Conveniently His Omnibus(15)

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 discover 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 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.

* * *

‘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.