by Penny Jordan
‘Forgive me.’ His voice was harsher than she had ever known it. ‘I obviously mistook anger for frustration.’
Frustration? Slowly his meaning dawned and a scarlet wave of anger scalded its way over her skin. Did he actually think she had deliberately tried to incite him to…to make love to her…because she was suffering from frustration because he had interrupted her with Chris? That she wanted him to finish what Chris had started? The thought made her feel acutely sick and for the second time that day she was bitterly angry with him.
Tears stung her eyes but she refused to let them fall.
‘You couldn’t be more wrong,’ she told him thickly. ‘I wasn’t lying to you when I said Chris attacked me, and as for thinking I wanted you to…to finish what he had started….’ She swallowed hard on the nausea clutching her stomach. ‘You’re doing both of us an injustice. I can’t think why you married me, Jon, if that’s the sort of woman you think I am. I’m tired, Jon,’ she told him listlessly as the surge of anger drained away, leaving her feeling exhausted both emotionally and physically. ‘I think it must be this hot weather that’s making everyone so on edge. I’m going to bed.’
She hesitated by the door, consumed by a totally crazy desire to turn round and go back, to beg him to take her back in his arms and kiss her again but somehow she found the strength to resist it.
Upstairs she was too tired even to start undressing. She caught a glimpse of her reflection in her mirror and stared at her swollen mouth touching it tentatively with her fingertips. When Jon had kissed her she had experienced sensations so totally alien and yet so totally known that she was still shocked by them. But not as shocked as she had been by Jon’s assured experience. When she had thought about him kissing her she had imagined his touch would be hesitant, unsure and perhaps rather clumsy but his mouth had moved on hers with wholly masculine authority, subtly demanding, revealing a wealth of experience she had never expected him to have. For a man who openly expressed a lack of interest in sex, Jon had revealed a totally unexpected degree of expertise. And she wasn’t sure she liked it. Where and with whom had he gained that expertise? Had he once perhaps been deeply in love? So deeply in love that it had made him eschew all further emotional or physical involvement? She shivered slightly, faintly disturbed by the discovery than Jon was not what she had thought him to be…that there was obviously much of himself that he kept hidden. But why had he kissed her?
That was a question to which she could not find an answer other than perhaps out of male pride because she had verbally challenged his sexuality.
Yes…she decided finally, that must be it. Yet didn’t that explanation too, indicate that Jon was not the totally non-sexual, mild man she had always believed him to be? Had she simply deceived herself or had he deliberately deceived her and if so, why? Why present an image to her that was, at least partially, false? That was something she was too tired to even try and analyse. Tomorrow, she told herself sleepily, as she prepared for bed, she would try to unravel these mysteries tomorrow.
* * *
IN THE MORNING Sophy overslept slightly and, much to the children’s disappointment, opted not to use the new car to take them to school. After explaining that she needed to drive it by herself to get used to it first, she managed to placate them.
She had promised to drive Jon into Cambridge when she had dropped the children off and had decided to combine it with a shopping trip.
‘We could meet for lunch.’ Jon suggested, as she was parking. ‘Unless of course you won’t have time.’
Sophy had been dreading being alone with him after what had happened the previous evening but he was his normal mild, calm self, and she had even been able to persuade herself that most of last night’s heart searchings had been prompted by nothing more than her own imagination. After all, it was not perhaps surprising that she should enjoy his kiss. She had wanted him to touch her for long enough.
‘Er…no. Lunch would be lovely,’ she stammered, realising that Jon was waiting for her response.
‘Good.’
The smile he gave her made her heart lurch drunkenly and, for some stupid reason, she simply sat in the car and watched him walk away, unable to take her eyes off his lean, lithe body. He was wearing his new clothes as though he had always worn them and watching the way more than one woman turned to observe his long legged progress down the street, Sophy found herself wishing she had left him to his baggy cords and shapeless shirts. She didn’t want other women looking at him, she realised with a sharp pang. She didn’t want them admiring the masculine lines of his body, the breadth of his shoulders beneath the fine cotton of his shirt…
Like someone moving slowly in a dream, she shook her head, trying to disperse it, forcing herself to get out of the car and lock it.
Her shopping didn’t take her long, and she was finished in plenty of time to get to the office where she had arranged to meet Jon. So much time in fact that when she found herself studying an attractive lemon sundress in a shop window, she gave in to the temptation to go inside and try it on.
It fitted her perfectly, enhancing the golden gleam of her skin and bringing out the red highlights in her hair. Tiny shoe-string straps tied on her shoulders in provocative bows, a broad stiffened belt emphasising the narrowness of her waist, before the skirt flared out over a slightly stiffened underskirt.
‘It might have been made for you,’ the assistant said, truthfully.
‘I’ll take it…’ Sophy took a deep breath, ‘and I’ll keep it on…’
The other girl’s eyes twinkled. ‘Mmm…well I certainly think he’ll appreciate it, whoever he is.’
‘My husband.’ The admission was made almost before she was aware of it and angry colour flooded her skin. Of course she wasn’t buying this dress for Jon’s benefit! She was buying it because it was cool and she was hot…and besides it was time she had some pretty things and…
Impatiently she waited for the girl to take her cheque and put her things into a bag, regretting now her impulsive decision to wear the dress but too embarrassed to do anything about it.
