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‘Even if I had the time or the energy—ouch!’ he exclaimed as a second cushion this time found its target. ‘You are a very good shot, Mrs Travers!’ he mused, rubbing at his shadowed chin where the embroidered cushion had hit him. ‘Perhaps you should take up golf?’
‘Please don’t try and change the subject, Todd!’ she warned him sweetly. ‘And if it’s not another woman, then you’d better start explaining why you’re not happy!’
‘Now you are putting words in my mouth,’ he accused quietly. ‘I didn’t actually say that, did I?’
He moved to stand directly in front of her then, the loose cut of his Italian trousers not quite concealing the powerful shafts of his thighs, and Anna felt consumed with longing.
‘Can I sit down?’ he questioned, indicating the space beside her.
‘Since when did you start asking?’ she asked breathlessly.
‘Since you started hurling soft furnishings at me, and then decided to glower at me as if I were the most heinous villain in history,’ he responded silkily. ‘So can I?’
‘Suit yourself,’ she shrugged, aware that she was not responding in a very adult way, but quite at a loss to know how to stop it, since she suspected from the grim expression on his face that Todd was about to tell her something she most definitely didn’t want to hear.
She noted that he positioned his long-legged frame at some distance from her, and was grateful for the physical space between them, at least. Because she was suddenly and quite overwhelmingly aware of him. And her hands were shaking...
‘You asked if we were happy here,’ he began, but he was frowning.
‘And you gave me an evasive answer.’
‘Well, try this for straightforwardness.’ He ran his fingers through the thick, already ruffled waves of his dark hair and stared at her. ‘Of course I’ve been happy here.’
She noted his use of the past tense. ‘Well, then?’
‘I’m happy now,’ he amended softly. ‘I just think we could be even happier.’
‘And just what is that supposed to mean?’
Todd sighed, wishing that he had opted for that drink, after all. He had been dreading this moment for too long now, but he could put it off no longer. ‘Just that we have been very, very blessed—I’m aware of that, Anna. We live in a large and very comfortable apartment—’
‘Which is situated right slap bang in the middle of the capital!’ she prompted immediately.
‘As you say.’
‘We couldn’t get more central if we tried, Todd! Could we?’
‘No, indeed. But we also have three rapidly growing daughters,’ he reminded her drily. ‘Who very soon may no longer be contented with sharing a bedroom, no matter how vast that bedroom might be,’ he added as he saw his wife open her mouth and correctly anticipated her objection to that particular statement.
‘The triplets could never bear to be separated!’ objected Anna as she recalled the many battles she had had over the years. Why, even on holidays they wouldn’t contemplate the idea of different rooms. ‘They’ve always said that!’
‘Have you asked them recently?’
Something in his tone alerted Anna to discussions from which she had clearly been excluded. ‘No,’ she answered steadily. ‘But I presume from your voice that you have?’
‘I have been talking to the girls about lifestyles in general,’ he told her unwillingly, wondering why he should feel as though he had committed some kind of crime.
‘But you clearly decided that I shouldn’t be privy to this particular discussion?’ she queried tartly. ‘Or was there more than one?’
Todd drummed his long fingers so that they sounded like galloping hooves on the arm of the velvet sofa. ‘Don’t make it sound like a felony I’ve committed against you, Anna,’ he warned her softly. ‘You have lots of conversations with the girls which do not include me.’
Anna bit back the temptation to tell him that talks about whether they needed new clothes, or nagging at them to do their homework, were hardly in the same league as moving house!
She looked directly into stormy grey eyes, narrowed now so that only a gleam of silver was visible, their expression shaded by the lush fringing of his dark lashes. ‘So what exactly did you all discuss?’ she asked him. ‘And how did the subject come up?’
He decided to come clean. ‘It was on your birthday—when I was looking after them. Remember?’
She most certainly did! For her twenty-eighth birthday Todd had bought her a ticket for a day’s pampering at one of London’s most luxurious female-only health clubs.
Privately, Anna had thought the gift slightly wasted on someone as uninterested in her appearance as she was. She had spent the day being pummelled and pounded, sweating in a sauna and then being forced to plunge into an icy tub. She had had her skin massaged with unctuous creams and her nails buffed and manicured, then, after a lunch which consisted entirely of some inedible form of plant life, she had arrived home refreshed and rejuvenated, but with the most enormous appetite!
