Conveniently His Omnibus(16)
‘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.
* * *
SUSAN SAUNDERS 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.
* * *
‘COME 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?’