Part Time Marriage

Jessica Steele CHAPTER ONE

THERE were too many complications in her life! Elexa's mood to complete the work she'd brought home was sorely shattered as she stared at the phone after her mother's call and felt on the brink of doing something drastic.

Life should have been something of a breeze, and would be, were it not for her `family' and, to a lesser degree, `men', well meaning in the main though they meant to be-only she wished that they wouldn't.

Why couldn't they see that she was happy and contented with her lot? She had an excellent job with Colman and Fisher, a name well known in the marketing world, and at twenty-five she was already a team leader in the market planning division, with every chance of going higher. So who needed a boyfriend, a lover, a husband?

Jamie Hodges was forever hoping to fill the position of her steady boyfriend. She was running out of excuses not to go out with him. With Des Reynolds she hadn't bothered making excuses when, in his sexiest voice, he'd suggested that one night with him and she'd never be the same again. `In your dreams!' she'd told him bluntly-but that hadn't stopped him. But although she found both men's persistence wearing, it was her mother's dogged insistence that at `her age' she should by now be `settled' that was the most wearing of all.

`I am settled!' she'd attempted to get through to her mother. `I've got a good job, a job I love. A job with endless opportunities for promo-'

'I'm not talking that kind of settled,' her mother had interrupted.

Elexa knew exactly what kind of settled her mother meant. Married, nice house in the country, children-particularly children; even before her cousin Joanna had produced an offspring Elexa's mother had been desperate to become a grandmother. Since the arrival of baby Betsy, Kaye Aston had been ten times worse. Elexa had tried explaining matters to her, explaining how she already had her own home. So, okay, it was a flat and not a house, and it was in London and not in the country, but, given that she rented her flat, she had made it her own. She had tried explaining that she was enjoying her career too much to even want to think of marriage, much less settle down to that state.

The result of this heart-to-heart had been that, ignoring the possibility that any daughter of hers-even as academically bright as her daughter had shown herself to be-could be so totally dedicated to a career, her mother had grown terribly anxious and was now certain that Elexa must have suffered some extremely painful experience.An experience which she had kept quiet about, but which must have put her off men. Kaye Aston had refused to believe otherwise and had since taken to introducing Elexa to `gentle' men-who invariably turned out to be `drippy'men !

Elexa had moved from her old home and into her present flat a few years ago. But, apart from some family gathering or other-more frequent of late-she was expected to return and visit her parents on average every three weeks. Because she loved her parents, Elexa willingly complied, and had been happy to do so.

But that had been then, before her cousin Joanna had firstly become engaged and subsequently had married; that Elexa's younger cousinn had married first had not gone down well. Kaye Aston had not lost the opportunity to tell Elexa of herdisappointment, and since Joanna and David had produced baby Betsy Elexa's mother seemed to have only one topic of conversation.

Elexa had started to dread her mother's phone calls. But she had begun to dread even more her once-every-three-weeks visits to her old home, never knowing what man it would be this time. Where her mother found them from was a mystery to Elexa-she must have her scouts out searching!

Kaye Aston's phone call just now had been to remindher, at length, that it was baby Betsy's christening this coming Sunday. `You remember Thomas Fielding?' her mother had asked. `Now isn't it kind?' she'd rushed on. `Joanna has invited him to the party afterwards.' Tommy Fielding was a man Elexa had known for years, a man who was about the same age as herself and was another `gentle' soul. No need to ask why her mother had wangled an invitation for him. Worse, Elexa saw Aunt Celia's hand in this. Aunt Celia, one of her mother's two sisters, was Joanna's mother. Quite clearly Aunt Celia had been roped in to cajole Joanna into issuing the invitation. Which, in turn, Elexa suddenly realised, must mean that Joanna as well as Aunt Celia had joined in the 'Let's get Elexa married' campaign.

Feeling at her wits' end, Elexa knew all too well that to try again to explain that she had not endured any painful experience would be like banging her head against a brick wall. Countless were the times she had tried to get through that she found her work far more interesting than any man she had come across. She had lost count of the times she had explained that she just did not want to be married, and that she had no desire to leave her well-paid career to set up home with some gentle soul like Tommy Fielding who, nice, sweet as he was-as they all were-would want her to play `wife', and would be unbearably hurt to discover that she had a career she preferred to staying home and playing house.