She found Jon waiting for her when she got to the office. He opened the door for her and, as the strong midday sunlight fell on his face, she realised he looked tired. Lines of strain harshened the shape of his mouth and for some reason he looked almost unfamiliar; harder, more male. As though she were seeing him properly for the first time Sophy stared at him, confused. He in turn was studying her, looking at her with such an air of open appraisal that the sundress, so pretty and cool in the shop, now seemed somehow provocative and dangerous.
‘It’s such a hot day I thought we’d eat at the Mill.’
The restaurant he named was on the river and very popular. Sophy doubted that they would be able to get a table but she was anxious to escape the tense atmosphere of the small office. It seemed to be stifling her. It must be the heat, she thought dizzily as they went outside but even in the fresh air the tension remained.
In the narrow streets the heat was like a thick blanket, clogging her throat when she tried to breathe. Far too acutely conscious of Jon at her side, she started to walk faster, arriving at the car hot and out of breath. In contrast Jon looked cool and lazily at ease. But was he? Some sixth sense made her study him more closely. A tiny pulse flickered unevenly under his skin. This constraint between them was a new thing, and one she did not know how to handle. Almost overnight Jon had turned from a kind, unthreatening man whom she liked very much and was fond of in a sisterly fashion, into a stranger, for whom her feelings were anything but sisterly.
Her face burned as she remembered his laconic accusation the previous evening. She had goaded him deliberately, she recognised that now. She wanted him to react physically to her comments but not because of Chris. All the feelings she had been fighting so hard to suppress flooded through her as she started the car. Why did she have to discov
er them now, when it was too late? Why had she not realised before their marriage that she was vulnerable to Jon’s attraction? Was it because they were married that she was seeing him in this new light?
The questions buzzed in her tired brain like swarming wasps, making her stall the car and have to restart it, whilst Jon sat silently at her side.
To her surprise he had booked a table for them at the Mill. Not outside where everyone else seemed to be eating but in the dim coolness of the mill itself. Once a working flour mill, the building had been enterprisingly converted into a restaurant some years ago. Recently it had been taken over by a young couple with an enthusiasm for wholesome natural food, which was attractively presented.
Sophy ordered unenthusiastically, knowing that she was far too wrought up to enjoy her meal. Her throat seemed to have closed to an aching tightness, her whole body in the grip of an unfamiliar tension. She wanted to be with Jon and yet she didn’t. Being alone with him made her feel nervous and on edge. Something she had never experienced in his company before, but a feeling she was familiar with nevertheless. She had experienced it every time she had dated a man she liked and whom she had thought might help her to overcome the stigma that Chris had labelled her with. It was the utmost stupidity to want Jon physically, she told herself despairingly, and it was not even as though he wanted her.
She managed no more than a few bites of both her first and main courses, refusing a sweet, and playing with her cup of coffee whilst Jon buttered biscuits and helped himself to the Stilton.
Why had she ever thought him clumsy? she wondered absently, watching the neat methodical movement of his hands. In moments she was totally absorbed in watching him, in wondering what it would be like to feel those long fingers against her skin…
‘Sophy.’
She looked up, confused by the sudden curling ache in the pit of her stomach, her breath catching suddenly, trapped deep in her lungs as she saw the way he was looking at her.
‘Jon?’
‘Some boxes are better never opened, Pandora,’ he said quietly in answer to her unspoken question, ‘but it’s too late for going back now.’
Sophy moistened her dry lips with the tip of her tongue, dreading what he might be going to say. She had seen in that look they had just exchanged a recognition of the desire he had stirred within her, and was ashamed of her own betrayal.
‘What do you mean?’ She was playing for time, hoping to stall whatever was to come but Jon did not want to play. She could tell that from the way his jaw tensed, his eyes narrowing faintly as he studied her face.
‘Isn’t it obvious what I mean?’ he asked quietly, carefully pushing aside his plate and looking at her. She wanted to look away but it was impossible, some power beyond her own puny strength refused to allow her to drag her gaze away from his. ‘I want you dammit, Sophy,’ she heard him saying rawly, the words falling around her, splintering through her self-control and shattering it completely, shocking her with their intensity, stunning her into silence with their totally unexpectedness. ‘I want you as a man wants a woman, in my arms…in my bed. Oh, it’s all right, I’m not going to force myself on you. I simply brought you here so that we could discuss this sensibly.’
From somewhere she managed to find her voice, the sound of it raw and husky in her own ears as she stammered helplessly, ‘But you don’t…you aren’t like that.’
His mouth twisted with unfamiliar cynicism, his voice very soft and faintly metallic as he told her, ‘You’re wrong, Sophy, I do…and I most certainly am, much as it pains me to admit it. Poor Sophy,’ his voice mocked her in its irony, ‘how shocked you look, and no wonder…but did you really think me so sexless? Oh, I know you don’t find me physically appealing but unfortunately a human being’s ability to experience desire is not in direct ratio to physical attractiveness. Or is that another truth you find hard to digest? Poor Sophy, indeed. How disconcerting all this must be for you…. You preferred to see me as more machine than man, I’m afraid but you really only have yourself to blame,’ he told her harshly. ‘I’m not blind despite these…’ He touched his glasses, his eyes and mouth hard. ‘Whether you’re willing to admit it or not, you’ve been deliberately provoking me recently. Why? Because of Benson?’
