by Penny Jordan
‘Yes, it is—at least the launch of the new range is down to him but it was my idea to produce it; we’ve invested an awful lot of time and money in it...’
‘Well, if it makes other women smell as good as you, then I should say from a man’s point of view that you’ve definitely got a winner on your hands.’
Even as she was smiling and accepting his compliment Holly was conscious of an inner dismay, an inner sense of anxiety in case the situation somehow got out of her control. She liked John and she didn’t want to lose his friendship, but sexually... She gave a tiny shudder, uncomfortably aware that for some reason seeing Robert this afternoon had heightened and underlined her lack of desire for John to such an extent that she couldn’t contemplate him even touching her without experiencing a sharp sense of rejection.
Damn Robert, damn him, she cursed inwardly. Why did he have to come back here? Why?
John parked his car in the market square, empty of stalls and already half full of cars, most of whose occupants were no doubt headed for the same destination.
The assembly rooms were illuminated by discreet floodlights which showed off the newly cleaned stone and the elegance of the Georgian windows and the fanlight above the door.
Holly and John were warmly welcomed by their local MP and her husband. She was on the charity committee and Holly knew her quite well—a woman closer to her mother’s age than her own, who was very well thought of locally and who worked hard for the community.
‘Holly, I love your dress!’ she exclaimed admiringly, adding, ‘I’d like to have a word with you later, if I may. We’re hoping to organise a Christmas fair to raise some more money, and we shall be looking to local businesses for whatever help they can give.’
Smilingly Holly assured her that they would be pleased to help before walking through into the anteroom to leave her cloak.
The recital was to last two hours with a short break halfway through. Holly and John’s seats were close to the front. As they were being directed towards them, a familiar male figure standing talking with another group caught her eye.
She froze immediately, causing John to bump into her and to reach instinctively for her arm as he did so.
Inside Holly could feel herself beginning to tremble. She felt sick and angry at the same time, idiotically close to tears of anger and resentment as she focused on the tall dinner-suit-clad figure of Robert.
He was standing with his back to her, a small dark-haired woman in an expensive designer dress clinging to his side. Holly recognised her immediately as the widow of a local entrepreneur. Although she was in her early forties, she was still a very sensually attractive woman. Too much so, Holly had heard. Apparently she wasn’t very well liked by her own sex.
‘It’s that “helpless little me” act of hers that gets me,’ one of Holly’s friends had admitted through gritted teeth at a party where Angela Standard had appropriated her husband. ‘Especially when I know she’s about as helpless as a praying mantis. Everyone knows that she only married Harry Standard for his money. I mean he was close to fifty when they married and she was barely twenty-five...’
Then Holly had taken her friend’s comments with a pinch of salt, but now she was suddenly so searingly and shockingly jealous that she could easily have crossed the room and torn that pale, clinging hand from Robert’s dark-suited arm.
The intensity of her own emotions made her shake inside with sick awareness of how inappropriate and dangerous her feelings were.
She turned away blindly, cannoning straight into John.
‘Hey...are you OK?’
There was concern and warmth in his voice as he held her. Her eyes blurred with anguished tears, her throat filling with them so that she couldn’t speak, shaking her head as she tried to insist that there was nothing wrong. Blindly she pulled away from him, ignoring the curious and speculative look the girl showing them to their seats was giving her.
She felt hot and cold at the same time, sick with an anger that was directed against herself for her idiotic response to the sight of Robert with someone else.
As she sat down in her seat, she tried to tell herself that it was the unexpected shock of seeing him that was responsible for what she was feeling; that if she had anticipated that he might be here and prepared herself for it accordingly she would never have reacted in the way she had; but the arguments failed to convince her, and throughout the first half of the recital she was barely aware of the glorious sounds filling the room, so deeply engrossed was she in her own painful thoughts.
When at the interval John suggested going to the bar for a drink, she shook her head. The last thing she wanted to do was suffer seeing Robert again. She had no idea how on earth she was going to get through the supper following the recital, and wondered if she could possibly plead the excuse of not feeling well in order to escape early.
The thought of having to come face to face with Robert again made her feel sick with tension. Every time she closed her eyes, trying to get control of herself, she was tormented by vivid flashing images of Robert with Angela clinging possessively to his arm.
‘If you want a drink, don’t let me stop you from having one,’ she told John huskily.
‘No, it’s OK. Look, are you sure you’re feeling all right? If you’d like to leave...’
Holly bit down hard on her bottom lip, her guilt increasing with every second. She was behaving like a child...a fool. So Robert was here escorting another woman. She had known for over ten years that he had never loved her the way she had him—had known that and had, or so she thought, come to accept it, so why was she feeling like this now?
During the decade of his absence she had never allowed herself to think about him, to dwell on what he might or might not be doing, and she had thought that the past and her love for him were safely behind her.
People were beginning to return to their seats. The interval was over and with it her opportunity to slip discreetly away.
