Love @ First Site Read Online Free PDF Page B

if I say so myself, with all the dramatic "Pows!" and "Bams!" in their right place. But by the end of the third page, Matthew's mouth has fallen open and he's emitting tiny, butterfly snores. Flicking off the bedside light, I sit in the half glow for a while, just listening to the steady rhythm of his breathing and studying his motionless face.
    Although I didn't actually give birth to him and Emily, I can't imagine loving them any more than I do. This scenario--married life with two or three children and all the angst, hard work, and sacrifice it entails--is absolutely, 100 percent what I want.
    Kara has always said she doesn't want children, which is probably a good thing rather than pass on her grumpy cow chromosome. She says she's too selfish and wants to carry on having a nice car and foreign holidays, as if they were somehow mutually exclusive from parenthood.
    It always amazes me how people think a tiny seven-pound bundle is going to control your life, issuing orders from its high chair, banning vacations and insisting that only a sensible, family estate car will do. What utter silliness.
    Sure, it's probably easier to holiday in Britain and drive a roomy tank, but if you want to fly off to Barbados and drive a two-seater sports car, you can. And there's not a damn thing little Junior can do about it.
    Once, when Olivia was bit squiffy from too many gin and tonics, she confided in me that, although she would never admit it to anyone else, she felt slightly superior to women who chose not to have children. She said she pitied them for not ever being able to know the strength of love between a mother and her child.
    "I loved my carefree, single years," she murmured. "But if they stretched on endlessly without contrast, they would seem very empty indeed."
    I knew what she meant. At thirty-four, I'm bored sick of my single, selfish life.
I
want that contrast Olivia spoke so passionately about, but the big question is, am I going to get it? And from whom?
    Occasionally, a woman I work with tells me how envious she is of me and my uncomplicated existence. She has three lovely children and a solid, if unremarkable, marriage, but said she longs to do what she wants, when she wants.
    "No, I envy
you,"
I replied.
    "Yeah, right," she said ruefully, before wandering off to the local grocery store to get her family's tea.
    Some women genuinely enjoy life without the major responsibility of incumbents. But I'm not one of them. I can only liken it to craving a slice of chocolate cake when, say, family life is chocolate free. A day at a health spa with your girlfriends, swigging champagne and not worrying about getting home or having a hangover in the morning--
that's
your slice of chocolate cake.
    But imagine being able to have it whenever you want. Huge, unlimited, stodgy slices of it. See? Loses its appeal, doesn't it? Well, that's the prolonged single life for me. Unappealing.
    I kiss Matthew on the forehead and creep out of his bedroom, edging back down the stairs to the mezzanine level, where Michael's study is. Shutting down the computer, I fold up the piece of paper with twelve names written down--the dozen potentials chosen from forty-eight replies.
    Stuffing it into my jeans pocket, I sigh as I watch the power drain from the screen. I want family life and it doesn't seem to be coming my way via the usual routes. So I'll just have to take matters into my own hands.
    Tomorrow, I'll whittle the twelve names down to three and arrange my first foray into cyberdating.

Four

    Hi, I'm Simon. I'm 35, of athletic build, and have a black belt in judo. I'm about to get my pilot's license, but to fund my passion for flying I have to work occasionally as an account manager for a West End advertising agency. But don't tell my mother that's what I do, she thinks I'm the doorman in a brothel! The woman of my dreams will be equally adventurous, but most of all, great fun.
    I thought Saturday lunch was good place to start. Broad daylight,