Celebrate the legend that is bestselling author

PENNY JORDAN

Phenomenally successful author of more than two hundred books with sales of over a hundred million copies!

Penny Jordan’s novels are loved by millions of readers all around the word in many different languages. Mills & Boon are proud to have published one hundred and eighty-seven novels and novellas written by Penny Jordan, who was a reader favourite right from her very first novel through to her last.

This beautiful digital collection offers a chance to recapture the pleasure of all of Penny Jordan’s fabulous, glamorous and romantic novels for Mills & Boon.

About the Author

PENNY JORDAN is one of Mills & Boon’s most popular authors. Sadly, Penny died from cancer on 31st December 2011, aged sixty-five. She leaves an outstanding legacy, having sold over a hundred million books around the world. She wrote a total of one hundred and eighty-seven novels for Mills & Boon, including the phenomenally successful A Perfect Family, To Love, Honour & Betray, The Perfect Sinner and Power Play, which hit the Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller lists. Loved for her distinctive voice, her success was in part because she continually broke boundaries and evolved her writing to keep up with readers’ changing tastes. Publishers Weekly said about Jordan ‘Women everywhere will find pieces of themselves in Jordan’s characters’ and this perhaps explains her enduring appeal.

Although Penny was born in Preston, Lancashire and spent her childhood there, she moved to Cheshire as a teenager and continued to live there for the rest of her life. Following the death of her husband, she moved to the small traditional Cheshire market town on which she based her much-loved Crighton books.

Penny was a member and supporter of the Romantic Novelists’ Association and the Romance Writers of America—two organisations dedicated to providing support for both published and yet-to-be-published authors. Her significant contribution to women’s fiction was recognised in 2011, when the Romantic Novelists’ Association presented Penny with a Lifetime Achievement Award.

Capable of Feeling
Penny Jordan

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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CHAPTER ONE

‘DARLING, I DO HOPE you’re going to wear something a little more attractive than that for dinner. You know we’ve got the Bensons coming and he is one of your father’s best clients. Chris is back by the way.’

Sophy had only been listening to her mother with half her attention, too overwhelmed by the familiar sense of depression, which inevitably overcame her when she had to spend longer than an hour in the latter’s company, to resist the tidal flood of maternal criticism but the moment she heard Chris Benson’s name mentioned she tensed.

They were sitting in the garden on the small patio in front of the immaculately manicured lawns and rosebeds. The garden was her father’s pride and joy but to Sophie it represented everything about her parents and their lifestyle that had always heightened for her the differences between them. In her parents’ lives everything must be neat and orderly, conforming to a set middle-class pattern of respectability.

She had spent all her childhood and teenage years in this large comfortable house in its West Suffolk village and all that time she had felt like an ungainly cuckoo in the nest of two neat, tiny wrens.

She didn’t even look like her parents; her mother was five-foot-three with immaculate, still blonde, hair and plumply corseted figure, her father somewhat taller, but much in the same mould; a country solicitor, who had once been in the army and who still ran his life on the orderly lines he had learned in that institution.

It was not that her parents didn’t love her, or weren’t kind, genuinely caring people. It was just that she was alien to them and them to her.

Her height, the ungainly length of her legs and arms, the wild mane of her dark, chestnut hair and the high cheekboned, oval face with its slightly tilting gold eyes; these were not things she had inherited from her parents, and she knew that her mother in particular had always privately mourned the fact that her daughter was not like herself, another peaches and cream English rose.

Instead, her physical characteristics had come to her from the half American, half Spanish beauty her great-grandfather had married in South America and brought home. Originally the Marley family had come from Bristol. They had been merchants there for over a century, owning a small fleet of ships and her great-grandfather had been the captain of one of these.

All that had been destroyed by the First World War, which had destroyed so many of the small shipping companies and Sophie knew that her parents felt uneasy by this constant reminder of other times in the shape and physical appearance of their only child.

Her mother had done her best…refusing to see that her tall, ungainly daughter did not look her best in pretty embroidered dresses with frills and bows.

She had disappointed her mother, Sophy knew that. Sybil Rainer had been married at nineteen, a mother at twenty-one and that was a pattern she would have liked to have seen repeated in her daughter. Once too she…

‘Of course, Chris is married now…’

Her mind froze, distantly registering the hint of reproach in her mother’s voice. ‘There was a time when I thought that you and he…’ her voice trailed away and Sophy let it, closing her eyes tightly, thinking bitterly that once she too had thought that she and Chris would marry. Chris’s father was a wealthy stockbroker and she had known him all through her teens, worshipping his son in the way that teenage girls are wont to do.

She had never dreamed Chris might actually notice her as anything other than the daughter of one of his father’s oldest friends. The year he came down from university, when she herself was just finishing her ‘A’ levels, he had come home.

They had met at the tennis club. Sophy had just been finishing a match. Tennis was one of the few things she excelled at; she had the body and the strength for it and, she realised with wry hindsight, he could hardly have seen her in a more flattering setting.

He had asked her out; she had been overwhelmed with excitement…and so it had started.

Her mouth twisted bitterly. It was not how it had started that she was thinking of now, but how it had finished.

It hadn’t taken her long to fall in love—she was literally starving for attention…for someone of her own and she had been all too ridiculously easy a conquest for him. Of course she had demurred when he told her he wanted to make love to her but she had also been thrilled that he could want her so much. Seeing no beauty or desirability in her own appearance, she could not understand how anyone else could either.

She had thought he loved her. She had wanted to believe it. She had thought he intended to marry her. God, how ridiculous and farcical it all seemed now.

Inevitably she had let him make love to her, one hot summer night at the end of August when they were alone in his parents’ house…and that night had shattered her rosy dreams completely.

Even now she could remember his acid words of invective when he realised that she was not enjoying his lovemaking, his criticisms of her as a woman, his disgust in her inability to respond to him.

