by Penny Jordan
‘Oh, yes. I’m sure you’d be able to make this,’ Philippa assured him, guessing what he wanted to ask. ‘It’s very easy and quite healthy as well… my boys both love it. I’ll write down the recipe for you if you like.’
How different she was from Sally, Joel reflected—Sally, who complained that she didn’t like the way he had rearranged her kitchen cupboards, who said that he made too much mess when he cooked anything.
‘It’s quite cheap to make as well,’ Philippa told him.
‘Like my fruit salad,’ Joel responded. ‘How are things with you?’ he asked her quietly as she got up to get some paper and a pen.
‘Oh, not too bad,’ Philippa fibbed lightly.
She was still waiting to hear from the bank and the wait was stretching her optimism to its limits. The small sum she received from the social services didn’t go very far at all, and, if it weren’t for Susie’s insistence on constantly inviting her round for meals and then sending her home with the left-overs, Philippa suspected that she would be reduced to surviving on a very meagre diet indeed.
‘I’m hoping to study for some qualifications myself,’ she told Joel, ‘although I’m not sure what it will be yet. I’d thought originally of taking a degree course, but with so many young people leaving university without a job to go to I’ve begun to wonder if I wouldn’t be wiser going for something more practical, although I’m not sure what.
‘There.’ She gave Joel the piece of paper with the recipe she had written down. ‘It’s quite easy to make. Do you… does your wife have a mixer?’
‘Yes,’ Joel confirmed, leaning closer then as he studied the piece of paper she had given him. ‘What does this mean?’ he asked her. ‘Cream butter and… ?’
‘Oh, well, you have to…’
Joel listened intently to her while she explained. She was a nice woman, he decided. Warm and kind, and he would have liked her and felt drawn to her on the strength of that alone. But if it was her warmth and kindness that made him feel relaxed and reluctant to leave, that made it easy for him to talk to her and confide in her, it was her femininity, her softness, that small betraying tension he could sense within her, that made him respond to her physically and sexually—and dangerously!
‘You see? It’s really quite easy,’ he heard her telling him earnestly.
He looked across at her. Her face was slightly flushed, her colour deepening slightly as she looked away from him. She was as aware of him as he was of her, Joel recognised. Aware of him and just a tiny little bit afraid. Not in the sense that she thought he might do anything to hurt or abuse her, he recognised, just femalely and intuitively afraid of his maleness and her own response to it.
Once, a long time ago… a long, long time ago… he had seen that look in Sally’s eyes, felt her body tremble as he’d taken her in his arms, had known that when he touched her, kissed her, she would melt into eager response, wanting him… needing him.
She was behaving irrationally and ridiculously, as though she were a teenager, Philippa recognised as she tried to control her body’s responses to Joel’s proximity. She could feel herself starting to tremble, her legs threatening to buckle as she was filled by an overwhelming sensual yearning, a need to touch and be touched, to hold and be held.
Horrified that Joel might guess the effect he was having on her, she looked away, dipping her head so that her hair fell forward. Automatically she reached out to push the fair strands back behind her ear, only Joel beat her to it.
The pads of his fingers felt slightly rough but his touch was gentle and warm, stroking almost as though he was trying to soothe her. As though he recognised how she felt and was trying to comfort her, she acknowledged.
He was a very attractive, very sexy man, and no doubt he was well used to dealing with silly women who came on to him. And she was being silly… stupid, like an archetypal lonely housewife, so desperate for sex that…
‘You’re trembling…’
Philippa tensed, her mouth dry, her heart pounding; her face burned hot with embarrassment. She tried to turn away but Joel’s hand was still lying against her jaw, cupping her face, turning it gently towards his.
‘And you’re not the only one,’ he told her huskily as he took hold of her hand and lifted it towards his chest. ‘Feel.’
The powerful fast thud of his heartbeat made her feel light-headed and dizzy—or was it the intensity of her own desire that was making the room spin round her, making her feel so weak that she had to cling to him for support?
