Kitabı oku: «Make-Over Marriage»

Contents

Cover

Introduction

Dear Reader

About the Author

Title Page

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

EPILOGUE

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

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?