Conveniently His Omnibus

Tears stung her eyes but she refused to let them fall.

‘You couldn’t be more wrong,’ she told him thickly. ‘I wasn’t lying to you when I said Chris attacked me, and as for thinking I wanted you to...to finish what he had started....’ She swallowed hard on the nausea clutching her stomach. ‘You’re doing both of us an injustice. I can’t think why you married me, Jon, if that’s the sort of woman you think I am. I’m tired, Jon,’ she told him listlessly as the surge of anger drained away, leaving her feeling exhausted both emotionally and physically. ‘I think it must be this hot weather that’s making everyone so on edge. I’m going to bed.’

She hesitated by the door, consumed by a totally crazy desire to turn round and go back, to beg him to take her back in his arms and kiss her again but somehow she found the strength to resist it.

Upstairs she was too tired even to start undressing. She caught a glimpse of her reflection in her mirror and stared at her swollen mouth touching it tentatively with her fingertips. When Jon had kissed her she had experienced sensations so totally alien and yet so totally known that she was still shocked by them. But not as shocked as she had been by Jon’s assured experience. When she had thought about him kissing her she had imagined his touch would be hesitant, unsure and perhaps rather clumsy but his mouth had moved on hers with wholly masculine authority, subtly demanding, revealing a wealth of experience she had never expected him to have. For a man who openly expressed a lack of interest in sex, Jon had revealed a totally unexpected degree of expertise. And she wasn’t sure she liked it. Where and with whom had he gained that expertise? Had he once perhaps been deeply in love? So deeply in love that it had made him eschew all further emotional or physical involvement? She shivered slightly, faintly disturbed by the discovery than Jon was not what she had thought him to be...that there was obviously much of himself that he kept hidden. But why had he kissed her?

That was a question to which she could not find an answer other than perhaps out of male pride because she had verbally challenged his sexuality.

Yes...she decided finally, that must be it. Yet didn’t that explanation too, indicate that Jon was not the totally non-sexual, mild man she had always believed him to be? Had she simply deceived herself or had he deliberately deceived her and if so, why? Why present an image to her that was, at least partially, false? That was something she was too tired to even try and analyse. Tomorrow, she told herself sleepily, as she prepared for bed, she would try to unravel these mysteries tomorrow.

* * *

IN THE MORNING Sophy overslept slightly and, much to the children’s disappointment, opted not to use the new car to take them to school. After explaining that she needed to drive it by herself to get used to it first, she managed to placate them.

She had promised to drive Jon into Cambridge when she had dropped the children off and had decided to combine it with a shopping trip.

‘We could meet for lunch.’ Jon suggested, as she was parking. ‘Unless of course you won’t have time.’

Sophy had been dreading being alone with him after what had happened the previous evening but he was his normal mild, calm self, and she had even been able to persuade herself that most of last night’s heart searchings had been prompted by nothing more than her own imagination. After all, it was not perhaps surprising that she should enjoy his kiss. She had wanted him to touch her for long enough.

‘Er...no. Lunch would be lovely,’ she stammered, realising that Jon was waiting for her response.

‘Good.’

The smile he gave her made her heart lurch drunkenly and, for some stupid reason, she simply sat in the car and watched him walk away, unable to take her eyes off his lean, lithe body. He was wearing his new clothes as though he had always worn them and watching the way more than one woman turned to observe his long legged progress down the street, Sophy found herself wishing she had left him to his baggy cords and shapeless shirts. She didn’t want other women looking at him, she realised with a sharp pang. She didn’t want them admiring the masculine lines of his body, the breadth of his shoulders beneath the fine cotton of his shirt...