Busy Woman Seeks Wife
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the authors’ imagination or are
used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2009 by Wordright Ltd.
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced,
distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written
permission of the publisher.
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First eBook Edition: April 2009
ISBN: 978-0-446-55060-4
Contents
To men wielding vacuum cleaners
W
e can’t pretend to know the first thing about life as a marketing executive—that’s why we write novels—so we had to turn to
a few people for help. Massive thanks to Caroline Whaley, a very special friend, for all her advice about life in the sportswear
fast lane. We couldn’t have done it without her. Thanks also to Jill Stanton, Alex Fraser, Anthony King, Lynn Shone and Adrian
Mcloughlin. And not forgetting Jane Wood, Sara O’Keefe and all at Orion for their enthusiasm and gentle handling as always,
and Emily Griffin at Grand Central Publishing for her delicate and gentle handling.
I
n my bed! They were at it in my sodding bed!”
“Never!”
“Yup. Right there. Big hairy bum in the air and Manuela’s legs… Oh God, I don’t even want to think about it.”
“You must have given her the fright of her life!”
“Well, I think I’ve probably rendered him impotent for life. Ugly sod. Oh God, Saff… I feel so dirty, like I’ve been
violated or something.”
“Want to come over?”
“Can I? Will Max mind?”
“ ’Course not. He loves ya. Anytime—though I’ll have to sort out the kids.”
“I’ll bring a bottle. I need anesthetic. I’m in shock.”
Saffron laughed. “Stay calm.”
Alex put down the phone and turned back to the chaos in her room: her cushions strewn everywhere, a bowl of foreign change
smashed on the floor, the blanket from the bed hurled into the corner. She wanted to throw up.
She’d heard the strange noises the minute she’d shouldered open the front door, back home earlier than anticipated with an
overnight bag in one hand and a laptop in the other. Dumping them in the narrow hallway, she’d thought Manuela might be moving
furniture in her bedroom to clean behind it. Though that would be a first. Her Spanish cleaner didn’t move anything if she
could help it and struggled at the best of times to figure out the workings of a can of Pledge—oh, the irony. Alex had purposely
thumped about the flat a bit so as not to give the poor woman a fright, and called her name before opening the bedroom door.
For a moment she hadn’t quite been able to work out what was going on, and had said “Sorry” as if two people screwing in her
bed at 2:15 on a Wednesday afternoon were normal. Then the horror of the situation dawned on her, not to mention the wobbling
nether regions. The man’s suit was on the floor—tartan boxers off, shirt and socks still on—and Manuela’s red stiletto shoes
were discarded. The woman herself appeared to still be fully dressed, and not for cleaning.
“What—the—fuck—are—you—doing?” Alex’s screech sounded loud even to Alex and the couple’s heads shot around, their expressions
freezing for one blissful moment in total disbelief. “Get—out—of—my—bed!”
If it hadn’t been so disgusting, the scramble that ensued would have been funny. The man—gray-haired, bearded and overweight—reversed
out of Manuela and off the bed, frantically searching for his underpants while holding his shirttails over his genitals in
some ridiculous attempt to preserve his remaining dignity. Manuela pulled down her dress and tidied her hair with her hands
as she pushed her feet into her shoes. Clearly knickers were not a consideration.
“So sorry…” he puffed as he struggled with his trousers. “Didn’t know, you know… we were…”
“Get out,” Alex hissed through her teeth.
“Yes, yes of course.” Stuffing his feet into shoes—quite smart brogues, Alex noticed—he shrugged on his jacket, his face red
and sweaty, his neck thick where it was stuffed into the collar of his shirt. He appeared to be about fifty, perhaps fifty-five,
a wedding ring on his pudgy finger. He made towards the door and Alex stood back to let him through. Then he stopped suddenly,
putting his hand inside his jacket and fishing out his wallet. He pulled out some notes, and it wasn’t until he turned back
towards Manuela that Alex understood.
“I think
I’ll
have that, thank you.” She snatched the notes from his hand before Manuela could take them. “It’ll go towards some new sheets.
Now get out!”
He bolted like a rabbit, slamming the front door of the flat behind him. Alex turned to Manuela, so angry now she could hear
the blood pounding in her ears. The little woman was straightening the sheets and puffing up the pillow. Lunging forward,
Alex grabbed her thin arm. “Get out, you bitch. You whore,” she shrieked. “Get out of my flat. Get out.” And as Alex wrenched
at the bedsheets, Manuela tottered to the door.
“But
señorita.
