by Penny Jordan
Polly was having the most blissful dream imaginable. In it she was snuggled up in bed with Marcus, close to his body, totally enveloped in its warmth and his love. Euphorically she moved closer to him, murmuring his name, breathing in the warm scent of his skin, nuzzling her mouth into the warmth of his bare shoulder.
‘Mmm…Marcus…’
He was moving his arm to draw her closer and she could feel the way his mouth was smiling as she touched it.
‘Marcus!’
Bemused, Polly opened her eyes. It wasn’t a dream at all; she was actually in bed with Marcus.
As she tried to sit bolt upright he laughed softly, as though her being there with him was so natural and right that they might have been sharing a bed for years.
‘Mmm…Now that you’ve woken me up, what are you going to do with me?’ he asked her teasingly. But the way his hand was stroking her naked breast and playing with its hardening tip suggested that he knew very well already what it was he wanted to do with her, Polly recognised, as the final shreds of her dream dispersed and full recollection of the events of the evening brought her eyes wide open and her thoughts into confused shock.
No wonder Marcus was behaving the way he was after what she had said…done…
‘Mmm…Nothing to say?’ Marcus was nuzzling her breast, her throat, her mouth, his hands sliding over her, stroking her, positioning her.
Polly wasn’t naive; she knew, of course, that it was possible to have sex in a wide variety of positions, but she and Richard…well, they had been young, inexperienced and…
She gave a small gasp at what Marcus was doing with her…to her…
‘It’s nice like this,’ he was whispering. ‘I can touch all of you as well as…’
Polly gasped again as his fingers stroked her intimately, gently exploring and caressing her. She could feel her body responding to him, reacting to him. Helplessly she closed her eyes and gave in to the surge of desire flooding her.
‘Lie still,’ Marcus was telling her. ‘Let me…please you…like this…’
Polly moaned softly under her breath, unable to silence her pleasure. Marcus moved her again, pushing back the bedclothes so that in the dim light she could just see what he was doing. His body filled hers, fitting her so fully that just to feel him inside her caused her to quiver in a series of tiny convulsions.
‘Marcus…’
She clung to him, unable to do anything other than ride the waves of pleasure that were starting to swamp her. Even the smallest movement of his body within hers seemed to trigger them, tremor after tremor, wave after wave until, the tiny movements became not so much a pleasure but a refined form of torture.
She reached for him, digging her fingers into his forearms as she tried to pull him closer, deeper within her. The suddenness with which he acceded to her hungry demand shocked her at first, robbing her of breath as he drove powerfully within her, but then almost immediately she was moving with him, responding to him, opening to him.
This time her orgasm was deeper, longer, and so intense that it flooded her eyes with tears, bewildering her with the complexity of the emotions it released, leaving her shakily and emotionally needy, wanting to cling to Marcus and to be reassured by him that he felt the same way about her as she did about him. At the same time, defensively agitated, she wanted to deny what she was feeling because it made her feel so afraid of her own vulnerability.
‘We shouldn’t be doing this,’ she told Marcus.
‘Why not?’ he demanded. ‘We’re both free agents, aren’t we?’
When Polly made no response, his grip on her arms tightened.
‘Polly…’ he began warningly, but Polly had had enough. She had seen him earlier with Suzi, after all. Suzi, whom Briony so much wanted him to marry. Briony! Dear God, what on earth was she going to think if she…?
With appalling clarity Polly could see the minefield she had dropped herself into, the emptiness of the life that now lay ahead of her, the deceit, the lies she would have to tell. And for what? A brief taste of heaven which was going to leave her with an aftertaste of the worst kind of hell. How was she going to endure seeing Marcus with Suzi now, after what she herself had just experienced in his arms? How was she ever going to be able to look at Marcus again without thinking…remembering…?
‘Polly?’ Marcus was demanding.
