Marriage Material

‘Mr Fox,’ she began, ‘I think my client has the right to a great deal larger settlement than you have suggested and here is a small selection of the innumerable irrefutable reasons why…’

In an hour it was all over.

Before Romy had even hit her stride in her savage roast, Sebastian capitulated.

He glanced at his watch, said, ‘Sorry to cut the game short, guys. It’s been a blast but I have a date. Give Janet whatever she wants.’

Now, that was one heck of a surprise! As, although the guy was a renowned playboy who had left behind a daisy chain of well-kept women who had kindly kept him company on those long, cold Melbourne nights, he had never even suggested a pre-nuptial agreement before marrying. So Janet getting what she wanted was a fair whack.

Sebastian grabbed a pen from the table, signed Romy’s contracts with a flourish, patted his lawyer on the back and left without a backward glance.

He had given up an exorbitant amount of money so as not to break a date. For a guy who seemed to go through women as if they were going out of fashion, Romy couldn’t help but wonder who could be that important to him.

And in some small, ridiculous part of Romy’s anatomy, she felt a pang of something akin to envy towards someone who could mean that much in Sebastian Fox’s life.

CHAPTER TWO

AN HOUR later Sebastian was still trying to push the thought of the lawyer and her stinging criticism from his mind.

A thin, high voice called out from across the oval. ‘Hey, Seb. Heads up!’

Sebastian scooped the ball up and weaved in and out of the group of youngsters running at his side, relishing the heat and sweat and opportunity to exercise away the niggling frustration that had tagged him all day. He eventually slowed enough for his elder nephew to tag him but not enough to make it look as if he wasn’t trying.

‘Tagged!’ Chris called out in glee.

‘Aah, you got me there, Chris.’ Sebastian shook his head in disbelief as he handed over the football to his opposition. ‘You’re just too quick for an old man like me.’

Chris grinned proudly and yanked the ball from Sebastian’s hands.

‘Everybody ready?’ Chris called out to the group straggling across the football field before taking off towards the goals.

A madly waving hand on the end of an adult arm on the sideline caught Sebastian’s attention. He looked up-field and made sure another couple of adults were keeping control of the game before he jogged off the oval.

‘Good to see you, Tom.’ He gave his brother-in-law a bear hug.

‘Hey, watch the threads. You’re sweating all over me.’

Sebastian made sure to wipe his hands vigorously on the back of Tom’s clean shirt before pulling away.

‘You’re getting thrashed out there, mate.’

Sebastian grinned. ‘You think you can do better? You join us.’

Tom held up his palms in defeat. ‘No, thanks. I’ve got this bad knee, remember.’

Sebastian raised his eyebrows in disbelief. ‘Melinda told me all about that. Didn’t you walk into the coffee-table? Three weeks ago?’

‘That table has a really sharp corner.’

‘Fine.’ Sebastian turned and watched Chris weaving across the field, the ball in his possession again. ‘You’re just lucky you’ve got me around to make sure your kids get the exercise they need.’

‘Sure, mate. Sure. Hey, Melinda told me today was D-day. Divorce day, right?’

‘Yep.’ The easy smile swiftly melted from Sebastian’s face. He kicked at a tuft of grass on the edge of the field.

‘So what did she get?’ Tom grabbed Sebastian by the arm, the slick sweat coating him suddenly of no importance. ‘You’d better not have given her the beach house. Melinda and I promised the kids a week there this summer.’

‘She would never have even asked for the beach house.’

Tom’s raised eyebrows showed he disagreed. ‘I think you proved you were the last one to know what Janet might or might not do to get what she wants.’

Sebastian shrugged. ‘Anyway, she got plenty.’ Tom let loose with a great laugh. ‘For a girl who seemed easy come, easy go, she sure turned out to have a killer streak.’

‘So we now know. But this wasn’t Janet. This was the lawyer.’

The lawyer. So much for pushing her to the back of his mind. The instant action replay running constantly through his mind all afternoon, and frustrating him to distraction, had been all about the lawyer. Long legs, startling eyes, and that hair. And most of all the cutting accusations about his lifestyle she had flung at him with such vigour. He’d been brandished a playboy before. And even a cad. And maybe with good reason. But the lawyer had labelled him ‘a neurotic caveman for whom women were merely bandages for his over-inflated ego’. And that had been rough.

