Make-Over Marriage

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.’

‘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

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!’