Best Man To Wed?. PENNY JORDAN

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      She hadn’t...but now she did, and with such heart-aching in tensity that she was almost swamped by her misery.

      Thank heavens it couldn’t be much further to the hotel, she thought. She closed her eyes and leaned back in her seat, keeping her face turned towards the window and averted from James.

      Four days, four times twenty-four hours... She gave an involuntary shudder. Please God, let them pass quickly, she prayed.

      ‘Poppy.’

      Sleepily Poppy opened her eyes and eased her aching body into a more comfortable position when she realised that the car had come to a halt and that they had reached their destination.

      The hotel, as she had read in the brochure, had originally been a medieval fortress built by an Italian prince, set high up in the mountains to guard his territories, but leading about it had not prepared her for the raw magnificence of a structure which seemed to be carved out of the rock itself, rising up steeply from the walled courtyard in which they were now parked.

      Even though she knew that the original fortress was now just a shell which had been used to house a far more modern and luxurious centre, Poppy felt awestruck and faintly intimidated by the sheer, stark rise of the stone edifice in front of her, which was softened only slightly by its mantle of ivy and roses.

      The palazzo had been used as a private home for several centuries, abandoned only when it had been commandeered by the German army during the Second World War, and Poppy knew that in addition to the luxurious state rooms which had now been adapted to form the hotel’s reception rooms the original Italian water garden had been restored to working order and restocked with the varieties of roses and other plants with which it would originally have been adorned.

      And yet, despite knowing just how luxurious the spa promised to be and being hit by the heat of the sunshine when she stepped out of the car, unable to remove her gaze from the sheer sweep of rock from which the outer wall of the fortress had been cut, Poppy couldn’t quite repress a small shiver.

      ‘Not the kind of place you’d want to be incarcerated in as a prisoner,’ she heard James saying behind her, his comment so exactly mirroring her own thoughts that she turned towards him in surprise as he added drily, ‘I wouldn’t give much for anyone’s chance of escaping from here.’

      ‘No.’ Poppy agreed bleakly. A prisoner would probably have about as much chance of escaping from such a place as she had of escaping James over the next few days.

      The car park was starting to fill up rapidly with other arrivals. Picking up their cases, James touched Poppy briefly on the shoulder.

      ‘Reception seems to be that way. Let’s go and get booked in before it develops into too much of a scrum.’

      Once inside the hotel, the austere, almost forbidding impression of the fortress as a prison was totally banished by the breathtaking luxury of the reception area, a huge, vaulted room illuminated by crystal chandeliers, the walls decorated with glowingly rich frescos. Only a room this vast could take such an abundance of gold, crimson and blue, Poppy acknowledged dizzily as she followed James towards the central reception desk.

      Immaculately groomed girls, in suits as understated as their surroundings were ornate, busied themselves dealing with the rapid influx of guests, and Poppy was cynically amused to see that James, who was in fact behind three other men trying to claim one girl’s attention, received the full wattage of her very alluring smile whilst they were totally ignored.

      Poppy had always known that other women found her elder cousin attractive. She could even remember how, in the days before she had fallen in love with Chris, she had actually felt angry and jealous herself if he paid her schoolfriends more attention than he did her, but those days were gone now, and even though she registered the assessing look the receptionist gave her as James leant over the desk to speak to the girl and handed her their passports she was not affected by it. The receptionist was welcome to him. She gave a small shudder. She could think of nothing more loathsome... noone more...

      She tensed as she suddenly realised what the receptionist was saying to James, and hurried towards him, demanding angrily, ‘What does she mean, our room?’

      The girl was already reaching behind her to hand James a pass-key. A key, Poppy noticed in disbelief.

      ‘James...’ she urged, but James had already anticipated her and was turning back to the receptionist, telling her in swift, fluent Italian that there appeared to have been a mistake, and that they required two separate rooms.

      ‘No,’ the girl denied, shaking her head, picking up their passports and a list she had in front of her. She read out carefully, ‘Mr and Mrs Carlton,’ and then said, first to Poppy, ‘You are Mrs Carlton,’ and then to James, ‘and you Mr Carlton.’

      ‘I am Poppy Carlton,’ Poppy confirmed, ‘but I am not his wife. We are not married... I am not... his wife,’ she emphasised.

      When the receptionist continued to gaze blankly at her, she turned angrily to James, appealing, ‘You tell her, James. Explain... make her understand.’

      How could such a mistake have been made? Poppy fumed as she stood back whilst James quickly explained to the receptionist the misunderstanding which seemed to have occurred and asked her to change their booking from one double room to two singles.

      Chris’s secretary had made the original bookings. She was comfortably middle-aged and extremely efficient and Poppy couldn’t believe that she could have made such a mistake. The receptionist had summoned the duty manager at James’s request and James was now explaining the situation to him and reiterating the fact that they required two separate rooms.

      The duty manager shrugged and shook his head. ‘That, I am afraid, is not possible,’ he told James. ‘The hotel is fully booked for the conference, every room already taken...’

      ‘But they must have somewhere... some room,’ Poppy gasped as she heard what he was saying.

      ‘None; there is nowhere,’ the duty manager repeated firmly.

      ‘Then we’ll just have to find somewhere else to stay,’ Poppy burst out.

      Her face flushed beneath the withering look that James gave her as he asked her sardonically, ‘Where exactly did you have in mind? The nearest town is forty miles away.’

      ‘Then...then I’ll just have to...to sleep in the car,’ Poppy asserted wildly. ’I—’

      ‘For four days?’ James gave her a derisive look. ‘Don’t be so ridiculous...’

      ‘James, you can’t let them do this,’ Poppy protested as the duty manager turned away from them to deal with the harassed-looking courier in charge of a party of Japanese businessmen who, from what Poppy could hear of their agitated conversation, had lost not just some luggage en route but one member of their party as well. ‘Do something.’

      ‘Such as?’ James asked, gesturing to the now packed reception area and the press of people demanding attention from the receptionists.

      ‘You’ve attended conferences before; you know what they’re like,’ he pointed out. ‘The rule is if it can go wrong it will...’

      ‘Maybe, but it’s never gone wrong before,’ Poppy seethed. ‘How can they make a mistake like that...? There СКАЧАТЬ