Distracted by her Virtue

by Maggie Cox

  She gave him a brief smile. ‘With my brother and his family. They’ve invited him to stay with them in Suffolk for a short break before he starts school. David has a son just a couple of years older than Charlie, and they haven’t seen each other for a long time. I’m glad that he wanted to go, but I’m going to miss him like crazy.’

  Just the thought of being without her precious child for even a day made Sophia feel tearful. They’d always had the strongest bond, but they’d become even closer since the shadow of Tom had no longer loomed over them.

  Jarrett’s glance was warmly reassuring. ‘You’ll be fine,’ he told her. ‘I know you’ll miss the little man, but you could probably do with a bit of a break too.’

  ‘I suppose it’s a good opportunity to get on with doing some work … both my photographic assignments and the house.’

  The man in front of her looked thoughtful. Then with another warm smile he said, ‘Why don’t you let me hang up your coat? Then we’ll go into the kitchen and have a hot drink.’

  With fingers still icy-cold from the rain that had drenched her, Sophia slowly started to unbutton her damp raincoat.

  CHAPTER SIX

  THE hot mug of tea helped to dispel the chill that seemed to have seeped right through to her marrow.

  Not since her father had Sophia known a man who knew his way confidently round a kitchen, and it had been an unexpected bonus to have Jarrett make the tea and then bring it to her at the table, along with an inviting plate of custard creams. As she’d watched his eye-catching physique garbed in a black fitted cashmere sweater and black trousers move with arresting masculine grace round the luxurious bespoke kitchen—a kitchen that was a million miles away from her own rather spartan one at High Ridge—Sophia hadn’t been able to help but be transfixed.

  Her heart was still thudding inside her chest because she’d at last found out why he hadn’t turned up on Sunday. It had been the biggest shock to learn that he’d arrived just as her brother was saying goodbye and had immediately assumed that David was her lover. Although she’d forgiven him, it still hurt that he’d believed for even an instant that she was the kind of woman who would deceive him like that.

  ‘Is your tea all right?’

  Her host’s arresting voice broke through her reverie. As he dropped down into the seat opposite her at the round glass-topped table, for a moment the close proximity of his arresting presence made it almost impossible for Sophia to think straight. His sexy but classy cologne made a devastating foray into her senses first. But then she met his gaze. His dark-lashed eyes were so blue that it was as if God had especially reserved the perfect portion of sunlit summer sky to make them. Entranced, Sophia hoped that the neutral expression she aimed for adequately concealed the effect he was having on her.

  ‘It’s perfect. Just the way I like it. Where did you learn such a mundane but vital domestic task?’

  ‘My sister always told me that the way to a woman’s heart was through the perfect cup of tea.’

  ‘Did she really?’

  ‘No. I’m only joking.’ His lips formed an unabashed grin. ‘Living by myself, I’ve learned to do most things. I draw the line at wearing an apron, though. Wouldn’t be at all good for my street cred if my family or friends were to see me in one.’

  ‘Why don’t you just pay someone to look after the domestic side of things for you?’

  ‘Ah …’ Jarrett knowingly tapped the side of his perfectly shaped aquiline nose. ‘Now you’re veering very close to discovering my Achilles’ heel.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Clearly you believe in living dangerously.’

  The lowered husky voice that came back to her made the tips of Sophia’s breasts inside her bra surge and sting. ‘Don’t tell me, then.’ She endeavoured to sound nonchalant when she was feeling anything but.

  ‘I’m a boring perfectionist, I’m afraid,’ Jarrett admitted wryly. ‘I somehow always come round to thinking that I may as well do it myself rather than hire someone who won’t live up to my standards.’

  ‘You’re a bit of a control freak, then?’

  ‘That accusation is not unknown to me.’ He took a sip of his beverage, then grimaced. ‘But I hope I’m not controlling in a way that puts me in the category of typically macho male. With the right woman I’m sure I could learn to be a lot more flexible.’

