Contracted: Corporate Wife

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Funny to realise what a difference a gleam of humour made, too, lightening his expression and warming the cold eyes.

Funny how his smile made her heart jump, just a little.

Must be all that champagne she had drunk.

‘Why don’t you try going out with women who’ve got bigger ambitions?’ she said, forcing her mind back to the subject at issue. ‘Someone who’s got a career of her own and who doesn’t want to settle down any more than you do?’

‘Believe me, I would if I could find a girl like that,’ said Patrick. ‘I might even be prepared to marry her.’

‘What, and give up your precious freedom?’

‘At least it would shut my mother up. She’s constantly going on at me to get married again. She thinks it would be good for me to have someone else to think about. She says it would stop me being so selfish.’

He sounded aggrieved and Lou smothered a smile. She rather liked the idea of him having a mother who was no more impressed with him than his PA.

‘Does she want grandchildren? Is that why she’s keen for you to get married?’

‘I think she’s accepted that she’s not going to get them from me,’ he said, and pointed a finger at Lou’s expression. ‘Don’t you go feeling sorry for her! She can’t complain. She’s already got eleven grandchildren. I’d have thought that was more than enough.’

‘Eleven?’ said Lou, trying to adjust to the idea of Patrick as part of a large family.

‘I’ve got three sisters, all of whom seem to be very fertile, and all of whom also think I should get married. Every time I see them, they ask me what’s the point of having all that money and not enjoying it. Just because they’ve got big families of their own, they think I should have that too,’ he grumbled.

‘I tell them I’m perfectly happy living on my own, and I am, but sometimes when I go home the house does seem a bit empty,’ he admitted, and gave a rather shamefaced smile. ‘There, that’s my embarrassing confession!’

‘That’s a confession, not a fantasy,’ said Lou light-heartedly.

She was feeling extraordinarily mellow. It was oddly comfortable to be sitting here with him, talking to Patrick about things she would never normally dream of discussing with anyone at work, let alone her boss, talking to him as if he were a friend.

It was strange now to think that she had been perfectly happy to have a cool working relationship with him. For a fleeting moment, Lou wondered whether she would regret her confidences in the morning, but she pushed the thought aside. She would just blame it on the champagne.

Not to mention the wine. They seemed to have made major inroads into that bottle in spite of her plans to stick to the occasional sip.

She wasn’t going to worry about it now, anyway. She was here, away from home, away from the children. It was like being in a bubble, time out from the day-to-day reality of commuting and cooking and preparing lunchboxes. Everything felt different.

Patrick even looked different. Warmer somehow, more human, more approachable. Much more attractive than he should for a man who wasn’t her type, anyway.

‘Go on,’ she told him. ‘You said it was confession time, and that we’d forget it all tomorrow. I told you my fantasy, so I think you should tell me yours.’

Patrick thought about leaning over the table and whispering that she should forget pudding, that he wanted to take her upstairs and press her against the bedroom door, that he wanted to explore the back of her knee while he kissed her, to let his hand smooth insistently up her thigh, pushing up that prim little skirt until his fingers found the top of her stocking, and then—

‘One of them anyway,’ said Lou, unnerved by the way his eyes had darkened. She didn’t know what he was thinking about just then, but she was pretty sure it would leave her blushing.

And more than a little jealous. There had been something in his expression that had made her pulse kick in a way it hadn’t for a very long time. Now was not the time for it to start doing that, and her boss was not the man to set it off either. Whatever he had been fantasising about doing with one of those blonde stick insects he liked so much, she didn’t want to hear it.

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

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

Not a good idea, in fact.

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘That’s not very romantic!’

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

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

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

CHAPTER THREE

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

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

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

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

‘Right,’ said Patrick, fascinated.

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

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

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

‘I thought you didn’t want a man?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘And does it?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘I’ve got three.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘So why don’t you do it?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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