CHAPTER ONE
HE WAS a complete stranger. He had brought his three-year-old son to the same harbourside park Sasha had brought her nine-month-old daughter. In half an hour of desultory conversation across a sandpit where their children played together, all she had learned about him was his name, Nathan Parnell. He was also the sexiest man Sasha had ever met.
He made a pair of jeans and T-shirt look like indecent exposure. The casual but open affection with which he touched his son conjured up visions of the tactile pleasure he would give a woman. It brought goose-bumps to Sasha’s skin.
And those riveting blue eyes. When she spoke they focused on her with concentrated interest as though she were the most important person in the world. Sasha found it difficult to tear her gaze away from him. Even when she forced her attention back to Bonnie, who was being entertained by his little boy, she was intensely aware of the man lounging on the grass on the other side of the sandpit.
‘What I need...’ he spoke in a musing tone, not so much to her as to the world at large, yet the deep baritone of his voice made her ears tingle with anticipation to hear what his needs were ‘...is a wife.’
Sasha’s head jerked up, her dark eyes wide with shock. She quickly flicked the fall of her long black hair over her shoulder to cover up her reaction to the startling statement. She had been secretly envying Nathan Parnell’s wife, and berating herself for having wasted so many years on Tyler Cullum while all the best men were taken. The whimsically appealing smile Nathan Parnell directed at her set her pulse racing.
‘Tell me honestly,’ he invited. ‘Would you consider the position?’
Warning bells rang in Sasha’s mind. Strangers who made odd propositions in a park were definitely to be avoided, no matter how sexy they were.
Her gaze quickly swept their vicinity. Most of the people who had been nearby earlier seemed to have wandered off. There was an old man sitting at one of the benches, reading the Saturday newspaper, a young couple under the trees closer to the water, two middle-aged women apparently watching the leisure craft sailing by on the harbour, all of them a fair distance from the sandpit and all of them strangers.
She probably looked like part of a family group, Mum and Dad and their two kids, and people in the city tended to steer clear of others’ troubles. This was time to get out.
‘I’d better be going,’ she said, trying not to look too hasty as she began gathering the plastic blocks Bonnie had thrown around.
‘You haven’t answered the question,’ Nathan Parnell reminded her, not exhibiting any discomfiture whatsoever. ‘I need a wife, and to satisfy my curiosity I’d like to know whether you’d consider the position.’
‘Definitely not.’
‘Is there something wrong with me?’ he asked.
With his attributes, he could probably have the choice of any woman in Sydney. He probably knew it, too. Sasha cast him a quelling look. ‘I thought you were already married.’
‘I was. Past tense.’
It gave her pause for thought. Maybe he was a widower in desperate need for someone to mother his little boy. Although why he’d pick on her, after the barest acquaintance, left a lot of questions up in the air. Was he impressed by her manner with Bonnie? Was that the only yardstick he had for a wife? Or did he find her attractive enough to fancy her in his bed, as well?
Curiosity prompted her to say, ‘I don’t want to raise a matter that might be painful to you, but what happened to your first wife?’
‘She’s gone. Hopefully to hell and perdition.’
It was certainly no salute to the woman he had married. Which gave Sasha every reason to be circumspect with this man. ‘I’m sorry things didn’t work out better for you,’ she said, resuming her block-gathering. To keep him talking until she could make her getaway, she asked, ‘How did she die?’
‘She didn’t. More’s the pity,’ he said with an edge of bitterness. ‘Though the marriage wasn’t a dead loss. I got Matt. Thank God he takes after me.’
‘Then you’re divorced,’ Sasha deduced, wanting the situation spelled out.
‘No other way out of the problem.’
Sasha knew how messy such problems were. She didn’t have to divorce Tyler Cullum because they weren’t married in the first place, but effecting a separation was just as traumatic as any divorce. She wondered how any mother could leave her child behind, as Nathan Parnell’s wife apparently had. Then, with a spurt of her own bitterness, she supposed there were women, as well as men, who didn’t want their lives loaded down with children.
Nathan Parnell took her silence for complicity and resumed his proposition. ‘Consider the advantages. We could go back to the old way of doing things. Set up a marriage contract...’
‘What makes you think I’m free to marry?’ Sasha demanded, thinking he was assuming one hell of a lot in talking to her like this.
‘No wedding-ring.’
‘Many people think marriage isn’t valid any more,’ she argued, although it was Tyler’s opinion, not hers.
The blue eyes blazed incredulity. ‘You’re still living with a guy who didn’t bother to marry you when you had his child?’
‘It does happen these days,’ she flared at him, painfully aware of the mistakes she had made.
‘Why isn’t he with you?’
‘Because...’ It was none of his business, but somehow his eyes pinned her to a reply. ‘Because I left him,’ she finished defiantly. ‘He wasn’t good to me, and he wasn’t good to Bonnie.’
‘There you are. Same problem I had,’ he said with satisfaction. ‘We’d both be better served if we worked out a sensible contract. Set out what we’re prepared to give to the marriage, and what we can expect from each other.’
‘You’re talking about a marriage of convenience.’
‘Absolutely.’
‘What about love?’
‘Definitely out. It causes havoc and creates chaos. Turns sensible people into raving lunatics. The Greeks had it right. They called it Eros. The eighteen months of madness before passion cools and reality sets in.’
‘Well, you might not think it’s worth having, but I do,’ Sasha said emphatically.
She grabbed her holdall and stuffed Bonnie’s play blocks into it. Her dreams might have been tarnished by her experience with Tyler, but she was not about to give them up and become as cynical as Nathan Parnell.
‘What did love do for you?’ came the sardonic challenge. ‘How long did it take you to find out your lover was a dead loss when it came to commitment and responsibility?’
She faced him with grim determination. ‘It wasn’t love. Not real, deep-down love. And I’m not going to settle for anything less next time around. If there is a next time. I’d rather manage on my own than compromise myself again.’