Conveniently His Omnibus

Sophy was too amazed to be tactful. ‘But surely they could see that you aren’t interested in sex?’ she protested.

The dark head bent, and she watched him rub his jaw in his familiar vague fashion, his expression concealed from her as he responded in a faintly strangled voice that betrayed his embarrassment.

‘Uh...obviously they didn’t have your perception.’

‘Well, next time you’ll have to employ someone older,’ Sophy told him forthrightly. ‘Do you want me to get in touch with the agencies while you’re away?’

‘Er...no. We’ll leave it until I get back. Can you stay with them until then?’

‘Well, yes...but why delay?’

‘Well, I’m thinking about making some other arrangements.’

Other arrangements. What other arrangements? Sophy wondered. As far as she knew, he was the children’s only family. Unless—her blood ran cold.

‘You’re not thinking of abandoning them...of putting them into foster homes?’

‘Of course...of course, it’s always a possibility.’

Trying to come to terms with her shock, Sophy wondered why she had the feeling that he had set out to say one thing and had ended up saying another...perhaps he was embarrassed to admit the truth to her. ‘Surely there must be another way,’ she said impulsively. ‘Something...’

‘Well, there is,’ he looked acutely uncomfortable. ‘In fact I was going to discuss it with you when I came back from Brussels.’

‘Well, why can’t you tell me now?’

There were times when his vagueness infuriated her and now was one of them.

‘Well...this evening perhaps, when the kids are in bed.’

It was only natural that he wouldn’t want them to overhear what he might have to say and so she nodded her head. ‘All right, then.’

It was nine o’clock before both children were bathed and in bed. Jonathan’s case was packed, his documents neatly organised and safely bestowed in his briefcase. He had offered to make them both a mug of coffee while Sophy finished this final chore and she had urged him to do so. Up until then he had been hovering like a demented bloodhound in his study, frantically searching for some all important piece of paper which had ultimately turned up under the telephone. Gritting her teeth, Sophy set about tidying up. Talk about disorganised!

And yet for all his vagueness, Jon could be ruthless enough when the occasion demanded it, she mused, pausing for a moment—witness his dismissal of Louise.

She sat down in his desk chair, still half stunned that a girl as clever and as quick as Louise had honestly thought she could use her sexual allure to trap Jonathan into marriage. That must have been what she had thought. No girl as modern as the children’s nanny had been could possibly have believed that any man would marry her simply because he had been to bed with her.

Getting up, she made her way to the sitting room most used by the family. It caught the afternoon sun and she passed by the deeply sashed Victorian windows staring at the sunset as she waited for Jonathan.

‘Coffee, Sophy.’

For such a large man he moved extremely quietly. Frowning as she turned round, Sophy was suddenly struck by the fact that Jonathan was altogether deceptive. She always thought of him as clumsy and yet when he was working on his computer he could be surprisingly deft. She had thought him too obtuse and involved in his own private thoughts and his work, and yet he was surprisingly perceptive where the children were concerned and this afternoon, when he had answered her unspoken question. He sat down on the ancient, slightly sagging sofa, the springs groaning slightly as they took his weight. Standing up he often looked thin and faintly stooping but he wasn’t thin, she realised in sudden surprise as he took off his glasses and, putting them down on the coffee table, stretched his body tiredly so that she could see the way his muscles moved beneath his shirt, and they were muscles, too...

Still standing by the window she continued to watch him, faintly shocked to realise that in profile his features were attractively irregular and very masculine. Without his glasses he looked different from the normally aesthetic man he appeared to be. He ceased stretching and rubbed his eyes.