Past Loving. PENNY JORDAN

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СКАЧАТЬ that had caused her to put her foot down and break the speed limit. Since he was a man, it was all too probable that he just would not have understood, she told herself as she listened gravely to his caution. Her first driving offence in over ten years of blemishless driving. And it was all Robert’s fault.

      She was still glowering and mentally blaming him when she eventually drove off, this time keeping a much stricter eye on her speed.

      Rory had gone but the newly turned earth of the flower-beds showed how hard he had been working. The forget-me-nots were small dots of soft grey-green against the darkness of the earth. She lingered in the garden, studying them, telling them not to be overawed by their well-established perennial bedmates, and then paused to console and reassure those same larger plants, coaxingly promising them that the new arrivals were no threat to them, and that the summer extravagance of their pinks, silvers, whites and blues would be all the more spectacular after the sharp colour contrast of the bright spring yellows and blue of the bulbs and forget-me-nots.

      It was almost an hour before she had finished her tour of the garden, and although it was still light she could smell the crisp early autumn scent infusing the air.

      Yesterday morning she had spotted a heron investigating the fish pond, which meant that this weekend she would have to string wires from the vine eyes in the brick surrounding the pond to stop him from helping himself to her fish.

      The irritation and anxiety produced by her run-in with Robert was slowly fading as her senses responded to the peace of her garden.

      If, ten years ago, someone had told her that she would become so devoted to such a homely pursuit, that she would find so much solace and pleasure in it, she would have bitterly denied what they were saying. A small smile touched her mouth. It was time she went in. She was going out this evening.

      Their local market town’s seventeenth-century assembly rooms had recently been renovated and reopened, providing an elegant setting for a number of events. Tonight’s event was a small charity affair; a well-known cellist who supported the charity would be playing for them, and there was to be a light supper afterwards, provided by the local WI.

      As a prominent business figure locally, Holly had been approached to support the charity and in addition to buying tickets she had also given a generous donation. The bowls of potpourri scenting the rooms had been provided by her company, their perfume a distillation of natural products and one which she personally thought was evocative of the period in which the assembly rooms had been built.

      The evening was to be a formal affair—black tie for the men and gowns for the women, preferably with some sort of Regency look about them to complement the setting. When she had originally bought the tickets, Holly had assumed that Paul would be escorting her, but then this trip to South America had intervened.

      Instead she was now being partnered by a relative newcomer to the area.

      The building of a new private hospital just outside the market town had resulted in an influx of medical personnel. John Lloyd was the new hospital’s chief administrator. A Scot in his late thirties, divorced with two children, he had made no secret of the fact that he found her very attractive.

      However, he was old enough and intelligent enough to accept that while she enjoyed his company Holly did not wish their relationship to progress any further.

      For this evening’s occasion she had had made an Empire-style dress in eau-de-Nil silk with silver embroidery around the hem. Over it, she was wearing a dark green velvet cloak lined with the same silk as the dress. The outfit had been an extravagance, but, as Paul had pointed out, the event was being photographed both for the local paper and the county magazine and she would be photographed in her role as head of the company so that it was important that she presented the right appearance.

      With the aid of her electric curling-tongs she managed to produce enough feathery ringlets in her fine hair to be caught back in a soft ethereal tangle, vaguely reminiscent of the correct period hairstyle.

      When she was dressed and ready, she pulled a face at herself in her mirror. This kind of event was not really her style, although the charity in aid of children in need was one she was more than happy to support.

      Personally she would far rather have made an anonymous cash donation than participate in this kind of event, but she quelled these thoughts, telling herself that she was being very unworldly in thinking that the money she and others had spent on outfits for the affair could far more sensibly have been donated direct to the charity. As Paul had pointed out to her when she had said as much to him, there were those who, while they were quite happy to buy expensive tickets for such events, would never have considered donating any such sum without the event to back it up.

      John arrived on the dot at half-past seven. Holly didn’t invite him in. Years ago she had learned to be wary of naïvely allowing men to mistake her natural warmth and friendliness for sexual encouragement.

      After Robert, the heady and dangerous sexual desire he had aroused within her had died completely, leaving her somehow bereft of any ability to respond to men on a sexual basis. As a form of self-preservation it couldn’t be beaten, and, in the new restrained mood of sexual constancy and celibacy which seemed to have doused the sexually ferocious fires of earlier decades, she had been able to reflect that perhaps after all Robert had done her a favour in destroying her ability to be sexually responsive to other men.

      As she smiled at John and locked the door behind her, he murmured appreciatively, ‘Mm…nice perfume.’

      Immediately she tensed. She had her back to him, but she could tell from the way she could feel the warmth of his breath against the back of her neck that he was leaning towards her.

      ‘Do you think so? It’s our new one,’ she told him brightly, firmly stepping to one side and turning round.

      ‘Officially we shan’t be launching it for a while yet. It has a floral base, but we’ve added some subtle extras to bring it into line with current tastes.’

      ‘It’s very sexy. And so are you…especially in that dress.’

      Hurriedly Holly pulled her cloak more firmly around herself, suddenly uncomfortably conscious of the way the light from the security lights was highlighting the soft pale fullness of her breasts. The dress had a slightly lower neckline than she had expected. She remembered at the time that the dressmaker had pointed out to her that it had been de rigueur at the time the Empire line was made so popular for the neckline to reveal the upper curve of the wearer’s bosom.

      The way John’s glance lingered appreciatively on her body made her feel both uncomfortable and irritated. She told herself that she probably ought to feel flattered by his admiration and interest; he was after all a very attractive man but on the one and only occasion when he had taken her in his arms and kissed her she had felt nothing at all, other than a mild sense of curiosity, quickly followed by panic and revulsion when the tenor of his kiss had become too passionate.

      And yet with Robert…in Robert’s arms…She trembled suddenly, remembering how he had made her feel, how her whole body had trembled with eagerness and expectancy. How she had so wantonly and willingly moved closer to him, little moans of anguished expectation filling her throat as her body anticipated the pleasure he would give it. She had given herself to him so eagerly, so naïvely, believing he loved her as she did him. Sexually she might have been inexperienced, but there had been no hesitation in her response to him, no holding back, no restraint, no thought in her head of even attempting to control the emotions he aroused inside her. His merest touch had been enough to send her into a seventh heaven of delirious joy; the lightest brush СКАЧАТЬ