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Make-Over Marriage
Sharon Kendrik
Mills & Boon are proud to present a thrilling digital collection of all Sharon Kendrick’s novels and novellas for us to celebrate the publication of her amazing 100th book! Many of these books are available as e books for the first time.Last chance to get it right…Anna Travers has somehow lost herself. In the last ten years, her triplets and gorgeous husband became her entire world. But when she over hears comments about her appearance… her weight…her world turns on its axis.With her husband away, Anna has one month to turn herself around! But having gone from school girl to wife and mother, can she find the courage to be herself before she can make over her marriage?
Anna drew a deep breath.
‘But Todd, why move?’ she asked him plaintively. ‘I mean, we’re happy here. Aren’t we?’
He didn’t reply at first. Anna noticed him hesitate for the second time, and the subsequent silence filled the room like an unwelcome blanket of smoke.
‘Todd?’ Anna turned to look at him, her face suddenly pale and troubled. ‘Are you trying to tell me you aren’t happy?’
He shook his dark head. ‘Sweetheart—it isn’t quite as simple as that.’
Dear Reader (#ua9cf3389-64a8-544f-94b0-63c7accfe39c),
One hundred. Doesn’t matter how many times I say it, I still can’t believe that’s how many books I’ve written. It’s a fabulous feeling but more fabulous still is the news that Mills & Boon are issuing every single one of my backlist as digital titles. Wow. I can’t wait to share all my stories with you - which are as vivid to me now as when I wrote them.
There’s BOUGHT FOR HER HUSBAND, with its outrageously macho Greek hero and A SCANDAL, A SECRET AND A BABY featuring a very sexy Tuscan. THE SHEIKH’S HEIR proved so popular with readers that it spent two weeks on the USA Today charts and…well, I could go on, but I’ll leave you to discover them for yourselves.
I remember the first line of my very first book: “So you’ve come to Australia looking for a husband?” Actually, the heroine had gone to Australia escape men, but guess what? She found a husband all the same! The man who inspired that book rang me up recently and when I told him I was beginning my 100th story and couldn’t decide what to write, he said, “Why don’t you go back to where it all started?”
So I did. And that’s how A ROYAL VOW OF CONVENIENCE was born. It opens in beautiful Queensland and moves to England and New York. It’s about a runaway princess and the enigmatic billionaire who is infuriated by her, yet who winds up rescuing her. But then, she goes and rescues him… Wouldn’t you know it?
I’ll end by saying how very grateful I am to have a career I love, and to thank each and every one of you who has supported me along the way. You really are very dear readers.
Love,
Sharon xxx
Mills & Boon are proud to present a thrilling digital collection of all Sharon Kendrick’s novels and novellas for us to celebrate the publication of her amazing and awesome 100th book! Sharon is known worldwide for her likeable, spirited heroines and her gorgeous, utterly masculine heroes.
SHARON KENDRICK once won a national writing competition, describing her ideal date: being flown to an exotic island by a gorgeous and powerful man. Little did she realise that she’d just wandered into her dream job! Today she writes for Mills & Boon, featuring her often stubborn but always to-die-for heroes and the women who bring them to their knees. She believes that the best books are those you never want to end. Just like life…
Make-Over Marriage
Sharon Kendrick
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
To the stunning Kym Westbrook and her two angelic
children, Jody and Bod!
Contents
Cover (#ud2415e05-0f22-5dba-bb92-fa8aea75c980)
Introduction (#ua430730b-3863-5cf1-b3a4-c74612e8cbef)
Dear Reader (#ua895e4eb-ccf1-5a4d-bc0b-b020de08af8a)
About the Author (#ufd8f6141-80d2-5f59-936a-330472efa949)
Title Page (#u21cb472e-83b7-5a6e-b4a2-8aaa0fe94634)
Dedication (#uecb3cecb-c12f-5bf0-9c3d-2c10bb0c7a5d)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_b1b07394-80d7-57da-8915-7a1b080629df)
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_da134eca-030a-5fb9-8c0f-4f26eabb63bf)
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_9a68a7a6-a3c3-56fc-9ab5-c7decca5377f)
CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_60b3a830-1aa8-5251-a59d-e71a6f9320c6)
TODD TRAVERS removed a ballet shoe from behind the teapot, and said something rather uncomplimentary about it beneath his breath. He briefly contemplated hurling it to the other side of the bright, airy kitchen, but resisted. It would probably disappear for ever in this noisy, chaotic home of his, and he could just imagine the ensuing panic if that should happen!
‘Don’t those girls ever put anything away?’ he demanded, in a voice so rich and deep and spine-tinglingly sexy that most people meeting him for the first time laboured under the illusion that he was a Shakespearean actor, instead of a businessman with one of the most respected portfolios in London!
Anna lifted her head to look at her husband. She was sitting on the floor, polishing three sets of shoes, and her neck was beginning to ache. Meanwhile, Todd had broken the habit of a lifetime and come home from work unexpectedly early today. And still hadn’t told her why!
Her deep blue eyes were dreamy and faraway, but they instantly focused with pleasure on the hard symmetry of her husband’s features. Unconsciously, her heart picked up speed as she let her eyes drift adoringly over him, then sighed.
Todd was one of those men who were often described as being too good-looking for their own good—though Anna certainly didn’t have any complaints in that department! Tall and fit—with strong, muscular thighs and a lean, hard body—he had all the grace of the natural sportsman. His thick dark hair held the hint of a wave to it, and when he smiled it was like the sun coming out.
In fact, if someone had asked Anna to list any of Todd’s less attractive characteristics, she would have been completely stumped, but then she was just a hopeless case where Todd was concerned, still occasionally having to pinch herself in case the whole marriage turned out to be a dream!
Ten years down the line and three children had done nothing to dissipate the sense of wonder she sometimes felt, knowing that she was wedded to a man as downright gorgeous as Todd Travers!
‘Mmm?’ she questioned absently, carefully putting down the little black shoebrush on the sheet of newspaper. ‘What was that you said, darling?’
‘The girls,’ he repeated impatiently. ‘They never seem to put anything away. Do they?’
Anna’s eyes swivelled to the French dresser, on which she had placed a large, laughing portrait of their ten-year-old triplets with their butter-coloured curls and their dark blue eyes which were so like their mother’s.
It was an extremely flattering photograph, and had been taken by a leading London photographer who had instantly admired the girls’ professionalism. But such professionalism was hardly surprising, since Natalia, Natasha and Valentina Travers had been successfully modelling in television commercials for the last two years.
The three girls had been ‘discovered’ by a casting director whose son attended their school in Kensington—the very same school where Anna herself had gone as a child. The triplets had been mad-keen to take part in the proposed supermarket TV campaign, but it had taken a good deal of persuasion before Anna and Todd had been convinced that their daughters’ school work would not suffer.
Since then the three girls had worked exclusively for Premium Stores, a vast chain of supermarkets which had outlets all over Britain. They appeared regularly on television advertisements and their smiling faces—so like Anna’s—were routinely featured on giant hoardings nationwide. And their schoolfriends were all desperately jealous of them, because, as Valentina had once gleefully put it, ‘we actually get paid to eat chocolate biscuits!’
Seasoned veterans, all three, thought Anna, and her mouth curved into a soft smile as she stared at their mischievous, mobile faces. ‘I know that they can be a little untidy,’ she told Todd reluctantly, because, quite frankly, if her three daughters had suddenly sprouted wings and sported haloes, it would have come as no surprise to their doting mother!
Her husband’s dark brows met in a forbidding ebony line above grey eyes which today looked as wintry as a December sky. ‘That’s hardly surprising,’ he commented acidly.
