Long-Distance Marriage

by Kendrick, Sharon

  She gave her husband a coolly questioning look. ‘Perhaps you’d like to introduce us, Cameron?’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CAMERON didn’t bat an eyelid. ‘Certainly,’ he said. ‘Alessandra, this is Babette Lewis, my new pilot. Babette, I’d like you to meet Alessandra Walker, my wife.’

  Babette? thought Alessandra incredulously. No! It couldn’t be real, it just couldn’t! Who on earth could have a name like Babette? She watched the attractive blonde’s face visibly fall as she obviously registered the fact that her gorgeous new boss had the inconvenient encumbrance of a wife in tow!

  Refusing to admit just how rattled she was by the thought of this sex-bomb working in such close proximity to Cameron, Alessandra extended her hand. ‘Babette,’ she said politely. ‘I’m so pleased to meet you.’

  She could see Cameron’s eyes narrowing thoughtfully.

  Babette dropped three of the carrier bags and shook Alessandra’s hand. ‘Pleased to meet you too,’ she gushed, in an entirely different voice from the one she had been using when they’d chatted in the lift. ‘I must say I didn’t realise that Mr Calder—’

  ‘Cameron,’ he interrupted, a self-deprecating smile lifting the corners of his sensual mouth, and Alessandra watched Babette almost melt under the impact.

  ‘Cameron,’ echoed Babette smilingly, giving him a cute little upward glance from between her thick black lashes.

  ‘You were saying?’ Alessandra asked coolly. ‘That you didn’t think Cameron was...?’

  ‘Well, married.’ Babette’s sapphire eyes briefly flicked to his left hand. ‘He doesn’t wear a ring.’ She spoke as though he weren’t in the room, then frowned. ‘And didn’t he say that your name was Walker?’ she mumbled in some confusion. ‘But I thought—’

  ‘Alessandra doesn’t use my name,’ said Cameron drily. ‘You regard it as an “outdated symbol of possession”, don’t you, darling?’

  ‘You can’t have one rule for men and another for women,’ retorted Alessandra sweetly. ‘And why on earth are we all standing on the doorstep when we could be so much more comfortable inside? After all—’ and here she shot him a barbed look ‘—Babette has to change, so she told me. Into her uniform.’ The last word hung ominously in the air, with all the menace of an unexploded bomb.

  Cameron stood aside and let the two women pass. ‘Babette,’ he said smoothly, pointing down the wide central corridor of the apartment. ‘You can change in one of the spare suites. It has everything you need—you should be comfortable in there.’

  ‘Fine! Which one is it?’

  ‘Third door on your left. Alessandra and I will be in the sitting room. Feel free to shower or whatever.’

  ‘It’ll have to be a quick shower,’ dimpled Babette over-familiarly, and then, as if sensing the distinctly brittle atmosphere, grew officious before Alessandra’s eyes. ‘We must leave in no later than fifteen minutes,’ she told Cameron briskly, glancing at a watch which resembled a pocket calculator and which hung heavily around her slim wrist. ‘Okay with you?’

  Cameron nodded briefly. ‘Sure.’

  ‘See you in a minute, then.’ And Babette peeped inside several of the carrier bags before picking one up and heading off towards the guest suite which Cameron had indicated.

  Alessandra was so livid she could scarcely speak as she followed Cameron into the sitting room where he headed straight for the drinks tray.

  ‘What would you like?’ he queried calmly, as though nothing untoward had happened.

  ‘I don’t want anything!’ she shot back furiously. ‘And I’m surprised that you do! I should be careful, if I were you, Cameron! Won’t you be over the limit if you have another?’

  His eyebrows disappeared into the thick black hair as he looked at her in amazement. ‘What?’

  ‘You had lunch out today, didn’t you?’ she accused.

  He gave her a steady look. ‘Since you obviously know, then why bother asking?’

  ‘You rang up to have lunch with me!’ she declared unreasonably.

  ‘And you were busy, weren’t you?’

  ‘So what happened then? Did you ring Babette up as my replacement?’

  He looked very slightly irritated. ‘Hardly. She rang to confirm what time I needed her tonight, and I thought that it might be a good idea to have lunch together. A business lunch,’ he added with a cold gleam in his eyes.

