The Accidental Mother (37 page)

Sophie had snorted in response. “Trust me,
that’s
not going to happen,” she’d said, knowing that she
really
didn’t want to marry an investment banker.

“Anyway,” Eve had said, “it’s probably just as well you got the job and not me.”

“Why?” Sophie had asked her, genuinely intrigued.

“Well, you can’t hang around outside smoking when you’re the boss, can you?” Eve had replied.

“No,” Sophie had said with more regret than she’d expected. “I suppose you can’t.” But it wasn’t losing the chance to smoke that had made Sophie feel a sudden pang of regret. It was something else entirely that she wouldn’t tell Eve or anyone else. A quiet truth that had been nagging her from the moment she had returned to the office. Now that she had everything she had been working toward for the best part of her adult life, now that she had the power and the prestige and the money, she had made a very depressing discovery.

She didn’t really want it.

The huge Friday night event she had planned to celebrate her promotion had had to be put off for a week due to the lack of availability of willing guests on such short notice, and even then the numbers had dwindled rather rapidly to the two or three people from the office who weren’t too scared to have a drink in front of the boss: Lisa, Cal, and Christina, the only one of Sophie’s friends not currently in the kind of relationship that monopolized Friday nights.

“Thank Christ you’re back in town, Soph,” Christina had told her as she set two glasses of wine down at their table. “If it wasn’t for you, I’d have no one to go pick up guys with. I can’t believe it,
everyone
is hooked up. It’s so
dull
when everyone is happy.”

“Oh, I know,” Sophie had said enthusiastically as she took a large gulp of her wine. “Well, I’m not happy. Any time you want to go on the pull, count me in.”

“You’re so funny,” Christina had said, laughing. “I’ve quite missed you. So, fill me in then—where
have
you been recently? I thought you’d emigrated or something. Didn’t somebody die?”

Perhaps if Christina had known what was coming, she wouldn’t have bothered to ask, but when Sophie was only twenty minutes into recounting her trials and tribulations of the last couple of months, she had noticed that Christina wasn’t really listening. Instead she was gazing rather obviously at someone just over Sophie’s left shoulder.

“Chris!” Sophie had attempted to regain her friend’s attention. “I’m telling the story of my life here.”

Christina had jumped. “God,
sorry.
I just couldn’t take my eyes off that man over there. He’s
very
handsome. And he looks rich. Probably married of course or—” Christina had sat back in her seat and dropped her palms onto her knees. “Typical, he’s talking to Cal…I should have known. The best ones are always married or gay.”

“Or widowers,” Sophie had added without thinking.

“Or what?” Christina had asked her.

“Nothing,” Sophie had said quickly. “Anyway, that will be Mauro. Cal’s been going on about him nonstop since I got back.”

Sophie had turned around to get a look at the man who had captured Cal’s attention for longer than two minutes, and as she saw him, she caught her breath. It wasn’t Mauro.

It was Jake Flynn.

“Oh, God,” Sophie had said just as the music lulled for a moment.

Jake had looked up and smiled at her. Sophie had turned quickly back to Christina and downed her glass of wine.

“What?” Christina had demanded. “Don’t tell me he’s yours. Seriously, if you get a boyfriend before I do, I’m going to kill myself, because it officially means there is no hope for me.”

Sophie wasn’t listening; she had picked up Christina’s drink and downed that too.

“Hey!” Christina had protested.

“I’ll get you another, but I’ve got to go over and talk to him. You know all that stuff that happened in Cornwall?” Christina had looked blank. Sophie had shaken her head in irritation. “Well, a lot of stuff happened there, stuff I can’t seem to move on from or stop thinking about
night
after
night
after…And, anyway, I don’t know why I didn’t think about it before. Jake is the solution, Jake will take my mind off things, he’s totally into me, or at least he was. And if he still is, then I’m going to be totally into him. You said it—he’s practically perfect.”

Luckily, Sophie hadn’t seen the expression on Christina’s face as she headed determinedly toward the bar, where Jake was standing. If she had, the look of horror and disbelief might have thrown her off a little.

Sophie had planned to approach Jake with the kind of cool sophistication she knew he was attracted to. Unfortunately, she had tripped a little when she was only a step or two from him and ended up stumbling into his chest.

“Oh,” she had said, righting herself. “It’s these new shoes. Impossible to walk in.” She had glanced down to see which of the ten or so pairs she had bought since she’d been back she had put on. Annoyingly, the ones she had randomly selected that morning didn’t go at all with what she was wearing.

“Sophie.” Jake had smiled at her, his voice carefully neutral. “Good to see you! I heard your news today, and when I went by the office they said you’d be here. I wanted to buy you a drink so you’d know I’m cool about everything and very happy for you, although I guess I’ll be doing most of my business with Cal now—you’ll be far too important to deal with me.”

“I’ll always have time for you, Jake,” Sophie had said, tossing her hair as coquettishly as she knew how.

Cal had looked from Sophie to Jake. “Good to see you, Jake. I’m off now,” he had told Sophie. “Remember what I said.”

“What did you say?” Sophie had asked him.

“That you need to get laid ASAP,” Cal had replied, and then he had gone.

Sophie had covered her face with her hands, and Jake had gently removed them and smiled at her, still holding her wrists.

“First rule of management, never let your staff see you’re embarrassed.”

“Oh, I’ve blown that one about two hundred times already, and I don’t even start my new job until next week.” Sophie had laughed and noticed Jake had held her for a moment or two longer before he let go. Perhaps it wasn’t too late after all.

“I sort of didn’t expect you to come back.” Jake had handed her the glass of wine he’d ordered for her.

“Didn’t you?” Sophie had asked him with real curiosity. “Why?”

“It looked to me like something was going on there. I didn’t think you’d be able to leave them. Any of them.”