” She turned to Alex, her face outraged as if it were she who had been wronged. “What about my pay? I’ve done the bathroom
…”
It was all Alex could do not to thump her. “And it looks like you’ve well and truly done the bedroom too. How dare you! Get
out. You’re fired!”
As if possessed, Alex continued to pull off the sheets. Bundling them up into a ball, she hurled them with all her might out
of the room, followed by the pillows and duvet, then, opening the flat door, kicked them down the communal stairs to the hallway
below, narrowly avoiding Manuela as she bolted out the front door. Grabbing her overnight bag to prop open the flat door,
Alex turned back to her bedroom and pulled on the mattress, her hands struggling to find a grip and slipping painfully. It
was heavy and she had to push hard against it to squeeze it through the door. Her tight jacket didn’t help, and she could
feel herself sweating. She was aware she was grunting inelegantly, but eventually she managed it and pushed the mattress to
join the sheets below. Throwing her jacket back into the flat, she followed her bedding downstairs, clambering over it to
open the front door of the building and, in two journeys, dumped it all in the builders’ Dumpster outside the house opposite,
her duvet cover joining brick rubble and broken plasterboard.
It was then that she’d phoned Saff.
What now? She slowly began to straighten the chaos in the room, picking up the shards from the broken bowl carefully before
scooping up the coins and dropping them into a drawer in her dressing table. She must have knocked the bowl over as she struggled
with the mattress.
In her room. They’d done it in
her
room and in her lovely bed that she’d bought the day she’d completed on the flat. The lovely bed with its pretty bedding,
where she and Todd made love and read the papers together on a Sunday morning. Well, she read them anyway while he usually
did his hundred push-ups before going on a run. She’d have to call the cleaning agency, of course, and get Manuela struck
off, but as Alex folded up the bed quilt, piling it up with the cushions on the bare divan, she realized that wouldn’t go
any way to ridding her of the suspicion that today’s liaison was probably not the first.
Changing out of her work clothes, crumpled from the horrendously early start in Stuttgart and the flight, she purposely turned
her back on the denuded bed as she slipped into sweatpants and her favorite T-shirt. Comfort clothes. Of course, she’d have
to sell the flat; that was obvious. Heaven only knew how many sexually frustrated, overweight married men had been entertained
by Manuela over the weeks she’d worked here. No wonder the place was never very clean. The tart was too busy turning tricks.
Gathering up her clothes and stuffing them into the washing machine, Alex could feel her blood pumping loudly again. She tore
open the fridge, knowing full well there wouldn’t be anything in there to eat—there rarely was—but there wasn’t even the measly
pint of milk she’d asked Manuela to get. The request had been written on the same note about putting the bedsheets through
the machine: clearly another thing that hadn’t been done. Alex grabbed her purse, fishing out a few quid, and, locking the
flat door behind her, dashed downstairs and to the corner shop.
“Hello there, Alex girl.” Rajesh’s toothy smile peeked out from behind the counter piled high with displays of chewing gum
and chocolate bars on special offer. “Where have you been? Off on your travels again?”
“It’s been a bit of a marathon,” she sighed, picking up a basket. “Geneva, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Stuttgart. I think.” She
picked up a few things, including a paper she knew she wouldn’t have time to read, but it was a nodding attempt to keep up
with world affairs, and handed over the money to Rajesh.
“Oh, it’s no good. A lovely girl like you shouldn’t be off on a plane every minute. You should be at home with babies.”
Alex rolled her eyes. “You are as bad as my mother, Rajesh.” Laughing, she left the shop as the little shopkeeper shook his
head and went back to reading the local paper.
As she elbowed open her door a few minutes later, a rather tired bunch of daffodils, a warm bottle of Chardonnay and a loaf
of sliced white—which had been all that was left on the shelf—under her arm, she could hear her mobile ringing. By the time
she’d dumped her shopping it had stopped. The office.
“Yup, Camilla? I’m back now.” Alex tucked the phone under her chin as she leaned into a cupboard for a vase. “Sorry I missed
your call. I managed an earlier flight so I’m home.”
“Oh, that’s great,” her assistant’s soft voice cooed down the phone. It was as pretty as she was, but Alex was grateful that
despite her petite frame and doe-like blue eyes, she was awesomely efficient and a rock in Alex’s choppy seas. “It’s good
to have you back. Just a few things to keep you up to speed. Tetril’s factory are happy with the samples date you suggest,
the twenty-fifth is fine for the ice hockey and the shoe people want to talk to you about the color range.”
