The Beautiful Widow

by Helen Brooks

  ‘I told you, he’s been the perfect gentleman since Monday night,’ Toni said weakly, ‘besides which if there was any sexual harassment going on I think it was more me than him.’ She glanced out of Poppy’s kitchen window to where the twins were shrieking with delight as Poppy’s eldest boy, a sturdy four-year-old with a voice like a foghorn, chased them with a small bucket of water. It was a baking hot weekend and Poppy had filled the paddling pool with tepid water after all the children had stripped down to their pants and been covered with suncream.

  It had been a relief to talk the incident through with Poppy. She’d kept it to herself all week and the strain had been getting to her. Now she wondered if she’d done the right thing.

  ‘So he’s pretty drop-dead gorgeous, is he, this boss of yours?’ Poppy leant forward, putting her elbows on the kitchen table where they were sitting having coffee and cake. ‘Tell me all the sordid details.’

  Toni smiled wryly. ‘You ought to get out more.’

  ‘Tell me about it.’ Poppy patted her enormous stomach wherein her fourth child lay. Besides Nathan, the four-year-old, she had David, who was three, and little Rose, who would be a year old when the new baby made its appearance. They already knew it was another girl and Poppy had decided two of each was enough and Graham, her husband, was already scheduled for the snip.

  ‘Seriously though,’ Poppy continued, ‘if you fancy him and he fancies you, what’s wrong with a little fling? You’re a free woman, Toni, and after the life you had with Richard a bit of rampant sex would be just the tonic you need.’

  Toni eyed her friend severely. ‘For one thing he doesn’t particularly fancy me; I told you, it was more me than him.’ The recollection of how she’d practically begged him to make love to her with that kiss was still too raw to talk about in any detail, and she went on hurriedly, ‘Added to which I’ve only been a widow a matter of months and “rampant sex", as you put it, isn’t my style with a virtual stranger.’ Or anyone else, come to it. Poppy had been free with her favours before she met Graham and settled down and had hardly been able to believe it when Toni had told her Richard had been her first and only lover.

  ‘He won’t be a stranger the more you work with him,’ Poppy said reasonably. ‘Especially if your mother invites him to dinner.’

  ‘He’s my boss.’

  ‘So? I had great rumpy-pumpy when I worked for that marketing executive. There’s something about an office desk …’

  ‘This is different,’ said Toni, trying not to laugh.

  ‘OK, we’ll talk adult and grown-up. You kissed. No more, no less. Not exactly mind-blowing in the twenty-first century, Toni. And you let him know you enjoyed it. So what? That’s a compliment to him, surely? Far better than gagging.’

  Toni giggled; she couldn’t help it. A few minutes with Poppy and she always felt better.

  ‘He knew all about Richard and he’d met the girls, he realised you weren’t in the running for a quick affair and so he did the decent thing and stepped back a mile or two. Respected you as a wife and mother. Well, ex-wife, but very much a mother. And now you can earn a shedload while working for a gorgeous piece of eye candy who won’t try anything on and respects your saintly position. You’ve got everything you want. Stop feeling awkward, relax, and enjoy the job. You do enjoy it, don’t you?’

  ‘Love it.’ Toni smiled and silently blessed Rose, who chose that moment to wake up from her morning nap. Time for a change of subject. She appreciated her friend’s take on the situation and Poppy was probably right, but then she didn’t have to work with Steel every day. Try as she might, and she knew it was completely unreasonable, it rankled that from Tuesday morning, when she had arrived at the office not knowing if she was on foot or horseback, Steel had been his smooth, unruffled, urbane self. Monday night could have been a dream, a fantasy, and there were a couple of times during that day when she’d had to reassure herself it had actually happened.

  But it had. Oh, it had. And to her chagrin Steel had awakened something in her that evening that made it impossible for her to revert to the woman she had been before he’d kissed her. He’d inadvertently opened Pandora’s box, which was monumentally unfair, leaving her—as it did—in the middle of nowhere. She didn’t want Steel, or any other man, intruding into the safe, orderly world she had now, a world where she and the girls were impregnable.