  ‘So you took her to the Savoy?’ she put in furiously.

  ‘There’s no law against that, is there?’

  Clearly the Savoy did not have the same romantic associations for him as it did for her. ‘And don’t tell me you didn’t have anything to drink!’ she snapped.

  He frowned as though he resented the accusation. ‘I didn’t, as it happens. Because, like all pilots, Babette is not allowed to take alcohol for twenty-four hours before flying, and, naturally, I had no intention of drinking alone.’

  ‘Like now, you mean?’ she said, looking pointedly at the whisky in his hand.

  He gave her a weary look. ‘Right now I’m in need of a drink,’ he answered starkly.

  She didn’t want to ask herself why. She forced herself to ignore the shadows beneath his eyes, the pale lines of fatigue around his lips. ‘You didn’t have to take her to the Savoy!’ she spat at him from between gritted teeth.

  ‘Why ever not?’

  He didn’t even know! ‘Because that’s where you’ve always taken me!’ She nearly came out with the all-time trite comment of ‘That’s our restaurant!’ ‘Before we were married!’ she finished, then wished that she hadn’t brought that to mind because she found herself blanching as she remembered the lunch they had not touched, and just what they had done that day instead of eating. Had he done the same with Babette? she found herself wondering, and it felt like a knife twisting in her gut.

  ‘Darling,’ he sighed. ‘I like the Savoy. I have an account there. Remember? It was a business lunch, nothing more. Or are you telling me that you’ve never taken a male client to a restaurant which you’ve been to with me?’

  She decided to ignore that. Blast Cameron and his logic! Alessandra was way past logic! She got down to the nitty-gritty, to what was really bugging her. ‘What in heaven’s name do you think you’re playing at, Cameron?’

  He paused in the act of topping his glass up with soda and frowned. ‘I’m not entirely sure what you mean.’

  ‘Oh, don’t put on that innocent-little-boy act with me!’ she stormed. ‘Employing a pilot who looks as though she should have a staple through her belly button!’

  He coolly took a sip of his drink, his face unreadable. ‘Meaning just what?’ he queried coldly.

  ‘Meaning that the girl’s a bimbo!’ she raged, horrified at the jealous tirade which seemed to be pouring from her lips, and yet strangely powerless to stop herself. ‘Just exactly what kind of service are you intending that she supply you with on the plane? Hoping to join the Mile-High Club, are you? Or perhaps you already have?’

  ‘I shall treat that with the contempt it deserves,’ he told her icily, and she flinched from the censorious look in his eyes as though he’d hit her. ‘Babette passed out of one of America’s most high-powered aeronautical colleges, and with the highest honours, if you must know. She was top of her year.’

  Bully for Babette! ‘Oh, really?’ Alessandra said disbelievingly. ‘And you’re trying to tell me that with this glittering prize she takes a job as a private pilot to an English businessman? You may be a millionaire, Cameron, but there are institutions richer than you by far. Why work for one man when she could be flying with one of the major airlines?’

  ‘She was,’ he told her flatly. ‘But her engagement was broken off a couple of months ago. She was still coming into a lot of contact with the guy she’d been engaged to—and she decided that a clean break would be the best thing.’

  ‘And you’re expecting me to believe that?

  She saw the muscle flicker ominously in his cheek, knew that she was pushing him further than
she’d ever dared to push him before. ‘No, Alessandra.’ And here his voice took on a harsh and brutal tone. ‘I’m expecting nothing of you. That way I don’t get disappointed, do I?’

  She barely heard the accusation in his voice, and she was certainly not in the mood to analyse it. ‘Listen—’

  ‘No!’ he interrupted with a cutting firmness he had never used before—never to her. ‘You listen to me for a minute! You say you want equality? Well, you’ve got it, sweetheart! I chose Babette for the job because she was infinitely the best qualified person who applied, and not because she happens to look like a centrefold.’

  ‘So that didn’t escape your notice?’

  He remained unruffled. ‘You’d have to be blind not to notice Babette’s—er—’ He hesitated, but there was mocking humour in his voice as he continued, ‘Striking physical characteristics, shall we say? But—’ and here he fixed her with a wholly damning black look ‘—you can work in a bakery without spending your whole day devouring the cakes! Just because I’ve looked doesn’t mean that I want to touch. It’s you that I love, Alessandra. And you that I chose to marry!’

