CHAPTER ONE

      THERE were too many complications in her life! Elexa’s mood to complete the work she’d brought home was sorely shattered as she stared at the phone after her mother’s call and felt on the brink of doing something drastic.

      Life should have been something of a breeze, and would be, were it not for her ‘family’ and, to a lesser degree, ‘men’, well-meaning in the main though they meant to be—only she wished that they wouldn’t.

      Why couldn’t they see that she was happy and contented with her lot? She had an excellent job with Colman and Fisher, a name well known in the marketing world, and at twenty-five she was already a team leader in the market planning division, with every chance of going higher. So who needed a boyfriend, a lover, a husband?

      Jamie Hodges was forever hoping to fill the position of her steady boyfriend. She was running out of excuses not to go out with him. With Des Reynolds she hadn’t bothered making excuses when, in his sexiest voice, he’d suggested that one night with him and she’d never be the same again. ‘In your dreams!’ she’d told him bluntly—but that hadn’t stopped him.

      But although she found both men’s persistence wearing, it was her mother’s dogged insistence that at ‘her age’ she should by now be ‘settled’ that was the most wearing of all.

      ‘I am settled!’ she’d attempted to get through to her mother. ‘I’ve got a good job, a job I love. A job with endless opportunities for promo—’

      ‘I’m not talking that kind of settled,’ her mother had interrupted.

      Elexa knew exactly what kind of settled her mother meant. Married, nice house in the country, children—particularly children; even before her cousin Joanna had produced an offspring Elexa’s mother had been desperate to become a grandmother. Since the arrival of baby Betsy, Kaye Aston had been ten times worse. Elexa had tried explaining matters to her, explaining how she already had her own home. So, okay, it was a flat and not a house, and it was in London and not in the country, but, given that she rented her flat, she had made it her own. She had tried explaining that she was enjoying her career too much to even want to think of marriage, much less settle down to that state.

      The result of this heart-to-heart had been that, ignoring the possibility that any daughter of hers—even as academically bright as her daughter had shown herself to be—could be so totally dedicated to a career, her mother had grown terribly anxious and was now certain that Elexa must have suffered some extremely painful experience. An experience which she had kept quiet about, but which must have put her off men. Kaye Aston had refused to believe otherwise and had since taken to introducing Elexa to ‘gentle’ men—who invariably turned out to be ‘drippy’ men!

      Elexa had moved from her old home and into her present flat a few years ago. But, apart from some family gathering or other—more frequent of late—she was expected to return and visit her parents on average every three weeks. Because she loved her parents, Elexa willingly complied, and had been happy to do so.

      But that had been then, before her cousin Joanna had firstly become engaged and subsequently had married; that Elexa’s younger cousin had married first had not gone down well. Kaye Aston had not lost the opportunity to tell Elexa of her disappointment, and since Joanna and David had produced baby Betsy Elexa’s mother seemed to have only one topic of conversation.

      Elexa had started to dread her mother’s phone calls. But she had begun to dread even more her once-every-three-weeks visits to her old home, never knowing what man it would be this time. Where her mother found them from was a mystery to Elexa—she must have her scouts out searching!

      Kaye Aston’s phone call just now had been to remind her, at length, that it was baby Betsy’s christening