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 I said? When?”

He turned to look at her.

Telltale color 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.

“I 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. “And that’s what I’ve been doing. I think you were right. I think we should get married.”

Jessica Hart had a haphazard career before she began writing to finance a degree in history. Her experience ranged from waitress, theater production assistant and Outback cook to newsdesk secretary, expedition PA and English teacher, and she has worked in countries as different as France and Indonesia, Australia and Cameroon. She now lives in the north of England, where her hobbies are limited to eating and drinking, and traveling when she can, preferably to places where she’ll find good food or desert or tropical rain. If you’d like to find out more about Jessica Hart, you can visit her Web site at www.jessicahart.co.uk

Books by Jessica Hart

HARLEQUIN ROMANCE®

3797—HER BOSS’S BABY PLAN

3820—CHRISTMAS EVE MARRIAGE

Contracted: Corporate Wife

Jessica Hart

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For Diana, with love

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ONE

THE lift doors slid open, and out stepped Louisa Dennison, bang on time. As always.

Watching her from across the lobby, Patrick was conscious of a familiar spurt of something close to irritation. Dammit, couldn’t the woman be five seconds late for once?

Here she came, in her prim little grey suit, whose skirt stopped precisely at the knee, not a hair of her dark head out of place. She looked sensible, discreet, well groomed, the epitome of a perfect PA.

Patrick knew that he was being irrational. He had been lucky to inherit such an efficient assistant when he’d taken over Schola Systems. Lou—her name was the only relaxed thing about her, as far as he was concerned—was a model secretary. She was poised, punctual, professional. He never caught her gossiping or making personal phone calls in the office. She showed no interest whatsoever in his personal life, so Patrick never felt obliged to ask about hers. No, he couldn’t ask for a better PA.

It was just that sometimes he found himself wishing that she would make a mistake, just a little one. A typing error, say, that he could pick her up on, or a file that she couldn’t lay her hand on immediately. Maybe she could ladder her tights, or spill her coffee. Do something to prove that she was human.

But she never did.

The truth was that Patrick found Lou secretly intimidating at times, and it annoyed him. If there was any intimidating to be done, he was the one who liked to do it. Grown men had been known to tremble when he walked into the room, and his reputation as a ruthless executive was usually enough to make people tread warily around him.

Not Lou Dennison, though. She just looked at him with those dark eyes of hers. Her expression was usually one of complete indifference, but sometimes he suspected it also held a quiet irony that riled Patrick more than he cared to admit. It wasn’t even as if there was anything particularly special about her, he thought with a tinge of resentment. She was attractive enough, but she had to be at least forty-five, and it showed in the lines around her eyes.

That cool, composed look had never done anything for him, anyway. He liked his women more feminine, more appealing, less in control. And younger.

‘I’m not late, am I?’ Lou asked as she came up to him, and Patrick repressed the urge to glance ostentatiously at his watch and announce that she was a good fifteen seconds overdue.

‘Of course not.’

He forced a smile and reminded himself that it wasn’t actually Lou’s fault that high winds had forced the closure of the east coast line that evening, that it was too far to an airport, or that he would rather be having dinner with almost anyone else. There had been no way he could have got out of asking her to share a meal with him since they were both stranded, but he was hoping they could get it over with quickly and then go their separate ways for the rest of the evening.

He nodded in the direction of the restaurant. ‘Shall we go straight in? Or would you like a drink first?’

The drink option was such a patent afterthought that Lou was left in little doubt that Patrick was looking forward to their meal with as little pleasure as she was. Clearly she was supposed to meekly agree to eating straight away, but Lou didn’t feel like it.

She’d had a long day. It had begun with a five o’clock alarm call, progressed to getting two squabbling adolescents out of the house earlier than usual, continued with delays on the tube, followed by a stressful train journey with Patrick Farr. This was the first time they had had to travel to secure a contract, and she hadn’t thought her presence was necessary, but Patrick had insisted.

In the end, the meeting had been successful, but it had been long and intense, and Lou had been looking forward to getting home and enjoying a rare evening on her own to wind down with a stiff gin and a long bath without her children banging on the door and demanding to know what there was to eat or where she had put their special pair of torn jeans, which they needed right now.

And now she was stuck in this hotel with her boss instead. It wouldn’t have been too bad if Patrick hadn’t felt obliged to invite her to have dinner with him, or if she’d been able to think of a way of refusing without sounding ungracious. As it was, it looked as if they were both condemned to an evening of stilted conversation, and for that she definitely needed a drink!

‘A drink would be lovely, thank you,’ she said defiantly, ignoring the way Patrick’s thick brows drew together. He was evidently a man who was used to getting what he wanted—especially as far as women were concerned, if rumours were anything to go by. No doubt Lou was expected to fall in with his wishes like everyone else.

Tough, she thought unsympathetically. If he didn’t like it, he shouldn’t have asked her!

‘Let’s try the bar, then,’ he said, with just the suggestion of gritted teeth.

Lou didn’t care. In the three months since Patrick Farr had taken over Schola Systems he had made it obvious that he had no interest whatsoever in his new PA. Not young and pretty enough, clearly, Lou thought dispassionately. She didn’t mind that, but she didn’t see why she should pander to his ego in her free time. She wasn’t actually working this evening, and it wouldn’t do Patrick Farr any harm not to get his own way for once.

The bar was even worse than Patrick had feared. By the time they had realised that there would be no more trains to London that night, and that all road and air traffic was equally disrupted by the weather, all the best hotels had been booked out.

