Conveniently His Omnibus (9 page)

‘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

O
NLY
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 left 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.

* * *

‘W
HY
IS
U
NCLE
J
ON
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.

‘Why don’t you go upstairs and go back to sleep?’ she suggested to Jon, noting his bleary eyes and haggard appearance.

‘Mmm...sounds like a good idea.’

She watched him go, conscious of an urge to rush after him and go with him to fuss over him as though he were genuinely her husband.

‘Poor Uncle Jon, he looks really poorly,’ Alex commented sympathetically, finishing her breakfast.

* * *

S
USAN
S
AUNDERS
proved willing to babysit, and having arranged to pick her up at eight Sophy went upstairs to study the contents of her wardrobe. She had attended several business cocktail parties with Jon before and knew what to expect. As his secretary she had always worn something businesslike and formal but now she was his wife. In the end she selected a simple cream silk shift-style dress, which had been an impulse buy in London and which had been so hideously expensive she had been too guilty to wear it.

Holding it up against herself she saw how the cream silk emphasised her tan and the silky richness of her hair. The demure front was offset by the deep vee back; the dress would be pleasantly cool on what she suspected was going to be an oppressively hot evening.

Her mind made up, she went back downstairs, not giving in to the temptation to walk into Jon’s room and see if he was awake. Sooner or later they were going to have to talk; she was going to have to explain to him that the reason she had fled so abruptly had not been because she was shocked by his disclosures or found them distasteful. Even now she found it hard to grasp that he had made them, that he had told her that he wanted her.

He came downstairs just after lunch, looking worn and tired. ‘God, I feel dreadful,’ he told her wryly. ‘It’s a long, long time since I’ve been in the state I was in last night.’ He sat down at the kitchen table and leaned his head back. ‘I have the most God-awful headache.’

Silently Sophy produced some Alka Seltzer, watching the face he pulled as he drank it. ‘Filthy stuff,’ was his only comment before he closed his eyes again.

‘Jon, about yesterday.’ It had to be said before she lost her courage but the look in his eyes as he opened them immediately silenced her.

‘Not now, Sophy,’ he said wearily. ‘Just leave it, will you? I think I’d better get some fresh air...’

He didn’t want her to go with him, Sophy could tell that. Was he regretting saying to her what he had? Idly her eyes registered his progress to the door, her senses wondering how she could ever have been ignorant of his masculine appeal; how she could ever have been blind enough to think of him as sexless...? A quiver of heat darted through her as her glance rested briefly on the taut outline of his buttocks and then slithered down the length of his legs. Suddenly it hurt to even breathe; she was terrified he would turn round and see what was in her eyes. She reached clumsily for her mug of coffee, her whole body shaking. So this was desire, this fierce, hot need that pushed aside everything that stood in its path; that demanded and aroused. Jon wanted her, he had said so and it ought to be the simplest thing in the world simply to go to him and tell him that she wanted him too, only it wasn’t.

* * *

‘C
OME
AND
SHOW
me when you’ve got your dress on.’ Alex was in the sitting room with Susan and David, and Sophy smiled and nodded. Jon was already upstairs getting ready but she had only just arrived back with Susan. According to Jon they were supposed to be at his friend’s for nine o’clock. She had showered and put on her makeup before going for Susan but she had not changed into her silk dress.

She had decided to drive the BMW tonight—the first time she had taken it out with a passenger, although Jon was the most uncritical of men when it came to being driven.

She almost collided with him at the top of the stairs, his hands coming out to steady her, touching her briefly, making heat sheet through her body.

How on earth had she ever considered him unattractive, she wondered achingly. His hair was still slightly damp and curled into his neck, the white silk shirt he was wearing clinging to his skin. The black pants weren’t ones she could ever remember seeing before and then she realised it was part of a dinner suit and that he was carrying the jacket—a new dinner suit, she was sure. He was even wearing a bow tie, and as he moved past her she caught an elusive hint of some masculine cologne, faintly old-fashioned and citrusy.

‘I shan’t be long,’ she told him. ‘I’ve only got to put on my dress and do my hair.’