Frightened by the change in him, her body still torn by the pain of his possession she had sought to placate him offering uncertainly, ‘But it will get better when we are married…’

‘Married!’ He had withdrawn completely from her, staring at her with narrowed eyes. ‘What the hell are you talking about? I wouldn’t marry you if you were the last woman on earth, darling,’ he had drawled tauntingly. ‘When I get married it will be to a woman who knows what it means to be a woman…not a frigid little girl. You’ll never get married, Sophy,’ he had told her cruelly. ‘No man will ever want to marry a woman like you.’

Looking back, she was lucky to have come out of the escapade with nothing worse than a badly bruised body and ego, Sophy told herself. It could have been so much worse. She could have been pregnant…pregnant and unmarried.

‘Darling, you aren’t listening to a word I’m saying,’ her mother complained a little petulantly, ‘and why do you scrape your hair back like that? It’s so pretty.’

‘It’s also heavy, Mother…and today it’s very hot.’ She said it patiently, forcing a placatory smile.

‘I wish you’d have it properly styled, darling…and get some new clothes. Those awful jeans you’re wearing…’

Sighing faintly, Sophy put down her book. If only her mother could understand that she could not be what she wanted her to be. If only…

‘I’ve told Brenda to bring Chris and his wife round to see us. She’s a lovely girl, Brenda was saying. An American…they got married last year while we were away on that cruise.’ She looked across at her daughter. ‘It’s time you were thinking of settling down, darling, after all you are twenty-six…’

So she was, and wouldn’t Chris just crow to know that his cruel prediction all those years ago had proved so correct.

Not that she wanted to get married. She moved restlessly in her deck chair, unwanted images flashing through her mind…pictures of the men she had dated over the years, and the look on their faces when she turned cold and unresponsive in their arms. She had never totally been able to overcome the fears Chris had instilled in her—not of the physical reality of male possession, but of her own inability to respond to him…her own innate sexual coldness. Well it was something no other man was ever going to find out about her. It was her own private burden and she was going to carry it alone.

No male possession meant no children, though. Sighing once again, she opened her eyes and stared unseeingly at her father’s neat flower border. Just when she had first felt this fierce need to have children of her own she wasn’t quite sure but lately she was rarely unaware of it. She very much wanted children…a family of her own. But she wasn’t going to get them, as Chris had so rightly taunted her. No man was going to want a woman who was physically incapable of responding to him sexually.

The sharp ring of the telephone bell on the wall outside the house cut through her despondent thoughts.

Her mother got up and hurried into the house via the french windows. Several seconds later she reappeared, beckoning Sophy, a frown marring her forehead.

‘It’s Jonathan,’ she told Sophy peevishly. ‘Why on earth does he need to ring you at weekends?’

Jonathan Phillips was her boss. Sophy had been working for him for two years. She’d first met him at a party thrown by a mutual acquaintance to which she had gone in a mood of bitter introspection having finally come to the realisation that the happiness and fulfilment of marriage and children would never be hers. She had also been well on her way to getting drunk. She had bumped into him on her way to get herself yet another glass of wine, the totally unexpected impediment of a solidly muscled chest knocking her completely off balance.

Jonathan had grasped her awkwardly round the waist looking at her through his glasses with eyes that registered his discomfort and shock at finding her in his arms.

She had pulled away and he had released her immediately, looking very relieved to do so. She would have walked away and that would have been that if she had not suddenly betrayed her half inebriated state by teetering uncertainly on her high heels.

It was then that Jon had taken charge, dragging her outside into the fresh air, procuring from somewhere a cup of black coffee. Both were acts which, now that she knew him better, were so alien to his normal vague, muddledly hopeless inability to organise anything, that they still had the power to surprise her slightly.

They had talked. She had learned that he was a computer consultant working from an office in Cambridge; that he had his orphaned niece and nephew in his care and that he was the mildest and most unaggressive man she had ever come across.

She, in turn, had told him about her languages degree—gained much to the disapproval of her mother, who still believed that a young woman had no need to earn her own living but should simply use her time to find herself a suitable husband—her secretarial abilities, and the dull job she had working in her father’s office.

She had eventually sobered up enough to drive home and by the end of the next week she had forgotten Jonathan completely.

His letter to her offering her a job as his assistant had come totally out of the blue but, after discussing it with him, she had realised that here was the chance she needed so desperately to get herself out of the rut her life had become.

It was then that she realised that Jonathan was one of that elite band of graduates who had emerged from Cambridge in the late ’sixties and early ’seventies, fired by enthusiasm for the new computer age about to dawn, and that Jonathan was a world-renowned expert in his field.

Against her mother’s wishes she had accepted the job and on the strength of the generous salary he paid her she had found herself a pleasant flat in Cambridge.

She went into the hall and took the receiver from her mother, who moved away but not out of earshot. Her mother disapproved of Jonathan. Tall, and untidy with a shock of dark hair and mild, dark blue eyes which were always hidden behind the glasses he needed to wear, he was not like the bright, socially adept sons of her friends. Jonathan never indulged in social chit-chat—he didn’t know how to. He was vague and slightly clumsy, often giving the impression that he lived almost exclusively in a world of his own. Which in many ways he did, Sophy reflected, speaking his name into the receiver.

‘Ah, Sophy…thank goodness you’re there. It’s Louise…the children’s nanny. She’s left…and I have to fly to Brussels in the morning. Would you…?’

‘I’ll be there just as soon as I can,’ Sophy promised with alacrity, mentally sending a prayer of thanks up to her guardian angel.

Now she had a valid excuse for missing tonight’s dinner party and inevitable conversation about Chris.

‘What did he want?’ her mother questioned as Sophy replaced the receiver.

‘Louise, the nanny, has left. He wants me to look after the children for him, until he comes back from Brussels on Wednesday.’

