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Sophy shook her head.
‘I’m told BMW make a good vehicle,’ Jon offered. ‘How about them?’
‘They’re very expensive,’ Sophy warned him.
Beside her, Jon shrugged. ‘That doesn’t matter...safety and comfort do.’
‘You managed to sort everything out in Nassau, then?’ Sophy asked when the silence began pressing painfully on her screaming nerves.
‘Yes. Oh, that reminds me...Harry Silver, my contact over there, will be coming to stay in Cambridge soon for a week or so. He and I used to be at university together. I’d like to invite him and his wife over for dinner one night.’
He might just as well be an employer giving his housekeeper her instructions, Sophy thought bitterly, immediately chiding herself for the thought. She was the one at fault, she was reacting in a totally unfamiliar and unreasonable way and had been ever since she walked into Jon’s room and found him there.
That must be it, she decided, relieved to have hit upon an explanation for her behaviour. It was the shock. The shock of seeing him, a mocking inner voice demanded, or the shock of how she had seen him?
‘Is anything wrong?’
Sophy bit her lip. So even Jon had noticed her tension. ‘No...I think it’s just this heat,’ she gave him a brief smile. ‘Sometimes I find it a bit wearing. Unlike you.’
A strange silence followed her last two words, and for some reason Sophy felt constrained to explain them. ‘That is...you’ve got such a good tan you must enjoy sunbathing.’
‘There were times when I had to wait for them to run certain tests. Lillian was kind enough to take pity on me and let me have the use of her patio and pool whilst I was doing so.’
‘Lillian?’ Sophy asked sharply, taking her eyes off the road for a second to look at him.
‘Harry’s assistant,’ Jon responded vaguely. ‘She had a condominium near the Centre, with a communal pool. It was much more convenient to stay there whilst I was waiting for the results of the tests rather than to go back to my hotel.’
A sensation unlike any other Sophy had experienced in her life was boiling through her; a mixture of anger, resentment and—jealousy—she recognized dully. She was jealous of this unknown Lillian, Jon spoke about so easily. Was that why he didn’t want her in his room because...? Abruptly she brought her careering thoughts to a halt. Why should Jon have reacted any differently to this Lillian than he did to any other woman? What on earth was the matter with her? She was behaving like a jealous wife suspecting her husband of having an affair.
Fortunately they had reached the school and in the excitement of the children greeting Jon she was able to bring herself under some sort of control.
Tea was a light-hearted meal, although she herself took a back seat in the conversation.
‘Uncle Jon looks nice in his new clothes, Sophy,’ Alex announced approvingly. ‘We got you some in blue because that’s the same colour as your eyes,’ Alex informed her uncle, dimpling a smile at him, ‘and Sophy has sent all your old things to the cleaners.’
* * *
THE WEEKEND WAS as hot as the rest of the week had been and they spent most of it in the garden. Sophy was having trouble sleeping. Each day seemed to drain a little more out of her, and yet she was so tensely wound up that she just could not relax. Her whole body was gripped by a peculiar and unfamiliar tension which left her nerves on edge and made her muscles ache. But at least no one else seemed to be aware that anything was wrong with her.
Even worse than her growing inner tension was the compulsion she seemed to have developed to be with Jon, and yet when she was with him, she felt acutely tense, unable to so much as sit down for more than five minutes at a time.
The trouble was, she thought exhaustedly on Sunday afternoon, that while she had suddenly become aware of him as a man, Jon simply did not see her as a woman at all. He would be deeply embarrassed if he knew the reason for the way she occasionally found herself looking at his body. She was embarrassed herself. Embarrassed and annoyed. What was the matter with her? Even with Chris, when she had been deeply in love with him, she had felt no stirring of desire within her to know him as a man.
