Part-time Marriage

‘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!

CHAPTER TWO

ELEXA was still gasping, still striving to hold down panic, when the man she had two minutes before decided she did not want to see after all rang the doorbell to her flat, announcing that he was right outside.

She gulped for air, her usual smart intelligence deserting her as she sought for some ‘I’m sorry I bothered you, I shouldn’t have, goodbye’ kind of comment. She was certain he would ring her doorbell again if she did not soon dash to open the door. But he did not. He was controlled, this man, this stranger—heaven help us, had she really, truly, suggested to him that they made a baby together?

Elexa felt scarlet all over when, knowing that she couldn’t stand there dithering all night, she went to the door, her sophisticated image fast starting to slip. Dressed in a smart two-piece—calf-length skirt and boxy top of sage-green—and with her long blonde gold-lit hair brushing her shoulders, she pulled back the door. But any phrase she might have been able to utter was lost when, before he stepped over her threshold, ‘Alexandra Aston?’ he enquired.

‘My friends call me Elexa,’ she answered, and felt stupid because she had. This man, this stern looking man, this steely, grey-eyed man was not her friend and was never likely to be. ‘Er—you’d better come in,’ she invited.

She led the way into her sitting-room. She didn’t remember him being so stern looking. True, he hadn’t actually been smiling when she’d seen his reflection in that mirror, but neither had he been scowling.

‘Can I get you something?’ Politeness of years pushed her on. ‘A drink, a…?’ Abruptly, she halted. ‘How did you find me?’ she changed tack to ask sharply.

‘It wasn’t difficult.’

He was tall. She was five feet nine herself and didn’t like having to look up to him. ‘Would you like to take a seat?’

He moved over to her sofa but did not sit down until she had taken the chair opposite. She saw his glance flick round her elegantly furnished room, and cancelled any top marks she might have given him for manners because of it. No doubt he was totting up her furnishings—along with the rental of her flat in the not unsmart apartment block—and assessing how much she would need for the upkeep of both.

‘Without my job—which pays very well—I have private means,’ she told him irately.

‘Falling before you’re pushed?’ he queried—and she hated him, hated that she felt her lips twitch. She had rather jumped in there with both feet, hadn’t she? She didn’t smile, of course. Why should she? He was looking as grim-faced as ever. ‘I’m aware of your financial circumstances,’ he informed her coolly.

‘You’ve had me investigated?’ Elexa went shooting away from holding down a laugh to being outraged. ‘How dare—?’

‘You proposed yourself to be the mother of my child—did you think I wouldn’t have you investigated?’ He was actually considering the proposition? Her brown eyes widened as she stared thunderstruck at him. ‘Are you always this cantankerous?’ he enquired mildly, his all-seeing grey eyes steady on her.

Elexa took a deep breath. She was feeling less panicky than she had, but was still feeling very shaken. ‘I’m nervous.’ She opted for honesty. ‘Your call, you coming here tonight, was, well, unexpected to say the least.’

‘You mean you wouldn’t have slammed the phone down on me a third time had I telephoned first?’

‘You had no intention of phoning first—you wanted to catch me unaware, with my defences down,’ she accused.

He neither agreed nor denied it, but instead, his serious grey eyes fixed on her eyes, he questioned toughly, ‘Why is it so important for you to be married?’

She wanted to deny it was important at all, then roused herself—she wasn’t having him coming here to her home and acting like some man in charge. ‘Why is it so important to you to have a son?’ she tossed back shortly.

‘Did you miss that part?’

She coloured—he knew it all, didn’t he? ‘So I was eavesdropping. Not that I intended to—’ She broke off. ‘How did you find out—that I’d been listening to your conversation—that day? That it was me?’

He shrugged. ‘Marcus Dean was the only person who knew of my thoughts on having a son.’

‘Mmm,’ Elexa murmured. ‘You remembered where you were when you were discussing it with him?’

‘Marcus wouldn’t discuss it with anyone else,’ Noah Peverelle asserted, with the same confidence that Elexa had that anything she discussed with her friend Lois would go no further. ‘Since the voice that called me yesterday wasn’t the voice of Lois Crosby…’

‘You remembered Lois’s voice?’

‘I knew yesterday’s voice wasn’t hers. Which meant it had to be her brown-eyed companion.’

‘You remembered my eyes?’ she asked incredulously. ‘But it was ages ago—we didn’t even speak!’

‘You obviously didn’t forget me,’ he lobbed back at her. ‘Or, more precisely, my side of the conversation. So tell me why, since it doesn’t appear you’re in any urgent need of money, are you so keen to have a husband?’

‘I’m not!’ Elexa answered bluntly, but not yet ready to go into more detail. ‘So you knew who it was who phoned you, but—’ She broke off again. ‘How did you find out—who I am, was, I mean? Your friend Marcus wouldn’t know me. Ah! You rang Marcus and he rang Lois…’ Her voice trailed off. ‘That can’t be right. Lois would have rung me to say…’

‘I didn’t have to call Marcus. My company does a lot of business with the Montgomery…’

He had no need to continue. ‘You contacted the restaurant and asked who had reserved the booth next to yours that lunchtime.’ Clever swine.

