Contracted_corporate wife

by Jessica Hart

  So why was he sitting there thinking about a middle-aged woman with lines starring her eyes? Lou had good legs, but she was hardly the stuff of fantasy, was she? It was just that Patrick had found himself longing for a dose of her cool irony in place of Ariel's inane chatter, for her crisp retorts, for the gleam of humour in her dark gaze, and the direct way she looked into his eyes instead of coyly sweeping down her lashes and peeping from beneath them the way Ariel did.

  And then he had found himself remembering how warm and vivid Lou had seemed that night in Newcastle, how she had let down that barrier of poise and let him glimpse the sensuous woman beneath, and he had found himself wishing, too, that he could see her that way again.

  He had thought about what she had suggested that night, too. He had thought about it a lot.

  Patrick threw himself down in his chair and swung it round in exasperation. He hated feeling like this, edgy and uncertain about everything. He wasn't himself.

  Look at the way he had behaved just now. He'd been thinking about Lou, and when he'd walked into the office and found her there his heart had leapt ridiculously. She had smiled, but it had only been her polite smile, and then

  she had lifted her brows and he had felt an idiot. Clearly she wasn't overjoyed to see him, the way he was to see her. and Patrick had been so disappointed that he had just grunted and slammed into his office.

  He would have to apologise. If only she didn't make him feel so unsettled. Patrick drummed his fingers on the desk, wondering how to word what he wanted to say.

  'I'm sorry I was a bit abrupt earlier,' he said when she had come into his office and they had been through the urgent business.

  'That's all right,' said Lou. 'I'm sorry you didn't have a good time. Was there a problem with the hotel?'

  'No.'

  'Did you have good weather?'

  'Perfect, and, before you ask, the flights were on time and all your arrangements worked precisely.' He hesitated. 'How was your holiday?'

  'Well, the trains were late and the weather was awful, but it was beautiful and Fenny's a great cook, so it was a very relaxing break. Just what I needed.'

  'Good,' said Patrick, but he knew that he sounded grouchy. Obviously she hadn't missed him at all. She'd been quite happy having a good time with her children and aunt.

  That seemed to be the end of the holiday interrogation. It didn't look as if there would be a friendly exchange of holiday snaps when the photos were developed. Lou gathered up her notebook and pen and rose from her seat.

  'Don't go,' said Patrick brusquely. 'I want to talk to you.'

  Subsiding back into her chair, Lou opened her notebook once more and held her pen at the ready.

  'You won't need to take notes,' he said, disconcerted by her businesslike demeanour.

  He was doing this all wrong, he realised. He should have waited until the evening and taken her out for a drink, but it was too late for that now. He shrugged mentally. He might as well deal with it now that he'd got this far.

  'This is personal,' he explained.

  'Oh?'

  Lou laid down her pen and regarded him with a certain wariness.

  Having got this far, Patrick wasn't sure how to proceed. He got to his feet and prowled around the office, his hands thrust into his pockets and his brows drawn together.

  'I've been thinking about what you said,' he said at last, coming to a halt by the window.

  'What / said? When?'

  'That night in Newcastle.' He turned to look at her.

  Tell-tale colour crept into Lou's cheeks. Trust Patrick to bring that up now, just when she had allowed herself to relax and think that the whole sorry incident was forgotten.

  T shouldn't pay any attention to anything I said that night.' She tried to make a joke of it. 'I'd had far too much champagne.'

  'You said I should think about marrying you,' said Patrick. 'Arid that's what I've been doing. I think you were right. I think we should get married.'

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Lou stared at him. 'I wasn't being serious!'

  'I know, but the more I think about it, the more sensible it seems.'

  Sensible...? 'Hang on,' said Lou. 'Is this a joke?'

  'If you'd had the week I've just had, you'd know I'm not in a joking mood,' said Patrick. 'It was a mistake taking Ariel on holiday, I can see that now. She took it to mean that I was ready for commitment. And you didn't tell me that the Maldives were full of honeymooners,' he added accusingly.

