“Does that mean you’ve already decided what it is you want to do?”

He looked at her levelly, his gray eyes fixed on her. “I want a son,” he stated. “I would prefer not to marry, but since I need to protect my parental rights, I’m prepared to make a temporary marriage. You have reasons, too, for wanting a marriage certificate. A brief marriage to each other would, I believe, suit us both.”

Elexa swallowed. There it was. Noah Peverelle had just offered to marry her. She wasn’t ready to say yes, she knew she wasn’t. “You mentioned giving me time to think everything through.…”

He was already getting to his feet, prepared to leave, when he asked, “If there’s nothing further you want to know?”

“I wouldn’t have to live with you?” she blurted out.

To her astonishment, he stated, “Beautiful though you undoubtedly are, Elexa, I’d prefer that you didn’t.”

To have and to hold…

Their marriage was meant to last—and they have the gold rings to prove it!

To love and to cherish…

But what happens when their promise to love, honor and cherish is put to the test?

From this day forward…

Emotions run high as husbands and wives discover how precious—and fragile—their wedding vows are…. Will true love keep them together—forever?

Marriages meant to last!

Part-Time Marriage
Jessica Steele

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER ONE

THERE were too many complications in her life! Elexa’s mood to complete the work she’d brought home was sorely shattered as she stared at the phone after her mother’s call and felt on the brink of doing something drastic.

Life should have been something of a breeze, and would be, were it not for her ‘family’ and, to a lesser degree, ‘men’, well-meaning in the main though they meant to be—only she wished that they wouldn’t.

Why couldn’t they see that she was happy and contented with her lot? She had an excellent job with Colman and Fisher, a name well known in the marketing world, and at twenty-five she was already a team leader in the market planning division, with every chance of going higher. So who needed a boyfriend, a lover, a husband?

Jamie Hodges was forever hoping to fill the position of her steady boyfriend. She was running out of excuses not to go out with him. With Des Reynolds she hadn’t bothered making excuses when, in his sexiest voice, he’d suggested that one night with him and she’d never be the same again. ‘In your dreams!’ she’d told him bluntly—but that hadn’t stopped him.

But although she found both men’s persistence wearing, it was her mother’s dogged insistence that at ‘her age’ she should by now be ‘settled’ that was the most wearing of all.

‘I am settled!’ she’d attempted to get through to her mother. ‘I’ve got a good job, a job I love. A job with endless opportunities for promo—’

‘I’m not talking that kind of settled,’ her mother had interrupted.

Elexa knew exactly what kind of settled her mother meant. Married, nice house in the country, children—particularly children; even before her cousin Joanna had produced an offspring Elexa’s mother had been desperate to become a grandmother. Since the arrival of baby Betsy, Kaye Aston had been ten times worse. Elexa had tried explaining matters to her, explaining how she already had her own home. So, okay, it was a flat and not a house, and it was in London and not in the country, but, given that she rented her flat, she had made it her own. She had tried explaining that she was enjoying her career too much to even want to think of marriage, much less settle down to that state.

The result of this heart-to-heart had been that, ignoring the possibility that any daughter of hers—even as academically bright as her daughter had shown herself to be—could be so totally dedicated to a career, her mother had grown terribly anxious and was now certain that Elexa must have suffered some extremely painful experience. An experience which she had kept quiet about, but which must have put her off men. Kaye Aston had refused to believe otherwise and had since taken to introducing Elexa to ‘gentle’ men—who invariably turned out to be ‘drippy’ men!

Elexa had moved from her old home and into her present flat a few years ago. But, apart from some family gathering or other—more frequent of late—she was expected to return and visit her parents on average every three weeks. Because she loved her parents, Elexa willingly complied, and had been happy to do so.

But that had been then, before her cousin Joanna had firstly become engaged and subsequently had married; that Elexa’s younger cousin had married first had not gone down well. Kaye Aston had not lost the opportunity to tell Elexa of her disappointment, and since Joanna and David had produced baby Betsy Elexa’s mother seemed to have only one topic of conversation.

Elexa had started to dread her mother’s phone calls. But she had begun to dread even more her once-every-three-weeks visits to her old home, never knowing what man it would be this time. Where her mother found them from was a mystery to Elexa—she must have her scouts out searching!

Kaye Aston’s phone call just now had been to remind her, at length, that it was baby Betsy’s christening this coming Sunday. ‘You remember Thomas Fielding?’ her mother had asked. ‘Now isn’t it kind?’ she’d rushed on. ‘Joanna has invited him to the party afterwards.’

Tommy Fielding was a man Elexa had known for years, a man who was about the same age as herself and was another ‘gentle’ soul. No need to ask why her mother had wangled an invitation for him. Worse, Elexa saw Aunt Celia’s hand in this. Aunt Celia, one of her mother’s two sisters, was Joanna’s mother. Quite clearly Aunt Celia had been roped in to cajole Joanna into issuing the invitation. Which, in turn, Elexa suddenly realised, must mean that Joanna as well as Aunt Celia had joined in the ‘Let’s get Elexa married’ campaign.

Feeling at her wits’ end, Elexa knew all too well that to try again to explain that she had not endured any painful experience would be like banging her head against a brick wall. Countless were the times she had tried to get through that she found her work far more interesting than any man she had come across. She had lost count of the times she had explained that she just did not want to be married, and that she had no desire to leave her well-paid career to set up home with some gentle soul like Tommy Fielding who, nice, sweet as he was—as they all were—would want her to play ‘wife’, and would be unbearably hurt to discover that she had a career she preferred to staying home and playing house.

Suddenly, and as abruptly, Elexa all at once knew she had had enough. She was aware that her mother worried about her, but, feeling backed into a corner with no way out, Elexa just knew she could not take any more of it. She had tried, endlessly tried, explaining to her mother that she was not interested in ‘settling down’, and that her career had priority over everything. What had been the result? Even more pressure, and with back-up forces.

Well, she wasn’t having it. Elexa pushed distraught fingers through her pale gold-lit blonde hair. But what could she do about it? All she craved was a year free of the relentless pressure—there was chance of promotion in the not-too-distant future. She just wanted time to concentrate all her spare energies on that.

She sighed and stared unseeing across the room, and then—perhaps born of utter desperation, but entirely un-bidden—she was suddenly recalling again the conversation she had overheard about a month ago. It had been one lunchtime and she had been waiting for her friend Lois Crosby to join her. Lois was always late.

She and Lois were meeting to have lunch at the Montgomery, and, as busy as Elexa always was, she had been first there. The head waiter had led her to a series of sectioned-off booths, designed so that business people could lunch in the smart restaurant and be able to converse in relative privacy to discuss their business.

Elexa sometimes entertained clients at the Montgomery and, her name—or possibly her face—recognised, she had been left with a menu and the drink she had ordered to wait for her guest.

She’d had her back to the adjoining booth, but whatever she had been thinking about—either work, or Lois and, it was not unlikely, family pressures—had gone from her head when she had become aware that the previous lone occupant of the booth behind had company.

‘Noah!’ greeted one.

‘Marcus,’ answered the other.

She guessed they had shaken hands, and glanced to the large mirror facing her and saw reflected that a tallish fair-haired man had risen to greet a taller dark-haired man. They were both somewhere in their middle thirties, both immaculately suited, and businessmen. They exchanged a few comments with two distinct voices, one low and well modulated, the other lighter. Then they were sitting down out of her view—but not out of her hearing.

‘We don’t seem to have seen anything of you in the two years since you became international chairman.’ That was the lighter voice—Marcus’s voice, she thought.

‘I hear you’re doing well at Stanton’s.’ Noah? Noah obviously felt no need to boast about being international chairman, but was interested to hear how his lunch companion was getting on.

‘Not without cost,’ Marcus replied.

Silence—maybe they were studying menus. ‘What cost would that be?’ Noah asked idly.