  His glance was sheepish, and too endearing for her to take umbrage with, and she lightly shook her head as if to break free from the spell he so effortlessly cast. ‘It’s entirely up to you how you conduct yourself. One thing puzzles me, though. This house and the expensive cars on the drive, plus the fact that you’re not exactly ugly … women must view you as quite a catch. It makes me wonder why you’re still single.’

  ‘Clearly not all women think I’m such a catch. You’re not particularly impressed by my wealth or my looks. I know I’m risking denting my ego even further by asking, but why is that, Sophia? I’m feeling a little insecure here, knowing that none of my supposed assets can entice you.’

  Bravely she met his searching gaze, her mouth drying at the weight of hurtful memory that backed up inside her like a swelling wave, knowing that she could no longer let it recede. ‘I was married to a man who had wealth and good-looks—and it was like being married to the devil himself,’ she admitted softly.

  ‘Why? What did he do?’ Jarrett’s eyes were wild for a moment—the very thought of any harm coming to her was abhorrent to him.

  Glancing away, Sophia desperately tried to garner every ounce of courage she could find to continue. ‘There’s more than one way to skin a cat, as my dad used to say, and my husband knew them all. He was a virtuoso in the art of being cruel. Unfortunately it wasn’t just me who bore the brunt of it.’

  Her companion’s sharp intake of breath was clearly audible. On his face, the shock that mingled together with disbelief was vivid too. ‘You mean he hurt Charlie?’

  ‘Not physically, thank God.’

  She quickly moved her head from side to side, wishing they could talk about anything but this. However, she had promised her companion that she would tell him everything. She had never even shared the full extent of what she’d experienced at her husband’s hands with her brother. To her mind, David had suffered enough, knowing that she lived with such a brute and that if he’d tried to take action to bring an end to her misery it might have made the situation worse for her and Charlie. There was no reasoning with a man like Tom Abingdon.

  ‘Mental cruelty was his speciality,’ she said out loud, ‘and he could be as sulky and petty as a spoilt child. He regularly demanded that Charlie pay him more attention, because our son naturally came to me if he wanted or needed anything. He’d go ballistic at him for doing that. It was an affront to him that our boy needed his mother. After all, he was the one who was clever and educated—as he so often reminded me. He was the one with friends who admired and envied him, whereas I was a nobody. A picayune from a very average, nondescript family. He even told Charlie that I was a useless mother as well as a useless wife to him, and that they both deserved better. In a bid to prove it, he brought his mistress home.’

  Sophia saw Jarrett’s jaw slacken in disbelief and bit down heavily on her lip. ‘I can see in your eyes that you’re wondering why on earth I would put up with something like that if I had any self-respect at all.’ Anger—defensive and bitter—crept into her voice. ‘Well … perhaps you’ll hold back your judgement until you hear the whole story. I hope that you will, because I’m so sick of being judged.’

  Somehow she made herself continue. ‘One evening when he brought this woman home—he’d been besotted with her for quite a while, I gather—he tried to convince our son that she would make a much better mother than me. She knew how to teach a boy to become a man, he said. She wouldn’t turn him into some “namby-pamby Mummy’s boy” like I was doing.’

  She swallowed hard across the burning cramp in her throat. ‘Tom thought he was justified in having affairs bec
ause after I’d had Charlie I locked him out of our bedroom. But I did that because he was always making eyes at other women, and when he didn’t come home nights I knew he was messing around.’ She freed a despairing sigh.

  Jarrett gave her a quizzical look. ‘He let you lock him out of the bedroom?’

  Sophia’s short burst of laughter was harsh. ‘I think that was the first time I made him realise that I wasn’t the gullible little schoolgirl he thought I would stay for ever when he married me. I was so furious with his behaviour that I didn’t care if he hit me. I discovered it’s a powerful thing to meet your fear instead of running away from it. But then he got back at me by other demoralising means. The worst thing of all was when he insisted on taking Charlie out for the day … away from my “despicable’ influence”, he used to say. I knew he’d be with his so-called friends. Friends who were as self-destructive and immoral as he was. I fought against him taking Charlie every time, and suffered not only verbal but sometimes physical abuse too for my protests.’

