style="font-size:15px;"> Emily pulled a face when her mother got up and went over to start picking up the mounds of Christmas paper.
‘Mummies aren’t as much fun as daddies,’ she pronounced.
Kane smiled. ‘Oh, I don’t know, Emily. Your mummy has her moments. And she is a very good mummy, isn’t she?’
‘Oh, yes,’ Emily said, and smiled over at her mother.
Jessie thought her heart would burst with happiness. She didn’t know what she had done to deserve such happiness but she resolved never to take it for granted, to work hard, to always be a good wife to Kane, and an even better mother to Emily and whatever other children she might be blessed with.
Her mother was going to be surprised when she rang her later today and told her that some man did want to marry her, even with some other man’s baby.
But of course Kane wasn’t some man. He was a very special man.
‘Daddy,’ Emily whispered to Kane, ‘why is Mummy crying?’
‘She’s crying because she’s happy, princess,’ he told Emily, a lump in his own throat. ‘Grown-ups cry sometimes when they’re happy.’
‘When I cry, Mummy kisses me better.’
Kane nodded. ‘What a good idea. Let’s go kiss her better.’
ROBERT WILLIAM MARSHALL arrived just after midnight on Christmas Eve the following year, much to the delight of his big sister, Emily, who immediately started planning her next year’s wish list, which included a pony, a boyfriend for Dora and a visit from her Nanna in Ireland, who’d been writing to her a lot since she’d become something called a Buddhist.
Within a few hours of her beautiful boy’s arrival, Jessie decided work could go hang for a while. As much as she had enjoyed her time at Wild Ideas—and she’d worked till she was eight months pregnant—she felt the time had come for an extended maternity leave.
No doubt she would go back to work at some stage. Maybe she’d even start up her own boutique advertising company, run from home. When she mentioned this to Kane he was all for it, as long as he could become her partner.
When a fluttery and flushed Dora visited later that day with her new lodger on her arm—an aspiring writer in his sixties who’d never been married—Jessie and Kane exchanged knowing looks whilst Emily wondered if Santa and God had read her mind and simply got in early.
Jessie was allowed to bring the baby home on Boxing Day, which they spent at her in-laws’ place. She felt remarkably well, but it was still lovely to be waited on, and fussed over. Kane’s mother could not stop picking up the baby and goo-gooing over him.
‘Happy, darling?’ Kane asked her when they finally went home that night and both their babies were asleep.
‘Couldn’t be happier,’ Jessie replied.
‘Care for a dance with your husband?’ he said, and put on a suitable CD.
As Jessie went into her husband’s arms, she remembered the first night they’d met, and danced.
Was it destiny that had brought them together?
It would be romantic to think so.
But it wouldn’t be destiny that kept them together.
It would be love.
Miranda Lee
RYAN Armstrong never mixed business with pleasure.
His was very much a case of once bitten, a zillion times shy. Not that the word ‘shy’ fitted Ryan’s confident and outgoing personality. So cross out ‘shy’ and put ‘wary’ instead.
Ryan was wary of the complications and consequences which came from mixing business and pleasure. Very wary.
When he’d been younger and not involved in the business world there’d been no need to resist temptation when it had come to the fairer sex. If he’d been attracted to a girl, he’d never stopped to think before his male hormones had sent him off in pursuit. He was usually successful in that pursuit, Mother Nature having endowed him with the sort of tall, broad-shouldered and extremely athletic body which women lusted after and which had seen him rise to become one of the world’s most successful and well-paid goalkeepers. From the ages of twenty-three to twenty-nine, during which he’d played international soccer for several European clubs, he’d had more girlfriends than he’d saved goals.
When injury had forced early retirement at the age of thirty, and he had set up his own sports-management company back in Sydney, Ryan unfortunately had not developed the good habit of either controlling or ignoring his sexual urges. So when one of his first female clients—who was very attractive as well as a great athlete—started flirting with Ryan, it was inevitable that they would end up in bed together. Given she was nearly thirty and totally dedicated to her sports career, Ryan never imagined that she would want anything more from him than a casual fling.
By the end of their second date, however, Ryan had seen that he’d made a huge mistake. The girl had constantly sent him text messages raving about his love-making abilities, then saying how much she was going to enjoy being his wife. When he’d tried to finish things—very tactfully, he’d thought—she had gone all out to destroy his business. She’d released confidential information to the papers, plus had tried to drag his name through the mud in every possible way.
Unfortunately, by then he’d deleted all those revealing messages and it had been a case of her word against his. He’d come out the winner in the end, but it had been a close call. Ryan shuddered whenever he thought how close he’d come to losing everything he’d worked for. His business had still suffered for a while, hence his rule about mixing business with pleasure.
These days, he only dated mature, sensible women who had absolutely nothing to do with the Win-Win Sports Management Agency. He steered well clear of female clients and employees. He even trod carefully when it came to any kind of close business-colleague. His current girlfriend was a public-relations executive from a firm whose services he never used. Erica was blonde, thirty-five years old, divorced, childless and ruthlessly ambitious.
Thankfully, she was no more interested in marriage than he was. Or falling in love, for that matter. She’d been there, done that and it hadn’t worked out. She suited Ryan’s needs admirably, being attractive, intelligent and sexy. Ryan had discovered over the last few years that driven career-girls were usually hot between the sheets—and not given to huge tantrums when he wanted to move on.
Ryan moved on every few months. Occasionally, a relationship would last a little longer, but usually not. Often they ended earlier, once or twice
