Contracted_corporate wife

by Jessica Hart

  Clearing her throat, Lou put an arm round Grace. 'This is my daughter, Grace.'

  Patrick and Grace sized each other up. At first all Patrick saw was a young girl with messy hair, dressed alarmingly in Goth gear, but when he looked closer he could see that she had an enchantingly pretty face, a very stubborn chin, and her mother's dark, direct eyes.

  For her part, Grace saw a tall man in boring, conventional clothes, but she couldn't dismiss him the way she really wanted to. There was something uncompromising about him, a coolness to his eyes and a set to his mouth that indicated that he wasn't someone to mess with. Also, he wasn't trying to impress her, which she liked.

  'Hello, Grace,' he said.

  'Hi,' she said warily.

  Lou let out a breath she hadn't realised she'd been holding. It might not sound like much of an exchange, but Grace was liable to take violent dislike to people on sight, often on the flimsiest of grounds—I didn't like his shoes, I didn't like the way she smiled at me, that sniff really annoyed me.

  'And this—'

  She stopped, realising for the first time that Tom wasn't by her side. Turning, she saw to her horror that her son had gravitated towards the car and had his nose squashed up against the driver's window, grubby hands pressed into the immaculate paintwork, oblivious to the greetings taking place at the door.

  'Tom!' she said, aghast. 'What do you think you're doing? Come here at once.'

  Tom didn't even turn round. 'Mum, do you know what this is?' he said reverently. 'It's a Porsche 9111 Twin turbo!'

  'I dare say,' said Lou, a distinct edge to her voice now. 'But leave it now and come and meet Patrick. Now, Tom.'

  Tom glanced over his shoulder at that. 'But, Mum, you don't understand! This is the best car in the worldV

  Lou looked helplessly at Patrick. Tm terribly sorry. He loves cars.'

  'I can see.' Patrick went over to join Tom at the Porsche, surprised but pleased to discover a kindred spirit at last, even in the unlikely form of Lou's eleven-year-old son. He loved that car, but he never seemed to meet anyone else who understood how beautiful it was.

  Women just didn't get it. They might like the idea of a sports car, but in Patrick's experience they didn't have a clue what made it really special. He had given up talking to them about cars. He was pretty sure, for instance, that if he asked Lou what kind of car she liked she would reply something annoying like 'one that goes' or 'a red one' as his sisters did.

  'You're right,' he said to Tom. 'It is the best car in the world. Do you want to get in the driver's seat?'

  Tom's eyes shone. 'Could I?' he breathed.

  Patrick fished his key out of his pocket and pressed a button that sent the soft top sliding smoothly back as Tom opened the driver's door with the kind of awe usually reserved for cathedrals. Delighted at the chance to show off his car to someone who would really appreciate it, Patrick got in beside him, and soon the two heads were bent together over the dashboard.

  Lou and Grace stood on the front steps, and listened as snatches of animated conversation about spoilers and revs per minute and six-speed manual gearboxes floated across the gravel.

  Lou looked at Grace and Grace looked at Lou.

  'We'll never get lunch now,' sighed Grace. 'You know what Tom's like.'

  Lou went over to the car. 'We'll go in and make ourselves at home, shall we?' she suggested pleasantly.

  The startled pause that followed made it pretty clear that Patrick had forgotten all about the two of them left stranded on the steps.

  'Oh, yes, yes...do you mind?' he said, wrenching his attention from the dashboard with an effort. 'I'll just show Tom the engine. We'll just be a minute...'

  It was clearly going to be a very long minute. Lou and Grace left them to it. Inside, there was a vast hall with a grand staircase leading up to a landing, and doors opening off it. Lou was dying to explore, but she didn't want to seem too nosy, so they followed the light through to the back of the house where an enormous, elegant conservatory housed a gleaming turquoise pool.

  'Wow,' said Grace.

  Quite.

  A glass door led onto a sunny terrace straight out of Homes and Gardens You* 11 Never in a Million Years Be Able to Afford. Grace sat at the table under a classy cream parasol and tried desperately not to look too impressed, while Lou wandered round the garden, too jittery to sit still. It had been cleverly designed on a green and white theme. Elegant, Lou decided, but lacking in heart somehow. Personally she liked a bit more colour and chaos in a garden.