  Taking a deep breath in at the dreadful memories that flooded back—at the humiliation and hurt of being hit and disparaged, along with her growing fear at the time that her son would grow up to be just like his father if she didn’t find a way to get him away soon—Sophia laid her hand over her chest in a bid to calm her thudding heart.

  As soon he saw the gesture, Jarrett moved across to the sink and poured some water into a glass tumbler. Returning swiftly, he pressed it into her hand.

  Gratefully, she took a few sips and her companion moved back to his seat. Setting the glass down on a coaster, Sophia darted out her tongue to lick the moisture from her lips. Then she resumed her story. ‘Leading up to the time when Tom died—his heart stopped beating one night in his sleep—Charlie was clearly being adversely affected by his father’s behaviour. And why wouldn’t he be? He was wetting the bed at night, having nightmares that made him scream out loud, and hitting me if I said no to something he wanted. I’m afraid it was making him ill.’

  Jarrett scowled and looked disgusted. ‘The man must have been absolutely deranged.’

  ‘He was. He was addicted to everything that was harmful … alcohol, drugs, gambling, prostitutes. He had an utter lack of self-control and no self-respect whatsoever, and he didn’t care who he contaminated—certainly not his wife and son. His death was a blessing, not just to me and Charlie … but to him too. I’m sure.’

  ‘Why didn’t you leave him long before it got so bad?’

  Sensing an excruciating throb of guilty heat surge through her, Sophia abruptly left her seat and walked across the kitchen. There was an elegant glass wall cupboard full of pristine white crockery and, catching sight of her ghostly pale reflection in it, she quickly looked back to the dark-haired man whose uncomprehending and furious gaze seemed to burn right through to the very core of her vulnerability. He was clearly waiting for her explanation.

  ‘I did leave him once. I went to a women’s shelter in a nearby town. It was only meant to be a temporary measure. I’d planned to move further away, but Charlie and I had only been there barely a fortnight when Tom’s father turned up and demanded we leave. As well as being a top QC, he comes from landed gentry … he’s a very powerful and influential man. He must have brought the full weight of his powers down on the women who ran the shelter, because by the time they regretfully asked me to leave they looked quite shaken. They told me he’d threatened to have the shelter shut down if they didn’t let me go, and that was the last thing that any of us wanted. So I went back with him … back to my husband. I wouldn’t jeopardise the other women’s security by staying, no matter how desperate I was. Back at home, things didn’t improve. And the situation wasn’t helped by Tom’s father. Whenever he visited us they had the most terrifying rows. He regularly accused Tom of being a disgrace to the family name, but worse than that he threatened to take Charlie away if he didn’t pull himself together and change his behaviour. Ironic, really, when the man was even more of a bully than his son.’

  She crossed her arms over her chest to contain the icy shudder that ran through her. ‘It didn’t even seem to cross his mind that I was Charlie’s mother and would fight him tooth and nail on that. He believed that his son had married beneath him, so consequently he had very little regard for me. Tom’s behaviour didn’t change. He warned me he would take Charlie away from me himself if I told his father that his drinking, drug-taking and womanising had got worse. He was spending every penny we had on his destructive habits. He was pinning all his hopes on his inheritance. He said if I jeopardised his birthright by trying to leave then he would find me, come hell or high water. And then I would really see what he was capable of.’

  Shaking her head in despair, Sophia lifted her now brimming eyes to Jarrett, incapable of holding back the emotional tide that swamped her. ‘Both my husband and his father made it impossible for me to turn to anyone for help—even my brother. They blocked every avenue I could take. They didn’t want me to talk to anyone. My father-in-law feared losing his reputation if anyone found out the truth about what was going on, and my husband was terrified he’d lose his inheritance. His debts escalated wildly—as I found out when he died. Because of their threats, because of my terrible fear that somehow they would snatch Charlie away from me if I did manage to escape—that was why I stayed in the marriage longer than I should have … Not because I wanted to, or because I had no self-respect, but because I honestly believed I had no choice.’