Resolutely she closed her eyes, holding her body stiff and wooden as she heard him curse under his breath and then release her. The moment he did she turned away from him. She didn’t want to stay here in bed with him but her exhausted body was refusing to allow her to move. Tiredly she closed her eyes. Behind her she could feel Marcus’s warmth.
Why the hell hadn’t she answered him when he had said that they were both free agents? Was there, after all, something between her and Bernstein? Could she be in love with the other man? Had she been using Marcus simply to assuage the desire she felt for him? Marcus was tempted to wake her up and demand to know the truth.
Polly gave a small sob in her sleep. Frowning, Marcus leaned over her. In the dim light he could see her tears and his anger melted. He loved her so much, had loved her for so long, virtually from the very first moment he had seen her—but she had been Richard’s then and he had forced down his own feelings for her. He had strong views about loyalty and about commitment, and Richard had been his cousin and there had been a close bond between them.
But it hadn’t been either loyalty or concern for his cousin that had prompted his suggestion to Richard that they keep Fraser House and that he finance its upkeep whilst Richard and Polly—or, more realistically, Polly acted as its housekeeper and his hostess. Just the sight of her small, too worried, too pale face as she had shivered with cold in that wretched flat of theirs had been enough to make him feel positively murderous towards his impractical cousin. Polly had so obviously needed cherishing and cosseting, and had she been his wife and not carrying his cousin’s baby…
But at least he had managed to bring some measure of comfort and order to her life—hers and Briony’s.
Briony…Marcus blinked fiercely as he remembered Briony’s birth. At the hospital they had mistaken him for Polly’s husband, allowing him into the delivery room with her.
She had clung so hard to his arm during the most intense of her labour pains that at one point his arm had gone heavy and his fingers had gone white and numb.
He had been so afraid for her and so angry with Richard, demanding that the doctor do something to ease her pain, but Polly herself had shaken her head, insisting that she was all right, so absorbed in what she was doing that she’d hardly seemed to know he was there. And then had come the wonderful, miraculous moment of Briony’s birth.
Over the years he had often asked himself whether it was because he had witnessed her arrival into the world that Briony meant so much to him, as though she were his own child.
Perhaps, but that could not explain Briony’s own closeness to him; the bond which they shared was a very close one and very special to him.
After Richard’s death he had begun to allow himself to hope, just a little, but that hope had died a swift, merciless death when Polly herself had made it plain on more than one occasion that Richard was the only man she ever could or ever would love.
He had tried to conceal his own feelings by adopting a manner of cool indifference towards her, but sometimes just being with her was so painful for him that he had to distance himself from her, which was the main reason he had decided to move out of Fraser House.
Perhaps at his age his emotions ought to be different, less easily aroused, his need for her tamed and subdued, but if anything the years had only increased his love for her, and with it the sense of anger and helplessness he felt at the waste of her womanhood and his love. But those feelings were nothing to what he was experiencing now at the thought that she might have given another man what she had resolutely always insisted she could never give any man other than Richard—her love.
When he
thought of all the times he had held himself back, pulled himself back from telling her how he felt, and of all the times when she had vehemently insisted that there was no room in her life for a man who was not Richard, all the years she had clung so fiercely to her love for her late husband…and yet now, within days of meeting Phil Bernstein…
Marcus thought he had accustomed himself to the fact that Polly was so wedded to her widowhood and her memories of her late husband that all she would ever see him as was Richard’s cousin.
His eyes felt gritty with tension and lack of sleep. In two hours’ time he needed to leave for the airport. The last thing he felt like doing was walking away from Polly right now, absenting himself from her life and leaving the field wide open to Phil Bernstein, knowing the other man would be bombarding her with flattery and attention.
Just what was the attraction the other man possessed that he did not? What was it that had made Polly turn to Phil and not to him? Pushing back the bedclothes, Marcus got out of bed. Polly was deeply asleep and he knew that if he stayed where he was the temptation to wake her up and demand to know what made Bernstein so attractive to her and not him would be too much for him.
