Contracted_corporate wife

by Jessica Hart

  Surely he loved her too? Like Fenny, he had been there when she'd needed him. For the first time, Lou hadn't had to deal with everything by herself. Patrick had done it all. He wouldn't have done that Unless he loved her, would he?

  The only question was how he loved her. Did he love her as a dear friend, or as a wife?

  She was going to have to find out, Lou resolved. Not right then, when they were all still so upset about Fenny, but soon. Marisa was right. Their marriage couldn't carry on the way it had been. Being friends wasn't enough, and Lou was just going to have to do something about it.

  Patrick drove Grace and Tom back to London the next day. Lou was going to stay on for a few more days to sort

  out Fenny's things and see her solicitor about settling her affairs, but the children needed to go back to school, and Patrick had some urgent meetings he couldn't put off any longer.

  Til come and get you next weekend,' he said to Lou as he closed the boot of the car. She had kissed Grace and Tom goodbye, and stood waiting to wave them off, hugging her arms against the cold.

  'You know, there's no need for you to drive up and down the country like this,' she tried. 'I could get the train back.'

  Patrick opened the driver's door. Til be back on Friday night,' he said as if she hadn't spoken.

  As she had known he would. She was getting used to being looked after, Lou thought guiltily. But it was a nice feeling.

  'Thank you for everything, Patrick,' she said.

  He hesitated, then came back and kissed her on the cheek. Take care,' he said.

  A peck on the cheek, was it? That was going to change.

  'Drive carefully,' said Lou, and gave him a friendly hug in return. She could do friends. For now.

  What she needed was a plan of action. Lou waved until the car was out of sight, and then turned back to go into the cottage. Inside, the fire was swept and laid ready for her to light it. Patrick must have done that this morning while she was having a bath.

  She searched for the matches on the mantelpiece. Crouching in front of the fire, she struck a match and held it out to a piece of paper, watching as the flame caught, flickered and then grew, spreading under the kindling.

  Like her feelings for Patrick, really. It was hard to remember now how completely uninterested she had been in him when she had first met him. Three months working

  with him, and not once had she noticed his mouth or his hands or the way his eyes lit when he smiled. Not a flicker.

  Then there had been that night in Newcastle. That had been a spark.

  And then that kiss in the back of the car. That had been a definite flicker.

  Now Lou wanted a blaze.

  Patrick had been so kind over the last few days. She thought about that first night when they had come back from the hospital to find the cottage empty. His kindness and gentleness had been what she'd needed that night, but she didn't need that any more. She wanted him to take her to bed again, and this time she wanted him to treat her like a woman, not a friend. She wanted him to be demanding, not gentle, hot, not warm, but he wouldn't be as long as they stuck to their agreement to be just friends.

  Their marriage was just like the fire that Patrick had made for her so carefully that morning, thought Lou. It had everything necessary to burn but right now it was cold, still perfectly laid, needing only a match to get it going.

  And she would light it when Patrick came back.

  Patrick parked the car outside the cottage. It was late, but he hadn't wanted to wait another day before seeing Lou. The lights were on in the house, glowing and welcoming through the dark and the rain.

  The next moment the front door opened and Lou appeared, silhouetted in a rectangle of yellow light. Patrick felt the tension inside him release at the sight of her. It had been a wet and windy drive, with endless hold-ups on the motorway as the heavy traffic crept along nose to tail, but it was worth it to think that he would be walking into the warm house and she would be there, smiling.

  He was going to tell her how he felt. Patrick had decided

  that on the way up in the car. He wasn't that sure if this was the right time—it wasn't that long since Fenny had died, after all—but he wasn't going to ask anything of Lou or make any demands. He would give her all the time she wanted. He just needed to say that he loved her, that was all.

  Pulling his mac over his head, he grabbed his overnight bag and ran through the rain for the door.

  'Hello.' Lou stepped back to let him into the warm, and Patrick was seized by an inexplicable shyness as he shook the raindrops from his coat. What was going on? He had never been shy in his life. It was just Lou. His wife.

