Best Man To Wed? by Penny Jordan

Author:Penny Jordan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2011-06-06T16:00:00+00:00

It was almost twelve o‘clock when James came into the bedroom, where Poppy was hard at work on the translations which had proved more complex than she had originally thought. He demanded peremptorily, ‘Have you finished yet, Poppy?’

‘Almost,’ she told him, mentally crossing her fingers that when she gave the documents a final read through she wouldn’t come across anything she had missed. She didn’t miss the way James’s frown deepened as he looked over her shoulder at what she was doing, and she immediately challenged him defensively, ‘If you’re not satisfied, James, or if you think that you could have done any better...’

‘If I could, the company wouldn’t be employing you as a translator,’ James told her crisply, picking up the work she had completed, adding as he started to read it, ‘You know, Poppy, there has to be a division between our role as cousins and that of employer and employee. You’re very fond of insisting that you got your job with the company on merit and not by trading on your relationship with your mother, but you don’t seem to mind trading on our cousinship in our roles of employer and employee...’

‘You’re .the one who’s doing that, not me,’ Poppy defended herself immediately. ‘After all, if we weren’t cousins, there’s no way you’d have been able to force me to share a bedroom with you...’

She could see from his expression that he didn’t like what she was saying. Well, tough, she decided. He was the one who had brought the subject up, not her.

‘You know your problem, don’t you, James?’ she challenged, swinging round to glower at him. ‘You’re a control freak, but you can’t control me. No one controls me...’

‘No,’ James agreed drily. ‘No one does, not even you.’

As he looked at her Poppy had a vivid memory of the most recent occasion on which she had betrayed her lack of self-control, and as she felt the hot tide of colour start to flood up in a give-away rush under her skin she turned quickly away from him.

‘I thought you were supposed to be taking your Japanese friend out today,’ she muttered as she gathered her papers together.

‘I am,’ James agreed, glancing at his watch as he took the papers from her. ‘Have you finished now? Is everything here?’

‘Yes,’ Poppy confirmed tersely, noting that he was eager to be away.

‘More wine?’

Poppy smiled as she shook her head, covering her almost empty glass with her hand.

‘No, I suppose I hadn’t better either,’ Gunther agreed regretfully. ‘Not as I’m driving.’

They had driven through the warm Italian countryside for almost two hours before finally stopping in a small, dusty town so pretty that it might have come straight out of a film or operetta.

They had explored it like two schoolchildren set free from their lessons, buying and eating delicious homemade ice cream the taste of which had made Poppy close her eyes in disbelieving bliss.

It had been Gunther’s suggestion that, instead of heading straight back, they equip themselves with food and wine and have an impromptu picnic on the banks of the river they had seen earlier.

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