‘Must have been a real hot-shot,’ Tom said, thankfully drawing Sebastian back to the comparative comfort of his current surrounds. ‘What’s his name?’

‘ Her name is Romy Bridgeport.’

Tom stopped laughing though his grin went from full-screen to wide-screen. ‘You poor fellow. A couple of guys at work have been on the losing end of her counsel. But I thought if any guy had a chance against her charms it would have been you. She must be really something. Was she the man-hater I heard she is?’

‘Well, I don’t think she liked me much.’

‘No? But I thought they all liked you, what with you being so cute and all.’

Tom reached out and gave Sebastian’s cheeks a rough pinch. Sebastian playfully slapped his hands away. But he did not feel so playful.

It was true. She had not liked him one bit. She had not even tried to hide the fact for civility’s sake. Yet despite it all he had been patently attracted to her. Attracted physically went without saying, but it was her vitality that kept him engaged even after she let fly with her unremitting accusations.

‘Apparently she is engaged to some American,’ Tom said, again dragging Sebastian back to the present. ‘How ironic—a divorce lawyer getting married. You’d think she would be cynical about the whole deal.’

Sebastian did not remember seeing a sparkling diamond. But he had been blindsided by the significance behind the adorably short fingernails, so maybe… ‘Engaged to an American, you say?’

‘Mmm. Thing is, from what I’ve heard nobody has ever seen the guy or if they have they are keeping quiet about it. Maybe it’s all a diversionary tactic to fend off hot-from-the-oven divorcees. Don’t even think about it, I’m engaged.’

Sebastian looked up as a yell of glory erupted from the other end of the field. One of his team had scored a try. He looked back to Tom and shuffled from one foot to the other, itching to get back to the game.

‘Saved by the yell,’ Tom said. ‘Go on, then. Get back out there. But I want details. Come for dinner and stay over tonight?’

‘Fine,’ Sebastian conceded as he ran backwards onto the field. ‘Tell Melinda I’ll be there at seven.’

Romy stumbled into her apartment-building foyer after ten o’clock. She had spent the evening with her divorced-singles group, with once battered wives, with cheated-on husbands, with a woman she had comforted in a quiet corner, and with a pair who had the amazing news that they had become engaged…to one another! They were serious people looking for serious relationships, and if Romy knew anything about anything, she knew about that.

She shuffled into the antiquated lift, pulled the doors shut and endured the interminable ride to her top-floor apartment. Rhythmic creaks and groans took the place of the electronic music you would find in most modern apartment-building lifts. In an atypical fit of whimsy she had picked the apartment for the beautiful restored lift with its open-cage design, and she’d had to endure its resultant slowness and periodic breakdowns ever since. That would teach her!

Once home she checked her answering machine. Her parents had sent their weekly ‘hello’ in duet. She could not remember the last time she had spoken to one and not the other. They were the most devoted couple she had ever come across, still deeply in love after thirty perfect years.

She called them back, and hooked the phone beneath her chin as she prepared herself a light snack.

‘Hey, Mum.’

‘Hey, baby. I saw you on TV tonight. The Press conference. With that lovely Janet Hockley. Will she continue to make those aerobic videos, do you think?’

Romy chomped on a celery stick. ‘She made them before her marriage and during her marriage so I wouldn’t think she would suddenly stop now.’

‘Oh, good. I was thinking of buying the next one for your father for Christmas. It seems he doesn’t mind the exercise so long as there’s a cute young thing to show him how to do it. And I’ve hit the point that I’m willing to let him do anything so long as his cholesterol comes down.’

Romy set up her picnic on the small round table by the kitchen.

‘And did you get to meet that husband of hers?’

‘I did.’

‘And was he the stud the magazines say he is?’

Her mind wandered to the image of him walking from office to lift. Throughout the day it had transformed into slow motion and sepia. Now her mother had unfortunately relocated that image to Sebastian walking through a stable, rake in hand, shining with sweat…She fought the urge to dislodge the looped vision from her mind with a sharp slap across the cheek.

‘Not that I witnessed first-hand.’

Her mother paused and Romy hoped she did not pick up on the forced nonchalance in her voice. That was all she needed for her mother to get funny ideas in her head. Luckily her indifference seemed to fly.

