by Penny Jordan
All right, so he might have caught her off guard tonight, but from now on she was going to make it plain to him that she wasn’t interested in any kind of game-playing, and that the vulnerable girl she had once been had gone forever, destroyed by his cruelty.
But when she finally lay in bed she could still feel the warmth of his mouth on hers, still feel the betraying tingle of sensation that had torn through her, still feel the small betraying ache deep within her body as it cried out its need for him.
Panic gripped her. This couldn’t be happening. She must not let it happen. She wasn’t going to fall in love with him all over again. She must not fall in love with him all over again. Hadn’t she learned anything from the past...anything at all? Must she remind herself again of every pain he had inflicted on her...the agony she had suffered when he’d left her?
CHAPTER FOUR
IT WAS the low insistent burr of the bedside telephone that eventually woke Holly, bringing her to the shocking realisation that she had somehow slept right through her alarm and that it was now gone nine o’clock.
Oversleeping was something she did not do normally, but then suddenly nothing about her life was normal any more, and last night, after shutting the door behind Robert, she had somehow omitted to close the door of her mind against him as well so that her sleep had been punctuated by intensely vivid dreams of him, which had carried her back to the past, to a time when they had been lovers, when she had believed he loved her. Perhaps after all it was not so surprising then that, when she had eventually fallen into a dreamless sleep, that sleep had been unusually deep.
She reached for the telephone receiver, groggily saying her name.
‘Are you all right?’ she heard John asking her anxiously. ‘I’ve just rung your office and they said you weren’t in. After last night...’
Immediately she tensed. How did John know that Robert had come round to see her? How did...?
‘You looked so ill when we left the assembly rooms.’
Abruptly she realised that John had no idea that Robert had called round to see her and that he was in actual fact referring to her supposed illness during supper. Guilt and despair tensed her body as she reassured him shakily, ‘I’m fine, John. I overslept, that’s all.’
‘I had thought we might have lunch together,’ he told her.
‘No, I’m sorry, I can’t. I’ve got a planning meeting I can’t get out of.’
It was the truth and yet as she replaced the receiver she was conscious of a guilty feeling of relief that she had had the excuse. What was the matter with her? John was an intelligent and pleasant man, a man whose company and conversation she had always enjoyed, and yet here she was, relieved to have an excuse to turn down his invitation. Why?
Her reactions were so unfamiliar to her, so emotionally charged and unstable, and, like her mood-swings, more like those of a teenager than a mature woman.
She paused halfway out of bed, shivering a little. Oh, no, she wasn’t going back down that road again. She was over Robert. It was finished...finished. She had learned her lesson the hard way; all right, so she might still be vulnerable, susceptible to the past...but that was all it was. She was a different person now. A wiser, saner person, a woman and not a child, and as a woman she recognised the danger of allowing herself to be drawn into a situation which might ignite her emotional vulnerability to him.
She would give him a wide berth, make sure that she had as little contact with him as possible. After all, a person predisposed to some inherited and fatal disease did not go courting the very thing that would activate that disease, did they? It was better to be cautious now, to evade any kind of confrontation, any kind of challenge.
But why should Robert want to challenge her? Why should he want to have anything to do with her? He had made it plain enough how he felt about her when he left, hadn’t he?
But last night he had touched her...kissed her...implied—
Implied what? she demanded of herself aggressively as she forced her body into action and headed for her bathroom. What exactly was it that he had implied? That he found her sexually desirable?
How could he? He must have been playing some kind of cruel game with her, testing her. The best thing she could do was to ignore him completely, to pretend that he simply did not exist. He would soon tire of tormenting her then and turn his attentions to someone else.
And after all he wouldn’t have to look far to find someone far more responsive to him— Angela, for instance...
Fortunately her planning meeting wasn’t scheduled to begin until eleven o’clock but once she was showered she took the opportunity of ringing her PA to let her know she had been delayed.
‘What happened?’ Alice asked her anxiously. ‘John rang and he said that you hadn’t been at all well last night.’
‘A combination of too rich a diet of both music and food,’ Holly fibbed, ‘but I’m feeling fine now. I’ll be in in time for the planning meeting.’
She walked into her bedroom to replace the receiver, catching a glimpse of herself in the full-length mirror as she did so. With her wet and tousled hair and her face free of make-up, the image reflected back at her made her wrinkle her nose and pull a face at herself.
It had been a good summer and her skin was slightly tanned from working in the garden, although, being so fair-skinned, she was careful always to keep her face protected from its harmful rays.
On a not altogether understood impulse, she abruptly let go of her towel, studying her naked reflection in the mirror.
Her body was taut and firm, partially as a result of her gardening and partially as a result of the exercise class she forced herself to attend once a week—as much for its benefits as a means of reducing tension as for keeping her body well toned.