Unable to listen to any more, Sophy reacted wholly instinctively and did something she’d never done before in her life. She got up and fled from the room, rushing out to the car before Jon could stop her, quickly starting it and driving off.
It wasn’t until she reached home that the full enormity of what she had done actually dawned on her. She had left Jon stranded at the Mill. All because she didn’t have the courage to be as open with him as he had been with her and tell him that her recent provocative behaviour had sprung from a mingling of pique and curiosity and had had nothing to do with Chris at all. No, not just pique and curiosity…there was desire as well; the same desire that was curling through her body now as she remembered what he had said to her about wanting her.
Suddenly galvanised into action she ran to the phone and looked up the number of the Mill, quickly dialling it. It seemed an age before anyone answered. Impatiently she asked for Jon and, after what seemed like an endless wait, was told that he had left.
He must have got a taxi, she reflected guiltily. Why had she reacted like that…like a gauche and embarrassed teenager? What on earth could she say to him when he came home?
CHAPTER SIX
ONLY HE DIDN’T come home. At least not immediately, and he wasn’t back when she returned from collecting the children from school either. She had dialled the office several times without getting a reply and was now beginning to get seriously alarmed…he had every right to be angry with her but to do this. Where was he?
She had to fib to David and Alex, telling them that he had gone out on business. Fortunately they were too accustomed to his sudden departures and arrivals to question her more closely, because she was sure her anxious expression would not have deceived them for very long if they had.
Supper time came and went and there was still no sign of him. Sophy stayed up until gone midnight, her mind in total panic. Had he walked out on her? Was he so angry with her that he could not bear to come back? Or had he perhaps taken her sudden flight as an indication that she found his revelations totally repellent…that she found him totally repellent? Biting her lip anxiously she paced the floor, tension seizing her body as she heard a car coming up the drive.
The taxi driver greeted her appearance with a relieved grimace. ‘Passed out cold I think he has,’ he informed her bluntly.
At first when she looked into the taxi she thought he was right but Jon was conscious, although undeniably drunk. Between them she and the driver managed to get him into the house where he collapsed on to the settee.
The smell of whisky clung to his skin and his breath.
‘At least he’s not a violent drunk,’ the taxi driver comforted her when she went out to pay him. ‘Real gentlemanly he was until he passed out.’
Slowly Sophy went back inside. Jon never drank more than the odd glass of spirits or wine; she had never ever seen him like this, nor thought that she would. Had he done this to himself because he wanted her? She ached to tell him the truth…that she wanted him too, and wished more than ever that she had not rushed off in that silly fashion at lunchtime, but she had been shocked and, yes, angry too that he could be so blind about her. It was insulting that he should believe that she could not see beyond his public façade to what lay behind but until very recently she could not, she reminded herself…until she had married him, until David had made that innocent remark about Louise—in fact, she had never considered him as a sexual human being at all…so perhaps it was no wonder he had spoken the way he had.
He moaned and she went across to the sofa, reflecting grimly that in the morning he would have an outsize hangover and a stiff neck if she le
ft him where he was…but how could she move him? She tried and found it impossible and instead made him as comfortable as she could, relief invading her now that he was actually back.
* * *
‘WHY IS UNCLE JON sleeping in the sitting room?’ Alex asked the question innocently at breakfast time.
It was David who replied, eyeing his sister faintly scornfully, as he said. ‘It’s because he’s been drinking. He smells just like Daddy did when he and Mummy had been to a party.’
‘Yes, but why does that make him sleep downstairs?’ Alex persisted, breaking off as the subject of her question came into the kitchen. The blue eyes looked slightly bloodshot, the brown skin faintly sallow.
‘Coffee?’ Sophy asked quietly.
Jon nodded and then closed his eyes, moaning faintly as he did so. ‘What happened?’ he demanded wryly, sitting down beside Alex and taking the coffee Sophy poured for him.
‘I don’t really know. A taxi driver brought you back.’
‘Oh, God, yes…I bumped into some friends I was at Cambridge with. Which reminds me…I think I accepted an invitation to a party for both of us tonight.’ He fished in his pocket and produced a scrap of paper with an address scribbled down on it. ‘Yes, there it is…’
‘You haven’t had enough partying?’ Sophy asked him drily, taking the paper and smoothing it out.
‘Mmm…but we ought to go. It’s someone who’s just setting up on his own and he needs my help. If you don’t fancy it, I could always go alone.’
Instantly Sophy recognised that she did not want that at all. She wanted to be with him…accepted by his friends as his wife.
‘No…no. It will be a pleasant change.’ She would have to arrange a babysitter, but that should not be too difficult. Helen Saunders at the Post Office had a teenage daughter who was trying to save up to buy her first car. Susan was a pleasant, responsible girl, who Sophy knew she could trust with the children.