Free The Perfect Match by Unknown Page A

Jenny said, smiling at Chrissie. Jon had mentioned to her over breakfast that he had an appointment with the late Charlie Platt's niece concerning his affairs.
    Jenny shook hands with her, but she and Guy hugged and kissed one another with obvious closeness and affection, Chrissie noticed before the older woman turned and hurried away, leaving them head-ing for Guy's car at a more leisurely pace.
    'You and Jenny have obviously known one another a long time,' Chrissie remarked as Guy drove back to town, unable to resist bringing up the subject even though she felt a stab of jealousy.
    'Yes, we have,' Guy agreed, the warmth in his voice and the way he was smiling fanning the flames of Chrissie's apprehensions into an unwanted positive belief that Jenny held a very special place in his life—
    and in his heart?
    'How long have she and Jon been married?' she asked, unwilling to demand to know outright just what Jenny meant to him and yet increasingly anxious to dispel her growing fears.

    'I'm not quite sure. Well over twenty-five years,'
    Guy informed her. 'Max, their eldest child, must be in his late twenties, I should think.'
    Over twenty-five years. Chrissie started to relax slightly. Well, at least that meant that there could have been no youthful relationship between Guy and Jenny, the embers continuing to smoulder throughout Jenny's marriage. But she still couldn't entirely relax.
    'And they've always been happy together, have they?' she probed.
    Guy frowned as he turned his head towards Chrissie. What on earth had made her ask that particular question and how the hell should he answer it?
    The truth was that Jon and Jenny's marriage had gone through a bad patch at one time and he... His frown deepened.
    The relationship between him and Jenny had never been anything other than that of business partners and good friends, but... But there had been a time when he had wanted it to be more, he acknowledged inwardly. There had, in fact, been a time when he had been ready and willing—more than willing, if he was being honest—to encourage Jenny to leave Jon...
    when he had actively wanted her to do so. Fortunately and wisely, Jenny had never allowed either of them to cross the fine line that divided the safety of friend-ship from the danger of... something else.
    There was no logical reason why he couldn't tell Chrissie any of this. But how would she react to the knowledge that he had once come very close to wanting Jenny to break her marriage vows, to convincing himself that the emptiness he had been beginning to sense in his life at that time might be filled by her; that her vulnerability and need had aroused within him a protective and very masculine desire to shelter and take care of her and to convince both himself and her that those emotions could be transmuted into something they could both call love.
    Surely it was sufficient for him to know that he had been wrong and that thankfully Jenny had known that and prevented them both from making what he now knew would have been a bad mistake.
    He would eventually, of course, tell Chrissie about Jenny and about his own awareness of how emotionally vulnerable he had been at that time. And he could tell her then, too, how glad he was at the same time that she was the only woman he had ever and could ever want to make a formal lifelong commitment to.
    That now that there was love, that now that he did love, he could recognise the vast gulf, the huge difference, that existed between it and what he had believed he felt for Jenny.
    Yes, he would tell Chrissie all of that later when their own relationship was far more firmly estab-lished. For now, he mentally crossed his fingers behind his back and assured himself that he was doing the right thing. Smiling at her, he replied, 'Yes, so far as I know, they've always been extremely happy together.'
    She had the reassurance she needed, so why did she feel that Guy was keeping something from her?
    Withholding something from her? Chrissie