  'I'm not responsible for you knowing what anyone who's ever picked up a holiday brochure knows,' said Lou at her most crisp.

  Patrick glowered. 'It was a disaster. Ariel spent her entire time angling for an engagement ring. I told her that it wasn't going to happen, but that didn't stop her giggling about weddings with new brides and picking up tips about dresses and table decorations and what the best man ought to wear,' he said with distaste.

  'I came home vowing that I was never going to get in that situation again. I've decided that the only way to convince girls that a relationship with me doesn't involve any measure of commitment is to show them I'm already married.'

  Lou could hardly believe what she was hearing. 'You don't think that's taking your fantasy about sex without a relationship a bit far?' she asked acidly.

  'Why? It would make the point, wouldn't it?'

  She shook her head in disbelief. 'Why would you want to get involved with a woman who was prepared to sleep with a married man?'

  'But that's the whole point,' said Patrick impatiently. T don't want to be involved. I'm not interested in anything beyond a purely physical relationship. I always make that clear anyway, but maybe they would believe me if they knew I had a wife in the background.'

  'There is such a thing as divorce, you know,' said Lou, exasperated. 'What's to stop these poor deluded girls hoping that you'll fall in love with them and leave your wife?'

  Patrick thought for a moment. 'I'll tell them that I've signed a pre-nuptial contract so my wife gets seventy per cent of my assets if there's a divorce.'

  Lou goggled at him. 'It might even be worth marrying you for that!' she said, still half convinced that he was joking.

  'I'm serious,' said Patrick. He came back to sit opposite her and folded his hands on the desk. 'I'm offering you the chance of a life where you never have to worry about money again. All I ask in return is that you be a visible wife, that you'll help with corporate entertaining and play the convincing part of a wife in front of my business associates—and my mother and sisters,' he added as an afterthought.

  'It's true that you're not absolutely ideal,' he went on, apparently unaware of Lou's expression of growing outrage. 'You're certainly not the kind of wife I ever envisaged for myself,' he admitted, 'and it's a pity that you've got children. I don't see myself as a stepfather, but I expect that we could work something out.'

  There was always boarding-school, he thought to himself.

  T don't see why we'd need to have that much to do with

  each other,' said Patrick, dismissing that objection. 'So while you're not exactly what I want, you have got other advantages to offset that, especially your knowledge of the business, as you pointed out yourself. And being older means that you're mature enough to understand that marriage would be a purely practical arrangement on both sides. And, of course, you've got more of an incentive than most,' he finished. 'You need the money.'

  'Not that much,' said Lou distinctly. Now she knew how Elizabeth Bennett had felt when Mr Darcy had insulted her family and her connections and then tossed a proposal of marriage her way.

  She got to her feet.

  'Where are you going?' asked Patrick, taken aback.

  'Back to work.'

  'But what about my proposal?'

  'Oh, that was a proposal, was it?' said Lou in her most sarcastic voice. 'I didn't realise an answer was required.'

  'Of course I want an answer,' said Patrick crossly. What did she think, he was just having a chat?

>   'Oh, OK.' Lou put her head on one side and pretended to think about it for an insultingly short time. 'No.'

  'No?' He was outraged.

  'No,' she repeated firmly. 'As proposals go, that one sucked! There's absolutely no question of me marrying you, Patrick. You'd better find someone else to solve your commitment problem, because it's certainly not going to be me!'

  Patrick got to his feet too. 'Just a minute, this was your idea,' he said angrily.

  'I can't believe you took me seriously,' said Lou, just as angry. Angrier, in fact, and getting more and more angry the more she thought about it. 'I'd been guzzling cham-

  pagne all evening, for heaven's sake! Of course I wasn't serious!'

  4 You were pretty persuasive!'

  'I certainly wouldn't have been if I'd known you were going to take a joke and use it to insult me!'

  'I've just asked you to marry me,' said Patrick, livid by now. 'How is that insulting you?'

