Free Distracted by her Virtue by Maggie Cox Page B

destitute and I found out that you had to sell your home to pay off his debts. As for myself, I’m fortunate to have a place of my own as well as a good income with which to maintain it and to live on. Nothing could have pleased me more than to hear that some good fortune had come your way at last.’
    Sophia’s anxiety over the matter thankfully eased, to be happily replaced by a wave of the most profound relief. ‘Thanks for that. I don’t think I could have borne it if you’d been at all resentful. And, in answer to your question, Charlie
is
well and happy. He’s starting his new school in a couple of weeks, and he’s looking forward to making some new friends. I’m not doing too badly either, though it still feels a bit like I’ve been let out of jail. How are Lindsay and Oscar doing?’
    ‘Oscar’s seven going on sixteen!’ David answered wryly. ‘And if his current stroppy moods are anything to go by Lindsay and I will have our work cut out when he becomes a teenager, that’s for sure’
    ‘Why don’t you come into the kitchen and we’ll have a cup of tea and a chat? I was going to make some lunch for me and Charlie very soon—just something simple. You’re welcome to join us if you’re not in too much of a hurry to get to London?’
    Even as she issued the invitation Sophia remembered with a jolt that Jarrett was paying her a visit after lunch, and that she’d promised to tell him the whole story of her bitterly unhappy marriage. She wouldn’t put off the visit, but she’d rather her brother left before he arrived. All morning, whenever she’d reflected on seeing him again, she’d felt almost sick with nerves. Yet underneath the nerves was growing a distinct sense of excited anticipation, and it was that pleasurable expectation that worried her
far
more than being judged on making such a terrible marriage and enduring it for so long, when she should have found the courage to get herself and Charlie away from thesituation as soon as possible …
whatever
the threatened or imagined consequences.
    Jarrett had hardly slept. He’d risen early and busied himself with inconsequential activities, like browsing the Sunday newspapers, surfing the internet and drinking enough coffee to raise a person from the dead, simply to kill the time before he could drive over to High Ridge Hall and see Sophia.
It was as though someone had put a spell on him
. He could hardly think about anything else but her beautiful face, and the realisation that he was a different man when he was in her company—a man who was far more in touch with his feelings than he usually managed.
    The mere idea of being so vulnerable to a woman would have normally had him running for the hills. God knew he’d had a lifetime of doing just that, fooling himself that long term relationships were best avoided because he didn’t want to deal with the grief he might feel if things didn’t work out. Losing his parents in a car accident when he was young had taught him that loving someone wasn’t always enough to keep them by your side. Better to not risk being hurt, should that ever happen again. Yet what was happening to him now as far as Sophia was concerned was completely out of his control. And while it was undoubtedly frightening, it was also the most wonderful thing that he’d ever experienced.
    Now, drawing up outside the familiar manor house, he reached over to the back seat of the car to collect the enormous bunch of flowers he’d brought for Sophia. They were all hand-picked from his own well-planted gardens. He and his gardener had walked the stonepaths between the colourful beds together to select and cut them. Jarrett smiled to himself, shaking his head in bemusement as the heady floral perfume drifted up to him.
    Even his gardener—the elderly but still sprightly Alfred—had winked knowingly up at him when he’d asked him to help choose some of the most beautiful blooms for a ‘friend’. As the gnarled hands had