Anna’s eyes widened in question. ‘Oh? Why’s that?’
‘Because you spend your whole life running round after them!’ he accused growlingly.
‘Todd, I don’t—’
‘Anna, you do,’ he cut across her. ‘You know you do! You insist on doing everything for them! Like now, for instance,’ he accused, sending a dark glower in the direction of the half-polished shoes. ‘Why do you do so much for them?’
‘Because I’m their mother,’ she answered calmly.
‘Other mothers have help,’ he pointed out.
‘Other mothers have careers. I can’t justify farming my children out to strangers when I’m not even going out to work, Todd!’
‘I don’t like to see you cleaning their shoes,’ he said stubbornly. ‘That’s all.’
Anna stopped thinking about whether the girls had matching clean tights for tomorrow’s photo-shoot, or whether she should take a lasagne from out of the freezer for supper, or simply start cooking something from scratch—and gave her husband her full attention. The curving shape of his mouth had definitely flattened into an implacable line. She put the lid carefully back on the tin of polish. ‘Are you angry about something, Todd?’
Their eyes met.
‘You don’t want to hear about it—’
‘Oh, yes, I do,’ she demurred softly. Her deep blue eyes were curious as she leaned back against her heels to look at him and absent-mindedly lifted her finger to loop a long strand of hair which was tickling her cheek, then tucked it behind her ear.
The small movement hinted at the lush swell of her breasts and Todd felt the slow burn of desire begin to prick heatedly at his skin, even though his wife was doing absolutely nothing to inflame him. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Anna always dressed very practically—a habit she had acquired with three tiny babies to look after, and one which she had never quite lost. She wore a pair of leggings which had already begun to wrinkle at the knee, and a sloppy red cotton sweater which was pretty shapeless. Her buttery blonde hair was scraped back into a ponytail and tied with a velvet ribbon, and she wasn’t wearing a scrap of make-up.
And yet...
‘Why don’t you tell me, Todd?’ She scrambled to her feet and looked at him quizzically. ‘Or shall I fetch you a drink first?’
He shook his head, then looked into her trusting face and almost changed his mind, aware of the bombshell he was about to drop into her lap. ‘I don’t want a drink,’ he told her emphatically. ‘Let’s go next door and sit down, shall we?’
Anna nodded and followed him into the sitting room, whereupon he immediately flopped his angular frame onto one of the large, squashy green sofas, and sighed.
Anna slid onto the far end of the sofa and smiled at him encouragingly, thinking that her normally equable husband was in a very irritable mood today. Though, come to think of it, hadn’t he been oddly distracted for the past few weeks now? And every time she had asked him if something was wrong he had just shaken his dark head rather impatiently.
Anna was beginning to lose patience herself; she was much too busy for all these guessing games. If something was wrong, he should jolly well tell her! ‘So tell me what’s troubling you, Todd.’
He hesitated, choosing his words carefully because he had an extremely strong suspicion that his wife was going to object to what he was about to say. And object very strongly, too. ‘Sweetheart—’
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, Todd—spit it out!’
He smiled briefly, because she was the only woman in the world he would allow to get away with speaking to him like that! ‘Perhaps it’s time that we thought about moving...’
It was the last thing Anna had expected to hear. If Todd had suddenly announced that he wanted the five of them to go back-packing across the Arizona desert, she could not have been more surprised. ‘Moving?’ She sat bolt upright on the sofa and stared at him in dismay.
They had started their married life in this mansion flat, brought up three lively triplets within its spacious walls, and stayed together there as a family, despite all the odds and the dire predictions of the few people who had known them at the very beginning. ‘Moving?’ said Anna again, only more faintly this time.
Todd nodded. ‘That’s right. It isn’t such a bizarre suggestion, is it, sweetheart? Lots of people do it all the time! Think about it sensibly.’
But Anna had discovered that thinking sensibly was easier said than done, especially since she had become a mother. Because in the ten years since she had given birth to the triplets her brain had gone completely to mush. From someone who at school could add up a whole line of figures in her head, she was sometimes reduced to counting on her fingers when the triplets had friends over to tea and she needed to calculate how many jam sandwiches they would need!
She put it down to motherhood, and having to remember at least twenty things at the same time, but whatever the cause she was no longer terribly good at thinking through a problem logically. She tended to fire off at the deep end if she felt rattled—and rattled was exactly what she felt right now.
That, and insecure.
This flat was her nest and her haven; she had lived here for as long as she could remember—long before she’d married Todd. And they were happy here. The last thing in the world she wanted was to uproot them all. ‘But I don’t want to move anywhere, Todd,’ she told her husband firmly.
A muscle moved dangerously by the side of his mouth. ‘No, I realise that. But you can’t just dismiss the suggestion like that, Anna!’
No. He was right. She couldn’t. Not if she wanted to win him round to her way of thinking. Because Todd Travers was one of those infuriatingly cool and reasonable men who always had an answer for everything. And if Anna burst into noisy and hysterical tears—which was what she felt like doing at that precise moment—and made a passionate announcement stating that she couldn’t bear to leave, then Todd would simply demolish all her arguments by the sneaky use of logic.
Anna drew a deep breath. ‘But Todd, why move?’ she asked him plaintively. ‘I mean, we’re happy here. Aren’t we?’
He didn’t reply at first. Anna noticed him hesitate for the second time, and the subsequent silence filled the room like an unwelcome blanket of smoke.
‘Todd?’ Anna turned to look at him, her face suddenly pale and troubled. ‘Are you trying to tell me you aren’t happy?’
He shook his dark head. ‘Sweetheart—it isn’t quite as simple as that.’
Anna stilled as she heard the sombre note in his voice and immediately leapt to one very gloomy conclusion as to what her husband might really be trying to tell her. ‘Are you t-trying to tell me that you’re seeing someone else?’ she demanded shakily, because her stomach was tied up in tight little knots as she asked the question.
Todd actually burst out laughing. ‘Oh, Anna—’
‘Don’t you “Anna” me!’ she stormed back, but her relief at his reaction was so immense that she found herself picking up a cushion and hurling it at him. He caught it as easily as blinking. ‘If there’s another woman in your life, then I darned well want to know about it, Todd Travers!’
Todd put the cushion down and stood up, and Anna was horrified to find herself gazing lustfully at his thighs. How was it possible to be this angry with a man, she wondered, and yet to know that if that same man wandered over and started making love to her she would be hard-pushed to resist him? Not that he would, of course. Not right now, on the sofa, in broad daylight. Todd was a man who had always kept his formidable sexual appetites strictly under control... having three children born at the same time had made sure of that!
‘There is no other woman,’ he told her softly. ‘As well you know. I am simply not interested in other women—’
‘Aren’t you?’ she queried, only slightly mollified and unwilling to let the subject drop.
‘Even if I had the time or the energy—ouch!’ he exclaimed as a second cushion this time found its target. ‘You are a very good shot, Mrs Travers!’ he mused, rubbing at his shadowed chin where the embroidered cushion had hit him. ‘Perhaps you should take up golf?’
‘Please don’t try and change the subject, Todd!’ she warned him sweetly. ‘And if it’s not another woman, then you’d better start explaining why you’re not happy!’
‘Now you are putting words in my mouth,’ he accused quietly. ‘I didn’t actually say that, did I?’
He moved to stand directly in front of her then, the loose cut of his Italian trousers not quite concealing the powerful shafts of his thighs, and Anna felt consumed with longing.
‘Can I sit down?’ he questioned, indicating the space beside her.
