Contracted: corporate wife

by Hart, Jessica

  'Sorry,' she said. 'Just checking to see if you were listening!'

  Patrick had the alarming feeling that things were slipping out of control and he got a grip of himself with an effort. There must have been something very odd in that champagne. He wasn't feeling like himself at all.

  'You're on your own, though.' That was better; think of her as a sad divorcee. 'Don't you get lonely?'

  'When you live in a tiny flat with two growing children, I can tell you that you long for the chance to be lonely sometimes!' said Lou.

  'That's not what I mean, and you know it,' he said.

  'No, OK,' she acknowledged. T miss being married sometimes,' she said slowly, pushing her plate aside so that she could lean her arms on the table and prop her face in

  one palm, oblivious to what that did to her cleavage, or what the effect on Patrick might be.

  'It's hard bringing up children on your own,' she toid him, while he fought to concentrate. 'There's no one to talk to in the evening, no one to share your worries with, no one who cares the way you do about their little triumphs.'

  She was gazing at the candle flame, miles away with her children, and Patrick wondered if she had forgotten that he was there. If she had, he didn't like it, he realised.

  'It would just be nice sometimes to have someone to support you when everything seems to be going wrong,' she said.

  'Someone to hold you?' he suggested, his voice harder than he had intended, and Lou's dark eyes flashed up from the candle to meet his for a taut moment while both of them tried not to think about being held.

  Her gaze dropped first. 'Yes, someone to hold me,' she said quietly. 'Sometimes.'

  Patrick had a sudden memory of Lou walking across the lobby earlier that evening. She had seemed so prim and proper then, so cool and composed. Not appealing at all. He was almost appalled to realise how warm and soft and inviting she looked now, her eyes dark, gleaming pools in the candlelight, and her hair just a little tousled. He wondered what it would be like to touch it, to run his fingers through it and let the dark, silky strands fall back against her cheek.

  What had happened? Then the neat suit and the demure top had struck him as merely dull. Now they seemed tantalising, as if they were specifically designed to make him wonder what she might be wearing underneath. If she were warm and willing in his lap, would he be able to slide his hand over her knee and under that businesslike skirt and discover that she was wearing stockings?

  Patrick swallowed. God, he had to stop this right now. Talk about inappropriate. He didn't want Lou to think that he was just another lecherous businessman fantasising about secretaries in tight skirts and stockings and high heels.

  Although if the cap fitted...

  Picking up his glass, he took a gulp of wine and made a sterling effort to pull himself together.

  'Yes, being held...I do miss that,' Lou was saying thoughtfully, unaware of Patrick's confusion. 'I think what I miss most, though, is the feeling that you don't have to deal with everything on your own, that someone is interested in you for yourself, and not just because you're a mother and there to be taken for granted. I don't mind when the kids do that, I know that's part of their job, but still...' . She glanced at him, evidently hesitating, and Patrick cleared his throat and nodded encouragingly.

  'Go on, tell me. This is confession time, remember? Nothing to be remembered or held against you tomorrow!'

  Lou laughed in spite of herself. 'OK, then, but you get to tell me an embarrassing fantasy too.'

  'It's a fantasy? Better and better!'

  A slight blush crept up her cheeks, but she hoped the candlelight would disguise it. 'Mine's not a very exciting fantasy, I'm afraid. I imagine that I can skip the awkwardness of meeting a man, dating him, getting to know him, all of that. I don't want the falling-in-love bit again. It's too consuming, and it hurts too much when you lose it.'

  'So where does the fantasy come in?'

  'I just want to wake up and find myself comfortably married to someone,' she confessed. 'Someone nice and...kind. Someone I could lean on when I needed to, and support when he needed it, and the rest of the time we'd be...I don't know...friends, I suppose.'

  'What's embarrassing about that?' asked Patrick, his mind straying distractingly back to Lou's stockings. If they were stockings. He really, really wanted to know now.

  Could he ask her? Patrick wondered, and then caught himself. What was he thinking of? Of course he couldn't ask his PA if she was wearing stockings. That would be sexual harassment.

  'It's so politically incorrect,' said Lou guiltily. 'I'm a strong, independent woman. I shouldn't need anyone to look after me. I can look after myself. And I do, most of the time,' she said, recovering herself. 'I only think about having someone else when I'm tired, or feeling down, or one of the kids is being difficult.'

  Which was a depressing number of times in the week, when she thought about it.

  'It doesn't sound to me like an impossible fantasy,' said Patrick carefully. 'You'll just have to keep an eye out for someone suitable.'

  'Oh, yes, and there are so many kind, supportive, single men out there!'

  'There must be someone,' said Patrick. 'You're an attractive woman.' Rather too attractive for his own comfort, it appeared.

  'I'm also forty-five and have two bolshy adolescents who consume every moment I'm not at work,' she pointed out. 'Would you want to take that on?'

  'Not when you put it like that.'

  'There isn't any other way to put it,' said Lou. 'I've been divorced over six years now, and I've learnt to cope on my own. I'm not looking for a man.'

  'I've heard that before,' said Patrick cynically, thinking of the women who had assured him that they were just out for a good time and then started dawdling past jewellers'

  windows and dropping heavy hints about moving in with him.