It was a long time since he had stayed anywhere this provincial, he thought, looking around the bar with distaste. It was overflowing with vegetation, and so dark that they practically had to grope their way to a table, which did nothing to improve his temper.

‘What would you like?’ he asked Lou as he snapped his fingers to summon the barman, although whether the man would be able to find them in the gloom was another matter.

‘A glass of champagne would be nice,’ said Lou composedly as she settled herself and smoothed down her skirt.

Patrick was surprised. She hadn’t struck him as a champagne drinker. He would have thought champagne too fizzy and frivolous for someone so efficient. He could imagine her drinking something much more sensible, like a glass of water, or possibly something sharp. A dry martini perhaps. Yes, he could see her with one of those.

Lou lifted her elegant brows at his expression. ‘Is that too extravagant?’ she asked, thinking that a glass of champagne was the least that he owed her after the day she had had. And it wasn’t as if he couldn’t afford it. The Patrick Farrs of this world could buy champagne by the truckload and think of it as small change.

‘We did win that contract,’ she reminded him, a subtle edge to her voice. ‘I thought we should celebrate.’

‘Of course.’ Patrick set his teeth, perfectly aware that he should have suggested a celebration given the size of the contract they had just won. ‘I’ll have the same.’

The barman had fought his way through the artificial jungle and was hovering. Opening his mouth to ask for two glasses of champagne, Patrick changed his mind and ordered a bottle instead. He wasn’t going to have Lou Dennison thinking that he was mean.

‘Certainly, sir.’

Sitting relaxed in her chair, she was looking around the gloomy bar, apparently unperturbed by the silence while they waited for the barman to come back. She was quite unlike the women he was usually with in bars, Patrick reflected. He liked girls who were prepared to enjoy themselves a bit.

Take Ariel, for instance. Ariel was always thrilled to be out with him. That was what she told him, anyway. If she were here, she’d be chatting away, entertaining him, exerting herself to captivate him.

Unlike Lou, who was just sitting there with that faintly ironic gleam in her eyes, unimpressed by his company. What would it take to impress a woman like her? Patrick wondered. Someone must have done it once. She was Mrs Dennison, although he noticed that she didn’t wear a wedding ring. Divorced, no doubt. Her husband probably couldn’t live up to her exacting standards.

Uncomfortable with the situation, Patrick leant forward and picked up a drinks mat, tapping it moodily on the low table between them. It took a huge effort not to glance at his watch, but chances were he wouldn’t be able to read it anyway in this light. It looked like being a long evening.

Lou was thinking the same thing. Patrick’s moody tapping was driving her mad. It was just the kind of thing Tom did when he was being at his most annoying. Her fingers twitched with the longing to snatch the mat out of his hand and tell him to stop fiddling at once, the way she would if Tom were sitting there irritating her like this.

But Tom was her son and eleven, while Patrick Farr had to be in his late forties and, more to the point, was her boss. And she couldn’t afford to lose her job. She had better hold back on the ticking-off front, Lou decided reluctantly.

She was gasping for a drink. Where was that champagne? The barman must be treading the grapes out there. It couldn’t take that long to shove a bottle in an ice bucket and find a couple of glasses, could it? If it didn’t arrive soon, she was going to have to take that mat anyway and shove it—

Ah, at last!

Lou smiled up at the barman as he materialised out of the gloom, and Patrick’s hand froze in mid-tap as he felt a jolt of surprise. He hadn’t realised that she could smile like that.

She never smiled at him like that.

She smiled, of course, but it was only ever a cool, polite smile, the kind of smile that went with her immaculate suit, her perfectly groomed hair and her infallible professional manner. Not the warm, friendly smile she was giving the barman now, lighting her face and making her seem all at once attractive and approachable. The kind of woman you might actually want to share a bottle of champagne with, in fact.

Patrick sat up straighter and studied her with new interest as the barman opened the bottle with an unnecessary flourish and made a big deal of pouring the champagne.

The boy was clearly trying to impress Lou, Patrick thought disapprovingly, watching his attempts at banter. She had only smiled at him, for heaven’s sake. Anyone would think that she was hot, instead of nearly old enough to be his mother. Just what they needed, a barman with a Mrs Robinson fixation.

And now he was tossing his cloth over his shoulder in a ridiculously affected way as he placed the bottle back in the ice bucket, and telling Lou to enjoy her drink. Patrick noticed that he didn’t get so much as a nod, which was a bit much given that he was paying for it all.

‘Thank you,’ Lou was saying, with another quite unnecessary smile.

Patrick glowered at the barman’s departing back. ‘Thank God he’s gone. I was afraid that he was planning on spending the whole evening with us. I’m surprised he didn’t bring himself a glass and pull up a chair.’

‘I thought he was charming,’ said Lou, picking up her glass.

She would.

‘Don’t tell me you’ve got a taste for toy boys!’

‘No—not that it would be any business of yours if I did.’

Patrick was taken aback by her directness. She was normally so discreet.

‘You don’t think it would be a bit inappropriate?’ he countered.

Lou stared at him for a moment, then sipped at her champagne. ‘That sounds to me like a prime case of pots and kettles,’ she said coolly, putting her glass back down on the table.

‘What do you mean?’ demanded Patrick.

‘I understand that your own girlfriends tend to be on the young side.’

Patrick was momentarily taken aback. ‘How do you know that?’

She shrugged. ‘Your picture is in the gossip pages occasionally. You’ve usually got a blonde on your arm, and I’ve got to say that most of them look a good twenty years younger than you.’

That was true enough. Patrick didn’t see why he should apologise for it. ‘I like beautiful women, and I especially like beautiful women who aren’t old enough to get obsessed with commitment,’ he said.

