emphasise the aura of leadership and power that emanated from him rather than diminish it.
He was her cousin as well as her boss and it was ridiculous that she should feel like a child summoned before a disapproving teacher, Poppy decided as she waited to hear why he had sent for her.
There were some papers on the desk in front of him and her heart missed a beat as she saw the familiar letterhead of the Italian spa.
‘Stewart Thomas asked to see me this morning,’ he told Poppy, referring to the company’s accountant.
Poppy’s heart started to thump even more heavily. She had submitted her quarterly expenses to the accounts department the previous week. She was always painstakingly careful with them, but ever since James had hauled her over the coals for inadvertently putting a private petrol bill through her expenses she had lived in nervous dread of accidentally repeating her error.
‘If it’s about my expenses,’ she began quickly, ‘I—’
‘No, Poppy, it’s not about your expenses,’ James told her. ‘It’s about this.’ He picked up the letter in front of him as he spoke and pushed it across the desk towards her.
Uneasily Poppy picked it up.
‘It’s the bill from the Italian hotel,’ she acknowledged. ‘I... I understood I didn’t have any expenses for that. You—’
‘This isn’t about your expenses, Poppy,’ James repeated grimly. ‘At least not in the way you mean. Take another look at the bill and this time read it properly, or would you prefer me to do it for you? Perhaps I should; that way we might at least save some time,’ he told her curtly, flicking the paper away from her and reading out the words. ‘Mr and Mrs Carlton: one double room.’
Poppy stared at him, the colour leaving her face, driven out as much by the acid note she could hear in his voice as by what he had actually said.
‘But... but it was a mistake... They made a mistake,’ she told him huskily. ‘You said so yourself... You said...’
‘It doesn’t matter what I said,’ James told her. ‘What matters is the interpretation that Stewart Thomas and no doubt anyone else who happens to have seen this is going to put on it. The mere fact that he felt he ought to bring it straight to me says it all... don’t you agree?’
Poppy felt sick.
‘But you paid the bill before we left. They gave you a receipt, and—’
‘And now they’ve sent a copy of it here,’ James told her. ‘God knows how many people had already seen it before it reached Stewart’s desk.’
‘But... but you explained to him what happened ...? That the hotel had made a mistake, that they were overbooked.’
‘Oh, yes, I told him,’ James agreed, ‘but—’ He stopped speaking as his office door was unoeremoniously pushed open and Chris hurried in, looking uncertain and confused.
‘James, I don’t know what’s going on, but I’ve just overheard—’ He broke off when he saw Poppy, looking frowningly from her stricken white face to James’s grimly angry one.
‘Yes, Chris, what have you overheard?’ James probed.
‘Well, I don’t suppose it means anything, but as I walked past the general office I heard one of the girls talking about the fact that you and Poppy had... were... They’re saying that the two of you are lovers,’ he finished awkwardly. ‘The whole place is buzzing with it,’ he added. ‘What on earth’s going on?’
Whilst Chris had been talking James had stepped out from behind his desk and was now, Poppy realised, standing next to her.
As Chris looked at them both, to Poppy’s shock James reached out and took hold of her hand, linking fingers with hers and then squeezing hers warningly as he said, ‘We had hoped to keep it to ourselves for a little while longer but... yes, it’s true; Poppy and I—’
‘But this is wonderful,’ Chris interrupted him enthusiastically. ‘Just wait until I tell Sally. When did all this happen and why haven’t you said anything? Too preoccupied with other things, I suppose,’ he chuckled. ‘I know how it was with me and Sally when we first fell in love and I’ve no need to ask if you are in love, you must be, James, if you were idiotic enough to think the pair of you could get away with booking into a double room without anyone finding out. Have you told the family yet or—?’
‘We didn’t�
�’ Poppy began quickly, anxious to make him understand that he had got it wrong, that there was nothing between her and James, that it was all a horrible mistake, that...
But James stopped her, the pressure of his grip on her fingers silencing her denial in her throat, his voice overriding hers as he told Chris smoothly, ‘We didn’t want to say anything to anyone yet. It’s all so new to us that we wanted to keep our...feelings to ourselves.’
‘Well, you can hardly do that now,’ Chris laughed. ‘Not with the whole place knowing that the two of you have spent four nights in bed together.’