‘Family. I hardly ever see my children,’ Marcus stated.

Elexa supposed she must have nipped out of their conversation to occupy herself with her own thoughts for a while, because when she had next become aware of their conversation she had been able to gather that they were obviously good friends who hadn’t seen each other in an age and were still catching up, with Marcus accusing Noah of being the same old workaholic.

‘Not without cost.’ She heard Noah bounce back the same phrase Marcus had used earlier.

‘How so?’

She guessed at that point that Noah must have given a shrug or something of the sort. There had been a pause anyway for a few moments, before, ‘There’s a price you pay for everything, Marcus,’ he said. ‘With me it’s not having time to have a family.’

‘You want a family?’ Marcus sounded incredulous. ‘You want a wife and—’

‘I don’t particularly want a wife,’ Noah cut him off. ‘In fact, to be frank, a wife is an appendage I can well do without.’ A pause, then, ‘Though I have been wondering just lately what it is I’m striving for.’

‘You can’t get much higher than international chairman.’

There was a second or two’s silence, and she visualised Noah giving another shrug. Then he was saying, ‘Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy my work, the challenges it brings day to day. But…’

‘But something’s lacking?’ Marcus put in.

There was a short silence, then Noah was saying something about having been taking stock, something about more to life than being successful in business, and admitting, ‘A son. I’ve been thinking for a month or two now that I would quite like to have a son.’

‘You, with children?’ Marcus seemed surprised.

‘One would be sufficient.’

‘I thought you were a confirmed bachelor?’

‘I am, but I’d be prepared to give up that status—briefly,’ he qualified.

This time it was Marcus who paused. ‘You never cease to amaze me, Noah! At university you were always able to think on a different planet from the rest of us.’ Elexa heard a smile in Marcus’s voice. ‘Now you want a part-time wife!’

‘I don’t want a wife at all!’ Noah put him straight without delay. ‘But to have a son I’d have to get temporarily tied to some woman.’ Marcus made some kind of ribbing statement, then Noah was proclaiming, ‘Find me a woman who’s willing to marry, produce and then divorce, and I might think about it.’

‘You’re serious?’ Marcus wanted to know. ‘You think she exists—this woman who’s going to produce your heir and then cheerfully disappear?’

‘I’ve neither space for emotional entanglements nor time to go hunting,’ Noah answered.

‘You’re still constantly on the move?’

Elexa guessed Noah had given some affirmative kind of nod, for he was then going on, ‘According to my work schedule I land round about three years next Palm Sunday.’ There was the sound of male laughter.

Then Marcus was suggesting, ‘Why not sort a temporary wife out from your own stable?’

Like some brood mare! Elexa was not amused.

But apparently the up-to-his-eyes-in-work Noah knew quite a number of willing females. He admitted as much when he answered, ‘You’ve met some of them. Can you honestly see any of them being content to present me with Peverelle junior and then, regardless of any financial settlement we agreed in advance, going quietly?’

‘Whooh! Very shaky ground,’ Marcus conceded, but at that point, glancing in the huge mirror in front, Elexa saw that her friend had arrived and was being directed her way.

Elexa might not have given the overheard conversation another moment’s thought—after all she knew neither of the men. But her friend Lois had—at least she knew one of them. Tall and attractive, she obviously recognised one of the men in the adjoining booth, and paused in passing.

‘Bon appetit, Marcus,’ she greeted with the grin of an old friend.

Marcus was already on his feet. ‘You still slaying them at that financial institution?’ he enquired, kissing her cheek, referring to the finance house she worked for.

‘Earning a crust,’ she acknowledged, the outfit she was wearing suggesting it was a well-buttered crust.

‘You don’t know Noah Peverelle?’

The tall dark-haired man was on his feet too, and Elexa took more note of this man who wanted a son but didn’t want a wife. She quickly dropped her gaze, however, when, having replied to his friend’s introduction, Noah Peverelle seemed to become aware that someone was watching him. Fleetingly, before she looked down, her large brown eyes made contact with a pair of grey eyes.

Then Lois was joining her, apologising profusely for being late, explaining that she hadn’t been able to get away from her client. ‘Don’t give it another thought,’ Elexa excused her, but, aware how easily she had overheard the conversation in the next booth, for all neither man had been speaking loudly, she was careful to keep her chat with Lois light.

The two men were the first to leave. ‘How’s your mother?’ Lois was asking. ‘Still trying to get you married off?’

‘You’re about the only one I know who isn’t trying,’ Elexa replied, her thoughts on her aunt Celia and her cousin.

‘Ah, but I’ve been there, done that—and wouldn’t recommend it,’ Lois answered, newly divorced and happy to be out of a bad marriage.

‘Er—who’s Marcus?’ Elexa asked. She and Lois had been at school together and could ask each other anything—and Lois, either through her personality or her work, seemed to know practically everybody.

‘Marcus—as in Marcus just now, having lunch with no less a personage than Noah Peverelle?’

‘You know Noah Peverelle too?’

‘Until today had never met him. But knew of his reputation,’ Lois answered, speaking in the shorthand of old friends. ‘He’s the big noise over at the Samara Group—you know them; they’re that international communications company, they’ve offshoots all over the place.’

Elexa had never got to hear more about Marcus, because a cursory glance at her watch had made her exclaim in a hurry, ‘I’ve got to dash! I’ve a meeting I’m going to be late for if I don’t get my skates on.’

She had seen Lois since. They had shopped together a couple of weeks ago, and had lunch together only last week. But neither the name of Marcus, whoever he was, or Noah Peverelle had come up again. Though Elexa had thought of that overheard conversation quite a number of times.

She had equally dismissed the overheard conversation too as being the sort of thing you said to a friend you knew well without being expected to be taken seriously.

But now, after her mother’s latest phone call, pushed into a seemingly no-way-out kind of corner, and with the prospect hanging over her of Tommy Fielding—and after him, without a doubt, someone else, and so on ad infinitum—Elexa just had to wonder, had Noah Peverelle been serious? On thinking about it, she felt that he had sounded serious, deadly serious. But…

It was absurd! She’d never have the nerve—her stomach started to churn at the very idea. Elexa attempted to dismiss the notion. But the pressure was on, that pressure strengthening, and, short of caving in and taking on one of her mother’s ‘nice’ types, what was a career minded executive to do?

She had tried the heart-to-heart with her mother—it had only made matters worse. She knew that her mother worried about her—she was a natural born worrier. In fact Elexa’s father had often said that if her mother didn’t have anything to worry about she would invent something. But this roping in Joanna, along with Aunt Celia, was going too far.

Yes, but to contemplate marrying some stranger, having his baby and then divorcing just to get her well-meaning relatives off her back, was a bit desperate, wasn’t it?

But the situation was desperate! On impulse Elexa picked up the phone and dialled her friend Lois’s number. It was ridiculous, Elexa decided, before the number had started ringing out.

So why didn’t she put down the phone? Gentle, nice Tommy Fielding and a string of others like him, that was why, Elexa answered her own question. And there was that prospect of promotion she should be concentrating on—instead of evading her mother’s water-wearing-away-stone tactics.

‘Elexa!’ Lois exclaimed when she heard her voice. ‘I was just thinking about you and wondering if you fancy doing anything at the weekend.’

‘It’s the christening this weekend,’ Elexa reminded her friend. Lois had often stayed weekends in Elexa’s home when they had been schoolgirls, and knew all of Elexa’s family.

‘Joanna’s sprog?’

‘She’s rather cute,’ Elexa replied—and brought herself up short. Good heavens, where had that come from? She wasn’t getting all mumsie, was she? Just because she had been toying with some far-fetched idea of having a baby, she wasn’t going all broody, was she? ‘Er—I need a favour,’ she said quickly.

‘If it’s in my power, it’s yours,’ Lois answered without hesitation.