‘So the subject just happened to come up, did it?’ enquired Anna suspiciously. ‘Just like that? The girls suddenly turned to you and said, “Daddy—we want to move!”’
He didn’t respond. Just sat there with a studiedly patient expression as he returned her accusing stare.
‘Well?’ prompted Anna sarcastically, infuriated by the maddeningly reasonable look on his face! How dare he be so reasonable? ‘Was that what happened?’
‘Are you going to give me a chance to tell you?’ he enquired coolly. ‘Or are you going to continue speaking for me so melodramatically?’
‘I think I need a drink,’ said Anna suddenly, and couldn’t miss Todd’s look of surprise at her request. She, who normally took alcohol on high days and holidays only, and then in such tiny amounts that any more than a glass of wine could render her very tipsy indeed!
‘I’ll fetch us one,’ said Todd instantly, and escaped into the kitchen where he busied himself with opening wine and getting glasses out of the cupboard while he decided how best to continue a discussion which was not going at all the way he had intended.
Anna noticed that he had chosen a very expensive bottle indeed and raised her eyebrows as he carried the tray into the sitting room. ‘It must be very bad news,’ she joked darkly as he handed her a glass of wine.
Todd ignored that as he sat back down beside her and sipped at his drink, then put his glass firmly down on the table and turned to her. ‘It’s just that I don’t spend as much time with the girls as I’d always like, so on your birthday I told them that they could do exactly what they wanted to do—within reason, of course—as a special treat.’
‘That was very sweet of you,’ said Anna automatically as she tried her wine.
‘That’s when Tally told me, in the gloomiest voice imaginable, that it would be impossible for her to do what she really wanted to do, because she simply wasn’t allowed.’
‘This is all to do with horses, I suppose?’ said Anna slowly as she thought of Natalia, first-born of their triplets, who was completely and utterly pony-mad. She spent all her allowance on pony and horse magazines and every book she read for pleasure had an equestrian theme.
‘Yes, it is,’ Todd agreed, rather grimly. ‘She asked me rather plaintively why she wasn’t allowed to have a horse of her own.’
‘Because she knows as well as I do that horse-riding is far too risky,’ sighed Anna. ‘All three of them are aware that they cannot take part in any kind of dangerous sport—why, it’s even written into their contract! The casting director told her right at the beginning that if she breaks an arm or a leg, then it could spell disaster for the campaign.’
‘Which would be the end of the world, no doubt?’ questioned Todd slowly. ‘Disaster for the campaign?’
The mocking tone in his voice made Anna’s head jerk up swiftly, and something indefinable she read in his eyes made her put her barely touched glass of claret quickly back onto the table.
‘And just what is that supposed to mean?’ she asked him in a low voice.
Todd’s gaze was very steady. ‘It doesn’t mean anything, Anna,’ he responded softly. ‘I was just wondering if it would be so terrible if the girls stopped working for Premium Stores—’
‘Of course it would!’ returned Anna immediately. ‘You know how lucky they are to have that contract! Other children—more experienced by far than ours—would have absolutely leapt at the chance!’
‘You sound like a real showbiz mum,’ Todd told her critically, and Anna went cold with both indignation and fear because Todd never usually used that horrible, disapproving tone with her.
‘That isn’t fair and you know it!’ she retorted. ‘I never went looking for fame for the girls—fame found them! We discussed it carefully with all three of them before we let them go ahead with the advertisements—you know we did! And we both agreed that so long as it didn’t interfere with their school work they could carry on doing it. And it doesn’t interfere with their school work, does it?’
‘Not so far,’ answered Todd cautiously. ‘But—’
‘And they earn heaps of money for what they do,’ insisted Anna quickly.
‘But we’re hardly on the breadline, are we, sweetheart?’ he commented drily as he let his gaze drift around the elegantly proportioned room, taking in the high ceiling and the costly chandelier which glittered like a million rainbow icicles.
‘Okay,’ she conceded, with a shrug of her shoulders. ‘They aren’t doing it for the money! They’re doing it because they absolutely love it!’