  She was absently dead-heading some busy lizzies— white, of course—when Patrick and Tom eventually appeared, having clearly bonded without bothering with any introductions.

  'I'm sorry about that.' At least Patrick had the grace to

  sound a bit embarrassed at how long they had been. 'We got a bit carried away."

  Tom's face was glowing, not embarrassed at all. 'You should go and have a look, Mum,' he said eagerly. 'It's, like, a dream car! Patrick let me have a go with the gears. It's got six, and four-wheel drive, and guess what its top speed is?'

  'Pretty fast, I should think'

  'A hundred and eight-nine miles per hour!'

  'That's handy,' said Lou, wondering what was the point of a car that went at a hundred and eighty-nine miles an hour when the speed limit was seventy.

  Grace was equally unimpressed, having heard her brother go on for hours about cars before. She let her elbow slip off the table and mimed falling asleep with boredom, but Tom wasn't to be deflated.

  'It can go from nought to sixty-two miles an hour in four point two seconds,' he told his mother in a reverent tone, ignoring his sister. 'And when you're going really fast, these spoilers fold out and that gives you extra stability.'

  'Spoilers? Really?' Lou didn't have a clue what her son was talking about, but she loved watching his face when he was lit up with enthusiasm like this. 'Jolly good.'

  Patrick grinned at her expression. 'What's the betting your mother doesn't know what a spoiler is, Tom?'

  'It's a kind of wing, Mum,' Tom explained kindly. 'It's sort of upside down. It folds out and keeps the car steady at speed. Patrick showed me. It's like the opposite of planes, isn't it, Patrick?' He was struggling a bit, obviously dying to show off his new knowledge but not that confident. 'You tell Mum,' he said to Patrick.

  'Tom's right. Planes have wings designed to give them up force,' said Patrick obediently. 'On a high-performance car the wing is the other way, to keep them grounded. They

  generate so much force that you could drive a Formula One car upside down on a ceiling at two hundred miles an hour.'

  Tom nodded eagerly. 'Can you imagine it?'

  Frankly, Lou couldn't. Why would anyone want to drive upside down in the first place? Still, she appreciated that wasn't really the point.

  'Wow,' she said dutifully, and then caught Patrick's eye. He was smiling, and looking so much more relaxed than she had ever seen him that she felt oddly hollow inside.

  'I didn't realise that you were a petrol head too,' she said lightly to cover the sudden stumble of her heart.

  'My mother always complained that cars were my only passion,' said Patrick cheerfully.

  'I suppose they're less demanding than women,' said Lou in a dry voice, and he flashed a look at her.

  'Exactly. I don't often meet anyone else who feels like I do about them, though. Tom knows a lot about cars,' he said, sounding genuinely impressed, and Lou felt herself flush with pleasure.

  'He gets that from his father. Lawrie's mad about cars too.'

  'Wait till I tell him I've been in a Porsche 911!' said Tom. 'He'll be really jealous.'

  Much more jealous than he would be to hear that she was thinking of getting remarried, Lou couldn't help thinking.

  'What about a drink?' said Patrick. 'Then we can have lunch. It's cold, so we just need to put it on the table.'

  'Have you been slaving away in the kitchen all weekend?'

  'My housekeeper has,' he adm
itted. 'She left it all for me yesterday.'

  They ate in the kitchen, a bright, sunny room opening

  100 CONTRACTED: CORPORATE WIFE

  out onto the terrace. Patrick said the dining room was too gloomy. 'I only use it for formal dinners.'

  His housekeeper lived out, he told them, but had come in specially on Saturday to prepare the lunch, and she had done them proud, with a very simple but delicious spread.

  'It must get a bit lonely rattling around in this great big house on your own, doesn't it?' said Lou, looking around her and calculating that they could probably fit their current flat into Patrick's kitchen alone.

  'Only occasionally,' said Patrick. 'I'm out a lot.'

  Ah, yes, with all those leggy blondes. Not a subject Lou wanted to raise in front of the children.