‘You don’t know what it is yet,’ Elexa laughed. But even as she laughed, she knew that she was delaying asking the question because she didn’t want to ask it. It was as if, once asked, it would commit her to carrying through her only half-thought-out plan.

‘If I know you, it won’t be anything too diabolical. Give?’ Lois requested.

‘I—er…’ Lois was her oldest and most trusted friend, Elexa reminded herself. ‘I—um—need Noah Peverelle’s private number,’ she plunged. ‘And I can’t tell you why,’ she added hastily.

There followed a small silence. ‘Intriguing,’ Lois ruminated. ‘But,’ she added after a moment, ‘I don’t know it. I only ever met him that one time. Uh!’ she exclaimed. ‘You know that I know a man who may know it, right?’

‘Marcus and Noah Peverelle are great friends,’ Elexa volunteered.

‘You sound as if you know them both very well,’ Lois opined.

‘I don’t,’ Elexa had to confess. ‘Is there a chance you could ask Marcus without telling him why you need Noah’s number?’

‘If they’re such good friends, Marcus Dean isn’t going to tell me without wanting to know why,’ Lois commented. ‘Hang on, though. Ginny Dean owes me a favour! I’ll ring Marcus’s wife and get back to you.’

Elexa put down her phone after her call, wondering what she had done. She had involved Lois in something which Elexa wasn’t certain she was going to take any further anyway.

Though, in thinking about it more deeply, more logically, instead of panicking that family pressures had become too intense past bearing, she suddenly realised that, while her career was all-important, yes, there was every probability that she would at some stage rather like to have a child.

It shook Elexa a little that she had child-bearing instincts. It was something she had never considered before. But, in delving more deeply, she recalled how, when Joanna had given her the baby to hold one time, she had been more than happy to nurse the sweet, sleeping infant in her arms.

For a few minutes Elexa lived with the discovery that she was no different from most other women—and that she did have the same maternal instincts. Then she gave herself a mental shaking—that still didn’t mean that she wanted a husband. She most definitely did not. In her view they were vastly overrated.

Noah Peverelle wouldn’t be your normal run-of-the-mill husband, though. For a start it sounded, with his talk of according to his work schedule he’d land round about three years next Palm Sunday, as if he wouldn’t be around much anyway. Not that she had any intention of living with the man. And in any case, in three years’ time she would be married and divorced from him. Not that she wanted to marry the man in the first place, but…

Elexa abruptly cut off her thoughts mid-stream. Good grief, woman, don’t start making plans. You haven’t so much as got his phone number yet, much less plucked up the courage it will take to suggest what you have to suggest. But—she was still feeling quite desperate, and desperate problems called for desperate solutions.

But what if Noah Peverelle hadn’t been serious anyway? What kind of a fool would that make her look? What…? Elexa was just building up a fine head of steam against Noah Peverelle for daring to make her feel a fool when the phone rang.

She grabbed at it. But it wasn’t Lois; it was her mother. It couldn’t have been an hour ago that they had last spoken! It must be important. It was—to her mother. ‘I forgot to ask. What are you going to wear on Sunday?’

‘Wear?’ Elexa repeated in surprise. ‘Does it matter?’

‘Of course it matters. You’ll want to look your best when Tommy Fielding sees you again. I don’t want you turning up in those old trousers you were wearing when Timothy Stowe popped round the other Sunday.’

Popped round! As Elexa recalled it—and she had been wearing a pair of fairly new trousers at the time—Timothy Stowe had been especially invited to ‘pop’ in to see her father’s stamp collection, and to stay to tea. But Elexa knew from past experience that it would do no good to remind her mother of this. Timothy, Tommy—she’d probably got a Tarquin all lined up ready, should Tommy Fielding fail to thaw her annoying daughter’s stony heart.

‘I’ll make sure to wear something smart,’ Elexa replied finally, feeling too worn down by the constant attempts at coercion to want an argument with her parent.

‘Good,’ her mother replied, and rang off—no doubt, Elexa assumed, to do more scheming in the I’ll-get-my-daughter-to-the-church-if-it’s-the-last-thing-I-do stakes.

A minute later, however, and the phone rang again, and this time it was Lois. ‘I’ve perjured my soul to get this for you,’ Lois began. ‘Have you got a pen handy?’

Elexa took down the number her good friend read out to her, and repeated it back, and then said gratefully, ‘I truly appreciate it, Lois.’

‘What are friends for? Though you’ll have to tell me why you want it as soon as you can. My imagination is running riot, trying to guess what’s going on!’

Elexa said goodbye to her, knowing that not even in her wildest imaginings would Lois ever guess at the truth of what was going on. That was, Elexa mused, beginning to feel hot all over at the thought of what she was contemplating, if she ever found enough nerve to call that number.

She did call it though, a half-hour later when she was heartily fed up with her dithering. For goodness’ sake, the man hadn’t space for emotional entanglements—well, neither had she! With her throat dry, her hands shaking, she picked up the phone and pressed out Noah Peverelle’s number, and consequently didn’t know whether she felt frustrated or relieved when he wasn’t home.

He really was as busy as he’d intimated, she had to conclude when over the next couple of days she tried his number again with the same result. He was never home.

By Sunday morning it had become something of a fixture in her mind that she would keep ringing his number until he did answer. By then she knew his number off by heart and, just before she left her flat to drive to her parents’ home in Berkshire, she stabbed out the digits again.

‘Peverelle,’ said a voice she knew—and Elexa only just managed to hold down a squeak of alarm.

It was him! He! ‘Hello!’ she managed, the whole idea of what she was about all at once seeming not only crazy but totally preposterous. Yet, as she recalled that her mother had again phoned her last night to ask her to be ‘warm’ to Tommy Fielding, Elexa saw that if she could manage to spit the rest of her rehearsed speech out, she might see in front of her time free of pressure—leaving her the space she craved to be left in peace to get on with her career. ‘You don’t know me—’ She pushed herself to go on, but just couldn’t get any further. It was preposterous! It was…

‘Do you have a name?’ Noah Peverelle asked shortly. Elexa made a face—charm school had obviously been wasted on him. But for the moment she preferred to stay anonymous.

‘The thing is,’ she asserted herself to begin briskly, ‘that you would like a s-son, and I need a h-husband tem…’ Temporarily, she would have said, had he given her the chance.

‘Who the hell are you?’ Peverelle demanded curtly.

‘No one you know. We—’

‘Where did you get hold of that sort of erroneous information?’ he challenged sharply. ‘Are you press?’

‘No, I’m not!’ she erupted, unsure if she was glad or sorry that her information was erroneous. Though, hang on—it wasn’t erroneous. She had heard it herself from him with her very own ears. Abruptly then she realised that if he believed her to be from the newspapers he would automatically deny he had said any such thing, wouldn’t he? ‘We have a mutual friend, sort of,’ she hurried on.

‘Who?’ he rapped.

Don’t beat about the bush, come straight to the point, why don’t you? ‘That’s not important just now.’

‘So—what is important?’

‘You sounded much more pleasant the last time I heard you talking,’ Elexa said without thinking.

‘I’ve had a hard week!’ he rapped again, clearly taking in his stride that she, somewhere before, and at some time, had heard his voice. ‘What are you after?’

‘Nothing—other than…’

‘A husband, in return for a son—and a meal ticket for the rest of your life, no doubt,’ he snarled.

He thought she was after his wealth! Shocked, Elexa was speechless for endless seconds. Then, furious with him, with herself, ‘When I’m that hard-up I’ll let you know!’ she hissed, and fairly threw the phone back on its rest. That anyone could accuse her of such a thing as marrying for money was something she had simply not considered.

To think she had seriously, for even half a moment, thought of tying herself up with that suspicious swine! She had money of her own without wanting any of his, thank you very much. Her parents were quite well off, as too had been her grandparents. They had left her a substantial sum of money, sufficient anyway for her to be able to live comfortably without the need to touch her not inconsiderable salary. Had he been mixing with the wrong sort of woman? Suspicious devil!

