Welcome to Penny Jordan’s miniseries featuring the Crighton family.

This is no ordinary family, because, although the Crightons might appear to have it all, shocking revelations and heartache lie just beneath the surface of their perfect, charmed lives. Into this family comes a young, spirited woman, with heartfelt prejudices against one particular Crighton son.

PENNY JORDAN is one of Mills & Boon’s most popular authors. Sadly Penny died from cancer on 31st December 2011, aged sixty-five. She leaves an outstanding legacy, having sold over a hundred million books around the world. She wrote a total of a hundred and eighty-seven novels for Mills & Boon, including the phenomenally successful A Perfect Family, To Love, Honour & Betray, The Perfect Sinner and Power Play, which hit the Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller lists. Loved for her distinctive voice, her success was in part because she continually broke boundaries and evolved her writing to keep up with readers’ changing tastes. Publishers Weekly said about Jordan, ‘Women everywhere will find pieces of themselves in Jordan’s characters’ and this perhaps explains her enduring appeal.

Although Penny was born in Preston, Lancashire, and spent her childhood there, she moved to Cheshire as a teenager and continued to live there for the rest of her life. Following the death of her husband she moved to the small traditional Cheshire market town on which she based her much-loved Crighton books.

Penny was a member and supporter of the Romantic Novelists’ Association and the Romance Writers of America—two organisations dedicated to providing support for both published and yet-to-be published authors. Her significant contribution to women’s fiction was recognised in 2011, when the Romantic Novelists’ Association presented Penny with a Lifetime Achievement Award.

The Crightons

A Perfect Family

The Perfect Seduction

Perfect Marriage Material

Figgy Pudding

The Perfect Lover

The Perfect Sinner

The Perfect Father

A Perfect Night

Coming Home

Starting Over

Perfect Marriage Material

Penny Jordan

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Table of Contents

Cover Excerpt About the Author The Crightons Title Page CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER EIGHT CHAPTER NINE CHAPTER TEN CHAPTER ELEVEN EPILOGUE Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

TULLAH reached tiredly for the receiver as the telephone started to ring. She had just walked into her flat. Despite the fact that the company she worked for was cutting back on both taking on and promoting staff, the amount of work passing over her desk seemed to increase every day. Officially she finished at five-thirty but tonight, just like every other night for the past six weeks or so, it had been gone nine before she actually left work. But not for much longer... Thank goodness.

‘Tullah Richards,’ she announced softly into the receiver in the faintly husky and rather sensual voice that her friends teased her sounded far too sexy for the determined career woman she proclaimed herself to be.

‘Tullah! Wonderful. I’ve been trying to get hold of you all day. It’s still on for this weekend, isn’t it?’

Tullah smiled as she recognised the voice of Olivia. She and Olivia had worked together a few years earlier and had remained good friends even though Olivia was now married with a small daughter and living in the Cheshire countryside, whilst she had remained in London determinedly pursuing her chosen career path. But not for much longer. By an odd quirk of fate, she, too, would soon be moving to Haslewich....

‘Yes, if it’s still OK with you,’ she responded to Olivia’s question.

‘We’re looking forward to it,’ Olivia assured her. ‘What time do you expect to arrive?’

‘About five, I think. I’m supposed to be meeting the rep from the relocation people at one and we’re going to go round several properties they’ve picked out for me.’

‘Properties...that sounds very grand,’ Olivia teased.

Tullah laughed. ‘I wish,’ she agreed. ‘Actually I’ve already told them that I shan’t be able to afford anything much more expensive than a single-bedroomed flat, or preferably a small cottage, although I understand with the influx of new residents from Aarlston-Becker relocating to Haslewich, property locally is at something of a premium.’

