by Penny Jordan
‘Darling, let me introduce you to an old friend of mine.’ Irritatingly it was Chris who took charge of the proceedings, drawing his wife towards him.
‘Oh, not another old flame, darling....’ The fluttery voice was unexpectedly hard, and instantly Sophy revised her opinion. Chris’s wife was not the delicate little flower she looked. On the contrary, she was every bit as hard as Chris himself, she thought inwardly, taking the hand the other girl extended.
‘Heavens, aren’t you tall!’ Innocent blue eyes slid upwards over Sophy’s body. ‘You must be almost six foot.’
‘Five-ten actually.’ From somewhere Sophy managed to summon a cool smile. Six foot made her sound like a giantess—a freak almost.
‘And this,’ Chris was looking past Sophy now to Jon and the children. His mouth curled in a dazzling smile, laughter lighting his eyes as he looked at Jon. ‘You can only be Sophy’s boss!’ His glance swept derisively over Jon’s appearance, and Sophy could almost see him comparing it with his own. The immaculate white cotton jeans, the cotton knit jumper in blues and greens banded with white...the elegantly cool casualness of his appearance in comparison to Jon’s.
Chris’s rudeness did not surprise her, but the blindingly fierce stab of mingled anger and protectiveness she felt, did. She reached out instinctively to take Jon’s hand in her own, unaware of the deeply gold glitter in her eyes as she said firmly, ‘And my husband. That’s what we came to tell you... Jon and I were married this morning.’
‘Married!’ Her mother looked shocked and disbelieving, and Sophy was furious with her when she cried out, ‘Oh, Sophy...no...how could you do this to us?’ her eyes dropping immediately to her daughter’s tautly flat stomach.
Fury kicked sharply beneath her heart as Sophy realised what her mother was thinking.
‘Sophy is not pregnant, Mrs Marley.’ She was still holding Jon’s hand and the firmness with which he squeezed her fingers was intensely reassuring. She was beginning to feel as though she had strayed into a bad dream. She had known her parents would not be pleased...but that her mother should actually think she was pregnant. She was burning with embarrassment on her parents’ behalf. Neither of them had made the slightest attempt to put Jon at ease or to make him feel welcome.
‘Then why such a rush?’ her mother complained. ‘Why didn’t you say anything the last time you were here?’ She looked suspiciously from her daughter’s flushed face to the one of the man behind her. ‘I know what it is,’ she said shrilly. ‘You’ve married her so that you’ll have someone to look after those children. I told you he was making use of you.’
Sophy couldn’t endure it. She turned blindly towards Jon saying huskily, ‘I think we’d better leave,’ but the hard pressure of his hand holding hers held her back.
‘You do your daughter a severe injustice, Mrs Marley,’ he said very gently. ‘I married Sophy quite simply because I love her.’
Even her mother fell silent at that, rallying enough to add huffily, ‘Well, I still think you should have told us, Sophy. I can’t understand why you should have got married in such a hole-and-corner fashion at all...and in such a rush!’
‘Because I want to be with Jon and the children, Mother,’ she managed evenly. ‘That was why.’
‘Well you can’t expect your father and me not to be shocked. Not even to tell us about the wedding—’
‘I had the most wonderful wedding,’ Felicity cut in cattily. ‘Five hundred guests and a marquee on the lawn at home. Mummy said it was her dream come true for me.’
‘Good old Sophy! Married, eh?’ Chris was eyeing her with open mockery. ‘I never thought I’d see the day. You know, old boy, I once actually bet Sophy that she’d never find a man to marry her.’
‘Well, you see, you were wrong.’
Was she imagining the faint rasp beneath Jon’s mild tone? She must be, Sophy thought, her skin suddenly burning with furious anger as she heard Chris saying quite distinctly to his wife, ‘Not as wrong as all that.’ He turned to Jon and taunted smilingly, ‘She told you about our little bet, then, did she?’