Ah, commitment-phobic. That figured, thought Lou with a touch of cynicism. She knew the type. And how. Lawrie had never been hot on commitment either, but at least he had warmth and charm. Patrick didn’t even have that to recommend him.

She studied him over the rim of her glass. He was an attractive enough man, she admitted fairly to herself. Mid to late forties, she’d say. Tall, broad-shouldered, well set up. He had good, strong features too, with darkish brown hair and piercing light eyes—grey or green, Lou hadn’t quite worked that one out yet—but there was a coolness and an arrogance to him that left her quite cold. He seemed to go down well with young nubile blondes, but he certainly didn’t ring any of her bells.

Not that that was likely to bother Patrick Farr much. She was a middle-aged woman and it was well known that you became invisible after forty, particularly to men like him. She doubted that he had registered anything about her other than her efficiency.

‘I’d no idea you took such an interest in my personal life,’ Patrick was saying, annoyed for some reason by her dispassionate tone.

‘I don’t. It’s absolutely nothing to do with me.’

‘You seem to know enough about it!’

‘Hardly,’ said Lou. ‘The girls in Finance have taken to passing round any articles about you so that we can get some idea of who’s running the company now. You took us over three months ago, and all we know about you is your reputation.’

‘And what is my reputation, exactly?’ asked Patrick.

Lou smiled faintly. ‘Don’t you know?’

‘I’d be interested to hear it from your point of view.’

‘Well…’ Lou took a sip of her champagne—it was slipping down very nicely, thank you—and considered. ‘I suppose we’d heard that you were pretty ruthless. Very successful. A workaholic, but a bit of a playboy on the side.’ Her mouth turned down as she tried to remember anything else. ‘That’s it, really.’ She glanced at him. ‘Is it fair?’

‘I like the successful bit,’ said Patrick. ‘As for the rest of it…well, I certainly work hard. I know what I want, and I always get what I want. I like winning. I’m not interested in compromising or accepting second best. If people think that’s ruthless, that’s their problem,’ he said. Ruthlessly, in fact.

‘And the playboy side?’

He made a dismissive gesture with his glass. ‘People only say that if you’re rich and don’t tie yourself down with a wife and children. I like the company of beautiful women, sure, and I meet lots of them at the parties and events I’m invited to, but I’d much rather work than swan around on yachts or waste money in casinos or whatever it is playboys do.’

‘I see. I’ll tell the girls in Finance that you’re really quite boring after all, then.’

Patrick looked up sharply from his glass and met Lou’s eyes. They held a distinct gleam of amusement and he realised to his amazement that she was teasing him.

There was a new sassiness to her tonight, he thought, and he wasn’t at all sure how to take her. Lou Dennison had always been the epitome of an efficient PA, quiet, discreet, always demurely dressed in a neat suit, but he had had no sense of her as a woman beyond that.

Now, suddenly, it was as if he were seeing her for the first time. The dark eyes held a challenging spark, and there was a vibrancy and a directness to her that he had never noticed before. Patrick’s interest was piqued. Perhaps there was more to Lou than was obvious at first glance.

He knew nothing about her, he realised. If he’d thought about it at all, he might have imagined her going home to an immaculately organised flat somewhere, but the truth was that he had never really considered the fact that she had any existence at all outside the office. What did she do? Where did she go? What was she really like?

He ought to know, Patrick thought with a twinge of shame. She had been his PA for three months. Of course, they had been incredibly busy trying to turn the failing firm around, and she wasn’t exactly easy to get to know. She never encouraged any form of social contact…or was it just that he had been too intimidated by her composure to make the first move?

Patrick wriggled his shoulders uncomfortably. He should have made more of an effort. She was the closest member of staff to him, after all. The truth was that he was more used to women flirting and fluttering around him. No way would Lou Dennison indulge him like that. She wasn’t the flirting kind.

On the other hand, what did he know? Maybe it was time to find out more about her.

‘So what about you?’ he asked her. ‘Do you live up to your reputation?’

Lou looked surprised. Well, that was better than indifference or irony, anyway.

‘I don’t have a reputation,’ she said.

‘Yes, you do,’ Patrick corrected her. ‘I heard all about you before I got to Schola Systems. I heard that it was you that ran that company, not Bill Sheeran.’

Lou frowned. ‘That’s rubbish!’

‘Don’t worry, I don’t believe it for a minute. If you’d been running the company, you would never have let it go under. You’re too competent to let that happen.’

She grimaced slightly. ‘Competent?’ It didn’t sound very exciting. Not like being a playboy. ‘Is that what people think of me?’

Her glass was empty. Patrick lifted the bottle and held it over the ice bucket to let it drip for a moment. ‘Competent…efficient…practical…yes, all those things.’

‘You don’t have much choice about being practical when you’ve got kids to bring up on your own,’ said Lou with a sigh.

‘It’s easy to be laid-back when you’ve just got yourself to worry about,’ she said, oblivious to the fact that his head had jerked up in surprise. ‘It’s different when the rent is due and there are bills to be paid and every morning you’ve got a major logistical operation just to get the kids up and dressed and fed, and to check that they’ve got everything they need and that all their homework is done and that they’re not going to be late for school.’

Patrick hadn’t got over the first revelation. ‘You’ve got kids?’ he said, ignoring the last part of her speech. He stared at her. Children meant mess and chaos and constant requests for time off, none of which he associated with Lou Dennison.

She had raised her brows at the incredulity in his expression. ‘Just two. Grace is fourteen, and Tom’s eleven.’

