Sharon Kendrik - One Husband Required!

‘And what about you?’ she quizzed curiously. ‘Do you have an aversion to mud and bugs?’

He smiled. ‘On the contrary—I like the feel of the soil on my hands. There’s something very satisfying about planting something in the ground and watching it take root and grow. No, my excuse for employing someone else to do the garden is that any free time I have, I prefer to spend with my daughter.’

He had moved slightly closer to her, and Ursula could detect the faintest trace of aftershave—a combination of musk and lemon which somehow seemed more heady out here in the open air than it ever did in the office. He must have been in the shower shortly before she arrived, since his hair was still very slightly damp.

Ursula shivered, in spite of the sun still beating fiercely down on their heads. She began to long for someone else to arrive, almost as much as she hoped that no one would.

She took a hurried mouthful of champagne. ‘So is anyone else coming to the party?’

‘You mean more children?’

‘I meant more adults.’

‘Just Jane,’ he told her. ‘And whoever she decides to invite at the last moment—which leaves the field wide open.’

She ignored the caustic tone in his voice. ‘No grandparents?’

‘No. Like you, my parents are both dead. And Jane’s are divorced—she doesn’t see her father, and her mother lives in Australia.’

‘No godparents?’ She saw the tightening of his features. ‘I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to pry.’

He shook his head. ‘That’s okay. It’s natural enough to ask. We’ve never actually had Katy christened. Jane has a horror of organised religion.’ He took a sip of champagne. ‘You obviously disapprove.’

‘My opinion doesn’t matter,’ she told him frankly, then smiled and raised her glass. ‘But I’m honoured—to be the only other adult invited!’

There was a pause. ‘And what if I told you that I had lured you here under false pretences?’

Ursula felt her heart bashing against her ribcage as wild fantasies sprang into rampant life. ‘In what way?’ she croaked.

‘Just that Jane sometimes gets carried away with work, forgets about the time, that sort of thing—’

Ursula suddenly understood. ‘And you needed someone you could rely on, to pick bits of pepperoni up off the floor?’ Someone, moreover, who would not read too much into the invitation—because Ursula was certain that there must have been tens of women who would have been delighted to step into Jane’s shoes for an evening and mastermind a children’s party...

‘Someone with the organisational skills to co-ordinate a game of musical statues, actually.’

Ursula hid a smile. ‘I think you’ll find that ten-year-old girls will find musical statues too “babyish”.’

‘You reckon?’

‘Yes, I do.’

Ross had gone quite pale. ‘Then what do you suggest we do with them for the next three hours? I didn’t bother hiring an entertainer!’

Ursula smiled. ‘Don’t panic! Right now they’re listening to a CD, and at that age they have the capacity to listen to it over and over again—for hours on end! Then they’ll probably want to watch the video while they eat their pizza. They’ll want us adults as far away as possible—they’re quite easy to please, really.’

‘You aren’t a secret mother by any chance?’ he teased. ‘With a brood of children hidden away at home?’

‘No.’ It was an image which stubbornly refused to be credible, but not because she couldn’t imagine herself as a mother. Simply that she had terrible difficulty conjuring up the idea of anyone as the father... ‘But I brought up my sister when our mother became too ill.’

‘But now that Amber has flown the nest...you don’t have anyone to take care of?’ he said softly.

‘I don’t need anyone to take care of!’

‘Oh, yes, you do! You were born to care, Ursula,’ he told her gently, and appeared about to qualify this extraordinary statement, when they heard a key being turned in a lock and then the sound of voices, and muffled laughter.

Silence.

Whispers.

Then more laughing.

‘That must be Jane,’ said Ross abruptly, just as his wife came into the room, closely followed by four men wearing rather theatrical clothes.

Musicians, thought Ursula immediately.

‘Hi, honey!’ smiled Jane breezily, and blew Ross a kiss. ‘Who’s this?’ She narrowed her eyes in Ursula’s direction. ‘Oh! It’s you! The indispensable assistant!’ She gave her a brief nod. ‘Hello, Ursula!’

Ursula pressed her lips together in a smile. ‘Hello, Jane. Nice to see you.’

Jane was very easy on the eye, the kind of woman about whom other women always said, ‘I don’t know what people see in her!’ But Ursula knew exactly what people saw in her. Men especially.

It wasn’t just that she was tall and skinny, or had hair so thick and curly it resembled a lion’s mane. Or a mouth so wide her smile could dazzle you. Not that she smiled very often, mind you—certainly not when Ursula had met her. No, her looks were more than a total of her parts—she had that indefinable quality called style, which could not be bought.

Today she was wearing green velvet hot-pants and a tiny matching bolero, which only just covered her small breasts. Her midriff was bare and smooth—lightly tanned to the colour of cappuccino—and Ursula wondered whether Ross minded his wife walking around the place dressed like that—like a teenager who had worn the outfit for a dare.

Ursula looked again at the four men, whose long hair and deathly pallor proclaimed them as rock stars, and even Ursula—who wasn’t really a star-spotter—sucked in a breath of disbelief when she spotted that one of them was Julian Stringer, lead singer of The Connection, his wild green eyes slitted as he drank deeply from a bottle of beer.

Ursula watched him with fascination, thinking that he had that total disregard for the conventional which only the really famous ever displayed.

He sensed Ursula watching him and his eyes widened slightly, and in that moment she understood exactly why women all over the world threw their underwear on stage whenever he was in concert.

He wasn’t really tall enough to be described as conventionally good-looking. He had the hips of an adolescent boy and the shoulders of a man, and his hair spilled untidily around his face and shoulders. But he had a kind of mad, wild beauty, with his too-white skin and bright green eyes, and you could sense the passion which ran beneath that rather twitchy exterior. He wrote savage love songs with haunting tunes. No wonder people fell in love with him, thought Ursula.

He turned to Jane. ‘Want us to play something for your kid, baby?’ he drawled. ‘We’ve got all the gear outside in the van.’

‘Wow! Would you really?’ Jane looked at Ross with excitement. ‘What do you reckon?’

Ursula knew Ross well enough to know when he was angry, and right now she could see that he was absolutely furious.

‘I don’t think that now is the right time for an impromptu gig from The Connection,’ he answered repressively.

‘Oh?’ Julian Stringer scowled like a petulant child. Last summer they had topped the Billboard charts in the States, and he was not used to having his offer to play for free turned down! ‘Like to tell me when is the right time, then, man?’

Jane laid her hand on Ross’s and Ursula saw him tense up. ‘Ross,’ she said softly. ‘It’s a great honour to have Julian and the boys play for us. Think what a treat it would be for Katy! It would be a birthday she’d never forget!’

‘You mean, it would be a birthday you’d never forget,’ argued Ross, then gave a weary sigh as his wife opened her mouth to object. ‘Okay, go ahead. Ask Katy.’