She wasn’t an exercise junkie, but believed that every individual owed it to themselves to take the best possible care they could of their health, and consequently her skin had the sheen and elasticity of someone who paid sensible attention to her diet, her hair and eyes glowing with good health. She was slim-hipped and narrow-waisted, with slender legs, and if she privately considered that her breasts were fuller than she would have liked she had grown adept at choosing clothes that minimised rather than maximised that fullness.
As a woman she looked upon her body much as a piece of equipment which in order to function properly needed to be properly maintained.
To be healthy and energetic were more important to her than how her body looked, and yet now almost inadvertently she found herself wondering how a man would view her. As a teenager, her flesh had been softer, rounder; Robert, she remembered, had loved to touch her, to stroke her skin with his fingertips, to kiss her—and not just on her lips. He had kissed her throat, her breasts, her belly, the narrow indentation of her waist, the vulnerable smooth flesh of her inner thighs, caressing her as though he loved the taste and the feel of her.
She had kissed him in turn, but more shyly, more hesitantly, always a little in awe of his body...of him.
She remembered how when he had wanted to caress her intimately with his mouth she had refused to let him, shocked by what he was suggesting, withdrawing from him in tense agitation. He had let her go, not pushing or coercing her; and then instead he had caressed her breasts, gently sucking on her nipples until she twisted against him, crying out in a swiftly spiralling coil of need.
Close at hand she could hear someone breathing erratically. She had closed her eyes, but now she opened them quickly, realising immediately that it was her own breathing she could hear. In the mirror she saw the way her breasts were rising and falling in quickened agitation, her nipples swollen and erect. A tiny shudder ran through her as she fought against her awareness of her body’s arousal, quickly turning away from the mirror image of her naked body, not wanting to acknowledge the flush of heat that stained her skin, the ache of need that pulsed through her.
Almost as though to compensate for what she was feeling, for her vulnerability as a wo
man, she dressed in a suit she had bought on impulse and which almost immediately she had recognised to be a mistake.
It was too severely cut for her slender frame, looking almost caricaturishly masculine on her, its dull beige colour unflattering to her very English skin.
Once downstairs, knowing she was running late, she made herself a healthy drink in the blender, mentally going through the points on the agenda for the planning meeting.
The sales department were pressing for more new products, but she intended to stand firmly by her decision not to market any product until she herself had complete faith in it—better to keep their product base small than to expand into lines which prejudiced the company’s stance on environmental and other issues, she had informed the sales department.
Hopefully once Paul returned from South America they could begin more detailed research on new products, using the information he had gathered there. The sales department were really Paul’s responsibility and tended to respond better to him than they did to her, even though right from the start she had insisted that where possible she wanted only sales people who shared her commitment to the environment.
All the sales force drove vehicles that ran on lead-free fuel and all of them were instructed to keep their business mileage as low as possible. To prove her point she had taken them all into the nearest city one busy Friday afternoon and made them stand at a large traffic intersection, breathing in the fumes from the traffic, reminding them as she did so that children and babies who were so much closer to those fumes were so much more at risk from the effects of them.
She arrived at the factory and office complex on the outskirts of town at half-past ten, deftly parking her car in the space allocated for it, before getting out and locking it.
The lease of the property had been expensive, and Paul had suggested that a new modern purpose-built unit on another industrial estate would be more economical. However, Holly had insisted on going ahead with the lease here because this development had involved the refurbishment of an old and neglected mill, running alongside a narrow, dank and uncared-for section of a local canal, and she had approved of the fact that here not only was an attempt being made to upgrade a very neglected eyesore, but also that the renovation of the mill would involve the recycling of material and the minimum usage of new materials; and her foresight had paid off in a variety of unexpected ways, not the least of which, according to their PR department, being the good Press her foresight had gained for them.
A small enclave of craftspeople had also sprung up in smaller units of the mill: an enterprising local couple had opened a health-food bar and restaurant with canal frontage, and now what had once been a contaminated stretch of water filled with the debris of modern-day living in the form of rusting cycles, washing machines and the like was now a calm stretch of living water whose far reeded banks were home to a variety of waterfowl.
An atrium had been created in the centre of the mill, and the boardroom overlooked this atrium, with Holly’s adjacent office overlooking the canal itself.
Alice, her PA, looked up with a smile as she walked in, her smile fading betrayingly as she saw what Holly was wearing.
‘I know. Not one of my better buys,’ Holly agreed with Alice’s silent condemnation as she took off her jacket. ‘I must admit, I never thought I’d ever become a victim of media hype. I seem to remember I bought this suit after reading a spate of articles on power-dressing. Anything important in the post?’
‘Nothing urgent,’ Alice told her. ‘There’s a rather interesting letter from a grower, asking if you’d be interested in organically grown lavender, and another from someone wanting to know if you’d be interested in buying her great-grandmother’s recipe for hand-cream.
‘We’ve also started to get back the results on the tests for the avocado face cream.’