‘You never mentioned that you had children,’ said Patrick accusingly.

‘You never asked,’ said Lou, ‘and, to be honest, I didn’t think you’d be the slightest bit interested in my private life.’

He hadn’t been—he wasn’t, Patrick reminded himself—but, still, she might have said something. He felt vaguely aggrieved. Two children, adolescent children at that, were a big thing not to mention.

‘Why have you kept them a secret?’

‘I haven’t,’ said Lou, taken aback. ‘There’s a framed photo of both of them on my desk. If you’re that interested, I’ll show you tomorrow!’

‘There’s no need for that, I believe you,’ said Patrick, recoiling. He had no intention of admiring pictures of grubby brats. ‘I was just surprised. I’ve had secretaries with children before, and they were always having time off for various crises,’ he complained. ‘After the last time, I vowed I’d never have a PA who was a mother again.’

‘Very family-minded of you,’ said Lou.

Patrick’s brows drew together at the unconcealed sarcasm in her voice. ‘I haven’t got anything against families,’ he said. ‘It’s up to individuals whether they have a family or not, but I don’t see why I should have to rearrange my life around other people’s children. I had a PA once whose children ended up running the office. We’d just be at a critical point of negotiations, and Carol would be putting on her coat and saying that she had to get to the school.’

‘Sometimes you just have to go,’ said Lou, who had somehow managed to get to the bottom of another glass of champagne. ‘Especially when your children are smaller. At least my two are old enough to take themselves to and from school, but if anything happened, or they were ill, then I’m afraid that I would be putting on my coat too.’

Patrick looked at her as if a dog he had been cajoling had just turned and snapped at him, but he refilled her glass anyway. ‘Am I supposed to find that reassuring?’

‘I’m just telling you, that’s all,’ said Lou. She looked at him directly. ‘Is it going to be a problem for you that I have children?’

‘Not as long as they don’t interfere with your work,’ said Patrick.

‘You know that they don’t, or you would have known about their existence long before now,’ she said in a crisp voice. ‘That doesn’t mean there won’t be times when I will need to be flexible, and, yes, sometimes at short notice.’

‘Oh, great.’ Patrick hunched a shoulder and Lou leant forward.

‘You’re obviously not aware of the fact that Schola Systems has always had a very good reputation for family-friendly policies,’ she admonished him. ‘I was lucky to get a job there when I had to go back to work and the children were small, and especially to have such an understanding boss. Bill Sheeran was always flexible when people needed time at home for one reason or another.

‘It won him a lot of loyalty from the staff,’ she added warningly, ‘so if you were thinking of holding parenthood against your employees, you might find yourself without any staff at all!’

‘There’s no question of holding anything against anyone,’ said Patrick irritably.

He didn’t want to hear any more about how marvellous Bill Sheeran had been. Not marvellous enough to save his own company, though, Patrick thought cynically. It was all very well being friendly and flexible, but if Patrick hadn’t taken over all those admiring employees would have been spending a lot more time at home than they wanted. There was no point in being family friendly if your firm went bust and your staff found themselves out of a job.

‘I just wish you’d told me, that’s all,’ he grumbled to Lou.

Lou didn’t feel like making it easy for him. Honestly, the man never even asked her if she’d had a nice weekend on a Monday morning. ‘If you’d shown any interest in your new PA at all, you would have known.’

‘I’m showing an interest now,’ he said grumpily. ‘Is there anything else I need to know?’

‘Is there anything else you want to know?’ she countered.

‘You don’t wear a wedding ring,’ said Patrick after a moment.

‘I’m divorced. Why?’ The champagne was definitely having an effect. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve got a problem with divorce as well as children?’

‘Of course not. I’m divorced myself.’

‘Really?’

‘Why the surprise? It’s not exactly uncommon as you’ll know better than anyone.’

Quite, thought Lou. ‘You’re right. I don’t know why I was surprised, really. I suppose it’s because you don’t seem like the marrying kind,’ she said, thinking of his lifestyle. Playboy or not, he clearly didn’t spend much time at home.

‘I’m not,’ said Patrick with a grim smile. ‘That’s why I’m divorced. We were only married a couple of years. We were both very young.’ He shrugged. ‘It was a mistake for both of us. That’ll be a bit of news for the girls in Finance,’ he added, not without a trace of sarcasm.

‘I’ll pass it on,’ said Lou, smiling blandly in return.

Patrick held up the bottle and squinted at the dregs in surprise. ‘We seem to have finished the bottle,’ he said, sharing out the last drops and upending it in the ice bucket. ‘Do you want another? Your toy boy is probably longing for an excuse to come over and see you again!’

Lou rolled her eyes. ‘I think I’d better eat,’ she said, ignoring the toy-boy crack.

The champagne had slipped down very nicely. A little too nicely, in fact. She was beginning to feel pleasantly fuzzy. She might even be a bit tipsy, Lou realised, hoping that she would be able to make it to the restaurant without falling over or doing anything embarrassing. They hadn’t had time for a proper lunch and it was all starting to catch up with her.

She felt better in the restaurant. The waiters fussed around, bringing bread and a jug of water without being asked. Obviously they could see that she needed it.

Lou took a piece of bread, and spread butter on it. This was no time to worry about her diet. She needed to line her stomach as quickly as possible.

She tried to focus on the menu, but kept getting distracted by Patrick opposite. He had been easier to talk to than she had expected. Of course, the champagne had probably helped. He certainly wasn’t as brusque and impersonal as usual. She had even found herself warming to him in a funny kind of way. It was as if they had both let down their guards for the evening. It must be something to do with being stranded away from home and tired…and, oh, yes, the champagne.

