Part-time Marriage. Jessica Steele

feet. ‘You still slaying them at that financial institution?’ he enquired, kissing her cheek, referring to the finance house she worked for.

      ‘Earning a crust,’ she acknowledged, the outfit she was wearing suggesting it was a well-buttered crust.

      ‘You don’t know Noah Peverelle?’

      The tall dark-haired man was on his feet too, and Elexa took more note of this man who wanted a son but didn’t want a wife. She quickly dropped her gaze, however, when, having replied to his friend’s introduction, Noah Peverelle seemed to become aware that someone was watching him. Fleetingly, before she looked down, her large brown eyes made contact with a pair of grey eyes.

      Then Lois was joining her, apologising profusely for being late, explaining that she hadn’t been able to get away from her client. ‘Don’t give it another thought,’ Elexa excused her, but, aware how easily she had overheard the conversation in the next booth, for all neither man had been speaking loudly, she was careful to keep her chat with Lois light.

      The two men were the first to leave. ‘How’s your mother?’ Lois was asking. ‘Still trying to get you married off?’

      ‘You’re about the only one I know who isn’t trying,’ Elexa replied, her thoughts on her aunt Celia and her cousin.

      ‘Ah, but I’ve been there, done that—and wouldn’t recommend it,’ Lois answered, newly divorced and happy to be out of a bad marriage.

      ‘Er—who’s Marcus?’ Elexa asked. She and Lois had been at school together and could ask each other anything—and Lois, either through her personality or her work, seemed to know practically everybody.

      ‘Marcus—as in Marcus just now, having lunch with no less a personage than Noah Peverelle?’

      ‘You know Noah Peverelle too?’

      ‘Until today had never met him. But knew of his reputation,’ Lois answered, speaking in the shorthand of old friends. ‘He’s the big noise over at the Samara Group—you know them; they’re that international communications company, they’ve offshoots all over the place.’

      Elexa had never got to hear more about Marcus, because a cursory glance at her watch had made her exclaim in a hurry, ‘I’ve got to dash! I’ve a meeting I’m going to be late for if I don’t get my skates on.’

      She had seen Lois since. They had shopped together a couple of weeks ago, and had lunch together only last week. But neither the name of Marcus, whoever he was, or Noah Peverelle had come up again. Though Elexa had thought of that overheard conversation quite a number of times.

      She had equally dismissed the overheard conversation too as being the sort of thing you said to a friend you knew well without being expected to be taken seriously.

      But now, after her mother’s latest phone call, pushed into a seemingly no-way-out kind of corner, and with the prospect hanging over her of Tommy Fielding—and after him, without a doubt, someone else, and so on ad infinitum—Elexa just had to wonder, had Noah Peverelle been serious? On thinking about it, she felt that he had sounded serious, deadly serious. But…

      It was absurd! She’d never have the nerve—her stomach started to churn at the very idea. Elexa attempted to dismiss the notion. But the pressure was on, that pressure strengthening, and, short of caving in and taking on one of her mother’s ‘nice’ types, what was a career minded executive to do?

      She had tried the heart-to-heart with her mother—it had only made matters worse. She knew that her mother worried about her—she was a natural born worrier. In fact Elexa’s father had often said that if her mother didn’t have anything to worry about she would invent something. But this roping in Joanna, along with Aunt Celia, was going too far.

      Yes, but to contemplate marrying some stranger, having his baby and then divorcing just to get her well-meaning relatives off her back, was a bit desperate, wasn’t it?

      But the situation was desperate! On impulse Elexa picked up the phone and dialled her friend Lois’s number. It was ridiculous, Elexa decided, before the number had started ringing out.

      So why didn’t she put down the phone? Gentle, nice Tommy Fielding and a string of others like him, that was why, Elexa answered her own question. And there was that prospect of promotion she should be concentrating on—instead of evading her mother’s water-wearing-away-stone tactics.

      ‘Elexa!’ Lois exclaimed when she heard her voice. ‘I was just thinking about you and wondering if you fancy doing anything at the weekend.’

      ‘It’s the christening this weekend,’ Elexa reminded her friend. Lois had often stayed weekends in Elexa’s home when they had been schoolgirls, and knew all of Elexa’s family.

      ‘Joanna’s sprog?’

      ‘She’s rather cute,’ Elexa replied—and brought herself up short. Good heavens, where had that come from? She wasn’t getting all mumsie, was she? Just because she had been toying with some far-fetched idea of having a baby, she wasn’t going all broody, was she? ‘Er—I need a favour,’ she said quickly.

      ‘If it’s in my power, it’s yours,’ Lois answered without hesitation.

      ‘You don’t know what it is yet,’ Elexa laughed. But even as she laughed, she knew that she was delaying asking the question because she didn’t want to ask it. It was as if, once asked, it would commit her to carrying through her only half-thought-out plan.

      ‘If I know you, it won’t be anything too diabolical. Give?’ Lois requested.

      ‘I—er…’ Lois was her oldest and most trusted friend, Elexa reminded herself. ‘I—um—need Noah Peverelle’s private number,’ she plunged. ‘And I can’t tell you why,’ she added hastily.

      There followed a small silence. ‘Intriguing,’ Lois ruminated. ‘But,’ she added after a moment, ‘I don’t know it. I only ever met him that one time. Uh!’ she exclaimed. ‘You know that I know a man who may know it, right?’

      ‘Marcus and Noah Peverelle are great friends,’ Elexa volunteered.

      ‘You sound as if you know them both very well,’ Lois opined.

      ‘I don’t,’ Elexa had to confess. ‘Is there a chance you could ask Marcus without telling him why you need Noah’s number?’

      ‘If they’re such good friends, Marcus Dean isn’t going to tell me without wanting to know why,’ Lois commented. ‘Hang on, though. Ginny Dean owes me a favour! I’ll ring Marcus’s wife and get back to you.’

      Elexa put down her phone after her call, wondering what she had done. She had involved Lois in something which Elexa wasn’t certain she was going to take any further anyway.

      Though, in thinking about it more deeply, more logically, instead of panicking that family pressures had become too intense past bearing, she suddenly realised that, while her career was all-important, yes, there was every probability that she would at some stage rather like to have a child.

      It shook Elexa a little that she had child-bearing instincts. It was something she had never considered before. But, in delving more deeply, she recalled how, when Joanna had given her the baby to hold one time, she had been more than happy to nurse the sweet, sleeping infant in her arms.

      For a few minutes Elexa lived with the discovery that she was no different from most other women—and that she did have the same maternal instincts. Then she gave herself a mental shaking—that still didn’t mean that she wanted a husband. She most definitely did not. In her view they were vastly overrated.

      Noah Peverelle wouldn’t be your normal run-of-the-mill husband, though. For a start it sounded, with his talk of according to his work schedule he’d land round about three years next Palm Sunday, as if he wouldn’t be around much anyway. Not that she had any intention of living with the man. And in any case, in three years’ time she would be married and divorced from him. Not that she wanted to marry