  In the last couple of years of her marriage she had never known how Richard would be when he walked through the door. Sometimes he was merely withdrawn, ignoring the twins and pushing her away when she tried to talk to him. Other times he’d been downright hostile and then she’d had to try and keep the girls out of his way completely. He had never gone so far as to be physically violent with Amelia and Daisy, but once or twice when he’d lost his temper over something they’d done or said she had felt he might be. The stress had been unbelievable. She would never put the girls in that position again. Never introduce a fourth person into their precious circle, someone with the potential to let them down. They were secure and in safe hands with her. That was all that mattered. They hadn’t asked to be born and her wants and needs didn’t count now.

  The rest of the morning was spent running round after the children and talking of inconsequentials, but as Toni was leaving she was surprised when Poppy put her arms round her in a hug that was more than just a polite farewell. ‘I know how awful it’s been, really, I do, and you’ve still got all that debt and so on, but you’re only thirty years old, Toni. There’s someone out there for you, I know it. Someone who would be good to the girls too. Don’t close your mind to that in the future.’

  Toni hugged her back even as she thought, I don’t want to hear this, Poppy. You know me but you don’t know me, not over this. But then Poppy was blissfully happy with Graham and he worshipped the ground she walked on. Poppy had never experienced nights of lying awake wondering how she could face the next year, the next ten years, the next few decades with a man she had nothing in common with, and then finding out she’d only had a travesty of a marriage after all. And she was glad Poppy hadn’t had to go through that, of course she was, but unless you had you didn’t know how it was. Her marriage had been a tissue of lies from beginning to end; the only real thing in it all had been her beautiful girls. Men weren’t to be trusted; she knew that now.

  Amelia was uncharacteristically quiet on the way home. Toni felt her head but it wasn’t hot and she didn’t seem to be sickening for anything. All was revealed that evening as she tucked the girls up in bed, prior to reading their night-time story. Out of the blue, Amelia stated, ‘Nathan said if you lose one daddy you can get another one. His friend Archy has had two already.’

  Toni warned herself not to react. Very calmly, she said, ‘We’re all right as we are, aren’t we? You like living with Grandma and Grandad and we all have lots of fun together.’

  Amelia considered this. ‘But it’s not the same as having a daddy, is it? Nathan has got a daddy and two lots of grandmas and grandads.’ This was said in the tone of ‘it’s not fair'.

  ‘But I’ve explained to you that your daddy’s mummy and daddy died before you were born.’

  ‘They were very old,’ Daisy put in importantly.

  ‘Yes, that’s right, sweetpea.’ Toni hoped that would be the end of the conversation but, knowing her daughter, she doubted it.

  Sure enough, Amelia wriggled a little before saying, ‘Why couldn’t we get another daddy, like the steel man? Me an’ Daisy liked him. He was nice.’

  ‘He’s too busy to be a daddy.’

  It was the wrong thing to say. She knew it even before Amelia piped up, ‘Daddy was busy all the time but he was still Daddy. You can be a daddy and be busy, and we like the steel man, don’t we, Daisy?’

  Helplessly, Toni murmured, ‘But you wouldn’t want another daddy to be busy all the time, surely? If you ever have another daddy it would be nice to find one who can play with you and come on holiday with us, things like that, wouldn’t it?’ Richard had
always insisted he was too tied up at work to holiday with them and she and the girls had gone away with her parents for a week in Cornwall each year.

  Amelia wriggled some more. ‘Suppose so,’ she muttered reluctantly. ‘But the steel man was nice.’

  Toni smiled at the tiny power house who was her daughter and then turned to Daisy, who was watching her with huge brown eyes. ‘It’ll all work out, honeybee, don’t worry,’ she said softly. ‘We’ve got each other and that’s all that matters.’

  Daisy beamed back and snuggled up against her, but Amelia slid under the covers without touching her mother. ‘I’d still like a daddy,’ she whispered, cuddling her teddy bear. ‘A proper one, like Nathan’s.’