‘But you’re his secretary,’ her mother expostulated. ‘He has no right to ring you here at weekends. You’re far too soft with him, Sophy. He’s only himself to blame…I’ve never met a more disorganised man. What he needs isn’t a secretary, it’s a wife…and what you need is a husband and children of your own,’ she added bitterly. ‘You’re getting far too attached to those children…you know that, don’t you?’

Mentally acknowledging that her mother was more astute than she had thought, Sophy gave her a brief smile. ‘I like them, yes,’ she admitted evenly, ‘and Jon is my boss. I can hardly refuse his request you know, Mother.’

‘Of course you can. I wish you weren’t working for the man. I don’t like him. Why on earth doesn’t he do something about himself? He ought to tidy himself up a bit, buy some new clothes…’

Sophy hid a smile. ‘Because those sort of things aren’t important to him, Mother.’

‘But they should be important. Appearance is important.’

Maybe for more ordinary mortals, Sophy reflected as she went upstairs to re-pack the weekend bag she had brought with her when she had come home, but the rules that governed ordinary people did not apply to near geniuses and that was what Jon was. He was so involved with his computers that she doubted he was aware of anything else.

At thirty-four he epitomised the caricature of a slightly eccentric, confirmed bachelor totally involved in his work and oblivious to anything else.

Except the children. He was very caring and aware where they were concerned.

As she went back downstairs with her case she frowned slightly. Louise would be the third nanny he had lost in the two years she had worked with him and she was at a loss to understand why. The children were a lovable pair. David, ten, and Alexandra, eight, were lively, it was true, but intelligent and very giving. The house Jonathan lived in had been bought by him when his brother and sister-in-law died, and was a comfortable, if somewhat rambling, Victorian building on the outskirts of a small Fen village. It had a large garden, which was rather inadequately cared for by an ancient Fensman and the housework was done by a woman who came in from the village to clean twice a week. Jonathan was not an interfering or difficult man to work for.

‘You’re going, then!’

Her mother made it sound as though she was leaving for good.

‘I’ll try and get down the weekend after next,’ she promised, aiming a kiss somewhere in the direction of her mother’s cheek and jumping into her newly acquired Metro.

Leaving the house behind her was like shedding an unwanted burden, she thought guiltily as she drove through the village and headed in the direction of Cambridge. It wasn’t her parents’ fault there was this chasm between them, this inability to communicate on all but the most mundane levels. She loved them, of course, and knew that they loved her…but there was no real understanding between them. She felt more at ease and comfortable with Jonathan, more at home in his home than she had ever felt in her own.

Of course it was impossible to imagine anyone not getting on with him. He could be exasperating, it was true, with his vagueness and his inability to live in any sort of order but he had a wry sense of humour…a placid nature…well, at least almost. There had been one or two occasions on which she had thought she had seen a gleam of something unexpected in his eyes. Best of all, he treated her as an equal in all respects. He never enquired into her personal life, although they often spent the evening talking when she was down at his home—which was quite often because, although he had an office in Cambridge, there were times when he was called away unexpectedly and he would summon Sophy to his side to find the papers he was always losing and to generally ensure that he was travelling to his destination with all that he would require.

It was through these visits that she had got to know the children, often staying overnight, and this was not the first time she had received a frantic telephone call from Jonathan informing her of some domestic crisis.

Her mother was right, she thought wryly, what he needed was a wife but she could not see him marrying. Jonathan liked the life he had and he appeared to be one of that rare breed of people who seemed to have no perceptible sexual drive at all. His behavior towards her for instance was totally sexless, as it seemed to be to the whole of her sex—and his own; there was nothing about Jonathan that suggested his sexual inclinations might lie in that direction.

In another century he would have been a philosopher, perhaps.

However much her mother might criticise his shabby clothes and untidy appearance, Sophy liked him. Perhaps because he made no sexual demands of her, she admitted inwardly. Her conviction as a teenager that she was ugly and plain had long been vanquished when she had gone to university and realised there that men found her attractive; that there was something that challenged them about her almost gypsyish looks. A friend had told her she was ‘sexy’ but if she was, it was only on the surface, and by the time she had left university she was already accepting that sexually there was something wrong. When a man touched her she felt no spark of desire, nothing but a swift sensation of going back in time to Chris’s bed and the despair and misery she had experienced there.

Just before she met Jonathan she had been involved with a man she had met through her father—one of his clients, newly divorced with two small children. She had been drawn to him because he was that little bit older…but the moment he touched her it had been the old story and that was when she had decided it was pointless trying any longer. Mentally she might be attracted to the male sex but physically she repulsed them.

When she brought her car to a halt on the gravel drive to Jon’s house, the children were waiting for her, David grinning happily. Alexandra at his side.

‘Uncle Jon’s in his study,’ David informed her.

‘No, he’s not’ Alex was looking at the house. ‘He’s coming now.’

All three of them turned to watch the man approaching them. He was wearing the baggy cord jeans her mother so detested and a woollen shirt despite the heat of the day. His hair was ruffled, his expression faintly harassed.

He was one of the few men she had to look up to, Sophy reflected, tilting her head as he approached. She was five-feetten, but Jon was well over six foot with unexpectedly broad shoulders. She frowned, registering that fact for the first time, totally thrown when he said unexpectedly, ‘Rugger.’

Her mouth fell slightly open. Previously she had thought him one of the dimmest men she had ever met when it came to following other people’s thought patterns and that he should so easily have picked up on hers made her stare at him in dazed disbelief. It really was unfair that any man should have such long, dark lashes, she thought idly…and such beautiful eyes. If Jonathan didn’t wear glasses women would fall in love with him by the score for his eyes alone. They were a dense, dark blue somewhere between royal and navy. She had never seen eyes that colour on anyone before.

It wasn’t that Jonathan wasn’t physically attractive, she mused, suddenly realising that fact. He was! It was just that he carried about him a total air of non-sexuality.

