The Beautiful Widow

His explosive exclamation caused her stomach muscles to contract but no sign of it showed on her face. She remained perfectly still, a flesh and blood statue.

‘When we first met you told me you didn’t want a man around because of the twins. You didn’t want them “let down” again, remember? But that was an excuse, whether you admit it or not. Deep down it was yourself you were protecting, not them.’

‘How dare you!’ She reared up like an enraged tigress, all pretence of calm gone. ‘You know nothing about it.’

‘Oh, I dare, Toni. This is our future, yours and mine, I’m fighting for. The gloves are off. You’ve just called me a womaniser and a no-hoper, the sort of guy who will take everything on offer and enjoy the ride.’

‘I did not,’ she protested furiously. ‘I never said any such thing.’

‘Virtually.’ His eyes had turned an icy mother-of-pearl.

‘No. I said women will always throw themselves at you and there’s not a man alive who won’t respond to that eventually.’

‘Wrong. You’re looking at him.’

She went on as if he hadn’t spoken. ‘I don’t want that sort of pressure when I’m with someone, that’s what I’m saying. Maybe ninety-nine per cent of women could cope with it, but I’m me and—and I don’t want to.’

‘One bouquet and I’m hung, drawn and quartered?’

Under the anger there was a bewilderment that wrenched at her heart but she couldn’t weaken now. This relationship had already gone too far. He had permeated her life like the steady drip-drip of water in a cavern, innocuous in itself but with the power to form mighty stalactites and stalagmites. The more she had got to know him, the more she had liked what she’d discovered, which made him a very dangerous man, and if she slept with him, if she opened up her body as well as her heart, she would be lost. She would never be able to walk away from him. And say what he might, she was thinking of the twins too. They’d had one male role model in their young lives who, if he had lived, could have given them a distorted view of family life and love that might have affected them for ever. Fate had saved them from that and she had a duty not to put them in harm’s way again.

‘You’re wrong about me,’ Steel said quietly after a full minute had ticked by in screaming silence. ‘I’m like the guy in one of the Sunday school stories we were told as kids, the one who sold everything he had to buy the pearl of great price.’

Toni couldn’t argue any more. He’d never understand and they had no meeting point. She lowered her head, hating the fact her hands were trembling and hoping Steel hadn’t noticed. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered, all anger and indignation gone. ‘I’m not as strong as I thought I was. You’re right, it only took one bouquet. But there would be other bouquets, other women through the months and years looking for a way to get your attention. I don’t have a thick skin, Steel, and I wouldn’t be able to laugh such incidents off, regardless of how you might react. I—I’m not made that way.’

She expected him to say more, to fight his corner. Instead, after a long tense moment he started the engine, saying quietly, ‘I would like you to complete the new project before you leave. Is that acceptable?’

She forced her numb lips to move. ‘Of course.’

‘Thank you.’

It was over.

CHAPTER TEN

‘I’M SORRY, TONI, BUT I think you’re stark staring mad.’ Poppy stared at her with something approaching horror. ‘He’s the most gorgeous man on the planet and absolutely loaded, and by your own admission he was great with the twins and they adored him, and you give him the old heave-ho. And not because you’ve caught him cheating or anything, but simply because other women find him attractive. Don’t you think that’s a teensy bit unreasonable?’

Toni shook her head. She’d been hoping Poppy would be sympathetic, but she might have known she?

??d get the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth from her friend. ‘It’s not as simple as that.’

‘Excuse me, but I think it is.’ Poppy was standing hands on hips. ‘And you like him, don’t you? I mean, really like him?’

Toni nodded. Understatement of the year.

‘Oh, Toni. What have you done?’ Poppy said sadly.

‘Don’t.’ Toni’s voice wobbled. ‘I’ve cried enough already and I don’t want the twins to see me upset.’

‘They’re fine, hark at them.’ Amelia and Daisy and Poppy’s two boys were playing in the boys’ bedroom and, if the shrieks and laughter were anything to go by, were having the time of their lives. Rose was playing at their feet and the baby was asleep.

It was Saturday morning, and the last three days had been the worst of her life. Since their talk in the car park Steel had retreated somewhere very distant. He was still present physically, still polite and courteous when he spoke to her, but it was clear to her she’d achieved her aim and whatever had been between them was dead as far as he was concerned. And following on from this thought, Toni said now in her defence, ‘He never spoke of love, you know. Commitment. For ever. It was a sexual thing on his side. Something that would be short-lived and semi-permanent.’

‘Even if that was true, and I don’t think it was but I’ll come on to that in a minute, I’d still say you were the luckiest woman alive. Again by your own admission he was sweet and thoughtful and not at all the big I am, like some men would be in his position, and you’d have had a fabulous time together. He’d have wined and dined you and the bedding part would have been out of this world.’

‘Poppy—’ She didn’t think she could take any more of this.

‘But I think it was more than that with him. See it from his side for a moment, Toni. Right from the word go you made it clear you were off limits because of what had happened with Richard and you being a single mother and everything, and so why would the poor guy say anything about for ever with you liable to run screaming if he did? He did the softly-softly routine for your sake. He didn’t give into his macho desires and take you on the office desk or in his chair or anywhere else he’d no doubt fantasised about, he let you get to know him, really know him. Now we all know men mostly think with a part of their anatomy a lot lower than their heads, so if he did all that for you I’d say it was more than good old lust driving him. And let’s face it, he could have any woman he wanted just by crooking his little finger if it was only sex motivating him.’