by Penny Jordan
‘Yes, Holly was just saying how much she would love to see you wearing a pair of those tight-knitted pantaloon things they used to wear in those days,’ she heard Patsy saying outrageously as she batted her eyelashes up into Robert’s impassive face.
At any other time, with any other man, Holly doubted if she would have felt anything other than a very mild irritation at her friend’s comment, but here and now and with this man the feelings that convulsed drove the hot colour burningly up under her pale skin and forced her to bite down hard on the fierce denial she ached to utter, knowing that such a passionate disclaimer would do more harm than good, that indifference and amusement were her best form of defence.
The others were all looking at her now, as well they might be, Holly recognised. Never had she wished more strongly for her brother’s presence. He was more than a match for Patsy, who was not the sort to be deliberately malicious, but who was nevertheless heedless sometimes of other people’s feelings.
At her side, John gave her a wry look and murmured, ‘I’d no idea you entertained fantasies of Regency rakes...’
‘I don’t,’ Holly denied shortly. ‘You know Patsy...’
At any other time, she would have been amused by the way that Angela had now manoeuvred herself to Robert’s other side, so that he had a woman clinging to either arm. He was carrying off the situation very well, she had to admit, neither appearing to be embarrassed nor flattered by the attention he was receiving.
Gerald muttered something about his purchase of the Hall and Robert replied that there was a good deal of work to be done inside the house.
‘And outside it as well. The gardens need completely redesigning and replanting.’
‘Well, if you want some expert advice there, you can’t do any better than to enlist Holly’s help,’ Gerald told him enthusiastically. ‘The garden at the farm has to be seen to be believed. She’s truly worked miracles with it.’
‘Yes, it’s a real credit not just to her eye for colour and line but to her hard work as well,’ John chimed in while Holly writhed inwardly in embarrassment, aching to be able to escape.
‘Oh, a cottage garden’s one thing,’ Angela announced disdainfully, ‘but the Hall calls for something quite different and someone who’s been properly trained and has the appropriate qualifications. An amateur, no matter how enthusiastic, is hardly the right sort of person to deal with such an important project.’
Which put her well and truly in her place, Holly reflected to herself.
Suddenly, no matter what it might cost her in the terms of the kind of speculation people might make, she knew she couldn’t stay any longer.
Turning to John, she said brittly, ‘Would you mind if we left, John?’
‘Of course not. Is it the headache?’ he asked her solicitously. ‘You wait here. I’ll go and get your cloak.’
Before she could protest that she would accompany him, he had gone, leaving her with no option but to wait where she was.
‘Any firm news yet about when Paul will be back?’ Gerald asked her while she waited for John to return.
She shook her head. ‘No, although he will definitely be back in time for the new perfume launch.’
As he turned from her to Robert, she heard Gerald saying proudly, ‘I expect you’ll have heard how well Holly’s business is doing.’
‘Yes, indeed.’
The enigmatic look that accompanied the words made her tense.
At his side Angela interjected nastily, ‘Well, of course, it’s all just a fad, isn’t it—this natural green thing? And, while Holly and Paul are to be congratulated for jumping on the bandwagon so quickly, no one really believes that it’s a fashion that’s going to last...’
There was a small sharp silence, and although she was inwardly seething Holly contented herself with giving the older woman a coolly thoughtful look, not wanting to precipitate any unpleasantness by crisply telling her just why her views were not only biased but also uninformed and blinkered.
She was just about to turn away and excuse herself to go in search of John, when to her astonishment Robert spoke, saying firmly, ‘I think you’re wrong, Angela, and, from what I’ve heard, far from jumping on any bandwagon, Holly’s been one of the market leaders in her field, and is to be congratulated on having the tenacity and the determination to follow through on her own principles instead of allowing herself to be swayed by other market forces. There aren’t many people these days who are prepared to put their personal beliefs before profits.’
‘There are more of us than you think,’ Holly corrected him, unable to remain silent, so strongly did she feel on this particular subject. ‘And a lot of us are women.’
Robert’s eyebrows rose.
‘A rather sexist remark.’
‘A statement based on fact,’ Holly corrected him. ‘Women are more in touch with their feelings than men—that is a fact; they are more aware of the dangers of further damage to our environment. It is, after all, women who bear and nurture each new generation, and who therefore have the strongest desire to protect it and its environment.’
‘I could take issue with you on that,’ Robert told her. ‘Men are equally protective of their young, albeit perhaps in a different way. After all, we are all of us on this planet together, male and female, rich and poor.’
Without realising how it had happened, Holly suddenly discovered that the two of them had become separated from the others and were standing alone, and surely Robert was standing far closer to her than he had been before. She had forgotten how tall he was, how masculine and powerful, and how fragile and female he had always made her feel.
A tiny shudder of self-loathing ripped through her as she fought down her instinctive impulse to move closer to him. Sickened by her self-betrayal, she deliberately forced herself to step back from him, tensing her spine in rejection of her own weakness.
As she turned her head, she saw John coming towards her, carrying her cloak.