‘She may have mentioned it.’ Jon looked totally vague and disinterested. ‘But it was a very long time ago, wasn’t it?’ He said it so mildly that there seemed to be no outward reason why Chris should colour so hotly until Jon added equally mildly, ‘Really I’m surprised you even remember it. Sophy can’t have been more than nineteen or so at the time.’
The children were pressing quietly against her side, and Sophy turned to her mother pinning a smile on her face.
‘I think we’d better leave now, Mother. Jon has to fly to Nassau in the morning.’
‘Jon has to...’ Chris’s eyebrows rose. ‘Dear me, how very unromantic but then no doubt as you’re both living in the same house you’ve already had ample opportunity to—’
‘Become lovers?’ Jon seemed totally oblivious to Chris’s malice. ‘Oh, about the same opportunity as any other couple of our age and situation in life,’ he agreed cheerfully.
‘Mummy would never have agreed with me living with Chris before we were married,’ Felicity chipped in dulcetly, earning an approving glance from her mother, Sophy noted.
‘No?’ Really, it was quite incredible how Jon’s face changed when he removed his glasses. He had been in the act of polishing them when Felicity spoke and there was quite definitely something almost satanic about the way his eyebrow rose and his mouth curled as he looked across at the other girl.
‘And we were engaged for twelve months.’
‘A wildly passionate romance.’
Sophy couldn’t believe her ears. Chris was red to the tips of his ears and an unbecoming tightness had formed round Felicity’s bowlike mouth. Sophy was quite sure that Felicity and Chris had been lovers well before the date of their marriage; how could it be otherwise when Chris was such a highly sexed man. She had no doubt that the little act Felicity was putting on was purely for her parents’ benefit.
‘I think we’d better leave.’
Neither of her parents made any attempt to stop them going but Sophy didn’t realise that Jon had misinterpreted the reason for her tiny sigh of relief, as they got in the car and he said in an unusually clipped tone. ‘Don’t let it bother you, Sophy. The loss is theirs, not yours. Good heavens,’ he muttered in a much more Jon-like tone, ‘can’t they see that you’re worth a dozen of that stupid, vain little butterfly?’
Wryly she smiled across at him, and said huskily. ‘Thanks...for everything.’ She was remembering how he had claimed that he loved her, protecting her from Chris’s malice.
* * *
ALL FOUR OF THEM were subdued on the way back, although it wasn’t until the children were in bed and they were alone that Jon again raised the subject of her parents.
‘I hope you weren’t too hurt by what happened today, Sophy,’ he began uncertainly. ‘If I had known...’
‘I stopped being hurt by the fact that I’m not the daughter my parents wanted, a long time ago,’ she said calmly. ‘But I was angry, Jon...angry and embarrassed that they should show such a lack of welcome and politeness to you.’
He shrugged and looked slightly uncomfortable as though the emotion in her voice embarrassed him.
‘I don’t suppose we’ll see that much of them,’ he rumbled clearing his throat. ‘Er...Benson, I suppose he’s the one.’
‘Yes,’ Sophy agreed tightly. ‘Yes, he’s he one...but it’s all over now, Jon. My life and loyalty lie with you and the children now.’
‘Yes...’
Why should she feel that there was a certain wry irony in the way he was looking at her?
SOPHY SPENT THE fortnight Jon was away in Nassau organising her new life. From now on Jon would work mainly from home when he was in England, so she moved some of the files from the office in town to his study. She managed to do some fenc
e building in her relationship with her parents but admitted to herself that it could never be the warm one she had once wanted. As she had firmly told her mother, Jon was now her husband and he and the children came first. Grudgingly this had been accepted, but Sophy doubted that there would be much contact between them in the future.
She also spent time planning how she was going to refurbish the house. Jon had given her permission to do exactly what she wanted and had also told her she need not stint on cost. She had been a little surprised to discover that he had also organised a new bank account for her and had placed into it what seemed to be an impossibly large sum of money.