‘Well, I guess that’s hardly something you could add to your résumé, dear, so no loss there.’

‘True. Is Dad there?’

‘He’s on the other phone, listening, dear.’

Of course he was. ‘All’s well, Dad?’

‘Well as can be expected considering your mother won’t let me eat potato any more. Potato, I tell you!’

‘Imagine if you got on her bad side. You’d be left with bread and water.’

‘Bread! Ha! She made me cut out bread long before potato became the evil food of the month—’

‘Anyway,’ Romy’s mother cut him off, ‘we just wanted to say we saw you on TV, dear. The girls at poker will be most impressed. Goodnight, love.’

‘Goodnight, Mum. ’Night, Dad.’

Romy hung up, appalled as the slow-motion, sepia, gorgeous-man-walking image was now replaced with the hazy image of Sebastian, the stud, dripping in hay and little else.

No! She was not a woman willing to have her head turned by an enchanting smile. She was stronger than that, more focused, and with very specific plans for her future, and mooning over a man like him did not come into that equation.

Romy was confident that like her parents she would never, ever marry unless she was sure it would be forever. Whereas this guy went through wives the way he went through baseball caps. Lucky he was Alan’s client, not hers, so it was unlikely she would run into him ever again.

She felt very sorry for the next Mrs Sebastian Fox. Whoever she was.

Sebastian walked into the kitchen early the next morning with his sister’s middle child Thomas slung squealing and twisting over his shoulder.

‘Put me down, Uncle Sebastian! You promised as soon as we got to the kitchen table!’

‘I promised once you finished my maths quiz. Come on, Thomas. Five times five is…’

Thomas took a deep, uncertain breath. ‘Twenty-five?’

‘That’s my boy.’ Sebastian tickled his nephew until tears welled in his eyes.

‘Put him down, Sebastian, or I’ll never get him to school.’ Melinda mixed several eggs in the frying pan and slopped in some milk and cheese.

‘Yes, sis.’ Sebastian swung the boy from his shoulders and plopped him at the kitchen bench next to Chris and Delilah.

‘You should be cooking for me,’ Melinda said. ‘I have to get ready for work. What are you doing today?’

‘Don’t know.’

‘When are you going to get a real job, Uncle Sebastian?’ Thomas asked.

Melinda grinned. ‘From the mouths of babes…’

Sebastian ruffled his nephew’s hair, earning a squeal of torment for his efforts. ‘I do just fine, thank you very much.’

‘It’s not about doing fine. It’s about using your gifts for good.’

He pushed Melinda aside with a bump of his hip and finished making the eggs for her. She set to getting the kids ready for school.

‘With my sponsorships and investments, I’m building a pretty meaty trust fund for your young tribe, sis, so I’m hardly using them for evil.’

Melinda was unmoved. ‘You hardly use them at all. If not a job then a hobby other than babysitting or playing touch footy and marrying badly. You need a project. I can’t stand watching you atrophy before my eyes.’

He chose to ignore Melinda’s barb. Though it had been playing on him all night. A project? Was that what he needed? He felt he was on the verge of something. As if he just needed a nudge and a truth would be revealed. He had no idea what it was but he felt invigorated, more than he had in years.

Sebastian lifted his shirt to reveal a very healthy torso. ‘What do you reckon, kids? Still enough to keep me going for a few winters yet?’ He poked his tummy out as far as it would go and scored a giggle from his nephews.

Melinda was about to hit him when Tom, senior, shouted out from the den. ‘That’s her!’

‘I’ve asked him a thousand times not to shout if he wants me, but to come and get me,’ Melinda said to Sebastian, her voice rising until it was more than a match for her husband’s. ‘He sets the kids such a bad example!’

‘It’s the lawyer!’ Tom shouted once more. ‘The one who took Sebastian to the cleaners yesterday.’

That caught Sebastian’s attention. He pulled down his shirt and hotfooted it into the den, where he sat on the arm of Tom’s couch. It was a Press conference from the day before. Romy’s sea-blue suit jacket was buttoned up to the neck no less, but nothing bar a big woollen hat could hide that shock of magnificent hair.

Tom whistled long and slow. ‘And boy, is she a babe!’