Elexa was still fuming a minute later when her phone rang for attention. She gave a hefty sigh of despair. She would be seeing her mother quite soon now; she did not really need another call from her with yet more instructions on how she should behave with Tommy Fielding.

But, unable to give in to her mother and ‘marry and settle down’, Elexa tried in other ways to be dutiful and respectful, and went to answer the phone, hoping that her parent would make it brief.

‘Hello,’ she said, and was shaken rigid to hear the voice of the man upon whom she had just slammed the receiver down.

‘So what’s with the proposition?’ he said toughly.

Proposition! He thought, Mr Clever, dial one-four-seven-one to get his last caller’s number—so much for wanting to remain anonymous—that she was propositioning him! ‘Forget it!’ she snapped furiously. ‘I’d sooner marry a man-eating shark!’ With that she slammed the phone down on him for a second time. If it rang again, mother or no mother, she just wasn’t answering it.

The christening went off beautifully, with baby Betsy being little short of angelic. Aunts and uncles, nephews and nieces were all assembled, all female members queuing up to cuddle the tiny bundle.

She really was a sweetheart, Elexa mused, feeling all sort of squashy inside when her turn came to hold and croon to the gorgeous cherub. Glancing up, though, she saw her mother watching her, and hated that she was made to feel guilty for denying her grandparental status.

Joanna came up to her. ‘She’ll want changing, I expect. Shall I have her?’ the proud mum asked, and as she came closer to take the baby from Elexa she said, ‘Sorry about Tommy. I couldn’t say no without offending your mother,’ she apologised for inviting the man who, while for a brief moment absent, had otherwise been sticking like glue to Elexa’s side ever since he’d arrived.

‘Don’t worry about it. He’s—er—nice.’

‘Nice,’ Joanna mouthed silently, and they exchanged cousinly grins. But as Elexa gave the baby up to her, Joanna warned, ‘I saw Aunt Kaye nailing Rory a little while ago—I shouldn’t be at all surprised to see Tommy Fielding at cousin Rory’s wedding in a couple of months’ time.’

‘Oh, grief,’ Elexa groaned.

‘Shall I get you some christening cake?’ Tommy hovered the moment Joanna had gone.

‘I’ve had some, Tommy, thanks,’ Elexa answered, fast running out of innocent topics of conversation—she had a feeling Tommy would be asking her for a date before the afternoon was over—it would be less embarrassing for them both if she could head him off.

She thought she had been successful when, as the party started to break up, and at her mother’s instigation, she went down the front garden path with Tommy to his car. But only to find that she hadn’t been as successful as she’d believed.

‘Come out with me tonight?’ Tommy blurted out the moment they were alone, every bit as though he had bottled it up all afternoon and somebody had just let the cork out.

‘I—er…’ Elexa tried hard for some gentle way to say no, and then to her own incredulity—and his, ‘I can’t, Tommy. I’m dating someone,’ she heard herself say. And, fearing Tommy would press her further, she found she was adding, ‘Long term.’ And to her further amazement, and quite without her bidding, a picture came into her head of tall, dark-haired Noah Peverelle, standing the way he had been at the Montgomery that day.

‘But—your mother…’ Tommy was arguing, astounded.

Elexa gave herself a mental shake and banished that sharp, snarling brute—he had actually accused her of propositioning him!—out of her head.

‘Um—my mother doesn’t know.’ She smiled at Tommy.

Only the very next morning she learned that Tommy Fielding wasn’t as nice as everyone thought him. He’d sneaked on her. She found that out when at six o’clock her mother phoned her.

Thinking it must surely be an emergency for anyone to get her out of bed this early, Elexa dashed to the phone when it rang, only to hear her mother’s voice, full of sweetness and pleasantness exclaiming, ‘I know how you don’t like phone calls at work, so I thought I’d get you before you started your day.’

Her mother was quite plainly in fine form. ‘Is Dad all right?’ Elexa asked swiftly.

‘He’s still in bed—old lazy bones. Now, what’s this I hear about you going steady with someone? I rang Tommy Fielding late last night, and he—’

‘Mother!’ At six o’clock in the morning! Was there to be no rest from it?

‘I didn’t ring you last night because Tommy said you were seeing your steady boyfriend.’ Elexa was astonished her mother had waited this long! ‘Now, tell me, what’s his name and where you met him? And why on earth didn’t you tell me?’

There wasn’t a name, she hadn’t met him, and there was nothing to tell—and Elexa felt very much like murdering Tommy Fielding. ‘It’s—er—all rather new.’ She was lying, to her mother! Elexa could barely take in that she had been worn down to such an extent. ‘Mother,’ she began, ‘I didn’t tell you because…’ There’s nothing to tell, she would have said, given half a chance.

But her mother was butting in angrily before she could finish. ‘You’re not living with him, I hope?’ she questioned frostily.

‘Would I dare?’

‘Don’t take that tone with me, young lady!’ Kaye Aston, regardless of her daughter’s executive, self-supporting position, ordered sharply. ‘Your father and I have brought you up with strict moral values. I’m not having any daughter of mine…’

‘Don’t worry, I’m not living with him,’ Elexa mollified her outraged parent, and just couldn’t believe that as the phone call ended, with her mother saying that she wanted to meet ‘him’ sooner rather than later, she had let her go without confessing that she had lied to Tommy and that there was no long-term boyfriend.

Elexa was glad that her job called for a high degree of concentration. But thoughts of the yet more pressure she would have earned herself from her mother tried to constantly get through. She would have to confess her lie, reluctant though she was to do so—she had a fairly certain idea that her mother would be on the phone the instant she arrived back at her flat that night, wanting a long cosy chat about ‘him’.

A picture of Noah Peverelle shot into her head. Oh, clear off! She must have been mad to have telephoned him—but he hadn’t sounded so unpleasant when she had overheard him in the Montgomery. True, he had been with a trusted friend. Goodbye, bad idea.

Elexa got on with her day, getting the best out of her team and spending time communicating with clients, solving problems as and when they arose. She was late leaving her office, and drove home wondering how, when she was said to have excellent judgement in the market planning division and to be little short of fantastic when it came to planning, it seemed she didn’t appear to have one solitary skill when it came to solving her own problems.

She let herself into her apartment and went over to the phone and punched one-four-seven-one; her mother had phoned ten minutes ago.

Elexa made herself a cup of coffee, anticipating that at any moment now she would be summoned to the phone.

It was not the phone that rang for her attention, however, but, while she was mid-rehearsal with the best way to confess that there was no ‘steady’ man-friend, the outer door buzzer sounded.

She wasn’t expecting anyone to call, but went to the intercom in the hall. ‘Who is it?’ she asked lightly, and nearly dropped dead with shock.

‘Noah Peverelle,’ answered a cool, not-at-all-friendly-sounding voice.

No! Brain-stunned, Elexa couldn’t think for several seconds. Then, reeling from so unexpectedly hearing what she had just heard, and with thoughts of how in creation he had managed to find her—let alone why had he bothered to find her—Elexa made a tremendous effort to get herself together.

He was waiting for her to let him in. He had said his name, dropped his bombshell, and had nothing more he wanted to say apparently—until they were standing face to face.

She swallowed hard on a suddenly desert dry throat. ‘You’d—better come up,’ she invited—she had no option—and pressed the button to unlatch the downstairs front door, and wished more than she had wished anything in her life that she had never made that phone call to him yesterday.

But phoned him she had, and it was too late now for wishing—Noah Peverelle was on his way up to see her, and must have gone to quite some trouble to find her!

CHAPTER TWO

ELEXA was still gasping, still striving to hold down panic, when the man she had two minutes before decided she did not want to see after all rang the doorbell to her flat, announcing that he was right outside.

