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.
‘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