Playing the Playboy's Sweetheart

‘Go to bed,’ Steele said, ‘and I mean to sleep. You need it.’

‘I think I might.’

Because they could, because they were both tired, for no other reason than they wanted to, when Steele had served up their meals they headed to the bedroom, stripped off, Steele closed the curtains and they ate dinner in bed while watching the news. Candy felt very spoiled and very lazy as he took their empty plates through to the kitchen.

‘I don’t think I’ve been to bed at this time since I was seven years old,’ she said as Steele climbed back into bed. ‘I used to beg to stay up then!’

‘Do you want to watch a movie or just go to sleep?’ he asked, and they shared a very nice kiss.

‘I just want to sleep.’ She sighed, wriggling down in the covers and getting comfortable with him.

‘Then do.’

She lay on his chest, delighted with their early night, feeling the lovely crinkly hair on his stomach and wondering if she’d ever been happier. ‘I love your stomach,’ Candy said.

‘If you want to sleep you’d better stop playing with it, then.’

She didn’t.

She thought back to what she’d been about to ask in the kitchen. Whether Steele had done the cooking or if his wife had was irrelevant, she knew. There was other stuff she’d like to know, though. ‘Can I ask you something?’

‘You can,’ he said, staring into the semi-dark and sort of knowing what was coming and wondering how he’d answer it.

‘Why did your marriage break up?

‘We just didn’t work out,’ Steele said. Then he went to add his spiel about they’d been too young, or they’d just grown apart, yet he and Candy had always been honest with each other. They were so honest with each other that it sometimes took his breath away. Which meant he didn’t want to be evasive now, yet he had never told anyone the reason for the break-up. He’d never told anyone apart from his ex-wife that he was infertile.

And when he had told Annie, she hadn’t taken the news well.

‘I haven’t really talked about it before,’ Steele admitted.

‘Were you a wife basher?’ Candy whispered.

‘No.’ He laughed.

‘Then it doesn’t matter,’ Candy said, and gave him a light kiss on the chest. ‘You don’t have to answer.’

He wanted to, though.

‘Annie and I got married when I was twenty-three and she was twenty-six. We’d been going out for years,’ Steele said. ‘We bought the house, the dog, all good...’

Candy didn’t like that.

It was funny but she felt the little stiffening of her body as he gave his past a name and an age but then she breathed out through her nostrils and lay there, waiting for him to continue. ‘Then Annie decided, or rather we both decided, to start a family.’

‘She decided or both?’ Candy checked.

‘I thought we should wait but Annie really wanted children so we went for it but nothing happened,’ Steele said. ‘And then nothing kept on happening. I went and had a test—they usually check for issues with the guy first as it’s far less invasive—and so we found out, pretty much straight away, that the problem was me. I’m infertile.’ He waited for her to stiffen again, or some sign of tension, or what, he didn’t know, but instead she looked up at him through the darkness. ‘That’s why you broke up?’

‘Pretty much. Annie was devastated. I mean, the news completely sent her into a spin.’

‘You broke up just because of that?’ Candy asked. She really didn’t understand.

‘It causes a big strain in a marriage. Then there was all her family and how they dealt with the news.’ Steele let out a sigh. ‘Can you imagine your family’s reaction if you told them that your husband was infertile?’

Candy thought for a moment and she could and so she answered him honestly. ‘One, I’m not very keen on getting married...’

‘Come on.’

‘Seriously, I’m not,’ she said. ‘Two, I wouldn’t tell them—it’s none of their business. I might tell them that we were having problems if they nagged enough.’ She thought about it some more. ‘Steele, I do everything I can not to discuss sex and such with them—I still hide my Pills in my handbag.’