‘No…’ she protested as he bent his head and she watched his mouth come closer to her own. ‘No, we mustn’t.’
His head stopped moving, his eyes searching her face.
‘No,’ he agreed sombrely. ‘We mustn’t.’
CHAPTER NINETEEN
SALLY glanced nervously at her watch. Almost half-past two. Surely Kenneth still wouldn’t be waiting for her now?
He knew her shift finished at two and when she didn’t appear he would know that she had changed her mind about seeing him.
If Joel hadn’t made her so angry and upset she would never even have agreed to see him in the first place, no matter how much a part of her might have wanted to do so.
As she smoothed down the fabric of her skirt she noticed that her fingers were trembling slightly.
This was silly, she told herself firmly, sulking here like a little girl afraid of being caught out in some misdemeanour. She had done nothing wrong. Just because another man enjoyed her company and she enjoyed his, just because he made her feel protected and cosseted, just because he had told her… implied that he was falling in love with her, that did not mean…
Shakily she got up, tensing as the door to the staff rest-room opened. The nurse who walked in raised her eyebrows when she saw Sally.
‘Nice outfit,’ she commented. ‘Going somewhere special?’
‘No… No, I… I just felt like a change,’ Sally told her uncomfortably.
The outfit had originally belonged to her sister, a crunchy, soft-toned linen two-piece which Daphne had complained petulantly creased every time she wore it.
Guiltily Sally allowed her mind to escape from the admission that it was an outfit she normally only wore for very special occasions. So what if she had decided to get changed here at work before going home for once? What did that mean? It was spring, the sun was shining; wasn’t she as entitled as anyone else to wear something feminine and impractical?
She looked at her watch again. Almost a quarter to three—he would definitely have gone by now.
She was doing the right thing, she told herself fiercely as she left the building. For Kenneth’s sake… For all their sakes.
She thought fleetingly of Joel who never seemed to have time for anything but the leisure centre these days. Once he would have known, sensed immediately that something was wrong. Look at the way he had objected at first when she’d insisted she was going to work full-time, and yet now, when she told him she was going to work a double shift…
She had been so nervous after she had told him, nervous and somehow elated at the same time, half afraid that he would accuse her of lying to him; that he would demand to know what she was really doing.
Perhaps because all he wanted from her was sex it never occurred to him that another man might fall in love with her.
Even the kids seemed to have changed towards her recently; it was Joel they talked to now… confided in… laughed with… She had seen the way they went quiet when she came home from work; the way they removed themselves from the room whenever she and Joel argued.
Perhaps Kenneth was right when he said that they were almost adults… that they no longer really needed her… except financially.
Tears blurred her eyes. Fiercely she blinked them away as she stepped out into the spring sunshine.
‘At last… I was just beginning to worry that I’d missed you.’
Her body froze, her heart stopping and then starting to race.
Kenneth.
He had waited for her after all. Dismay warred with pleasure. She truly hadn’t expected him to wait, she assured herself. She had genuinely believed that he would have gone, but she knew that the smile curling her mouth was telling him how pleased she was to see him, and the feelings bubbling up inside her and making her feel almost as though she could walk on air betrayed the truth.
She had wanted to see him… to be with him… It was only her conscience, her awareness of what was right and what was wrong that had made her decide that she shouldn’t.
‘Now,’ Kenneth was saying, ‘where would you like to go…?’
To go? Sally gave him a startled look. She had been so convinced that he would have left that she hadn’t thought any further ahead than that.
‘After all, we’ve got plenty of time, haven’t we…? Although eight hours is a mere tithe of the time I’d actually like to spend with you,’ he added caressingly. ‘A lifetime… no, several lifetimes would hardly be long enough. See how trite you’re making me,’ he added. ‘It’s a universal truth that a man in love becomes so besotted that he’s reduced to the mere banal to express his emotions because he cannot find words magnificent enough to do his feelings justice…’
His hands touched her arm lightly, his fingers gently warm through the sleeve of her jacket. She liked the way he didn’t make a grab for her, didn’t make her feel sexually pressured or oppressed, Sally admitted.