‘Since when did you start asking?’ she asked breathlessly.
‘Since you started hurling soft furnishings at me, and then decided to glower at me as if I were the most heinous villain in history,’ he responded silkily. ‘So can I?’
‘Suit yourself,’ she shrugged, aware that she was not responding in a very adult way, but quite at a loss to know how to stop it, since she suspected from the grim expression on his face that Todd was about to tell her something she most definitely didn’t want to hear.
She noted that he positioned his long-legged frame at some distance from her, and was grateful for the physical space between them, at least. Because she was suddenly and quite overwhelmingly aware of him. And her hands were shaking...
‘You asked if we were happy here,’ he began, but he was frowning.
‘And you gave me an evasive answer.’
‘Well, try this for straightforwardness.’ He ran his fingers through the thick, already ruffled waves of his dark hair and stared at her. ‘Of course I’ve been happy here.’
She noted his use of the past tense. ‘Well, then?’
‘I’m happy now,’ he amended softly. ‘I just think we could be even happier.’
‘And just what is that supposed to mean?’
Todd sighed, wishing that he had opted for that drink, after all. He had been dreading this moment for too long now, but he could put it off no longer. ‘Just that we have been very, very blessed—I’m aware of that, Anna. We live in a large and very comfortable apartment—’
‘Which is situated right slap bang in the middle of the capital!’ she prompted immediately.
‘As you say.’
‘We couldn’t get more central if we tried, Todd! Could we?’
‘No, indeed. But we also have three rapidly growing daughters,’ he reminded her drily. ‘Who very soon may no longer be contented with sharing a bedroom, no matter how vast that bedroom might be,’ he added as he saw his wife open her mouth and correctly anticipated her objection to that particular statement.
‘The triplets could never bear to be separated!’ objected Anna as she recalled the many battles she had had over the years. Why, even on holidays they wouldn’t contemplate the idea of different rooms. ‘They’ve always said that!’
‘Have you asked them recently?’
Something in his tone alerted Anna to discussions from which she had clearly been excluded. ‘No,’ she answered steadily. ‘But I presume from your voice that you have?’
‘I have been talking to the girls about lifestyles in general,’ he told her unwillingly, wondering why he should feel as though he had committed some kind of crime.
‘But you clearly decided that I shouldn’t be privy to this particular discussion?’ she queried tartly. ‘Or was there more than one?’
Todd drummed his long fingers so that they sounded like galloping hooves on the arm of the velvet sofa. ‘Don’t make it sound like a felony I’ve committed against you, Anna,’ he warned her softly. ‘You have lots of conversations with the girls which do not include me.’
Anna bit back the temptation to tell him that talks about whether they needed new clothes, or nagging at them to do their homework, were hardly in the same league as moving house!
She looked directly into stormy grey eyes, narrowed now so that only a gleam of silver was visible, their expression shaded by the lush fringing of his dark lashes. ‘So what exactly did you all discuss?’ she asked him. ‘And how did the subject come up?’
He decided to come clean. ‘It was on your birthday—when I was looking after them. Remember?’
She most certainly did! For her twenty-eighth birthday Todd had bought her a ticket for a day’s pampering at one of London’s most luxurious female-only health clubs.
Privately, Anna had thought the gift slightly wasted on someone as uninterested in her appearance as she was. She had spent the day being pummelled and pounded, sweating in a sauna and then being forced to plunge into an icy tub. She had had her skin massaged with unctuous creams and her nails buffed and manicured, then, after a lunch which consisted entirely of some inedible form of plant life, she had arrived home refreshed and rejuvenated, but with the most enormous appetite!
‘So the subject just happened to come up, did it?’ enquired Anna suspiciously. ‘Just like that? The girls suddenly turned to you and said, “Daddy—we want to move!”’
He didn’t respond. Just sat there with a studiedly patient expression as he returned her accusing stare.
‘Well?’ prompted Anna sarcastically, infuriated by the maddeningly reasonable look on his face! How dare he be so reasonable? ‘Was that what happened?’
‘Are you going to give me a chance to tell you?’ he enquired coolly. ‘Or are you going to continue speaking for me so melodramatically?’
‘I think I need a drink,’ said Anna suddenly, and couldn’t miss Todd’s look of surprise at her request. She, who normally took alcohol on high days and holidays only, and then in such tiny amounts that any more than a glass of wine could render her very tipsy indeed!
‘I’ll fetch us one,’ said Todd instantly, and escaped into the kitchen where he busied himself with opening wine and getting glasses out of the cupboard while he decided how best to continue a discussion which was not going at all the way he had intended.
Anna noticed that he had chosen a very expensive bottle indeed and raised her eyebrows as he carried the tray into the sitting room. ‘It must be very bad news,’ she joked darkly as he handed her a glass of wine.
Todd ignored that as he sat back down beside her and sipped at his drink, then put his glass firmly down on the table and turned to her. ‘It’s just that I don’t spend as much time with the girls as I’d always like, so on your birthday I told them that they could do exactly what they wanted to do—within reason, of course—as a special treat.’
‘That was very sweet of you,’ said Anna automatically as she tried her wine.
‘That’s when Tally told me, in the gloomiest voice imaginable, that it would be impossible for her to do what she really wanted to do, because she simply wasn’t allowed.’
‘This is all to do with horses, I suppose?’ said Anna slowly as she thought of Natalia, first-born of their triplets, who was completely and utterly pony-mad. She spent all her allowance on pony and horse magazines and every book she read for pleasure had an equestrian theme.
‘Yes, it is,’ Todd agreed, rather grimly. ‘She asked me rather plaintively why she wasn’t allowed to have a horse of her own.’
‘Because she knows as well as I do that horse-riding is far too risky,’ sighed Anna. ‘All three of them are aware that they cannot take part in any kind of dangerous sport—why, it’s even written into their contract! The casting director told her right at the beginning that if she breaks an arm or a leg, then it could spell disaster for the campaign.’
‘Which would be the end of the world, no doubt?’ questioned Todd slowly. ‘Disaster for the campaign?’
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 (#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.
Their eyes met over three silky blonde heads and the unmissable look of determination in her husband’s grey eyes made Anna dread the resumption of their talk.
‘Tea, please,’ she told him calmly, grateful for a bit of breathing space.
There was a lull while Todd clattered around in the kitchen and Anna brushed the triplets’ wayward hair and exclaimed over offerings brought home from their art class.
And, although she tried very hard not to think about it, her words came back to haunt her as she realised that for the first time ever she had had the courage to speak the truth during her row with Todd.
She had never meant to, but facts were facts, and, yes, she had trapped Todd Travers into a marriage he had never intended...
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_63a22f29-148c-5587-84b6-4f3bce07cef0)
ANNA met Todd in a nightclub. She was just seventeen and had never been anywhere quite like it before.
Clubbing had never held any fascination for Anna, but it was the birthday of one of her classmates at the exclusive Kensington school she attended, who had insisted on taking five friends to one of London’s liveliest clubs.
It was certainly very lively! But the place was packed and very noisy and the flashing strobe lights which were turning all her friends into fast-moving silvery white marionettes were giving Anna a splitting headache. She hadn’t been in there for twenty minutes before she found herself wishing that she could go home.
Todd was also at the club under sufferance. His driver, who had been with him since he was well on his way to making his first million, was getting married that weekend, and he had invited Todd to his stag night. At twenty-three, Todd wasn’t into either stag nights or heavy drinking, but he’d felt duty-bound to join in with the party, and only hoped his face didn’t show his boredom!
Just before midnight, with the thumping music pounding away inside his head, he slipped away unnoticed to catch a few moments of peace and found a discreetly lit bar on the first floor of the building.