And then some, Sebastian thought, feeling his breathing slow perceptibly at the sight of her. But now he saw the danger signs as they appeared. What he was feeling was precisely the pattern Romy had reiterated he had followed all his adult life. That for whatever reason, he fell into one set of female arms after another. So according to her theories his attraction to her would simply be because she was in the line of fire.

‘Who’s a babe?’ Melinda asked from the doorway.

‘You are, my love.’

Tom grinned and patted his lap. Melinda rolled her eyes but followed his instructions and snuggled onto his lap anyway. Sebastian saw this interplay only from the corner of his eye as his gaze was focused on the tabloid TV show in front of him.

‘ That was your opposition lawyer,’ Melinda said. Then she too laughed. ‘I would have put money on the outcome to go her way. I’ll give it to Janet—despite her foibles, she is a clever, clever girl.’

Sebastian had had a feeling from the moment he’d walked in that room that Janet was a lucky, lucky girl. The clever one had been sitting beside her, pulling all the strings. More importantly, that clever one was someone who knew what she wanted and let nothing stand in her way. That certainty was what he had been missing. He’d had it once before time and life had whittled it away.

‘You were right, bro. She doesn’t like you much,’ Tom said. ‘You can see it in her eyes as clear as if she had said the words. She is as happy to have beaten you as she is that her client won.’

Melinda leant forward to get a closer look then turned to her brother with her mouth turned upside-down. ‘Poor Sebastian. The one woman who won’t be signing up to your fan club and she just happens to be on the opposing side of your divorce suit.’

Sebastian nodded but his mind was a long way further down the track. The room the Press conference was being held in looked familiar. Where had he seen it before? The cooking class! He had accidentally stumbled in there when searching for the conference room.

‘They have quite some set-up down there, you know.’

‘Do they, now?’ He felt rather than saw Melinda give Tom a look.

‘They have a crèche, a café, cooking classes for the newly single.’

The feeling that had been building up in him all morning hit some sort of crescendo then spilled over into understanding. He suddenly knew what he was going to do that day.

‘I was thinking of going back there to check it out further.’

‘You want to take a cooking class?’

Sebastian peeled himself from the chair; he felt as if he was waking up after a long sleep. ‘Maybe. Why not?’

‘Why not, indeed?’ Melinda agreed. ‘Maybe you should go back and check it out.’

‘Maybe I will.’

But he knew that there was no maybe about it.

Romy walked back from her early-morning Pilates class to her office in her gym outfit of a snug tank top, ankle-length gym tights and white sneakers, whistling a tune she had heard in the cab radio on the way to work. The towel wrapped around her neck kept lank hair off her hot skin.

Once in her office she slid the towel from beneath her hair, performed a pretty spectacular butt-wiggle in time with the conclusion of the jazzy song, and threw her towel over her shoulder towards her sofa. She stopped short, as she did not hear the usual soft slap of towel hitting seat.

‘Mornin’, Romy,’ a deep, sexy voice called to her.

She spun around, her hand smothering the scream that escaped her throat, and found Sebastian Fox leaning back in her sofa, the old towel clutched in his hand. She had to resist the substantial urge to whack him for giving her such a shock.

‘According to your day planner you should have been back,’ he looked at his watch, ‘three minutes and twenty seconds ago. I was getting worried.’

‘You read my diary?’ she blurted.

‘I couldn’t miss it. It is open on your desk and takes up almost as much space. I’ve never met anyone who diarised what they are going to wear for the next week!’

‘Dry cleaning efficiently is a finicky business. And so what if I am organized? What’s wrong with that?’

Romy had to shake her head to remember how this conversation had even begun.

‘I think the pertinent information is what on earth you are doing here, Mr Fox. I can assure you the contract you signed was legal and binding, therefore you have no recourse to insist on any changes.’

Sebastian stilled. He had caught sight of the Barbie insignia emblazoned across the length of Romy’s towel. The smile he shot her was enquiring and…impressed?

‘It’s the smallest clean towel I could find at home this morning,’ she waffled.

Sebastian nodded as though her explanation made it seem less ridiculous, then she was forced to wait as he neatly folded her towel and placed it on the seat beside him. As such she was also forced to notice how unfairly scrumptious he looked in his black sweater. His hair was mussed from the wind outside and light stubble covered his swarthy cheeks and chin. His stormy eyes gleamed in the low morning light and he looked far too alert for so early in the day.