‘And?’
‘And so far so good. Apparently everyone who tried it liked it and so far no one has reported any adverse reactions, although one woman has written that her husband liked the taste of it so much, he thought it should be turned into a body lotion.’
They both laughed, and then Alice offered, ‘Coffee?’
‘Mm...yes, please.’
It was a standing joke that, despite several attempts to do so, Holly had never been able to overcome her love of strong coffee. Every now and again she would switch to a decaffeinated variety, only to switch back again when her taste-buds craved the flavour of a more robust brew.
The planning meeting went off without any hitches, although Holly was wryly aware of the surreptitious glances her male colleagues kept giving her suit.
It certainly was making an impact on them, she acknowledged, although she wasn’t too clear exactly what the impact was until the meeting ended and as they were all filing out of the boardroom the head of their PR department hesitated, hanging back to ask her uncertainly, ‘That suit...you aren’t planning to wear it for the new launch, are you, Holly?’
Giving him a bland smile, she fibbed, ‘I don’t know. I might. Why?’
He coughed and looked embarrassed, shuffling from one foot to the other before saying uneasily, ‘Well, it’s just that I thought perhaps something a little softer...a different colour.’
Gravely telling him she would bear his comments in mind, Holly closed the boardroom door and then walked through into her own office.
‘Something wrong?’ Alice asked her, seeing her frown.
‘No, not really. I was just wondering if men would ever stop judging women by their appearance and when they would start valuing us as people, as human beings.’
Now it was Alice’s turn to frown, and Holly shook her head in resignation.
‘Oh, don’t pay any attention to me, Alice. I think I must be getting old.’
The phone rang as she was speaking. Alice answered it and then told her, ‘Elaine Harrison from London.’
Elaine Harrison was the executive from the PR agency whom the company employed to handle their public image—an innovation of Paul’s that Holly had never felt entirely comfortable with, even though she liked Elaine herself very much.
‘Put her through,’ she told Alice now, smiling warmly as she picked up her own receiver and said, ‘Elaine, hello.’
‘Hi. Look, I need to see you about the PR coverage for the new perfume. I know it’s short notice, but could I come up this afternoon? If you’re free we could discuss things over dinner tonight and then I could travel back to London in the morning.’
Holly hesitated, reaching for her diary, even though she knew already that her evening was free. The trouble was that she hated this aspect of her business so much, hated being in the public eye...and felt uncomfortable with the fact that the public associated the company so strongly with her.
She had complained to Elaine that she sometimes felt she was being turned into the token ordinary woman made good—that she sometimes felt as though she was little more than a doll to be paraded in front of the world as a symbol of a successful businesswoman who had still retained her femininity...her roots.
Elaine had sympathised, but pointed out that that was life, in the business world at least; that you would never get a male head of a company refusing to capitalise on any asset which would increase the profitability of that business.
‘Maybe not,’ Holly had agreed, adding with uncharacteristic bitterness, ‘But then you don’t get many male executives being interviewed all dressed up in designer clothing with their hair and faces tortured into some photographer’s idea of fashion and then portrayed as objects of wonder simply because they retain their masculinity while being successful.’
Elaine had laughed and then shaken her head, telling her drily, ‘Make the most of the way you look, Holly. You can’t imagine how many successful women I have to deal with who are virtually reduced to tears because they don’t fit into the accepted stereotype of what makes a woman feminine and desirable, women who are petrified that their plain ordinariness will reflect badly on their
business.
‘I know we’d all like to be judged on our abilities and not our looks, but unfortunately life isn’t like that and some of the worst offenders are other members of our own sex.’
‘I am free this evening,’ Holly told Elaine now, adding cautioningly, ‘But you know how I feel about the media circus.’
‘Yes, I know,’ Elaine agreed soothingly. ‘But this is an important step forward for you...for the company. I know how strongly you believe in your products, Holly. Surely it isn’t asking too much for you to tell the world that.’
If only it were as easy as that, Holly reflected wryly ten minutes later when she had replaced the receiver.
Elaine was very clever and persuasive, and it was after all her job to ensure that the new perfume range got the maximum media coverage.
Right from the start Holly had insisted that she did not want her products advertised by impossibly glamorous models whose image was all too likely to make other women feel inadequate and inferior, that she wanted her products to speak for themselves, but she hadn’t envisaged then that that would involve her in so much media work.
‘Elaine will be arriving later this afternoon,’ she told Alice now. ‘Could you book her a room at Sarle Manor, please, Alice? Oh, and you’d better book us a table for this evening at Alistair’s.’
Midway through the afternoon she received a totally unexpected phone call from her brother. The international line was surprisingly clear, and for some unexplained reason the sound of Paul’s cheerful voice brought a lump to Holly’s throat and a tiny ache to her heart. She and Paul, opposites in so many ways, were very close in others, and she had missed him this summer.