Bitter Betrayal. Penny Jordan

you don’t want to sit on your own either. It will be fun,’ she finished, beaming up at Jenneth. ‘We can pretend that we’re a real family…’

      And, before Jenneth could make the appalled denial that was choking in her throat, Louise and George drew level with them, and she had a moment’s startled realisation that her friend’s husband looked nothing like George-like, and that Louise was wearing a totally unfamiliar look of blissful bemusement that made her own heart ache treacherously.

      Somehow or other she discovered that she was outside with the rest of the guests crowding around the newly married couple, and that Angelica had fixed herself firmly to her side, and was clutching her hand with what almost amounted to possessiveness, chattering brightly to her so that Jenneth hadn’t the heart to reject her and quell the happiness in her eyes by telling her that she wanted nothing to do with her.

      It was several moments before they managed to break through the crush to reach Louise, and when her friend saw the little girl clinging firmly to Jenneth’s side, her eyes darkened with dismay and she said uncertainly, ‘Jenneth, I promise you I had no idea…’

      Before Jenneth could say anything, Angelica clutched even harder at her hand and announced, not just to Louise, but also to the crowd of people within earshot of her carrying, piping voice, ‘Jenneth’s going to be my pretend mummy, Aunt Louise.’

      As Jenneth heard the hard male voice say warningly behind her, ‘Angelica,’ she felt the shock of her body’s awareness of Luke’s tall male presence behind her, and her body trembled so visibly that she was not surprised to see the concern in Louise’s eyes.

      If she had felt that the day could hold nothing worse than it had already held, she found she was wrong, when she heard Louise’s mother saying firmly. ‘Luke, Jenneth looks as though she’s about to faint…help her, will you?’

      Against her back and arm she felt the hands whose touch had tormented her dreams for far too many years, holding her firmly but dispassionately, as Luke briskly obeyed his aunt’s instructions and manoeuvred her out of the crush of people around the church porch and into the privacy of the churchyard.

      Now, when she would have given anything to faint and thereby escape a situation which was fast outstripping the very worst of her nightmares, her body remained stubbornly determined not to allow her that escape.

      Instinctively she pulled away from Luke, not surprised that he let her go—he must be loathing this every bit as much as she was, but he could only be suffering revulsion, and not the agonising awareness of feelings she ached to be able to deny which were oppressing her.

      ‘How are you getting back to the house?’ she heard him asking her distantly, and, too surprised to lie, she told him.

      ‘Walking? In this heat?’ She watched the dark eyebrows draw together, and saw that the years had not been entirely kind to him and that, although nothing ever could diminish his masculinity, there were hard grooves etched either side of his mouth, and tiny lines fanning out from his eyes, suggesting that his life had not been without pain.

      That should have made her feel glad, but it didn’t. She had an appalling, impossible impulse to reach out and touch him. To smooth those lines away…to make him smile, the old, familiar, teasing smile that had once made her stomach curl with pleasure and her body ache with desire.

      ‘My car’s just round the corner. We’ll give you a lift…’

      ‘No!’The panic-stricken denial was out before she could stop it, leaving them both to look at one another in a silence that was impregnated with an emotional hostility Jenneth could almost taste.

      In the distance the photographer was busily at work, and she could hear the hum of conversation, but it was a distant, unobtrusive hum, as though she and Luke were sealed into an intimacy that locked out the rest of the human race.

      And then Angelica piped up shrilly and uncertainly, ‘But, Jenneth, you promised that you were going to be my pretend mummy…’

      Under the sardonic, bitter eyes of her father Jenneth turned towards the little girl, the words of denial burning her throat until she saw the vulnerable look in her eyes and knew that she just could not do it.