to her flat that evening Elexa had been through again and again everything she wanted, and what she was going to have to do to get it. She had heard today the manager’s job that had been rumoured, was definitely going to be announced shortly. It wasn’t a senior manager’s job—that would be some years away—but it was a job she wanted. Without false modesty, Elexa felt she was good enough to get it. She worked now in a high stress area—and loved it. But she knew there would be more pressure attached to the new job; she wouldn’t need any extra in the shape of her family trying to push her into marriage.
So, the answer seemed obvious. Go through a marriage ceremony with Peverelle, get ‘the other business’ over and done with, and get back to what she was good at.
Her phone rang; she jumped. Her mother? Or—him? Why him? Probably because she had thought so frequently of making a phone call to Peverelle. Was he making that phone call to her? How dared he? Feeling slightly miffed—that phone call was her prerogative—she picked up the phone and said a firm, ‘Hello,’ and discovered it wasn’t him at all, but was her mother’s other sister.
‘I’ve only just heard about you and your man-friend,’ her aunt Helen trilled. ‘Now, you’ll be sure to bring him to Rory’s wedding, won’t you? If you’ll give me his address I’ll be sure he gets an invitation.’
‘I—er…’ Oh, Lord. ‘We’ll look forward to it—um—thank you very much, Aunty,’ Elexa replied—what else could she have said? ‘Er—don’t bother with a written invite.’ She hadn’t a clue about Peverelle’s address.
‘You’ll be sure to tell him how welcome he is—how we’re all dying to meet him?’
‘I’ll tell him,’ Elexa assured her, and came off the phone sighing. Heavens above, the way the family were carrying on you’d think that she had never had a boyfriend and that Peverelle was her last chance!
By Saturday morning Elexa had convinced herself that she was taking a right and proper course of action. It was an unusual arrangement, of course. She accepted that. But when all this initial trauma was done and dusted and—subject to her and Peverelle agreeing on everything—then he would have the promise of an heir, and she would have the promise of some space to concentrate on what she so enjoyed: a career without constant family pressure. A year, that was all she craved. To think, in a year’s time, she could have that all-important junior manager’s job! And from there—who knew? The possibilities were limitless.
By six o’clock that evening, however, Elexa was having to firmly remind herself of all the reasons for why she was taking this course of action. When the outer door buzzer sounded a half an hour later she was feeling so all over the place that she could barely remember one good reason.
She saw no point in going to the intercom to ask who was there. It would be Peverelle. She hesitated. What if he had come in person to say he had thought matters over and had decided he neither wanted to act as her ‘steady’ that evening, nor marry her either?
Well, he knew what he could do, she fumed furiously. But her fury was instantly doused when she thought of her mother, her father too, waiting to meet Noah Peverelle. Oh, heavens, she’d never hear the last of it if Peverelle had called in person to tell her ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye’.
Suddenly realising that nerves about this whole business were getting to her, Elexa made herself think more positively. Why would he come to say that he thought it a rotten idea? If they went through with it he would be getting the son he wanted. He must know by now that if he wanted some woman who wasn’t out to take him to the cleaners financially, she—Alexandra Aston—was that woman.
Knowing from previous experience that he would not ring twice, Elexa picked up her bag and left her flat. Which must mean, she considered as she went down the stairs, that she herself was ready to carry this notion a little bit further. In any event, how could she now tell her mother—not to mention her aunts—that she had made up having a steady boyfriend? Oh, crumbs, another thought suddenly struck her: her mother would never forgive her if she had to pass on to her sisters, Celia and Helen, that she had a daughter who told whopping howlers!
‘You needn’t have rushed,’ Noah Peverelle greeted her sarcastically when she at last opened the door to him.
Elexa felt inwardly agitated enough without his help, and felt very much like telling him to go find his own dinner. But memory of her mother, Aunt Celia and Aunt Helen, was recent. ‘Okay, so I’ll make more of an effort,’ she conceded.
His grunt showed her how much he cared. ‘My car’s this way,’ he stated. He hadn’t thought better of it, then? He was still considering her ‘proposition’? He touched her elbow briefly in the direction he wanted her to go, though had manners enough, she noted, to walk with her rather than go striding ahead and leaving her to trail behind. ‘Where are we making for?’ he asked, once they were inside his Jaguar and he had the motor purring.
‘Got enough petrol for Berkshire?’
It was the last thing that was said in the car for quite some while. But the nearer they got to her parents’ home, the more Elexa started to become all stewed up inside.
Until at last she just had to explode, ‘This is all wrong!’
He was cool, was Peverelle; she had to give him that. If he heard the edge of panic in her voice he gave no sign. Nor, when the least she thought he might have done was to pull over and stop the car, did he do anything of the sort, but, his tone even, he enquired, ‘What’s wrong about it?’
‘I don’t know you! You don’t know me!’ burst from her. ‘How on earth are my parents going to believe that we’re an—an item?’
‘Point taken,’ he replied, still in that same even, unflustered way. He glanced briefly at her, but his stern expression in no way lightened when he informed her, ‘I’m thirty-seven. Your friend Lois will have told you what work I do. I have a house in London and propose ultimately, perhaps when my workload lessens, to buy a place somewhere in the country.’ That would please her mother. All too clearly it was pointless having a country home now, when, by the sound of it, he had no free time to spend there. ‘My parents are both living in Sussex and I have a sister, Sarah, divorced and with her own home. What do I need to know about you?’ He ended as if that was all he believed she needed to know—and sounded as though he wasn’t too bothered whether she told him anything about herself or not.
‘Have you ever been married?’ Since they had got started on this, she was suddenly not ready to risk tripping up on some unexpected nugget of information he might have chosen to keep to himself.
‘Never found the time,’ he answered, when for a moment there she’d thought he wouldn’t. ‘Nor,’ he added as an afterthought, ‘the inclination.’
From that she gathered that he had never fallen in love with any of the women he dated. That he hadn’t spent his life celibate seemed pretty obvious, without that conversation she had overheard when his friend Marcus had referred to Peverelle’s women-friends. Elexa stole a sideways glance at him—and quickly away again. He had a virile sort of look about him—there was a pounding in her ears suddenly; she didn’t want to think about that.
‘Until now,’ she said in a rush. ‘You’ve never contemplated marriage?’
He did not answer straight away, but then—and she could only conclude he had decided that there had perhaps to be a little give and take here—he unbent sufficiently to concede, ‘I’ve had moments recently when I’ve started to wonder what it’s all about…’
Elexa began to like him a little. ‘You mean the constant striving, being successful—but with no anchor—roots—’ She broke off, a shade embarrassed. ‘You spoke of buying a property in the country. I—er—thought that meant putting down roots. Somewhere for your son and heir to grow up and—’ Again she broke off. She had a feeling she was getting in too deep here. She didn’t want to know. She didn’t want that depth of involvement. ‘Anyhow,’ she went on hurriedly, ‘the fates may not be kind to you—it could be your