She had always known that he was a reasonably wealthy man but she had not realised, until now, exactly how wealthy. Perhaps because Jon himself never looked like an even remotely prosperous man, never mind a rich one.
That was something else she would have to do something about, she decided on the Wednesday before he was due back. She would go through his wardrobe, discover what size he was and start restocking it. She still burned with resentment when she thought about the way Chris had looked at him.
If ever she had worried about falling for Chris again she did so no longer. Indeed it amazed her that she could ever have found him the slightest bit attractive. The wounds he had inflicted still hurt but she found the man himself contemptible.
Sophy was familiar enough with the clothes Jon wore not to be too surprised by the collection of hairy suits and worn tweed jackets she discovered in his wardrobe. Rather wryly she wondered what on earth it was about the colour of mud that attracted him so much but other than that, her search was briskly impersonal and she stopped only to check on sizes before closing the wardrobe door and leaving the bedroom. Its furniture, like that in the rest of the house, was of no particular style or beauty. Jon had told her that he had bought it with the house. She planned to get rid of the majority of it, but not until she had decided what was to take its place.
Her decision made, she didn’t waste any time. After picking the children up from school she drove briskly towards Cambridge.
‘You’re going the wrong way,’ Alex told her.
Sophy shook her head. ‘No, I’m not. I want to do some shopping. Your uncle needs some new clothes.’
The silence from the pair in the back seat confirmed Sophy’s view that she was far from the only one to note the lack of appeal about Jon’s attire.
He must be boiled alive in those heavy cords he favoured and those woollen shirts, especially during the heatwave they were having at the moment.
She wondered wryly how on earth he was getting on in Nassau. When she had remarked that he was going to be hot he had told her that the temperature in computer operational rooms was always maintained at a set point, no matter what the climate.
It didn’t take long to park the car and Sophy knew Cambridge well enough to head straight for a small street which housed half a dozen or so exclusive shops catering for both men and women.
She stopped outside the window of one of them surveying the grey blouson jacket with its royal blue lining and the matching, pleated trousers, also trimmed in blue.
‘I don’t think Uncle Jon would like that,’ David informed her doubtfully.
Sophy grinned. She could just picture Jon’s face if she produced something as radically modern as that. No, what she had in mind was something rather more conservative.
‘Then we won’t go in,’ she told David equably, herding the pair instead to a shop two doors down which stocked a range of Jaeger clothes for men.
It took her over an hour to make her final choice, which included two shirts, one in silk and one in cotton in a shade of blue which Alex had informed her was exactly the same as Jon’s eyes.
Having chosen those it had proved fairly easy to pick out the basis of a new wardrobe for him based almost entirely on blue and cream—including a softly blue herringbone tweed jacket which she was pleased to see bore no resemblance whatsoever to the ones already in his wardrobe.
Having paid the bill and escorted the children outside she remembered that both of them seemed short of casual T-shirts and that she could do with some inexpensive casual wear herself. The heatwave which had begun in the early part of the month was still persisting with no let-up forecast and her wardrobe was not really geared to such hot weather.
It only took them a few minutes to walk to Marks & Spencer, where she gave in to Alex’s entirely feminine whim to be kitted out in a range of separates in pretty pinks. Even David allowed himself to be persuaded into a pair of brushed denim jeans in a soft olive colour to which Sophy added several T-shirts and thin cotton jumpers.
‘Look over there. Uncle Jon would look nice in that, Sophy,’ Alex informed her, having by now thoroughly entered into the spirit of things.
On the display she had indicated, Sophy could see a range of men’s casual separates in a soft, pale sand colour.
She went over to inspect them, trying in her mind’s eye to imagine Jon dressed in the well-cut brushed denim jeans and matching bush shirt, the toning grey and sand jumper draped casually over the model’s shoulders adoring Jon’s, and failed miserably. Even so...he was short of jeans, and she could always bring them back. Recklessly she bought a full outfit, adding socks and the shoes that the assistant pointed out to her, only remembering on the way out that she hadn’t got anything for herself.