Once it was on she wasn’t sure if the cream silk had been a good idea. She had forgotten that the back was so low that it was impossible to wear a bra under it and the silk, almost perfectly decorous, seemed to hint at the shape of her breasts in a way she found unfamiliar. Her hair she left loose, sliding her feet into cream high-heeled sandals that made her taller than ever. For the first time in her life she was not ashamed or embarrassed by her height. Even in these heels she was nowhere near as tall as Jon. She picked up her bag and went downstairs.

‘Wow...you both look smashing!’ Alex told her, her admiring eyes going from Jon to Sophy in excited wonder. Susan grinned at her and then blushed bright red as she looked at Jon. A sharp knifing feeling that Sophy recognised as jealousy tore through her. She was jealous! Jealous of an eighteen-year-old...just because that eighteen-year-old had recognised instantly what she herself had been blind to for so long. Jon was an extremely attractive and desirable man!

‘We shan’t be back late.’ Instead of being reassuring her voice sounded slightly brittle. She saw Jon frown as they went outside.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked her quietly. ‘You seem on edge.’

‘It’s the heat.’ It was partially true after all. Surely he knew the reason she was so on edge? He touched her arm as he opened the car door for her and she flinched, red hot darts of sensation destroying her composure.

‘For God’s sake, Sophy.’ His voice was harsh against her ear. ‘What the hell do you think I’m going to do? Give in to my animal passions and take you here in full view of the kids?’

He had managed to subdue the harshness to a laconic drawl which infused the words with a certain dry mockery, but they still made her shake with reaction. ‘I’m sorry that you find the knowledge that I’m a fully functioning sexual being so distressing, but as I’ve already told you...you have nothing to fear.’

‘I know that.’

‘You do?’ His mouth twisted in a way she was coming to know. ‘Then you’ve a pretty odd way of showing it.’

He walked round to the passenger door of the car, which she unlocked for him, and got in beside her.

She had lost count of the thousands of times she must have driven him and yet tonight his presence beside her in the close confines of the car disturbed her. She was acutely conscious of the lean sprawl of his legs...of the rise and fall of his chest, and the cool scent of his cologne mingling with a different, more basic scent which her sense responded to on a deeper, primitive level.

She wanted him, she realised despairingly, and she would give anything not to be going to this party tonight but to be alone with him so that they could talk. Instead she forced herself to concentrate on her driving, absently noting the easy way in which the big car responded to her touch. It was a pleasure to drive, but right now she was hardly in a mood to appreciate that fact.

It was ten-past-nine when she pulled up in the drive to Jon’s friend’s house. A mock Tudor building in an avenue of similar houses, it was an easily recognisable symbol of success.

She walked with Jon to the front door.

A small brunette opened it to them, smiling ravishingly at Jon, and exclaiming, ‘Darling, you made it!’ She giggled. ‘After last night we weren’t sure if you’d remember.’ She took her time before looking at Sophy.

‘So this is your wife? Please come in. You can’t know how thrilled we were to bump into Jon last night in Cambridge.’ She chattered on as she led them through the house to a long terrace at the back where the rich aromas of barbecued meat mingled with the heat of the evening. ‘It’s simply ages since we last saw him. Roy, my husband, was so pleased...he’s having trouble with this new computer of his and if anyone can help him it will be Jon. How long have you been married?’

She was still talking to Sophy but it was Jon who answered, his expression unreadable as he drawled, ‘Not very long...not long enough, in fact.’

Sophy could feel the brown eyes darting speculatively from Jon’s face to her own. In time she might quite get to like this petite brunette, but at the moment she was too uncomfortably aware of her speculation and her interest in Jon. My God, she thought despairingly, what was she turning into? A woman who was jealous of every mere look her husband received from other women? She must be going mad, suffering from some sort of sickness brought on by the heat. Or perhaps that frustration Jon had accused her of not so very long ago?

‘There’s an old friend here of yours that you simply must meet, darling.’ Their hostess was talking to Jon now, holding on to his arm in a way that made Sophy’s fingers curl into tiny talons.

‘Roy, over here a minute, darling,’ she called to her husband, and Sophy watched the burly fair-haired man detach himself from a small group.

He looked older than Jon although Sophy recognised that they must be around the same age, clever hazel eyes studying her gravely as he shook her hand.