had asked Anna to list any of Todd’s less attractive characteristics, she would have been completely stumped, but then she was just a hopeless case where Todd was concerned, still occasionally having to pinch herself in case the whole marriage turned out to be a dream!
Ten years down the line and three children had done nothing to dissipate the sense of wonder she sometimes felt, knowing that she was wedded to a man as downright gorgeous as Todd Travers!
‘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