The Impatient Virgin
Her future husband?Anny was still a child when she met Giovanni–Van–Carlisle. He was nine years her senior, and Anny had soon developed a severe case of hero worship for Van. Over the years her youthful infatuation has blossomed into love.Anny dreams of becoming Van's wife, but how does he feel about her? He still treats her as if she's a little girl to be looked after–but Anny is determined to show him the woman she can be!About A MARRIAGE HAS BEEN ARRANGED:"Talented writer Anne Weale's…masterful character development and charming scenes create a rich reading experience."–Romantic Times
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Stooping, Van sniffed. “Mmm... that scent suits you.”Letter to ReaderTitle PageCHAPTER ONECHAPTER TWOCHAPTER THREECHAPTER FOURCHAPTER FIVECHAPTER SIXCHAPTER SEVENCHAPTER EIGHTCHAPTER NINECHAPTER TENAuthor’s NoteCopyright
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.
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.
