The Beautiful Widow - By Helen Brooks Page 0,35
working for a gorgeous piece of eye candy who won’t try anything on and respects your saintly position. You’ve got everything you want. Stop feeling awkward, relax, and enjoy the job. You do enjoy it, don’t you?’
‘Love it.’ Toni smiled and silently blessed Rose, who chose that moment to wake up from her morning nap. Time for a change of subject. She appreciated her friend’s take on the situation and Poppy was probably right, but then she didn’t have to work with Steel every day. Try as she might, and she knew it was completely unreasonable, it rankled that from Tuesday morning, when she had arrived at the office not knowing if she was on foot or horseback, Steel had been his smooth, unruffled, urbane self. Monday night could have been a dream, a fantasy, and there were a couple of times during that day when she’d had to reassure herself it had actually happened.
But it had. Oh, it had. And to her chagrin Steel had awakened something in her that evening that made it impossible for her to revert to the woman she had been before he’d kissed her. He’d inadvertently opened Pandora’s box, which was monumentally unfair, leaving her—as it did—in the middle of nowhere. She didn’t want Steel, or any other man, intruding into the safe, orderly world she had now, a world where she and the girls were impregnable.
In the last couple of years of her marriage she had never known how Richard would be when he walked through the door. Sometimes he was merely withdrawn, ignoring the twins and pushing her away when she tried to talk to him. Other times he’d been downright hostile and then she’d had to try and keep the girls out of his way completely. He had never gone so far as to be physically violent with Amelia and Daisy, but once or twice when he’d lost his temper over something they’d done or said she had felt he might be. The stress had been unbelievable. She would never put the girls in that position again. Never introduce a fourth person into their precious circle, someone with the potential to let them down. They were secure and in safe hands with her. That was all that mattered. They hadn’t asked to be born and her wants and needs didn’t count now.
The rest of the morning was spent running round after the children and talking of inconsequentials, but as Toni was leaving she was surprised when Poppy put her arms round her in a hug that was more than just a polite farewell. ‘I know how awful it’s been, really, I do, and you’ve still got all that debt and so on, but you’re only thirty years old, Toni. There’s someone out there for you, I know it. Someone who would be good to the girls too. Don’t close your mind to that in the future.’
Toni hugged her back even as she thought, I don’t want to hear this, Poppy. You know me but you don’t know me, not over this. But then Poppy was blissfully happy with Graham and he worshipped the ground she walked on. Poppy had never experienced nights of lying awake wondering how she could face the next year, the next ten years, the next few decades with a man she had nothing in common with, and then finding out she’d only had a travesty of a marriage after all. And she was glad Poppy hadn’t had to go through that, of course she was, but unless you had you didn’t know how it was. Her marriage had been a tissue of lies from beginning to end; the only real thing in it all had been her beautiful girls. Men weren’t to be trusted; she knew that now.
Amelia was uncharacteristically quiet on the way home. Toni felt her head but it wasn’t hot and she didn’t seem to be sickening for anything. All was revealed that evening as she tucked the girls up in bed, prior to reading their night-time story. Out of the blue, Amelia stated, ‘Nathan said if you lose one daddy you can get another one. His friend Archy has had two already.’
Toni warned herself not to react. Very calmly, she said, ‘We’re all right as we are, aren’t we? You like living with Grandma and Grandad and we all have lots of fun together.’
Amelia considered this. ‘But it’s not the same as having a daddy, is it? Nathan has got a daddy and