  Hiding her pain, Toni said briskly, ‘Well, who knows what the future might bring, darling? But for now you’ve got to make do with just me and Daisy and Grandma and Grandad. How about we go on a picnic tomorrow and maybe in the afternoon we could visit that swimming pool you like, the one with the big slides and wave machine? We could see if Nathan and David want to come with us.’

  ‘Yes, yes, yes!’ Both girls bounced up and threw their arms round her neck.

  Once the twins were asleep Toni sat watching them for a long time, her heart breaking. She had expected the sort of questions Amelia had put to her one day; just not so soon.

  She rubbed tense neck muscles and walked over to gaze out of the window. In some of the other little gardens families were having barbecues or sitting enjoying the last of the sunshine together, and directly below the window her parents were reading over a cup of coffee at the patio table. As she watched them her father leant across and touched her mother’s cheek. A simple gesture but one filled with love.

  Jerking back into the room, Toni found she was fighting the tears, a poignant sadness gripping her. She had never felt so alone and lost and for a moment it seemed she was shrinking, disappearing into a little speck of nothing as she contemplated endless evenings like this one in the future.

  And then one of the girls stirred in her sleep, muttering, ‘Mummy,’ before settling down again.

  Toni walked across to look down at them and as she stood there her heart filled with thanksgiving for her babies. She had to count her blessings and the biggest two were right here, healthy and happy and safe. She was all at sixes and sevens at the moment, but was it any wonder with all that had happened in the last months? And she didn’t know why she was feeling like this tonight; she had coped so well up to this point.

  For a moment a dark male face was there on the screen of her mind, a pair of stunningly beautiful silver-blue eyes challenging the thought before she shook her head determinedly. No, it wasn’t Steel Landry who had so unsettled her tonight. She wouldn’t let it be. She worked for him, that was all, and she could dismiss the memory of what had happened that night in the garden just as easily as he apparently could.

  Poppy was right. She’d fallen into a terrific job, which she absolutely loved, and she had got everything she wanted. She had to relax and go with the flow. Life was what you made it and she was going to make a good life for her and her daughters. It wasn’t what she’d imagined in her teens—living life without a partner, a husband, someone to love and laugh and grow old with—but she had her girls and that was a lot more than some women had.

  No more self-pity. She touched each of the girls’ faces before leaving the room. She was back on track again.

  This resolution was severely tested over the next weeks and months. Working with Steel proved to be exhilarating and stimulating and exhausting, but never, ever dull. Within the first month she could understand why once someone worked for him they rarely left unless they had to. Although a fiercely hardworking and exacting employer, he never asked one of his staff to do something he wouldn’t do himself. In fact it was fair to say he worked harder and longer than anyone. And he was immensely generous when it came to holidays and time off and helping the families of those he employed. Bill’s wife was by no means an isolated case. He actually seemed to care about his employees as people and not just efficient working machines. Although they definitely had to be that too. He simply didn’t understand less than one hundred per cent commitment and loyalty.

  Joy’s replacement worked out well. Fiona was a very capable and friendly woman in her mid-forties who had been the breadwinner in her family most of her married life, due to her husband being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis when their two children were very young. Her boys were away at university now and the fact that they were twins provided an immediate bond between the two women.

  Amelia and Daisy had sailed into big school life although Toni still received tales of the terrible Tyler most days, and as Toni paid for the girls to attend an after-school facility, where they were cared for until six o’clock when she picked them up, the load on her parents had lessened considerably.

  So, everything in the garden was coming up roses, or it would have been but for the persistent and ridiculous feelings regarding Steel, which were a daily battle. Maybe if he hadn’t kissed her that night, if he hadn’t aroused all sorts of dormant sexual desires she had never been aware of, maybe then she would have been able to learn to disregard her magnetic boss as a man. But he had kissed her, breathing life into a side of her that had the power to shock and agitate her in the cold clear light of day. Some mornings she had difficulty looking him in the face.