Suddenly, and as abruptly, Elexa all at once knew she had had enough. She was aware that her mother worried about her, but, feeling hacked into a corner with no way out, Elexa just knew she could not take any more of it. She had tried, endlessly tried, explaining to her mother that she was not interested in `settling down', and that her career had priority over everything. What had been the result?Even more pressure, and with back-up forces. Well, she wasn't having it. Elexa pushed distraught fingers through her pale gold- lit blonde hair. But what could she do about it? All she craved was a year free of the relentless pressure-there was chance of promotion in the not-too-distant future. She just wanted time to concentrate all her spare energies on that.

She sighed and stared unseeing across the room, and then-perhaps born of utter desperation, but entirely unbidden-she was suddenly recalling again the conversation she had overheard about a month ago. It had beenone lunchtime and she had been waiting for her friend Lois Crosby to join her. Lois was always late.

She and Lois were meeting to have lunch at the Montgomery, and, as busy as Elexa always was, she had been first there. The head waiter had led her to a series of sectioned-off booths, designed so that business people could lunch in the smart restaurant and be able to converse in relative privacy to discuss their business.

Elexa sometimes entertained clients at the Montgomery and, her name-or possibly her face-recognised,she had been left with a menu and the drink she had ordered to wait for her guest.

She'd had her back to the adjoining booth, but whatever she had been thinking about either work, or Lois and, it was not unlikely, family pressures-had gone from her head when she had become aware that the previous lone occupant of the booth behind had company. `Noah!' greeted one.

`Marcus,' answered the other.

She guessed they had shaken hands, and glanced to the large mirror facing her and saw reflected that a tallish fair-haired man had risen to greet a taller dark-haired man. They were both somewhere in their middle thirties, both immaculately suited, and businessmen. They exchanged a few comments with two distinct voices, one low and wellmodulated, the other lighter. Then they were sitting down out of her view- but not out of her hearing.

`We don't seem to have seen anything of you in the two years since you became international chairman.' That was the lighter voice-Marcus's voice, she thought.

`I hear you're doing well at Stanton's.' Noah? Noah obviously felt no need to boast about being international chairman, but was interested to hear how his lunch companion was getting on.

`Not without cost,' Marcus replied. Silence-maybe they were studying menus. `What cost would that be?' Noah asked idly.

`Family.I hardly ever see my children,' Marcus stated.

Elexa supposed she must have nipped out of their conversation to occupy herself with her own thoughts for a while, because when she had next become aware of their conversation she had been able to gather that they were obviously good friends who hadn't seen each other in an age and were still catching up, with Marcus accusing Noah of being the same old workaholic.

`Not without cost.' She heard Noah bounce back the same phrase Marcus had used earlier.`How so?'

She guessed at that point that Noah must have given a shrug or something of the sort. There had been a pause anyway for a few moments, before, `There's a price you pay for everything, Marcus,' he said. `With me it's not having time to have a family.'

`You want a family?' Marcus sounded incredulous. `You want a wife and-' `I don't particularly want a wife,' Noah cut him off. `In fact, to be frank, a wife is an appendage I can well do without.' A pause, then, `Though I have been wondering just lately what it is I'm striving for.'

`You can't get much higher than international chairman.'

There was a second or two's silence, and she visualised Noah giving another shrug. Then he was saying, `Don't get me wrong. I enjoy my work, the challenges it brings day to day. But...'

`But something's lacking?' Marcus put in.

There was a short silence, then Noah was saying something about having been taking stock, something about more to life than being successful in business, and admitting, `A son. I've been thinking for a month or two now that I would quite like to have a son.'

`You, with children?'Marcus seemed surprised. `One would be sufficient.'

`I thought you were a confirmed bachelor?"

'I am, but I'd be prepared to give up that status-briefly,' he qualified.

This time it was Marcus who paused. `You never cease to amaze me, Noah! At university you were always able to think on a different planet from the rest of us.' Elexa heard a smile in Marcus's voice. `Now you want a part-time wife!'

