Contracted: Corporate Wife. Jessica Hart

job. I’ve got this boss who makes my life an absolute misery.’

      ‘What?’ Patrick did a double take. He had been so busy not noticing what was going on with that damn top—why couldn’t the woman sit still, for God’s sake?—that it took him a moment to realise what she had said.

      ‘That was a joke,’ said Lou patiently.

      ‘Oh. Right.’ Patrick was surprised by how relieved he felt. ‘Ha, ha,’ he said morosely, and then was startled when Lou laughed. She had a proper laugh, not a giggle or a simper, and it made her look younger, vibrant, interesting, really quite…sexy. Was that what the waiter had seen too?

      ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Just checking to see if you were listening!’

      Patrick had the alarming feeling that things were slipping out of control and he got a grip of himself with an effort. There must have been something very odd in that champagne. He wasn’t feeling like himself at all.

      ‘You’re on your own, though.’ That was better; think of her as a sad divorcee. ‘Don’t you get lonely?’

      ‘When you live in a tiny flat with two growing children, I can tell you that you long for the chance to be lonely sometimes!’ said Lou.

      ‘That’s not what I mean, and you know it,’ he said.

      ‘No, OK,’ she acknowledged. ‘I miss being married sometimes,’ she said slowly, pushing her plate aside so that she could lean her arms on the table and prop her face in one palm, oblivious to what that did to her cleavage, or what the effect on Patrick might be.

      ‘It’s hard bringing up children on your own,’ she told him, while he fought to concentrate. ‘There’s no one to talk to in the evening, no one to share your worries with, no one who cares the way you do about their little triumphs.’

      She was gazing at the candle flame, miles away with her children, and Patrick wondered if she had forgotten that he was there. If she had, he didn’t like it, he realised.

      ‘It would just be nice sometimes to have someone to support you when everything seems to be going wrong,’ she said.

      ‘Someone to hold you?’ he suggested, his voice harder than he had intended, and Lou’s dark eyes flashed up from the candle to meet his for a taut moment while both of them tried not to think about being held.

      Her gaze dropped first. ‘Yes, someone to hold me,’ she said quietly. ‘Sometimes.’

      Patrick had a sudden memory of Lou walking across the lobby earlier that evening. She had seemed so prim and proper then, so cool and composed. Not appealing at all. He was almost appalled to realise how warm and soft and inviting she looked now, her eyes dark, gleaming pools in the candlelight, and her hair just a little tousled. He wondered what it would be like to touch it, to run his fingers through it and let the dark, silky strands fall back against her cheek.

      What had happened? Then the neat suit and the demure top had struck him as merely dull. Now they seemed tantalising, as if they were specifically designed to make him wonder what she might be wearing underneath. If she were warm and willing in his lap, would he be able to slide his hand over her knee and under that businesslike skirt and discover that she was wearing stockings?

      Patrick swallowed. God, he had to stop this right now. Talk about inappropriate. He didn’t want Lou to think that he was just another lecherous businessman fantasising about secretaries in tight skirts and stockings and high heels.

      Although if the cap fitted…

      Picking up his glass, he took a gulp of wine and made a sterling effort to pull himself together.

      ‘Yes, being held…I do miss that,’ Lou was saying thoughtfully, unaware of Patrick’s confusion. ‘I think what I miss most, though, is the feeling that you don’t have to deal with everything on your own, that someone is interested in you for yourself, and not just because you’re a mother and there to be taken for granted. I don’t mind when the kids do that, I know that’s part of their job, but still…’

      She glanced at him, evidently hesitating, and Patrick cleared his throat and nodded encouragingly.

      ‘Go on, tell me. This is confession time, remember? Nothing to be remembered or held against you tomorrow!’

      Lou laughed in spite of herself. ‘OK, then, but you get to tell me an embarrassing fantasy too.’

      ‘It’s a fantasy? Better and better!’

      A slight blush crept up her cheeks, but she hoped the candlelight would disguise it. ‘Mine’s not a very exciting fantasy, I’m afraid. I imagine that I can skip the awkwardness of meeting a man, dating him, getting to know him, all of that. I don’t want the falling-in-love bit again. It’s too consuming, and it hurts too much when you lose it.’

      ‘So where does the fantasy come in?’

      ‘I just want to wake up and find myself comfortably married to someone,’ she confessed. ‘Someone nice and…kind. Someone I could lean on when I needed to, and support when he needed it, and the rest of the time we’d be…I don’t know…friends, I suppose.’

      ‘What’s embarrassing about that?’ asked Patrick, his mind straying distractingly back to Lou’s stockings. If they were stockings. He really, really wanted to know now.

      Could he ask her? Patrick wondered, and then caught himself. What was he thinking of? Of course he couldn’t ask his PA if she was wearing stockings. That would be sexual harassment.

      ‘It’s so politically incorrect,’ said Lou guiltily. ‘I’m a strong, independent woman. I shouldn’t need anyone to look after me. I can look after myself. And I do, most of the time,’ she said, recovering herself. ‘I only think about having someone else when I’m tired, or feeling down, or one of the kids is being difficult.’

      Which was a depressing number of times in the week, when she thought about it.

      ‘It doesn’t sound to me like an impossible fantasy,’ said Patrick carefully. ‘You’ll just have to keep an eye out for someone suitable.’

      ‘Oh, yes, and there are so many kind, supportive, single men out there!’

      ‘There must be someone,’ said Patrick. ‘You’re an attractive woman.’ Rather too attractive for his own comfort, it appeared.

      ‘I’m also forty-five and have two bolshy adolescents who consume every moment I’m not at work,’ she pointed out. ‘Would you want to take that on?’

      ‘Not when you put it like that.’

      ‘There isn’t any other way to put it,’ said Lou. ‘I’ve been divorced over six years now, and I’ve learnt to cope on my own. I’m not looking for a man.’

      ‘I’ve heard that before,’ said Patrick cynically, thinking of the women who had assured him that they were just out for a good time and then started dawdling past jewellers’ windows and dropping heavy hints about moving in with him.

      This was good. He wasn’t thinking about stockings any more.

      Much.

      ‘It’s true.’ Lou fixed him with one of her disconcertingly direct looks. ‘Frankly, I haven’t got the energy to put into finding a man, let alone maintaining a relationship. When you work all day, and go home to two children who need all your attention, it’s hard to imagine being with anyone new.’

      ‘And even if I did by some remote chance meet someone who didn’t mind only meeting every few weeks when I could persuade a friend to babysit, and wasn’t put off by Grace’s moods, or the fact that I don’t have a bedroom of my own, and was happy with only ever getting the fraction of my attention that was left over from my children, I’d still hesitate,’ she said. ‘It’s taken me a long time to build up my life again after Lawrie left. I’m not going to let it all come crashing down in smithereens like before.’

      ‘You