“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

MILLS & BOON

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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!

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