‘Some of it is,’ Olivia agreed. ‘I think initially there was a feeling amongst the upper echelons of Aarlston-Becker that they’d be able to exchange their city semis for seven-bedroomed country mansions and ex-vicarages, complete with paddocks for ponies and Gertrude Jekyll—style gardens. However, the reality hasn’t been quite like that. Property is cheaper here, but... There are some very pretty little houses in Haslewich itself. Great-Aunt Ruth already has four new neigh-bours on Church Walk where she lives and we’ve certainly been handling a big increase in conveyances.

‘What will happen about your London flat, by the way?’

‘Oh well, I’ve been quite lucky there. Sarah, the girl I share with, is getting married and she and her new husband are buying me out, so at least I’m not having to hang fire waiting for a buyer, although part of the deal when Aarlston-Becker offered me the job was that they would cover all my moving costs, including any bridging loans I might need, plus making sure I got a mortgage.’

‘That’s my girl.’ Olivia laughed. ‘I must say I’m really looking forward to your moving up here. It will be like old times. I can’t believe sometimes that it’s over three years since I left the company. So much has happened. Caspar and I’ve married and we’ve had Amelia, the practice has really become busy this past year and Uncle Jon and I have been talking about taking on a qualified legal assistant or even possibly a full solicitor.’

‘Mmm...well, you certainly did make the right decision leaving when you did,’ Tullah assured her darkly. ‘The amount of cutbacks we’ve been having are quite frightening.’

‘They’ll be sorry to lose you, though,’ Olivia returned. ‘I must say I felt awfully proud of you when I heard that you’d been head-hunted to join Aarlston-Becker.’

‘Along with a good dozen or so other people,’ Tullah felt bound to point out, ‘and only because they’d decided to relocate to Haslewich almost at the last minute instead of going ahead with their original plans to move their European divisional headquarters to The Hague because the British incentives were so much better.’

‘Well, you’re certainly going to be working for a first-class international organisation,’ Olivia told her enthusiastically. ‘I know how impressed my cousin Saul has been since he joined them six months ago. Like you, he, too, was head-hunted by them when they first relocated and—’

‘Saul,’ Tullah interrupted her, an unusual sharpness entering her normally soft husky voice.

‘Mmm...he’s one of my cousins, well, perhaps a second or even a third on my father’s side. I’m never quite sure with our tangled family history. You may not remember him although he was at the wedding and the christening, as well. Tall, dark and—’

‘Handsome,’ Tullah supplied grittily, adding trenchantly, ‘So far as I can remember, Olivia, you have at least half a dozen second and third male cousins who could answer that description.’

‘Maybe,’ Olivia agreed and then her voice softened slightly as she continued, ‘But there’s only one Saul.’

‘If only,’ Tullah muttered sourly under her breath. Then raising her voice so that Olivia could hear her, she remarked, ‘I do remember him—vaguely. Very dark, rather autocratic and quite the gallant, as I recall. He made a big fuss about making sure everyone knew what a good father he was, but I seem to remember it was your Aunt Jenny who actually seemed to be spending the most time looking after his children.

‘I thought that his side of your family lived in Pembroke,’ she added disdainfully.

‘They did...they do. It’s just that since Uncle Hugh is virtually fully retired, he and Ann spend a good deal of their time travelling abroad. Uncle Hugh is a keen sailor and, well, to cut a long story short, Saul is divorced now and he thought it would be better for the children to grow up in an environment where they had close family ties, and in fact that was the clinching element in his taking this job with Aarlston’s. Quite a coincidence, really, both of you working for their legal department but then, of course, it is a huge multinational organisation.

‘There was quite a lot of local antagonism towards them when they first moved into the area. Aunt Ruth said it reminded her of when the Americans arrived during the Second World War, only they had the benefit of silk stockings and chocolate to ease their way into the community.

‘Aunt Jenny was saying the other day that she’d heard on the local grapevine via Guy Cooke, her business partner—his widespread family are Haslewich, you should know. They’ve been here right from the word “go”—the general consensus of opinion tends to be in favour of the influx, or at least the boost to the local economy that it brings with it.’

