Contracted: Corporate Wife

‘And those are just the big things,’ he said. ‘At the same time they’re working on you to change your life completely, they want you to understand them and talk to them and surprise them with little presents and weekends away. They want you to send them flowers and emails and to ring them from work so they know that you’re thinking about them the whole time. I tell you, it’s never-ending demands with women.’

He drained his glass morosely. ‘Basically they want to take over your whole life.’

Lou was unimpressed by his suffering. ‘So what you’re saying is that you want to have sex but you don’t want a relationship?’

‘What’s the big deal about relationships anyway?’ Patrick grumbled. ‘Women are obsessed with them! I thought I might get on better if I dated younger women. I figured they’d be happy to have a good time and not care about settling down, but, oh, no! We’ve only been out a couple of times and they’re talking about our relationship.’

He sighed. ‘Before you know where you are, you’re in the middle of all that emotional hassle again.’

‘It must be awful for you,’ said Lou, not bothering to hide her sarcasm.

Patrick shot her a look. ‘Why do women do that?’ he complained.

‘Well, you see, we tend to have these awkward things called feelings,’ Lou explained with mock patience. ‘It’s annoying of us, I know, but there’s nothing we can do about it. We will go and fall in love without thinking about how tedious it is for you to have someone who adores you and will do anything for you.’

She shook her head in pretended disbelief. ‘I mean, how selfish is that?’

‘I’m serious,’ said Patrick. ‘I just wish I could find a woman who was happy to take things as they are without always fretting about the future or what it all means or what will happen between us. As it is, we only go out for a few weeks before she starts to get clingy and I start to get claustrophobic.’

He grimaced. ‘The thought of tying myself down for life is too horrible to contemplate. I’d be bored within a month.’

‘You didn’t get bored with Catriona,’ Lou pointed out.

Patrick thought about living with Catriona. They had both been so young and excited to be living together. They had argued a lot, but it hadn’t been boring. He had missed her when she had gone.

‘That was different.’

‘How?’

Patrick wished that Lou would stop asking difficult questions. ‘It just was,’ he said.

‘Nothing to do with the fact that you and Catriona were the same age, and now you’re twice as old as any girl you might contemplate marrying?’

And she could stop putting her finger on the nub of the matter while she was at it.

‘No.’ He scowled at her. ‘It’s just that the older I get, the more I value my freedom. I like my life as it is. I work hard, I play hard and if I find a woman attractive, I can do something about it.’

Although clearly that wasn’t always the case, he added mentally, remembering Lou’s stockings.

Damn. Patrick cursed inwardly. He was supposed to have forgotten about them.

‘That’s not to say it wouldn’t be very handy to have a wife sometimes,’ he said, pushing the stockings to the back of his mind once more. ‘It would be good to have someone who could deal with the domestic and social side of things. I can’t be bothered with all of that, but there are times when I have to entertain and it would all be a lot easier if I were married.’

‘You can always have a housekeeper to take care of the house, and there must be any number of caterers falling over themselves to cook for people like you.’

‘Quite. That’s exactly what I do at the moment. But it’s not quite the same as having a hostess who can welcome people and introduce them to each other and do all the chit-chat.’

‘Have you ever tried any of your girlfriends?’

‘No.’ Patrick looked horrified. ‘It’s bad enough taking them along to receptions and parties. They’re not interested in business. They get bored and end up more of a liability than an asset. I can just imagine what would happen if I asked them to help me entertain business associates to dinner. That would be commitment.’ He sneered the word. ‘They’d be off buying wedding magazines the next day.’

‘I can’t believe that all these girls are really that desperate to marry you,’ said Lou, exasperated by his attitude. ‘It’s not like you’re that big a deal.’

Of course, incredibly wealthy, single, intelligent men in their forties weren’t that easy to come by, she had to admit. And it wasn’t as if Patrick were grotesquely ugly, either. He probably had a pretty fair notion of how attractive he was.

Not her type of course. The cockiness of Tom Cruise and the cool of Clint Eastwood was how she had described him to Marisa. ‘Tell me he’s got the looks of George Clooney and I’ll come and work for him myself!’ Marisa had said.

But Patrick was no George Clooney. He was too cold, his features too austere. He had none of Lawrie’s rakish good looks, or his easy charm, but still…Lou considered him anew. There was something definite about him, she decided, something solid and steady, and when he listened he concentrated completely on what you were saying. He looked at you properly, instead of letting his eyes wander around looking for something or someone more interesting the way Lawrie’s had done.

Funny that she had never noticed that before, thought Lou. Or his mouth, so cool and firm and intriguing. The kind of mouth you couldn’t help wondering about, how it would feel, how it would kiss. Not that she would want to, Lou reminded herself. It was just funny that she hadn’t noticed it until now, that was all.

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.’

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