Poppy had to bite down hard on her bottom lip to prevent herself crying out with pain as she heard the amusement in his voice. Didn’t he know, didn’t he care that he was the one she loved, not James?
‘Just wait until I tell Sally,’ he repeated.
Poppy burst out frantically, ‘No...’
‘No,’ James concurred, giving Poppy’s tender fingers another warning squeeze as Chris gave her a surprised look. ‘Not yet. We still need a little more time to ourselves.’
‘Well, you’re going to have to go public with the family soon,’ Chris warned him. ‘They’re bound to hear the gossip that’s going round. I know that Ma and Aunt Fee only come in once a month or so, but—’
‘Thanks, Chris,’ James interrupted his brother. ‘I hear what you are saying but...’
‘But it isn’t anything to do with me,’ Chris finished cheerfully for him. ‘Well, I doubt you’ll get either Ma or Aunt Fee to agree with that, and you know that it’s Aunt Fee’s annual birthday lunch on Sunday. You’re not going to find it easy to keep them from guessing the truth; after all, the family is used to seeing the pair of you either quarrelling or ignoring one another, not holding hands and...’
Immediately Poppy tried to pull her hand away but James refused to let her go.
If he wasn’t going to tell Chris the truth then she would just have to, Poppy decided, turning away from James to reach out imploringly to Chris with her other hand as she began, ‘Chris, please, there’s—’
‘Chris, that call has come through for you from Bensons,’ Chris’s secretary interrupted, putting her head round the door to give him the message.
‘Thanks... I’m on my way,’ he responded, pausing only to say ruefully to Poppy and James, ‘You might as well tell them, you know; there’s no way you’re going to be able to keep it a secret now...’
Poppy could hardly contain herself long enough for Chris to close the door behind him before she turned on James and demanded furiously, ‘Why didn’t you tell him the truth? Why—?’
‘What truth?’ James interrupted her. ‘Is that really what you want me to do, Poppy?’ he asked curtly. ‘Do you really want me to tell Chris what happened—exactly what happened, everything that happened?’ he emphasised cruelly.
Humiliated, Poppy looked away from him.
‘No, you know that’s not what I meant,’ she admitted, white-faced, adding in a choked whisper, ‘But you had no need to let him think, to let him believe that...’
‘That what—that you and I are lovers? What would you have preferred me to do? Tell him it was just sex ...just a four-night stand.’
‘You could have said it was a mistake,’ Poppy burst out. ‘You could have told him that the hotel was confused by the fact that we share the same surname...’
‘I could, yes,’ James agreed. ‘And then what...?’
‘What do you mean?’ Poppy asked him in confusion.
‘If I had told him that, Chris would have been bound to ask what had happened, how we had resolved the mistake. In other words, Poppy, he would have expected me to say that the mistake was put right and that we were given separate rooms if not separate bills.’
‘And whose fault was it that we weren’t?’ Poppy demanded frantically. ‘We can’t let people think that... that we are lovers,’ she told him miserably.
‘We can’t let people, or we can’t let Chris?’ James demanded. ‘Face it, Poppy, he couldn’t care less. In fact he’s probably relieved to have you off his back. It’s time you started living in the real world, Poppy. You and I—’
“There is no you and I,’ Poppy denied fiercely. ’I hate knowing what happened between us,’ she told him passionately. ’I feel sick every time I think about it. I know you’ve always hated and despised me, James; well, now you’ve made me hate and despise myself even more than you do.’ She headed for his office door. ’No more, James. I just can’t take any more.’
‘Poppy, are you sure you’re all right?’
Poppy gave her mother a lacklustre smile and fibbed, ‘Yes, I’m fine.’
‘She’s probably missing James,’ Chris teased her. He and Sally had arrived minutes earlier, the first guests to arrive for her mother’s annual birthday lunch, and the four of them were standing in her parents’ conservatory whilst her father poured the drinks.
Poppy shot her mother an anxious look, but she appeared to have missed Chris’s comment.
‘Don’t worry, he’ll be here,’ Chris told Poppy. ‘He rang me last night to say he’d be bringing Ma with him.’
For the first time since she had fallen in love with him Poppy found that she actively didn’t want to be with Chris. She could tell from the looks he and Sally were exchanging that he had told his wife about her supposed relationship with James.