‘Louise has gone,’ Alexandra told her importantly, tugging on her hand and interrupting her thought train. ‘I expect it was because she fell in love with Uncle Jon like the others,’ she added innocently.

While Sophy was gaping at her, totally floored by her remark, David remarked sagely, ‘No…it was because Uncle Jon wouldn’t let her sleep in his bed. I heard him saying so.’

Conscious of a sudden surge of colour crawling up over her skin Sophy stared at Jonathan. He looked as embarrassed as she felt, rubbing his jaw, looking away from her as he cleared his throat and said, ‘Uh…I think you two better go inside.’

It couldn’t be true. David must have misunderstood, Sophy thought, still trying to take in the mind-boggling implications of the little boy’s innocent statement.

She forced herself to look at Jonathan. He was regarding her with apprehension and…and what…what exactly did that faint glint at the back of his eyes denote? Sophy mentally pictured Louise. Small, petite with black hair and a pixieish expression, the other girl had exuded sexuality and, from the brief conversations Sophy had exchanged with her, she had gained the impression that the other girl had men coming out of her ears.

Jonathan hadn’t denied his nephew’s innocent revelation, however. She studied him covertly, suddenly and inexplicably granted another mental image. This time it contained Jonathan as well as Louise…a Jonathan somewhat unnervingly different from the one she was used to seeing; his body naked and entwined with that of the other girl’s.

Sophy blinked and the vision, thankfully, was gone, Jonathan was restored to his normal self. There was that strange glint in his eyes again though but his voice when he spoke was familiarly hesitant and faintly apologetic.

‘I believe she had some strange notion about, er…compelling me to marry her. She wants a rich husband you know.’

Sophy’s mind balked a little at taking it all in. That Louise should attempt to seduce Jonathan, of all people, into offering her marriage, seemed impossibly ludicrous. Surely she realised, as Sophy herself had, that he was immune to sexual desire…totally oblivious to it in fact.

Another thought struck her. ‘And the other two nannies?’ she asked faintly.

‘Well, they didn’t actually go to Louise’s length, but—’

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.

‘What have you got planned for the children, Jon?’

She sounded more belligerent than she had intended and she half expected him to jump uneasily in apprehension as he was wont to do when she complained because he had upset her neat filing cabinets. Instead, he smiled at her glintingly.

‘You sound like a protective mother hen. Come and sit down. I hate having to look up at you,’ he added, smiling again. ‘I’m not used to it.’

Knowing that she would not get a scrap more information from him until she did as he asked, Sophy took a chair opposite the settee. Beneath that vague exterior lurked a will of iron, as she already knew, but so far she had only seen it in force where his work was concerned.

Suddenly and quite inexplicably she felt tense and nervous, neither of them feelings she was used to experiencing in Jon’s presence. To cover them she said quickly, ‘Mother was saying only today that you need a wife, Jon, and I’m beginning to think she’s right.’

‘So am I.’ He started polishing his glasses, something he always did when he was nervous, and yet his nervous movements were oddly at variance with the tense determination she could almost feel emanating from him.

‘But not Louise surely?’ she began faintly, only to realise that it was hardly any of her business. And yet the thought of the pert, dark-haired young woman as Jon’s wife was oddly distasteful to her. She bit her lip and looked up. Jon was looking at her and it was hard to analyse the expression in his eyes. All she did know was that it was unfamiliar to her.

‘Not Louise,’ he agreed gravely, suddenly looking away from her, his voice once again faintly husky and nervous as he cleared his throat and said, totally out of the blue, ‘As a matter of fact, Sophy, I was rather hoping that you…’

Her? Jonathan was trying to say that he wanted to marry her! Oh no, surely she must be imagining things. She must have misunderstood. She looked across at him and saw from the hopeful hesitant look he was giving her that she had not.

‘You want to marry me?’ she asked disbelievingly, just to be sure. ‘You think we should get married? But that’s totally out of the question.’

She had expected him to accept her refusal immediately; even to be faintly embarrassed and perhaps a little relieved by it. After all, he could have no real desire to be married to her…but to her dismay he shook his head, and plunged on quickly.

‘No, no…listen to me for a moment. You love the kids.’ He paused and while she said nothing Sophy knew she could not deny it. She heard him clearing his throat again and held her breath slightly. ‘And, er…well…that is…you don’t seem to have a…er…a boyfriend at the present time.’

‘I don’t want to get married, Jon,’ she broke in firmly. ‘Not to you nor to anyone else.’

‘But you want children, a family.’

There was no hesitation in his voice this time and once again she was astounded by his perception.

‘I need a wife, Sophy,’ he continued, ‘someone to look after the children and to run my home but not someone to…to share my bed.’

The words sank in slowly.

‘You mean a…a marriage of convenience?’ Sophy asked him uncertainly. ‘Is that legal…is…?’

‘Perfectly, since no one will know the truth apart from ourselves.’

‘But, Jonathan, it’s crazy! Just because Louise…Is that why you want to marry me?’ she asked, staring at him. ‘To stop—’

‘It’s amazing the lengths some of your sex will go to, to secure what they consider to be a wealthy husband and I’m afraid I am wealthy, Sophy.’

She knew that, and while it had never particularly concerned her she could see, now that he had mentioned it, that he would be quite a financial catch for a woman wanting to marry only for money. Suddenly she felt quite protective towards him.

‘The children need you as well, Sophy,’ he told her. ‘They love you. With you they would be secure.’

‘If I don’t agree, what will you do…put them in some sort of institution?’

Her mouth went dry at the thought. It was true, she thought bleakly, feeling the pain invade her heart. She did love them…perhaps all the more so because she knew she would never have any of her own.

She watched Jonathan shrug uncomfortably and get up to pace the room. ‘What else can I do?’ he asked her. ‘You know how much time I spend away. It’s not fair to them. They need a settled background. They need you, Sophy. I need you.’