‘Mmm...well. it’s good to know I shan’t be facing the local eviction committee,’ Tullah told her ruefully.

Olivia laughed. ‘You? No way. It’s going to be lovely having you to stay for the weekend, Tullah. I’m really looking forward to it.’

‘So am I,’ Tullah confirmed with a smile.

Once she had replaced the receiver, though, she wasn’t smiling. Saul Crighton. She hadn’t realised that he was living in Haslewich now or, even worse, working for Aarlston-Becker. She knew, of course, that Olivia had something of a soft spot for him although she couldn’t understand why. By all accounts and from the gossip she had overheard at Olivia and Caspar’s wedding, Saul had come very close to breaking them up, cold-bloodedly trying to persuade a then very vulnerable Olivia into having an affair with him, even though he had been married at the time.

And if that wasn’t bad enough, Tullah had also overheard the same two people discussing the fact that one of Olivia’s young teenage cousins, Louise, was in all likelihood also a victim of Saul’s egotistical and grossly selfish need to boost his flagging self-esteem in the only way he apparently knew how—flattering and seducing young, immature and vulnerable girls into having affairs with him.

Tullah knew all about that kind of man and she knew, too, just what sort of devastation they could wreak, just what kind of hurt and self-loathing they could inflict on their victims. She should do. She after all...

But it was pointless harking back to the past. She had very firmly closed the door on that particular episode of her life when she had come to live and work in London. The young girl who had fallen so intensely and so damagingly in love with the married man who had cold-bloodedly fed on her naïvety and inexperience, her belief that when he said he loved her and his marriage was an empty sham, he truly meant it, no longer existed. How could she? She had been damaged beyond repair, destroyed by the trauma of discovering just how much her lover had deceived her, by learning that not only had he no intention of leaving his wife but that also, far from being the love of his life, she was actually just one in a long, long chain of affairs he had lured his victims into over the years.

If she was honest with herself, she could see now that it wasn’t so much her youthful love and adoration that still festered deep down inside her, but the humiliation he had wrought, the self-hatred, the awareness of her own foolishness and gullibility.

His wife had told her wearily at the time that the only reason she had not left him was because of their children.

‘They still need him even if I don’t,’ she had told Tullah tiredly, and Tullah, aware humiliatingly of how much she missed her own father since her own parents’ divorce, had to bite down hard on her bottom lip to prevent herself from crying like a child herself.

Over the years she had come into contact with a good many men who suffered from the same egocentric needs as the man who had hurt her so badly—shallow, vain creatures, possessed of a dangerously alluring charm that could all too easily deceive the vulnerable and naïve, and so far there was no doubt whatsoever in her mind that Saul Crighton was yet another example of the breed.

She remembered that he had asked her to dance at Olivia and Caspar’s wedding, frowning down at her from his admittedly impressive height of over six feet when she had refused as tersely and abruptly as a child.

She could remember, too, watching Olivia fuss over him, explaining when she saw Tullah watching her that he had been going through a bad time and that he carried a heavy burden of responsibility.

‘He and his wife...are separated,’ she had explained, a little uncomfortably when Tullah had made no response. Tullah had said nothing, not wanting to cause any discord between Olivia and her by informing her friend that she was not surprised. After all, she had just overheard about Saul’s attempt to seduce Olivia away from Caspar.

It had been Max Crighton, another of Olivia’s cousins, Jon and Jenny’s elder son, who had explained the whole situation to her.

‘Saul likes ’em young...he’s at that age,‘ Max had told her cynically. ‘Mind you, he’s not exactly the faithful type. No sooner had he realised that he’d lost Olivia than he started making a play for my sister Louise.’

She had spent a good half an hour listening to Max explaining the intricate interfamily relationships that existed between the various members of the Crighton clan. He himself was quite obviously very much a man who liked to flirt, but Tullah had found his frank and open attempts to engage her in a subtly sensual exchange of banter far more healthy and easy to deal with than, to her mind, Saul’s much more sinister and underhanded pseudo sincerity, especially when she had seen Louise, all coltish limbs and soft, trembling mouth, watching him with her heart in her eyes. No, she hadn’t liked Saul Crighton a bit...not one tiny little bit.