Sophie had sipped her drink and fought the rising tide of sadness that swelled in her chest.

“I missed you, actually,” she had said, looking up at Jake. He had watched her for a moment as if he were trying to read her mind, and in response she had tried to banish any thoughts of Louis that might have been lurking in her eyes. She knew what she was doing was wrong, but maybe Cal was right, maybe she did need to get laid. If she had another man in her bed, a man who cared for her and wanted her, then perhaps she’d be able to get the persistent memory of the last one out of her head for good.

“That’s not why you came back,” Jake had said with a sad, wry smile.

“I’m sorry about the way I acted the last time I saw you, Jake. Throwing myself at you like that. You were right to say what you did, I was confused. I needed to go to Cornwall. But once I was there, I realized how wrong it all was for me. How complicated.”

“Just because something is complicated doesn’t make it wrong,” Jake had said casually. “It’s worth pursuing something that will make you truly happy, even if it’s difficult getting there.”

Sophie had resisted the urge to scowl. Jake wasn’t being nearly as helpful as she had hoped he would be.

She had supposed she’d just have to seduce him, and as she had no idea how to go about it, she had decided to be as direct and as blunt as possible.

“Jake, I want you,” she had said, somehow holding his gaze and her nerve at the same time. “Sexually.”

Jake had had to raise his hand to his mouth to cover his smile, and Sophie had felt her skin instantly blotch. “I’m sorry,” he’d said, and his smile was gone in an instant, replaced by that compelling blue gaze.

Finally, Sophie had thought, he was taking her seriously.

“Why?” Jake had asked her.

“Why!” Sophie had raised her voice, and a few people looked across at her. “What do you mean, why?” She had dropped her voice to a whisper. “Isn’t it enough that I do?”

Jake had set his glass down and led her away from the bar to a quiet corner near the fire escape.

“You know I want you,” he had told her, his voice low and urgent. “I’ve wanted you for a long time. I wanted you even after I told you I didn’t.” He had given a brief, mirthless laugh. “You know what? I don’t really care if you are into someone else. If you want me to take you to bed just to help you forget that someone else, then I will. That’s how much I want you, Sophie. But answer me honestly, do you really want this? Do
you
really want
this
? Because I don’t care if I get hurt—but I couldn’t stand to see you hurt yourself any more.”

Sohpie had looked into Jake’s intense blue eyes and had willed herself to say yes, she wanted him to take her to bed.

But she hadn’t been able to. She hadn’t been able to use Jake like some kind of medication, because it wouldn’t work, and anyway he was right, she would only be hurting them both.

She had dropped her gaze to her feet. “Oh, Jake,” she had said softly. “I’m sorry. I’m such a fool.”

Jake had swallowed and nodded stiffly. “You probably are,” he had said. “But not for the reasons you think.”

He had turned on his heel and walked out of the bar, and Sophie had not heard from or seen him since. All she knew was that his people called her people whenever they needed anything done.

So, all the going out, all the cocktails and shopping and smoking, and not even Jake had helped. From the moment she had come back, she had tried, really tried, to fit herself into her new and improved life, but nothing she could do would change the most startling and frightening fact: despite her new, frantic city life, she was desperately lonely. And there were only three people in the whole world who could take that loneliness away.

Three people who it was far too late to go back to now—even if she had the courage to make the trip.

The meeting broke up, and Eve paused by Sophie’s end of the desk to drop off some paperwork.

“Okay?” she said generally, but Sophie knew she was referring to her vacant spell in the middle of the meeting that she had been supposed to be running.

“Fine, getting a cold or something,” Sophie said, with half a smile.

Eve raised an eyebrow before leaving.

Cal checked his watch. “It’s lunchtime,” he said. “Come on, let’s go out for a walk.”

Sophie looked at the pile of paperwork on her desk. “I can’t, Cal, I have to catch up on all of this
and
read the minutes from the meeting. Has Lisa typed them up yet?”

“You’re joking, aren’t you?” Cal said, picking up the offending pile of paperwork, arranging it neatly, and dropping it in its entirety into one of the deep drawers of Sophie’s filing cabinet. “There, that’s filed. Lisa won’t have finished those notes until this afternoon if we’re lucky. She’s out to lunch, in all senses of the word, with the new love of her life. Anyway, it’s a beautiful spring morning out there, and we’re going for a walk to clear our heads. Come on! I’ll buy you a Mars bar.”

A few minutes later they sat side by side on a bench in Finsbury Circus looking at a bed of red tulips bobbing cheerfully in the breeze.

“Why is this called a circus?” Cal asked her. “When it’s square?”

Sophie shrugged. “Don’t care,” she said.

Cal sighed. “Look,” he said. “When you first came back and were a bit off your game, I thought it was exhaustion. All those weeks of wiping arses and noses, ugh! And when you went through your thankfully short period as a lush, I thought it was the stress of getting a job you probably couldn’t really do. I put up with the constant hangovers, the nights out, spending
my
lunchtime taking
your
impulse buys back for you because you’re too embarrassed to do it yourself. I thought, She’s had a difficult time. It will take time to adjust. But you’ve been back over three months now, Soph. You keep getting
more
vague and airy-fairy, not less. And I know for a fact you have no social life, so unless you’ve developed a very boring addiction to heroin, which you haven’t because you hate needles, you’re depressed. So why are you depressed—as if it isn’t obvious?”

Sophie frowned at him.

“I’m fine,” she said. “Honestly!”

Cal sighed again and rolled his eyes. “I used to prefer when you were in love with Jake,” he said wistfully. “It was much less complicated.”

Sophie managed a small smile. “I was never in love with Jake—I wish I had been—and anyway I’ll be fine,” she said. “I just need a bit of adjustment time, that’s all.”