She gulped for air, her usual smart intelligence deserting her as she sought for some ‘I’m sorry I bothered you, I shouldn’t have, goodbye’ kind of comment. She was certain he would ring her doorbell again if she did not soon dash to open the door. But he did not. He was controlled, this man, this stranger—heaven help us, had she really, truly, suggested to him that they made a baby together?

Elexa felt scarlet all over when, knowing that she couldn’t stand there dithering all night, she went to the door, her sophisticated image fast starting to slip. Dressed in a smart two-piece—calf-length skirt and boxy top of sage-green—and with her long blonde gold-lit hair brushing her shoulders, she pulled back the door. But any phrase she might have been able to utter was lost when, before he stepped over her threshold, ‘Alexandra Aston?’ he enquired.

‘My friends call me Elexa,’ she answered, and felt stupid because she had. This man, this stern looking man, this steely, grey-eyed man was not her friend and was never likely to be. ‘Er—you’d better come in,’ she invited.

She led the way into her sitting-room. She didn’t remember him being so stern looking. True, he hadn’t actually been smiling when she’d seen his reflection in that mirror, but neither had he been scowling.

‘Can I get you something?’ Politeness of years pushed her on. ‘A drink, a…?’ Abruptly, she halted. ‘How did you find me?’ she changed tack to ask sharply.

‘It wasn’t difficult.’

He was tall. She was five feet nine herself and didn’t like having to look up to him. ‘Would you like to take a seat?’

He moved over to her sofa but did not sit down until she had taken the chair opposite. She saw his glance flick round her elegantly furnished room, and cancelled any top marks she might have given him for manners because of it. No doubt he was totting up her furnishings—along with the rental of her flat in the not unsmart apartment block—and assessing how much she would need for the upkeep of both.

‘Without my job—which pays very well—I have private means,’ she told him irately.

‘Falling before you’re pushed?’ he queried—and she hated him, hated that she felt her lips twitch. She had rather jumped in there with both feet, hadn’t she? She didn’t smile, of course. Why should she? He was looking as grim-faced as ever. ‘I’m aware of your financial circumstances,’ he informed her coolly.

‘You’ve had me investigated?’ Elexa went shooting away from holding down a laugh to being outraged. ‘How dare—?’

‘You proposed yourself to be the mother of my child—did you think I wouldn’t have you investigated?’ He was actually considering the proposition? Her brown eyes widened as she stared thunderstruck at him. ‘Are you always this cantankerous?’ he enquired mildly, his all-seeing grey eyes steady on her.

Elexa took a deep breath. She was feeling less panicky than she had, but was still feeling very shaken. ‘I’m nervous.’ She opted for honesty. ‘Your call, you coming here tonight, was, well, unexpected to say the least.’

‘You mean you wouldn’t have slammed the phone down on me a third time had I telephoned first?’

‘You had no intention of phoning first—you wanted to catch me unaware, with my defences down,’ she accused.

He neither agreed nor denied it, but instead, his serious grey eyes fixed on her eyes, he questioned toughly, ‘Why is it so important for you to be married?’

She wanted to deny it was important at all, then roused herself—she wasn’t having him coming here to her home and acting like some man in charge. ‘Why is it so important to you to have a son?’ she tossed back shortly.

‘Did you miss that part?’

She coloured—he knew it all, didn’t he? ‘So I was eavesdropping. Not that I intended to—’ She broke off. ‘How did you find out—that I’d been listening to your conversation—that day? That it was me?’

He shrugged. ‘Marcus Dean was the only person who knew of my thoughts on having a son.’

‘Mmm,’ Elexa murmured. ‘You remembered where you were when you were discussing it with him?’

‘Marcus wouldn’t discuss it with anyone else,’ Noah Peverelle asserted, with the same confidence that Elexa had that anything she discussed with her friend Lois would go no further. ‘Since the voice that called me yesterday wasn’t the voice of Lois Crosby…’

‘You remembered Lois’s voice?’

‘I knew yesterday’s voice wasn’t hers. Which meant it had to be her brown-eyed companion.’

‘You remembered my eyes?’ she asked incredulously. ‘But it was ages ago—we didn’t even speak!’

‘You obviously didn’t forget me,’ he lobbed back at her. ‘Or, more precisely, my side of the conversation. So tell me why, since it doesn’t appear you’re in any urgent need of money, are you so keen to have a husband?’

‘I’m not!’ Elexa answered bluntly, but not yet ready to go into more detail. ‘So you knew who it was who phoned you, but—’ She broke off again. ‘How did you find out—who I am, was, I mean? Your friend Marcus wouldn’t know me. Ah! You rang Marcus and he rang Lois…’ Her voice trailed off. ‘That can’t be right. Lois would have rung me to say…’

‘I didn’t have to call Marcus. My company does a lot of business with the Montgomery…’

He had no need to continue. ‘You contacted the restaurant and asked who had reserved the booth next to yours that lunchtime.’ Clever swine.

‘None of this is at all important. You’ve just said you’re no longer in urgent need of a husband.’ He looked to be about to leave.

Elexa suddenly realised she had very mixed feelings about that. It seemed a very good idea that he should go and that she should forget that she had started this whole sorry business, but… ‘I never wanted a husband at all,’ she informed him. ‘But I’m being pushed—’ The phone starting to ring cut through what she was saying. She knew it would be her mother—and started to panic again. ‘Can you hang on while I take this call?’ she asked quickly, and didn’t wait to see whether he would or not. Presenting him with her back, she went over to the telephone and picked it up.

‘I was hoping you’d be home from work by now,’ her mother’s voice came briskly down the wires. ‘Now, what’s so dreadful about your man-friend that you couldn’t tell me about him before?’

‘There’s nothing dreadful about him,’ Elexa found herself answering, barely able to believe she was still carrying out this myth that there was someone she was going ‘steady’ with.

‘Then why didn’t you bring him to the christening yesterday?’

‘He’s—uh—busy,’ Elexa replied. What am I doing? ‘He’s a very busy man.’

‘He’s not married! Tell me he’s not married! You wouldn’t go out with a married man. Don’t tell me I’ve reared a daughter who would—’

‘Mother!’ Elexa cut off her tirade. ‘I didn’t bring him because he—um—puts a lot of hours in with his work.’

‘What’s his name? He does have a name?’

Oh, grief. Elexa hadn’t heard any doors closing. If Noah Peverelle was still in earshot—and she couldn’t blame him if he was; she had after all listened in to his conversation—then he would just love it if she gave her mother his name. ‘Can I give you a ring later?’ she asked, and, rushing on before her mother should ask why, ‘He’s—er—here now—um…’

‘He’s there with you now? Why didn’t you say?’

‘I—er…’

‘Ring me before you go to bed tonight,’ her mother instructed firmly. ‘And you’d better bring him to dinner on Saturday.’

Elexa came away from the phone with her head spinning. She turned and saw that Noah Peverelle was still there. ‘Oh, grief,’ she sighed, and collapsed into the nearest chair.

But she was not to be allowed time to get herself back together, it seemed, for straight away Noah Peverelle was bombarding her. ‘Why would you tell your mother anything about me? And don’t deny it was me you were talking about.’

Elexa had just about had enough of him. ‘It didn’t have to be you; any man would have done,’ she snapped, but wearily felt obliged to explain. ‘Yesterday, in order to put somebody off, I invented having a steady boyfriend. He told my mother—she now wants me to bring said steady boyfriend to dinner on Saturday.’

‘You look as fed up as you sound,’ Noah Peverelle observed, and added speculatively, but nonetheless accurately, ‘It’s your mother who wants you to be married, not you, isn’t it?’

Elexa didn’t want to be disloyal to her mother, but somehow, having been driven to this situation by her, she was feeling just a little too worn down just then to mind so much.

