by Penny Jordan
At eight o’clock when the phone rang, Holly stared at it with a frown, as though unsure of why it was ringing. She hesitated before reaching for the receiver, tensing as she half expected to hear Robert’s voice on the other end of the line.
Instead, to her surprise, the voice she heard belonged to Paul.
‘Hi. Guess where I am,’ he demanded.
‘I’ve no idea. Where are you?’
‘Here, at home. Look, come round and bring a bottle of champagne with you. You and I have got something to celebrate.’
‘You’re home? But—’
‘Come round,’ Paul interrupted her. ‘I’ll tell you everything then.’
It was typical of her brother to arrive home early without any warning and then demand her presence, but for once Holly was too glad to have him back to object.
Paul had a small but very luxurious apartment several miles away in a large Victorian house which had been converted into a complex of apartments, with all the owners having access to a communal conservatory, the gardens, and a sports complex which included an indoor swimming-pool.
Having stopped on the way to buy a bottle of champagne, Holly waited for the automatic gates surrounding the property to open and admit her car, and then drove carefully up the drive to park in one of the spaces reserved for non-residents.
The apartments were guarded by a very sophisticated security system. She had to wait in the Gothic panelled hallway for Paul to authorise her entry, using the discreetly concealed lift to take her up to his apartment on the top floor.
The first thing she noticed when he opened the door was his tan; unlike her, he had not inherited their mother’s fair skin, and his stay in South America had not only bleached his hair, but darkened his skin to mahogany. The second thing she noticed, just as she had finished telling him with sisterly candour that he looked like an advert for an American beach-boy, was that he wasn’t alone.
Robert was standing in front of the sitting-room window, staring out into the night.
‘Great, you’ve got the champagne,’ Paul announced, ignoring her sarcastic comment. Shock hit her, paralysing her. What was Robert doing here?
‘I met Robert at the airport. He was just seeing Angela off and he very kindly offered me a lift back. I’ve got some terrific news, Holly.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me you were coming home? I would have picked you up,’ Holly asked him automatically.
‘There wasn’t time. When I heard I’d got the licences through, I went out to the airport to book a seat home and found that I could have a cancellation on a flight leaving within a couple of hours. There wasn’t time for me to do anything more than rush back to my hotel, pack my stuff and get myself back to the airport.
‘I’ve invited Robert to have supper with us. No point in going back to eat alone...’
‘Supper? But...’
‘Don’t panic. I’ve ordered it from the restaurant.’
In addition to its other facilities, the complex also had a small restaurant for the use of residents and their guests, and although room service was not really provided Paul had somehow or other managed to charm his way around the catering staff.
‘You haven’t gone vegetarian, have you?’ he asked her now, grinning at her.
It was a sore point between them. Holly very rarely ate meat of any kind, but she did enjoy fish, even while her conscience urged her to try seriously to convert to a wholly vegetarian diet.
‘I just hope you haven’t ordered me steak,’ she told him.
She was still trying to get over the shock of Robert’s presence. Had she known that he was going to be here, no way would she have come over.
‘They’ll be half an hour or so yet with supper, so let’s open that champagne, shall we? Here you are, Rob, you do it. I’ll get the glasses.’
Paul had disappeared in the direction of the kitchen, leaving Holly alone with Robert. She kept as much distance as she could between them, stiffening as she heard him saying quietly, ‘This wasn’t my idea, Holly, but that doesn’t matter—’ he stopped speaking as Paul walked back into the room.
The champagne was poured, and Paul handed Holly her glass.
‘A toast,’ he declared. ‘To the rain forest and the iugyar plant.’
‘The...’ Holly paused, her glass halfway to her lips. ‘...the iugyar plant? What on earth’s that?’
