Capital Sins Read Free

occasions, to the extent of
picking out a dress that caught his fancy and taking an interest in the way she
had her hair done. He took her with him on his business trips at home and
abroad. He drove himself and her hard while he was examining a project in a
strange city, using a suite in a good hotel as his base. When the telephone had
stopped ringing and the last caller had gone they would dine in the restaurant
and, with luck, would be left alone for a few hours to relax. They helped each
other shed the problems of the last few hours over a pre-dinner drink.
    Sheila had
resisted falling in love with him. telling herself
that this was one situation she would avoid, even though he was still unmarried
at the age of thirty-five. But inevitably gratitude and loyalty had ripened
into a love that she knew was no mere infatuation. She had been 'in love'
during her adolescence like most of the girls in her class at school –
realising later as she grew older that 'crushes' and 'fancies' soon passed,
although it hurt just as much at the time, while love lingered or remained if
requited.
    Once before
Sheila had experienced what real love was. She'd been in her late teens when
she'd met a soldier at a supper dance. They'd been seated next to each other,
so it had only been natural that they should talk. They'd had little in common
she'd realised, except youth, but she'd fallen for his dancing eyes and rough
charm. There were too many differences between them but these yielded to the
defiance of youth. After spending two wonderful days and nights together, they
had exchanged love letters when he'd been shipped abroad with his unit. Hers, so neat and sentimental, his almost illiterate and blunt in
his adoration. The exchange ended abruptly when he was killed in action.
    She never
forgot him entirely; a man who resembled him ensured a second look from her ,but it didn't mean she
couldn't fall in love again.
    She sensed
Jessop was a lonely man, because she was able to identify with his moods,
knowing too how lonely loneliness was. His office adjoined hers, and no one
could gain access to Samuel Jessop unless they went through Sheila Delaney
first – unless it was one of his girl friends.
    He wasn't
dating any one woman in particular, and his relationships never lasted long. He
would even joke about them to Sheila sometimes, yet something in his manner told
her that they didn't satisfy him.
    After a
long, tiring day at work, they often had a quiet drink together in the confines
of his own magnificent office, really a suite, and she used to tell him about
herself – about her lonely childhood as an only child, and her over-protective
mother who had almost made Sheila too shy even to mix with girls of her own
age. How she'd conquered a stammer and later her timidness and learned to be independent. Jessop always appeared genuinely interested, he
seemed willing enough to talk and was always very friendly to her, although
others found him remote. So, encouraged, she had tried to get him to talk about
his own background, but this was one area of his life about which he was
reticent.
    Samuel
Jessop was good-looking in a way that wasn't instantly apparent but which grew
on acquaintance. He had a justifiable reputation of being shrewd in matters of
business and high finance (he'd earned the nickname of 'Mr All-Sorts' from
financial newspaper writers because of his uncanny ability to sense when
disasters were looming, and to avoid them in time, or diversify into other
areas) and was ambitious to climb even higher. Like Sheila, he was an only
child, but his mother had died giving birth to him. His father, after having
served in the army during the war, had bought a ramshackle boarding house on
the coast with the gratuity he received when the war ended. This house he
reconstructed into flatlets and then he became an
estate agent. He prospered and turned to property development, starting Jessop
& Co with his first wife. A year after her death he