After Hours

After Hours
Sandra Field

Significant Others Wife wanted! Quentin Ramsey was fed up with casual relationships and empty promises. And then he had seen Marcia Barnes across a crowded room and realized she was the woman he'd been waiting for all his life. But Marcia was more Ms. Workaholic than Miss Right.Her biological clock was ticking. It was the only reasonable explanation she could think of for her involvement with Quentin. The only thing they had in common was sex - great sex admittedly, but sex all the same. Marcia had always lived to work, but now she was living for five o'clock… . How could Quentin persuade Marcia to take him on for a lifetime and not just after business hours!"Pure pleasure… ." - Romantic Times

“You’re very sure of yourself, Mr. Ramsey.” (#ue0154840-eb51-5995-9f9b-d6e3fbf2e276)Letter to Reader (#u4c0adcc0-d353-551b-98e4-d891483b0f56)Title Page (#uc01d822a-0369-5771-9af8-a707513d6b15)CHAPTER ONE (#u4343625e-8567-534e-a1c0-8eda91d319e1)CHAPTER TWO (#uf25af8a4-9f3f-5bb6-ad68-6baf5756dcef)CHAPTER THREE (#u4b053ef5-c247-5c9c-b8ce-eb2762fb0f0f)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)CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

“You’re very sure of yourself, Mr. Ramsey.”

“Confidence gets results, Dr. Barnes.”

“Up until now, confidence might have gotten you results,” she said sweetly.

“Are you suggesting I should change tactics?”

“I’m suggesting you abandon the project.”

“I don’t think so. You’re an interesting challenge.”

Marcia’s nostrils flared. “Now you’re being insulting.”

Quentin stepped closer and said softly, “You liked it when I touched you.”

Gritting her teeth, Marcia thought about icebergs and glaciers and Scotch on the rocks—anything to prevent herself from blushing. “You took me by surprise, that’s all.”

“You really get under my skin, Marcia Barnes.”

“That’s mutual.” She had never been kissed like that in her life. Brief, beautiful and bewildering.

Dear Reader,

Welcome to the third of three scintillating books by Sandra Field. When Sandra first came up with the idea for her book Beyond Reach (#1806) she fell in love with her characters so much that she couldn’t bear the thought of leaving them behind. So she wrote another book. Then another.... And Significant Others was born. Sandra writes:

“This series of three books crept up on me unawares. After Troy and Lucy met in the West Indies, I found myself curious to discover how marriage would change them, hence Second Honeymoon (#1830), again set on an island, this time off the coast of Nova Scotia. Lucy’s laid-back friend, Quentin, and her uptight sister, Marcia, played minor roles in Second Honeymoon. Once Quentin had appeared on the scene, I knew I wouldn’t rest until I’d brought him face-to-face with Marcia....”

After Hours is Marcia and Quentin’s story.

Enjoy!

The Editor

After Hours

Sandra Field

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

CHAPTER ONE

SHE was losing it. Going bonkers.

Marcia Barnes stood in the living room of her condo, gazing out the window at the Rideau Canal; along the bicycle path that followed the curves of the canal a couple of intrepid cyclers zipped along, undeterred by the rain. It was a peaceful scene. Trees that had just burst into leaf, tulips in geometric beds, tidy arrays of well-kept houses. Everything neat and in perfect order.

Not like her.

She pulled a hideous face in the plate glass window. However, if this had been an attempt to quell the anxiety that had been with her ever since the meeting that afternoon at the medical research institute where she worked as an immunologist, it failed miserably. At the meeting the director, in a voice as smooth as cream, had spoken of budgetary restraints that might lead to cutbacks in staff. Cutbacks that could go as high as fifty percent. Although Marcia had worked there for seven years, she by no means had seniority.

Her work was her life. Had been as long as she could remember. She’d be lost without it.

She took a couple of deep breaths, trying to calm herself. Thank goodness she’d had the sense to refuse Lucy and Troy’s invitation to dinner. Bad enough that she’d agreed to go to the gallery where their friend Quentin what’s-his-name’s show was opening.

Quentin. The name conjured up Harris tweed jackets and a pipe. An uppercrust British accent. Landscapes modeled after Constable’s, with puffy white clouds and placid brown cows.