Relief flooded through her. She was already starting to walk towards him when Robert stunned her by saying quietly, ‘Oh, and by the way, I should appreciate your advice on the gardens if you could spare the time to look over them.’
‘How are you feeling now?’ John was asking her anxiously, helping her on with her cloak as she battled in silence with her shock at Robert’s request for her help.
As John started to say goodbye to the others, Robert added, ‘I’ll be in touch...about the garden.’ And then John was ushering her away, solicitously putting his arm around her.
Later she reflected that she must have made conversation with John on the way home or at least responded normally enough to his comments because when he finally left her at her front door he seemed to be completely unaware of her turmoil and shock.
Once inside, once alone, once she was free of the necessity to keep up a front, she sank down in front of her sitting-room fire, her head in her hands, her whole body shaking with the release from tension.
Her entire body ached from the stress she had put on her muscles. She felt physically tired...physically battered almost, feverish and weak, like someone suffering from a physical disease.
She had recently had a gas fire installed in her sitting-room—less authentic than an open coal or wood-burning hearth, but easier to keep clean, and instantly warm and comforting, she reflected gratefully as she turned it on.
She was so cold inside, as though her stomach were filled with ice. She started to shiver, hugging her arms around her body, her brain acknowledging that what she was suffering was the fall out of the intense shock of seeing Robert, while her emotions tried frantically to reject that knowledge.
She didn’t want to be affected like this by him. She didn’t want to be dragged back into the past, to suffer again what she had suffered then. She wanted to forget he had ever existed...to forget that he had ever made her feel...
She swallowed hard, her throat sore and swollen with tension as she fought against remembering just how he h
ad made her feel, just how he had aroused within her such an intensity of emotional and physical responsiveness that even now, over ten years later, the memory of it was as fresh and sharp as though it had only been yesterday.
Even to think of him now was enough to make her muscles tense, her breasts ache, her body tremble...her mouth soften. If she closed her eyes now, it would be so easy to remember, to pretend... The totally unexpected sound of someone ringing her doorbell jerked her back to reality.
As she scrambled to her feet, wincing as she felt the pins and needles in her numb flesh, she realised how long she had been sitting motionless in front of the fire, lost in her memories of the past.
The hall was in darkness. She switched on the lights that were on the wall, the ceilings being too low to support central lights. The exposed beams in the walls had a soft sheen in the light, the peachy tinged plasterwork giving off a mellow warmth.
Paul had told her she was mad when she had informed him that she planned to carpet her hall in the same soft peach as the walls, but she had ignored his comments and the effect was both warm and welcoming.
A couple of thick rugs strategically placed took the brunt of the wear plus any grime accidentally walked in by visitors and the good-quality underlay recommended by the carpet suppliers softened the uncomfortable hardness of the concrete damp-proof course that lay directly beneath it.
As she opened the heavy oak door, she remembered guiltily how often Paul had told her to get a safety-chain, but it was already too late. The door was open and the man standing outside with his back to the door was turning towards her.
She had recognised him long before she saw his face. After all, hadn’t she once known his body so intimately that there was no angle at which she might view it and not instantly recognise it?
‘Robert...’
Her voice shook as she said his name.
‘I had to come this way home after dropping Angela off, and I thought I’d call in and see how you were feeling. I take it your friend isn’t still here?’
Her friend? It took her a few seconds to realise that he meant John and then another few to realise that out of self-protection if nothing else she ought to have seized on the chance Robert was offering her and told him that he was, but by then it was too late—she was already shaking her head, already stepping back into the hallway so that he could enter the house.
‘I...I was just about to go to bed,’ she told him untruthfully once he was inside, and then immediately flushed an uncomfortable bright red as he looked directly at her.
For a pulsebeat of time she was vividly reminded of a time when to be alone with him like this would have instantly meant that she was in his arms, pressing her body eagerly against his, whispering to him how much she loved him, how much she wanted him.
‘I shan’t keep you. As I said, I was driving past, and I saw that the light was on downstairs. I remembered the migraines you used to get, and how you used to say that having your scalp massaged was always a far more effective cure than pain-killers.’
Holly stared at him. Was she actually hearing what she thought she had heard? It was true that she had always claimed that massage worked better than pain-killers, but only because of the pleasure it gave her to have him touch her, and the thought that he could actually be suggesting that he had called round here to offer her that kind of panacea now, after the way they had parted...when they hadn’t seen one another in over a decade, seemed so implausible as to make her think she must be imagining having heard it.
When she finally mustered the self-control to be able to look at him, he was watching her questioningly as though waiting for some kind of response. A wave of giddy recklessness swept over her, a sharp, splintering desire to encourage the delusion which seemed to have possessed her, a dangerous impulse to allow herself to believe what she had heard, to whisper to him that there was nothing she wanted more than to feel his hands on her skin; a warm, wanton feminine urge to allow herself to drift along on whatever roller-coaster of fate had brought him to her door tonight, but then thankfully sanity intervened.
