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‘And what time are they back?’ he demanded, his thumb now tantalising her nipple beneath the crisp lace of her brassière so that he felt it harden and thrust against his flesh.
‘We’ve g-got just under an hour,’ shuddered Anna breathily, trying to remember the last time they had made love like this. Years, she realised, with a sinking feeling. It had been years and years.
She pulled uselessly at his fine silk shirt, and frantically tried to unbuckle his belt, but as he shook her hands off he noticed that his own were trembling like a schoolboy’s. He wanted her so much he could hardly think straight and he couldn’t remember feeling quite this hot in a long, long time...
Had their bitter words added fuel to his desire? he wondered. Was that what happened after ten years of marriage—that you needed harsh words to turn you on so much you couldn’t think straight?
‘Oh, Todd!’ gasped Anna, every pore on fire with wanting as her fingers slid sinuously over the hard muscle of his torso. ‘Please!’
But old habits died hard and Todd shook his head, even though it took every bit of self-control he possessed.
They had spent almost all of their ten years together with children around the place, and they had never made love with an audience, not even when the girls were tiny babies. Neither of them had thought that it seemed quite right to lose themselves in sensual pleasure when there were one or more infants snuffling away in the same room. As Todd had often remarked—children didn’t exactly enhance the mood for making love! While Anna had wondered whether that was because children were often the unexpected consequences of making love.
Like theirs...
‘Not here,’ he growled, his heart pounding hotly in his chest as he forced himself to resist the appeal in her big blue eyes. ‘What if the girls come back early?’
‘Then—’
‘Shh,’ he urged as he stood up and bent to lift her off the sofa. Unhampered by her weight, he began to carry her towards the bedroom, half-resenting the fierce need she had aroused in him which had made all thoughts of moving fly straight out of the window.
But reason was only temporarily obscured by desire, and Todd resolved to continue the discussion with his wife once he had slaked that desire.
While Anna, who was almost feverish at the prospect of making love with her husband in the middle of the afternoon, clung to him tightly as he set her down on the bed and began to peel off her leggings, mistakenly and rather complacently believing that the subject of moving was now closed...
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_5f5baed8-e07f-50bc-91eb-b5981db620b1)
IN THE soft light of the late-afternoon sun Anna’s heartbeat began to lessen, and she smiled to herself as she ran one lazy finger over Todd’s sweat-slicked hip.
‘Mmm,’ he murmured in response, catching her hand and guiding it to an infinitely more intimate part of his anatomy, and Anna sucked in a breath of shocked and delighted pleasure as she felt her husband harden beneath her fingers.
‘Todd!’ she gasped, but boldly left her hand where it was to make tiny stroking movements.
‘Anna!’ he mocked on a groan of pleasure, and levered himself up to lean on his elbow, looking down at her rose-flushed face and the silky blonde hair which lay in tousled strands all over the pillow. He picked up one buttery gold lock and twisted it between his fingers, his expression distracted, knowing that if she continued doing what she was doing...
Gritting his teeth with effort, Todd pushed Anna’s hand away.
‘Oh!’ she pouted.
‘Not now, sweetheart,’ he said brusquely, even though his body was screaming out for more of the magic she was weaving with her feather-light touch. ‘How long do we have undisturbed?’
Anna’s eyes flicked to the clock which stood on her bedside table. ‘Just over half an hour,’ she yawned. Her eyes were rueful as she thought back to their frenzied lovemaking. ‘It all happened terribly quickly, didn’t it?’
‘Mmm.’ He smiled with memory. ‘But you still enjoyed it?’
Anna blushed, a habit she had never quite lost, much to her chagrin and her husband’s immense pleasure. ‘You know I did,’ she responded in a low voice, but her thoughts were a mass of confusion. It had been wonderful, yes, but it had been lovemaking on a different scale to the one she was used to. It had been frantic even before they’d got into the bedroom, with Todd pulling the clothes away from her body in an almost out-of-control way which was nothing like his usual teasing finesse.
Anna sat up in the rumpled bed and blonde hair streamed down over her naked breasts. ‘I’d better get up—’
He laid a hand on her arm. ‘Not yet, you’re not.’
She turned to him wearing a smile of delight which was mixed with slight exasperation. ‘But darling, you just said there wasn’t time...’
But he shook his head. ‘Not to make love again, Anna,’ he said seriously. ‘That wasn’t what I meant. I want to talk.’
‘Talk?’ The acrid taste of fear formed itself into a cold lump in Anna’s throat and, in order to distract herself from the determined expression glinting in the depths of her husband’s grey eyes, she jumped out of bed and hunted around for her knickers. ‘Talk about what, Todd?’ she questioned brightly.
‘What we were talking about before you started pouting and flaunting that luscious body at me. About moving,’ came his stern response as he watched her slide her sensible navy blue panties over her pale thighs and briefly wondered why she never wore the outrageous scraps of nonsense he brought back for her whenever he went abroad.
‘But I thought we’d said everything there was to say on the subject,’ she objected, hooking the clasp of her bra behind her back,
Todd shook his head. ‘Oh, no, sweetheart,’ came his emphatic reply. ‘I think that you said everything you had to say on the subject—namely, that you didn’t want to move.’
