ANNE WEALE - The Impatient Virgin

Stooping, Van sniffed. “Mmm... that scent suits you.” Stooping, Van sniffed. “Mmm... that scent suits you.” As they moved on, Anny noticed that French women of all ages, from teenage girls to women with matronly figures, looked with interest at the man strolling beside her. She basked in the pleasure of knowing that this evening she looked like other girls of seventeen and was out for the evening with a man who might be considered a bit too old for her now, but wouldn’t always be. Each year the age gap between them would become less important. She just had to pray that he wouldn’t fall in love with anyone else before she was ready for love. Seventeen was too young. She knew that. But eighteen was officially grown-up, and nineteen was old enough for anything...even marriage. Letter to Reader Dear Reader, If the name of one of the people in this story rings a bell, it’s because you have met her before...as a child in one of my longer books, Summer’s Awakening, published by Worldwide in 1984. The hero of that story was a computer tycoon, as is the hero of this one. Remembering my introduction to the excting world of computers during a winter in America in the early eighties, I also remembered the people in Summer’s Awakening and the letters from readers suggesting a sequel. This book is not a sequel, but it answers some of the questions about what happened to Emily. Title Page The Impatient Virgin Anne Weale www.millsandboon.co.uk CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER EIGHT CHAPTER NINE CHAPTER TEN Author’s Note Copyright

Stooping, Van sniffed. “Mmm... that scent suits you.”

As they moved on, Anny noticed that French women of all ages, from teenage girls to women with matronly figures, looked with interest at the man strolling beside her.

She basked in the pleasure of knowing that this evening she looked like other girls of seventeen and was out for the evening with a man who might be considered a bit too old for her now, but wouldn’t always be. Each year the age gap between them would become less important. She just had to pray that he wouldn’t fall in love with anyone else before she was ready for love. Seventeen was too young. She knew that. But eighteen was officially grown-up, and nineteen was old enough for anything...even marriage.

Dear Reader,

If the name of one of the people in this story rings a bell, it’s because you have met her before...as a child in one of my longer books, Summer’s Awakening, published by Worldwide in 1984.

The hero of that story was a computer tycoon, as is the hero of this one. Remembering my introduction to the excting world of computers during a winter in America in the early eighties, I also remembered the people in Summer’s Awakening and the letters from readers suggesting a sequel.

This book is not a sequel, but it answers some of the questions about what happened to Emily.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

THEY were walking briskly across the park, a tall, fair-haired couple who might have been brother and sister, when Jon reached for her hand and laced his fingers through hers.

Until that moment, Anny had been relaxed and carefree, one of the many Londoners enjoying the sunshine in Hyde Park on a spring afternoon after a long cold winter. As his fingers tightened, intuition told her the gesture was more than a friendly impulse.

She had thought that if, some time in the future, he proposed to her, it would be at a secluded table in a quiet restaurant after a candle-lit dinner. Jon was that kind of man: romantic, conventional, predictable but also totally reliable. Everyone who knew him liked him. But even though they had known each other for some time, she was still uncertain how she would answer him, if and when the time came.

Now, in quite different circumstances from the way she had imagined, she sensed that any second now he was going to pop the question.

They had left the path and were cutting across the grass in the direction of the lake. There was nobody near them. He drew her to a halt, released her fingers and took her face between his hands. Big hands, but always gentle.

Her hair tossed about by the breeze which had rosied her winter-pale cheeks, Anny looked into his eyes and longed to say, ‘No, Jon...not yet. I’m not ready.’ At the same time she shrank from hurting him.

As he opened his mouth to speak, her cellphone started to ring in the pocket of her red fleece squall jacket.

Jon growled something which, translated, would probably be a taboo word in English. He had learnt to speak Turkish for his work as a plant conservationist, and had smatterings of other languages. She had never heard him swear in his own. He had a placid temperament. It took a lot to rile him.

‘I’ll say I’m busy.’ She took the telephone out of her pocket and extended the aerial. ‘Hello?’

‘Greg here...got a job for you.’ The caller was the editor of the colour magazine of a Sunday newspaper. ‘All the morning flights from Gatwick and Heathrow are booked solid, so you’ll have to fly from Stansted. The flight number...’

Anny had been a journalist in London for five years. She never went anywhere without a pencil and small pad in her pocket. Holding the phone to her ear with her shoulder, she wrote down the details. Air UK Flight 910 Business Class 15 April 1120 hours Destination Nice.

Nice, on the Bay of Angels, on the French Riviera. She could see it in her mind’s eye. Fountains sparkling in the sun. Palm trees and beds of green grass dividing the three lanes of traffic along the Promenade des Anglais, named after the English who had invented the concept of wintering in the sun. A blue sea lapping the beach and, nearby, in the old quarter, the stalls of the flower market bright with fluffy golden mimosa, symbol of the mild climate. A city she had known well, but would never willingly go back to, or to any part of that coast.

‘Why Nice?’ she asked.

‘Because I’ve set up an interview with Giovanni Carlisle. His place is not far from Nice, just the other side of the Italian border. You can pick up a car at the airport and be there in less than an hour.’

Anny felt as if she were having a heart attack. There was a pain in her chest. She felt sick and giddy.

‘It’ll be the scoop of your career... the first time the King of Cyberspace has talked to a journalist. I hope you realise how lucky you are,’ said Greg.

‘Why send me? Why not someone who understands all that stuff?’

‘Because it’s the private man we’re interested in, not the computer whiz. There’ll be a file of clippings from the computer press waiting for you at the check-in. You can bone up on the technical background during the flight. This is your big break, Anny. You’ll never get a better one. Go for it.’ Greg rang off.

‘What was all that about?’ asked Jon, as she put the cellphone back in one pocket and the notepad in the other.

‘An assignment to fly to Nice tomorrow...to interview Giovanni Carlisle.’

He looked relieved. ‘That won’t take long. You’ll be back by tomorrow night. Until you said “Why Nice?” I thought it might be one of your editors sending you off to the back of beyond for a month. That would have been tough...just when I’m back for a spell.’ As they began to walk on, he said, ‘I thought Carlisle was famous for his hatred of the popular press and only ever talked to computer journalists on strictly technical matters.’

‘Up to now, yes. But that makes him all the more desirable in the eyes of people like Greg. Most of the world’s celebrities fall over themselves to get coverage. Those that don’t—the ones who employ PR people to keep them out of the limelight—are the biggest quarries of all, from an editor’s point of view.’