Throughout the entire second half of the recital panic clawed damagingly at her stomach. She sat tensely on the edge of her seat, sickly wondering how many of the other guests here tonight would remember the love she had once had for Robert. After all, she had never made any attempt to hide it, and many of them were her contemporaries, people with whom she had grown up, people who had known both her and Robert well during their shared youth.
Her close friends had come to accept the fact that she appeared uninterested in men and marriage, putting it down to the fact that the success of her business occupied her time and emotions so fully that there was simply no room in her life for anything or anyone else.
Some of them, she knew, envied her. They told her so openly, contrasting their lives as wives and mothers with what they perceived to be the freedom and excitement of hers, not appearing to realise the discipline her work demanded, the burdens it placed upon her, the responsibilities she had to carry.
But what about those others who would be here tonight, people who knew her less well and were less inclined to see her through the rose-tinted glasses of friendship? Might not they remember the old Holly, the immature, shy girl who so openly and so disastrously adored her lover, who had been too shocked, too distraught when he left her to make any attempt to conceal what she was feeling?
Her closest friends had tried to console her then, telling her that she would soon forget him, coaxing her to try to put the past behind her, and once her pride had fought its way through the anguish that had almost destroyed her she had allowed them to think that they had been right.
She had taught herself not to flinch when people mentioned Robert’s name; and even Paul, who was perhaps closer to her than anyone else, had no idea how much the destruction of her dreams still had the power to make her ache inside, even though these days she could acknowledge how foolish and impossible those dreams had been, how flimsy the foundations which had supported them.
But now the one thing she had never allowed herself to contemplate occurring had
occurred... Robert was back.
But why? When he had left, when he told her about his intention of going to Harvard and from there to climbing the corporate ladder and estab-lishing his own business, he had made it plain to her that he saw his future in the ruling cities of the world—that he saw himself as a man who lived internationally, who called no one place his home, who had neither the need nor the desire for roots.
‘But I love you,’ Holly had wept, and he had looked at her then, a long, disquieting look that had ripped the scales of self-deceit from her eyes and made her confront the truth.
‘You said you loved me,’ had been her whispered response to the silent look he gave. ‘You said you loved me...’
‘Yes, I know,’ he had acknowledged quietly. ‘But you must understand...I have other needs, other plans.’ Such damning, cruel words.
She had cried then, bitter tears of self-betrayal and loss, begging him to retract them, but he had refused.
‘You’re eighteen, Holly, with your whole life in front of you. You’re an intelligent girl. You can’t honestly want to tie yourself down now to married life...to children...to the kind of financial and intellectual poverty we’d both suffer if we married now.’
He had hurt her so much and some part of her had believed that she deserved that hurt for being stupid enough to allow herself to believe that when he said he loved her he meant it. She had been merely a brief sexual diversion, that was all—an idiotic, adoring, virginal child with whom he could amuse himself for the brief length of one short summer while he waited for his real life to begin.
She shuddered inwardly, her body writhing in tormented self-disgust as she remembered the way she had behaved...not just when she had learned that he was leaving her, but long, long before that, when she had given herself to him with abandonment and joy, when she had trembled beneath his touch, crying shocked tears of tormented pleasure at the first intimate possession of his body, when she had cried out beneath its masculine heat and thrust, imploring him, begging him to touch her, hold her, fill her with the hard pulse of his male flesh.
There had been no holding back, no self-protective awareness that she was giving him too much, that she might later regret being so open about her feelings for him, her emotional and physical need of him.
That physical abandonment to her desire for him shamed her now as much as her emotional abandonment had done. Even the thought of it was enough to make her tense her muscles, to make her flesh cry out in silent anguished protest at its own weakness. She had sworn then that never, ever again would she allow herself to repeat that kind of self-betrayal.
‘Holly, are you all right?’
She realised abruptly that the recital had come to an end, that people were moving in their seats, the room filling with the muted sound of their conversations. Chairs scraped back on the wooden floor, the noise painful to her ears. She felt suddenly as though her senses had been scraped raw, as though she was suffering through them in the same way that one suffered through a raw patch of tender skin.
She badly wanted to shake her head and to tell John that she felt too ill to stay for the supper reception, but her pride wouldn’t let her. How would it look if she left now? How many people would put two and two together and make four...would guess that it was because of Robert’s presence here that she had fled?
‘I’m fine,’ she lied. ‘Just a bit of a headache, that’s all.’
She stood up shakily, an outwardly composed blonde woman who was completely unaware of the attention she was attracting or the reason for it.
Her companion was, though, and he wished for the umpteenth time that he could find a way of breaking down her barriers, of making her respond to him as a man and not just as a friend. She always wore an outer cloak of cool sophistication and calm that was almost immediately belied by the sombreness of her expression, the sadness that always seemed to lurk in her eyes. In so many ways she fascinated and drew him, and not just because of the way she looked. She was always so selfcontained, so immaculate, so perfectly poised and turned out that his need to see her with her mouth swollen after love, her hair tangled by his fingers, her eyes languorous and heavy, her breathing quickened, sharp and desirous, was sometimes so great that he ached to reach out and take hold of her. But he knew how unwelcome his sexual attentions would be, how little she wanted him in that kind of way.
