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‘Paolo doesn’t seeht us anyhi her face

‘Poppy,’ James warned

‘No no, I shall never try to pretend Chris is my our baby’s father,’ she said ‘Not to myself or to anyone else

‘Ja to endure this?’ she de her misery ‘We don’t love each other’ Her voice quickened with panic ‘We don’t even like one another’

‘We’ll endure it because we have to, because of hily on her stomach before he picked up the car keys which he had dropped on the table ‘I’ll take the cases upstairs and then I’ll go down to the village for soe in the main bedroom—I’ll sleep in the other one’

The villa only had two bedrooms, both of theer of the two rooh the et to it James’s mother had always said that one day she would add a second bathrooot round to it

Without waiting for her to answer, James walked towards the door

The rear of the villa was shaded by a vine-covered patio The summer that Poppy had stayed here with her parents they had eatento endure teeks cooped up alone here with Ja teeks alone with hih all the years that lay ahead of them? Tiredly she went upstairs

Paolo’s wife had made up both beds on James’s instructions How had he explained the fact that a honey couple required two double beds? Poppy wondered dully as she stripped off her clothes and showered off the dirt of their drive before pulling on clean underwear and crawling beneath the lavender-scented linen sheets

Poppy smiled contentedly to herself as she slipped on her soft lawn cotton dress and glanced out of the bedroo another sunny day

It was just as she let the loose folds of her dress fall round her hips and started to straighten up that she felt it—no more than the briefest flutter of sensation—a ainst her skin She recognised it straight away, instinctively, calling out auto, ‘James quick’

‘What is it? What’s wrong?’ he de open her bedroo her

She had dreaded this ti alone with Ja that it was bound to reveal all the flaws in their relationship, all the reasons why they should not have ly the days had actually passed very quickly

Her body, perhaps exhausted by the trau, had wanted only to relax and absorb the heat of the sun Her instincts had caused her to focus not on the antipathy which existed between her and Ja within her, and, yes, there had been tily conscious of all that she had forfeited, all that she would never have—all that both of the thee without love—and then she had ached with pain and an intense but nebulous sense of loss and despair

And yet, oddly, it had not been Chris whoe, the h the years of her adolescence seeive her succour

‘What is it?’ Ja

As she looked back at hi how very masculine he looked in a pair of soft, natural-coloured linen shorts and white T-shirt, his legs bare and very brown, his forearly muscled for a man who spent soof unexpected e awareness of how intensely male James actually was

It was, she felt, as though suddenly she was seeing hih she had walked into a room in which all the familiar objects had been moved around so that she saw them with fresh eyes—saw them and found that she had allowed habit to conceal the true depth of their appeal from her

Her heart suddenly seemed to beat a little bit faster and she knew that she had flushed slightly

‘Don’t you feel very well?’ Ja her For the first few days of their stay he had insisted that she reht her a cup of tea and some plain biscuits

Initially she had been irritated by such coddling, telling him curtly that she kneas for the baby’s sake and not hers, but these last couple ofbeing spoiled—a feeling which had sneaked up on her, catching her unawares

‘No No, I feel fine’