The Wrong Kind Of Wife. Roberta Leigh
with you, darling, not with my job.’
Morosely Tim pushed back his chair and rose, and she feasted her eyes on him. Tall, slim and strikingly handsome, he had wide shoulders and athletically co-ordinated movements. His face reflected his patrician lineage: high cheekbones, wide forehead, and finely chiselled nose and mouth. His thick, dark blond hair was soft and faintly unruly, and unusually well-shaped eyebrows marked genial grey eyes. With his bathrobe knotted casually around his waist, he epitomised the well-bred man about town.
‘Why can’t they send someone else to Paris?’ he asked. ‘You aren’t their only researcher.’
‘They consider me one of their best,’ Lindsey admitted. ‘But I promise it will be the last time. I told Grace I don’t want to do any more out-of-town interviews.’
‘Well, if it’s really the last time...’
‘How was your day?’ she asked, anxious to change the subject.
‘I spent the morning editing Turlow’s article and the afternoon finding photographs for him. It’s a job anyone with a half-decent education could do. I’m wasting my degree.’
‘It would have been equally wasted if you’d gone to work in your family business.’
‘I never committed myself to working there.’ Tim was instantly on the defensive.
‘Your parents took it for granted, and if you hadn’t met me I think you’d have joined your father like a shot.’
‘Perhaps, but you’re more important to me than any job.’
‘Thank you, but I don’t fancy having it on my conscience that you aren’t doing what you want.’
‘Who the hell knows what I want?’ he questioned bitterly.
‘Well, at least you won’t waste your training if you stay on in Fleet Street.’
‘As a hack journalist?’
‘Give yourself a chance. I’m sure they’ll ask you to do Turlow’s column when he goes.’
‘Is that your ambition for me?’ Tim asked slowly. ‘To be a political leader writer?’
‘What’s wrong with it?’
‘Nothing. Except it isn’t my ambition. The thought of spending my life criticising what others have done—’
‘And putting forward your own views,’ Lindsey intervened silkily. ‘Imagine the influence you could have on public opinion.’
‘It would be years before anyone listened to me.’
‘You have to begin somewhere,’ Lindsey said irritably. ‘Or would you prefer to waste your talent going into the family business and being your father’s dogsbody?’
‘I’d hardly have been that. It’s not a one-man business, you know. It’s a sizeable engineering firm, and—’ Tim hesitated, then clamped his lips and said no more.
But Lindsey knew what he had held back, and, realising how important it was to clear the air, she finished the sentence for him.
‘And if you don’t join your father, he’ll eventually have to sell the company to somebody else, who probably won’t have the same caring attitude to the workforce.’
‘Exactly. So what’s wrong with that attitude?’
‘Nothing. Except that you aren’t interested in business, and your parents shouldn’t make you feel guilty because you don’t want to conform to their ideas. That’s why they don’t like me. Because they blame me for what they see as your disloyalty.’
‘That isn’t true. They don’t blame you, though I admit they’re upset that I’m not joining Ramsden Engineering.’
Lindsey bit back a sigh. She understood Tim’s dilemma but didn’t see how it could be solved, for if he toed the line it would mean returning to live in Evebury, and that would put untold strain on their marriage, for she knew she would never be happy living there.
‘Don’t look so upset,’ Tim said quickly, his words intimating knowledge of her feelings. ‘You’re my first loyalty, darling, and you always will be.’ Moving forward, he caught her round the waist and rubbed his cheek against hers, his passion, as always, very near the surface.
Lindsey’s breasts swelled at his touch, and she traced the nape of his neck with her fingertips, fiercely glad to know that, whatever their difficulties, their love would always overcome them.
CHAPTER TWO
LINDSEY flung down her pen and stretched her arms lazily above her head, easing her tired muscles. By dint of working long hours she was two days ahead of her schedule, which pleased her because she knew it would delight Tim.
She reached for the telephone, called Air France, and secured a reservation on an early evening flight to London. Replacing the receiver, she picked it up again to call Tim and tell him, then, smiling, put it down. How much nicer to surprise him!
With one eye on the clock, she continued transcribing material from her tape recorder on to her lap-top word processor. She had come to Paris to research the life of a famous French movie star who, twenty years earlier, at the age of forty, had married an out-of-work twenty-year-old French guitarist. Everyone had said it wouldn’t last, but they had been proved wrong, for not only were they still blissfully happy, but the guitarist was now one of the most popular musicians in France.
Lindsey knew that Grace Chapman, who was the programme’s producer and her immediate boss, would be delighted with the material she had obtained, for she had great aptitude in gathering information, and Grace had recently suggested she would let her appear in a documentary instead of being a backroom girl.
‘You have the looks, intelligence and personality to be a presenter,’ the woman had stated. ‘But telly fame means you’d become a target for every gossip columnist in Fleet Street, and you might not want that.’
‘They’d find nothing to gossip about in my life,’ Lindsey had replied.
‘I’ll put your name forward, then.’
Since Grace’s word carried enormous weight, Lindsey was delighted, yet she had not said a word to Tim, uncertain how would he feel if she suddenly became famous while he was still struggling. Perhaps it might be wiser to soft-pedal her prospects for another year.
Arriving at the airport with time to spare, she wandered into the duty-free shop and, spying Tim’s favourite aftershave, which even for her was wickedly expensive, she decided to buy some for him. The bottle she had given him for Christmas was down to the last inch, and she had noticed him using it sparingly.
Deciding in for a penny in for a pound, she also purchased a bottle of champagne as a nice way to mark her earlier than expected return. Tim’s favourite brand was Dom Perignon, but the cost was almost double the one she had chosen, and given the amount she had spent on the aftershave it was an extravagance she could ill afford.
Although the flight took only an hour, it was interminable to Lindsey as she envisaged Tim’s surprise and pleasure at seeing her. Would they drink the champagne before going to bed, or make love first? When they had been apart for more than a night, he was always impatient to possess her, and as she walked in he would gather her into his arms and carry her into the bedroom, his hunger such that there was no time for foreplay. But she was always wet and ready for him, and their coupling, though swift, was lusty and satisfying.
As her taxi drew to a halt outside the red-brick Edwardian house where they had their apartment, and she saw the light in the sitting-room of their second-floor apartment, she breathed a sigh of relief. Thank goodness Tim was home. In the last half-hour it had occurred to her that her desire to surprise him would backfire if he had gone to the films, or was visiting friends.
Hurrying