Anna was in search of the loo, and once she found it wished she hadn’t, because she was confronted with a full-length mirror and quickly became aware that her sophisticated outfit made her look like some experienced big-sister version of herself.
She had borrowed the dress, of course, because her own wardrobe was sadly lacking in most areas. Anna might have been a pupil at a prestigious and expensive London day school, but her father had no idea how young girls wanted to live.
He was an out-of-touch civil servant who spent most of the time locked away in his mote-filled and dingy office in Whitehall; a changed person, so different from the laughing man of Anna’s childhood. Anna’s mother had been mown down by a drunken driver when Anna was just fourteen, and since then all the light seemed to have gone out of her father’s life. He rarely seemed to be home at all. He did not seem able to share his immense grief with his daughter, coping instead by burying himself in his work.
A lofty and somewhat distant intellectual, he cared nothing for high fashion, and what little he knew had convinced him that it was nothing more than an elaborate swindle designed to part young and impressionable girls from their money. Consequently, while Anna received an adequate allowance, it certainly didn’t allow her to indulge herself in the outfits which most of her peers owned.
The dress she had borrowed for the evening wasn’t something she would have normally chosen, but it obviously did something for her, because Anna had never been quite so aware of men ogling her before. It was a short satin slip dress with shoe-string straps which left the creamy skin of her shoulders exposed. The silvery grey silky material clung to her undulating curves like a second skin, and the eyes of most men in the room were out on stalks.
Todd sipped at his tonic water and observed the woman in the tiny, shimmering dress from out of the corner of his eye. Great legs, was his first instinctive thought, and then something made him look closer, and he frowned.
Because for all her beauty there was something about her which did not quite add up. She did not look very comfortable in her surroundings, for a start. And any minute now one of those creeps who had been quaffing far more booze than was good for them was going to breathe stale alcohol all over her and try to chat her up. Or worse.
Todd rose to his feet, unaffected by the fact that every woman present was lasciviously undressing him with her eyes.
Except one.
Anna had noticed him, of course. He was so hunky that everyone had noticed him! But only a woman who was supremely vain, or extremely confident, would ever have expected a man like that to look at her twice. And she was neither.
And then she blinked as she saw that he was walking purposefully across the bar in her direction.
She actually peered over her shoulder to see if some glamorous female was standing behind her, giving the tall man with the slanted grey eyes a welcoming smile, but there was no one. Only her. She bit her lip.
Todd saw her obvious and innocent confusion and felt the oddest glow of satisfaction as he drew closer to her.
‘Hello,’ he said, in his distinctively deep voice. ‘You look lost.’
‘I wish I was,’ Anna told him frankly. ‘This place is worse than being in a fireworks factory.’
‘Oh? Why?’ He was amused and showed it; these days he rarely seemed to meet women who said anything original. Most of them just agreed with everything he said!
‘Well, all those lights flashing like mad and the music banging loud enough to perforate your eardrums!’ Anna looked around her with obvious disapproval. ‘And I can’t believe that they charge those ridiculous prices for drinks!’
‘You sound as though you shouldn’t be here,’ he observed drily. ‘Which rather begs the question of why you are.’
Anna shrugged. ‘I came with some friends,’ she told him, deliberately omitting the prefix ‘school’.
‘And they are...?’ He looked around.
‘Dancing. Downstairs.’
‘And don’t you want to dance?’ he questioned, thinking that it would be heaven to have her swaying in his arms to the music.
Anna considered the question briefly. She wouldn’t have minded dancing with him. Not one bit. But did she dare risk taking him back downstairs to the dance floor? He was the best-looking man she had seen all night. Wouldn’t the others just leap all over him, like slavering dogs confronted with a bone? ‘Not really,’ she shrugged. ‘It’s too crowded.’
‘A drink, then? Or a coffee, perhaps?’
‘Oh, I’d love a coffee,’ she said fervently. ‘Do they sell it here?’
He shuddered. ‘I believe they do a foul brown liquid masquerading as coffee but I know a little expresso bar just around the corner which serves the best coffee in the whole of London. If you’re interested, that is?’
Anna hesitated. She had listened and learnt her lessons in personal safety well, and yet some bone-deep instinct told her that she could trust this man.
‘Bring along a chaperon, if it makes you happier,’ he prompted gently as he correctly interpreted her hesitation.
No fear! Anna shook her head and her bright blonde hair shimmered in the subdued bar lighting. ‘That won’t be necessary—I happen to have a black belt in karate, in case I need protecting.’
‘Do you really?’ he quizzed her in admiration.
‘No!’ she laughed. ‘But I had you worried there for a moment, didn’t I?’
He laughed back. ‘Todd Travers,’ he murmured, and held his hand out.
‘Anna Marshall,’ she told him as they shook hands.
They spent an innocent and absorbing hour over coffee, though afterwards Anna could barely remember what they had talked about. She was glad that she had paid so much attention to all her subjects in class, and also glad that her father had always insisted she read the newspapers thoroughly, because she was more than able to hold her own with the remarkably well-informed Todd Travers.
They stepped out together into the neon-lit street and he hailed a black cab, then accompanied her back to Knightsbridge. Anna was awfully glad that it was dark, because she started blushing wildly when the driver pulled over outside her building, desperate for Todd to ask to see her again.
Todd had tussled with his conscience during the journey. She was not like the women he usually dated. There was something pure and clean about her which, ironically, made him feel awfully protective of her, an emotion he had only ever experienced with his little sister, and his friend from school, Elisabeta. And he had never fancied Elisabeta...
As the cab stopped, his conscience got the better of him, and he forced himself to ask, ‘Just how old are you, Anna?’
It was the moment of truth and Anna refused to heed it.
‘Twenty,’ she told him blithely, saw his relieved smile, and the die was cast.
During the next few weeks, Anna managed to meet with Todd every single day, while keeping him well away from her father. This proved to be easy since Todd had no desire to share her company with anyone else, and she felt exactly the same about him.
She was evasive when she chose to be, telling him simply that she was on her Easter vacation; when he assumed that she was at university, she let him carry on believing it, justifying it by telling herself that she would be at college before long. She, who was normally as honest as the day was long, soon discovered that deception was terribly, terribly easy when you wanted something badly enough.
And Anna wanted Todd...
She didn’t care that she was duping him. She had fallen in love with him, but knew that he would drop her like a hot potato if she told him how old she really was. And love was love. Anna had already lost her mother; it had made her grow up fast. More than most people she recognised the ephemeral nature of happiness—embraced the idea that you had to grab at it when you got the chance, because you never knew when it might be snatched away from you. She would, she decided, do almost anything to keep Todd Travers in her life...
Todd was in far deeper than he wanted to be too; he had never been in love before either, and it had knocked him for six. For the first time in his life, he was conscious of being in the throes of something much more powerful and much more exciting than reason.
In a way, his life had been as fractured as Anna’s. He had inherited a run-down plastics factory in Islington on his eighteenth birthday, and this had played a big part in his decision not to take up a scholarship to Oxford. His father had gambled away what little money the family had left, before running off to Australia and dying penniless just a year later from an excess of alcohol.
It had been left to Todd to support his mother and little sister, and the anger he had felt at his father’s betrayal he had channelled into turning the factory into a dynamic and successful business manufacturing luxurious ice-creams made out of the best natural ingredients. It had been a perfectly timed strategy. People were just beginning to rebel against impersonal mass production and were prepared to pay more for quality. Todd hadn’t realised at the time that he was setting a trend, but then he had always been ahead of his time.