A rack of pale green cotton shorts with matching patterned short-sleeved shirts and plain T-shirts caught her eye, and while she was studying them Alex tugged away from her hand, coming back several seconds later proudly clutching a mint and white bikini plus a pair of matching shorts.
‘Look at these, Sophy,’ she demanded. ‘They would look great with those shorts and things. You could sunbathe in the garden in them.’
It was years since she had worn a bikini—four at least. That was how long it had been since she had last been abroad. She no longer felt so ashamed of her body that she could not bring herself to reveal more of it than actually necessary, but even so...a bikini?
‘I don’t...’ she began and then seeing how Alex’s face fell, amended her remark quickly, ‘I don’t see why not! Come on, let’s go and pay for all these things, and then as a special treat...’
‘Fish and chips?’ they both begged together.
Laughing, she gave way.
‘Uncle Jon hardly ever lets us have chips,’ David complained on the way home. ‘He says they aren’t good for you.’
‘He’s quite right,’ Sophy agreed, firmly squashing any hopes David might have that she would not. There was a rather neglected vegetable plot in the garden and she had already tentatively wondered about planting it next year. There was obviously some of her father in her after all, she thought wryly. She must make a mental note to get the ground cleared and dug over in the winter, not by the arthritic James who normally did the gardening but by someone younger and stronger. Instead, James could supervise the planting next year.
‘I wish we had a swimming pool,’ Alex sighed when they reached home. ‘A lovely, cool swimming pool.’
‘Try a cold shower instead,’ Sophy suggested wryly, laughing when both children groaned.
This evening the heat was almost oppressive, but there was no sign of any impending storm.
‘What are you going to do with Uncle Jon’s new clothes?’ Alex asked after supper. ‘Keep them as a surprise?’
‘No, I think I’ll just hang them up in his wardrobe ready for him.’
‘But what about his old ones?’ Alex demanded. ‘Are you going to throw them away?’ She posed the question with a certain amount of delighted relish.
‘Er...no, I...’
‘You could send them all to the cleaners,’ David offered practically and knowingly. ‘That way he would have to wear the new ones but he wouldn’t be able to shout because you’
d thrown the others away.’
Slightly startled, Sophy glanced at David’s downbent head. She hadn’t even thought he was listening to their conversation, but he was obviously far more astute and mature than she had known.
‘Uncle Jon never shouts,’ Alex protested loyally.
‘No, but he does get angry,’ David told her calmly, ‘Not many people know about it, though, because he just speaks very quietly.’
He was right, Sophy reflected. Jon did go very quiet when he was angry, and somehow that controlled softness in his voice was even more alarming than if he had bellowed at full volume.
‘I’m glad Uncle Jon married you and not Louise,’ Alex confided happily to Sophy, leaning her head affectionately against the latter’s knee.
‘Don’t be silly,’ David told his sister scornfully. ‘Uncle Jon would never have married Louise.’
‘No, he was frightened of her,’ Alex confided naively. ‘He always used to go...er...er...a lot more when she was there.’
If it was possible David looked even more scornful. ‘That wasn’t because he was frightened of her, silly,’ he told Alex. ‘It was because...’ He went bright red and closed his mouth, an expression crossing his face that somehow reminded Sophy of Jon.
‘Because what, David?’ she pressed, as confused herself as Alex plainly was.
He wouldn’t look at her, scuffing the toe of his shoe against the worn carpet, eventually muttering, ‘Oh, nothing...’
Wise enough not to press him, Sophy was nevertheless still bewildered. As she got them ready for bed she told herself that it could be nothing more than a little boy’s natural desire to protect those closest to him, and David adored his uncle, there was no doubt about that.
CHAPTER FOUR
ON FRIDAY MORNING, after dropping the children off at school, Sophy made her way to Cambridge to do the weekly food shopping. Exhausted by the heat and press of people in the shops she was only too pleased to get back inside her car. The air inside was stifling, and winding down the windows, she drove home.