She really mustn’t have any more to drink, Lou decided, but somehow a glass of wine appeared in front of her and it seemed rude to ignore it. She would just take the occasional sip.

‘So,’ said Patrick when they had ordered. ‘What’s happened to your children tonight? Are they with their father?’

‘No, Lawrie lives in Manchester.’ There was a certain restraint in her voice when she mentioned her ex-husband, he noticed. ‘I knew I’d be late back to London even if the trains had been running, so I arranged for them to stay with a friend. They love going to Marisa’s. She lets them watch television all night and doesn’t make them eat vegetables.’

Which was probably more than Patrick needed or wanted to know. He was only making polite conversation after all. She was getting garrulous, a sure sign that she had had too much to drink. Better have another piece of bread.

‘Have you got any children?’ she asked, thinking it might be better to switch the conversation back to Patrick before she started telling him how good at sport Grace was or how adorable Tom had been as a baby.

‘No,’ said Patrick, barely restraining a shudder at the very idea. ‘I’ve never wanted them. My ex-wife, Catriona, did. That’s one of the reasons we split up in the end.’ His mouth pulled down at the corners as he contemplated his glass. ‘Apparently I was incredibly selfish for wanting to live my own life.’

Lou frowned a little owlishly. ‘But isn’t the reason you get married precisely because you want to live your life with another person, that you want to do it together and not on your own?’

She’d spoken without thinking and for a moment she thought she might have gone a bit far.

‘I told Catriona before we got married that I didn’t want children,’ said Patrick, apparently not taking exception at the intrusiveness of her question. ‘And she said that she understood. She said she didn’t want a family either, that she didn’t want to share me with anyone else, not even a baby.’

He rolled his eyes a little as if inviting her to mock his younger self who had believed his wife, but Lou thought she could still hear the hurt in his voice. He must have loved Catriona a lot.

‘We agreed,’ Patrick insisted, even as part of him marvelled that he was telling Lou all this. ‘It wasn’t just me. I thought we both wanted the same thing and that everything would be fine, but we’d hardly been married a year before she started to lobby for a baby.’

He sounded exasperated, and Lou couldn’t help feeling a pang of sympathy for poor Catriona. You’d have to be pretty brave to lobby Patrick Farr about anything.

‘It’s quite common for women to change their minds about having a baby,’ she said mildly. ‘It’s a hormone thing. You can be quite sure you’re not interested, and then one day you wake up and your body clock has kicked in, and suddenly a baby is all you can think about. I was like that before I had Grace.’

‘Yes, well, I’ve learnt the hard way that women change their minds the whole time,’ said Patrick grouchily. ‘If I’d known then what I know now, I wouldn’t have believed Catriona in the first place. But I was young then, and it was a blow.’

‘It must have been a blow for her too,’ Lou pointed out. ‘It doesn’t sound as if you were prepared to compromise at all.’

‘How can you compromise about a baby?’ demanded Patrick. ‘Either you have one or you don’t. There are no halfway measures, no part-time options, on parenthood.’

That would be news to Lawrie, Lou couldn’t help thinking. He seemed to think that he could drop in and out of his children’s lives whenever it suited him.

‘Plenty of fathers don’t have much choice but to see their children on a part-time basis,’ she said, struggling to sound fair. ‘It can work.’

‘I didn’t want to be a father like that,’ said Patrick flatly. ‘I don’t believe in half measures. Either you do something properly, or you don’t do it at all.’

Not the king of compromise, then.

CHAPTER TWO

‘YOU could say that about marriage too,’ said Lou, courage bolstered by all the champagne she had drunk.

Patrick twisted a fork between his fingers, his expression bitter. ‘I would have stuck with our marriage no matter what, but Catriona wanted a divorce. So that’s what happened. We didn’t do it at all.’

‘What happened to Catriona?’

‘Oh, she met someone else. She got her children…three of them…but now she’s divorced again. Her husband ran off with his secretary for a more exciting and child-free life, I gather, so she’s on her own again.’

‘You know,’ he confided slowly, ‘Catriona always used to say that if only she could have a baby, she would never be unhappy again, but I still see her occasionally, and she doesn’t look very happy to me. She’s got the children she wanted, but she looks exhausted and worn down.’

‘I’m not surprised if her husband’s left her and she’s dealing with three children by herself,’ said Lou.

‘She’s got help,’ said Patrick unsympathetically. ‘She got the house and she’ll have someone to clean it and an au pair to take care of the kids. She doesn’t even have to work. And when it comes down to it, it was her choice.’

‘It’s tiring bringing up children,’ said Lou, although she was feeling less sympathetic since hearing about the cleaner and the au pair and the lack of a mortgage.

A cleaner, imagine it! Imagine having a house with no rent or mortgage to pay. Even better. She’d hold on the au pair though. Grace would make mincemeat of the poor girl.

‘Kids can be very consuming,’ she said.

‘I know,’ said Patrick. ‘That’s precisely why I’ve chosen not to have them. You can keep all your dirty nappies and your grazed knees and your adolescent tantrums. I don’t want to be bothered with any of that.’

‘But are you any happier than Catriona?’

‘Of course I am!’

Lou looked unconvinced. ‘You say she’s not happy, but I bet she is. I bet she doesn’t regret having those children for an instant. Of course it’s hard work. There are days when I’m so exhausted just getting through the day, and it all seems a never-ending battle, and then I’ll look at the back of Tom’s neck, or hear Grace laughing, and they’re so…miraculous…I feel like my heart’s going to stop with the sheer joy of them. Do you ever feel like that?’