‘I don’t need marriage. I’ve got a super job, excellent prospects of promotion—I’m more than happy with my career.’

‘But your mother isn’t?’

Elexa sighed. ‘I’ve tried to explain how it is.’

‘You can’t have tried very hard.’

She felt like hitting him. ‘Much you know! I tried so hard my mother is now convinced that some man has caused me so much pain that I’m off men for good—and that I’m never likely to marry. Now various old friends, and new acquaintances, are invited to my parents’ home when I’m due to make a visit, and to family get-togethers—and I’m instructed to be nice to them.’

‘Yesterday’s offering being the one whom you told you were going steady?’

Elexa looked across at the unsmiling—rather good looking, she realised—dark-haired man occupying her sofa, recognising just how astute he was. It hadn’t taken him any time at all to sort through the situation.

‘It seemed the better way of saving his face when he asked me to go out with him.’ Noah Peverelle gave her a look as if to say the sophisticated image she was trying for had slipped a mile and he had just glimpsed her softer centre. ‘For my sins,’ she went on, not liking that he had observed her softer side, ‘he told my mother I was going steady.’

‘She must have been pleased.’

Sarcastic devil! Again, though, Elexa felt an urge to laugh. Most odd. All this stress must be making her light-headed. ‘My mother phoned me at six this morning wanting to know more about it.’

‘It’s getting you down?’

‘You could say that.’

‘Why not marry one of these men and be done with it?’ Peverelle demanded.

Nothing like being told he’d rather drink burning oil than marry her himself, Elexa thought sniffily. And went on to think, Well, who asked you? But she more or less had. ‘Because they would want to be emotionally involved.’

‘And you don’t?’

‘All I want is time free of my mother being on the phone every five minutes. All I want is to be left alone to get on with the career I love. Don’t get me wrong, I love my family, love my mother dearly, and I’d do anything for her but…’

‘But marry some man on a permanent basis?’

‘That’s about it,’ she had to agree, and looked steadily at the grey-eyed man across from her.

As she stared at Noah Peverelle, so he scrutinised her. She would have dearly liked to have known what was going through his mind, but guessed he would only let her know what he wanted her to know.

But, when she was thinking that he was probably considering he had wasted enough time and was about to leave, he surprised her by asking, ‘How do you feel about children?’

Oh, help, was he really, seriously considering…? Had she seriously proposed what she had to this cold, unsmiling man? She wanted to swallow, but wouldn’t, but, since he seemed such a forthright person, she gave his question serious thought, and answered honestly, ‘Up until the day I heard you talking about having a son, I hadn’t given children a thought—having them, that is. The furtherance of my career is important to me, as I mentioned. But, on thinking about children, I’ve realised that, while marriage has never featured in my plans, ultimately I shouldn’t like to miss out and never have a child.’

She didn’t know what she expected him to say to that. But discovered that he was clearly a most decisive man when, getting to his feet he informed her, ‘I’m away from home for the rest of this week. Presumably your mother isn’t too far away. What time shall I pick you up on Saturday?’

Elexa wasn’t sure her jaw didn’t drop. ‘You’re—you’re coming to dinner with me at my parents’ on Saturday?’ she questioned, only just holding down a gasp of shock. Decisive, had she said?

‘I’m not yet ready to be engaged to you—we need to discuss this more thoroughly first, and I’m already running late for another appointment. But I don’t mind being your “steady” in the meantime.’

‘Don’t do me any favours!’ she snapped huffily.

Noah Peverelle looked arrogantly down at her. ‘We’re in the territory of mutual favours here!’ he rapped.

‘So call for me at six-thirty!’ she flared, and felt as if she’d just been poleaxed when, with nothing more than a curt nod, Noah Peverelle strode from her apartment.

How long she sat there, stunned that Noah Peverelle had actually been inside her flat, had asked her a few short and to the point questions, and had then gone on to keep an appointment, Elexa had no idea.

But slowly, as she got herself into more of one piece, it began to dawn on her that with Peverelle’s talk of mutual favours it rather looked—future discussions going well—as if they could be on the way to him marrying her, and to her giving him the son he wanted.

Oh, heck. Ice encased her southernmost extremities but, knowing that her mother was probably sitting by the phone, waiting for her to ring, this was no time to start getting cold feet. He, Peverelle, when all was said and done, had not been the one to approach her with the idea. Rather it had been she who had made the first approach.

Nevertheless, there were several occasions before Saturday arrived when Elexa came within an ace of contacting Noah Peverelle and telling him to forget the whole idea. Two things were against that, however. One was that he was away from home for the rest of the week—she didn’t think he’d appreciate her phoning his office and leaving any kind of ‘Would-you-tell-Mr-Peverelle-I’ve-decided-not-to-have-his-baby?’ type of message. The very big other was that her mother was so excited about actually meeting her steady boyfriend she was never off the phone.

Worse, having been more or less forced to give her his name, her father too had been on the phone. Was her steady boyfriend the Noah Peverelle? Apparently her businessman father, who daily kept up to date with business news, knew all about what went on in big business, seemed as eager as her mother to meet him.

As, too, did Aunt Celia and Uncle Kenneth want to meet him. Aunt Celia had rung saying how delighted she was to hear her news. ‘We’re not engaged, or anything like that!’ Elexa had told her hurriedly.

‘No, but I know you, you wouldn’t be taking him home to meet your parents unless you were serious about him.’

As far as Elexa could remember, she hadn’t had any choice. Her mother had decreed ‘dinner’ and, while Elexa might have wriggled out of it, the lofty Peverelle—no doubt wanting to see what sort of stock she came from—had agreed, without being asked, to go to her parents’ home with her.

At that point she came close to contacting his office and leaving a message to the effect that Saturday’s arrangements had been cancelled. She objected strongly to him giving her parents the once-over. Though since, on reflection that was what her parents were doing, giving him the once-over to see if he was suitable for their only child, Elexa realised she hadn’t got very much to complain about.

The only relief Elexa found from the tangle her private life seemed to be in was at her office. But even there she wasn’t left in peace to do the job she so loved.

‘I didn’t see you at all yesterday,’ Jamie Hodges interrupted her day to complain.

‘I had several meetings—was it something specific?’ she enquired, feeling pretty certain that she knew what was coming.

‘I’ve got two tickets for the theatre on Saturday. I wondered if you were free?’ he began eagerly.

‘I’m not,’ she replied, and knew she was as soft as Peverelle no doubt thought her because she couldn’t tell Jamie more bluntly that he was wasting his time. She did not have the same problem in telling Des Reynolds to leave her alone, however.

‘How’s the most gorgeous woman ever to grace the portals of Colman and Fisher?’ he leered, perching himself on a corner of her desk.

‘Save it for your wife, Des. I’m up to my ears in—’

‘Very beautiful ears, if I may…’

‘I swear somebody turns a key and winds you up every morning.’ She had to laugh. ‘Clear off, Des, there’s a good lad.’ He went, and she supposed he would probably not change very much even if she did tell him she had a steady boyfriend. Jamie Hodges, now he was a different matter.

Elexa was halfway through rehearsing how she would tell Jamie that she was going out with someone she was going to marry when she stopped dead, her stomach churning. Apart from the fact he was a long way from agreeing yet, how could she contemplate marrying Peverelle? She didn’t even like him! The thought of actually going to bed with the cold unfeeling brute was impossible.

Again Elexa was ready to pick up the phone and leave a message with his office. Her hand actually went to the phone—she pulled it back. Hang on just a minute! Wasn’t that exactly what she wanted—a no-commitment kind of commitment?

By the time she returned to her flat that evening Elexa had been through again and again everything she wanted, and what she was going to have to do to get it. She had heard today the manager’s job that had been rumoured, was definitely going to be announced shortly. It wasn’t a senior manager’s job—that would be some years away—but it was a job she wanted. Without false modesty, Elexa felt she was good enough to get it. She worked now in a high stress area—and loved it. But she knew there would be more pressure attached to the new job; she wouldn’t need any extra in the shape of her family trying to push her into marriage.

