Best Man To Wed?. PENNY JORDAN

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      Poppy’s face burned hotly as he parked the car and opened his door. She wasn’t going to dignify his comments by responding to them... or defending herself, she told herself fiercely. Nor was she going to let James see how much they had hurt her.

      ‘It’s no wonder that Chris prefers to take a real woman to bed,’ James told her cruelly as he opened her door for her and waited like a gaoler for her to get out.

      I am a real woman, Poppy wanted to protest. Just as real as Sally, just as capable of giving love, of inciting passion and desire. But was she? Was there something inherently feminine and desirable in Sally that was missing from her? Was she somehow lacking in that vital ingredient that made a woman lovable and desirable?

      All the doubts about herself and her sexuality which had sprung into life with the news of Chris’s engagement to Sally and which she had rigorously and fiercely ignored and denied suddenly rose up inside her, a fully armed enemy force which James’s words had carelessly set free from the prison in which she had concealed them.

      Did he know about the fears, the insecurities about her sexuality that these last months had brought? Poppy wondered numbly as she waited for him to remove their cases from the boot of his car.

      How could he? It was impossible. He was simply trying to goad her, to hurt her, to provoke a reaction from her which would enable him to reinforce his condemnation of her as immature and foolish.

      Quite what his purpose was in doing this Poppy didn’t really know, had never really questioned. The enmity which had developed between them had grown alongside her love for Chris until she’d accepted it in the same way that she had accepted that love. But, despite the fact that Chris’s marriage had now forced her to accept that she had to find a way of severing herself from the past and finding another focus for her life, of accepting that Chris could never be a part of that life in the way she had so much hoped, it seemed that since the wedding James’s antagonism to her had simply increased.

      Why? Was he perhaps trying to force her into leaving the company? Was his desire to hurt her, to undermine her... to destroy her... to do with the business, or something more personal?

      James had locked the car and was waiting impatiently for her to join him.

      These next four days were going to be the longest of her life, Poppy reflected.

      ‘You can relax now; we’re airborne...’

      The sound of James’s voice in her ear made Poppy open her tightly closed eyes, her pent-up breath leaking in a relieved sigh from her lungs as she recognised the truth of what he was saying.

      Having shudderingly refused the window-seat that James had offered her, she had fastened her seat belt and willed herself not to give in to her childhood need to have a familiar hand to cling to as the plane had taxied down the runway and started to lift off.

      At least she had managed not to do that, although... Surreptitiously she slowly released the tense fingers she had not been able to stop herself from curling into the immaculate smoothness of James’s suit jacket—and not just James’s suit jacket, she acknowledged uncomfortably, but James’s very solidly muscled arm as well.

      His dry ‘Thank you, Poppy’ as she tried to remove her hand from his arm without him noticing what she had done made her flush guiltily and avoid looking at him.

      Did he never feel afraid? she wondered bitterly. Did nothing ever dent that iron self-control of his? Had no one ever made him ache... hurt ...yearn for her so much that nothing else ... noone else mattered?

      If anyone had, she had certainly never been aware of it, Poppy thought, but then she had been too involved in her own feelings to pay much attention to anyone else.

      As always, now that they were actually airborne, her fear left her, her body starting to relax...

      She refused the drink that the stewardess offered her and reached for her case and the work she had brought with her. James, she noticed, was already engrossed in some papers which he had removed from his briefcase. Well, at least whilst his attention was on them he wouldn’t be able to pick on her, she decided with relief.

      

      ‘Oh, James, just look at that view,’ Poppy breathed, unable to keep the awed delight from her voice as she stared through their hire-car window at the panorama spread before them.

      Transport had been arranged from the airport to the conference centre, but James had opted to make his own arrangements and independently hire a car, and Poppy had felt no trepidation at the thought of travelling with him, since she knew that not only was he a very safe driver but that he was also familiar with Italian roads.

      The thought of spending three hours shut up in a car with only him for company had been a different matter and until they had started to climb into the mountains she had resolutely occupied herself with her own thoughts rather than try to engage him in any conversation. Conversations with James, she had decided bitterly, always seemed to lead to the same place-to them arguing.

      Pride and her awareness of how unsympathetic and antagonistic towards her he was had prevented her from trying to defend herself by telling him that loving Chris had become a burden she desperately wanted to remove from her life.

      Had they had a different relationship, had they been closer, had she felt able to trust him, to turn to him for help, she might have been able to admit to him how much she longed to have someone to confide in, someone to whom she could talk about her feelings and her guilt at her own inability to leave behind a love she knew could only cause her pain. If things had been different ... if he had been different... if he had still been the same James he had been when she had been a child... But he wasn’t, and somewhere, somehow, the cousinly love that he had once felt for her had gone.

      Her determination not to give him any opportunity to criticise or condemn her whilst they were alone by keeping silent and aloof from him had disintegrated, though, as the road had started to wind through the ancient chain of mountains, taking them through small villages and dusty towns in whose Renaissance squares Poppy could very easily visualise the richly liveried rnen-at-arms who, along with the princes who had once commanded them, had fought over the prizes of the fertile plains below them.

      Today, the towns were tranquil, only their architecture a reminder of the past turbulence and turmoil, the scenery around them so spectacular that it bewitched Poppy into forgetting her vow of silence to exclaim over its beauty.

      James, of course, was bound to be less impressed, Poppy recognised; he had relatives in Tuscany and Rome and was no stranger to the beauty of Italy’s countryside, nor her architecture. And Poppy told herself that she ought not to feel rather like a child told off for a crime it hadn’t committed when James turned his head to look at her in response to her impulsive comment and said tautly, ‘But no doubt a view which you would enjoy far more if it was my brother you were seeing it with. Too bad that Chris doesn’t share your enthusiasm. He’s a modern city man, Poppy—something else he and Sally share, something else you and he don’t,’ he told her unkindly.

      Poppy said nothing, turning her head away so that James couldn’t see the quick, betraying sheen of tears filming her eyes.

      She knew, of course, that Chris did not share her love of history... of the past... of the awesomeness of nature, as James had just said, and as Chris himself was the first to cheerfully admit.

      Nor did she intend to defend herself СКАЧАТЬ