‘I do when I look at my Porsche,’ said Patrick flippantly.

‘Enough to make up for a failed marriage and losing your wife?’

‘Look, I was bitter when Catriona left. Of course I was,’ he said, a slightly defensive edge to his voice. ‘I’m not going to pretend I’ve been ecstatically happy all the time, ever since, but I’ve moved on. I’ve been successful in a way I would never have dreamed of when I was married to Catriona. I’ve built up some great companies, and I’ve made lots of money while I was at it. I’ve worked hard and I’ve had a good life. And I’ve got the kind of car most men can only fantasise about.’

‘Oh, well, as long as you’ve got a nice car…’

‘You may mock, but it means a lot.’

‘I think you may need to be a man to understand that one,’ said Lou. Tom and Lawrie certainly would.

‘Let’s put it this way,’ said Patrick, pointing a fork at her for emphasis. ‘I can do what I want. I can go where I want, when I want, with whoever I want. You don’t think that makes me happy?’

‘Right.’ Lou nodded understandingly as she buttered another piece of bread. She hoped the food was coming soon. She was starving. ‘So when was the last time you went away? You certainly haven’t been anywhere in the last three months.’

‘I’ve been busy, in case you hadn’t noticed,’ said Patrick, thrown off balance by this new, combative Lou. ‘I had a company to save!’

‘Hey, we managed for years before you came along! We wouldn’t have fallen apart if you’d taken a long weekend. You didn’t even go away at Easter. Don’t you ever wish that you were working for something more than to make more money? That you had someone to go home to at the end of the day?’

‘Aren’t you trying to ask me if I ever get lonely?’ said Patrick sardonically.

‘Well, don’t you?’

‘I don’t need to be on my own if I don’t choose to. I’ve had plenty of relationships, and I’m not short of female company.’

So Lou had gathered from the gossip columns.

Perhaps it was just as well that the food arrived before she had time to frame a tart retort. Patrick had to watch while Lou went through her smiling routine again, and the waiter, this one old enough to have known better, fell over himself to serve her. He picked up her napkin, refilled both of her glasses, offered to fetch her more bread and ground pepper from an extremely suggestive-looking mill.

Extraordinary, thought Patrick. He studied her across the table. She had taken off her jacket and was wearing a simple, silky sort of top with a scoop neck, its plainness set off by a striking silver necklace. OK, she was elegant in a classic way and she had a charming smile—it seemed to work on waiters and barmen, anyway—but there wasn’t anything particularly special about the rest of her.

Well, she had nice eyes, he supposed, amending his opinion slightly, and all the assurance of an older woman, but there was no way you could describe her as beautiful. Not like Ariel, who had all the bloom and radiance of youth. Still, now that he was looking at her properly, he could see that she did have a certain allure with that dark hair and those dark eyes.

Funny, this was the first time he had really been aware of her as a woman. He must have seen the line of her throat and the curve of her mouth almost every day for the last three months, and yet tonight was the first time he had noticed them at all.

Patrick frowned slightly. He wasn’t sure he really wanted to start noticing things like that about Lou. There was something vaguely unsettling about thinking of her as a woman, warm and real, as opposed to the impersonal PA who ran his office so efficiently. About realising how oddly the generous curve of her lips sat with that air of cool competence or the ironic undertone in her voice sometimes.

And there was something very unsettling about noticing the way that top shifted as she leant forward to pick up her glass. The material seemed to slither over her skin, and it was impossible not to wonder how it would feel beneath his hands, how warm and smooth her body would be underneath…

Patrick looked abruptly away. Enough of that.

‘What about you?’ he said, struggling to remember what they had been talking about. She had been making him cross, and that was good. Anything was better than watching that top slip and slide as she breathed. ‘Are you Mrs Happy?’

‘I think I’m pretty happy,’ she said, swirling the wine in her glass as she considered the matter. ‘Content, anyway. I’m not joyously happy the way I was when I was first married, and when Grace and Tom were babies, but I’ve got a lot to be happy about. My children are healthy, I’ve got a dear aunt who’s like a mother to me, I’ve got good friends…It’s just a shame about my awful job. I’ve got this boss who makes my life an absolute misery.’

‘What?’ Patrick did a double take. He had been so busy not noticing what was going on with that damn top—why couldn’t the woman sit still, for God’s sake?—that it took him a moment to realise what she had said.

‘That was a joke,’ said Lou patiently.

‘Oh. Right.’ Patrick was surprised by how relieved he felt. ‘Ha, ha,’ he said morosely, and then was startled when Lou laughed. She had a proper laugh, not a giggle or a simper, and it made her look younger, vibrant, interesting, really quite…sexy. Was that what the waiter had seen too?

‘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. ‘I 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 told 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 life.’

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 that?’

‘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 chit-chat.’

‘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.

‘A fantasy that will embarrass you, not me,’ she specified firmly.

It was just as well she had said that, thought Patrick, a mixture of amusement and horror at the narrowness of his escape tugging at the corner of his mouth. For a minute there he had got a bit carried away. Fortunately, her intervention had given him time to unscramble his brains. Reality had slotted back into place and all the disadvantages of explaining to your PA that you were fantasising about her and her choice of lingerie had presented themselves starkly.

Not a good idea, in fact.

