Part-time Marriage

Elexa felt scarlet all over when, knowing that she couldn’t stand there dithering all night, she went to the door, her sophisticated image fast starting to slip. Dressed in a smart two-piece—calf-length skirt and boxy top of sage-green—and with her long blonde gold-lit hair brushing her shoulders, she pulled back the door. But any phrase she might have been able to utter was lost when, before he stepped over her threshold, ‘Alexandra Aston?’ he enquired.

‘My friends call me Elexa,’ she answered, and felt stupid because she had. This man, this stern looking man, this steely, grey-eyed man was not her friend and was never likely to be. ‘Er—you’d better come in,’ she invited.

She led the way into her sitting-room. She didn’t remember him being so stern looking. True, he hadn’t actually been smiling when she’d seen his reflection in that mirror, but neither had he been scowling.

‘Can I get you something?’ Politeness of years pushed her on. ‘A drink, a…?’ Abruptly, she halted. ‘How did you find me?’ she changed tack to ask sharply.

‘It wasn’t difficult.’

He was tall. She was five feet nine herself and didn’t like having to look up to him. ‘Would you like to take a seat?’

He moved over to her sofa but did not sit down until she had taken the chair opposite. She saw his glance flick round her elegantly furnished room, and cancelled any top marks she might have given him for manners because of it. No doubt he was totting up her furnishings—along with the rental of her flat in the not unsmart apartment block—and assessing how much she would need for the upkeep of both.

‘Without my job—which pays very well—I have private means,’ she told him irately.

‘Falling before you’re pushed?’ he queried—and she hated him, hated that she felt her lips twitch. She had rather jumped in there with both feet, hadn’t she? She didn’t smile, of course. Why should she? He was looking as grim-faced as ever. ‘I’m aware of your financial circumstances,’ he informed her coolly.

‘You’ve had me investigated?’ Elexa went shooting away from holding down a laugh to being outraged. ‘How dare—?’

‘You proposed yourself to be the mother of my child—did you think I wouldn’t have you investigated?’ He was actually considering the proposition? Her brown eyes widened as she stared thunderstruck at him. ‘Are you always this cantankerous?’ he enquired mildly, his all-seeing grey eyes steady on her.

Elexa took a deep breath. She was feeling less panicky than she had, but was still feeling very shaken. ‘I’m nervous.’ She opted for honesty. ‘Your call, you coming here tonight, was, well, unexpected to say the least.’

‘You mean you wouldn’t have slammed the phone down on me a third time had I telephoned first?’

‘You had no intention of phoning first—you wanted to catch me unaware, with my defences down,’ she accused.

He neither agreed nor denied it, but instead, his serious grey eyes fixed on her eyes, he questioned toughly, ‘Why is it so important for you to be married?’

She wanted to deny it was important at all, then roused herself—she wasn’t having him coming here to her home and acting like some man in charge. ‘Why is it so important to you to have a son?’ she tossed back shortly.

‘Did you miss that part?’

She coloured—he knew it all, didn’t he? ‘So I was eavesdropping. Not that I intended to—’ She broke off. ‘How did you find out—that I’d been listening to your conversation—that day? That it was me?’

He shrugged. ‘Marcus Dean was the only person who knew of my thoughts on having a son.’

‘Mmm,’ Elexa murmured. ‘You remembered where you were when you were discussing it with him?’

‘Marcus wouldn’t discuss it with anyone else,’ Noah Peverelle asserted, with the same confidence that Elexa had that anything she discussed with her friend Lois would go no further. ‘Since the voice that called me yesterday wasn’t the voice of Lois Crosby…’

‘You remembered Lois’s voice?’

‘I knew yesterday’s voice wasn’t hers. Which meant it had to be her brown-eyed companion.’

‘You remembered my eyes?’ she asked incredulously. ‘But it was ages ago—we didn’t even speak!’