It was reassuring to know that even if anyone had seen them together they would have found nothing to remark on in the way he was touching her; it was the polite gesture of any man to a woman he knew.
What he was saying to her, though, was a different matter altogether. It was exciting, enticing, flattering, giving without demanding any response from her, this verbal love play, reawakening echoes of the early days of Joel’s courtship of her. Then Joel had treated her as carefully as though she were as fragile and precious as expensive glass.
He had dated other girls before her, girls who were far more sexually aware and experienced than she, but on their first date he had done nothing more than hold her hand…
‘I don’t like you seeing him,’ her mother had told her angrily. ‘They’re all the same, boys of that type… all after one thing…’
‘He’s not like that,’ Sally had protested, blushing furiously at what her mother was implying. Sex was something that had not been openly discussed in their household apart from stern assertions from Sally’s mother that she didn’t want either of her daughters getting themselves into trouble.
Then Joel had loved her carefully and lovingly, but now…
When had he stopped courting her for sex, and started treating it instead as though it were a right…?
She could never imagine Kenneth behaving like that.
Eight hours… Eight hours alone with him… Her heart flipped over, her hands trembling. Where did she want to go?
‘I… I don’t know,’ she told him. ‘I… I hadn’t really thought…’
‘I had,’ Kenneth told her softly. ‘But if I told you where I’d really like to take you…’
He stopped speaking, his eyes darkening, and Sally felt her face flushing as she recognised the sexual innuendo and promise in his words.
‘It’s too soon for that yet, though, isn’t it?’ he asked her ruefully.
Kenneth was surprised how much it excited him, this prolonged drawn-out prologue to their relationship. The sheer headiness and euphoria of his anticipation had caught him off guard, like breathing in air that was short of oxygen, he recognised. Quick, urgent sex had never appealed to him; he enjoyed the power and self-control of a long period of foreplay.
His wife had once accused him of being narcissistic sexually, of enjoying the thought that he was arousing and controlling her, of bestowing on her the gift of orgasm more than he enjoyed his own release.
It had been shortly after that that she had stopped reaching orgasm, telling him that she refused to be used, to be studied as some kind of a laboratory specimen; that she felt that his desire to get sexual satisfaction at second hand via her was a form of perversion.
He frowned angrily to himself. She had never really understood him; her reactions had been too coarse, too earthy. Sally was different: more sensitive and finely tuned. His desire for her was as much a form of mental arousal as a physical one.
The fact that today, when he could have chosen to take her home with him and have her all to himself, he had instead elected to be with her in public sharpened his desire for her, adding a fiercely keen edge to it.
‘I know,’ he told her now, as though the thought had just occurred to him. ‘It’s such a marvellous day—why don’t we go to Farringdean?’
‘Farringdean?’ Sally frowned uncertainly. She had heard of the elegant Georgian House and its gardens, but it was somewhere she had never been.
‘The house probably won’t be open but the gardens will,’ Kenneth told her. ‘We can walk there and talk… get to know one another better.’
‘That sounds lovely,’ Sally told him gratefully. Had he guessed how mixed up and confused she felt, aware of his desire for her and her own response to it and yet at the same time reluctant to acknowledge it openly and to take their relationship a step further?
Just as long as she stayed on this side of the physical barrier that separated them, she could still tell herself that she was doing nothing wrong, but once she crossed it…
* * *
‘So how are things at home?’
They had been walking through the gardens for almost half an hour, Sally unable to prevent herself from stopping every few minutes to admire them and exclaim over their beauty.
‘Not too bad,’ she told him.