  If only he didn’t have such a—such a physical effect on her, she thought early one cold morning at the beginning of December. It had been six months she’d worked with him now, but every time she caught sight of him in the morning her heart beat rapidly and her mouth went dry. And it didn’t help that, the more she’d got to know him, the more she appreciated his dry, slightly wicked sense of humour, his ability to laugh at himself, his cynical but definitely amusing take on life.

  Toni pushed her hair back from her forehead as she stood gazing out of the kitchen window into the tiny garden dusted with white from a heavy frost the night before. Spider webs on her mother’s pots and bushes surrounding the patio glinted and sparkled in the weak morning sunlight, and a carpet of diamond dust coated the stone slabs.

  She took a sip of the coffee she’d made for herself before the rest of the household awoke, and contemplated the day ahead. The apartments having been finished the week before and immediately snapped up, Steel now had a list of rich and influential would-be buyers for the new project that had been started while the apartments were still being worked on. This was the conversion of an enormous old riverside inn sitting in a quarter of an acre of ground into four three-bedroom apartments, complete with a new garage block over which was planned a caretaker’s flat. The whole would be surrounded by an eight-foot brick wall and electric gates, with enough security to match Fort Knox.

  But it wasn’t the inn on the agenda today. Before she had left the office the night before, Steel had told her they’d be visiting a property outside London this morning, midway between the capital and Oxford. She had nodded interestedly. ‘Another conversion?’

  ‘Not exactly, no. Just come and see the place with an open mind anyway and then I’ll tell you my plans for it,’ he’d said, somewhat cagily, Toni thought now.

  They had been sitting in Steel’s office at the time, a routine they seemed to have slipped into before she left to pick up the twins each evening. Initially the chat and cup of coffee at the end of the working day had been a time for discussing any problems or difficulties that had occurred on the job, but somewhere in the time between June and December it had changed into something more …

  What, exactly? She frowned, her gaze caught by the robin who appeared on the window sill outside, peering in the window and reminding her she hadn’t put his cake out that morning. Delving into the cupboard for the cake tin, she cut him a generous chunk of her mother’s fruit cake and opened the back door, crumbling his breakfast on the sill in front of him. He didn’t bother to move, watching her as she retreated and pecking even as she closed the door. He
’d brought young ones along in the summer but since they’d matured he’d seen to it they were sent packing.

  Her mind returned to Steel; she asked herself what it was about their evening chats that was so unsettling. Since the incident in the garden in the summer he’d been propriety itself; she could have been a man for all the impact she made on him. This thought wasn’t new and one she didn’t like to dwell on. It had the power to ruin her day.

  Perhaps it was the fact that they now tended to discuss anything and everything in a way she’d never had with anyone before. And he was more relaxed in the evenings and unfortunately ten times more attractive, often sitting with his tie loose and the first few buttons of his shirt undone revealing the beginnings of the black curly hair on his chest. She was galled just how much this affected her, especially in view of his indifference to her, but the flagrant masculinity was all the more potent for its naturalness. He was just one of those men who radiated maleness, she told herself irritably. Oozed it. Every little gesture, the way he held his head, the way he walked.

  She finished her coffee, washing up her mug along with a couple of dishes from supper the night before. Her mother’s tiny kitchen didn’t boast a dishwasher.

  She had a shower and got dressed before she woke the twins and took her parents their morning cup of tea in bed. By the time she dropped the twins off at school for their breakfast club a beautiful December day had unfolded, the sky high and blue and a winter’s sun casting wisps of pale yellow light over the world below. It was good to be alive on such a morning.

  Steel had obviously been working for some time when she arrived at the office and he called her into his room. His desk was strewn with papers, the biscuit tin was open and the delicious smell of coffee permeated the air. ‘Don’t take your coat off. We’re leaving straight away,’ he said, fastening the first couple of buttons of his shirt and pulling his tie into place as he spoke. ‘And bring a notebook with you.’