Make-Over Marriage

‘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.