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 free 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.
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 instinctively 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.