The Beautiful Widow - By Helen Brooks Page 0,38
place with an open mind anyway and then I’ll tell you my plans for it,’ he’d said, somewhat cagily, Toni thought now.
They had been sitting in Steel’s office at the time, a routine they seemed to have slipped into before she left to pick up the twins each evening. Initially the chat and cup of coffee at the end of the working day had been a time for discussing any problems or difficulties that had occurred on the job, but somewhere in the time between June and December it had changed into something more …
What, exactly? She frowned, her gaze caught by the robin who appeared on the window sill outside, peering in the window and reminding her she hadn’t put his cake out that morning. Delving into the cupboard for the cake tin, she cut him a generous chunk of her mother’s fruit cake and opened the back door, crumbling his breakfast on the sill in front of him. He didn’t bother to move, watching her as she retreated and pecking even as she closed the door. He’d brought young ones along in the summer but since they’d matured he’d seen to it they were sent packing.
Her mind returned to Steel; she asked herself what it was about their evening chats that was so unsettling. Since the incident in the garden in the summer he’d been propriety itself; she could have been a man for all the impact she made on him. This thought wasn’t new and one she didn’t like to dwell on. It had the power to ruin her day.
Perhaps it was the fact that they now tended to discuss anything and everything in a way she’d never had with anyone before. And he was more relaxed in the evenings and unfortunately ten times more attractive, often sitting with his tie loose and the first few buttons of his shirt undone revealing the beginnings of the black curly hair on his chest. She was galled just how much this affected her, especially in view of his indifference to her, but the flagrant masculinity was all the more potent for its naturalness. He was just one of those men who radiated maleness, she told herself irritably. Oozed it. Every little gesture, the way he held his head, the way he walked.
She finished her coffee, washing up her mug along with a couple of dishes from supper the night before. Her mother’s tiny kitchen didn’t boast a dishwasher.
She had a shower and got dressed before she woke the twins and took her parents their morning cup of tea in bed. By the time she dropped the twins off at school for their breakfast club a beautiful December day had unfolded, the sky high and blue and a winter’s sun casting wisps of pale yellow light over the world below. It was good to be alive on such a morning.
Steel had obviously been working for some time when she arrived at the office and he called her into his room. His desk was strewn with papers, the biscuit tin was open and the delicious smell of coffee permeated the air. ‘Don’t take your coat off. We’re leaving straight away,’ he said, fastening the first couple of buttons of his shirt and pulling his tie into place as he spoke. ‘And bring a notebook with you.’
‘OK.’ It was all she could manage, having caught the clean scent of his aftershave as he’d raked his fingers through his hair. It was a habit of his, the attempt to control the quiff of hair that was forever falling onto his forehead no matter how short he had his hair. She could imagine its refusal to obey irritated him no end. She didn’t know how it had the temerity!
He also narrowed his eyes slightly and pulled at his left ear when he was considering something, became completely deadpan when he was unsure of his ground—which wasn’t often—and had a delicious way of quirking his mouth when something had struck him funny when it shouldn’t have.
Oh, she knew quite a bit about what made her one-in-a-million boss tick, Toni thought wryly. Apart from his love life. In all their discussions he’d never mentioned women, for which she was eternally grateful. And the office grapevine had gone silent on the subject too. Normally, apparently, Steel’s latest woman was discussed and dissected at length. The last one to be mentioned—a flame-haired attorney with a body to die for, according to most of the men—had bit the dust