`I don't want a wife at all!' Noah put him straight without delay. `But to have a son I'd have to get temporarily tied to some woman.' Marcus made some kind of ribbing statement, then Noah was proclaiming, `Final me a woman who's willing to marry, produce and then divorce, and I might think about it.'

`You're serious?' Marcus wanted to know. `You think she exists-this woman who's going to produce your heir and then cheerfully disappear?" 'I've neither space for emotional entanglements nor time to go hunting,' Noah answered. `You're still constantly on the move?'

Elexa guessed Noah had given some affirnnative kind of nod, for he was then going on, `According to my work schedule I land round about three years next Palm Sunday.' There was the sound of male laughter.

Then Marcus was suggesting, `Why not sort a temporary wife out from your own stable?'

Like some brood mare! Elexa was not amused.

But apparently the up-to-his-eyes-in-work Noah knew quite a number of willing females. He admitted as much when he answered, `You've met some of them. Can you honestly see any of them being content to present me with Peverelle junior and then, regardless of any financial settlement we agreed in advance, going quietly?'

`Whooh!Very shaky ground,' Marcus conceded, but at that point, glancing in the huge mirror in front, Elexa saw that her friend had arrived and was being directed her way. Elexa might not have given the overheard conversation another moment's thought- after all she knew neither of the men. But her friend Lois had-at least she knew one of them. Tall and attractive, she obviously recognised one of the men in the adjoining booth, and paused in passing.

`Bon appetit, Marcus,' she greeted with the grin of an old friend.

Marcus was already on his feet. `You still slaying them at that financial institution?' he enquired, kissing her cheek, referring to the finance house she worked for.

`Earning a crust,' she acknowledged, the outfit she was wearing suggesting it was a well-buttered crust.

`You don't know Noah Peverelle?'

The tall dark-haired man was on his feet too, and Elexa took more note of this man who wanted a son but didn't want a wife. She quickly dropped hergaze, however, when, having replied to his friend's introduction, Noah Peverelle seemed to become aware that someone was watching him. Fleetingly, before she looked down, her large brown eyes made contact with a pair of grey eyes. Then Lois was joining her, apologising profusely for being late, explaining that she hadn't been able to get away from her client. `Don't give it another thought,' Elexa excused her, but, aware how easily she had overheard the conversation in the next booth, for all neither man had been speaking loudly, she was careful to keep her chat with Lois light.

The two men were the first to leave. `How's your mother?' Lois was asking. `Still trying to get you married off?"

'You're about the only one I know who isn't trying,' Elexa replied, her thoughts on her aunt Celia and her cousin.

'Ah, but I've been there, done that-and wouldn't recommend it,' Lois answered, newly divorced and happy to be out of a bad marriage.

'Er-who'sMarcus ?' Elexa asked. She and Lois had been at school together and could ask each other anything-and Lois, either through her personality or her work, seemed to know practically everybody. 'Marcus-as in Marcus just now, havinglunch with no less a personage than Noah Peverelle?"

'You know Noah Peverelle too?"

'Until today had never met him.But knew of his reputation,' Lois answered, speaking in the shorthand of old friends. `He's the big noise over at the Samara Group-you know them; they're that international communications company, they've offshoots all over the place.'

Elexa had never got to hear more about Marcus, because a cursory glance at her watch had made her exclaim in a hurry, `I've got to dash! I've a meeting I'm going to be late for if I don't get my skates on.'

She had seen Lois since. They had shopped together a couple of weeks ago, and had lunch together only last week. But neither the name of Marcus, whoever he was, or Noah Peverelle had come up again.Though Elexa had thought of that overheard conversation quite a number of times.

She had equally dismissed the overheard conversation too as being the sort of thing you said to a friend you knew well without being expected to be taken seriously. But now, after her mother's latest phone call, pushed into a seemingly no-way-out kind of corner, and with the prospect hanging over her of Tommy Fielding-and after him, without a doubt, someone else, and so on ad infinitum-Elexa just had to wonder, had Noah Peverelle been serious? On thinking about it, she felt that he had sounded serious, deadly serious.But...