‘It’s a plant that grows in the rain forest. The native tribespeople use it on their skins. It heals sores and bites, and it also seems to have a rejuvenating effect on damaged skin. They make a kind of paste from the stems and leaves which they apply to the skin. I tried it myself. It certainly seems to work. Just think, Holly,’ he carried on, excitement sharpening his voice, ‘a natural plant remedy that actually slows down the ageing process.’
‘You said it healed bites and wounds,’ Holly reminded him dubiously.
‘So it does, but I also said that it heals them remarkably quickly. If the majority of the ageing process is caused by sun damage, then might not it heal that equally effectively? It obviously possesses something that makes the skin repair itself far faster than normal...something that accel-erates the healing and thus the growth process of the skin.
‘Of course we won’t know how effective it might be until we’ve researched it properly.’
‘And done clinical tests,’ Holly reminded him. ‘Tests which must not be carried out on animals.’
‘I know. I know,’ Paul soothed. ‘But think of the potential if it can be proved that it actually does slow down the ageing process. Oh, come on, show a little bit more enthusiasm,’ he begged her.
‘I...I don’t know what to say,’ Holly admitted. ‘On the face of it it sounds a wonderful discovery...’
‘She’s always like this,’ Paul complained wryly to Robert. ‘Show Holly a glimpse of paradise, and she’d be saying that it was only a mirage. I’ve never known such a doubting Thomas. You never used to be like this,’ he told her.
‘I’ve got the business to think of,’ Holly told him unsteadily. ‘We can’t afford to take chances. We don’t know anything about this plant as yet...about what adverse effects it may have.’
‘Oh, Holly. You’re always looking for problems...always so dubious and distrustful,’ Paul told her. ‘Always so cautious.’
‘One of us has to be,’ Holly pointed out, and then added, ‘I’m sorry, Paul. Of course I’m thrilled and excited, but...’
‘But what?’
‘Well, nothing. It’s just that it seems almost too good to be true,’ she told him helplessly.
A knock on the door interrupted them. Paul went to answer it and came back pushing a covered dinner-wagon.
‘Supper is served,’ he announced, ‘and out of respect to you, Holly, my love, none of us is eating steak. In fact Robert seems to share your squeamishness—he opted for fish as well. I’ve ordered salmon for you, by the way. Hope that’s OK?’
‘Lovely,’ Holly assured him.
‘Well, finish your champagne, then,’ Paul instructed her. ‘I’ve opened wine to have with our meal.’
Obediently Holly gulped down the fizzing liquid, gasping a little at the shock of the cold bubbles against the back of her throat and inside her stomach.
As she headed for Paul’s small dining-room, she recognised that she felt distinctly unsteady on her feet.
Robert obviously thought so as well, because as she reached the door he moved unobtrusively to her side, touching her arm lightly as though gently supporting her.
Paul was too busy pouring the wine to see what was going on. A fine tremor of sensation ran through Holly’s body, as her senses reacted to Robert’s proximity. She wanted to move away from him, to snap at him to take his arm away, but at the same time she was agonisingly conscious of an equally strong and completely conflicting desire to let go of the past and with it all her antagonism and to simply stand there, secure in the knowledge that it was unnecessary for her to say or do anything; that he would instin
ctively know her needs, her fears, her—
She shivered suddenly, causing Paul, who had turned round, to frown and exclaim, ‘You’re cold! I’ll put the heating on. Come and sit down.’
Shakily she did so, wanting to sit as far away from Robert as she could and yet somehow discovering that she was actually sitting between the two men.
As old friends, it was natural that they had a lot of catching up to do and yet Robert made a point of making sure that she was included in the conversation.
In any other circumstances, had she been meeting him for the first time, she knew that she would have found him not just a physically compelling and very attractive man, but that she would also have been impressed both by his intellect and his respect for hers.
He hadn’t always been like that. As a younger man he had been inclined, like Paul, to overrule her judgements, to take a lordly, masculine and very, very annoying attitude towards any attempt on her part to claim equal intelligence and awareness of current situations.
