Contracted: Corporate Wife. Jessica Hart

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 mean if you were hurt again?’ said Patrick.

      ‘Yes. I won’t expose myself to it.’ Draining her glass, Lou set it down firmly in front of her, absolutely definite.

      ‘So you won’t even take a risk?’

      ‘If it was just me, maybe I would,’ she said, and then thought about the pain and the heartache she’d been through. ‘Maybe. But I’ve got two children who were caught in the fallout of a failed relationship. I won’t do that to them again. Anyway,’ she said, going on the counterattack, ‘I notice you haven’t rushed to remarry either!’

      ‘No, once was enough for me,’ Patrick agreed. ‘I wasn’t good at being married. I hated the endless negotiations and guessing games.’

      ‘It doesn’t have to be like that,’ Lou pointed out. There had never been any question of negotiating with Lawrie. He had gone his own charming way without ever considering that she might be affected by what he was doing.

      ‘No, but it often is. Every relationship I’ve had since my divorce has been the same. The thing about women is that they’re never satisfied. You give them what they ask for, and then they want more.’

      ‘I don’t think that’s very fair,’ said Lou, trying to remember the last time she’d been given what she asked for by a man.

      ‘Isn’t it?’ Patrick demanded. He was feeling more himself now. Good. The stockings thing had obviously just been a momentary aberration.

      He leant forward, counting off the points on his fingers. ‘You’re getting on well and having a good time together, but then they want to leave their hair-dryer or something at your house. Just something small to stake a claim on your space. They want you to say you love them, and when you say you love them, they want commitment. And when you’ve committed yourself, they want you to move in with them, or marry them, and then they want babies…

      ‘And those are just the big things,’ he said. ‘At the same time they’re working on you to change your life completely, they want you to understand them and talk to them and surprise them with little presents and weekends away. They want you to send them flowers and emails and to ring them from work so they know that you’re thinking about them the whole time. I tell you, it’s never-ending demands with women.’

      He drained his glass morosely. ‘Basically they want to take over your whole life.’

      Lou was unimpressed by his suffering. ‘So what you’re saying is that you want to have sex but you don’t want a relationship?’

      ‘What’s the big deal about relationships anyway?’ Patrick grumbled. ‘Women are obsessed with them! I thought I might get on better if I dated younger women. I figured they’d be happy to have a good time and not care about settling down, but, oh, no! We’ve only been out a couple of times and they’re talking about our relationship.’

      He sighed. ‘Before you know where you are, you’re in the middle of all that emotional hassle again.’

      ‘It must be awful for you,’ said Lou, not bothering to hide her sarcasm.

      Patrick shot her a look. ‘Why do women do that?’ he complained.

      ‘Well, you see, we tend to have these awkward things called feelings,’ Lou explained with mock patience. ‘It’s annoying of us, I know, but there’s nothing we can do about it. We will go and fall in love without thinking about how tedious it is for you to have someone who adores you and will do anything for you.’

      She shook her head in pretended disbelief. ‘I mean, how selfish is that?’

      ‘I’m serious,’ said Patrick. ‘I just wish I could find a woman who was happy to take things as they are without always fretting about the future or what it all means or what will happen between us. As it is, we only go out for a few weeks before she starts to get clingy and I start to get claustrophobic.’

      He grimaced. ‘The thought of tying myself down for life is too horrible to contemplate. I’d be bored within a month.’

      ‘You didn’t get bored with Catriona,’ Lou pointed out.

      Patrick thought about living with Catriona. They had both been so young and excited to be living together. They had argued a lot, but it hadn’t been boring. He had missed her when she had gone.

      ‘That was different.’

      ‘How?’

      Patrick wished that Lou would stop asking difficult questions. ‘It just was,’ he said.

      ‘Nothing to do with the fact that you and Catriona were the same age, and now you’re twice as old as any girl you might contemplate marrying?’

      And she could stop putting her finger on the nub of the matter while she was at it.

      ‘No.’ He scowled at her. ‘It’s just that the older I get, the more I value my freedom. I like my life as it is. I work hard, I play hard and if I find a woman attractive, I can do something about it.’

      Although clearly that wasn’t always the case, he added mentally, remembering Lou’s stockings.

      Damn. Patrick cursed inwardly. He was supposed to have forgotten about them.

      ‘That’s not to say it wouldn’t be very handy to have a wife sometimes,’ he said, pushing the stockings to the back of his mind once more. ‘It would be good to have someone who could deal with the domestic and social side of things. I can’t be bothered with all of that, but there are times when I have to entertain and it would all be a lot easier if I were married.’

      ‘You can always have a housekeeper to take care of the house, and there must be any number of caterers falling over themselves to cook for people like you.’

      ‘Quite. That’s exactly what I do at the moment. But it’s not quite the same as having a hostess who can welcome people and introduce them to each other and do all the chit-chat.’

      ‘Have you ever tried any of your girlfriends?’

      ‘No.’ Patrick looked horrified. ‘It’s bad enough taking them along to receptions and parties. They’re not interested in business. They get bored and end up more of a liability than an asset. I can just imagine what would happen if I asked them to help me entertain business associates to dinner. That would be commitment.’ He sneered the word. ‘They’d be off buying wedding magazines the next day.’

      ‘I can’t believe that all these girls are really that desperate to marry you,’ said Lou, exasperated by his attitude. ‘It’s not like you’re that big a deal.’

      Of course, incredibly wealthy, single, intelligent men in their forties weren’t that easy to come by, she had to admit. And it wasn’t as if Patrick were grotesquely ugly, either. He probably had a pretty fair notion of how attractive he was.

      Not her type of course. The cockiness of Tom Cruise and the cool of Clint Eastwood was how she had described him to Marisa. ‘Tell me he’s got the looks of George Clooney and I’ll come and work for him myself!’ Marisa had said.

      But Patrick was no George Clooney. He was too cold, his features too austere. He had none of Lawrie’s rakish good looks, or his easy charm, but still…Lou considered him anew. There was