  This was good. He wasn't thinking about stockings any more.

  Much.

  'It's true.' Lou fixed him with one of her disconcertingly direct looks. 'Frankly, I haven't got the energy to put into finding a man, let alone maintaining a relationship. When you work all day, and go home to two children who need all your attention, it's hard to imagine being with anyone new.'

  'And even if I did by some remote chance meet someone who didn't mind only meeting every few weeks when I could persuade a friend to babysit, and wasn't put off by Grace's moods, or the fact that I don't have a bedroom of my own, and was happy with only ever getting the fraction of my attention that was left over from my children, I'd still hesitate,' she said. 'It's taken me a long time to build up my life again after Lawrie left. I'm not going to let it all come crashing down in smithereens like before.'

  'You mean if you were hurt again?' said Patrick.

  'Yes. I won't expose myself to it.' Draining her glass, Lou set it down firmly in front of her, absolutely definite.

  'So you won't even take a risk?'

  'If it was just me, maybe I would,' she said, and then thought about the pain and the heartache she'd been through. 'Maybe. But I've got two children who were caught in the fallout of a failed relationship. I won't do that to them again. Anyway,' she said, going on the counterattack, 'I notice you haven't rushed to remarry either!'

  'No, once was enough for me,' Patrick agreed. 'I wasn't good at being married. I hated the endless negotiations and guessing games.'

  'It doesn't have to be like that,' Lou pointed out. There

  had never been any question of negotiating with Lawrie. He had gone his own charming way without ever considering that she might be affected by what he was doing.

  'No, but it often is. Every relationship I've had since my divorce has been the same. The thing about women is that they're never satisfied. You give them what they ask for, and then they want more.'

  'I don't think that's very fair,' said Lou, trying to remember the last time she'd been given what she asked for by a man.

  'Isn't it?' Patrick demanded. He was feeling more himself now.
Good. The stockings thing had obviously just been a momentary aberration.

  He leant forward, counting off the points on his fingers. 'You're getting on well and having a good time together, but then they want to leave their hair-dryer or something at your house. Just something small to stake a claim on your space. They want you to say you love them, and when you say you love them, they want commitment. And when you've committed yourself, they want you to move in with them, or marry them, and then they want babies...

  'And those are just the big things,' he said. 'At the same time they're working on you to change your life completely, they want you to understand them and talk to them and surprise them with little presents and weekends away. They want you to send them flowers and emails and to ring them from work so they know that you're thinking about them the whole time. I tell you, it's never-ending demands with women.'

  He drained his glass morosely. 'Basically they want to take over your whole fife.'

  Lou was unimpressed by his suffering. 'So what you're saying is that you want to have sex but you don't want a relationship?'

  'What's the big deal about relationships anyway?' Patrick grumbled. 'Women are obsessed with them! I thought I might get on better if I dated younger women. I figured they'd be happy to have a good time and not care about settling down, but, oh, no! We've only been out a couple of times and they're talking about our relationship.'

  He sighed. 'Before you know where you are, you're in the middle of all that emotional hassle again.'

  'It must be awful for you,' said Lou, not bothering to hide her sarcasm.

  Patrick shot her a look. 'Why do women do that?' he complained.

  'Well, you see, we tend to have these awkward things called feelings,' Lou explained with mock patience. 'It's annoying of us, I know, but there's nothing we can do about it. We will go and fall in love without thinking about how tedious it is for you to have someone who adores you and will do anything for you.'

  She shook her head in pretended disbelief. 'I mean, how selfish is thatT

  'I'm serious,' said Patrick. 'I just wish I could find a woman who was happy to take things as they are without always fretting about the future or what it all means or what will happen between us. As it is, we only go out for a few weeks before she starts to get clingy and I start to get claustrophobic'

  He grimaced. 'The thought of tying myself down for life is too horrible to contemplate. I'd be bored within a month.'

  'You didn't get bored with Catriona,' Lou pointed out.

  Patrick thought about living with Catriona. They had both been so young and excited to be living together. They had argued a lot, but it hadn't been boring. He had missed her when she had gone.

  'That was different.'

  'How?'

  Patrick wished that Lou would stop asking difficult questions. 'It just was,' he said.

  'Nothing to do with the fact that you and Catriona were the same age, and now you're twice as old as any girl you might contemplate marrying?'

  And she could stop putting her finger on the nub of the matter while she was at it.

  'No.' He scowled at her. 'It's just that the older I get, the more I value my freedom. I like my life as it is. I work hard, I play hard and if I find a woman attractive, I can do something about it.'

  Although clearly that wasn't always the case, he added mentally, remembering Lou's stockings.

  Damn. Patrick cursed inwardly. He was supposed to have forgotten about them.

  'That's not to say it wouldn't be very handy to have a wife sometimes,' he said, pushing the stockings to the back of his mind once more. 'It would be good to have someone who could deal with the domestic and social side of things. I can't be bothered with all of that, but there are times when I have to entertain and it would all be a lot easier if I were married.'

  'You can always have a housekeeper to take care of the house, and there must be any number of caterers falling over themselves to cook for people like you.'