  ‘So you spend hours and hours closeted with someone who was built with attributes which would tempt a saint?’

  ‘Like Andrew, you mean?’

  Alessandra actually laughed. She could never have fancied Andrew, not in a million years! ‘Oh, don’t be so absurd—Andrew is just—’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ he ground out. ‘Your boss. So you’ve told me time and time again. Doesn’t matter that the man is clearly besotted with you, or that he’s always around you when I have to spend weeks away in the States—’

  ‘And I could actually go with you to the States sometimes!’ she said in a trembling voice, feeling perilously close to tears for the first time in years. ‘But you’ve never asked me, have you, Cameron?’

  He gave her a loaded look. ‘Because you’re always working! Your work comes first!’

  ‘It doesn’t come first,’ she said stubbornly, but he threw her a coolly assessing stare.

  ‘No?’

  ‘No!’

  He sighed. ‘Okay. Let me rephrase that. Your work is important to you. Is that better?’

  She nodded, glad that the curtain of silky hair had fallen over her eyes, obscuring the bleakness he might have seen there.

  ‘Well, that’s fine, Alessandra,’ he said calmly. ‘I knew that when I married you, and I can accept that. But for pity’s sake don’t start having one rule for men and another for women. And before you start giving me one of your smart replies—because it just won’t wash,’ he added warningly, ‘those were your words, remember? Equal rights mean just that. And you can’t ask me not to work with an attractive member of the opposite sex if you’re not prepared to do the same.’ He gave her a long, hard look. ‘It’s all a matter of trust, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘Trust?’ she echoed

  He shook his dark head in a slightly impatient movement. ‘What do you think happens when I’m in New York?’ he demanded rawly. ‘Do you think that there are no women around? Hasn’t it ever occurred to you that I have to do business with some of these women?’

  ‘Of course it has,’ she answered stiffly.

  ‘And that some of them make it very obvious that they’d like the relationship to move on to a more intimate footing?’

  ‘You mean that they want to go to bed with you?’ gasped Alessandra.

  He laughed. ‘That included.’ He saw her expression. ‘But I don’t. Why should I, when I have you? The ideal solution would be to have you with me all the time, but our two careers make that impossible. But you have to learn to trust me, Alessandra.’

  ‘You mean like you did last night, when I came in wearing that black dress and you virtually accused me of doing—I don’t know what, with Andrew?’

  He shrugged his broad shoulders. ‘Okay. Point taken.’ And he looked at her ruefully. ‘So we’re both guilty of having no faith.’ His blue-grey eyes were very direct. ‘What are we going to do about it?’

  They stared at one another in silence.

  There was the sound of a door shutting, and footsteps echoing along the polished wooden floor of the corridor. Babette was on her way back, thought Alessandra, suddenly feeling defeated and unutterably weary, and she didn’t know why. ‘She’s coming back,’ she said.

  ‘Yes.’ At the sound of Babette at the door, he calmly swallowed the rest of his drink and looked up as a vision in blue sashayed through the door. ‘Everything okay?’ he enquired solicitously.

  ‘Fine!’ chirruped Babette, her voice high and excited. ‘Shall I do a twirl?’

  ‘Oh. do,’ said Alessandra, a fixed smile on her face.

  Babette spun round, showing off both her perfect figure and the way the uniform clung lovingly to every curve.

  As Alessandra reluctantly watched, she began to wonder which of them had chosen it. Cameron or Babette? Babette, most probably—since women knew themselves what suited them best, and because no outfit could have flattered her more.

  There was something about a woman in uniform which men found attractive at the best of times—hence all the jokes about policewomen and nurses. But Babette’s uniform surpassed even that of those two professions.

  She was dressed all in blue, in a shade which somehow managed to be both delicate and intense—like a bluebell after a spring shower—with gold piping around the collar and cuffs. A stylish but fairly conventional gold-buttoned fitted jacket came to midthigh, but the trousers were unconventional. They were made of some clinging fabric, like that used for leggings, and which had obviously been designed for comfort as well as good looks. Like a second skin, they moulded Babette’s slender legs. The outfit was finished with a jaunty peaked cap and a pair of ankle boots in the softest navy leather.