‘None of this is at all important. You’ve just said you’re no longer in urgent need of a husband.’ He looked to be about to leave.

Elexa suddenly realised she had very mixed feelings about that. It seemed a very good idea that he should go and that she should forget that she had started this whole sorry business, but… ‘I never wanted a husband at all,’ she informed him. ‘But I’m being pushed—’ The phone starting to ring cut through what she was saying. She knew it would be her mother—and started to panic again. ‘Can you hang on while I take this call?’ she asked quickly, and didn’t wait to see whether he would or not. Presenting him with her back, she went over to the telephone and picked it up.

‘I was hoping you’d be home from work by now,’ her mother’s voice came briskly down the wires. ‘Now, what’s so dreadful about your man-friend that you couldn’t tell me about him before?’

‘There’s nothing dreadful about him,’ Elexa found herself answering, barely able to believe she was still carrying out this myth that there was someone she was going ‘steady’ with.

‘Then why didn’t you bring him to the christening yesterday?’

‘He’s—uh—busy,’ Elexa replied. What am I doing? ‘He’s a very busy man.’

‘He’s not married! Tell me he’s not married! You wouldn’t go out with a married man. Don’t tell me I’ve reared a daughter who would—’

‘Mother!’ Elexa cut off her tirade. ‘I didn’t bring him because he—um—puts a lot of hours in with his work.’

‘What’s his name? He does have a name?’

Oh, grief. Elexa hadn’t heard any doors closing. If Noah Peverelle was still in earshot—and she couldn’t blame him if he was; she had after all listened in to his conversation—then he would just love it if she gave her mother his name. ‘Can I give you a ring later?’ she asked, and, rushing on before her mother should ask why, ‘He’s—er—here now—um…’

‘He’s there with you now? Why didn’t you say?’

‘I—er…’

‘Ring me before you go to bed tonight,’ her mother instructed firmly. ‘And you’d better bring him to dinner on Saturday.’

Elexa came away from the phone with her head spinning. She turned and saw that Noah Peverelle was still there. ‘Oh, grief,’ she sighed, and collapsed into the nearest chair.

But she was not to be allowed time to get herself back together, it seemed, for straight away Noah Peverelle was bombarding her. ‘Why would you tell your mother anything about me? And don’t deny it was me you were talking about.’

Elexa had just about had enough of him. ‘It didn’t have to be you; any man would have done,’ she snapped, but wearily felt obliged to explain. ‘Yesterday, in order to put somebody off, I invented having a steady boyfriend. He told my mother—she now wants me to bring said steady boyfriend to dinner on Saturday.’

‘You look as fed up as you sound,’ Noah Peverelle observed, and added speculatively, but nonetheless accurately, ‘It’s your mother who wants you to be married, not you, isn’t it?’

Elexa didn’t want to be disloyal to her mother, but somehow, having been driven to this situation by her, she was feeling just a little too worn down just then to mind so much.

‘I don’t need marriage. I’ve got a super job, excellent prospects of promotion—I’m more than happy with my career.’

‘But your mother isn’t?’

Elexa sighed. ‘I’ve tried to explain how it is.’

‘You can’t have tried very hard.’

She felt like hitting him. ‘Much you know! I tried so hard my mother is now convinced that some man has caused me so much pain that I’m off men for good—and that I’m never likely to marry. Now various old friends, and new acquaintances, are invited to my parents’ home when I’m due to make a visit, and to family get-togethers—and I’m instructed to be nice to them.’

‘Yesterday’s offering being the one whom you told you were going steady?’

Elexa looked across at the unsmiling—rather good looking, she realised—dark-haired man occupying her sofa, recognising just how astute he was. It hadn’t taken him any time at all to sort through the situation.

‘It seemed the better way of saving his face when he asked me to go out with him.’ Noah Peverelle gave her a look as if to say the sophisticated image she was trying for had slipped a mile and he had just glimpsed her softer centre. ‘For my sins,’ she went on, not liking that he had observed her softer side, ‘he told my mother I was going steady.’

‘She must have been pleased.’

Sarcastic devil! Again, though, Elexa felt an urge to laugh. Most odd. All this stress must be making her light-headed. ‘My mother phoned me at six this morning wanting to know more about it.’

‘It’s getting you down?’

‘You could say that.’

‘Why not marry one of these men and be done with it?’ Peverelle demanded.

Nothing like being told he’d rather drink burning oil than marry her himself, Elexa thought sniffily. And went on to think, Well, who asked you? But she more or less had. ‘Because they would want to be emotionally involved.’

‘And you don’t?’

‘All I want is time free of my mother being on the phone every five minutes. All I want is to be left alone to get on with the career I love. Don’t get me wrong, I love my family, love my mother dearly, and I’d do anything for her but…’

‘But marry some man on a permanent basis?’

‘That’s about it,’ she had to agree, and looked steadily at the grey-eyed man across from her.

As she stared at Noah Peverelle, so he scrutinised her. She would have dearly liked to have known what was going through his mind, but guessed he would only let her know what he wanted her to know.

But, when she was thinking that he was probably considering he had wasted enough time and was about to leave, he surprised her by asking, ‘How do you feel about children?’