Make-Over Marriage

‘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.