‘To protect you from the likes of Louise.’ Sophy agreed drily, adding teasingly, ‘Is the thought of an attractive young woman wanting to seduce you really so very repulsive, Jon?’ She knew the moment the words left her lips that they were the wrong ones.

Slow colour crawled up under his skin and he turned away from her saying, in a faintly stifled voice, ‘I must confess, I do find such determined women…er…intimidating. I had a very domineering mother,’ he added almost apologetically.

Busy drawing the inevitable Freudian conclusions it was several seconds before Sophy observed the faintly risible gleam in his eyes and then it was so brief that she decided she must be imagining it. After all what could Jon be laughing at? It was no laughing matter for a man to have to admit he was frightened of the female sex. After all, didn’t she herself hold an almost equal fear of his own, albeit for different reasons. Temptingly the thought slid into her mind that as Jon’s wife she would be safe for all time from her own fears about her lack of sexuality. There would be no uncomfortable reminders in her unwed state about her inability to respond to his sex nor any fear that others would discover it and mock her for it as Chris had done.

Chris! No one would ever want to marry her, he had said. She took a deep breath.

‘All right, then, Jon. I agree. I’ll marry you.’

The moment she heard the words she regretted them. Had she gone mad? She couldn’t marry Jon. She couldn’t but he was already coming towards her, grasping her wrists and hauling her to her feet.

‘You will? Sophy, that’s marvellous. I can’t thank you enough!’ He made no attempt to touch her or to kiss her. Then again, why should he? She wouldn’t have wanted him to.

Panic set in. ‘Jon…’

‘I can’t tell you what this means to me, to be able to keep the children.’

The children. They would be her family. Already she loved them and found them a constant source of delight. She would have this house, its vast sprawling garden…a whole new way of life which she knew instinctively would delight her. She was no ardent career woman and it was a fallacy these days that housewives and mothers degenerated into cabbages. She would have the constant stimulation of the children’s growing minds.

But to marry Jon of all people. She glanced at his tall, slightly stooping frame. Wasn’t Jon the ideal husband for her, though? an inner voice asked. Jon, whose lack of sexuality would always ensure that he never learned of her humiliating secret. With Jon there would be no fear of rejection or contempt. Jon wouldn’t care that sexually she was frigid—wasn’t that the word—she goaded herself. Wasn’t frigid the description of herself she was always shying away from, fighting against facing, but the truth nonetheless?

‘I…er, thought we might be married by special licence. Perhaps next weekend?’

Special licence. Sophy came out of her daze to stare at him. ‘In such a rush. Is that necessary?’

Jon looked apologetic. ‘Well, it would save me having to find a new nanny. You can’t stay on here, living here while I’m living here too if we’re going to get married, Sophy,’ he told her with surprising firmness.

She wanted to laugh. She was going to laugh, Sophy thought, on a rising wave of hysteria.

Catching back her nervous giggles she expostulated, ‘Jon, this is the nineteen-eighties. You’re talking like someone out of the Victorian era.’

‘Your mother wouldn’t think so.’

His shrewdness left her lost for words for a moment. He was quite right. Her mother would most definitely not approve of her living beneath Jon’s roof once she knew they were getting married. Neither, she realised hollowly, would her mother be at all pleased by the fact that they were getting married. She closed her eyes, imagining the scenes and recriminations. Jon was not her mother’s idea of what she wanted for a son-in-law. She would also want a large wedding with Sophy in traditional white, a June wedding with a marquee and…

Groaning slightly she opened her eyes and said faintly, ‘Yes, you’re right. A special licence would be best and then we needn’t tell anyone until afterwards.’

There was a strange gleam in Jon’s eyes and this time she was almost sure it wasn’t the sunset, reflecting off his glasses, that caused it.

‘I’ll, er…make all the arrangements then. Do you want to tell the kids or…?’

‘I’ll tell them tomorrow when you’re gone,’ she suggested. ‘They’re always a bit down after you leave, it will cheer them up a bit.’

Although outwardly well adjusted and cheerful children, Sophy knew that neither of them could have gone through the experience of losing their parents without some scars. They were both passionately attached to Jon and she had thought him equally devoted to them. It had shocked her immensely to hear him talk of sending them away…it didn’t equate with what she knew of his character somehow.

‘I, er…think I’ll have an early night,’ she heard him saying. ‘My flight’s at nine and I’ll have to be at the airport for eight.’

‘Do you want me to drive you?’ Jon did not possess a car; he could neither drive nor, it seemed, had any desire to do so, although he had hired a small car for Louise’s use.

‘No. I’ve ordered a taxi. Don’t bother to get up to see me off.’

Picking up their coffee cups, Sophy grimaced slightly to herself. She always saw him off on his journeys because she lived in perpetual dread that if she did not he would lose or forget something of vital importance. She made a mental note to tell the cab driver to check the taxi before Jon got out of it and then, bidding him goodnight, carried their cups to the kitchen.

She was tired herself. It had, after all, been an eventful day. On her way to the room she always had when she stayed over at the house and which was next to the children’s room, she had to walk past Jon’s room. As she did so, she hesitated, still amazed to think that Louise had actually gone into that room fully intent on making love to its occupant. That earlier and extraordinarily disturbing mental vision she had had of their bodies sensuously entwined she had somehow managed to forget.

CHAPTER TWO

SHE WAS AWAKE at half-past-seven, showering quickly in the bathroom off her bedroom. The room which she occupied was what the estate agent had euphemistically described as ‘a guest suite’. Certainly her bedroom was large enough to house much more than the heavy Victorian furniture it did and it did have its own bathroom but after all that it fell rather short of the luxury conjured up by the description bestowed on it.