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Sharon Kendrik
Mills & Boon are proud to present a thrilling digital collection of all Sharon Kendrick’s novels and novellas for us to celebrate the publication of her amazing 100th book! Many of these books are available as e books for the first time.Last chance to get it right…Anna Travers has somehow lost herself. In the last ten years, her triplets and gorgeous husband became her entire world. But when she over hears comments about her appearance… her weight…her world turns on its axis.With her husband away, Anna has one month to turn herself around! But having gone from school girl to wife and mother, can she find the courage to be herself before she can make over her marriage?
Anna drew a deep breath.
‘But Todd, why move?’ she asked him plaintively. ‘I mean, we’re happy here. Aren’t we?’
He didn’t reply at first. Anna noticed him hesitate for the second time, and the subsequent silence filled the room like an unwelcome blanket of smoke.
‘Todd?’ Anna turned to look at him, her face suddenly pale and troubled. ‘Are you trying to tell me you aren’t happy?’
He shook his dark head. ‘Sweetheart—it isn’t quite as simple as that.’
Dear Reader (#ua9cf3389-64a8-544f-94b0-63c7accfe39c),
One hundred. Doesn’t matter how many times I say it, I still can’t believe that’s how many books I’ve written. It’s a fabulous feeling but more fabulous still is the news that Mills & Boon are issuing every single one of my backlist as digital titles. Wow. I can’t wait to share all my stories with you - which are as vivid to me now as when I wrote them.
There’s BOUGHT FOR HER HUSBAND, with its outrageously macho Greek hero and A SCANDAL, A SECRET AND A BABY featuring a very sexy Tuscan. THE SHEIKH’S HEIR proved so popular with readers that it spent two weeks on the USA Today charts and…well, I could go on, but I’ll leave you to discover them for yourselves.
I remember the first line of my very first book: “So you’ve come to Australia looking for a husband?” Actually, the heroine had gone to Australia escape men, but guess what? She found a husband all the same! The man who inspired that book rang me up recently and when I told him I was beginning my 100th story and couldn’t decide what to write, he said, “Why don’t you go back to where it all started?”
So I did. And that’s how A ROYAL VOW OF CONVENIENCE was born. It opens in beautiful Queensland and moves to England and New York. It’s about a runaway princess and the enigmatic billionaire who is infuriated by her, yet who winds up rescuing her. But then, she goes and rescues him… Wouldn’t you know it?
I’ll end by saying how very grateful I am to have a career I love, and to thank each and every one of you who has supported me along the way. You really are very dear readers.
Love,
Sharon xxx
Mills & Boon are proud to present a thrilling digital collection of all Sharon Kendrick’s novels and novellas for us to celebrate the publication of her amazing and awesome 100th book! Sharon is known worldwide for her likeable, spirited heroines and her gorgeous, utterly masculine heroes.
SHARON KENDRICK once won a national writing competition, describing her ideal date: being flown to an exotic island by a gorgeous and powerful man. Little did she realise that she’d just wandered into her dream job! Today she writes for Mills & Boon, featuring her often stubborn but always to-die-for heroes and the women who bring them to their knees. She believes that the best books are those you never want to end. Just like life…
Make-Over Marriage
Sharon Kendrick
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
To the stunning Kym Westbrook and her two angelic
children, Jody and Bod!
Contents
Cover (#ud2415e05-0f22-5dba-bb92-fa8aea75c980)
Introduction (#ua430730b-3863-5cf1-b3a4-c74612e8cbef)
Dear Reader (#ua895e4eb-ccf1-5a4d-bc0b-b020de08af8a)
About the Author (#ufd8f6141-80d2-5f59-936a-330472efa949)
Title Page (#u21cb472e-83b7-5a6e-b4a2-8aaa0fe94634)
Dedication (#uecb3cecb-c12f-5bf0-9c3d-2c10bb0c7a5d)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_b1b07394-80d7-57da-8915-7a1b080629df)
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_da134eca-030a-5fb9-8c0f-4f26eabb63bf)
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_9a68a7a6-a3c3-56fc-9ab5-c7decca5377f)
CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_60b3a830-1aa8-5251-a59d-e71a6f9320c6)
TODD TRAVERS removed a ballet shoe from behind the teapot, and said something rather uncomplimentary about it beneath his breath. He briefly contemplated hurling it to the other side of the bright, airy kitchen, but resisted. It would probably disappear for ever in this noisy, chaotic home of his, and he could just imagine the ensuing panic if that should happen!
‘Don’t those girls ever put anything away?’ he demanded, in a voice so rich and deep and spine-tinglingly sexy that most people meeting him for the first time laboured under the illusion that he was a Shakespearean actor, instead of a businessman with one of the most respected portfolios in London!
Anna lifted her head to look at her husband. She was sitting on the floor, polishing three sets of shoes, and her neck was beginning to ache. Meanwhile, Todd had broken the habit of a lifetime and come home from work unexpectedly early today. And still hadn’t told her why!
Her deep blue eyes were dreamy and faraway, but they instantly focused with pleasure on the hard symmetry of her husband’s features. Unconsciously, her heart picked up speed as she let her eyes drift adoringly over him, then sighed.
Todd was one of those men who were often described as being too good-looking for their own good—though Anna certainly didn’t have any complaints in that department! Tall and fit—with strong, muscular thighs and a lean, hard body—he had all the grace of the natural sportsman. His thick dark hair held the hint of a wave to it, and when he smiled it was like the sun coming out.
In fact, if someone had asked Anna to list any of Todd’s less attractive characteristics, she would have been completely stumped, but then she was just a hopeless case where Todd was concerned, still occasionally having to pinch herself in case the whole marriage turned out to be a dream!
Ten years down the line and three children had done nothing to dissipate the sense of wonder she sometimes felt, knowing that she was wedded to a man as downright gorgeous as Todd Travers!
‘Mmm?’ she questioned absently, carefully putting down the little black shoebrush on the sheet of newspaper. ‘What was that you said, darling?’
‘The girls,’ he repeated impatiently. ‘They never seem to put anything away. Do they?’
Anna’s eyes swivelled to the French dresser, on which she had placed a large, laughing portrait of their ten-year-old triplets with their butter-coloured curls and their dark blue eyes which were so like their mother’s.
It was an extremely flattering photograph, and had been taken by a leading London photographer who had instantly admired the girls’ professionalism. But such professionalism was hardly surprising, since Natalia, Natasha and Valentina Travers had been successfully modelling in television commercials for the last two years.
The three girls had been ‘discovered’ by a casting director whose son attended their school in Kensington—the very same school where Anna herself had gone as a child. The triplets had been mad-keen to take part in the proposed supermarket TV campaign, but it had taken a good deal of persuasion before Anna and Todd had been convinced that their daughters’ school work would not suffer.
Since then the three girls had worked exclusively for Premium Stores, a vast chain of supermarkets which had outlets all over Britain. They appeared regularly on television advertisements and their smiling faces—so like Anna’s—were routinely featured on giant hoardings nationwide. And their schoolfriends were all desperately jealous of them, because, as Valentina had once gleefully put it, ‘we actually get paid to eat chocolate biscuits!’
Seasoned veterans, all three, thought Anna, and her mouth curved into a soft smile as she stared at their mischievous, mobile faces. ‘I know that they can be a little untidy,’ she told Todd reluctantly, because, quite frankly, if her three daughters had suddenly sprouted wings and sported haloes, it would have come as no surprise to their doting mother!
Her husband’s dark brows met in a forbidding ebony line above grey eyes which today looked as wintry as a December sky. ‘That’s hardly surprising,’ he commented acidly.