  'What kind of woman do you think I am?' she demanded furiously. 'Do you really think I'd marry a man I don't love, a man I don't even like very much, just for his money? A man who tells me outright that he can't be bothered with my children, a man who doesn't really want me at all or find me that attractive, but thinks I'll do and that I'm desperate enough to agree?

  'I've got to tell you, Patrick, that I find that pretty insulting,' she told him. 'I mean, I've heard of some insensitive proposals in my time, but yours has to take the biscuit!'

  'What was I supposed to do, go down on one knee and wrap it up in a lot of romantic claptrap? Don't tell me you expected me to tell you I loved you?'

  Lou drew in a sharp breath. 'I expected you to treat me with some respect,' she said in an arctic accent.

  'I was being honest!' he protested.

  'Oh, yes, you were honest, all right. You made your position crystal-clear. You think you can buy me the way you can buy all the other women in your life. Well, I may not have a lot of money, but I'm not for sale!'

  Patrick struggled to control his temper, not very successfully. 'Listen, it was you who were so full of what a perfect wife you'd be and what a good thing it would be for you if you married me. It would be your fantasy, you said.'

  'I can assure you that a proposal like that has never fig-

  ured in a fantasy of mine,' said Lou, her voice still glacial. 'I've already been told by one husband that I'm not really the kind of wife he wanted,' she added bitterly. 'I can do without another husband thinking the same thing. And if you think I'm going to expose my children to the kind of attitude that treats young women as objects, and women over forty as past their sell-by date, you've got another think coming!

  'Your mother's right,' she swept on, too consumed by hurt and anger to care about her job any more. 'You are selfish. You think that because you're rich, you can have whatever you want, and never have to give anything in return. Well, I'm sorry, but that's not a lesson I want Grace and Tom to learn. They've got few enough role models as it is, and I'm certainly not going to provide them with one of such monumental selfishness!'

  'I never suggested not giving you anything in return,' Patrick ground out. 'I was proposing to give you quite a lot of money, if you remember.'

  'I'm not talking about money,' said Lou contemptuously. 'I'm talking about feelings.'

  'Oh, feelingsV he sneered.

  'Yes, those things you don't have and the rest of us do. You go on and on about how your girlfriends hassle you about commitment, but have you ever thought what it's like for them to be with you and get their emotions thrown back in their faces all the time?'

  'Listen, nobody's forcing them. If they don't want to go out with me, they can say no.'

  'Yes, well, I'm saying no too,' said Lou. 'I want my children to believe that it's possible for adults to live together in a loving relationship. They're not stupid. They're not likely to find that very convincing if they saw you car-

  rying on with your... floozies... and treating me as a housekeeper, only coming home whenever it suits you.'

  Patrick raked his hands through his hair in frustration. 'You might want to think some time about exposing your children to the realities of life,' he bit out. 'All those romantic ideals aren't going to be much use to them when they get out into the big, bad world and realise that nothing is free. If you want anything, you have to work for it, one way or another. Why should marriage be any different?'

  'Because unless it is different, there's no point in getting married!' Lou exploded. 'It shouldn't be about who gets what, it should be about sharing.'

  Tears of sheer anger, and more than a little hurt, were perilously close. She turned for the door. 'I'm sorry if I gave you the wrong impression in Newcastle. I had hoped that you would be able to forget that conversation. I'll certainly try to forget this one,' she said in a freezing voice.

  'If that's what you want,' said Patrick, equally icy.

  'I'll let you have these letters to sign as soon as I've done them,' said Lou coolly and went out, closing the door carefully behind her.

  As soon as she had gone, Patrick vented his feelings on his chair, something that hurt him a lot more than the chair. He couldn't believe that she had said no and walked out like that. Not once had he considered that she would turn him down. He was Patrick Farr and he always got what he wanted.

  Until now.

  He raged silently as he hopped around, nursing his sore foot. How dared Lou talk to him like that? He had offered her a solution to all her problems, and he would have been generous. Did she have any idea what" she was giving up?