Now, without any of the obsequious fawning that made her feel so uncomfortable and which she always felt was both false and hypocritical, he made it plain that he was genuinely interested in her opinions, her comments.
It was Paul who asked him why he had come back, and if he intended to run his business from the Hall.
‘Yes, in answer to your second question,’ he responded promptly and then hesitated before adding, ‘As for your first...well, let’s just say that I’d always had in mind to come back and that suddenly I felt that I didn’t want to delay returning any longer.’
‘Mm...well, it’s going to be quite a change, giving up New York to live here.’
‘A welcome one, I can assure you,’ Robert told him quietly.
‘So you’ve no more ambitions...no more mountains to climb?’ Paul asked.
Robert shook his head.
‘I do have ambitions...or at least one very important one. I hear you’re launching a new perfume range this autumn,’ he commented, turning to Holly.
‘Yes, we are.’
‘The launch is a bit of a sore point so far as Holly is concerned,’ Paul told him. ‘She’s very anti any kind of media attention, but, as I’ve told her, to succeed in the market place these days you have to bring your product to the attention of that market—’
‘Maybe so, but I object to having to be forced into an over-glamourised and totally false image that can be held up to the general public as the way a successful businesswoman of the nineties should look,’ Holly interrupted him.
‘It’s what people expect. It’s a very well-known fact that people like to look up to others, to be a little in awe of them,’ said Robert.
‘Tell her, Robert. In fact, I think that perhaps you and I ought to get together, you know. We could do with some good management consultancy. We’re expanding so rapidly now—’
‘Perhaps we’re expanding too rapidly,’ Holly interjected, but Paul had stopped listening to her and was enthusiastically outlining to Robert his dreams of taking the company on to international fame.
‘I’m not sure that’s a good idea,’ Robert told him. ‘There’s a very definite move away from over-expansion. Too many companies that were highly successful in their own field have found themselves in deep financial difficulties because of over-expansion. These days people who are market leaders are beginning to recognise that staying small can sometimes be best, especially with a concern like yours, when you are very, very reliant on your reputation and good name.’
While they argued, Holly sipped her wine. She had not been able to eat all her salmon, even though she had been hungry. The taut muscles of her stomach had made it impossible for her to relax, perhaps if she drank her wine that might help.
She smothered a yawn and then another, and then finally, knowing that if she didn’t make a move soon she was all too likely to fall asleep where she was, she turned to Paul and apologised.
‘I’m going to have to go, Paul. I’m sorry, but I’m rather tired.’
‘OK, I’ll go and ring for a taxi for you.’
‘A taxi? But I’ve got my car.’
‘And you’ve also had a full glass of champagne and three glasses of wine,’ Paul told her. ‘You can’t drive, Holly, even if you could manage to stay awake at the wheel, it wouldn’t be safe.’
‘No...I suppose you’re right,’ she acknowl-edged reluctantly.
‘There’s no need for Holly to get a taxi,’ she heard Robert saying. ‘I’ve got my car here and I have to go past the farm on my way home. I could drop her off.’
‘Oh, no. I couldn’t put you to that trouble,’ Holly protested, shocked out of her lethargic state as she suddenly realised her danger.
‘It’s no trouble,’ Robert assured her. ‘And besides, at this time on a Saturday evening you could have quite a long wait for a cab.’
‘Robert’s right,’ Paul agreed, grinning a little as he looked at her heavy eyes. ‘You’ll have to watch her, Rob. She’ll probably fall asleep on you. What have you been doing, Holly? Too many heavy dates, I suppose,’ he teased her.
‘No, too many hours spent at my desk trying to keep on top of the paperwork,’ Holly corrected him.
‘Sorry, sis,’ Paul apologised, leaning forward to ruffle her hair and kiss her. ‘That’s my fault, I know, but things should get a lot easier now that I’m back.’