Anna’s eyes widened in question. ‘Oh? Why’s that?’
‘Because you spend your whole life running round after them!’ he accused growlingly.
‘Todd, I don’t—’
‘Anna, you do,’ he cut across her. ‘You know you do! You insist on doing everything for them! Like now, for instance,’ he accused, sending a dark glower in the direction of the half-polished shoes. ‘Why do you do so much for them?’
‘Because I’m their mother,’ she answered calmly.
‘Other mothers have help,’ he pointed out.
‘Other mothers have careers. I can’t justify farming my children out to strangers when I’m not even going out to work, Todd!’
‘I don’t like to see you cleaning their shoes,’ he said stubbornly. ‘That’s all.’
Anna stopped thinking about whether the girls had matching clean tights for tomorrow’s photo-shoot, or whether she should take a lasagne from out of the freezer for supper, or simply start cooking something from scratch—and gave her husband her full attention. The curving shape of his mouth had definitely flattened into an implacable line. She put the lid carefully back on the tin of polish. ‘Are you angry about something, Todd?’
Their eyes met.
‘You don’t want to hear about it—’
‘Oh, yes, I do,’ she demurred softly. Her deep blue eyes were curious as she leaned back against her heels to look at him and absent-mindedly lifted her finger to loop a long strand of hair which was tickling her cheek, then tucked it behind her ear.
The small movement hinted at the lush swell of her breasts and Todd felt the slow burn of desire begin to prick heatedly at his skin, even though his wife was doing absolutely nothing to inflame him. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Anna always dressed very practically—a habit she had acquired with three tiny babies to look after, and one which she had never quite lost. She wore a pair of leggings which had already begun to wrinkle at the knee, and a sloppy red cotton sweater which was pretty shapeless. Her buttery blonde hair was scraped back into a ponytail and tied with a velvet ribbon, and she wasn’t wearing a scrap of make-up.
And yet...
‘Why don’t you tell me, Todd?’ She scrambled to her feet and looked at him quizzically. ‘Or shall I fetch you a drink first?’
He shook his head, then looked into her trusting face and almost changed his mind, aware of the bombshell he was about to drop into her lap. ‘I don’t want a drink,’ he told her emphatically. ‘Let’s go next door and sit down, shall we?’
Anna nodded and followed him into the sitting room, whereupon he immediately flopped his angular frame onto one of the large, squashy green sofas, and sighed.
Anna slid onto the far end of the sofa and smiled at him encouragingly, thinking that her normally equable husband was in a very irritable mood today. Though, come to think of it, hadn’t he been oddly distracted for the past few weeks now? And every time she had asked him if something was wrong he had just shaken his dark head rather impatiently.
Anna was beginning to lose patience herself; she was much too busy for all these guessing games. If something was wrong, he should jolly well tell her! ‘So tell me what’s troubling you, Todd.’
He hesitated, choosing his words carefully because he had an extremely strong suspicion that his wife was going to object to what he was about to say. And object very strongly, too. ‘Sweetheart—’
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, Todd—spit it out!’
He smiled briefly, because she was the only woman in the world he would allow to get away with speaking to him like that! ‘Perhaps it’s time that we thought about moving...’
It was the last thing Anna had expected to hear. If Todd had suddenly announced that he wanted the five of them to go back-packing across the Arizona desert, she could not have been more surprised. ‘Moving?’ She sat bolt upright on the sofa and stared at him in dismay.
They had started their married life in this mansion flat, brought up three lively triplets within its spacious walls, and stayed together there as a family, despite all the odds and the dire predictions of the few people who had known them at the very beginning. ‘Moving?’ said Anna again, only more faintly this time.
Todd nodded. ‘That’s right. It isn’t such a bizarre suggestion, is it, sweetheart? Lots of people do it all the time! Think about it sensibly.’
But Anna had discovered that thinking sensibly was easier said than done, especially since she had become a mother. Because in the ten years since she had given birth to the triplets her brain had gone completely to mush. From someone who at school could add up a whole line of figures in her head, she was sometimes reduced to counting on her fingers when the triplets had friends over to tea and she needed to calculate how many jam sandwiches they would need!
She put it down to motherhood, and having to remember at least twenty things at the same time, but whatever the cause she was no longer terribly good at thinking through a problem logically. She tended to fire off at the deep end if she felt rattled—and rattled was exactly what she felt right now.
That, and insecure.
This flat was her nest and her haven; she had lived here for as long as she could remember—long before she’d married Todd. And they were happy here. The last thing in the world she wanted was to uproot them all. ‘But I don’t want to move anywhere, Todd,’ she told her husband firmly.
A muscle moved dangerously by the side of his mouth. ‘No, I realise that. But you can’t just dismiss the suggestion like that, Anna!’
No. He was right. She couldn’t. Not if she wanted to win him round to her way of thinking. Because Todd Travers was one of those infuriatingly cool and reasonable men who always had an answer for everything. And if Anna burst into noisy and hysterical tears—which was what she felt like doing at that precise moment—and made a passionate announcement stating that she couldn’t bear to leave, then Todd would simply demolish all her arguments by the sneaky use of logic.
Anna drew a deep breath. ‘But Todd, why move?’ she asked him plaintively. ‘I mean, we’re happy here. Aren’t we?’
He didn’t reply at first. Anna noticed him hesitate for the second time, and the subsequent silence filled the room like an unwelcome blanket of smoke.
‘Todd?’ Anna turned to look at him, her face suddenly pale and troubled. ‘Are you trying to tell me you aren’t happy?’
He shook his dark head. ‘Sweetheart—it isn’t quite as simple as that.’
Anna stilled as she heard the sombre note in his voice and immediately leapt to one very gloomy conclusion as to what her husband might really be trying to tell her. ‘Are you t-trying to tell me that you’re seeing someone else?’ she demanded shakily, because her stomach was tied up in tight little knots as she asked the question.
Todd actually burst out laughing. ‘Oh, Anna—’
‘Don’t you “Anna” me!’ she stormed back, but her relief at his reaction was so immense that she found herself picking up a cushion and hurling it at him. He caught it as easily as blinking. ‘If there’s another woman in your life, then I darned well want to know about it, Todd Travers!’
Todd put the cushion down and stood up, and Anna was horrified to find herself gazing lustfully at his thighs. How was it possible to be this angry with a man, she wondered, and yet to know that if that same man wandered over and started making love to her she would be hard-pushed to resist him? Not that he would, of course. Not right now, on the sofa, in broad daylight. Todd was a man who had always kept his formidable sexual appetites strictly under control... having three children born at the same time had made sure of that!
‘There is no other woman,’ he told her softly. ‘As well you know. I am simply not interested in other women—’
‘Aren’t you?’ she queried, only slightly mollified and unwilling to let the subject drop.
‘Even if I had the time or the energy—ouch!’ he exclaimed as a second cushion this time found its target. ‘You are a very good shot, Mrs Travers!’ he mused, rubbing at his shadowed chin where the embroidered cushion had hit him. ‘Perhaps you should take up golf?’
‘Please don’t try and change the subject, Todd!’ she warned him sweetly. ‘And if it’s not another woman, then you’d better start explaining why you’re not happy!’
‘Now you are putting words in my mouth,’ he accused quietly. ‘I didn’t actually say that, did I?’
He moved to stand directly in front of her then, the loose cut of his Italian trousers not quite concealing the powerful shafts of his thighs, and Anna felt consumed with longing.
‘Can I sit down?’ he questioned, indicating the space beside her.
‘Since when did you start asking?’ she asked breathlessly.
