Long-Distance Marriage

She picked up the silver-framed photo taken after her wedding to Cameron. It had been a tiny ceremony. Neither of them had wanted a big wedding, each for their own reasons. Cameron’s parents were dead, and Alessandra’s lived in Italy. But Cameron was a powerful man with a lot of connections and, when they had been discussing wedding plans, he had turned to her and said, in that crisp, decisive way of his, ‘We either invite everyone or no one. A simple wedding or the whole works.’

There had been no contest for Alessandra. She’d had a few close girlfriends who wouldn’t be mortally offended if they didn’t get an invite.

And her family. Quite apart from the fact that they’d have been hard-pushed to find the air fares, she couldn’t exactly see them hitting it off with her husband-to-be. She’d tried to imagine the cool, enigmatic Cameron coping with her noisy, messy family, and failed.

She just hadn’t wanted to make a big deal out of the day—look how many people did that, and how many of them divorced soon after? She had been petrified of getting married in the first place—in fact, she had sworn that she never would marry. And she probably never would have done if she hadn’t met Cameron. She certainly couldn’t imagine anyone else changing her mind about something so important. But he had been so coolly persistent, and so damned gorgeous, that she just hadn’t been able to resist him!

‘A simple wedding,’ she had told him quietly.

Those blue-grey eyes had narrowed thoughtfully, a half-smile playing around the delectable curve of his lips. ‘But you do realise, Alessandra,’ he’d murmured softly, ‘that a simple wedding means just that? Registry office and two witnesses. No church or flowers or organ music. No big white dress and veil. I thought that’s what all women wanted?’

She had brought her chin up mutinously when she’d heard that, until she’d seen, from the soft light in his eyes, that he’d been teasing. She hadn’t taken the bait, just shaken her head. ‘None of that,’ she’d said firmly, wondering if she had imagined that he looked very slightly disappointed.

So she had gone ahead and bought a simple wedding dress and she hadn’t even opted for the conventional white or ivory. Instead she had chosen a short scarlet linen dress, which had clung flatteringly to her soft curves, and which had complemented the Italian colouring she had inherited from her mother, her glowing skin and huge dark eyes, her newly washed hair falling in a dark, silky cloud to her shoulders.

She had deliberately and untraditionally spent the night before the wedding with Cameron, and travelled with him to Marylebone Register Office. She had been unable to hide her surprise and pleasure when he had stopped the cab at a market stall and bought her the biggest bunch of scarlet roses she had ever seen. And then they had picked two witnesses off the street and married. But she had noticed that Cameron was oddly quiet after the brief ceremony.

Alessandra stared at the woman in the photo who stood smiling rather uncertainly at the camera, with the dashingly tall, dark figure of her new husband beside her. It was the only photograph of the day they had.

Uncertain? she wondered as she peered at it more closely. Had she been?

Well, yes. And she still was, to some extent, although she hid it superbly. She had never been lacking in confidence but Cameron was so gorgeous, and she was so in love with him, that sometimes she had to pinch herself to believe that they were married. That out of all the women he could have chosen he had chosen her. Because a strange thing had happened once they were legally married. She had found that it was very difficult to remain the cool, rather aloof woman he’d fallen in love with. Instead, she’d had to try very hard not to become the clingy kind of doting wife he would have despised.

As always when her thoughts turned to Cameron, she felt the tips of her breasts stinging with dangerous excitement beneath the thin silk of her blouse and she immediately slammed the photo back down on her desk. Damn the man! You’d think that six months of marriage might have cooled down that unbearable ache she felt at the pit of her stomach whenever she thought of him. Instead it seemed to have done the opposite. Cameron was like a drug; she just couldn’t get enough of him. Heavens, couldn’t she even think about her husband for a moment without necessarily getting extremely and sometimes embarrassingly turned on?

She remembered how, once, he had turned up unexpectedly at the office and taken her out to the Savoy for lunch. They’d just sat across the table staring and staring at one another, silent and sensual messages sizzling between them.

When the food had arrived they’d scarcely noticed and they’d hardly touched their first course when, as if by mutual assent, Cameron had firmly taken her by the hand, booked an extremely expensive room upstairs, and spent the rest of the lunch hour making mad, passionate love to her.

If only one of the damned secretaries at the advertising agency hadn’t noticed that she’d come back with her sweater on inside out! That hadn’t done her reputation a lot of good!

With an effort she forced thoughts of Cameron to the furthest corner of her mind and asked her boss, who was still hanging patiently on the end of the phone, ‘What’s so urgent about seeing me that it can’t wait until tomorrow?’

Again she could hear the satisfaction in Andrew’s voice. ‘Just that the head of a certain highly prestigious American motor company has approached me—’

‘Which company?’ Alessandra shot out quickly.

Andrew named the company and Alessandra gave a silent whistle. Prestigious indeed. If not yet one of the world’s biggest car producers then it was soon set to be. ‘And?’ she prompted, since Andrew had fallen silent, presumably to let the full import of his words hit her.

‘They want to meet us.’

‘You mean they’re thinking of using us?’ Alessandra asked in disbelief. The advertising agency which Andrew owned and which she worked for was original and competent—they’d walked off with a couple of the industry’s top awards for the last two years—but they were strictly small-time. Their clients were all small to medium-sized British companies, and there was no one international on their books; certainly nothing on the scale of the American motor company. She simply couldn’t imagine having a client of that size!