Wasn’t it the female sex that was supposed to need emotional reassurance and close physical contact after sex and not his own? But, when it came to the feelings of longing and insecurity that loving someone who did not return one’s feelings provoked, Marcus suspected that there wasn’t that much difference between the sexes.
He might as well get dressed and leave for the airport, he told himself; there was nothing to be gained by staying where he was, waking Polly and provoking an argument with her which he knew would result in her defending her feelings for Phil Bernstein.
Half an hour later, as he gently closed the bedroom door behind him so as not to waken Polly, he couldn’t help reflecting that another man—a man who did not care as deeply as he did—might have taken a rather macho pleasure in knowing that, whilst Bernstein might be the man Polly had fallen in love with, he was the one she had gone to bed with and given herself to…But then it wasn’t Polly’s body he wanted; it was her love, her commitment, herself—all of her.
Two hours later, when the early-morning call Marcus had booked for himself came through from the reception desk, it woke Polly, who reached automatically for the telephone receiver, listening as the voice on the other end told her brightly, ‘This is your early-morning call, Mr Fraser. You wanted to be woken in time to catch your flight to China.’
China…Marcus had gone to China? Numbly Polly replaced the receiver.
Blurred images of the evening’s events replayed themselves over and over again inside her head whilst she shivered in a mixture of despair and disbelief.
How could she have behaved in such a way; cheapened herself like that? Oh, she knew that the modern view was that a woman had as much right to freedom of sexual expression as a man, but she was not a modern woman, not in that respect, and it hurt her to know that she had betrayed herself so badly and allowed her emotions, her love to override her normal caution.
Now Marcus must know just how she felt about him. No wonder he had left without so much as waking her up to say goodbye. In just a few self-indulgent, sex-crazed hours she had demolished all the years of careful defences and subterfuge she had hidden her secret behind.
Would he tell Suzi? Would they laugh about it…her…together?
Not even Briony, her own daughter, had known how she felt about Marcus.
‘I’ve found the perfect woman for Uncle Marcus,’ she had trilled happily, never realising that there was and always had been only one woman Polly could bear to see sharing Marcus’s life and his bed: herself.
And now everything she had done to prevent Marcus from guessing the truth had been undermined by her own foolish actions.
Oh, no, there was no need for her to question just why Marcus had walked out on her whilst she lay asleep. No need to ask at all.
CHAPTER SEVEN
AFTER ordering a room-service breakfast, which she’d felt totally unable to eat, Polly was packing for her return journey when the bedroom telephone rang.
Drearily she picked up the receiver, knowing that the only person whose voice she really wanted to hear was Marcus’s and, of course, there was no way that Marcus was going to ring her.
‘Polly?’
‘Oh, Phil, I was just about to leave,’ she answered.
‘Good; that means I’ve caught you just in time,’ Phil told her warmly, adding before she could say anything, ‘There’s something I want to discuss with you—a proposition I want to put to you.’
‘A proposition?’ Polly queried uncertainly.
‘Mmm…of a strictly business nature,’ Phil assured her, before adding teasingly, ‘Not that I would be averse to propositioning you personally if I thought there was any chance you would respond! No, this is strictly business, Polly…but I’ll tell you about it when you get here. Just come straight up to the suite; I’ll be waiting.’
‘Phil—’ Polly began, but it was too late. Phil had already replaced his receiver.
Frowning, Polly wondered just what it was he wanted to discuss with her. Beneath that teasing manner he adopted Phil was an extremely shrewd businessman. Was he, perhaps, despite what had already been said, thinking of expanding his operation into the British countryside? Did he have his sights on Fraser House? If so, then it was really Marcus he needed to talk with more than her.
She was very tempted to ignore Phil’s phone call and go straight back to Fraser House, where she could lick her wounds in private and brood on the folly of her own behaviour, but it had never been Polly’s style to give in to self-pity, and besides, if Phil was contemplating making a bid for Fraser House then she owed it to herself to be informed of what was happening.
