Distracted by her Virtue by Maggie Cox Read Free Book Online Page B

waves and run back again before they reach us!’
    By the time she and Charlie ran back onto the shore, a few minutes later, Jarrett was waiting with the generoussized bathtowel she’d brought from home. Catching her eye, he smiled as if to reassure her he held no grudges about her splashing him with ice-cold seawater. Then he unhesitatingly wrapped the towel around Charlie, as if genuinely concerned that he get warm and dry again as quickly as possible.
    Sophia was certain that anyone observing them would assume that he was the boy’s father. Their colouring—apart from the eyes, of course—was practically identical. The notion gave her the strangest most unsettling pang. Jarrett was bigger, leaner and more muscular in build than her husband Tom had been … taller too. It wasn’t likely that Charlie would reach a similar height. Yet he would undoubtedly be handsome when he was grown.
    Ruffling her son’s damp corkscrew curls, Jarrett stood aside so that Sophia could finish off the drying and help him get dressed. With his T-shirt and shorts on again, Charlie was eager to collect some seashells, so he skipped a little bit further on down the beach with his red bucket and spade, his mother’s clear instruction to not wander out of her sight ringing in his ears. Deliberately avoiding glancing directly at Jarrett, because his commanding masculine presence was making her feel painfully self-conscious, she lifted her long, drenched plaits off the back of her neck, arranged the towel round her shoulders and stooped to pick up the straw bag with the spare set of clothing that she’d left lying on the sand next to her sandals. Her jeans and shirt were plastered icily to her skin where Charlie had splashed her.
    ‘I’m going over by those rocks to change,’ she toldJarrett, finally meeting his arresting cobalt gaze. ‘Would you keep an eye on Charlie for me?’
    ‘No problem. I’ll go and join him to help collect seashells.’
    Even though they’d spent a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon together on the beach, and at the small seaside restaurant where they’d had fish and chips, Jarrett honestly hadn’t expected Sophia to invite him in when they reached High Ridge. But fate was on his side. Charlie had fallen asleep in his car seat.
    Sophia got out of the car, peered in at him, then glanced round at Jarrett with an almost apologetic shrug. ‘Would you mind carrying him into the house for me? I’ll grab our things and open the door.’
    On entering the hallway, he saw the ceiling with its old-fashioned cornices was far loftier than he’d anticipated, but the overall impression Jarrett got was that the place was as dark and dingy as Miss Havisham’s decaying manor in
Great Expectations
. The remaining evening light that did manage to stream in through the front door’s decorated windowpanes was nowhere near illuminating enough to make the place remotely welcoming. Underfoot was an equally dingy, well-trodden maroon carpet that in his view ought to be replaced, or at least given a professional clean.
    As he followed Sophia into the house, carefully transporting her still-sleeping little boy in his arms, he couldn’t help reflecting that he’d love to help restore the place to its former beauty. But even as the thought stole into his mind Jarrett’s sight was helplessly waylaid by the graceful sway of the lithe yet shapely hips of the pretty woman in front of him. Her long slim legsalong with the peach-like derrière snugly enclosed in a pair of almost shabby blue jeans suspended any further reflections bar the realisation that he
wanted
her. From the moment he’d seen her lissome shapely figure outlined by the clinging jeans and shirt at the beach, and briefly lifted her into his arms, he’d ached with every fibre of his being to be intimate with her—and soon.
    ‘You can put him down on the couch,’ his lovely companion instructed him, her porcelain cheeks flushing a little as her emerald eyes warily met