So, the answer seemed obvious. Go through a marriage ceremony with Peverelle, get ‘the other business’ over and done with, and get back to what she was good at.

Her phone rang; she jumped. Her mother? Or—him? Why him? Probably because she had thought so frequently of making a phone call to Peverelle. Was he making that phone call to her? How dared he? Feeling slightly miffed—that phone call was her prerogative—she picked up the phone and said a firm, ‘Hello,’ and discovered it wasn’t him at all, but was her mother’s other sister.

‘I’ve only just heard about you and your man-friend,’ her aunt Helen trilled. ‘Now, you’ll be sure to bring him to Rory’s wedding, won’t you? If you’ll give me his address I’ll be sure he gets an invitation.’

‘I—er…’ Oh, Lord. ‘We’ll look forward to it—um—thank you very much, Aunty,’ Elexa replied—what else could she have said? ‘Er—don’t bother with a written invite.’ She hadn’t a clue about Peverelle’s address.

‘You’ll be sure to tell him how welcome he is—how we’re all dying to meet him?’

‘I’ll tell him,’ Elexa assured her, and came off the phone sighing. Heavens above, the way the family were carrying on you’d think that she had never had a boyfriend and that Peverelle was her last chance!

By Saturday morning Elexa had convinced herself that she was taking a right and proper course of action. It was an unusual arrangement, of course. She accepted that. But when all this initial trauma was done and dusted and—subject to her and Peverelle agreeing on everything—then he would have the promise of an heir, and she would have the promise of some space to concentrate on what she so enjoyed: a career without constant family pressure. A year, that was all she craved. To think, in a year’s time, she could have that all-important junior manager’s job! And from there—who knew? The possibilities were limitless.

By six o’clock that evening, however, Elexa was having to firmly remind herself of all the reasons for why she was taking this course of action. When the outer door buzzer sounded a half an hour later she was feeling so all over the place that she could barely remember one good reason.

She saw no point in going to the intercom to ask who was there. It would be Peverelle. She hesitated. What if he had come in person to say he had thought matters over and had decided he neither wanted to act as her ‘steady’ that evening, nor marry her either?

Well, he knew what he could do, she fumed furiously. But her fury was instantly doused when she thought of her mother, her father too, waiting to meet Noah Peverelle. Oh, heavens, she’d never hear the last of it if Peverelle had called in person to tell her ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye’.

Suddenly realising that nerves about this whole business were getting to her, Elexa made herself think more positively. Why would he come to say that he thought it a rotten idea? If they went through with it he would be getting the son he wanted. He must know by now that if he wanted some woman who wasn’t out to take him to the cleaners financially, she—Alexandra Aston—was that woman.

Knowing from previous experience that he would not ring twice, Elexa picked up her bag and left her flat. Which must mean, she considered as she went down the stairs, that she herself was ready to carry this notion a little bit further. In any event, how could she now tell her mother—not to mention her aunts—that she had made up having a steady boyfriend? Oh, crumbs, another thought suddenly struck her: her mother would never forgive her if she had to pass on to her sisters, Celia and Helen, that she had a daughter who told whopping howlers!

‘You needn’t have rushed,’ Noah Peverelle greeted her sarcastically when she at last opened the door to him.

Elexa felt inwardly agitated enough without his help, and felt very much like telling him to go find his own dinner. But memory of her mother, Aunt Celia and Aunt Helen, was recent. ‘Okay, so I’ll make more of an effort,’ she conceded.

His grunt showed her how much he cared. ‘My car’s this way,’ he stated. He hadn’t thought better of it, then? He was still considering her ‘proposition’? He touched her elbow briefly in the direction he wanted her to go, though had manners enough, she noted, to walk with her rather than go striding ahead and leaving her to trail behind. ‘Where are we making for?’ he asked, once they were inside his Jaguar and he had the motor purring.

‘Got enough petrol for Berkshire?’

It was the last thing that was said in the car for quite some while. But the nearer they got to her parents’ home, the more Elexa started to become all stewed up inside.

Until at last she just had to explode, ‘This is all wrong!’

He was cool, was Peverelle; she had to give him that. If he heard the edge of panic in her voice he gave no sign. Nor, when the least she thought he might have done was to pull over and stop the car, did he do anything of the sort, but, his tone even, he enquired, ‘What’s wrong about it?’

‘I don’t know you! You don’t know me!’ burst from her. ‘How on earth are my parents going to believe that we’re an—an item?’

‘Point taken,’ he replied, still in that same even, unflustered way. He glanced briefly at her, but his stern expression in no way lightened when he informed her, ‘I’m thirty-seven. Your friend Lois will have told you what work I do. I have a house in London and propose ultimately, perhaps when my workload lessens, to buy a place somewhere in the country.’ That would please her mother. All too clearly it was pointless having a country home now, when, by the sound of it, he had no free time to spend there. ‘My parents are both living in Sussex and I have a sister, Sarah, divorced and with her own home. What do I need to know about you?’ He ended as if that was all he believed she needed to know—and sounded as though he wasn’t too bothered whether she told him anything about herself or not.

‘Have you ever been married?’ Since they had got started on this, she was suddenly not ready to risk tripping up on some unexpected nugget of information he might have chosen to keep to himself.

‘Never found the time,’ he answered, when for a moment there she’d thought he wouldn’t. ‘Nor,’ he added as an afterthought, ‘the inclination.’

From that she gathered that he had never fallen in love with any of the women he dated. That he hadn’t spent his life celibate seemed pretty obvious, without that conversation she had overheard when his friend Marcus had referred to Peverelle’s women-friends. Elexa stole a sideways glance at him—and quickly away again. He had a virile sort of look about him—there was a pounding in her ears suddenly; she didn’t want to think about that.

‘Until now,’ she said in a rush. ‘You’ve never contemplated marriage?’

He did not answer straight away, but then—and she could only conclude he had decided that there had perhaps to be a little give and take here—he unbent sufficiently to concede, ‘I’ve had moments recently when I’ve started to wonder what it’s all about…’

Elexa began to like him a little. ‘You mean the constant striving, being successful—but with no anchor—roots—’ She broke off, a shade embarrassed. ‘You spoke of buying a property in the country. I—er—thought that meant putting down roots. Somewhere for your son and heir to grow up and—’ Again she broke off. She had a feeling she was getting in too deep here. She didn’t want to know. She didn’t want that depth of involvement. ‘Anyhow,’ she went on hurriedly, ‘the fates may not be kind to you—it could be your child will be a girl.’

‘The fates wouldn’t dare,’ he decreed, and for all his expression was as unsmiling as ever she saw he had a sense of humour.

Her mouth picked up at the corners. Quickly, though, she repressed any semblance of a smile. For goodness’ sake—she’d be really liking him next, and that would never do. Clinical, detached; that was the way—if a way there was at all—that she wanted any ‘arrangement’ with him to go. The word ‘detached’ started to trip her up. How in creation could she be detached when…? She was glad when Noah Peverelle interrupted her thoughts.

‘You’re twenty-five, I believe.’

She had forgotten for the moment that he’d had her investigated. Perhaps that was why he hadn’t bothered asking her questions about herself. ‘I expect you know all there is to know about me,’ she answered, striving hard not to sound peeved.

‘I wouldn’t say that,’ he denied. ‘I know your grandfather made his money in retail, and set your father up in business. You’re an only child, by the sound of it with a doting mother who, obviously happy in her own marriage, believes that the only way her daughter will ever be as truly happy is if said daughter marries, and soon.’

‘Sounds pretty ghastly, doesn’t it?’ Elexa had to admit.