The last thing she felt right now was placid—she who everyone thought was so into control. Rather, she felt as though her life, so carefully constructed and so rigidly maintained, was falling into pieces around her.

She went into the kitchen and located her invitation to the gallery—the most exclusive gallery in town. Not that she cared. She didn’t want to get dressed up and go out again. She didn’t want to meet Quentin Ramsey, whose show, called Multiple Personalities, was being touted in such glowing terms. Nor did she want to see her sister Lucy and her brother-in-law Troy, who had arrived in Ottawa yesterday just to be at the opening.

What she wanted to do was fill her bathtub to the rim with steaming hot water and big globs of bubble bath, turn on the most soothing music she possessed and forget all about the outside world. After that she’d go to bed. How else to end a day from hell?

She sighed. Lucy was already puzzled by her refusal to have dinner with them. Although Lucy and Troy lived in Vancouver, they were spending the next two months in Ottawa because Troy was teaching pediatric residencies in two of the city hospitals. They’d brought the baby with them. If Marcia didn’t turn up at the art gallery, Lucy would think something was wrong.

Nothing’s wrong, Marcia thought wildly, rubbing at her forehead. There’s a good chance I’m going to lose my job, the woman I’ve always been has deserted me and I don’t have a clue who else to be, and I don’t want to see my own sister. I don’t even want to be around her. What kind of person does that make me?

Tall, beautiful Lucy, with her mop of untidy curls and her full figure and her rich, uninhibited laughter was the very antithesis of her elder sister Marcia. Or her younger sister Catherine. Or their mother Evelyn, come to that.

Do I envy her? Is that what it is?

Was envy one of the seven deadly sins? If it wasn’t, it should be.

The old-fashioned grandfather clock, which had indeed belonged to Marcia’s grandfather, a renowned neurosurgeon, chimed the half hour. I’m going to be late... Oh, well, that means I’ll miss the speeches at the beginning and I’ll get to meet Lucy and Troy in the middle of a whole lot of people. No chance for intimacy. Sounds good.

Marcia went into the bedroom, which faced west and was filled with the fading light of evening. Raindrops were beating against the windowpane in a miniature tattoo. Firmly closing her mind to the prospect of a hot bath, Marcia rummaged through her closet. Lucy always had been too intuitive for comfort. So the persona of the Marcia she had always been was going to be firmly in place. Cool, competent Marcia, in control of her own life. Unemotional, detached Marcia, who never made demands.

All her movements neat and efficient, she stripped off her work clothes, had a quick shower and dressed in a navy blue linen suit whose tailored elegance was worth every penny she had paid for it. Silky navy hose, Italian leather pumps and discreet gold jewelry came next. Expertly she applied her make-up. Then she brushed her sleek dark hair, in its expensive cut that curved just below her ears, and checked her appearance in the full-length mirror in her bedroom.

She didn’t look thirty-three.

Not that it really mattered how old she looked.

Hastily she jammed her big horn-rimmed glasses on her nose. She could have worn her contacts. But her glasses gave her something to hide behind—and to meet Lucy she needed all the help she could get. Grabbing her shiny forest-green raincoat and still-damp umbrella from the hall closet, she left her condo and took the elevator to the basement.

She’d go straight to the gallery, meet the famous Quentin Ramsey, make appreciative noises about every one of his multiple personalities and invite Lucy and Troy to dinner on Sunday along with the rest of the family. And then she’d come home, duty done.

Multiple Personalities, she thought crossly, backing out of her parking lot. What kind of a name was that for a bunch of paintings? Too clever by half. Too cutesy. Altogether too self-conscious. He might be Lucy and Troy’s friend, but that didn’t mean that she, Marcia, had to like him.

Scowling, she pressed the remote control to open the garage door, and drove out into the rain swept evening.

Quentin, too, had checked his appearance in the mirror before he’d left for the art gallery. The amount of money he’d had to spend to get a decent suit that he planned to wear no more than half a dozen times a year had astounded him. He looked like an ad in a glossy men’s magazine, he thought irritably, hitching. at the knot in his silk tie: “The Successful Artist of the 90s. Man-abouttown Quentin Ramsey attending the opening of his highly successful show Multiple Personalities.”

What in hell had possessed him to come up with that title?