There were women who lacked a definite sex-drive and men as well, but for all her coolness, her remoteness he didn’t think that Holly was one of them; she reminded him somehow of a child who was burned and who was now afraid of fire.
A group of people were approaching them. John touched Holly’s arm to draw her attention to them.
Holly turned her head and immediately tensed. Their local MP was coming towards them, smiling warmly at them, and behind her, along with two or three other people, was Robert...and of course Angela.
‘Holly. There you are. You must remember Robert? Yes, of course you do. He and Paul were good friends, weren’t they? You’ll have heard of course that he’s bought the Hall?
‘I’m trying to persuade him to let us use the minstrel’s gallery there for a performance by the local madrigal society. It would be such a wonderful setting.’
‘Not right now, it wouldn’t,’ Holly heard Robert saying drily. ‘The place is full of woodworm and just about to be sprayed against its spread.’
Everyone was laughing. Angela clung possessively to Robert’s arm. Didn’t she realise how ridiculous she looked—a woman of her age? Even if she was a very, very attractive and feminine forty-odd. Stop it, Holly warned herself. Stop it at once.
She forced her lips to frame a smile, the kind of smile she had so painstakingly learned to put on the public face those occasions when she had to appear as one of the new successful women of the nineties. It was a calm, cool smile, the kind of smile that said yes, she knew she was successful, and that yes, she knew she was attractive, and that she had the self-confidence in herself to carry off both these assets without the need to flaunt them like banners of war in the face of those who were less fortunate.
She could see Angela glancing dismissively at her, her own smile a definite cat-that-got-the-cream smile, a sensual, satisfied smile that said quite positively, ‘Yes, I’m all woman and he’s all man—and mine.’
Holly deliberately avoided looking directly at Robert, saying as calmly as she could, ‘Hello, Robert.’
‘Holly...’
No mention of their meeting earlier in the day, no comments about her success...her metamorphosis from shy teenager into successful woman of the world; but then what had she expected—that he would take one look at her and immediately announce that he had always regretted leaving her, that not a single day had passed without him wanting her?
As she touched John lightly on the arm, and excused them both to their hostess, fibbing that she was starving and longing to get to the buffet, she derided herself inwardly for her stupidity.
It was over, finished, and had been for over a decade. There was no point, no purpose in her continuing to torment herself like this...none whatsoever. So why did she?
CHAPTER THREE
WHY indeed?
Holly was, she discovered ten minutes later when she and John walked into the room set aside for supper, still fighting her reaction to that brief meeting. As she spotted Patsy and Gerald on the other side of the room, Patsy turned her head and saw them, hurrying over to speak to her.
Why on earth had she ever thought the neckline of her own dress might be considered too low? Holly wondered with a brief resurgence of her normal sense of humour as she glanced briefly at the outrageously décolleté dress that Patsy was wearing. The chiffon skirt of the dress was so fine that it was almost possible to see right through it.
‘That’s how they wore them in those days,’ Patsy told her defensively after she had admired Holly’s outfit and then drawn her attention to her own. ‘They used to damp down their skirts so that they would cling to t
heir bodies.’
‘I know,’ Holly agreed drily. ‘I read Georgette Heyer as well, you know.’
Patsy giggled. ‘Mm...poor Gerald, I don’t think he’d have looked too good in a pair of tight pantaloons, do you? Come to think of it, not many of the men here would.’ The two women had drawn slightly apart from the men. Holly had her back to them, and so she was caught off guard, when Patsy suddenly whispered in her ear, ‘Mind you, Robert would. He’s the epitome of a Regency hero, don’t you think? All tough maleness...dark-haired and brooding, don’t you agree?’
She really couldn’t help it; even before her conscious mind knew what she was doing she had turned her head and had focused on the small group attracting Patsy’s attention.
Robert had his back to her and was apparently deeply engrossed in conversation with Gerald, but, as though he knew that she was watching him, he turned round and looked at her.
Her heart seemed to turn a somersault and then stop beating altogether. She was vaguely aware of the hum of conversation around her, a noise like distant bees, numbing her thought processes so that her whole world was narrowed down to this one man, this one heartbeat in time.
An odd feeling of being drawn physically into danger, of being powerless to stop herself from walking towards him overwhelmed her, further weakening her. She focused on his eyes, the pupils of her own dilating, her breath quickening, her whole body tensing.
And then abruptly the spell was broken as Patsy stepped in between them, pouting flirtatiously up at Robert as she exclaimed, ‘Robert! How lovely to see you again. Holly and I were just saying that of all the men here you’re the only one who could possibly do justice to our fantasies of a sexy Regency rake.’
She was smiling provocatively at him, her hand on his sleeve, smoothing away an invisible piece of thread, either deliberately ignoring or oblivious to the killing looks she was receiving from Angela. Knowing Patsy, Holly suspected that it was the former. She glanced at Gerald. He was watching his wife with an expression that was a cross between resignation and irritation. Poor man, but if he hadn’t learned by now that Patsy would never change, that flirtation was as necessary to her as breathing, then he never would.