Todd frowned. ‘They used to. I think they love it less than when they first started,’ he pointed out.
‘Do they really? That’s something else they’ve told you, but omitted to mention to me, is it?’ Anna knew that her voice sounded waspish and peeved, but she seemed unable to do anything about it.
She felt hurt.
Badly hurt.
She had given birth to the triplets when she was still seventeen—why, she had been little more than a child herself—and had always considered her relationship with her girls to be incredibly close. So it was something of a shock to discover that they had been grumbling to their father and completely excluding her!
Todd observed his wife’s white, angry face and wondered just why this discussion was going so disastrously wrong. The last thing he wanted was to antagonise Anna. He thought about how smoothly topics could be raised and discussed in the workplace and wondered why discussions at home always seemed to get fraught with emotion and lack of logic.
He decided to try again. ‘On that day you were away at the health club, the girls and I sat down and had quite a long chat,’ he admitted.
‘So it would seem,’ came her stony response. ‘And what exactly did you sit down and chat about?’
Todd took another mouthful of wine as he thought about how best to word his daughters’ complaints about a lifestyle which most of their peers envied. ‘They have loved working for Premium Stores,’ he told Anna with a placatory smile which chilled her. ‘As they themselves said—how many children get plucked from obscurity to star in a supermarket advertising campaign which fits in so well with the rest of their lives?’
‘Exactly!’ responded Anna triumphantly. ‘Plus they’ve got to meet all kinds of celebrities, done the sorts of things that most children only dream of...’ Her voice tailed off rather wistfully as she recalled the memorable occasion when Tally, Tasha and Tina had served a world-famous rock star with fizzy cola on stage, to launch Premium Stores’ new range of diet drinks. Why, the excitement at school had taken weeks to die down!
‘Nobody is denying that the job has given them opportunities that they would never normally have had,’ Todd said soothingly. ‘But they’ve been working for two years now.’
‘And Premium want them to carry on working for them,’ said Anna stubbornly. ‘Indefinitely.’
Todd decided that the time had come to stop pussy-footing around. And if his wife was refusing to listen, then he was going to have to make her! ‘Yes, I know that the company still want them, Anna. But the point you seem to be missing is that although the contract is both lucrative and exciting it is also very restrictive.’
‘It’s an exclusive contract,’ defended Anna. ‘That’s why.’
Todd shook his head. ‘I am not talking about the restrictive clause which prevents the girls from working for anyone else while they are contracted to Premium,’ he argued. ‘But restrictive in a much wider sense. Tasha is doing particularly well at school—’
‘I know!’ Anna beamed proudly. ‘And they want her to sit for a scholarship to her next school!’
‘But if she sits for a scholarship she’ll need to study, won’t she?’ said Todd. ‘And when will she find the time to do that, with all the demands that Premium make on her time?’
‘She could try watching less television, for a start,’ said Anna, echoing the words of mothers the world over, but Todd shook his dark head vigorously.
‘That isn’t fair, and you know it. She doesn’t watch much television, and she’s entitled to watch some, surely? If she can’t have any bona fide relaxation time because of school and study and filming, then that isn’t much of a life for a ten-year-old, now, is it?
‘Meanwhile, Tally is prevented from riding a horse because of the injuries she might sustain,’ he continued inexorably. ‘And, what is more, she has saved up enough money for a horse of her own so it’s doubly disappointing for her never to be able to ride.’
‘But we live in Knightsbridge!’ retorted Anna spikily. ‘How on earth could she possibly have a horse of her own when we haven’t any room for one? Where are you proposing we stable it? Outside Harrods?’
‘Exactly!’ breathed Todd, and Anna got the distinct feeling that she had fallen straight into a trap of his making. ‘Knightsbridge is not the kind of place where people keep pets! We don’t have room for a horse, or a dog,’ he went on, his words coming so automatically that it sounded as though he had been thinking about the subject for ages.
Had he? wondered Anna fleetingly. And, if so, then why the hell hadn’t he talked it over with her before? Why was he just springing it on her now, like this?
‘We also don’t have apple trees which are covered in fragrant blossom in springtime and heavy with succulent fruit in the autumn,’ he said, his voice growing more impassioned than she had heard it for a long time.