She dressed quickly in her jeans and a clean T-shirt. Her body, once gawky and ungainly, had filled out when she reached her twenties and now she had a figure she knew many women might have envied; full breasted, narrow waisted, with long, long legs, outwardly perhaps, as her friend had once teased, ‘sexy’, but inwardly…She was like a cake that was all tempting icing on the outside with nothing but stodge on the inside, she thought wryly, pulling a brush through her hair and grimacing at the crackle of static from it.

There wasn’t time to pin it up and she left it curling wildly on to her shoulders, her face completely devoid of make-up and surprisingly young-looking in the hazy sunshine of the summer morning.

As she went past Jon’s door she heard the hum of his razor and knew that he was up. Downstairs she checked that the cases she had packed for him the previous night were there in the hall. In the kitchen she ground beans and started making coffee. Jon was not an early morning person, preferring to rise late and work, if necessary, all through the night and despite the fact that she knew he would do no more than gulp down a cup of stingingly hot black coffee, she found and poured orange juice and started to make some toast.

He didn’t look surprised to find her in the kitchen, and she knew from his engrossed expression that he was totally absorbed in whatever problem was taking him to Brussels.

Jon was the computer industry’s equivalent of the oil world’s ‘trouble shooter’. She had once heard one of his colleagues saying admiringly that there was nothing Jon did not know about a computer. Although she knew that Jon himself would have been mildly amused by her lack of logic, she herself would have described his skill as something approaching a deep empathy with the machines he worked on.

As far as she was concerned the computer world was a total mystery but she was a good organiser, an excellent secretary and Jon found her flair for languages very useful. He himself seemed to rely entirely on the odd word, nearly always excruciatingly mispronounced from what Sophy could discover. But then, who needed words to communicate with a computer? Logic was what was needed there…and Jon had plenty of that, she thought wryly as she poured and passed his coffee. Only a man of supreme logic would propose to a woman on the strength of needing her to look after his wards and run his home. And also to keep other women out of his bed, Sophy reminded herself.

She didn’t ask him if he wanted toast, simply pushing the buttered golden triangles in front of him. He picked one up, absently bit into it and then, frowning, put it down.

‘You know I don’t eat breakfast.’

‘Then you should,’ she reproved him. ‘It’s no wonder you’re so thin.’ But he wasn’t, she remembered…recollecting that brief, unexpected glimpse of hard muscles.

She heard the sound of a car approaching over the gravel. So did Jon. He stood up, swallowing the last of his coffee.

‘I’ll ring you on Wednesday to let you know what time I get back. If anything urgent crops up in the meantime—’

‘I know where to get in touch with you,’ she assured him. She would have to drive into Cambridge later and leave a message on the office answering service asking callers to ring her here at the house. Her mind raced ahead, busily engaged in sorting out the host of minor problems her being here instead of in Cambridge would cause.

She walked with Jon to the taxi…sighing in faint exasperation as he forgot to pick up his briefcase, handing it to him through the open door and then turning to speak to the driver.

‘Ticket…’ she intoned automatically, turning back to Jon. ‘Passport, money…’

He patted the pocket of his ancient tweed jacket, a faintly harassed look crossing his face.

Registering and interpreting it correctly Sophy instructed. ‘Stay there, I’ll go and get them.’

She found them in a folder beside his bed, and sighed wryly. She remembered quite distinctly handing them to him yesterday and telling him to put them in his jacket pocket.

She ran downstairs and handed the documents to him, catching the driver’s eye as she did so. He was looking faintly impatient.

‘I’ll see you late Wednesday or early Thursday.’ She closed the taxi door and waited until it had turned out of the drive.

Back in the kitchen she munched absently at Jon’s toast and drank her coffee. She and Jon were to be married. It was incredible, ridiculous…only strangely it didn’t seem that way. Already she felt an oddly comfortable pleasure in the thought, as though some burden of pressure had been released. She wanted to marry him, she realised with a start of surprise…or at least…she wanted what marriage to him would give her. She frowned. Didn’t that mean that in her way she was just as selfishly grasping as Louise? But, unlike Louise, she did care about Jon. As a person she liked him very much indeed. As a man he was so totally unthreatening to her that she found his company relaxing. Marriage to Jon would be like slipping into a pair of comfortable slippers…But on Saturday? She comforted herself with the thought that it was hardly likely that Jon would be able to organise a special licence so quickly. In fact she doubted he would even remember about it once he got on the plane. No doubt the task of sorting out all the arrangements would fall to her once he came back but she would still prefer not to tell her parents until after the ceremony.

Coward, she mocked herself, hearing sounds from upstairs that meant David and Alex were up and about.

She told them about Jon’s proposal after breakfast. All three of them were outside, sitting on the lawn. Their open delight and excitement made tears sting her eyes. David flung his arms round her embracing her exuberantly, Alex hanging on to her arm.

‘I’m glad he’s marrying you and not that nasty old Louise,’ she told Sophy. ‘We didn’t like her, did we, David?’

‘No, and neither did Uncle Jon…otherwise he would have let her sleep in his bed.’ A thought seemed to strike him. ‘Does that mean you’ll be sleeping in his bed, Sophy?’

A strange paralysis seemed to have gripped her. She wasn’t sure how much the children knew about adult behaviour. They must have learned something from school but their parents had been dead for three years and she could hardly see Jon satisfactorily explaining the so-called facts of life to them. On the other hand, it was pointless telling them a lie.

‘No, I won’t, David,’ she said at last.

She watched him frown and saw that for some reason her answer had not pleased him.

‘That’s because both of you are so big, I expect,’ intervened Alex, ever practical. ‘You wouldn’t both get in one bed.’

‘They would in Uncle Jon’s,’ David told her gruffly. ‘It’s huge.’

It was…king size and Jon normally slept diagonally across it. She knew because she occasionally had to wake him up in the morning when he had an early business appointment and he had been up late the previous night working. She had never needed to do much more than lightly touch his duvet mummy-wrapped body though.