How many of the other guests her mother had invited also knew about it? Poppy wondered, her face burning. Where was James? What was she going to do if he didn’t arrive...if she was left to face people’s questions and curiosity on her own? A dizzy panicky feeling gripped her as she looked anxiously through the drawing-room window, searching for some sign of James’s arrival.
‘Poppy, what is it? Who are you looking for?’ her mother asked her.
‘N-nothing ...no one,’ Poppy stammered, but she knew that her face was flushing guiltily and she could see that her mother was puzzled by her behaviour.
‘Poppy, my dear...and how was Italy?’ a friend and neighbour of her parents enquired heartily after he’d greeted her mother. ‘A beautiful country and, of course, you went with James who is part-Italian himself...’
‘Oh, have you and James been on holiday together?’ a slightly deaf great-aunt asked with interest, picking up on the conversation. ‘How nice; I always thought that the two of you would be well suited.’
‘James and Poppy went away together to Italy on business,’ Poppy’s mother explained hastily.
Nearly all the guests had arrived now and Poppy’s heart missed a beat as she saw Stewart Thomas and his wife on the opposite side of the room. She had had no idea that her mother had asked him and his wife to come. What was she going to do if Stewart said something to her mother about the hotel bill?
Panic seized her. Had James done this deliberately—left her on her own to face the consequences of what she had done? She started to shiver as her panic turned to a cold sweat of sick fear. How was she going to face everyone—her parents, her family?
James had to come, she reassured herself. He was bringing his mother. Chris had told her so. She could see Stewart Thomas and his wife talking together and she was sure that she was the subject of their discussion from the way they kept looking across at her.
A car drew up outside and James and Chris’s mother got out, but James wasn’t with her, Poppy realised in dismay as she recognised her aunt’s companion as a long-standing male friend.
‘Oh, dear, are we the last to arrive?’ Poppy heard her aunt saying as her parents welcomed them in. ‘I’m so sorry. There was a last-minute change of plan; James was supposed to be bringing us.’
‘Don’t worry, it’s a cold lunch,’ Poppy’s mother responded. ‘Come in and have a drink.’
Why wasn’t her mother asking where James was? Poppy worried frantically. Why hadn’t her aunt said why he wasn’t with them?
‘Poppy, you’re looking awfully pale; I hope that son of mine isn’t working you too hard. How was Italy, by the w
ay? The countryside in that area is just so magnificent. I haven’t seen you since you got back...’
Poppy glanced nervously over her shoulder before responding to her. Stewart was standing within earshot of their conversation, talking now to her own father.
‘I...’
‘Oh, I don’t think Poppy got an awful lot of time to look at the scenery,’ Chris informed his mother, giving Poppy a wicked look. ‘Although I do believe she has become a devout admirer of a certain aspect of Italian—’
‘James!’
Poppy couldn’t contain her relief as she saw the tall, familiar figure striding into the room. The agonised, reproachful look she had been about to give Chris was forgotten as she hurried across to James’s side, her brain not registering the surprise on some people’s faces and the more worrying knowledge and amusement on others’ until it was too late—until she had reached James’s side, until she had clutched anxiously at his arm, until she had by her own actions and in full view of everyone there confirmed all that she had told James so fiercely he had to deny.
‘Poppy?’ she heard her mother saying uncertainly, her face registering her disbelief that Poppy should even acknowledge James’s presence, never mind rush across the room to virtually throw herself into his arms, to clutch at him as though he were her only life raft in a life-threatening sea.
‘You’ll have to tell them now,’ Poppy heard Chris chuckling. He and Sally, as well as her own father and mother and aunt, had followed her to James’s side and all were now looking at them.
‘Tell us what?’ Poppy’s mother asked, puzzled.
Helplessly Poppy looked at James.
‘Poppy and I—’ James began quietly.
But Chris beat him to it, informing them happily, ‘Poppy and James are in love; in fact—’
‘At last. Oh, Poppy I can’t tell you how happy this makes me!’ her aunt exclaimed. ‘The two of you have always been so right for one another. I can still remember the way you used to follow James around when you were a child. Virtually as soon as you could walk you used to toddle after him, and now—’