‘It isn’t a migraine,’ she told him, recognising both the panic in her own voice and the longing, and hoping that he wouldn’t recognise them as well.
For a woman of thirty she was behaving in a ridiculously immature fashion. Heavens, how many times in the last decade had she had to deal with unwanted male attentions and had dealt with them with far more aplomb and sophistication than she was showing now? But then of course she had known what she was confronting. Here... She closed her eyes. She must be going mad...must be imagining what Robert had said...must be a victim of her own idiocy.
He could not have said, could not have implied...
‘And as I said, I was just on my way to bed,’ she reiterated shakily, trying now to do what she should have done before, which was to get him out of the house before she betrayed herself completely.
The way he was watching her made her tremble.
‘It’s all right, Holly, I can take a hint.’
He was turning towards the door but then abruptly he turned back so that she almost cannoned into him.
‘You’re sure you’re feeling all right?’
‘Yes. Yes, I’m feeling fine.’ She was practically gabbling in her desperate need to get him out of her home.
‘Why are you trembling so much, then?’
The soft question stilled her agitated movements.
‘I’m...I’m not,’ she lied protestingly.
‘Yes—yes, you are. I can feel it..’
The shock of suddenly finding herself in his arms, of suddenly being held lightly against his body, the wholly unexpected intimacy of what was happening defeated her ability to reason. She could only stand there while he held her, her eyes blank with shock and disbelief as his hands ran gently down her arms and then up over her back, and his voice murmured softly against her ear.
‘I shouldn’t be here, should I, Holly? You want to go to bed, and you want me to leave.’
He was still holding her. His head turned, his mouth touching hers in the gentle, altruistic kiss of a friend, a brother. She was transfixed with disbelief, with the pain of thinking that she must be imagining what was happening.
Beneath the light caress of his lips hers trembled. She could feel the deep burning sensation of pain growing inside her.
Once before he had kissed her like this, on her seventeenth birthday... Her first kiss. The kiss of an older male for a friend’s younger sister. Then she had clung to him in mindless ecstasy, silently pleading for more...now...
She started to move away and instantly he stopped her, one hand lifting to her head, sliding into her hair, holding her a prisoner, not by force, but by the sensual stroke of his hand, the slow, sure caress of his mouth.
It was as though the whole world was caving in around her, burying her in some subterranean place from which there was no escape from the burden of agonising pleasure he was enforcing on her. How well her senses remembered that pleasure, how easily they responded to it, recognising it, yearning for it...
She could feel her self-control starting to slide away from her, knew that in another handful of seconds she would be clinging to him, silently begging for him.
A shudder racked through her as she pulled herself away from him.
‘You had no right to do that,’ she stormed furiously at him, too distressed to hide what she was feeling.
‘No right at all,’ she heard him agreeing quietly. ‘No right, but every need. I’ve often wondered what manner of woman you’d turn into, Holly.’ His mouth twisted in a smile she found it hard to understand.
‘I’ve never realised until now what a poor thing my imagination is. John—is he your lover?’
She reacted instinctively, shaking her head in immediate and angry denial and then recognising too late the danger she was courting as she added huskily, ‘My private life has nothing to do with you.’
‘No? We were once lovers,’ he reminded
her.
The shock of hearing him put it into words was like a knife in her flesh, the pain instant and deathly.
‘That...that was over ten years ago,’ she managed to stammer.
‘Eleven years and ten months,’ he told her as he opened the door. He was halfway through it when he paused and said coolly, ‘You won’t forget your promise to come and look over the gardens, will you?’
Her promise? She had not given any promises. She opened her mouth to say as much, but it was too late, he had gone, closing the door behind him.
For a long time she simply stayed where she was, trying to make sense of what had happened.
For him to call round at all was so unexpected, so...so...at odds with the behaviour she had expected from him. But then, to have touched her, to have kissed her, to have implied that he... That he what? That he found her desirable as a woman? Was she going mad? How could he possibly find her desirable now when he had told her quite categorically and very cruelly that he neither wanted nor loved her.
What was he trying to do? It must be some kind of sick joke. Holly couldn’t think of any other explanation for his behaviour. Perhaps he had become the kind of man whose vanity would not allow him to permit any woman who had once loved him to cease doing so? There were such men, or so she had heard. But vanity had never been one of his weaknesses...especially not that kind of vanity. But what other explanation could there be? Men like him simply did not behave the way he had behaved, they did not walk into a woman’s house and hold her in their arms, touching and kissing her, intimating that they wanted her—at least not unless they were very, very sure that their advances would be welcomed.
Robert was a sophisticated, mature man, and no doubt used to playing sophisticated sexual games, but what on earth had motivated him to start playing them with her? He must surely know that he was the last person she would ever want back in her life...the last man she would ever allow herself to become involved with. If he wanted casual sex, she suspected that Angela Standard would have been only too pleased to oblige him, and if he thought for one moment that because she had once been vulnerable and stupid enough to love him that he could simply walk back into her life and she was going to fall into his arms all over again, then he could damn well think again.