‘If you’re going to get married, why won’t you be sleeping in his bed?’ he persisted doggedly.

‘Married people don’t always share the same bed, David,’ she told him, giving him what she hoped was a reassuring smile. ‘You know what your uncle’s like. He often works very late and I like to go to bed early. He would wake me up and then I wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep.’

He looked far from convinced, muttering, ‘Ladies always sleep with their husbands,’ and betraying a innate chauvinism that made Sophy smile. Already at ten he was very, very sure in his masculinity and of its supremacy which was surely something he didn’t get from Jon. He was also, as she had often observed, very protective of his sister…and too, of her. She bent forward and ruffled his dark hair.

‘Perhaps Uncle Jon doesn’t want her to sleep with him, David,’ Alex offered, smiling at him. ‘He didn’t want Louise to.’

The little girl was more right than she knew, Sophy thought grimly, glad of the distraction of the telephone ringing.

As she had half suspected it was her mother, eager to tell her all about the previous evening’s dinner party.

‘Chris came too,’ she told Sophy, oblivious to her daughter’s lack of enthusiasm, ‘and he brought his wife. Such a lovely girl…tiny with masses of blonde curls and so obviously in love with him. She’s expecting their first baby. He asked after you, and didn’t seem at all surprised to hear you weren’t married.’ There was a hint of reproof in her mother’s voice. ‘He even laughed about it.’

Sophy realised as she replaced the receiver that she was actually grinding her teeth. So he had laughed, had he? Well, he would soon stop laughing when he heard that she was married! She stood motionless by the telephone staring blindly out of the study window for a few seconds picturing the ordeal the dinner party would have been for her had she been there…that future dinner parties would have been if it hadn’t been for Jon’s extraordinary proposal. Without being aware of it had he had saved her from the most galling humiliation and pain. Now she needn’t even see Chris, never mind endure his mocking taunts on her unmarried state.

OVER THE NEXT couple of days, cautiously at first and then with growing confidence, like someone blessedly discovering the cessation of toothache and then cautiously exploring the previously tormented area and finding it blissfully whole again, Sophy allowed herself to acknowledge the totally unexpected happiness unfurling inside her.

The children were a constant, sometimes funny, sometimes exasperating joy and one she had never thought to know. For some women the physical act of giving birth was acutely necessary to motherhood but she, it seemed, was not one of them. She could not take the place of the children’s dead mother and did not seek to but it gave her a special delight to know that she would have the joy of mothering them. It was this, probably more than anything else, that convinced her that her decision to marry Jon was the right one. She still didn’t know how he could even have thought of relinquishing his responsibility for them but then his mind was so wrapped up in his work, that everything else was obviously secondary to it.

On Tuesday evening it rained and they spent the evening going through some old photograph albums David had found in a bureau drawer.

Once she and Jon were married she would ask him if she was to be allowed a free hand with the house, Sophy mused, glancing round the shabby sitting room, and mentally transforming it with new furnishings. At the present moment in time it wasn’t even particularly comfortable. Both the sofa and the chairs had loose springs which dug into vulnerable flesh if sat upon.

‘Look, Sophy, there’s Daddy and Uncle Jon when they were little.’

Sophy glanced down at the open page of the album, her eyes widening fractionally as she studied the photograph Alex was pointing out.

Two lanky adolescent boys stood side by side, one topping the other by a couple of inches. Both of them had identical shocks of near black hair—both of them had the same regular features, hinting at formidably good looks in adulthood.

‘Uncle Jon looks really like Daddy there, doesn’t he?’ Alex commented, wrinkling her nose. ‘He doesn’t look anything like Daddy did now though, does he, David?’

Thus applied to, her brother studied the photograph briefly and then said gruffly. ‘Yes he does…underneath.’

It was an odd remark for the little boy to make and one, Sophy sensed, made in defence of his uncle against his sister’s comment.

‘Uncle Jon would look much better without his glasses,’ Alex continued cheerfully. ‘He should wear contact lenses like our teacher at school.’

‘He can’t,’ David told her loftily. ‘They don’t suit his eyes, and besides, he doesn’t need to wear his glasses all the time anyway.’

This was news to Sophy. She had never seen him without them, apart from one occasion she recalled, remembering watching him remove them here in this very room. Then she had been struck by the very male attractiveness of his profile, she remembered and then shrugged mentally. What did it matter what Jon looked like? It was the kind of man he was that was important. She already knew all about the pitfalls encountered in getting involved with handsome men. Chris was good looking.

On the Wednesday morning after she had dropped the children off at school she got back just in time to hear the phone ringing noisily.

Thinking it might be Jon, she rushed inside and picked up the receiver, speaking slightly breathlessly into it, barely registering her sudden spearing disappointment at discovering it wasn’t him as she listened to the crisp American tones of the man on the other end of the line.

She explained to him that Jon was due back that day, and slowly read back to him the message he had given her, frowning slightly as she did so.

She knew, of course, that Jon often did work for various governments, but that call had been from the Space Center in Nassau, where apparently they were urgently in need of Jon’s expertise.

Would that mean he had to fly straight out to Nassau, before they could get married? She shrugged slightly. It didn’t really matter when the ceremony took place, surely?

The next time the phone rang it was Jon, ringing her from the airport in Brussels, to tell her the time of his flight.

‘I managed to get through a little earlier than planned,’ he told her, adding, ‘any messages?’

Quickly Sophy told him about the call from Nassau, giving him the number and asking hesitantly, ‘Will that mean that you’ll have to fly straight out there?’

There was a pause so long that she thought at one point their connection had been cut and then Jon said slowly, ‘I’m not sure.’ Having rechecked with him the number of his flight, Sophy said goodbye and replaced the receiver.

She would have to ring Heathrow now and check what time it was due to arrive…her mind ran on, mentally ticking off all that would have to be done. The children would have to be collected from school, fed…Yet all the time at the back of her mind was that same ridiculous sense of apprehension.

