by Penny Jordan
‘Holly.’ He breathed her name against her lips as he whispered, ‘There is still this, isn’t there?’ And then he was kissing her—no, not kissing her, what he was doing was subtly seducing her senses, by caressing her mouth with his, by stroking it over and over again with the warm pressure of his lips until hers softened and clung, until she was dizzy with the strength of the hot, aching pleasure that was beginning to burn through her.
His hands still cupped her face, holding her in gentle bondage, his fingers stroking her skin, seeking and finding the vulnerable places on her skull, the hollow behind her ears, the tender nape of her neck. A shudder tormented her, her mouth parting in an instinctive protest, and then too late she recognised that that unvoiced protest could all too easily have been interpreted as a plea for the increased pressure of his mouth, for the slow stroke of his tongue, for the sudden movement that brought his body into closer contact with hers.
The sound of denial and pain she made deep in her throat somehow become transmuted into one of need and longing. Robert’s hands left her face to gather her body close to his, and weakly, stupidly, she let him, her flesh as soft and pliable as water-weed, allowing him to wrap her so closely to him that her heartbeat took its rhythm from his.
‘Holly, Holly...’
Was he actually sighing her name or was it just the sound of the grass as it moved in the breeze? She felt dizzy, disorientated and totally out of control.
It was that knowledge that tensed her, checking her response, turning her body’s acceptance into rejection as she stiffened in Robert’s arms, dragging her mouth away from his.
‘Holly.’
‘No...no. I don’t want this,’ she told him frantically, pulling away from him. ‘Let me go, Robert. This isn’t what I came here for—and if you think for one moment that I’d be stupid enough to let you use me now the way you did before... If you think—’
‘You responded to me,’ he told her softly. ‘You—’
She had to stop this and now before it was too late and she was totally humiliated.
‘I’m a woman, not a girl,’ she interrupted him. ‘Of course I responded to you...just as I would have responded to any attractive man in the same circumstances. We’re both adults now, Robert. We both understand the force of sexual desire.’
She had to turn away from him in case he challenged her, in case he guessed that she was lying. She had never in her life responded to another man like this and she suspected that she never would. But sexual desire was all that it was. Her body had remembered that he had once been its lover and it had been to that memory, to the past, that it had responded—not the man he was now.
‘I think it’s time I went home,’ she told him grittily. ‘And if you really want my advice on your garden, then I suggest you do as Angela recommended and call in the experts. Or why not give Angela herself a call? I’m sure she’d be delighted to come round and—share your lunch.’
She had turned away from him and set off across the lawn before she remembered that she had no car, but as she hesitated he caught up with her and told her quietly, ‘I’m sorry if I upset you. I only wanted—’
He stopped speaking and shook his head.
‘It doesn’t matter. I’ll drive you home.’ He saw her face and gave her a sardonic look. ‘It’s all right. You’ll be perfectly safe. If that’s what you want...’
Holly couldn’t allow it to go unchallenged. She forced herself to give him a long, cool look.
‘Yes, that is what I want,’ she told him emphatically, and she told herself that it was true and that the sensations, the feeling, the desire and the urgency she had experienced in his arms had simply been by-products of the past...ancient echoes of something that was long dead and could safely be forgotten—that had to be forgotten.
She had no idea why Robert was pursuing her like this, or what he really wanted from her, but what she did know was that she didn’t trust him, could not trust him; that it would be safer, wiser to make it plain to him right now that she did not want him in her life. After all, he wasn’t going to have any problems finding someone who would be only too happy to—
To what? To become his lover? Was that what he had in mind for her? After all, he had lived in New York. He must have witnessed at first hand the effect of living promiscuously. Who safer to have sex with than the girl he had first known as a virgin? She smiled bitterly to herself. Even safer than he imagined, since there hadn’t been anyone else since then.
CHAPTER SEVEN
HOLLY had a date that evening with John. She prepared for it reluctantly, chastising herself for her lack of enthusiasm. Had she wanted to marry, John would have made an ideal husband. He had already indicated that he could quite easily fall in love with her. He respected her, and he would never try to dominate her. He would be a devoted husband and father, and she suspected that he could quite possibly be an adoring and sensual lover. And so why, given that despite everything that she had said to Robert she did still want a family, even if she had buried that need away deep inside herself, why was she turning John away, rejecting him instead of encouraging him? Why, whenever he took her in his arms, did she freeze and turn her head away? Why, as with every other man she had dated, had she found herself totally unable to respond to him as a man?
Was it because Robert had hurt her, or was it because she was afraid that no other man could touch her emotions as he had done—that no other man could arouse and delight her...that no other man could ever take her to such exquisite heights of ecstasy? She gave a small shudder. Was that why this afternoon she had not resisted him sooner—why she had simply stood there while he had held her, touched her, kissed her?
Was she really so much of a fool?
She and John, together with three other couples, had been invited to dinner by one of John’s colleagues, a senior surgeon at the hospital.
Holly had met their host and hostess before and vaguely knew the other guests, but she was rather disconcerted when they arrived at the large modern house on the outskirts of town to be treated as though she were some kind of celebrity.