  Fortunately Grace changed the conversation by asking Patrick if he had ever been skiing. 'I saw those photos of mountains in your loo,' she explained, and was soon telling him all about the trip she was so eager to go on, her sullen Goth pose quite forgotten.

  'I wish I could go too,' said Tom enviously. 'Charlie's been snowboarding. He says it's really cool.'

  'It sounds a great way to start,' Patrick said to Grace. 'When are you going?'

  Grace's face closed as she remembered. 'I might not go at all,' she muttered. 'It's quite expensive. Mum's going to see what she can do, though.'

  Patrick glanced across the table at Lou, who met his eyes for a moment before looking away. 'Could I have some more of that delicious salmon?' she said.

  So that was why she had changed her mind, he thought, passing her the dish. Marrying him must have seemed the only way she could ever afford to send Grace on the trip she wanted so much.

  It wasn't as if he hadn't known she would only consider marrying him for his money, Patrick reminded himself, puzzled by the slight pang he felt. Nobody could say she

  hadn't been honest with him. And that was what he wanted too. He didn't want a wife who would marry him because she loved him. That would just end in tears, the way all his other relationships did. He wanted it to be different with Lou.

  There was something unfamiliar about her today. Patrick couldn't work out what it was until belatedly he realised that it was the first time he had seen her without one of her prim little suits she wore to work. Instead she had on cool linen trousers and a silky sleeveless top, with silver bangles on her wrist and silver drops hanging from her ears. She looked casual, but cool and elegant, and Patrick enjoyed the contrasting picture she made to her children, Grace with her outrageous outfit and wary charm, and Tom, hair standing up on end, still elated by encountering the car of his dreams.

  The children lobbied for a swim after lunch. Lou's eyes followed Patrick as he led Grace and Tom off and showed them where they could change. It was very strange seeing the three of them together. Strange, too, to remember how nervous she had been about how they would get on. They all seemed fine, Lou thought. Bang went that excuse for not marrying him.

  And now she had seen him with the children, she wasn't sure she wanted an excuse any more.

  When Patrick came back, she was clearing away the lunch dishes.

  'Leave all that,' he said. 'You go and sit in the garden. I'll bring you coffee.'

  There was no doubt that it was nice to be looked after. Lou protested but Patrick was insistent, and in the end she wandered back out to the terrace as instructed. She paused for a moment to watch Tom and Grace splashing excitedly in the pool, then sat at the table with a little sigh. It was a

  perfect temperature under the parasol, with a soft breeze just ruffling the leaves, which fractured the sunlight. The whole garden seemed to sway with splashes of light and shade.

  Lou watched a butterfly hovering by a white buddleia and breathed in the scent of the roses growing up the wall behind her. It was so quiet and peaceful here, the silence broken only by the shrieks from the pool. Incredible to think that they were right in the centre of London.

  It would be easy to get used to this. Dangerously easy.

  'What do you think of the garden?' Patrick asked, setting the coffee tray down on the table.

  'It's lovely,' said Lou, looking around her.

  A subtle change seemed to come over her when she was surrounded by plants, almost like a slackening of tension. Patrick had noticed it before, when he had come out of the bar and seen her sitting in the pub garden, her eyes closed and her face tipped back as she'd breathed in the scent of growing things, her mouth curved with pleasure.

  He liked that about her, the way every now and then he got a glimpse of the secret, sensuous Lou who hid behind the practical fa?ade and the prim suits and the cool, ironic gaze.

  'I'm glad you said that,' he said, pouring out the coffee. 'I spent a fortune having it redesigned a couple of years ago.'

  'It shows,' said Lou.

  'Ouch,' said Patrick wryly. 'That wasn't the idea.'

  'No, honestly, it's beautiful,' she said, trying to explain. 'It's just a bit too perfect for me, that's all.'

  'Too perfect? That's a new one on me.'

  'Well, you can tell that it's a garden that's been designed. It hasn't grown up gradually. It's not full of cuttings your neighbour has given you, or plants that have just put them-

  selves in and are so determined to flower that you haven't got the heart to dig them up, even if they do clash with everything else.'