  She looked so beautiful, though, with her dark eyes and her dark hair. She was wearing a soft red jumper and a straight skirt that stopped at her knees and reminded him irresistibly of those little suits she had worn when she was his PA, the ones that she might or might not have been wearing stockings with. Just looking at her made Patrick's chest hurt.

  But there was a constraint about her that made him hesitate. It wasn't shyness, he realised. It was fear that she might not want him the way he so desperately wanted her. He would have to be very careful.

  'Let me take that for you.' Lou took his coat and hung it up on a hook.

  She was nervous. She had thought it all through, and now she had a plan. Even if they hadn't been interrupted by that awful phone call from Fenny's neighbour, Lou knew that she would have made a mess of sitting down and talking to him. It had been too difficult to find the right words.

  So now she was going to try Marisa's first suggestion. She was going to seduce her own husband.

  All she needed to do, Lou had decided, was to build up

  some sexual tension, the kind that had fizzled so unexpectedly across the restaurant table in Newcastle. Then it would be a question of not spooking him. She needed to be sexy, but subtle. She had already created an intimate atmosphere in the sitting room, with the sofa pulled up in front of the fire, and a single table lamp adding a soft glow to the flickering firelight.

  The only problem was her outfit. She didn't have anything remotely sexy in the clothes department with her. Understandably, it had been the last thing on her mind when she had thrown a few things into a case that night she had heard about Fenny's stroke. This jumper and skirt were the best she could do. Not exactly the slinky, shim-mery little number that would slide off her shoulders at the mere brush of his fingers.

  Still, slinky, silky dresses weren't ideal for opening the door on a night like this, or for hanging around in cold Dales kitchens, and she would probably have ruined the whole effect by putting a cardigan on whenever she left the warmth of the fire.

  Once there, though, it would be fine. She would sit next to him on the sofa and inch gradually closer. She would run her fingers through her hair, make a lot of eye contact, moisten her lips a lot. She had seen it on television and it always worked then.

  And then—Lou was a bit hazy about how this would happen exactly—they would kiss, and whoosh! The match would start the fire.

  It was a good plan, but her desired image as a sultry, mysterious seductress was immediately thrown off balance when Patrick filled the hall, his nearness making her woozy, making it hard to remember her careful plan, urging her instead just to jump him and tell him she'd die if he didn't

  make love to her, right there, up against the coats hanging in the narrow hall.

  And that wasn't likely to go down very well when he had been driving for five hours through the rush-hour traffic and the rain and the dark, was it? Lou took a steadying breath. No, let him come in, sit down, relax a bit. Then she could put her plan into action.

  'Do you want a cup of tea?' she asked instead, backing away in case she brushed against him and ended up jumping him after all. 'Or something stronger?'

  Tea would be good,' said Patrick, rubbing a hand wearily over his face, and her heart clenched.

  'Go and sit by the fire. I'll bring you a cup.'r />
  Lou concentrated on breathing calmly as she waited for the kettle to boil. 'I can do this,' she told herself. 'I just need to be that match.'

  When she carried the tea through into the sitting room Patrick was sitting on the sofa, his head dropped back and his eyes closed, but he stirred as she set the tray down on the stone hearth.

  Lou had a moment's compunction. Maybe he was too tired for seduction? But tomorrow they were going back to London, and it would be so much harder once they were back in the usual routine with kids and homework and long days at the office.

  She poured the tea and gave Patrick a mug, before sitting next to him with her own and gazing into the fire, taking courage from its merry blaze. Her relationship with Patrick could be that hot, if only she could find a way to convince him of that as well.

  'How are the kids?' she asked. Pretty lame on the seduction front, but she had to start the conversation somewhere.

  178 CONTRACTED: CORPORATE WIFE

  'They're fine,' he said. 'They'll be glad to have you back, though, and get back to normal.'

