Woman to Woman by Cathy Kelly Read Free Book Online

being married with 2.5 kids, a semi with a conservatory and an estate car filled him with the dread most men reserved for having their mothers-in-law to stay. At the mention of the word commitment, his eyes glazed over and he would pick up the remote control and switch channels rapidly, searching for something which involved a muddy field, a football or a newscast with in-depth sports coverage.
    Of course, when you were a sports photographer you had to keep up with current sporting events, but one tiny piece of Jo’s mind was beginning to think that the manic channel hopping which ensued the last time she talked about buying a place together was a ploy to avoid talking about
    settling down. She known what he was like when she first met him, shortly after he’d given up his secure and pension able job with one newspaper to set up a sports agency with a couple of other like-minded, risk-taking photographers.
    “It was driving me out of my mind working for just one paper.” He told her about his low boredom threshold as they drank red wine and completely ignored the press photographer awards ceremony going on around them.
    “This way, we’re our own bosses and we control what we do and what we don’t do.”
    “Absolutely,” breathed Jo, fascinated by his ambition and his Scandinavian blondness. She thanked God that she’d agreed to make up a party of ten people to cheer on Style’s fashion photographer as he accepted his award.
    She’d nearly cried off and stayed in to watch Coronation Street instead. There is a God after all, she thought happily.
    She wondered whether she should risk going to the loo to reapply some Crimson Kiss lipstick and adjust her strapless dress in case someone else nabbed the most fascinating man she’d met in years. No, she decided firmly.
    Who cared if her boobs were about to spill out of the figure-hugging hot red dress she’d borrowed from the fashion cupboard at work?
    Her rippling tortoiseshell hair was piled on top of her head in a haphazard manner, designed to suggest she’d just got out of bed. Mascara emphasised her dark eyes beautifully and only the most observant onlooker would notice the wobbly dark line above her lashes where the hand holding her eyeliner pen had slipped. Jo knew she looked good and she wanted this fair-haired hunk to know it too.
    “I can’t stand people who just sit still and let life happen to them. I want to make it happen, I want that excitement and that energy,” Richard said passionately.
    “It’s what keeps me going.”
    Gazing deeply into his eyes, Jo fell for him like a ton of bricks, low boredom threshold and all. She should have wondered what kind of man
    would dump a perfectly safe job to run a risky freelance agency. But she hadn’t.
    She was the sort of individual who woke in the morning with her guts spasming with nerves if she had a difficult interview ahead of her. She found Richard’s adventurous spirit intriguing. And frankly, very sexy.
    There was something macho about taking such a huge gamble and something equally attractive about realising that his dream had paid off tenfold.
    That wasn’t enough for Richard, though. Once the agency was making money, he was eager for the next challenge, longing for adventure, while Jo began to yearn for quiet domesticity. He wanted to take up parachuting. She was I scared of heights. He signed up for a scuba diving course and gave her a course of diving lessons for her birthday, even though she hated getting water in her eyes. But how could she now complain about the very traits she’d found so exciting in him in the first place?
    “Interest rates and conveyancing fees are probably responsible for more heart attacks than five pints of Guinness a day, darling,” he’d said only the week before when the most gorgeous cottage in the Wicklow mountains just jumped out of the property pages at her. The picture of the cottage bathed in sunlight made Jo long for the house with twelve-inch-thick