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‘I never thought he would fall so deeply in love,’ Poppy heard her adding as she paused on the stairs, not wanting to listen and yet somehow unable to stop herself She was a masochist addicted to the source of her pain, she told herself bitterly as the older woman continued

‘Of the two of them James has always been the more passionate and intense one Chris has always had a much sunnier, more resilient nature I just wish How is Poppy? She’

Quickly Poppyinwardly with a nation

She kne James would have reacted if he had been privy to that conversation, hoould have taunted her for allowing herself to beco he would never allow to happen to him Poppy’s ine Ja involved in any situation, any relationship which ht cast him in such a role Impossible

It was all very well for her aunt to describe James as the more intense of her two sons—ht ithis oay and stea anyone who stood in opposition to him But more passionate? And because of that passion, as her aunt had soer brother? No way

The only intense passion she had ever seen Jaer that she had felt when he had given her that unwanted, hateful kiss of contempt

Poppy shivered now as she hurried into the bathroo sensation—nothing at all to do with the coolness of the earlyair

In fact, as she glanced through theshe could see that the pre-dawn sky was clear and that it promised to be a fine, warm day

No, the reason for the aloose bumps on her skin lay not outside her body but within it Its cause was her own fiercely denied and totally shocked awareness of the fact that so within her, some alien, unknown, unwanted part of her, had been physically responsive to the practised skill of James’s kiss

It wasn’t a subject that she had any desire to explore and in order to dis through the list of Japanese technical ter

The conference they were attending was a new one and it proious event Until Ja the place not just of Chris but also of the sales tea forward to it

The venue was not Milan, where she had been on previous occasions, but a newly opened, exclusive spa resort in the mountains, and the brochure that Chris had shown her had made the event read more like an exclusive holiday than a work event

Not that she would have any time to enjoy the facilities of the spa, Poppy reflected as she stepped out of the shower and reached for a towel James, she suspected, would see to that

As she reached for her underclothes she caught sight of her naked body in the bathroo the weeks leading up to the wedding she had lost weight and now, she acknowledged, she was getting close to looking alile, slender body with Sally’s almost voluptuously feminine shape, she admitted that it was no wonder that Chris should prefer the open sensuality of Sally’s body to the fine-boned thinness of hers

James had commented derisively on her lack of feminine curves only the previous Christether at the firm’s Christmas party His hands had spanned her waist completely and he’d taunted her with the fact that her body was irl than of a woman

‘Just another indication of your reluctance to grow up and accept life as it really is,’ had been his sardonic comment

‘I arily

‘On the outside,’ Jaing to a self-created fantasy You don’t have an inkling of what real life is all about, Poppyreal emotions real men’

She had denied his comments, of course, but it hadn’t made any difference