Penny Jordan Collection: Just One Night by Penny Jordan Read Free Book Online Page A

scornful verbal sketch of herself that Ran had just drawn for her quite illogically hurt.
    Given that she had striven so hard to be considered wholly professional, to be capable and strong, it was quite definitely illogical, she knew, to wish forlornly that Ran might have adopted a more protective and less critical attitude towards her, that he might have shown more concern, some tenderness, some...
    ‘Why the hell didn’t you say you weren’t feeling well?’
    Ran’s curt demand broke into her thoughts, underlining their implausibility, their stupidity, their dangerous vulnerability.
    ‘Why should I have done?’ Sylvie countered defensively, adding tersely, ‘I hardly think that either the Trust or the owners of the properties it acquires would thank me for wasting both time and consequently money by bringing up the subject of my own health during business discussions. You and I may know one another from the past, Ran, but so far as I am concerned the fact that we have dealings with one another in the present is entirely down to the business and professional relationship between us.’
    It was several seconds before Ran bothered to respond to her unrehearsed but determinedly distancing little speech, and for a moment Sylvie thought that he was actually going to ignore what she had said, but then he turned towards her and said, ‘So what you’re saying is that it’s to be purely business between us, is that it?’
    It took every ounce of courage that Sylvie possessed, and then some, for her to be able to meet the look he was giving her full-on, but somehow or other she managed to do so, even if the effort left her perilously short of breath and with her heart pounding almost as painfully as her head, She agreed coolly, ‘Yes.’
    Ran was the one to look away first, his face hardening as he glanced briefly at her mouth before doing so.
    ‘Well, if that’s what you want, so be it,’ he told her crisply, returning his attention to his driving.
    His response, instead of making her feel relieved, left her feeling... What? Disappointed that he hadn’t challenged her, hadn’t given her the opportunity to...to what? Argue with him? Why should she want to? What was it she felt she had to prove? What was it she wanted to be given the opportunity to prove?
    Angry with herself, Sylvie shook her head. There was nothing, of course. She had made her point, said what she wanted to say and now Ran knew exactly how she viewed their working relationship and exactly how she viewed him. He could be in no doubt that, were it not for the fact that he was the owner of a property the Trust had decided to acquire, she would have no cause, nor any wish, to be involved with him.
    Up ahead of her she could see a grove, a small wooded area; Ran drove into it and through it towards the mellow high red-brick wall and through its open gates.
    The house which lay beyond them took Sylvie’s
breath away.
    She was used to grand and beautiful properties, to elegance of design, to scenery and settings so spectacular that one had to blink and look again, but this was something else.
    This was a house as familiar to her as though she had already walked every one of its floors, as though she knew each and every single one of its rooms, its corners. This was a house, the house she had created for herself as a girlhood fantasy. A house, the house, the home which would house and protect the family she so much longed to be a part of.
    Totally bemused, she couldn’t drag her gaze away from its red-brick walls, her professional eye automatically noting the symmetrical perfection of its Georgian windows and the delicacy of the pretty fanlight above the doorway. An ancient wisteria clothed the facing wall, its trunk and branches silvery grey against the rich warmth of the brick; its flowering season was now over but its soft green tendrils of leaves were coolly restful to her aching eyes.
    Prior to her mother’s second marriage to Alex’s father, they had