‘You’re looking very thoughtful and broody,’ Caspar commented to his wife as he walked into the kitchen, put down the essays he had brought home to read and went over to the table where she was standing to take her in his arms and kiss her. ‘Mmm...that was nice.’

‘Mmm...very,’ she agreed, telling him, ‘I spoke to Tullah earlier. She’s definitely coming up this weekend.’

‘Ah, now I understand. It’s the thought of doing a little bit of matchmaking that’s turning you all broody, isn’t it, and not—’

‘Well, Tullah is twenty-eight, just the right age to settle down,’ Olivia told her husband defensively. ‘And she’s so motherly....’

‘Motherly?’ Caspar gave a shout of laughter as he visualised his wife’s friend. ‘Is this the same Tullah we’re talking about? Tullah with the figure that’s straight out of every man’s fantasy...somewhere between Claudia Schiffer and a Baywatch babe? The same Tullah with those wonderful, dark gypsy eyes and curls and that gorgeous pouting mouth that makes her look so provocative and yet at the same time somehow more vulnerable and less knowing, if you know what I mean...and—’

‘Caspar,’ Olivia warned.

‘Sorry,’ he apologised unrepentantly. His eyes twinkled as he admitted, ‘Perhaps I was getting a trifle carried away...but you have to admit that no one would ever think she’s a highly qualified lawyer. She looks as though her sex-appeal rating would be through the roof while her IQ—’

‘Caspar!’ Olivia warned more darkly.

‘OK, OK...calm down. You know perfectly well that my taste runs to sassy blondes with flashing eyes and... All I’m trying to say,’ he added patiently, ‘is that stunning and sensual and very, very sexy Tullah may be, but motherly...’

‘That’s just because you’re judging her on the way she looks,’ Olivia told him severely. ‘As you’ve just said yourself, she is highly qualified. She actually started working in a small professional practice, you know, but the trauma of dealing with so many divorce and custody cases got to her so much that she decided to switch to industry instead. Her own parents split up when she was in her teens, and from what she’s told me about it, I suspect it had a very traumatic effect on her.’

‘Mmm...very probably.’ They exchanged long, understanding looks with one another. Caspar’s own childhood had not been an easy one, passed as he had been from parent to parent, forced to take a back seat as they both remarried and produced further families, which in his mind seemed to supplant him.

Olivia’s childhood, too, had not been without its problems. Her father, David, her uncle Jon’s twin brother, had disappeared whilst recovering from a serious heart attack, simply discharging himself and walking out, leaving no trace of where he was going or what he intended to do and her mother...

Tania, her mother, after years of suffering from an eating disorder, was now living in the south of England. She had telephoned Olivia several weeks ago to tell her excitedly that there was a new man in her life whom she wanted her daughter to meet.

‘I was thinking of how perfectly one of the Chester cousins would be for Tullah,’ Olivia told Caspar.

‘One of them?’ he repeated, raising his eyebrows.

‘Well, there are so many to choose from,’ she defended herself, ‘and now that Luke and Bobbie are married...well, it might just give the others the impetus they need. After all, it can’t be lack of financial security that’s holding them back.’

‘You sound like one of Jane Austen’s characters,’ Caspar teased her.

Olivia laughed again. ‘You mean, “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”’ she quoted. ‘I was thinking more of the emotional need,’ she informed Caspar with great dignity. Now let me see... There’s James and Alistair, Niall and Kit.’ She ticked their names off on her fingers.

‘She can’t marry all of them,’ Caspar interrupted her.

‘Of course not,’ she agreed, giving him a scathing look. ‘But I am sure that one of them... After all, just think what she’s got in common with them.’

‘What?’ Caspar invited.