As they all stood up and walked towards the hall he shook hands with Robert and said genially, ‘Thanks for the lift home, Rob, and we’ll have to get together some time soon.’
Already it was too late for her to protest that she would prefer to make her own way home, Holly recognised as Paul unlocked the door for them and Robert waited politely for her to precede him through it.
In the lift they stood together in silence, neither of them looking at the other. She didn’t want this, Holly recognised nervously. She didn’t want to be on her own with Robert...didn’t want the vulnerability, the awareness, the re-awakening of everything that she had fought so hard to put behind her.
CHAPTER EIGHT
SOMEWHERE between Paul’s flat and her own home, Holly fell instantly and deeply asleep, and, while she wasn’t aware of the problems this was likely to cause, Robert most certainly was.
He glanced at her once briefly, thinking that her averted profile and her silence were merely a further indication of her unwillingness to have anything to do with him, a well-deserved reminder that he had long ago lost any rights he might have had to her friendship...or her love, and then some sixth sense alerted him to the fact that she had simply fallen asleep.
He slowed down so that he could check, exhaling slowly, like someone trying to control the betraying rapidity of his accelerated breathing, as he looked into her sleeping face.
If anything, she was more desirable now, more womanly, more...more everything than she had been as a girl, or was it simply that he, as a man and not a boy, was just more aware of all that she was, all that she would have to give to the man lucky enough to be loved by her?
Once he could have been that man, but he had turned his back on her, had told himself that he was too young, that they were both too young—that they would forget one another and get on with their lives. He had had such plans...plans he had made long before that summer when he had looked at Paul’s kid sister and felt his body tighten with desire and his heart with emotion.
His father had suffered ill health all his life and had retired early on a very meagre pension, and his mother had constantly warned Robert of the fate that would befall him if he ever fell into the same trap as his father. He had loved his father with an almost parental protectiveness, aching sometimes for the look of helpless defeat he could see in his eyes and yet at the same time he had sworn that he would never be like him.
Both his parents were now dead, and as an adult he fully recognised that his father might have been quite content with his garden, his friends, his quiet life, if his mother had also been able to accept it; he had also co
me to learn that wealth, ambition, success did not necessarily make a man happy, that there were other things in life, other needs, other appetites which, if starved, could turn worldly success into an arid desert where a man could die of thirst.
He had known almost from the time he left her that he would never truly be able to forget Holly, and after less than six months away from her he had ached so intensely for her that he had often woken up in the night with his face wet with tears and the echoes of her name still resounding through his mind as he called despairingly for her.
But then he had been too young, too selfish, too obsessed by the lessons he had absorbed from his parents’ marriage to be prepared to admit that he had made a mistake, and then, by the time he was ready to admit it, it had been too late. He had told himself that Holly would have found someone else, that some other man with more sense and more wisdom than him would have seen all that he had deliberately refused to see.
For that reason he had not kept in touch with anyone from the village, and then he had started reading small items in the British financial Press about Holly’s success. He had made the decision to move back to Britain. He had told himself that he was acting like a fool...that he was chasing a dream which was long dead...that he could well find out that the Holly he remembered no longer existed.
And then he had seen her, spoken to her and he had known immediately that nothing had changed—not for him, anyway, and all the emotions he had dammed up for so long had swamped him. That first time he had seen her on the lane the temptation then to take hold of her and to go on holding her had been so strong, he had had to physically restrain himself from reaching out to her.
He loved her, but did she, could she love him? Physically she was aware of him, desired him—he knew that. But was that desire merely an ancient long shadow cast by the past, or was it something he could build on, fan into real life...into real love? As he studied her sleeping face, he ached inside to stop the car and take hold of her, to whisper her name against her mouth, to tell her how much he loved her, how much he wanted her, so much that already his body— He cursed under his breath, reminding himself that he was closer now to forty than to twenty and that the turbulent, uncontrollable reaction of his body to the merest thought of touching her was the reaction of an immature boy, not an adult man.