‘Since you started hurling soft furnishings at me, and then decided to glower at me as if I were the most heinous villain in history,’ he responded silkily. ‘So can I?’
‘Suit yourself,’ she shrugged, aware that she was not responding in a very adult way, but quite at a loss to know how to stop it, since she suspected from the grim expression on his face that Todd was about to tell her something she most definitely didn’t want to hear.
She noted that he positioned his long-legged frame at some distance from her, and was grateful for the physical space between them, at least. Because she was suddenly and quite overwhelmingly aware of him. And her hands were shaking...
‘You asked if we were happy here,’ he began, but he was frowning.
‘And you gave me an evasive answer.’
‘Well, try this for straightforwardness.’ He ran his fingers through the thick, already ruffled waves of his dark hair and stared at her. ‘Of course I’ve been happy here.’
She noted his use of the past tense. ‘Well, then?’
‘I’m happy now,’ he amended softly. ‘I just think we could be even happier.’
‘And just what is that supposed to mean?’
Todd sighed, wishing that he had opted for that drink, after all. He had been dreading this moment for too long now, but he could put it off no longer. ‘Just that we have been very, very blessed—I’m aware of that, Anna. We live in a large and very comfortable apartment—’
‘Which is situated right slap bang in the middle of the capital!’ she prompted immediately.
‘As you say.’
‘We couldn’t get more central if we tried, Todd! Could we?’
‘No, indeed. But we also have three rapidly growing daughters,’ he reminded her drily. ‘Who very soon may no longer be contented with sharing a bedroom, no matter how vast that bedroom might be,’ he added as he saw his wife open her mouth and correctly anticipated her objection to that particular statement.
‘The triplets could never bear to be separated!’ objected Anna as she recalled the many battles she had had over the years. Why, even on holidays they wouldn’t contemplate the idea of different rooms. ‘They’ve always said that!’
‘Have you asked them recently?’
Something in his tone alerted Anna to discussions from which she had clearly been excluded. ‘No,’ she answered steadily. ‘But I presume from your voice that you have?’
‘I have been talking to the girls about lifestyles in general,’ he told her unwillingly, wondering why he should feel as though he had committed some kind of crime.
‘But you clearly decided that I shouldn’t be privy to this particular discussion?’ she queried tartly. ‘Or was there more than one?’
Todd drummed his long fingers so that they sounded like galloping hooves on the arm of the velvet sofa. ‘Don’t make it sound like a felony I’ve committed against you, Anna,’ he warned her softly. ‘You have lots of conversations with the girls which do not include me.’
Anna bit back the temptation to tell him that talks about whether they needed new clothes, or nagging at them to do their homework, were hardly in the same league as moving house!
She looked directly into stormy grey eyes, narrowed now so that only a gleam of silver was visible, their expression shaded by the lush fringing of his dark lashes. ‘So what exactly did you all discuss?’ she asked him. ‘And how did the subject come up?’
He decided to come clean. ‘It was on your birthday—when I was looking after them. Remember?’
She most certainly did! For her twenty-eighth birthday Todd had bought her a ticket for a day’s pampering at one of London’s most luxurious female-only health clubs.
Privately, Anna had thought the gift slightly wasted on someone as uninterested in her appearance as she was. She had spent the day being pummelled and pounded, sweating in a sauna and then being forced to plunge into an icy tub. She had had her skin massaged with unctuous creams and her nails buffed and manicured, then, after a lunch which consisted entirely of some inedible form of plant life, she had arrived home refreshed and rejuvenated, but with the most enormous appetite!
‘So the subject just happened to come up, did it?’ enquired Anna suspiciously. ‘Just like that? The girls suddenly turned to you and said, “Daddy—we want to move!”’
He didn’t respond. Just sat there with a studiedly patient expression as he returned her accusing stare.
‘Well?’ prompted Anna sarcastically, infuriated by the maddeningly reasonable look on his face! How dare he be so reasonable? ‘Was that what happened?’
‘Are you going to give me a chance to tell you?’ he enquired coolly. ‘Or are you going to continue speaking for me so melodramatically?’
‘I think I need a drink,’ said Anna suddenly, and couldn’t miss Todd’s look of surprise at her request. She, who normally took alcohol on high days and holidays only, and then in such tiny amounts that any more than a glass of wine could render her very tipsy indeed!
‘I’ll fetch us one,’ said Todd instantly, and escaped into the kitchen where he busied himself with opening wine and getting glasses out of the cupboard while he decided how best to continue a discussion which was not going at all the way he had intended.
Anna noticed that he had chosen a very expensive bottle indeed and raised her eyebrows as he carried the tray into the sitting room. ‘It must be very bad news,’ she joked darkly as he handed her a glass of wine.
Todd ignored that as he sat back down beside her and sipped at his drink, then put his glass firmly down on the table and turned to her. ‘It’s just that I don’t spend as much time with the girls as I’d always like, so on your birthday I told them that they could do exactly what they wanted to do—within reason, of course—as a special treat.’
‘That was very sweet of you,’ said Anna automatically as she tried her wine.
‘That’s when Tally told me, in the gloomiest voice imaginable, that it would be impossible for her to do what she really wanted to do, because she simply wasn’t allowed.’
‘This is all to do with horses, I suppose?’ said Anna slowly as she thought of Natalia, first-born of their triplets, who was completely and utterly pony-mad. She spent all her allowance on pony and horse magazines and every book she read for pleasure had an equestrian theme.
‘Yes, it is,’ Todd agreed, rather grimly. ‘She asked me rather plaintively why she wasn’t allowed to have a horse of her own.’
‘Because she knows as well as I do that horse-riding is far too risky,’ sighed Anna. ‘All three of them are aware that they cannot take part in any kind of dangerous sport—why, it’s even written into their contract! The casting director told her right at the beginning that if she breaks an arm or a leg, then it could spell disaster for the campaign.’
‘Which would be the end of the world, no doubt?’ questioned Todd slowly. ‘Disaster for the campaign?’
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 (#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.
Their eyes met over three silky blonde heads and the unmissable look of determination in her husband’s grey eyes made Anna dread the resumption of their talk.
‘Tea, please,’ she told him calmly, grateful for a bit of breathing space.
There was a lull while Todd clattered around in the kitchen and Anna brushed the triplets’ wayward hair and exclaimed over offerings brought home from their art class.
And, although she tried very hard not to think about it, her words came back to haunt her as she realised that for the first time ever she had had the courage to speak the truth during her row with Todd.
She had never meant to, but facts were facts, and, yes, she had trapped Todd Travers into a marriage he had never intended...
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_63a22f29-148c-5587-84b6-4f3bce07cef0)
ANNA met Todd in a nightclub. She was just seventeen and had never been anywhere quite like it before.
Clubbing had never held any fascination for Anna, but it was the birthday of one of her classmates at the exclusive Kensington school she attended, who had insisted on taking five friends to one of London’s liveliest clubs.
It was certainly very lively! But the place was packed and very noisy and the flashing strobe lights which were turning all her friends into fast-moving silvery white marionettes were giving Anna a splitting headache. She hadn’t been in there for twenty minutes before she found herself wishing that she could go home.
Todd was also at the club under sufferance. His driver, who had been with him since he was well on his way to making his first million, was getting married that weekend, and he had invited Todd to his stag night. At twenty-three, Todd wasn’t into either stag nights or heavy drinking, but he’d felt duty-bound to join in with the party, and only hoped his face didn’t show his boredom!
Just before midnight, with the thumping music pounding away inside his head, he slipped away unnoticed to catch a few moments of peace and found a discreetly lit bar on the first floor of the building.