He caught her watching him and smiled again, this time it was slow and languorous and she felt it in her gut. Of course, that was probably hunger from not having had breakfast before her class.

‘I thought maybe we could talk shop.’ His smile lit up with mischief. ‘Though perhaps I have caught you at a bad time.’

‘Because I am dressed as such?’ she asked, waving a frustrated hand down the length of her insufficiently clad body. ‘Goodness no. It’s Wednesday. We all go ultra-casual on a Wednesday.’

But it was not her skimpy outfit that bothered her as such. It was that the day before at least she had been prepared for the sensory onslaught that was he. She had been Ms Bridgeport the lawyer, and her attire, her props, had all been a part of the magic act and she had felt right at home on the stage she had set. Right now she was still numb with surprise and not ready for the likes of him. She was Romy the sleepy, Romy the sweaty, Romy of the Barbie towel.

It was time to regain her home-court advantage. She walked around her desk and sat in her office chair, happier to have a huge obstacle between herself and his keen gaze. She casually picked up her heavy blue crystal and rolled it around in her palm.

‘Since your ex-wife is a client of mine I’m not sure how much shop we can talk without ethics getting in the way. Though I’m not sure that would have occurred to you.’

There, Romy thought, take that!

‘Actually that did occur to me. So I rang Janet this morning and she assured me her contract with you was finalised as soon as I signed on the dotted line.’

How chummy. Even his ex-wife was on phone-chatting terms. Well, she was not falling for the all-too-cool façade. She knew better than anyone that an angelic face did not an angel make.

‘Fine. You want to talk shop, Mr Fox, then talk shop.’

‘I think this place is pretty amazing.’

Well, she couldn’t argue with that. ‘Go on.’

‘And of all the amazing sights I witnessed yesterday you are the cream on the cake. You are a force to be reckoned with, Romy. The best I have ever come up against.’

The way Sebastian said it made Romy imagine coming up against him in a whole different way than he had implied, and the mental picture raised her heart rate to twice the speed the Pilates had. There was no harm in blaming hunger and exercise-induced endorphins, was there?

‘And I would like to secure your services,’ he finished.

‘That’s very flattering, but if you are seeking my representation I am afraid that I am a specialist and I would be no use to you unless…’

Sebastian watched in amazement as the colour drained from Romy’s face, making her startling eyes rimmed with smudged eyeliner stand out even more.

‘Oh, no,’ she said. ‘Please don’t tell me you already have another poor fish on your hook and you are already preparing for the time you will throw her back.’

Her statement was so ridiculous Sebastian almost laughed. But then he realised she was deadly serious. Her hand clamped tight onto a strange blue stone and he could swear she was on the verge of throwing it at him!

‘There is no fish to speak of, Romy,’ Sebastian said, simply unable to resist pandering to her self-righteousness. He wanted her up and fighting if he was going to get what he needed from her. ‘But I am a pragmatic man and time is awaiting, as is the next ex-Mrs Sebastian Fox. She’s out there somewhere and here we are, wasting time arguing about it, rather than giving the girl the chance to have a go.’

The nerve of the man! Romy’s palms began to itch as the hot blood rushed to her edgy extremities. She lowered her crystal into her desk drawer to stop herself from pegging it between his eyes.

‘I will not be your divorce lawyer, Mr Fox.’ Her voice all but quivered with indignation.

‘Once again, it’s Sebastian.’

She took a deep breath and counted to three. ‘Fine, then. I will not be your divorce lawyer, Sebastian. I act only for those who take marriage seriously and you, Sebastian, do not come across to me as a terribly serious person. And if you have really done your research you will know that I consider myself not in the business of promoting divorce but in the business of making sure the right people are together.’

‘Fine.’

‘Fine?

‘As I said, there is no fish to speak of. Not yet. So, since you are such a renowned matchmaker, I need you to assist me in procuring my next wife.’

CHAPTER THREE

‘I THINK the best thing for me is to get back on the horse,’ Sebastian said.

Romy’s mouth hung ajar and her eyes were round and bright as dollar coins. ‘Get…back…on…the…horse?’

Her face was crimson and absolutely delightful. He’d heard of women who were beautiful when they were angry but had thought it just a myth. But here was one woman for whom the saying could have been written.