‘Come straight up to the suite’, Phi had told her, and Polly did exactly that, knocking a little tentatively on the door, which was opened almost immediately by Phil, wearing a pair of jeans and a casual shirt and looking more than a little preoccupied.
‘Polly. Good. You came…Come on in.’ He gestured to the table in the centre of the suite’s sitting room which was loaded with an appetising assortment of fresh fruit and other brunch dishes.
‘Help yourself to something to eat,’ he offered, going over to the table himself and starting to pour two cups of coffee.
‘Let’s sit down,’ he added, waiting until she had done so before saying semi-quizzically, ‘Polly, let’s quit beating about the bush. The deal’s going through and I’ve bought out the hotel’s current owners but I can’t be here on hand to run a place like this the way it needs to be run, not with my other business interests. This hotel needs a top-class manager, someone who knows the hotel business inside out; someone who combines that experience and intelligence with flair and an intuitive knowledge of what the guests want.’
‘If you’re asking me to recommend someone…’ Polly began doubtfully. She had assumed without knowing how or why that Suzi must be in line for taking over the management of the hotel, but, from the tone of Phil’s conversation, it appeared that she had been wrong.
Just how wrong she was about to discover, as Phil shook his head and told her dryly, ‘Honey, I don’t need any recommendations. I already know exactly who I want to run this place. The only person I want to run this place.’
‘Oh?’ Polly looked blankly at him. If he knew, then why was he talking to her like this, unless it was just his way of using her as a sounding board to confirm his own decision?
‘Yes.’ Phil turned to look directly at her as he told her simply, ‘I want you Polly; no one else will do. I’ve seen what you’ve done at Fraser House and I’ve watched you…the way you work, the way you relate to the guests, the way you are. You’re the best…and the best is what I want for this place.’
Polly was speechless. This was the last thing she had expected.
‘Phil…Phil, hang on…’ Polly protested a little shakily. ‘You can’t rea
lly mean this. It’s—’
‘I do mean it,’ Phil insisted.
‘I…I’m flattered that you should think of me,’ Polly began, ‘but, Phil, I can’t. There’s Fraser House, for one thing, and—’
‘Fraser House?’ Phil interrupted her, with a small disparaging shrug. ‘You’ve done wonders with it, Polly, but you’re capable of doing so much more, especially now that Briony is off your hands and at college. Come on, admit it; you’d love the challenge of somewhere like this, of something you can really get your teeth into. You must want to spread your wings, Polly, and what, after all, is there to keep you tied to Fraser House now?’
What indeed? Polly reflected inwardly. Briony had gone and soon Marcus would be following her. All she would be left with would be her memories and her ridiculous, foolish hopes and dreams, her aching what-might-have-beens, whilst not so very far away Marcus began his new life with his new wife and no doubt his new family.
How would she feel seeing them walking into Fraser House as a close-knit loving unit? Marcus and Suzi bringing their children for lunch. Suzi basking in Marcus’s love whilst she was forced to stand on the sidelines and watch.
Yes. If she stayed she would have to endure scenes like that, and the kind of pain that…But if she left she would be leaving behind so many precious memories—memories of Briony’s childhood, of the difficult years when she and Marcus had built up the business together, years when Marcus had been there working alongside her, helping her, being there for Briony. So many memories, all of them bittersweet and edged with the pain of her loving him, yes, but yet, in so many ways, oh, so precious.
She could take her memories with her, of course, but deep down inside Polly knew that she didn’t want to leave Fraser House. She was happy there; it was her home as well as her business. Deplorable though it sounded if she admitted it, she wasn’t particularly ambitious. Oh, she liked to know she had done a good job, she loved knowing her guests felt happy and comfortable, but the thought of moving on to something bigger and supposedly better held very little real appeal for her. And this hotel, stunning though it was, was too big, too impersonal, too state-of-the-art for her tastes.