‘There are no streams for the girls to paddle in before they grow too old and disdainful to do so,’ he continued, his grey eyes dark and smoky. ‘No wild flowers for them to gather to make garlands for their hair. They won’t see rabbits scampering playfully across fields or hear owls hooting at night.’
‘You’ve been reading too many books about the country!’ joked Anna with the nervous smile of the born city-dweller, but there was no answering smile on the chiselled lips of her husband. ‘You forgot to mention the mud and the midges and being cut off whenever the weather turns bad!’
‘You forget that I grew up in the country, Anna,’ he contradicted her softly. ‘And, while my memories may be vaguely rose-tinted, I can assure you that I am only too aware of all the drawbacks of living out in the sticks.’
Anna remembered how this whole conversation had started—with moving. She had thought that was bad enough, but now it sounded as though Todd wanted a whole radical lifestyle change. Well, they were a partnership. He couldn’t force her and the girls to go and live in the country if they didn’t want to, and she definitely didn’t want to!
But how to convince Todd of that?
She stretched her arms above her head as she played for time and, noticing a tiny muscle flicker in Todd’s cheek, a daring idea came to her as she thought of a way which might shelve this whole awkward discussion.
Anna was panicking. She had spent most of her life in this very flat. Her father had sold the freehold to Todd very cheaply as a wedding present because Todd, being Todd, had refused to accept the place as a gift. She couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. Didn’t want to imagine living anywhere else!
She thought about how frantic their lives were these days. Perhaps she hadn’t been paying her husband enough attention recently? That was what all the women’s magazines always warned you about, wasn’t it? Wives who took their husbands for granted. Was that why he looked so moody and out-of-sorts this evening?
And yet she had one very effective weapon in her armoury which might bring Todd round to her way of thinking—if only she had the courage to use it...
‘Phew!’ She sighed huskily and wiped the back of her hand across her bone-dry forehead. And suddenly her plan no longer seemed so bizarre because something in the alert and watchful poise of his body had started her aching for him... Anna cleared her throat and her voice came out in a sultry little whisper of its own accord. ‘It’s become terribly h-hot in here, hasn’t it?’
Todd knew from the sudden tremble in her voice what his wife wanted and he felt his own body stir in response, partly because he desired her very much, and partly because it was not what they would normally have done.
They hardly ever went to bed in the middle of the afternoon; he was usually working and when he wasn’t, well—there simply weren’t the opportunities with three lively and curious children around. And Anna was usually so sweetly shy about sex. She must want to stay in London very much indeed, if she was prepared to seduce him in broad daylight!
He ignored the question in his mind about whether making love right now was going to be enough to paper over all the cracks which had been revealed in their relationship today. Because right now he didn’t particularly care. Anna had deliberately lit the touch-paper; let Anna take the consequences.
‘You’re hot, are you?’ he enquired deliberately.
‘Mmm. Boiling.’ In an unhurried manner which belied her trembling fingers, Anna peeled off her baggy sweater to reveal a tee-shirt underneath. It wasn’t a particularly new or a particularly clinging tee-shirt, yet it moulded the heavy lushness of her breasts to perfection and Anna grew aware that Todd was watching her movements obsessively. ‘There,’ she told him huskily, in a voice which sounded awfully decadent to her own ears.
The muscle in his cheek flickered convulsively now, and Todd knew that he was caught in the silken bonds of sexual desire. ‘Then why don’t you take something else off?’ he suggested in a murmur, wondering why a corny request which would have made him flinch if he had heard himself making it in, say, the office should sound so good and so right and so appropriate right now.
‘Wh-why don’t you?’ she countered shakily, her nerve deserting her.
He needed no second bidding. He leaned forward, his eyes smoky, his mouth a curve of hungry anticipation as he let it drift over her open lips in a lingering kiss. Then he let his hand stray beneath her tee-shirt to cup her breast possessively in his palm.
Anna closed her eyes and gave a greedy moan of pleasure, because the unexpectedness of her urge to seduce him, and Todd’s gratifyingly eager response to it, was turning her on very much.
‘Where are the triplets?’ he wanted to know.
‘E-extra-curricular activities,’ gasped Anna as she struggled to string her words together coherently. ‘Saskia is bringing them home.’