‘OK…’ he said, drawing out the syllables. He drank some wine while he tried to focus. Surely he could think of something to tell her? A fantasy…a fantasy…and keep right away from stockings…

‘Right,’ he said after a moment. ‘Well, how about this one? It’s not that different from yours, actually. What I’d really like is all the advantages of marriage without any of the drawbacks. So in my fantasy, I would have a wife who was there when I needed her. She would be the perfect hostess, remember all my sisters’ birthdays, and mysteriously vanish whenever I met a new and beautiful girl so that I could continue to have guilt-free affairs.’

Lou rolled her eyes, unimpressed. ‘Oh, the old fantastic-sex-without-a-relationship chestnut! I don’t think that’s like my fantasy at all,’ she objected. ‘But I can see why it appeals to you.’

Patrick wasn’t quite sure how to take that. ‘Well, since it’s likely to remain a fantasy, I’ll reconcile myself to an empty house, to hiring caterers and disappointing my mother.’

Thinking about it, Lou absently held out her glass for another refill.

‘What you really need,’ she said, ‘is someone who’s prepared to marry you for your money, and treat marriage like a job.’

‘That’s not very romantic!’

‘You don’t need romance,’ she told him sternly. ‘You need someone to run your house, to be your social secretary, to be pleasant and interested when you go out as a couple but turn a blind eye to your affairs and generally expect absolutely nothing from you other than access to your bank account.’

Patrick was impressed by her assessment and said so as he topped up her glass. ‘That’s exactly what I need.’

‘In fact,’ said Lou, ‘you need to marry me.’

CHAPTER THREE

PATRICK’S hand jerked and he missed her glass, spilling wine on the tablecloth. ‘Sorry,’ he said as he mopped it up with his napkin. ‘I thought you said that I should marry you there!’

‘I did.’ Lou accepted her glass back with a smile of thanks, quite unfazed. ‘Someone like me, anyway. But actually, now I come to think of it, I’d be the perfect wife for you.’

‘You would?’ Patrick wasn’t sure whether to be amused or appalled.

‘Of course.’ Lou gestured grandly with her glass. ‘I know your business, and I could do all that social stuff easily. I know who you need to charm and who to impress, and I’m under absolutely no illusions as to what you’re like!’

‘Right,’ said Patrick, fascinated.

‘You’d be much better off with someone sensible like me who wouldn’t make a fuss about your girlfriends, or expect you to pay me any attention,’ she pointed out. ‘You wouldn’t need to email me every day or buy me flowers or surprise me with mini-breaks to Paris.’

‘O…K,’ he said slowly, buying time until he worked out whether she was joking or not. ‘But why would you want to marry me?’

‘Oh, I’d be marrying you for your money, of course,’ said Lou cheerfully.

‘I thought you didn’t want a man?’

‘I don’t, but I do want financial security. Do you have any idea how tough it is to be a single parent living on a limited income in a city like London?’

Patrick raised his brows. ‘Is this a very roundabout way of complaining about your salary?’

‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘My salary is fair. More than fair, in fact. If it wasn’t, I would have got another job. It just doesn’t go very far when you have to pay an extortionate rent and feed and support two growing children into the bargain.’

‘Yes, I’ve heard that children are expensive nowadays,’ said Patrick, thinking of his sisters’ complaints.

‘They are, and the older they are, the more expensive they seem to become.’ Lou sighed and sipped her wine reflectively. ‘I’d like to be able to say that I had raised a couple of thoughtful, unmaterialistic, community-minded children who understood that the love and security you strive to give them mattered more than the latest brand of trainers or the newest computer game, but sadly they’re not like that at all!’

‘Oh?’ said Patrick, rather taken with the idea that Lou’s children weren’t the paragons he would have expected them to be. He found her attitude refreshing. He’d had to listen to too many mothers telling him how clever and talented and generally marvellous their children were.

‘They’re not bad kids,’ said Lou, ‘but they’re like all their friends. They want to be in with the in-crowd, to be like everyone else and to have what everyone else has. At least I haven’t been able to spoil them,’ she added with a wry smile. ‘The silver lining of living on a strict budget. Although naturally Grace and Tom don’t see it that way!’

‘Doesn’t their father give you any financial support?’ asked Patrick, ever the businessman. As a man who specialised in taking failing businesses and turning them round, he was clearly offended by the idea of losing control of your finances.

Lou sighed a little, thinking of Lawrie. ‘He’s always willing in principle, but when it comes to transferring money there’s always some great scheme that he needs to buy into temporarily which will solve all our problems.’

‘And does it?’

‘No. The last time he had any real money to invest, he lost us our house,’ said Lou, trying to make light of it. ‘There’s no way I’m getting back on the property ladder in London now.’

‘Unfortunate,’ commented Patrick, looking disapproving. He was far too canny a businessman ever to take the kind of risks Lawrie ran all the time.

Lou thought of the day Lawrie had come home and confessed that he had borrowed against the house, and lost it all on some idiotic venture that a child of six could have told him would fail.

Oh, and that by the way he was leaving her for a younger, prettier woman who wasn’t so boring about being sensible about money.

Of course, the other woman didn’t have two children to worry about, so it was easy for her.

Lou had lost her home and her husband on a single day. A double whammy as her world fell apart. Not one of the best days of her life.

‘It was a bit,’ she agreed, smiling bitterly at the understatement.

There was a pause. Patrick was having to adjust his ideas about Lou. She had always seemed so cool and in control, it was hard to imagine her dragged down by a feckless husband, having to scrape and make do.

‘So marrying for money might solve some of your problems?’ he said, trying to lighten the atmosphere, and Lou was glad to follow his lead.

