Fortunately for him, his mother had been able to channel her grandmotherly hopes up till now towards his younger brother, Mark, who’d married a couple of years back. Dominic had simply assumed Mark and his wife would reproduce in time, thereby letting him permanently off the hook.
But a few months ago his one and only sibling had unexpectedly arrived home and announced he was leaving his wife to go off to Tibet to become a Buddhist monk! To prove it, he’d promptly given all his considerable worldly goods to his rapidly recovering wife and taken off, his subsequent letters revealing he was happy as a lark living on some mountain-top monastery with only a yak for companionship!
It didn’t take a genius to conclude there would be no imminent hope of a grandchild from that quarter!
Which had brought his widowed mother’s focus right back on him, her only other offspring, and now her only other hope of providing her with a grandchild!
She’d been driving him mad with her none too subtle pressure, inviting all sorts of unattached females home to dinner. All of them beautiful. All of them sexy. And all of them wanting—or pretending to want—the same thing his mother wanted. Marriage and babies.
She’d just rung to check that he wouldn’t be too late home for dinner tonight, because she’d invited Joanna Parsons over.
‘The poor darling has been so lonely since Damien died,’ Ida had purred down the line.
Lonely? Joanna Parsons? Dear God! The woman was a sexual vampire. Even before Damien’s death, in a car crash six months ago, she’d done her best to seduce him. As a merry widow, there would be no holds barred!
Dominic liked his sex, but he liked it unencumbered, thank you very much. And with women who held the same views as he did. His current lady-friend was an advertising account executive whose marriage had broken up because she’d been already married to her job. Dominic saw her two or three times a week, either at her apartment after work or in a hotel room at lunchtimes, an arrangement which suited them both admirably.
Shani was thirty-two, an attractive brunette with a trim gym-honed body. She wasn’t into endless foreplay or mindless chit-chat or sentimentality, the word ‘love’ never entering what little conversation they had. She was also fanatical when it came to her health. If ever Dominic might have been tempted to believe a woman when she said it was safe, it would have been Shani.
But long-ingrained habits died hard, and Dominic maintained a cynical distrust of the female psyche. It would never surprise him to discover that his latest bed-partner, no matter how career-minded, had fallen victim to her infernal biological clock. In his experience, not even the most unlikely female was immune to that disease!
Take the case of Melinda, his invaluable PA, who’d been with him for years and always said she wanted a career, not the role of wife and mother. So what happened? She’d turned thirty and in less than twelve months had married and left to have a baby. On top of that, she’d refused to come back to work, abandoning him totally for the home front.
He’d been most put out!
Naturally he’d had to take steps to ensure such a thing wasn’t going to become a regular occurrence, though at the time finding a replacement for Melinda had been a right pain in the neck. There’d been no question of keeping the girl on who’d filled in during Melinda’s supposedly temporary maternity leave. As efficient and sweet as Sarah was, beautiful, young, unattached females were out—a decision reinforced by what had happened when he’d taken Sarah out for a thank-you meal on the last evening of her employ.
Dominic shuddered to think that even he could become a temporary victim of his hormones, if the circumstances were right. He’d been between women at the time, and had drunk far too much wine with his meal. When he’d taken Sarah home in a taxi and walked her to the door of her flat she’d unexpectedly started to cry. Her louse of a boyfriend, it seemed, had just the day before dumped her for some other woman.
Dominic had only meant to comfort her, but somehow comfort had turned to something else and they’d ended up in bed together for the night. They’d both regretted it in the morning, both agreed not to mention it again.
Sarah had gone back to her normal job as a secretary in Accounts on the floor below his, and he’d met Shani at a dinner party that very weekend.
His new secretary, Doris, had started the following Monday morning.
Thank God for Doris.
Now Doris would never cause him any worries. She was fifty-four, for starters, happily married, with a healthy, undemanding husband and grown-up children who didn’t live at home. She didn’t mind working late when required, and didn’t object to making him coffee at all hours of the day. If his tendency to untidiness bothered her—and he suspected it did—she didn’t say so to his face, just quietly cleaned up after him. A woman of great common sense and tact was Doris.
The intercom on his desk buzzed and he flicked the switch. ‘Yes, Doris?’
‘The others are waiting for you in the boardroom, Mr Hunter.’
That was another thing he liked about Doris.
She called him Mr Hunter, and not Dominic. It had a nice, respectful ring about it, and made him feel older than his thirty-three years.
‘Yes, yes, I’m coming. Hold all calls, will you, Doris? Absolutely no interruptions. We have a lot of work to get through this afternoon.’
The lift doors opened, and Tina steered the pram, along with the now sleeping infant, onto the twentieth floor. Straight ahead was a long glass wall with floor-to-ceiling glass doors upon which was written in gold lettering ‘Hunter & Associates—Management’.
Beyond was another sea of black granite, dominated by a shiny black reception desk.
Tina wondered caustically if the glossy blonde perched behind the desk had been chosen personally by Dominic Hunter himself.
Maybe he had a penchant for blondes. She recalled Sarah saying something about the big boss being present at her second interview for Hunter & Associates, after which she’d swiftly been hired.
Of course Sarah hadn’t just been any old blonde. Though her long fair hair had been her crowning glory, she’d been equally striking of face and figure. Her stunning looks had been a problem all her life, and hadn’t brought her any happiness. Men hadn’t been able to keep their eyes, or their hands, off.
Poor, sweet Sarah had always believed the declarations of love which had poured forth from her current pursuer’s mouth. After she’d become a secretary working in the city, she’d been especially susceptible to the smoothly suited variety of male, especially good-looking ones with dark hair, bedroom blue eyes and a convincing line of patter to get her into the cot and keep her there without actually offering any solid commitment.
Sarah had been a sucker for that combination every time, always believing herself in love. Once in love, Sarah had become her latest lover’s doormat, thinking that was the road to the wedding ring and the family of her own she’d always craved.
Naturally it had never turned out that way, and Sarah had been dumped in the end. It had driven Tina mad to watch her friend being used and abused by one silver-tongued creep after another. Married, divorced or single, it hadn’t mattered. If they’d told Sarah they loved her, she’d been putty in their hands.
Tina had tried to give solace and advice after each break-up, but her patience had worn thin over the years. She’d finally seen red when, shortly after Sarah had been promoted to the plum job of PA to Dominic Hunter, Sarah had confessed to being in love again. When pressed, she’d admitted the object of her affections was her new boss. A terrible argument had ensued. Tina had told Sarah that she’d sleep with any man if he said he loved her, and Sarah had retaliated that Tina had a heart of stone, was incapable of really loving anything or anyone but herself.
They