‘You obviously didn’t forget me,’ he lobbed back at her. ‘Or, more precisely, my side of the conversation. So tell me why, since it doesn’t appear you’re in any urgent need of money, are you so keen to have a husband?’

‘I’m not!’ Elexa answered bluntly, but not yet ready to go into more detail. ‘So you knew who it was who phoned you, but—’ She broke off again. ‘How did you find out—who I am, was, I mean? Your friend Marcus wouldn’t know me. Ah! You rang Marcus and he rang Lois…’ Her voice trailed off. ‘That can’t be right. Lois would have rung me to say…’

‘I didn’t have to call Marcus. My company does a lot of business with the Montgomery…’

He had no need to continue. ‘You contacted the restaurant and asked who had reserved the booth next to yours that lunchtime.’ Clever swine.

‘None of this is at all important. You’ve just said you’re no longer in urgent need of a husband.’ He looked to be about to leave.

Elexa suddenly realised she had very mixed feelings about that. It seemed a very good idea that he should go and that she should forget that she had started this whole sorry business, but… ‘I never wanted a husband at all,’ she informed him. ‘But I’m being pushed—’ The phone starting to ring cut through what she was saying. She knew it would be her mother—and started to panic again. ‘Can you hang on while I take this call?’ she asked quickly, and didn’t wait to see whether he would or not. Presenting him with her back, she went over to the telephone and picked it up.

‘I was hoping you’d be home from work by now,’ her mother’s voice came briskly down the wires. ‘Now, what’s so dreadful about your man-friend that you couldn’t tell me about him before?’

‘There’s nothing dreadful about him,’ Elexa found herself answering, barely able to believe she was still carrying out this myth that there was someone she was going ‘steady’ with.

‘Then why didn’t you bring him to the christening yesterday?’

‘He’s—uh—busy,’ Elexa replied. What am I doing? ‘He’s a very busy man.’

‘He’s not married! Tell me he’s not married! You wouldn’t go out with a married man. Don’t tell me I’ve reared a daughter who would—’

‘Mother!’ Elexa cut off her tirade. ‘I didn’t bring him because he—um—puts a lot of hours in with his work.’

‘What’s his name? He does have a name?’

Oh, grief. Elexa hadn’t heard any doors closing. If Noah Peverelle was still in earshot—and she couldn’t blame him if he was; she had after all listened in to his conversation—then he would just love it if she gave her mother his name. ‘Can I give you a ring later?’ she asked, and, rushing on before her mother should ask why, ‘He’s—er—here now—um…’

‘He’s there with you now? Why didn’t you say?’

‘I—er…’

‘Ring me before you go to bed tonight,’ her mother instructed firmly. ‘And you’d better bring him to dinner on Saturday.’

Elexa came away from the phone with her head spinning. She turned and saw that Noah Peverelle was still there. ‘Oh, grief,’ she sighed, and collapsed into the nearest chair.

But she was not to be allowed time to get herself back together, it seemed, for straight away Noah Peverelle was bombarding her. ‘Why would you tell your mother anything about me? And don’t deny it was me you were talking about.’

Elexa had just about had enough of him. ‘It didn’t have to be you; any man would have done,’ she snapped, but wearily felt obliged to explain. ‘Yesterday, in order to put somebody off, I invented having a steady boyfriend. He told my mother—she now wants me to bring said steady boyfriend to dinner on Saturday.’

‘You look as fed up as you sound,’ Noah Peverelle observed, and added speculatively, but nonetheless accurately, ‘It’s your mother who wants you to be married, not you, isn’t it?’

Elexa didn’t want to be disloyal to her mother, but somehow, having been driven to this situation by her, she was feeling just a little too worn down just then to mind so much.

‘I don’t need marriage. I’ve got a super job, excellent prospects of promotion—I’m more than happy with my career.’

‘But your mother isn’t?’

Elexa sighed. ‘I’ve tried to explain how it is.’

‘You can’t have tried very hard.’