Within a few hours of her beautiful boy’s arrival, Jessie decided work could go hang for a while. As much as she had enjoyed her time at Wild Ideas—and she’d worked till she was eight months pregnant—she felt the time had come for an extended maternity leave.
No doubt she would go back to work at some stage. Maybe she’d even start up her own boutique advertising company, run from home. When she mentioned this to Kane he was all for it, as long as he could become her partner.
When a fluttery and flushed Dora visited later that day with her new lodger on her arm—an aspiring writer in his sixties who’d never been married—Jessie and Kane exchanged knowing looks whilst Emily wondered if Santa and God had read her mind and simply got in early.
Jessie was allowed to bring the baby home on Boxing Day, which they spent at her in-laws’ place. She felt remarkably well, but it was still lovely to be waited on, and fussed over. Kane’s mother could not stop picking up the baby and goo-gooing over him.
‘Happy, darling?’ Kane asked her when they finally went home that night and both their babies were asleep.
‘Couldn’t be happier,’ Jessie replied.
‘Care for a dance with your husband?’ he said, and put on a suitable CD.
As Jessie went into her husband’s arms, she remembered the first night they’d met, and danced.
Was it destiny that had brought them together?
It would be romantic to think so.
But it wouldn’t be destiny that kept them together.
It would be love.
Miranda Lee
RYAN Armstrong never mixed business with pleasure.
His was very much a case of once bitten, a zillion times shy. Not that the word ‘shy’ fitted Ryan’s confident and outgoing personality. So cross out ‘shy’ and put ‘wary’ instead.
Ryan was wary of the complications and consequences which came from mixing business and pleasure. Very wary.
When he’d been younger and not involved in the business world there’d been no need to resist temptation when it had come to the fairer sex. If he’d been attracted to a girl, he’d never stopped to think before his male hormones had sent him off in pursuit. He was usually successful in that pursuit, Mother Nature having endowed him with the sort of tall, broad-shouldered and extremely athletic body which women lusted after and which had seen him rise to become one of the world’s most successful and well-paid goalkeepers. From the ages of twenty-three to twenty-nine, during which he’d played international soccer for several European clubs, he’d had more girlfriends than he’d saved goals.
When injury had forced early retirement at the age of thirty, and he had set up his own sports-management company back in Sydney, Ryan unfortunately had not developed the good habit of either controlling or ignoring his sexual urges. So when one of his first female clients—who was very attractive as well as a great athlete—started flirting with Ryan, it was inevitable that they would end up in bed together. Given she was nearly thirty and totally dedicated to her sports career, Ryan never imagined that she would want anything more from him than a casual fling.
By the end of their second date, however, Ryan had seen that he’d made a huge mistake. The girl had constantly sent him text messages raving about his love-making abilities, then saying how much she was going to enjoy being his wife. When he’d tried to finish things—very tactfully, he’d thought—she had gone all out to destroy his business. She’d released confidential information to the papers, plus had tried to drag his name through the mud in every possible way.
Unfortunately, by then he’d deleted all those revealing messages and it had been a case of her word against his. He’d come out the winner in the end, but it had been a close call. Ryan shuddered whenever he thought how close he’d come to losing everything he’d worked for. His business had still suffered for a while, hence his rule about mixing business with pleasure.
These days, he only dated mature, sensible women who had absolutely nothing to do with the Win-Win Sports Management Agency. He steered well clear of female clients and employees. He even trod carefully when it came to any kind of close business-colleague. His current girlfriend was a public-relations executive from a firm whose services he never used. Erica was blonde, thirty-five years old, divorced, childless and ruthlessly ambitious.
Thankfully, she was no more interested in marriage than he was. Or falling in love, for that matter. She’d been there, done that and it hadn’t worked out. She suited Ryan’s needs admirably, being attractive, intelligent and sexy. Ryan had discovered over the last few years that driven career-girls were usually hot between the sheets—and not given to huge tantrums when he wanted to move on.
Ryan moved on every few months. Occasionally, a relationship would last a little longer, but usually not. Often they ended earlier, once or twice after only a few weeks. Ryan always opted out very quickly if he thought he was becoming involved with a potential problem. He’d reached an age—he would turn thirty-eight next birthday—by which most guys had given up their bachelor days in favour of marriage and a family. He’d seen it happen time and time again. All his male friends were now married, even the ones whom he’d thought would never succumb to the urge to settle down and have children.
Ryan could well understand why members of the opposite sex saw him as a suitable target for marriage. Because he never talked about his past, what they didn’t know was that he’d decided a long time ago that he would never become a husband and father. And he hadn’t changed his mind about that.
A sharp tap-tap on the office door interrupted his thoughts and sent his eyes to the clock on his desk. Exactly three p.m.; right on time as usual, Ryan thought with illogical irritation. He actually admired punctuality. He hated wasting time waiting for people, especially when he’d made an appointment. So why didn’t he admire it at three p.m. every Friday afternoon?
‘Come in, Laura,’ he called out through clenched teeth.
She came in, looking exactly the same as she always looked: severely tailored black suit with black hair up in an equally severe French pleat. No make-up. No jewellery. No perfume.
As she crossed the room towards the chair she always occupied during their weekly meeting, Ryan looked her up and down and wondered why she did that to herself. Did she imagine that this was how a female lawyer should look—tough, hard, and totally sexless?
Anyone could see that she could be a very attractive woman if she tried. She had a good figure and an interesting face with high cheekbones and exotically shaped grey eyes. Admittedly, those eyes were usually as cold as an arctic sky, especially when they looked at him.
So Ryan was startled when their eyes met and he glimpsed not chilly indifference for once but a type of pained regret. She even stopped walking for a second to stare at him.
‘What?’ he said straight away.
‘Nothing,’ she replied, and shook her head. ‘Sorry. Let’s get straight down to business, shall we?’ She sat down, crossed her legs with her usual crisp modesty then leant forward to pick up the first of the contracts which were sitting on the edge of his desk waiting for her perusal.
It was a lucrative endorsement deal he’d personally negotiated for an up-and-coming young male tennis-player whom Win-Win had been lucky enough to sign up the previous month. A lot of Ryan’s work involved negotiating contracts