Merely Players Read Online Free

cow. ‘Jane Webster, you’re pathetic!’ she told herself sternly. She would need to find her own solutions.
    When they went upstairs, Adam went into the two rooms at the end of the landing to look at his sleeping children. Jane, listening to the distant throb of the dishwasher beneath her as she undressed in the bedroom, wondered whether he had gone in there to please himself or to please her.
    She might have been reassured if she had been able to see the change in Adam as he moved towards his children. The stillness of the scene in the first of the rooms, the slow, rhythmic breathing of the tiny figure in the big bed seemed to still also the thoughts and the pulse of the man who had fathered him. Damon was six now, a dynamo who seemed by day to have discovered the secret of perpetual motion. Yet, at this moment, you had to look hard to detect the tiny rise and fall of the blanket which meant that all was well with him. He had the blond curls that were so prominent in the pictures of his mother as a child, and skin ‘as smooth as monumental alabaster’. Adam wondered where that phrase had come from, then realized that it was from Othello. Not really appropriate for the skin of a child, maybe, but it always pleased him when a phrase from the past came to him. He wasn’t sure why.
    He was beset with a sudden fear for the innocence he saw beneath him, for the damage which must surely be done to this tiny figure by the harsh world which awaited him. How could this sleeping cherub possibly become a grown man, with the weapons and the will to resist the hostility which must surely be turned upon him by that aggressive, dog-eat-dog world which awaited him beyond the walls of this luxurious citadel?
    The room next door was identical, save for the pink walls which its imperious four-year-old mistress had demanded. Kate was not as deeply asleep as Damon had been. Her brow wrinkled for a moment as he watched her. The lips, small and delicate as the petals of a flower, mouthed words for a moment, but no sound came from them. Then a smile, tiny, mysterious, confident, settled on the small and perfect mouth. The sigh was as silent as the words had been. Then her breathing settled into a regular, quiet rhythm and you had to be close to her to detect any movement at all. He stooped and set his lips softly as the wings of a moth upon the infant forehead, then caressed with the back of his fingers the face which was so active and demanding when it was animated during the day.
    Adam Cassidy stood for a moment at the door, looking back at his sleeping child, relishing this moment of real life, which seemed at present to be increasingly elusive for him.
    Jane was already in bed when he went into the master bedroom. She lay as still as the child he had just left, but with her eyes steadily upon him. He was suddenly self-conscious, for a reason he could not explain, and turned abruptly into the luxurious bathroom beyond the bed. He had intended to say things to Jane about the children, about the way she cared for them and the way he appreciated it, but the words would not come, even when he slid beneath the duvet beside her five minutes later. He put out the light and stared for a moment at the invisible ceiling. Then he said, ‘I love you, Jane.’ It emerged not as he wanted it, but as if it were somehow a statement which surprised him. He said after another few seconds, ‘But you know that, don’t you?’
    â€˜It doesn’t do any harm for you to say it occasionally, does it? Or for me to hear it, for that matter.’ She turned on her side and slid her arms round him, feeling the muscles on his back, moving her hands down from the shoulder blades she knew so well to the bottom of his back and the top of the cleft there.
    Both of them knew that they were going to make love, but there was no need to hurry things on. He held her tightly for a moment, then leaned her back and stroked her breasts, in