The Wrong Kind Of Wife. Roberta Leigh

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СКАЧАТЬ has that effect on me,’ she said, knowing this would please him, and, seeing it did, she quickly took advantage of it. ‘I have to go to Paris for a few days. I was only told today.’

      ‘Not again!’ he exploded. ‘That’s the second time in three weeks.’

      ‘It isn’t for long,’ she placated.

      ‘That’s what you said last time, and you were away a week. Do you have to go, Lynnie?’

      ‘Yes. And I wish you wouldn’t call me that.’

      ‘Sorry, angel.’

      She forced a smile. She hated the abbreviation because it was one her stepfather had used. She had been a scrawny eight-year-old when he had married her mother, but at twelve she had started to bloom, and he had begun hanging around her in a way that had instinctively frightened her. Even now she loathed thinking about it, and had never mentioned it to Tim.

      ‘Why not go down to Evebury while I’m away?’ she said aloud, hoping the suggestion would placate him. ‘You have several days due.’

      ‘I don’t enjoy going without you.’

      She knew the reason too well and stifled her irritation. It would have been an opportunity to impress on his parents that he was making his own way, but he obviously couldn’t do it unless she was there to give him moral support.

      ‘I can’t take my father going on at me to join the business, and mother stoically holding back the tears,’ he explained.

      Lindsey sniffed. ‘Pity they don’t realise how happy you are.’

      ‘Happy 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 СКАЧАТЬ