  Lou gestured at the immaculate garden. There's no campanula running riot because you put it in without thinking a few years ago and it's now out of control.' A terrible thug in the garden, Fenny always said about campanula. 'I suppose it just doesn't seem like a garden that's loved,' she finished lamely.

  Patrick looked at her curiously. She was always surprising him nowadays. 'I thought you would have liked everything neat and orderly, the way you keep things in the office.'

  'No.' There was a pot of exquisite white lavender beside her, and Lou pulled a stem through her fingers. 'I like order in my fife, but not in my gardens.' Lifting her hand to her nose, she sniffed the wonderful lavender fragrance. 'My perfect garden would be all jumbly and colourful, with plants tumbling everywhere, and thick with scent on a summer night...' She sighed wistfully, just thinking about it. One day...

  'You're a romantic,' Patrick discovered, amused. 'I never had you down as one of those!'

  Lou's face closed as she thought of Lawrie. 'I used to be. I'm not a romantic any more, though. You tend to lose your faith in romance when you've been through a divorce.'

  'What happened?' asked Patrick, and then paused, wondering if he'd been tactless. 'Sorry, it's not my business.'

  'No, it's OK.' He had told her why his marriage to Catriona had broken down, after all. 'If we're going to get married, it probably is your business anyway.'

  Lou sipped her coffee, her eyes on the sunlight wavering

  through the trees. 'It wasn't all a disaster. For a long time, we were really happy. I was happy, anyway.' She sighed a little. 'I was a real romantic then. I used to think that if you loved each other enough, nothing could go wrong, and I couldn't have loved Lawrie more. I loved him from the first moment I laid eyes on him.'

  'Love at first sight?' Patrick looked sceptical. Lou wasn't surprised. Patrick was never going to be a love-at-first-sight kind of guy.

  'I didn't believe in it either,' she said. 'Until it happened to me. One look, and I was lost. I'd never met anyone like Lawrie before. He was so good-looking and funny and he had charm oozing from every pore. I couldn't believe he'd look at a nice, sensible girl like me. He made me feel... wonderful...alive... exciting. He made me feel like I wasn't such a nice, sensible girl after all.'

  Her eyes were alight with memories, her face soft and warm, and she smiled in spite of herself at the memory of those heady days.

  Watching her, Patrick felt something stir inside him. Had he ever been able to make a woman glow like that, just thinking about him? It was a disquieting thought and he frowned down at his coffee.<
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  'Of course, if I'd really been a sensible girl, I would never have married him,' Lou was saying. 'Being with Lawrie was like being on a roller coaster. One minute you were having the best fun you'd ever had, and the next you were in despair. He wouldn't call, he wouldn't turn up when he said he would, he'd be adoring you one minute and chatting up some other girl the next...'

  She made a face remembering those bad times. 'Fenny said that I was mad to marry him, but I was besotted. It wasn't that I couldn't see Lawrie's faults, but none of them

  mattered against the fact that just being near him gave me the biggest thrill I'd ever known.'

  'So what changed?' asked Patrick, vaguely disgruntled by all this. He was beginning to wish that he hadn't asked.

  'I did.' A little of the warmth faded from Lou's face. 'It was great until Grace was born, but you have to think differently when you've got a baby to look after. You can't both be irresponsible and free spirits. Babies don't need excitement and romance, they need security and a routine, and Lawrie wasn't good at either of those. He didn't like feeling tied down by responsibility, and I didn't like not being able to count on him when it mattered.

  'I could deal with it when it was just me,' she said. 'His unreliability was part of his charm, I suppose, but what made him fun and unpredictable as a lover was less endearing as a father. There were so many times when the children waited for him and he didn't turn up when he said he would, or looked forward to some treat he'd promised, which he changed his mind about at the last minute.'

  'Disappointing for them,' said Patrick, thinking that Lawrie sounded a jerk. Why had Lou stuck with him for so long? She must have loved him a lot.

  'Yes, nearly as disappointing as discovering that your husband has borrowed against the house to finance some wild scheme that's gone bust, so you've lost your home,' said Lou, her voice dusty dry. 'Or even being told that you're so boring and wrapped up in domesticity that he's decided to trade you in for a younger and more exciting model.'