Anna was in search of the loo, and once she found it wished she hadn’t, because she was confronted with a full-length mirror and quickly became aware that her sophisticated outfit made her look like some experienced big-sister version of herself.
She had borrowed the dress, of course, because her own wardrobe was sadly lacking in most areas. Anna might have been a pupil at a prestigious and expensive London day school, but her father had no idea how young girls wanted to live.
He was an out-of-touch civil servant who spent most of the time locked away in his mote-filled and dingy office in Whitehall; a changed person, so different from the laughing man of Anna’s childhood. Anna’s mother had been mown down by a drunken driver when Anna was just fourteen, and since then all the light seemed to have gone out of her father’s life. He rarely seemed to be home at all. He did not seem able to share his immense grief with his daughter, coping instead by burying himself in his work.
A lofty and somewhat distant intellectual, he cared nothing for high fashion, and what little he knew had convinced him that it was nothing more than an elaborate swindle designed to part young and impressionable girls from their money. Consequently, while Anna received an adequate allowance, it certainly didn’t allow her to indulge herself in the outfits which most of her peers owned.
The dress she had borrowed for the evening wasn’t something she would have normally chosen, but it obviously did something for her, because Anna had never been quite so aware of men ogling her before. It was a short satin slip dress with shoe-string straps which left the creamy skin of her shoulders exposed. The silvery grey silky material clung to her undulating curves like a second skin, and the eyes of most men in the room were out on stalks.
Todd sipped at his tonic water and observed the woman in the tiny, shimmering dress from out of the corner of his eye. Great legs, was his first instinctive thought, and then something made him look closer, and he frowned.
Because for all her beauty there was something about her which did not quite add up. She did not look very comfortable in her surroundings, for a start. And any minute now one of those creeps who had been quaffing far more booze than was good for them was going to breathe stale alcohol all over her and try to chat her up. Or worse.
Todd rose to his feet, unaffected by the fact that every woman present was lasciviously undressing him with her eyes.
Except one.
Anna had noticed him, of course. He was so hunky that everyone had noticed him! But only a woman who was supremely vain, or extremely confident, would ever have expected a man like that to look at her twice. And she was neither.
And then she blinked as she saw that he was walking purposefully across the bar in her direction.
She actually peered over her shoulder to see if some glamorous female was standing behind her, giving the tall man with the slanted grey eyes a welcoming smile, but there was no one. Only her. She bit her lip.
Todd saw her obvious and innocent confusion and felt the oddest glow of satisfaction as he drew closer to her.
‘Hello,’ he said, in his distinctively deep voice. ‘You look lost.’
‘I wish I was,’ Anna told him frankly. ‘This place is worse than being in a fireworks factory.’
‘Oh? Why?’ He was amused and showed it; these days he rarely seemed to meet women who said anything original. Most of them just agreed with everything he said!
‘Well, all those lights flashing like mad and the music banging loud enough to perforate your eardrums!’ Anna looked around her with obvious disapproval. ‘And I can’t believe that they charge those ridiculous prices for drinks!’
‘You sound as though you shouldn’t be here,’ he observed drily. ‘Which rather begs the question of why you are.’
Anna shrugged. ‘I came with some friends,’ she told him, deliberately omitting the prefix ‘school’.
‘And they are...?’ He looked around.
‘Dancing. Downstairs.’
‘And don’t you want to dance?’ he questioned, thinking that it would be heaven to have her swaying in his arms to the music.
Anna considered the question briefly. She wouldn’t have minded dancing with him. Not one bit. But did she dare risk taking him back downstairs to the dance floor? He was the best-looking man she had seen all night. Wouldn’t the others just leap all over him, like slavering dogs confronted with a bone? ‘Not really,’ she shrugged. ‘It’s too crowded.’
‘A drink, then? Or a coffee, perhaps?’
‘Oh, I’d love a coffee,’ she said fervently. ‘Do they sell it here?’
He shuddered. ‘I believe they do a foul brown liquid masquerading as coffee but I know a little expresso bar just around the corner which serves the best coffee in the whole of London. If you’re interested, that is?’
Anna hesitated. She had listened and learnt her lessons in personal safety well, and yet some bone-deep instinct told her that she could trust this man.
‘Bring along a chaperon, if it makes you happier,’ he prompted gently as he correctly interpreted her hesitation.
No fear! Anna shook her head and her bright blonde hair shimmered in the subdued bar lighting. ‘That won’t be necessary—I happen to have a black belt in karate, in case I need protecting.’
‘Do you really?’ he quizzed her in admiration.
‘No!’ she laughed. ‘But I had you worried there for a moment, didn’t I?’
He laughed back. ‘Todd Travers,’ he murmured, and held his hand out.
‘Anna Marshall,’ she told him as they shook hands.
They spent an innocent and absorbing hour over coffee, though afterwards Anna could barely remember what they had talked about. She was glad that she had paid so much attention to all her subjects in class, and also glad that her father had always insisted she read the newspapers thoroughly, because she was more than able to hold her own with the remarkably well-informed Todd Travers.
They stepped out together into the neon-lit street and he hailed a black cab, then accompanied her back to Knightsbridge. Anna was awfully glad that it was dark, because she started blushing wildly when the driver pulled over outside her building, desperate for Todd to ask to see her again.
Todd had tussled with his conscience during the journey. She was not like the women he usually dated. There was something pure and clean about her which, ironically, made him feel awfully protective of her, an emotion he had only ever experienced with his little sister, and his friend from school, Elisabeta. And he had never fancied Elisabeta...
As the cab stopped, his conscience got the better of him, and he forced himself to ask, ‘Just how old are you, Anna?’
It was the moment of truth and Anna refused to heed it.
‘Twenty,’ she told him blithely, saw his relieved smile, and the die was cast.
During the next few weeks, Anna managed to meet with Todd every single day, while keeping him well away from her father. This proved to be easy since Todd had no desire to share her company with anyone else, and she felt exactly the same about him.
She was evasive when she chose to be, telling him simply that she was on her Easter vacation; when he assumed that she was at university, she let him carry on believing it, justifying it by telling herself that she would be at college before long. She, who was normally as honest as the day was long, soon discovered that deception was terribly, terribly easy when you wanted something badly enough.
And Anna wanted Todd...
She didn’t care that she was duping him. She had fallen in love with him, but knew that he would drop her like a hot potato if she told him how old she really was. And love was love. Anna had already lost her mother; it had made her grow up fast. More than most people she recognised the ephemeral nature of happiness—embraced the idea that you had to grab at it when you got the chance, because you never knew when it might be snatched away from you. She would, she decided, do almost anything to keep Todd Travers in her life...
Todd was in far deeper than he wanted to be too; he had never been in love before either, and it had knocked him for six. For the first time in his life, he was conscious of being in the throes of something much more powerful and much more exciting than reason.
In a way, his life had been as fractured as Anna’s. He had inherited a run-down plastics factory in Islington on his eighteenth birthday, and this had played a big part in his decision not to take up a scholarship to Oxford. His father had gambled away what little money the family had left, before running off to Australia and dying penniless just a year later from an excess of alcohol.
It had been left to Todd to support his mother and little sister, and the anger he had felt at his father’s betrayal he had channelled into turning the factory into a dynamic and successful business manufacturing luxurious ice-creams made out of the best natural ingredients. It had been a perfectly timed strategy. People were just beginning to rebel against impersonal mass production and were prepared to pay more for quality. Todd hadn’t realised at the time that he was setting a trend, but then he had always been ahead of his time.
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