Perfect Marriage Material. Penny Jordan
of doing a little bit of matchmaking that’s turning you all broody, isn’t it, and not—’
‘Well, Tullah is twenty-eight, just the right age to settle down,’ Olivia told her husband defensively. ‘And she’s so motherly....’
‘Motherly?’ Caspar gave a shout of laughter as he visualised his wife’s friend. ‘Is this the same Tullah we’re talking about? Tullah with the figure that’s straight out of every man’s fantasy...somewhere between Claudia Schiffer and a Baywatch babe? The same Tullah with those wonderful, dark gypsy eyes and curls and that gorgeous pouting mouth that makes her look so provocative and yet at the same time somehow more vulnerable and less knowing, if you know what I mean...and—’
‘Caspar,’ Olivia warned.
‘Sorry,’ he apologised unrepentantly. His eyes twinkled as he admitted, ‘Perhaps I was getting a trifle carried away...but you have to admit that no one would ever think she’s a highly qualified lawyer. She looks as though her sex-appeal rating would be through the roof while her IQ—’
‘Caspar!’ Olivia warned more darkly.
‘OK, OK...calm down. You know perfectly well that my taste runs to sassy blondes with flashing eyes and... All I’m trying to say,’ he added patiently, ‘is that stunning and sensual and very, very sexy Tullah may be, but motherly...’
‘That’s just because you’re judging her on the way she looks,’ Olivia told him severely. ‘As you’ve just said yourself, she is highly qualified. She actually started working in a small professional practice, you know, but the trauma of dealing with so many divorce and custody cases got to her so much that she decided to switch to industry instead. Her own parents split up when she was in her teens, and from what she’s told me about it, I suspect it had a very traumatic effect on her.’
‘Mmm...very probably.’ They exchanged long, understanding looks with one another. Caspar’s own childhood had not been an easy one, passed as he had been from parent to parent, forced to take a back seat as they both remarried and produced further families, which in his mind seemed to supplant him.
Olivia’s childhood, too, had not been without its problems. Her father, David, her uncle Jon’s twin brother, had disappeared whilst recovering from a serious heart attack, simply discharging himself and walking out, leaving no trace of where he was going or what he intended to do and her mother...
Tania, her mother, after years of suffering from an eating disorder, was now living in the south of England. She had telephoned Olivia several weeks ago to tell her excitedly that there was a new man in her life whom she wanted her daughter to meet.
‘I was thinking of how perfectly one of the Chester cousins would be for Tullah,’ Olivia told Caspar.
‘One of them?’ he repeated, raising his eyebrows.
‘Well, there are so many to choose from,’ she defended herself, ‘and now that Luke and Bobbie are married...well, it might just give the others the impetus they need. After all, it can’t be lack of financial security that’s holding them back.’
‘You sound like one of Jane Austen’s characters,’ Caspar teased her.
Olivia laughed again. ‘You mean, “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”’ she quoted. ‘I was thinking more of the emotional need,’ she informed Caspar with great dignity. Now let me see... There’s James and Alistair, Niall and Kit.’ She ticked their names off on her fingers.
‘She can’t marry all of them,’ Caspar interrupted her.
‘Of course not,’ she agreed, giving him a scathing look. ‘But I am sure that one of them... After all, just think what she’s got in common with them.’
‘What?’ Caspar invited.
‘Well, for a start, they’re all members of the same profession,’ she told him, raising her eyes to the ceiling. ‘Honestly, men!’ She turned to the papers she had been about to read before he came in, shaking her head.
‘Livvy...’ She stared at Caspar as he drew her gently to him, ‘Look, I know you mean well, and yes, your cousins and Tullah possibly do have something in common, but she’s a high-flying professional woman of almost thirty. Don’t you think if she wanted to settle down and have children she’d have found a partner of her own choice by now?’
Olivia bit her lip. ‘Are you trying to tell me that I shouldn’t interfere?’
‘Well...’
‘I was only thinking of having a couple of dinner parties...returning invitations...that kind of thing.’
‘Mmm... I suppose I should take it as a compliment that you enjoy marriage and motherhood so much that you want to inflict it, er, share its pleasure, with all your friends.’
‘I suppose you should,’ she agreed. ‘Speaking of which...do you remember how we were talking the other night about it being time we thought about a brother or sister for Amelia?’
‘What, you’re not—’
‘Not yet,’ she told him demurely. ‘But we really ought to—’
‘Oh yes, we really ought,’ Caspar agreed, laughing as he turned her towards the kitchen door and the stairs that lay beyond it.
‘SO. HAVE you seen anything locally yet that’s taken your fancy?’ Olivia asked Tullah eagerly when she returned from the property viewings organised by the relocation agency.
‘Not really, apart from this little moppet.’ Tullah laughed as she broke off from cuddling Amelia, Caspar and Olivia’s two-year-old daughter, to answer Olivia’s question.
‘Ah well, if that’s what you fancy, it isn’t a house you should be looking for, it’s a man,’ Olivia teased her gently.
‘No thanks,’ Tullah retorted, the smile dying out of her eyes as she handed Amelia over to her mother, her full mouth compressing firmly.
‘Tullah...’ Olivia began, then stopped as she saw the look she was giving her. Good friends though they had always been, Tullah was the type who held herself slightly aloof from others and whom, despite her stunningly voluptuous and sensual looks, the men in the large organisation they had both worked for had very quickly learned to treat with wary caution.
Olivia knew the reason for Tullah’s wariness of the male sex and she also knew that Tullah didn’t like to discuss her love life.
She knew that the only time Tullah did let her guard down with men was when she was with one she knew to be happily attached to another woman. Because she felt safe with such a man?
‘So none of the properties was any good, then?’ she asked sympathetically.
Tullah pulled a face. ‘Well, the modern single-bedroomed flats they showed me were affordable, but very anonymous, and the cottages were either too large or too expensive or both. There was one, though....’ She paused whilst Olivia waited. ‘Well, it just had so many things against it, and even the agent said that it had only been included on the list at the last minute, but...’
‘But...’ Olivia encouraged patiently.
Tullah gave her a rueful look and admitted, ‘But it was quite definitely a case of love at first sight.’
‘Oh dear,’ Olivia sympathised, ‘as bad as that?’
‘And more,’ Tullah agreed wryly, ticking points off on her fingers. ‘It’s overpriced, on the wrong side of town for work. It needs a fortune spent on it. Possibly spraying for infestation of the wood, rewiring, new plumbing—you name it. It doesn’t even have mains drainage.’
‘So what does it have?’ Olivia asked, adding helpfully,