  'Quite. That's exactly what I do at the moment. But it's not quite the same as having a hostess who can welcome people and introduce them to each other and do all the chitchat.'

  'Have you ever tried any of your girlfriends?'

  'No.' Patrick looked horrified. 'It's bad enough taking them along to receptions and parties. They're not interested in business. They get bored and end up more of a liability

  than an asset. I can just imagine what would happen if I asked them to help me entertain business associates to dinner. That would be commitment,' He sneered the word. 'They'd be off buying wedding magazines the next day.'

  'I can't believe that all these girls are really that desperate to marry you,' said Lou, exasperated by his attitude. 'It's not like you're that big a deal.'

  Of course, incredibly wealthy, single, intelligent men in their forties weren't that easy to come by, she had to admit. And it wasn't as if Patrick were grotesquely ugly, either. He probably had a pretty fair notion of how attractive he was.

  Not her type of course. The cockiness of Tom Cruise and the cool of Clint Eastwood was how she had described him to Marisa. 'Tell me he's got the looks of George Clooney and I'll come and work for him myself!' Marisa had said.

  But Patrick was no George Clooney. He was too cold, his features too austere. He had none of Lawrie's rakish good looks, or his easy charm, but still... Lou considered him anew. There was something definite about him, she decided, something solid and steady, and when he listened he concentrated completely on what you were saying. He looked at you properly, instead of letting his eyes wander around looking for something or someone more interesting the way Lawrie's had done.

  Funny that she had never noticed that before, thought Lou. Or his mouth, so cool and firm and intriguing. The kind of mouth you couldn't help wondering about, how it would feel, how it would kiss. Not that she would want to, Lou reminded herself. It was just funny that she hadn't noticed it until now, that was all.

  Funny to realise what a difference a gleam of humour

  made, too, lightening his expression and warming the cold eyes.

  Funny how his smile made her heart jump, just a little.

  Must be all that champagne she had drunk.

  'Why don't you try going out with women who've got bigger ambitions?' she said, forcing her mind back to the subject at issue. 'Someone who's got a career of her own and who doesn't want to settle down any more than you do?'

  'Believe me, I would if I could find a girl like that,' said Patrick. 'I might even be prepared to marry her.'

  'What, and give up your precious freedom?'

  'At least it would shut my mother up. She's constantly going on at me to get married again. She thinks it would be good for me to have someone else to think about. She says it would stop me being so selfish.'

  He sounded aggrieved and Lou smothered a smile. She rather liked the idea of him having a mother who was no more impressed with him than his PA.

  'Does she want grandchildren? Is that why she's keen for you to get married?'

  'I think she's accepted that she's not going to get them from me,' he said, and pointed a finger at Lou's expression. 'Don't you go feeling sorry for her! She can't complain. She's already got eleven grandchildren. I'd have thought that was more than enough.'

  'Eleven?' said Lou, trying to adjust to the idea of Patrick as part of a large family.

  'I've got three sisters, all of whom seem to be very fertile, and all of whom also think I should get married. Every time I see them, they ask me what's the point of having all that money and not enjoying it. Just because they've got big families of their own, they think I should have that too,' he grumbled.

  'I tell them I'm perfectly happy living on my own, and I am, but sometimes when I go home the house does seem a bit empty,' he admitted, and gave a rather shamefaced smile. There, that's my embarrassing confession!'

  That's a confession, not a fantasy,' said Lou light-heartedly.

  She was feeling extraordinarily mellow. It was
oddly comfortable to be sitting here with him, talking to Patrick about things she would never normally dream of discussing with anyone at work, let alone her boss, talking to him as if he were a friend.

  It was strange now to think that she had been perfectly happy to have a cool working relationship with him. For a fleeting moment, Lou wondered whether she would regret her confidences in the morning, but she pushed the thought aside. She would just blame it on the champagne.

  Not to mention the wine. They seemed to have made major inroads into that bottle in spite of her plans to stick to the occasional sip.

  She wasn't going to worry about it now, anyway. She was here, away from home, away from the children. It was like being in a bubble, time out from the day-to-day reality of commuting and cooking and preparing lunchboxes. Everything felt different.

  Patrick even looked different. Warmer somehow, more human, more approachable. Much more attractive than he should for a man who wasn't her type, anyway.

  'Go on,' she told him. 'You said it was confession time, and that we'd forget it all tomorrow. I told you my fantasy, so I think you should tell me yours.'

  Patrick thought about leaning over the table and whispering that she should forget pudding, that he wanted to take her upstairs and press her against the bedroom door, that he wanted to explore the back of her knee while he

  kissed her, to let his hand smooth insistently up her thigh, pushing up that prim little skirt until his fingers found the top of her stocking, and then—

  'One of them anyway,' said Lou, unnerved by the way his eyes had darkened. She didn't know what he was thinking about just then, but she was pretty sure it would leave her blushing.

  And more than a little jealous. There had been something in his expression that had made her pulse kick in a way it hadn't for a very long time. Now was not the time for it to start doing that, and her boss was not the man to set it off either. Whatever he had been fantasising about doing with one of those blonde stick insects he liked so much, she didn't want to hear it.