Over dinner the male guests vied for her attention, complimenting her on her business skills.
‘Most astute of you to have jumped so quickly on to this environmental bandwagon,’ one of the men commented half enviously.
Holly compressed her lips, and told him coolly that, far from jumping on any bandwagons, she considered it every adult’s duty and responsibility to protect the environment for those generations yet to come.
The man looked rather disconcerted and put out. He was somewhere in his mid-fifties, balding with a florid countenance and a waistline that looked as though it was a victim of too many stodgy business dinners. His wife was thin and slightly nervy. Holly saw her tense whenever he spoke, as though she was half afraid of him.
In contrast one of the other couples, who must have been about the same age, were completely different, both of them well-informed and open-minded. The wife had recently embarked on an adult university course, and kept them all amused by describing the traumas of going back to full-time education in the same classroom as teenagers.
‘On the whole they’re very tolerant,’ she told them, ‘and very kind.’
Holly and John were the first couple to leave, Holly explaining that she had an early start planned in the morning and that she intended to spend the day working in her garden.
Her head had begun to ache. She put it down to the red wine she had drunk with her meal. She felt on edge and tense, unable to relax properly. She told herself it was because of her irritation with Norman Simpson and his inability to accept that they all had a responsibility to do something positive towards protecting the environment, but she knew that the root cause of her malaise went much deeper than a surface irritation with a man too wilfully blind to accept that others were changing where he was not.
Guiltily aware that she had not been the best of companions, she invited John in for a nightcap, apologising for
having dragged him away early.
‘I was ready to leave myself,’ he told her as he followed her into the kitchen.
She had just made them both mugs of coffee and sat down opposite him when he said gently, ‘Some-thing’s wrong, Holly, and I think I can guess what, or rather who is causing it.’
She stared at him, and then shrugged.
‘Oh, I know it was stupid to allow myself to get annoyed with Norman Simpson, but that kind of attitude—’
‘I wasn’t referring to Norman Simpson, idiot though he undoubtedly is. No, the problem goes much deeper than that, doesn’t it? It’s Robert, isn’t it?’
Holly was too shocked and dismayed to conceal her reaction. She had never expected John to show such perception, such intuition.
Her eyes widened, the pupils darkening, the colour running up under her skin, betraying her even before she started to stammer.
‘No—No...of course it isn’t. Why should he—?’
‘Holly, there’s no need to pretend with me,’ John told her gently. ‘And even if if I hadn’t heard on the grapevine that you and he were once very close, the way you reacted to the mention of his name just now...the way his presence affected you at the assembly rooms... Do you still love him?’
‘No—no of course I don’t,’ Holly repudiated violently.
John gave her a thoughtful, almost sad look. She found that it was difficult for her to meet his eyes, that she was looking away from him almost as though she had something to hide.
She picked up her coffee-mug, wrapping her hands round it, gulping the fragrant liquid.
‘But physically you still want him, is that it?’
She almost dropped the mug of coffee, the sudden involuntary movement of her body betraying her agitation.
‘No, of course I—’ She stopped, shaking her head, and told him huskily, ‘John, please, this isn’t something I want to discuss with you—with anyone.’
‘It’s all right,’ he told her soothingly. ‘I’m not trying to pry and I’m certainly not sitting in judgement. It is quite a common phenomenon, you know, Holly. One of the heaviest burdens our society has imposed on women is that of believing that love is synonymous with desire.
‘I suppose he was your first lover...’
She stood up, thoroughly agitated. ‘John, please...’
‘I’m sorry. I’m your friend, Holly, I care about you. I want to help you, not hurt you. Who knows, maybe the best thing you could do would be to go to bed with him? You might just find that the reality is by no means as attractive as your memories.’ He had finished his coffee and now he stood up. ‘Of course, that’s a man’s view, a man’s solution; women think and feel differently, but perhaps the only way for you to be free of him is for you to confront your physical desire for him instead of running away from it. One thing is certain; until you do, you’ll never be free to admit another man into your life.’
Holly was still sitting down, her head bowed, her face averted from him, but he hadn’t finished.
‘I’m sorry if I’ve spoken out of turn, or hurt you in any way, but I hate seeing you like this. Tonight, half the time you weren’t even with the rest of us. For your own sake you must find a way of either overcoming or accepting how you feel about him.’
He was heading for the door. Automatically Holly got up to go with him. At the front door, John paused and then turned towards her, kissing her briefly on the cheek. If he felt her instinctive recoil, he didn’t show it, simply smiling wryly at her before saying quietly, ‘It’s all right, Holly, I know. Even without him, you wouldn’t want me. At least not as a lover, but I hope that we’re good enough friends for you to understand how concerned I am about you. Think about what I’ve said, won’t you?’
Once he had gone, Holly went back to the kitchen and made herself a fresh mug of coffee.
She felt cold and sick inside, as shaky as though she had just suffered a trauma. She closed her eyes, biting on the inside of her bottom lip. If John had recognised how vulnerable she was to Robert, if he had guessed how much the past still haunted her, then how many other people, how many other friends were surreptitiously watching her...wait-ing...assessing?
