Part Time Marriage by Jessica Steele Read Free Book Online

dinner, there were a few small snares during the meal that caused her to tense up again.

    'Elexa has beenn very reticent in telling us about you, Noah.' Her mother smiled as she offered him morebroccoli . `I don't even know where the two of you met!' Oh, help! Elexa wasn't good at lying, and too late realised that if she was going to lie she ought at least to have rehearsed it first. She opened her mouth to make some comment, to intercede on Noah's behalf. But then found he did not require her help. Though, whether he had rehearsed the lie or not, his powers of invention, instant or otherwise, were far greater than hers, she very soon realised.

    `I was in one of the offices at the Samara Group when Elexa called to discuss a marketing plan with the head of department there,' he answered pleasantly.

    Stunned, Elexa could only stare while her mother beamed and accepted straight away that the international chairman of that group must have taken a shine to her daughter on that instant. 'Elexa is so good at planning,' Kaye Aston told him enthusiastically. Every bit, Elexa thought in amazement, as if she stood at her elbow in her office watching her. `In fact,' she went on, 'Elexa has always been academically quite brilliant.' While Elexa wanted to sink through the floor it was so embarrassing-her aunt Celia had used to go on like this to David about her daughter Joanna-her mother was adding, `Academically brilliant, but so unworldly about life.'

    Heaven help us, her mother was all but warning Noah to look after her prized chick! `Aunt Helen rang!' she interrupted, saying the first thing that came to her-too late realising she had triggered off an invitation to Rory and Martina's wedding. `She said she would.' Kaye Aston cheerfully admitted that the two of them had been under discussion. `You will be able to come to Rory's wedding, I hope, Noah?"

    'I expect Noah has a full diary,' Waldo Aston chipped in, much to Elexa's relief.

    Her relief was short-lived. `Oh, you business people,' her mother declared. 'Elexa works all hours and takes papers home, when there's absolutely no need for her to work at all. Yet she's never missed a day at Colman and Fisher in all the time she's been there.' She laughed lightly. 'I'm sure she'd crawl there on her hands and knees if she had to.' Elexa sent a desperate kind of look to her father, but her mother had warmed to her theme, and before he could say anything, `Why, I remember her struggling into work one day when she was so ill she was as near to having pneumonia as-'

    `A slight exaggeration,' Elexa jumped in quickly. For goodness' sake, Peverelle was a sophisticated man of the world-he didn't need to hear her mother singing her daughter's virtues-if virtues they were.

    `Not at all,' Kaye Aston insisted lightly. And in friendly fashion continued, `I swear, Noah, this daughter of mine truly believes Colman and Fisher would collapse without her.' 'Elexa is a great asset to them,' he answered smoothly, every bit as if he knew it for certain.

    `What's for pudding, Mother?' Elexa asked, cringing where she sat, not bothered in the slightest about pudding, but ready to grasp at anything to change the subject.

    `Gypsy tart and or cheesecake,' her mother replied, and drew breath to turn to her daughter's `steady' again, but was forestalled when her husband, perhaps having picked up his daughter's distress signals, beat her to it.

    `You don't by any chance collect stamps?' he asked Noah.

    `I'm afraid I don't. It's a fascinating hobby, I've heard.'

    Elexa was glad when the meal was over, and left Noah and her father in the drawing-room while she helped her mother clear the diningroom table.

    `Your father and I will see to the dishes later.' Kaye Aston beamed. And, because it seemed she just couldn't resist it, she declared, `Oh, darling, if I'd chosen someone for you myself I couldn't have chosen better.'

    Elexa stared at her parent and couldn't help feeling slightly staggered. Only a week ago