‘Oh!’ Her mouth trembled as she listened to Todd riding roughshod over her objections. ‘So my opinion counts for nothing, does it?’
Todd sighed. ‘Of course it does! In fact, if it hadn’t been for the fact that you so patently wanted to stay put, I would have brought up the subject of moving out to the country years ago!’
‘And I would have had the same objections then as I do now!’ she retorted.
Trying a different tack, he put his hands behind his head, and, leaning back against the pillows, gave her a slow smile. ‘What exactly do you do in the city that you won’t be able to do in the country?’
Anna looked at him assessingly. So he was treating her to the logical approach, was he? She wondered if he realised just how patronising he sounded. ‘Go to the theatre,’ she said immediately. ‘And to concerts. Then there are the art galleries and the parks—oh, and all the specialist shops.’
‘And if we lived close enough to another city? How would that be? So that you could still do all those things.’
‘But why would we want to? We’re settled here, Todd,’ she prevaricated. ‘You know we are.’
‘Yes,’ he conceded. ‘But we can just as easily settle somewhere else.’ He saw her mutinous expression, and decided that it might be prudent to backtrack. ‘Oh, I’m not being naive, sweetheart. I know it won’t be easy to just pack up our things and—’
‘Then why do it?’ Anna demanded, angry that Todd seemed contented to turn their world upside down on what sounded like little more than a whim.
‘For all the reasons we discussed earlier—more space around the place, and a better quality of life for the triplets—’
‘But not for me?’
‘For all of us,’ he corrected her gently. ‘You know that in your heart, sweetheart.’
Any minute now and she would burst into tears.
Anna pulled her crumpled tee-shirt violently down over her head, emerging with her blonde hair flattened like golden skin against her scalp. She shook it free. ‘And what’s brought this on all of a sudden?’ she asked him. ‘Is it just Tally complaining that she can’t have a horse?’
He shook his head. ‘Not at all. That was coincidental.’
‘What, then?’
He shrugged his broad shoulders. ‘Because I needed to take a long-term view of my affairs, and I realised that there was absolutely no need for me to be based in London any more. Communication systems today mean that I can work from almost anywhere. Plus you know how long it takes me to get to work.’
Anna nodded. He did have a point. The traffic was so heavy in the mornings that Todd had taken to leaving for the office at the crack of dawn, and often he didn’t arrive home until she was putting the triplets to bed. Sometimes even later. No wonder he was always so tired.
And it was no earthly good telling him to cut back on his hours, either, even though he had earned enough to keep them all for several lifetimes. Because the work ethic was deeply ingrained in Todd’s nature, the habit of a lifetime hard to break. Todd worked hard because he was a driven man, and like so many driven men he needed to work hard. Circumstances in his youth had seen to that.
‘Surely we could come to some sort of compromise?’ she suggested, before adding rather irritably, ‘And for goodness’ sake can’t you get up and put some clothes on, Todd? The girls will be back any minute now.’
He grinned as he slid off the side of the bed and pulled on a pair of jeans, and Anna found that she couldn’t tear her eyes away from him. He was like a sumptuous feast she couldn’t get enough of, and her fingers were just itching to caress the broad, tanned satin of his bare skin once again.
He looked up from buttoning up his shirt and gave her a tender smile. ‘You want us to climb straight back into that bed over there, don’t you, Anna Travers?’
Anna coloured. ‘No, I don’t.’
He came over to stand in front of her, and gently lifted her chin with his finger. ‘Don’t be shy, sweetheart. You certainly weren’t being shy a little while back! I wondered what had got into you, until I realised that I had!’
‘Todd!’ Anna bit her lip as she remembered how ruthlessly he had dealt with her clothes, stripping them from her body like a man on fire.
‘There’s nothing wrong with admitting that we still want and need each other, you know,’ he continued softly. ‘I hope that our mutual desire might even escalate as the years go by! And that’s another reason for wanting to move. We may have space here, but we don’t have many rooms. And rooms equal privacy.’
‘Don’t we have enough privacy?’
He shook his head emphatically. ‘Heck, Anna,’ he continued, with the fluency of someone who had thought an argument right through. ‘The girls are right next door to us as it is—so what do you suppose is going to happen as they become teenagers and realise why Mummy is moaning such a lot?’
‘Todd!’ She blushed hotly.
‘Quite apart from having to keep quiet—’ he frowned ‘—I should think our chances of making spontaneous love will continue to be infinitesimally small—that is, unless we decide to do something positive about it!
Anna finished pulling on her leggings and turned on him. ‘And what’s got into you all of a sudden, Todd Travers?’ she demanded. ‘Do you suppose that other men would attempt to uproot their wives and families just so that they could get more sex?’
He had been as tolerant and as understanding as he knew how, but now Todd went pale with anger at her insult. ‘So you think that’s what this is all about?’ he asked, in a voice which was dangerously quiet. ‘Sex?’
‘I don’t know,’ she answered wearily. ‘You tell me. What else could it be? A mid-life crisis? In which case, at thirty-three aren’t you a little young to be experiencing that?’