  Lou sipped her tea. 'Funny, it's hard to remember what normal is now,' she said carefully. Perhaps this would be a good way to start the ball rolling?

  'Our lives have changed so much this year,' she went on. 'It wasn't so long ago that normal was living in that cramped flat and taking the tube to work every morning. Since I've married you, there's been a whole new kind of normal. Not that you can really call our marriage normal, can you?'

  'No, you can't.' It was too good an opening to miss, and Patrick decided to take the plunge. 'I guess most couples don't have the deal we do,' he said, equally cautious. 'And talking of that, Lou, there's something I think you should know.'

  Lou went cold at the ominous phrase. He was going to tell her about some new girlfriend. Her cue was obvious. What's that? she was supposed to say, and then he would tell her about some long-legged blonde who had taken his fancy.

  Unable to face hearing the words just yet, she rushed into speech. 'Actually, there's something you should know too,' she said. 'Something amazing, really.'

  'Oh?' said Patrick, accepting his cue more readily than she had done.

  'I went to see Fenny's solicitor yesterday,' Lou told him. 'Patrick, Fenny left me everything!'

  'Surely you expected that?' he said gently.

  'I knew she wanted to leave me the cottage, but I didn't think that there would be anything else,' said Lou. 'Fenny lived so frugally that I always assumed that she had to be careful with her pension. So much so that I can remember

  hoping that I would be able to afford to keep the cottage when the time came. I knew I would hate to sell it.'

  She looked around the cosy sitting room, remembering the times she had sat there with her aunt. This is the closest I've got to a home.'

  You've got a home with me, Patrick wanted to say, but didn't. Perhaps it didn't feel like home to Lou? The thought gave him a pang.

  'Did she have some money put by, then?' he asked instead.

  'A bit.' Lou's mouth twisted at the understatement, remembering how unprepared she had been when the solicitor had folded his hands and looked over his glasses at her.

  'Your aunt was a very wealthy woman,*Mrs Fair,' he said. 'I tried many times to get her to realise some of her assets to make her life more comfortable, but she always insisted that she had everything she wanted. She said that she couldn't be bothered to deal with it, and told me to invest it on your behalf. I naturally obeyed her instructions.'

  The solicitor smiled a thin smile of restrained satisfaction. T have to tell you that you inherit a substantial amount of money, Mrs Fan*.'

  T was flabbergasted,' Lou said, recounting the story to Patrick, who was listening with a sinking heart. 'I didn't have a clue that Fenny had any investments at all, and when he told me how much it was, I nearly passed out!'

  Patrick put down his mug very carefully. 'It's a lot of money,' he said in a colourless voice.

  T know. He was full of advice about re-investing it, and thinking it through before I made any decisions. I think he thought that I was going to rush out and squander it all.'

  'You should listen to him,' said Patrick. 'Think about what you really want and don't make any decisions in a hurry.'

  'Well, I won't, but it's not as if anything's going to change, is it?' said Lou.

  'Isn't it?' said Patrick flatly, i would have thought that everything was changed now.'

  She stared at him. 'What do you mean?'

  'You won't want to stay married to me any more, for a start,' he said with a forced smile. 'I know you miss Fenny badly, but if you'd known that this was going to happen, you wouldn't have made a deal like the one we made, would you?'

  'No,' said Lou slowly.

  She didn't like the way this conversation was going. She had only told him about the money to distract him from whatever he had been going to say, and now it looked as if she had given him another perfect opening. 'No, I wouldn't.'

  'From what you've told me, you've got all the financial security you could ever want now,' said Patrick, trying to be fair, trying to be pleased for her, but all he could think was that she didn't need him any more.

  Lou hadn't thought of it like that before. She hadn't really absorbed much beyond the fact that Fenny had been richer than she had ever imagined. Typical of her, really. She could have bought herself a new dress occasionally, or had a new range put in the kitchen, but Fenny had never bothered about things like that. As long as she could stay in the cottage and have her beloved garden, that was all she'd wanted.

  'Yes, I suppose I have,' she said without enthusiasm.