  All in all, thought Alessandra dully, the overall effect was that of an outstandingly good-looking principal boy in a pantomime. And the combination of the stark lines of the uniform and Babette’s contrasting fluffily feminine looks was strangely alluring.

  ‘Do you like it?’ Babette asked, sounding as anxious as a teenager on a first date as she looked from Cameron to Alessandra.

  ‘It’s—perfect,’ said Cameron, almost reluctantly.

  ‘Perfect,’ echoed Alessandra dutifully, but her voice sounded as though it was coming from a long way away.

  Cameron reached into the pocket of his dark cords and withdrew the keys to his limousine. He held them out to Babette. ‘If you’d like to go and get in the car, I’ll be down in a moment.’

  Babette arched her delicate brows as she took the clump of keys from him. ‘Would you like me to help you carry anything?’

  She had replenished her glossy lipstick too, Alessandra noted, and her lips were a slick and shiny strawberry colour.

  Cameron shook his dark head and gave a small smile. ‘No, thanks,’ he said. ‘I have one small case which I’m quite capable of carrying myself. You go on ahead. I’d like to say goodbye to my wife.’

  Babette looked startled. ‘Oh, of course! Sorry! Silly of me! Goodbye, Mrs—er—Miss Walker—it was lovely to meet you! See you in a minute, Cameron.’

  ‘Goodbye,’ said Alessandra automatically, trying to dampen down the demon of jealousy which was still smouldering away inside her as she listened to the familiar way in which Babette purred her husband’s name.

  Cameron held his hand out to her. ‘Come into the bedroom with me,’ he said softly. ‘While I get my case.’

  She took his outstretched hand and let him lead her into the bedroom, feeling more lost and lonely than she could ever remember, even as a child.

  Once there he took her gently by the shoulders and turned her to face him, his expression exquisitely tender as he slowly bent his head and kissed her.

  Alessandra was determined to remain unmoved. One kiss and he’d make her all better, was that it? Like last night. He thought that sex was the cure-all for their occasional little spats, which lately didn’t seem
all that little or that occasional.

  But his mouth was delectably soft and remaining unmoved was almost impossible, but she managed it, if only for a moment. For a moment she detached herself from his kiss. It was, after all, just the touch of his lips on her lips, his flesh against her flesh, she told herself.

  Until instinct took over, ignoring her mutinous thoughts. It washed over her and guided her, and Alessandra found her mouth opening beneath his, her hands reaching up for his shoulders, her tongue sweetly deepening the kiss so that he returned it with a fierce hunger which grew and grew until, at last, he pulled away from her with a reluctant groan.

  ‘Darling,’ he said, slightly unsteadily, his eyes opaque with desire. ‘I don’t think that’s a very good idea, do you?’

  She opened her eyes in confusion; she’d forgotten everything in the glory of that kiss. ‘Wh-what?’ she murmured indistinctly.

  ‘We’re supposed to be saying goodbye, remember?’ he told her gently. ‘Not setting up a prelude to making love.’

  She tried without success to ignore the stinging of her breasts, the frustrated aching which tingled all over her skin. ‘When will I see you?’ she asked him uncertainly, realising as she did so just how temporary their marriage would sound to an outsider. Like Babette, you mean? queried some rogue voice in her head.

  ‘I have to stay up in Manchester for the rest of the week,’ he told her.

  ‘And today’s only Tuesday!’ groaned Alessandra.

  ‘Yes, I know.’ He made a rueful expression. ‘And it’s the annual dinner for all the factory staff on Saturday night. You hadn’t forgotten, had you?’

  ‘Heck!’ She pulled a face. He’d told her about it weeks ago, but she hadn’t given it another thought. ‘It had completely slipped my mind!’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. You won’t have to do anything except be there and be beautiful. Shall I send the plane down for you?’ he suggested, but Alessandra shook her head.

  No way! The last thing she wanted was to be closeted alone with Babette, and be at the mercy of her no doubt wonderfully impressive skills at the joystick. Babette would probably sit her in the ejector seat and then press the button!