‘There are few worse fates,’ he agreed solemnly. But, turning to stare at him, Elexa wasn’t at all sure that she didn’t catch the merest curve of movement at the corner of his excellent mouth.

Excellent? Oh, for Heaven’s sake. ‘Perhaps I should mention my cousin Rory’s wedding,’ she said hastily. ‘I think my mother may bring it up. Um—I know things, mutually, may not go any further between us than this one—er—meeting, but my mother is bound to endorse the invitation to you that her sister, Rory’s mother, phoned me to extend.’

‘You’re getting pressured by your aunt as well?’ He seemed amazed.

Elexa gave him top marks for catching on so quickly. ‘Aunts,’ she corrected, glancing at him to see that he had noted the added pressure she was under, but going on, ‘Aunt Helen, Rory’s mother, rang wanting your address so she could arrange for the invitation to be mailed to you.’

Noah mentioned to Elexa the area of London where he had his house, and queried, ‘If the invitations are going out, I take it the wedding is nigh?’

‘Six or seven weeks,’ she answered. ‘But—and I can’t imagine you getting pushed into a corner with no way out—if you do feel obliged to accept my mother’s proxy invitation, I’ll find a way of getting you out of it later.’

She looked at him—his lips had definitely twitched then. ‘I think I can safely be left to manage that on my own,’ he replied—and once again Elexa felt very much like hitting him.

On which pugilistic moment, they arrived in her home village. ‘Turn left here,’ she ordered crisply. She half expected him to turn right, just to show her that nobody bossed him around, but clearly he was made of more superior stuff than that, and steered the car left, and soon he was making another left up her parents’ drive.

Her tall and slender mother was dressed in one of her smartest outfits, Elexa observed when, taking Noah into the drawing-room, she made the introductions. Her mother was a charming hostess and in no time, Elexa’s father having seen to the drinks, they were all seated and in light conversation. What surprised her, though, was to see another facet of Noah Peverelle’s character when he, in turn, was equally charming. Her mother was bowled over, at any rate.

Elexa watched him, ready to take up cudgels on her mother’s behalf at any first sign that he might be privately having an inner laugh at her mother’s expense. But studying him as she did, she saw no such hint, so that gradually, having been extremely tense at the start, Elexa began to unwind almost completely.

Almost completely, but not quite. Because when they moved from the drawing-room to the dining-room and began dinner, there were a few small snares during the meal that caused her to tense up again.

‘Elexa has been very reticent in telling us about you, Noah.’ Her mother smiled as she offered him more broccoli. ‘I don’t even know where the two of you met!’

Oh, help! Elexa wasn’t good at lying, and too late realised that if she was going to lie she ought at least to have rehearsed it first. She opened her mouth to make some comment, to intercede on Noah’s behalf. But then found he did not require her help. Though, whether he had rehearsed the lie or not, his powers of invention, instant or otherwise, were far greater than hers, she very soon realised.

‘I was in one of the offices at the Samara Group when Elexa called to discuss a marketing plan with the head of department there,’ he answered pleasantly.

Stunned, Elexa could only stare while her mother beamed and accepted straight away that the international chairman of that group must have taken a shine to her daughter on that instant. ‘Elexa is so good at planning,’ Kaye Aston told him enthusiastically. Every bit, Elexa thought in amazement, as if she stood at her elbow in her office watching her. ‘In fact,’ she went on, ‘Elexa has always been academically quite brilliant.’ While Elexa wanted to sink through the floor it was so embarrassing—her aunt Celia had used to go on like this to David about her daughter Joanna—her mother was adding, ‘Academically brilliant, but so unworldly about life.’

Heaven help us, her mother was all but warning Noah to look after her prized chick! ‘Aunt Helen rang!’ she interrupted, saying the first thing that came to her—too late realising she had triggered off an invitation to Rory and Martina’s wedding.

‘She said she would.’ Kaye Aston cheerfully admitted that the two of them had been under discussion. ‘You will be able to come to Rory’s wedding, I hope, Noah?’

‘I expect Noah has a full diary,’ Waldo Aston chipped in, much to Elexa’s relief.

Her relief was short-lived. ‘Oh, you business people,’ her mother declared. ‘Elexa works all hours and takes papers home, when there’s absolutely no need for her to work at all. Yet she’s never missed a day at Colman and Fisher in all the time she’s been there.’ She laughed lightly. ‘I’m sure she’d crawl there on her hands and knees if she had to.’ Elexa sent a desperate kind of look to her father, but her mother had warmed to her theme, and before he could say anything, ‘Why, I remember her struggling into work one day when she was so ill she was as near to having pneumonia as—’

‘A slight exaggeration,’ Elexa jumped in quickly. For goodness’ sake, Peverelle was a sophisticated man of the world—he didn’t need to hear her mother singing her daughter’s virtues—if virtues they were.

‘Not at all,’ Kaye Aston insisted lightly. And in friendly fashion continued, ‘I swear, Noah, this daughter of mine truly believes Colman and Fisher would collapse without her.’

‘Elexa is a great asset to them,’ he answered smoothly, every bit as if he knew it for certain.

‘What’s for pudding, Mother?’ Elexa asked, cringing where she sat, not bothered in the slightest about pudding, but ready to grasp at anything to change the subject.

‘Gypsy tart and or cheesecake,’ her mother replied, and drew breath to turn to her daughter’s ‘steady’ again, but was forestalled when her husband, perhaps having picked up his daughter’s distress signals, beat her to it.

‘You don’t by any chance collect stamps?’ he asked Noah.

‘I’m afraid I don’t. It’s a fascinating hobby, I’ve heard.’

Elexa was glad when the meal was over, and left Noah and her father in the drawing-room while she helped her mother clear the dining-room table.

‘Your father and I will see to the dishes later.’ Kaye Aston beamed. And, because it seemed she just couldn’t resist it, she declared, ‘Oh, darling, if I’d chosen someone for you myself I couldn’t have chosen better.’

Elexa stared at her parent and couldn’t help feeling slightly staggered. Only a week ago her mother had been all for her being ‘nice’ to Tommy Fielding. Noah Peverelle and Tommy Fielding weren’t in the same street! ‘Er—we’re only dating,’ she thought she had better mention. She had no idea yet which way this arrangement, or non-arrangement, was going.

‘You told Tommy Fielding you were seeing someone, long-term. Oh, please don’t tell me you’re thinking of just moving in with him.’

‘I can promise you, Mum, that’s the last thing I’m thinking of,’ Elexa replied, glad to be able to be honest about that at least. While she owned to starting to feel more than a touch confused about what she was doing—she could hardly imagine she’d had the nerve to ring Peverelle the way she had last Sunday—she was clear about that. She had her own place—why would she want to move into his?

Her mother seemed so relieved she came and gave her a hug, ‘You will tell me—as soon as there is anything to tell me?’ she asked urgently.

She meant an engagement, or marriage, Elexa knew that she did, and as her heart went all soft on her Elexa forgot for the moment the weight of pressure—well-meaning, but pressure all the same—that her parents constantly applied in their urgency for her to be married. All Elexa knew then was that she loved her worrying mother, and that if it would mean so very much to her to see her walk down that aisle then, if Peverelle was willing, it didn’t seem such a huge step to take.

‘I’ll be on the phone to you as soon as,’ she promised.

But when, not long afterwards, she was seated beside Peverelle as he drove them back to London she was starting to have second thoughts, and that wedding aisle seemed suddenly ten miles long.

Barely a word passed between them on the return journey, which was all right by Elexa; she had a lot on her mind. She guessed that Noah Peverelle had too, because they had almost arrived at her door before he let her into some of his thoughts.

‘It’s a bit late for us to have any lengthy discussion—there are things I have to ask you, matters you’ll want to clear up with me,’ he said. ‘I’ll give you a call in the morning and arrange a time to talk the whole situation through.’