‘Well, I’ve got to admit that I haven’t given it a lot of thought as an option before,’ she said, ‘but I really think it might. In fact, I wonder if marrying you might not be just the thing!’

‘I’m glad you think I might be of some use to you!’

‘When you’re in my position, you can’t afford to be proud,’ said Lou frankly. ‘I’m sick of scraping by and worrying about money the whole time. And I hate not being able to give Grace and Tom the kind of life I want for them.’

‘You said you didn’t want to give them things,’ Patrick reminded her, and she nodded.

‘I don’t. They don’t need things, but they do need more space, for instance. If you saw where we live now…’

She trailed off with a grimace at the thought of the flat. ‘I know we’re better off than some, but it’s a tiny apartment for the three of us. Grace and I have to share a bedroom, and Tom’s is barely more than a cupboard. If you want to have any privacy, you have to go into the bathroom, and even then there’s always one of them banging on the door.’

Lou sighed. ‘It’s so small we all get on top of each other, and that makes everyone scratchy. I’m sure we wouldn’t argue nearly so much if we had more space.’ She cocked her head at him. ‘You’ve got a big house, haven’t you?’

‘I’ve got three.’

‘There you go, then. Plenty of room to spread ourselves. And I bet you don’t have neighbours going through a marital crisis on one side of you, while those on the other put the television on full blast at seven in the morning and don’t turn it off until well after midnight?’

‘I don’t know what state my neighbours’ marriage is in, or what their viewing habits are, but I certainly can’t hear them,’ agreed Patrick.

‘I didn’t think so. And you probably don’t have people upstairs either?’

‘No, I’ve got the whole house to myself.’

Lou sighed enviously. ‘Our neighbours upstairs are perfectly nice, but every footstep reverberates through the ceiling, and we can hear almost everything they say above a whisper.’

‘It sounds as if marrying me would certainly improve your accommodation prospects,’ said Patrick dryly.

‘Oh, don’t worry, I’d want your money too.’ Lou waved a piece of bread at him gaily. ‘Not millions, just enough to be able to do the kind of things I could have done for them if Lawrie had stayed and we hadn’t lost the house. I’d love to be in a position where I could encourage their interests, give them a chance to develop their talents, open their eyes to how other people live…’

She trailed off wistfully. ‘I’d really like to be able to take them abroad for a holiday one year. Grace has friends whose father took them to the States last summer. They had a week in Florida, and a week in New York, where they stayed in some swish apartment and got taken round the Statue of Liberty in a private speedboat. Grace was so jealous, she could hardly speak to Alice and Harriet when they got back. I know she’d love a holiday like that, but all I can afford is to take them to see my aunt in the Yorkshire Dales. It’s not that exciting for a fourteen-year-old.’

It didn’t sound that exciting to a forty-eight-year-old either, thought Patrick, and then sucked in an exasperated breath as he saw the waiters bearing down on them once more with their main courses. They had to go through the whole rigmarole as before, both waiters hovering sycophantically around Lou and vying to top up her glass or express the hope that she would enjoy her meal.

And Lou just sat there, encouraging them with that smile of hers.

Patrick watched them grovel off at last with a disgruntled expression. ‘If things are that tight, wouldn’t it be cheaper for you to move out of London?’

‘Yes, I often think that,’ said Lou as she picked up her knife and fork. ‘It’s the rent that’s so expensive anywhere within commuting distance of London. I’d love to live in the country, and I’m sure I could get some kind of job, although it’s not easy starting in a new place when you’re over forty.’

‘So why don’t you do it?’

‘Because the kids would hate it. They’re both settled at a good school in the centre of London. London’s all they’ve ever known, so they’re real metropolitans now. It’s bad enough taking them to the Dales for a week. They just droop around and say that they’re bored. Tom’s not too bad when you get him up and out, but Grace pines for her friends.’

‘You can’t arrange your whole life around your children,’ said Patrick, looking down his nose disapprovingly.

Lou put down her knife and fork and looked at him in wonder at his lack of understanding. ‘But that’s exactly what you have to do,’ she corrected him. ‘That’s the thing about having children. They always come first.

‘And the fact is that Grace and Tom would be miserable living in the country now,’ she went on, picking up her cutlery once more so that she could tuck into her meal. ‘All their friends are in London. That’s their home. They’re used to taking the tube and jumping on and off buses.

‘No,’ she said with mock resolution. ‘It’s a choice between marrying you or winning the lottery.’

Patrick was enjoying Lou’s novel approach. Not that he had any real intention of getting married, but at least her frankness about his money made a change from tears and protestations of love and tedious conversations about why he wasn’t prepared to commit.

‘Let’s just say for the sake of argument that I did marry you,’ he said. ‘How would it work?’

‘It would be a meeting of our two fantasies,’ said Lou, warming to the idea. ‘We wouldn’t have to pretend to be in love or any of that nonsense. I’d do the dutiful-wife act. I’d run your house, turn up for business dos and remind you to ring your mother, but other than that you’d hardly know I was there. You could chase girls all you liked and I wouldn’t be the slightest bit jealous. I’d just wave you off, tell you to have a nice time and remind you to leave me your credit card!’

She laughed at the absurdity of the idea. Honestly, she must have had far too much to drink, but she was at the merry stage where she couldn’t bring herself to care.

Patrick was having a bit of trouble disentangling the fantasies they had discussed from the one they definitely hadn’t. Clearly, Lou wasn’t talking about the one with the stockings, anyway. He’d certainly know she was there in that one.

With an effort he remembered what she had told him about her fantasy. Something about having someone to talk to, wasn’t it? Nothing about stockings, that was for sure.

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