‘That term hardly applies to you,’ Sophy said in an injured voice, the two of them clattering down the stairs in high heels.
‘I’m not a child who needs her life organised for her, either!’ Her face was flushed with anger.
‘I wasn’t trying to——Well, perhaps I was,’ Sophy conceded at her reproving look. ‘But Adam is a fascinating man, and …’
‘And you knew right from the beginning of your machinations that I was going to marry Paul,’ she bit out tautly. ‘Oh, never mind, Sophy,’ she dismissed impatiently at the other woman’s hurt expression. ‘Let’s just forget the whole subject.’
Was going to marry Paul; the words kept reverberating around in her mind, although Sophy didn’t seem to have noticed that past tense in her statement. Because that was what it was for now. She couldn’t, in all honesty, marry Paul at a time when Adam Gardener seemed able to take her in his arms and elicit a response from her any time he chose to do so. Paul deserved more from her than that.
That had been the reason she was unable to sleep after Adam had left her; she had been trying to decide what to do, knowing there was really only one thing she could do. And that was to tell Paul she couldn’t go through with the wedding until she was over this madness. If he still wanted her then …
* * *
‘What?’
She could understand Paul’s anger and pain at what she had had to tell him, she knew the same emotions herself. But what else could she do?
‘It’s just for now, Paul,’ she attempted to placate him.
‘You want to call off our wedding plans because of some juvenile interest you feel for a man who is completely unsuitable——’
‘If it were a juvenile interest, Paul, then it wouldn’t be of any importance.’ The way she reacted to Adam was far from juvenile. That was what frightened her.
She had excused herself from the breakfast table after drinking a hurried cup of coffee, leaving a puzzled Sophy watching her departure; she had been anxious to get away from Ashton House before she had to see Adam, Mrs Hodges having informed her when she arrived downstairs that he and Patrick had gone out riding.
On the drive over to Paul’s apartment she had gone over and over again in her mind what she had to say to him, and not once had it got any easier.
His reaction had been expected, and just as distressing as she had known it would be.
She had told him everything, sparing herself nothing, even telling him about the dinner party he had been unable to attend when Adam had been the other guest there, and not the female friend of Sophy and Patrick’s that she had claimed it to be. Paul had been dumbfounded at her deception, but even so, none of it seemed to have prepared him for the announcement she had just made about not being able to marry him with her emotions as confused as they were.
‘You’re over-reacting——’
‘But surely you can see,’ she looked at him pleadingly, tears balanced on her lashes, ‘that it wouldn’t be fair to you to go through with the wedding when another man can cause such a response in me?’ Her cheeks were fiery red at the admission, still slightly shocked herself at that response.
Paul’s face darkened with anger. ‘I can see that you’re allowing your pre-wedding nerves to let you imagine this physical attraction—which is all it can possibly be,’ he dismissed scathingly, ‘is more important than years of knowing each other, caring for each other. Gardener is nothing but a phony sun-tan and a smooth charm!’ he rasped disgustedly.
There was nothing in the least ‘phony’ about Adam, nor ‘smooth’, for that matter, and she and Paul both knew it. But she could appreciate that jealous anger was making Paul say these things.
‘I can also see Sophy O’Donnell’s interfering hand behind this!’ His eyes glittered furiously at the thought.
Eve sighed. ‘Sophy only introduced the two of us; she couldn’t force my reaction to him.’
Paul gave a disparaging snort. ‘A man like that would take delight in deliberately causing friction between us just because we were doing the decent thing by getting married!’
Again he spoke out of jealousy and not truth. If Adam had only been out to cause trouble between them, was really the selfish type of man Paul was claiming him to be, then he would have made love to her the night before, not left her as he had. Because she certainly wouldn’t have been able to say no …
But he hadn’t done that, and she knew it had been because of that ‘moral code’ she had taunted him about, not because he had found any resistance on her part.
‘Why else do you think a man of his age has remained single,’ Paul stormed, ‘if not because he would rather have his fun with someone else’s woman?’
That was just it, she was no longer anyone’s woman. She couldn’t marry Paul feeling as she did about Adam, and yet she knew she wasn’t in love with Adam. She loved Paul, had always loved Paul—she just couldn’t help kissing Adam back whenever he chose to take her into his arms!
‘I don’t think that’s the reason he’s never married, Paul,’ she began slowly.
‘What would you know about it?’ he scoffed, his eyes silver with anger. ‘You’ve never met anyone like him before, and you’re completely out of your depth with that brand of sophisticated excitement. What on earth am I saying?’ he groaned, his eyes closed in disbelief.