They were walking slowly along the gravel paths of a formal garden, and Kenneth was holding her hand in his. She felt happy and relaxed, enjoying his physical closeness in the knowledge that it was not a prelude to a demand for sex, as it would have been with Joel.
‘Joel’s become very involved down at the leisure centre and he seems to spend nearly all his time down there.’
Kenneth was frowning. ‘I thought he was supposed to be looking for a job,’ he commented sharply.
‘He was,’ Sally agreed.
‘But instead he goes out enjoying himself, leaving you to work to support him?’ Kenneth’s mouth hardened and Sally felt a small thrill of pleasure that he should be so angry on her behalf.
But her conscience prompted her to add, ‘He is actually doing some voluntary work, coaching young swimmers…’
‘But he doesn’t get paid for it… Does he have any idea of how lucky he is to have a woman like you?’ Kenneth asked her softly, stopping walking and turning to face her. His free hand touched her face lightly.
‘He doesn’t value you properly, Sally; you know that, don’t you? I’d take any kind of work… do anything…’ He stopped and shook his head. ‘What is it?’ Kenneth asked her. ‘And don’t say “nothing” because your eyes are already giving you away. I don’t know what it is that’s going through your mind, but I do know it’s upsetting you…’
‘It’s nothing really… just something Joel did… My sister wanted him to do some wallpapering for her. She was having an important dinner party—her husband’s headmaster and his wife—only Joel put the wallpaper on upside-down and now…’
She bit her lip. ‘Daphne wants him to go back and repaper the room, but he won’t. That means I’ll have to go and do it next Monday on my day off…’
She didn’t add that she hadn’t told Joel yet, nor that he would be furious with her for doing so, but what alternative did she have?
‘You’re too good for him,’ Kenneth whispered, squeezing her hand. ‘You shouldn’t stay with him, you know… a man who doesn’t appreciate or value you.’
Sally’s mouth went dry. Her heart started to thump uncomfortably hard. Kenneth’s words were only an echo of her sister’s, and yet coming from him they held a much greater import.
‘I�
� I can’t leave him,’ she protested in agitation. ‘He… he needs me…’
‘He’s using you,’ Kenneth told her forcefully. ‘And besides, you shouldn’t be asking yourself if he needs you, Sally, but whether you need him… if you want him… Do you still sleep together?’ he asked her abruptly.
His question sent a shock of awareness thrilling through her. ‘Yes… That is… we still share the same bed,’ she told him huskily. ‘But…’
‘But you don’t make love… you don’t have sex,’ Kenneth prompted softly.
‘I… we… Joel wants to, but…’ She closed her eyes, guiltily aware that every word she said increased her betrayal of Joel and their marriage, but it was such a relief to talk to someone who understood her, someone with whom she could be open and honest about her feelings. If Daphne had not been so antagonistic towards Joel she might have felt more able to confide in her, but with Daphne she was always uncomfortably aware that her sister was looking for faults in Joel, for something to criticise.
‘I suppose it’s just that men and women have a different attitude towards sex,’ she told him ruefully. ‘Joel just can’t seem to understand that it isn’t something I can… that I can’t make myself…’ She stopped, shaking her head.
‘That you can’t what?’ Kenneth prompted. ‘That you can’t make yourself want him? And he still tries to force himself on you, knowing…’ Kenneth began disgustedly, but Sally stopped him.
‘It isn’t like that,’ she protested defensively. ‘Joel doesn’t…’
She stopped again. How could she explain to Kenneth… admit to him that the diminishment of her sex drive had meant that she almost preferred to have Joel get the whole thing over and done with rather than attempt to arouse her?
‘You don’t want him, and he has to know it,’ Kenneth insisted. ‘In my book that makes him…’ He stopped, shaking his head. ‘There’s an awful lot more to a relationship, to loving someone, than sex…’
‘Yes,’ Sally acknowledged sadly.
‘You know how I feel about you,’ Kenneth told her. ‘Leave him, Sally, and come to me…’