Marriage Material. Ally Blake

stopped laughing though his grin went from full-screen to wide-screen. ‘You poor fellow. A couple of guys at work have been on the losing end of her counsel. But I thought if any guy had a chance against her charms it would have been you. She must be really something. Was she the man-hater I heard she is?’

      ‘Well, I don’t think she liked me much.’

      ‘No? But I thought they all liked you, what with you being so cute and all.’

      Tom reached out and gave Sebastian’s cheeks a rough pinch. Sebastian playfully slapped his hands away. But he did not feel so playful.

      It was true. She had not liked him one bit. She had not even tried to hide the fact for civility’s sake. Yet despite it all he had been patently attracted to her. Attracted physically went without saying, but it was her vitality that kept him engaged even after she let fly with her unremitting accusations.

      ‘Apparently she is engaged to some American,’ Tom said, again dragging Sebastian back to the present. ‘How ironic—a divorce lawyer getting married. You’d think she would be cynical about the whole deal.’

      Sebastian did not remember seeing a sparkling diamond. But he had been blindsided by the significance behind the adorably short fingernails, so maybe… ‘Engaged to an American, you say?’

      ‘Mmm. Thing is, from what I’ve heard nobody has ever seen the guy or if they have they are keeping quiet about it. Maybe it’s all a diversionary tactic to fend off hot-from-the-oven divorcees. Don’t even think about it, I’m engaged.’

      Sebastian looked up as a yell of glory erupted from the other end of the field. One of his team had scored a try. He looked back to Tom and shuffled from one foot to the other, itching to get back to the game.

      ‘Saved by the yell,’ Tom said. ‘Go on, then. Get back out there. But I want details. Come for dinner and stay over tonight?’

      ‘Fine,’ Sebastian conceded as he ran backwards onto the field. ‘Tell Melinda I’ll be there at seven.’

      Romy stumbled into her apartment-building foyer after ten o’clock. She had spent the evening with her divorced-singles group, with once battered wives, with cheated-on husbands, with a woman she had comforted in a quiet corner, and with a pair who had the amazing news that they had become engaged…to one another! They were serious people looking for serious relationships, and if Romy knew anything about anything, she knew about that.

      She shuffled into the antiquated lift, pulled the doors shut and endured the interminable ride to her top-floor apartment. Rhythmic creaks and groans took the place of the electronic music you would find in most modern apartment-building lifts. In an atypical fit of whimsy she had picked the apartment for the beautiful restored lift with its open-cage design, and she’d had to endure its resultant slowness and periodic breakdowns ever since. That would teach her!

      Once home she checked her answering machine. Her parents had sent their weekly ‘hello’ in duet. She could not remember the last time she had spoken to one and not the other. They were the most devoted couple she had ever come across, still deeply in love after thirty perfect years.

      She called them back, and hooked the phone beneath her chin as she prepared herself a light snack.

      ‘Hey, Mum.’

      ‘Hey, baby. I saw you on TV tonight. The Press conference. With that lovely Janet Hockley. Will she continue to make those aerobic videos, do you think?’

      Romy chomped on a celery stick. ‘She made them before her marriage and during her marriage so I wouldn’t think she would suddenly stop now.’

      ‘Oh, good. I was thinking of buying the next one for your father for Christmas. It seems he doesn’t mind the exercise so long as there’s a cute young thing to show him how to do it. And I’ve hit the point that I’m willing to let him do anything so long as his cholesterol comes down.’

      Romy set up her picnic on the small round table by the kitchen.

      ‘And did you get to meet that husband of hers?’

      ‘I did.’

      ‘And was he the stud the magazines say he is?’

      Her mind wandered to the image of him walking from office to lift. Throughout the day it had transformed into slow motion and sepia. Now her mother had unfortunately relocated that image to Sebastian walking through a stable, rake in hand, shining with sweat…She fought the urge to dislodge the looped vision from her mind with a sharp slap across the cheek.

      ‘Not that I witnessed first-hand.’

      Her mother paused and Romy hoped she did not pick up on the forced nonchalance in her voice. That was all she needed for her mother to get funny ideas in her head. Luckily her indifference seemed to fly.

      ‘Well, I guess that’s hardly something you could add to your résumé, dear, so no loss there.’

      ‘True. Is Dad there?’

      ‘He’s on the other phone, listening, dear.’

      Of course he was. ‘All’s well, Dad?’

      ‘Well as can be expected considering your mother won’t let me eat potato any more. Potato, I tell you!’

      ‘Imagine if you got on her bad side. You’d be left with bread and water.’

      ‘Bread! Ha! She made me cut out bread long before potato became the evil food of the month—’

      ‘Anyway,’ Romy’s mother cut him off, ‘we just wanted to say we saw you on TV, dear. The girls at poker will be most impressed. Goodnight, love.’

      ‘Goodnight, Mum. ’Night, Dad.’

      Romy hung up, appalled as the slow-motion, sepia, gorgeous-man-walking image was now replaced with the hazy image of Sebastian, the stud, dripping in hay and little else.

      No! She was not a woman willing to have her head turned by an enchanting smile. She was stronger than that, more focused, and with very specific plans for her future, and mooning over a man like him did not come into that equation.

      Romy was confident that like her parents she would never, ever marry unless she was sure it would be forever. Whereas this guy went through wives the way he went through baseball caps. Lucky he was Alan’s client, not hers, so it was unlikely she would run into him ever again.

      She felt very sorry for the next Mrs Sebastian Fox. Whoever she was.

      Sebastian walked into the kitchen early the next morning with his sister’s middle child Thomas slung squealing and twisting over his shoulder.

      ‘Put me down, Uncle Sebastian! You promised as soon as we got to the kitchen table!’

      ‘I promised once you finished my maths quiz. Come on, Thomas. Five times five is…’

      Thomas took a deep, uncertain breath. ‘Twenty-five?’

      ‘That’s my boy.’ Sebastian tickled his nephew until tears welled in his eyes.

      ‘Put him down, Sebastian, or I’ll never get him to school.’ Melinda mixed several eggs in the frying pan and slopped in some milk and cheese.

      ‘Yes, sis.’ Sebastian swung the boy from his shoulders and plopped him at the kitchen bench next to Chris and Delilah.

      ‘You should be cooking for me,’ Melinda said. ‘I have to get ready for work. What are you doing today?’

      ‘Don’t know.’

      ‘When are you going to get a real job, Uncle Sebastian?’ Thomas asked.

      Melinda grinned. ‘From the mouths of babes…’

      Sebastian ruffled his nephew’s hair, earning a squeal of torment for his efforts. ‘I do just fine, thank you very much.’

      ‘It’s not about doing fine. It’s about