‘Damned right I am!’ he agreed heatedly. ‘But maybe you’re right. Maybe it is some kind of crisis, only you just haven’t had the time or the inclination to notice it before—’
‘Todd—’ she cut in, as shocked at the brutal look of anger on his face as by the fact that they seemed to be having a pretty significant row. ‘You don’t mean that!’
‘Don’t I?’ he demanded, as fiercely as she’d ever heard him speak. ‘How do you know what I mean? You never listen if it doesn’t happen to correspond with what you want, do you? And it’s about time you heard me out, Anna Travers!’
‘Go on, then,’ she responded, in a shocked, low voice.
He drew in a great breath of air. ‘Don’t you ever feel that we’re in some kind of rut?’
‘A rut?’ she echoed in disbelief.
‘Sure.’ He saw the bewildered look on her face and his mouth softened as he put a hand out to touch her, but she pushed him away.
‘I thought you wanted to talk,’ she said coldly.
He nodded. She was right. Sex had already distracted them from the subject once. ‘Anna, you grew up in this flat,’ he sighed. ‘We’ve spent all our married life here. We brought up our three babies here and now we’re running out of space. I think we’ve outgrown it.’
His words had a chilling finality about them, as though that area of their life was now over, and Anna felt a shiver of apprehension ice its way down the entire length of her spine. She swallowed down the fear which had risen thickly in her throat like bile.
‘I hear what you’re saying, Todd,’ she told him quietly.
‘Well, that’s good,’ came his cautious reply.
Tears threatened to spring up behind her eyes. ‘And you’re admitting to me for the first time ever what we’ve both always known—that I trapped you into marriage by getting pregnant! If you’d never met me, you would never have found yourself in this supposedly terrible situation—and you could have gone ahead and married your beloved Elisabeta!’
His grey eyes narrowed into splinters of slate. ‘Please don’t say things in the heat of the moment that you might later regret, Anna!’
But she noticed he didn’t deny her words. ‘In that case, I’d better not say anything else at all,’ she told him flatly.
He opened his mouth to reply, but the loud ringing on the front doorbell heralded the arrival of the triplets and he decided to let the subject drop. For the moment.
As Anna prepared to walk past her husband he made a conciliatory attempt to catch her in his arms, but she stood clear of his embrace, still wounded by the implications of what he had said to her.
‘Just think about everything I’ve said, Anna,’ he urged her as the ringing increased in volume and in frequency. ‘That’s all I ask. Just consider it. Will you do that for me?’
Put that way, how could she refuse?
Anna risked a quick glance in the mirror as she followed Todd out of the bedroom. She looked absolutely frightful! Her hair was mussed and her cheeks were a giveaway red, and she became acutely aware that she had put her navy blue knickers on back to front! Still, none of the girls was about to notice that! She grabbed an elastic band, then scraped her hair back in its habitual ponytail.
Todd opened the front door and there was a whirl of green uniforms and flying blonde curls as three young girls entered the flat like dervishes and began speaking excitedly at the same time, as they had been doing ever since they’d first learned to talk.
‘Mummy, Hannah Phipps who writes those horse books is visiting our school after Christmas, and I’m to present her with a bouquet of flowers!’
‘Mummy, they’ve given me the part of the wicked witch in the summer play and I’m supposed to give you a list of what I need for costumes—but I’ve lost it!’
‘Mummy, I sat an extra Latin paper, just for fun, only I got the whole thing right, and Mrs McFadden is seriously pleased with me!’
‘That’s sad!’
‘It is not sad—Mrs McFadden says I’ll probably get a Headmaster’s Accommodation!’
‘Sadder still!’
Anna’s mouth softened into a wide smile of loving pride as she surveyed her triplet daughters—identical to look at, but so very different in character. They had inherited their pale, freckle-dusted skin, their cobalt eyes and golden hair directly from her, but whereas her hair was straight, theirs was a mass of uncontrollable curls. They were tall for their age, and their rangy, athletic build came straight from Todd. ‘Hello, darlings!’ she beamed as she hugged each one fiercely in turn. ‘What clever girls you all are!’
Natalia, Natasha and Valentina were known affectionately as Tally, Tasha and Tina. Tally and Tasha had been born late on February 13th, but their sister hadn’t joined them until two minutes after midnight on St Valentine’s day. So she never did get christened Nerissa, which had been her parents’ original intention, but everyone who knew her decided that ‘Tina’ suited her loving and slightly scatty personality far better than Nerissa would have done!
‘Daddy, why are you home from work so early?’ asked Tasha curiously, her intelligent eyes flicking from her mother to her father with interest.
‘I...sort of...took the afternoon off,’ explained Todd lamely, and Anna had to try very hard not to smile, their angry spat temporarily forgotten. Rarely, if ever, had she seen her husband look quite so much at a loss for words!
‘Oh. I see. And why is your shirt on inside out?’ Tasha added innocently.
‘Er...juice and biscuits for three hardworking and worn out girls, is it?” enquired Todd hurriedly.
‘Oh, yes, please, Daddy!’ trilled the three in unison.
‘And for you, darling?’ Todd looked directly at Anna.