  Well, if she didn't want to marry him, that was fine, he told himself. It was probably a good thing. He could have

  done without the last few humiliating minutes, but he'd be perfectly happy to carry on his life as before. He wasn't the one who had lost the chance to change his life. Oh, no, he wasn't going to be the one with the regrets.

  'Mum, I need a new pair of trainers,' Tom greeted Lou when she picked him up that night.

  Lou's heart sank. Tom was growing so fast. He seemed to need a new pair of trainers every few months, and they were always so expensive. They had to be the right brand and the right style and the right colour. In her day they had just had plimsolls. Whatever had happened to them?

  'We'll get you some this weekend,' she promised.

  'Cool. Can we go into town to where Charlie got his?'

  Charlie was Tom's best friend and rival in everything. He was a nice boy, but Lou sometimes wished his parents didn't indulge him quite so much. But then she would feel guilty about being unfair. If she could afford it, she would probably want to do the same for Tom as Charlie's parents did for him.

  'Charlie's going to a brilliant sports course in the summer,' Tom told her, hoisting his backpack onto his thin shoulders. 'You go off to this place for two weeks and they give you special coaching and you get to try a lot of new sports as well. Can I go?'

  Lou looked down at his eager face and her heart twisted. The only thing Tom loved more than sport was cars, and fortunately he was still too young to indulge that particular taste. He would get so much out of a sports course like that, but it was bound to be expensive.

  'We'll see, Tom,' she said and his face fell.

  'It's not fair,' he said, scuffing his shoes along the pavement. 'Whenever you say, "We'll see", it means no. I'm just as good at football as Charlie, but he'll get extra coach-

  ing and I'll be left behind. I probably won't even get in the team next year,' he said bitterly.

  There was worse to come when Grace danced in. She had always been a volatile child, changing moods with bewildering speed. When she was happy, she was wonderful company, but she could just as easily make life a misery for everyone in the vicinity. The latter had been her preferred option since turning teenager with a vengeance, although there were still moments when Lou recognised the enchanting child she had been when she was small.

  'Mum, look!' she said breathlessly, waving a piece of paper aro
und. 'There's going to be a skiing trip to the Rockies next year. Please say I can go!'

  'Skiing?' Tom's face lit up. 'Can I go? I want to try snowboarding.'

  'It's not for your year, squirt,' said Grace, whipping the paper out of his reach. 'What do you think, Mum?' she added anxiously. 'Can I go?'

  Lou's head was aching with tension after that row with Patrick, and she had come home to find three bills and an ominously worded letter from her bank suggesting that she make an appointment to see her personal manager.

  'Can I see what it says?'

  Grace relinquished the piece of paper reluctantly. She was too excited to sit still and kept jumping up and down from the kitchen table. 'Emily went last year, and she was, like, it was so excellent. They stayed in this log-cabin-type place and went out every night and the snow was this high.' She gestured up to her shoulder for Tom's benefit.

  Lou listened to her chattering on, and tried to concentrate on the details the school had sent out. She fastened at last on the cost of the trip. As suspected, she couldn't even afford the deposit as things stood at the moment.

  She bit her lip. Grace was so excited, she couldn't bear

  to disappoint her. And Tom deserved a chance at that course. She would have to see if Lawrie could help. He might be going through a flush period. You could never tell with Lawrie.

  'Let me talk to your father/ she said.

  'Oh, Mum, he won't do anything,' wailed Grace. 'He said he was going to take us to Greece this summer, but then he went and bought that stupid sports car, and now he says he can't afford to go anywhere.'

  'It's a cool car,' said Tom loyally. 'It's an Audi Quattro coupe. He's got a personalised number plate too.'

  Lou wanted to scream. A sports car! Why could Lawrie never think of his children first? Oh, there would be some plausible excuse. He would explain very patiently that he needed the car to project the right image for his new company, a company that would no doubt go the way of all the others Lawrie had lost interest in.