  Patrick took a deep breath. It wasn't fair on Lou to confuse the issue with emotions until she had absorbed all the implications of having financial independence of her own. She needed some time alone to think everything through.

  Til quite understand if you want to reconsider the deal we made,' he said. 'I wouldn't contest a divorce.'

  Lou couldn't believe that he was calmly sitting there, offering her a divorce, for all the world as if he didn't care one way or another. As if that was what he wanted.

  Was that what he wanted?

  She felt sick.

  'What about you?' she said tightly. 'You wanted something from our deal too,' she reminded him.

  Patrick avoided her eyes. 'Things have changed now. I don't want to make you stick to an agreement that doesn't make sense for you any more. We always agreed that we could divorce without any hard feelings.'

  He might not have any hard feelings, but she certainly did. Lou was suddenly, gloriously, angry. If Patrick wanted out of their marriage, he could say so. She wasn't having him using her inheritance from Fenny as a convenient excuse to back out of an agreement that no longer suited him.

  'Is reconsidering our deal what you wanted to talk about?' she asked him.

  Patrick shifted uncomfortably. He didn't want to lie to her, but this obviously wasn't the time to tell her how he felt. 'Yes, in a way,' he said reluctantly.

  'What's your problem with it?'

  'I don't really want to talk about this now,' he said, cornered. Lou might not think that inheriting over two million pounds changed anything, but of course it did.

  'Well, I do!' said Lou angrily. 'I think this is exactly the right time to talk about it. Tell me what you don't like about the deal we've got now.'

  'It's too... constricting.'

  'How? Have I ever made a fuss about you seeing anyone else?'

  'No.'

  'So you're just tired of the deal?'

  4 Yes/ Patrick admitted. At least he could be honest about that. 'I came here planning to ask you if you'd consider tearing up the pre-nuptial contract we both signed. And now that you're a wealthy woman in your own right, it's even more in your interests to think about doing just that.'

  Lou had been gripping her mug of tea, but now she put it down on the tray and turned on the sofa so that one leg was tucked up beneath her.
<
br />   'I want you to be honest with me,' she said, keeping her voice steady with an effort. 'Have you met someone else?'

  'No.'

  'So you don't want to marry anyone else?'

  'God, no,' said Patrick, appalled.

  'OK.' Lou tried to think of another reason why he might want to end the marriage, as it sounded as if he did. 'Do you just not want to be married?'

  'No!' he protested, goaded into the truth at last. 'I like being married. I like being married to you, 9 he amended. 'I like coming home and finding you there. I like Grace and Tom. I like the way the house feels like a home. I like the mess and the noise and the fact that you've unpicked everything I paid that garden designer a fortune to do. I'm used to you,' he told her. 'I miss you when you're not there,' he said almost accusingly.

  Lou's anger began to evaporate. She could feel it fizzling out of her as a tiny glimmer of hope uncurled deep inside. 'So what's wrong?'

  'The deal's wrong.' Patrick ran a hand despairingly through his hair. 'I hate it that I can't touch you. I hate that when I come in you don't kiss me. I hate having separate rooms. Of course there isn't anyone else! I don't want anyone else. I just want you,' he finished, sounding defeated.

  T love you,' he said simply as Lou sat there, stunned. 'I

  thought about you all the way up the motorway tonight. I planned what I was going to say. I was going to tell you how I felt and ask you if you would forget that stupid deal, if we could be married like normal people, arguing sometimes, and getting in a muddle but talking about it and getting through it, and loving each other... And now you tell me don't need me any more.'

  Surprise helped Lou find her tongue. 'When did I say that?'

  'Just now. Fenny's bequest has left you financially independent.'

  'That's true,' she said, marvelling that he could be so dense. 'I don't need your money,' she agreed. 'But I need other things, Patrick. I need you to make me tea when I'm tired. I need you to help me deal with the kids. I need you to drive me up and down the country and be there for me the way you've been there for the last few weeks.