  ‘You should have gone to the police … told them everything.’

  ‘If I’d filed a report then they would have conducted an investigation. If Tom hadn’t hurt me even more because I’d dared to do such a thing, then I’ve no doubt that his father would have done everything in his power to take Charlie away from me and make me pay for disgracing him and his son. Can you see why I couldn’t do that? My son means everything to me … everything!’

  ‘Don’t cry, sweetheart … please don’t cry.’

  On his feet, Jarrett was by her side in an instant. Enfolding her in his arms, he pulled her head down onto his broad muscular chest. In the midst of her distress, a jolt of surprise ricocheted through Sophia. The wonderful sensation of being held so tenderly instantly made her feel warm and protected. She hadn’t experienced such a feeling since she’d lived at home with her dad—before she’d met and married Tom Abingdon. But what surprised her most of all was the realisation that Jarrett’s heart was beating as wild and as fast as her own beneath the soft wool of his luxurious cashmere sweater.

  She lifted her face up towards him. ‘Before my husband died I vowed to myself that I would find a way to get Charlie and me out of that horrendous situation. I’d even started making discreet enquiries about going abroad … somewhere far-flung where Tom’s father’s influence carried no weight. But then Tom died in his sleep … just like that. When I found him he looked almost peaceful. It doesn’t seem right somehow, does it? That a man can put his family through such hell and then abdicate all responsibility by simply dying?’

  ‘I don’t want to make you feel even more upset—but why did you marry such a man in the first place?’

  Jarrett’s big warm hand cupped her cheek as he glanced intently down into her eyes. The guilt she still suffered made Sophia struggle to find adequate words to explain. ‘I was young and naive and flattered by his attention. He was good-looking, funny and clever, and because he’d been given everything on a silver spoon he was supremely confident too. When it came to getting what he wanted he knew exactly how to go about it, and when he decided that he wanted me I was too young and stupid to see that I might be walking into a trap. I was so dazzled by him that I relinquished every ounce of common sense I may have had. When he asked me to marry him I didn’t even hesitate. Even when I started to hear rumours about his drinking and chasing women I told myself not to worry … that he would soon learn he’d made the right choice in making me his lifelong partner. I thought I could reform him, make him change some of
his less attractive qualities when he saw what a good life we could have together.’

  ‘How did you meet him?’

  ‘I went to school with his younger cousin, and I met him at a party at her house.’ Feeling suddenly uncomfortable beneath Jarrett’s intense scrutiny, she removed his hand from her cheek and glanced away. ‘No doubt I was easy prey. I was only eighteen—hardly a woman of the world. I’d just got into studying photography, and I wanted to go on to university. Meeting Tom put a stop to all that. It wasn’t as though nobody warned me. My dad told me early on to cool things off and not rush into anything. But I was deaf to his advice. My husband-to-be even managed to fool him into thinking his intentions were good … that he loved me and wanted to take care of me. In the beginning I believed it, too. But it didn’t take long for my fiancé’s true nature to surface. I thank God that my dad didn’t live to see what he put me through.’

  The silence that pervaded the room after she’d finished speaking felt like a smothering blanket, and Sophia wanted to escape into the open air. Moving out of the intimate circle of Jarrett’s protection, she lifted her glance to stare forlornly out of the window at the still pounding rain. She shivered.

  ‘I’d better go. I’m trying to convert one of the downstairs rooms into a darkroom, and there’s a lot to do. I have to get on. Thanks for the tea … and for listening.’

  ‘Don’t go. It can’t have been easy to share what you’ve just told me. It was very brave. It’s only natural that you might be feeling vulnerable and exposed. I made you a promise that I wouldn’t share your confidences with anyone, remember? I want you to know that you can trust me, Sophia. I would never harm you or Charlie.’ Catching her hand, Jarrett gently impelled her towards him. ‘You’ve been through a terrible ordeal,’ he acknowledged huskily, ‘but given time things will slowly but surely get better—believe me. This is a new start for you and your son. Your husband is dead, Sophia … he can’t hurt you or Charlie any more.’