She was becoming paranoid, she told herself. John had made a perceptive guess at how she felt and she had been foolish enough to confirm his suspicions, that was all.
But what she had said to John was true; she didn’t love Robert. How could she? How could any woman love a man she couldn’t trust—a man who had lied to her, who had deceived her, who had hurt her the way Robert had hurt her?
And as for this raw ache of physical need that tormented her so much... She swallowed past the tense muscles of her throat, feeling the pain of their rigid ache.
Perhaps John was right; perhaps the only way for her to overcome that torment was to—to what? Make love with Robert...to have sex with him?
The sensations churning her stomach made her tense her muscles in quick defensiveness. How could she do that? It was impossible. She would be far too afraid of losing control, of being once again the helpless girl who had been unable to stop herself from wanting him so intensely. She could remember even now how when he had held her, when he had kissed her, it had been like walking mindlessly into the deepest water, like feeling it close over her head and knowing she was drowning, helpless, and totally out of control. She couldn’t put herself through that kind of torment again, that kind of humiliation; she couldn’t allow herself to take that kind of risk.
But what if somehow or other she could maintain her self-control? What if she could prove both to herself and to Robert that he no longer had the power to touch her, to arouse her, to make her ache for him and want him to the point where nothing else mattered, where sanity and reality were unwanted barriers between them that she shed along with her clothes? If she could do that...if she could do that, wouldn’t she, as John had suggested, finally be free?
She sipped her coffee shakily, telling herself that it must be the effect of the red wine that was making her think such dangerous and challenging thoughts.
‘There’s still this,’ Robert had told her, and then he had kissed her, knowing that she would respond, knowing that she...
Shivering with nervous tension, she finished her coffee. It was gone one o’clock and she wanted to be up early in the morning. Mechanically she washed up and then went upstairs. Damn John for making her confront issues she would much rather have left undisturbed.
* * *
FOLLOWING HER date with John, Holly had one of the busiest weeks she could remember. There never seemed to be a minute for her to draw breath, never mind anything else, and yet in the evening every time the phone rang she found her stomach muscles tensing until she had answered the call and assured herself that it wasn’t Robert on the other end of the line. There was no reason why he should ring her, she told herself, and yet at night she dreamed of him...dreamed that he was pursuing her while she fled through a growing tangle of undergrowth that quickly became darker and thicker, until what she actually wanted to do was not to run from him but to turn to him.
‘You’re losing weight,’ Alice remarked, studying her. ‘You don’t eat enough.’
‘Correction, I don’t have enough time to eat,’ Holly told her ruefully. ‘The sooner Paul gets back, the better...’
‘Mm...he won’t be able to delay much longer, will he? There’s the perfume launch...’
‘Don’t remind me,’ Holly groaned. She had had a phone call from Elaine to discuss the media interviews she had organised for her, and the PR executive was still trying to coax her up to London for an image-polishing session.
‘Why don’t you go?’ Alice urged her. ‘Just think, a wardrobe full of new clothes and the chance to visit a top hair and make-up stylist.’
‘Ten years ago I might have been tempted,’ Holly told her. ‘But now the thought of a lot of high-fashion stuff hanging unworn in my wardrobe seems such a waste...especially when I know that I’m going to spend most of my fr
ee time over the autumn and winter working in the garden in an old sweater of Paul’s, a pair of jeans and my wellingtons.’
Alice laughed and then told her, ‘I saw the most fabulous velour catsuits featured in a fashion mag the other day. Think of the effect you’d create on the local social scene, wearing one of them, and with your figure you could—’
‘Don’t,’ Holly begged her. ‘I’d probably be dropped from every guest list for fifty miles around...’ She paused and then added with a grin, ‘Perhaps I should try it.’
They both laughed and then Alice shook her head and warned her, ‘You wait until Paul gets back. He’ll back up Elaine and between the two of them—’
‘Between the two of them they are not getting me into any velour catsuit,’ Holly told her firmly.
‘Shorts, then,’ Alice teased her. ‘They’re very big this season as well.’
‘Not on me, they’re not going to be,’ Holly assured her, then asked, ‘Have you seen that estimate for those recyclable containers?’
Another week passed; she saw Robert only once, walking down the street towards her when she had been doing her shopping. He saw her and raised his hand, hurrying up to her with a smile.
Panic made her turn the other way and cross the street, pretending she hadn’t seen or heard him.
Afterwards she was furious with herself for behaving so stupidly. When she got home the phone was ringing. She picked up the receiver and heard Robert saying her name.
Without saying a word, she slammed down the receiver and then stood ignoring its persistent ring. Why was he doing this to her? Surely no sane man would go to such lengths simply to reactivate an old love-affair—if that was what he wanted. His behaviour seemed so illogical.
Summer was virtually over. She had wanted to spend the weekend in the garden, but she had too much work to do. Instead, she spent it inside, at her desk, forgoing lunch and then supper as she tried to catch up with the backlog of work.