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‘But if you love me, why—?’ Poppy stopped, her face suddenly crimsoning.
‘Why what?’ James pressed.
‘Why did you act the way you did after... after...? Why did you behave so coldly to me after we’d made love?’ she asked him huskily. ‘You must have known how much I wanted you.’ Her colour deepened. ‘I thought you were... I thought you didn’t want me any more, that I’d disgusted you—’
‘Disgusted me?’ James interrupted her. ‘Oh, Poppy, if only you knew what it did to me when you told me that you wanted me. You’ll never know how close I came that night to telling you how I felt, but I couldn’t get out of my mind the way you’d told me that you wanted me to be Chris...that you’d believed that first time that I was Chris.
‘I stopped being intimate with you because I had no choice. I knew that it was only a matter of time before my control broke and I told you how I felt and I couldn’t lay that burden on you. Not after everything else I’d done.’
‘Everything else... What else?’ Poppy demanded.
‘Making love to you when I knew you couldn’t really want me... when I knew that you were still a virgin and unlikely to be using any form of birth control... and, having done so once, being unable to resist repeating the offence and knowing when I did how it increased the likelihood that you would conceive.’
‘I think I knew I had,’ Poppy told him in awe, before admitting half-shyly, ‘There was something—a feeling, a sort of knowing.’
‘I didn’t set out to force you into a position where you’d have to marry me,’ James told her, ‘but, once I knew the possibility was there, there was no way I was not going to use it. I told myself that it was me who’d made love to you, me your body wanted, even if your heart remained locked against me, and that somehow I’d find a way of making you see that you couldn’t possibly want me so much physically without there being some possibility that you might come to love me.’
‘I probably already loved you, even before...before we made love,’ Poppy told him hesitantly. ‘When I was young... Before... You were always... It was you I loved best then,’ she told him softly, ‘but somehow when I started to grow up...’
‘Everyone goes through teenage crushes,’ James told her gently.
‘I can’t understand how I ever thought that what I felt for Chris was really love,’ Poppy said. ‘When I look back now...’
She stopped talking as James bent his head and kissed her.
‘James...? James?’ she demanded, shaking his arm as she broke the kiss.
‘What is it?’
‘I want to go home,’ she told him unsteadily. ‘Please make them let me go home... with you...’
‘Are you sure?’ James asked her quietly, searching her face and then cupping it in his hands to kiss her—holding her as though he simply couldn’t bear to let her go, Poppy recognised with a sense of wonder.
Now that she knew the truth it amazed her that she had not seen it for herself. The love she had thought could never be hers was there, displayed in his every touch, his every look. It wasn’t just with words that love was communicated, Poppy knew with sudden wisdom.
Looking back, she could see that it was perhaps no wonder that she had responded physically to James the way she had that first time they had made love; her body had recognised the truth that her mind had been too stubborn and perhaps a little too immature to want to see. There was no point in even trying to compare what she felt for James with the feelings she had had for Chris.
Chris!
She gave James a rueful look.
‘I was horrid to poor Chris,’ she told him solemnly.
‘Good,’ James replied unsympathetically, and then relented to smile lovingly at her.
‘Do you think things will be all right with him and Sally,’ Poppy asked him anxiously, ‘now that she’s decided she wants a baby?’
‘Chris and Sally love one another; there’s no doubt about that. They’ll find a way of working things out.’
‘I’m so glad you’re here,’ Poppy whispered as he bent his head to kiss her again. ‘And so,’ she added, ‘is your daughter. Oh, James—’ she clung to him, trembling slightly if anything had happened...’
‘Don’t,’ he begged her. ‘If anything happened to you, I don’t think I could bear to go on living.’
The nurse clicked her tongue reprovingly when she came into the room and found her patient wrapped in her husband’s arms.
‘I want to go home,’ Poppy told her.
‘Well, I don’t know about that,’ she said disapprovingly. ‘You’re supposed to be resting...’
The doctor, however, when summoned by James, took a more benign view. There was no reason why Poppy shouldn’t go home, just so long as she took things easy for a few days, he declared.
‘Don’t worry...she will,’ James assured him, adding in an undertone to Poppy, his face mock-severe, ‘Even if I have to stay in bed with her to make her do so...’
‘No more business trips away from home?’ Poppy questioned James some twenty minutes later as he gently helped her into his car.
‘None,’ he assured her firmly. ‘From now on Chris can handle those.’
‘Poor Sally,’ Poppy protested.
‘Well, perhaps not all of them,’ James allowed. ‘But the only way I shall be working away from home in future is if my wife comes with me.’