Suppose Jon had changed his mind about wanting to marry her? How long would he need to be in Nassau? What if he…?

Stop it! she urged herself firmly, reminding herself that less than a week ago there had been no thought in her mind of marriage to anyone, let alone her boss and now here she was in a mild flurry of panic in case they did not marry.

Since the time needed to get to Heathrow and back to meet Jon’s flight interfered with the children’s school leaving time, and because she knew of no one she could ask to meet them in her place, Sophy rang the school and asked to speak with the headmistress, quickly explaining the situation and getting permission to collect David and Alex on her way to Heathrow just after lunch.

Neither of them stopped chattering during the drive. Oddly enough, this would be the first time either of them had been to the airport and since Sophy always believed in having a little time in hand once they had parked the car she was able to take them to the viewing gallery to watch the flights taking off and landing.

‘Will we see Uncle Jon’s plane from up here?’ David demanded at one point.

Sophy glanced at her watch. Jon’s flight was due in in five minutes.

‘Yes,’ she told him. ‘We’ll watch it land and then we’ll go down to the arrivals lounge to wait for him.

The flight was on time and the plane landed perfectly, so there was no reason for her to feel that odd choking sensation of fear clutch at her throat, Sophy chided herself, especially when she had already watched half a dozen or so planes come and go without the slightest trace of apprehension.

‘Look! Look, Sophy…they’re putting the stairs up,’ Alex told her excitedly, tugging on her hand. ‘Can we wait and see Uncle Jon get off?’

Sophy knew from past experience that Jon was likely to be the last to leave the plane but in the face of the little girl’s excitement she could hardly refuse. It would be a bit of a rush down to the arrivals lounge…and she always liked to be on hand just in case Jon ran into any problems. There had been that time he had left his passport on the plane and another when he had lost the keys for his briefcase, and the strange buzzing sound emanating from it had drawn frowns and stern looks from the security authorities. In the end it had simply been the alarm he had forgotten to switch off but…

‘All right,’ she agreed, ‘but then we’ll have to rush back down.’

‘Look…they’re getting off now,’ David called out, ‘but I can’t see Uncle Jon.’

As Sophy had guessed, Jon was the last off the plane, a clutch of dark suited business men in front of him, the whole party impeded by the slow progress of an old lady who was having difficulty walking.

One of them, obviously growing impatient, pushed past her. His companions followed suit, and Sophy felt an impotent cry of warning rise in her throat as she saw the old lady lose her balance.

What happened next was so out of character that for a moment or two she actually doubted the evidence of her own eyes.

Jon who never seemed to be aware of what was going on around him…Jon who could often be so clumsy and awkward, moved forward so quickly that Sophy blinked. He caught the old lady before she could fall, supporting her with one arm while he held on to his briefcase with the other. She had never seen anyone move so quickly, Sophy reflected, nor move with such controlled reflexes, unless it was on the sports field.

‘Gosh, did you see the way Uncle Jon saved that lady?’ Alex asked, round-eyed. ‘It was really fast, wasn’t it?’

‘That’s because of playing rugger,’ David informed her loftily. ‘He used to play when he was at Cambridge.’

‘And he did rowing as well,’ Alex chipped in, as Sophy drew them away from the viewing windows and towards the arrivals lounge.

She had known about the rugby but it had never occurred to her to think of Jon as an athletic man. Chris who prided himself on his physical fitness spent at least three evenings per week in the gym, jogged and played amateur football but, as far as she knew, Jon did none of these things. There were of course those totally unexpected muscles shaping his shoulders and chest though. Irritated with herself without knowing why, Sophy tried to redirect her thoughts.

For once, Jon managed to negotiate the hazards of passport control and baggage checks without any mishaps.

As he came through the gate Alex slipped her hand from Sophy’s and ran towards him. Watching him field her as easily as any rugby ball and transfer his baggage to his other hand, Sophy was forced to admit that there were obviously still some aspects of her future husband that she was not familiar with. The knowledge was a little unsettling. Up until now she had thought she knew Jon very well indeed and had been quite content with the slightly exasperated toleration which was the normal feeling he aroused within her. Indeed she liked feeling faintly motherly and superior to him, she realised. Thoroughly startled by this sudden discovery about herself, she was the last of the trio to step forward and greet him.

‘That was really good how you saved that old lady from falling, Uncle Jon,’ David was saying. ‘We watched you from the gallery, didn’t we, Sophy?’

Over David’s head the navy blue eyes fixed rather myopically and vaguely on her own.

Alex piped up, ‘Yes, Sophy was so surprised that her mouth was open—like this.’ She demonstrated Sophy’s stunned surprise far too well, the latter thought uncomfortably, feeling the slow crawl of embarrassed colour seeping up under her skin as Jon continued to look at her.

Her embarrassment heightened when David asked suddenly, ‘Aren’t you going to kiss Sophy, Uncle Jon? You can do now that you’re going to get married.’

‘I don’t think I will right now, old son, if you don’t mind.’ Watching Jon ruffle David’s hair and listening to the mild, even tone of his voice as he sidetracked his nephew away from such a potentially embarrassing subject, Sophy knew she should be grateful to Jon for what he had done but for some strange reason, what she was really feeling, if she was honest, was a sense of genuine pique. Jon couldn’t have made it more plain that the thought of kissing her held absolutely no appeal for him, she thought irrationally. Was she really so unattractive to him that…? She stopped abruptly, stunned by the train of her own thoughts. Of course Jon did not want to kiss her—her or anyone else…indeed that was the reason she had felt able to agree to marry him. So why…?

It must be something to do with all the reunited couples and families freely embracing around them that had aroused that momentary and totally unnecessary fit of pique inside her. Feeling much better now that she had found a logical explanation for her irrational feelings, Sophy hurried to catch up with the others and led the way to where she had parked the car.

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