‘They loved your campaign for the low-calorie chocolate-chip cookie,’ Andrew told her levelly.

‘But surely not enough to give their account to a tiny British company?’ squeaked Alessandra in amazement, her customary savoir-faire momentarily deserting her.

Andrew was noncommittal. ‘Let’s just say they aren’t happy with who they have at the moment, and leave it at that. But they hinted strongly that their account might be up for grabs. It’s up to us to convince them that we can handle it; and not just handle it—handle it brilliantly!’

‘And do you think we can?’ asked Alessandra.

Andrew laughed. ‘Honey, for the kind of budget they’ll be offering we can place a hoarding on the moon if they want it—hell, I’ll even fly it there myself and put the damned thing up! Which is why—’ his voice dropped conspiratorially ‘—I need you there. You’re so easy on the eye—’

‘Andrew!’ Alessandra’s voice became distinctly chilly. She liked compliments on the way she looked from one man only, and that man was Cameron. ‘Give me a break!’

He laughed. ‘I’m kidding, honey, you know that! I want you there because you possess the most creative mind I’ve ever encountered together with a frighteningly cool logic which leaves most of us mere mortals open-mouthed with admiration. Is that better?’ He paused. ‘Come on, Alessandra—isn’t this what we’ve worked together towards for all this time? Isn’t this the kind of dream we thought would never come true? It’s the chance of a lifetime—surely you can see that?’

Alessandra stared at the receiver which she held in her slim pale hand. On the third finger of her left hand, next to her wedding band and completely dominating it, sat the enormous square-cut emerald which blazed in all its green, glorious fire. Cameron had given her the ring when she’d agreed to marry him.

They’d been in bed at the time. She remembered how his features had been carefully composed into a rather enigmatic look of satisfaction after he’d got his own way, and she’d told him rather gravely that, yes, she would marry him.

He’d waited until after they’d made love before producing the ring, pulling it casually from the pocket of his discarded trousers, like a magician producing a rabbit out of a hat.

Her breath had caught in her mouth as he’d placed the magnificent emerald on her finger and, in spite of her insistence that she cared for none of the trappings which came with matrimony, her eyes had widened like saucers. ‘Oh, but Cameron—it’s...exquisite,’ she’d breathed. ‘How did you know it would fit?’

He’d given that smile then. That lazy, sexy smile which had first captivated her, though she’d tried her damnedest not to let it. It still made her heart pound like a runaway train.

‘I just knew.’ And there had been a glint of sexual promise in his eyes as he’d spoken more softly. ‘Just wait until I start buying you lingerie. That will fit you perfectly too. You see, my delectable Alessandra, I know every inch, every centimetre of your delicious body...it’s emblazoned on my mind,’ he’d finished on a sultry murmur as he’d traced a slow, provocative finger from throat to navel.

Alessandra had been so in love with him, so sexually excited by that look in his eyes, that she hadn’t dared touch him back, afraid to kiss him just at that moment because she was so emotionally overcome that she’d feared she would frighten him away! So instead she’d searched around for the kind of response he would expect from her, forcing her habitually serene smile to curve her lips into an almost Madonnalike expression.

‘When did you buy it?’ she queried, as casually as if she were asking him the time.

‘Is that all you can say?’ he replied, with a kind of stunned disbelief which became a sardonic laugh.

‘What would you like me to say?’ she asked evenly.

‘I suppose you do realise,’ he told her in a deliberately mocking tone, ‘that women have been trying to get me to marry them for years? And that a lot of those women would have been overwhelmed to get my ring on their finger?’

It was a very arrogant thing to say, and possibly the only man who could have got away with saying it was Cameron Calder. He was teasing her, yes—but Alessandra was wise enough to know that he had spoken the truth. She was also mature enough to recognise that it was her air of insouciance which attracted him to her. ‘And they would have fallen at your feet in gratitude, would they?’ she queried solemnly. ‘If they had been the recipient of this magnificent ring?’

Cameron gave her a look of bemused admiration as she mocked him back. ‘God, you’re so damned cool,’ he murmured appreciatively. ‘So damned unflappable. I’ve never met a woman like you in my life.’

She learnt another lesson then. Because that avid declaration made Alessandra relieved that she hadn’t given in to her desire to tell him that in a few short weeks he had become her entire world. Because that wasn’t the Alessandra Walker that the world, and Cameron, knew. And that was who he’d fallen in love with—the cool, serene, unflappable woman who could mock him back for his arrogance. He’d had enough of the other kind—the kind that couldn’t keep their hands off him, whose eyes told him he was their lord and master.

She looked up at him from beneath her thick black lashes and this time there was laughter in her eyes. ‘So when did you buy the ring?’ she queried again.

‘When I decided to marry you, of course.’ Cameron smiled.

Alessandra frowned. ‘You mean—when you decided to ask me?’ she corrected.

‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘When I decided to marry you,’ he emphasised.

Some strange emotion quivered in the air. Her heart began to pound. ‘And when was that?’ she asked, suddenly breathless again.

He smiled, but it wasn’t a particularly warm smile. More wary than warm, and definitely bordering on the reluctant. He regarded her steadily. ‘The first time I met you,’ he said.

‘And you were that sure?’ asked Alessandra slowly. ‘So sure of me? So sure I’d say yes?’