‘Well, for a start, they’re all members of the same profession,’ she told him, raising her eyes to the ceiling. ‘Honestly, men!’ She turned to the papers she had been about to read before he came in, shaking her head.

‘Livvy...’ She stared at Caspar as he drew her gently to him, ‘Look, I know you mean well, and yes, your cousins and Tullah possibly do have something in common, but she’s a high-flying professional woman of almost thirty. Don’t you think if she wanted to settle down and have children she’d have found a partner of her own choice by now?’

Olivia bit her lip. ‘Are you trying to tell me that I shouldn’t interfere?’

‘Well...’

‘I was only thinking of having a couple of dinner parties...returning invitations...that kind of thing.’

‘Mmm... I suppose I should take it as a compliment that you enjoy marriage and motherhood so much that you want to inflict it, er, share its pleasure, with all your friends.’

‘I suppose you should,’ she agreed. ‘Speaking of which...do you remember how we were talking the other night about it being time we thought about a brother or sister for Amelia?’

‘What, you’re not—’

‘Not yet,’ she told him demurely. ‘But we really ought to—’

‘Oh yes, we really ought,’ Caspar agreed, laughing as he turned her towards the kitchen door and the stairs that lay beyond it.

CHAPTER TWO

‘SO. HAVE you seen anything locally yet that’s taken your fancy?’ Olivia asked Tullah eagerly when she returned from the property viewings organised by the relocation agency.

‘Not really, apart from this little moppet.’ Tullah laughed as she broke off from cuddling Amelia, Caspar and Olivia’s two-year-old daughter, to answer Olivia’s question.

‘Ah well, if that’s what you fancy, it isn’t a house you should be looking for, it’s a man,’ Olivia teased her gently.

‘No thanks,’ Tullah retorted, the smile dying out of her eyes as she handed Amelia over to her mother, her full mouth compressing firmly.

‘Tullah...’ Olivia began, then stopped as she saw the look she was giving her. Good friends though they had always been, Tullah was the type who held herself slightly aloof from others and whom, despite her stunningly voluptuous and sensual looks, the men in the large organisation they had both worked for had very quickly learned to treat with wary caution.

Olivia knew the reason for Tullah’s wariness of the male sex and she also knew that Tullah didn’t like to discuss her love life.

She knew that the only time Tullah did let her guard down with men was when she was with one she knew to be happily attached to another woman. Because she felt safe with such a man?

‘So none of the properties was any good, then?’ she asked sympathetically.

Tullah pulled a face. ‘Well, the modern single-bedroomed flats they showed me were affordable, but very anonymous, and the cottages were either too large or too expensive or both. There was one, though....’ She paused whilst Olivia waited. ‘Well, it just had so many things against it, and even the agent said that it had only been included on the list at the last minute, but...’

‘But...’ Olivia encouraged patiently.

Tullah gave her a rueful look and admitted, ‘But it was quite definitely a case of love at first sight.’

‘Oh dear,’ Olivia sympathised, ‘as bad as that?’

‘And more,’ Tullah agreed wryly, ticking points off on her fingers. ‘It’s overpriced, on the wrong side of town for work. It needs a fortune spent on it. Possibly spraying for infestation of the wood, rewiring, new plumbing—you name it. It doesn’t even have mains drainage.’

‘So what does it have?’ Olivia asked, adding helpfully, ‘It must have some plus points otherwise you wouldn’t have fallen for it.’

‘Oh, it does,’ Tullah agreed. ‘The place is surrounded by farm land. There’s the most wonderful view from upstairs of the river. It has a huge garden. It’s one of a pair of semis, the other half of which is owned by a couple of elderly widowed sisters who apparently travel a lot to Australia to visit relatives. The lane leading to it doesn’t go anywhere other than to a farmhouse that you can’t even see from my cottage.’

‘A farmhouse...’ Olivia was looking intrigued and slightly excited. ‘Where exactly is this cottage, Tullah? It sounds—’

‘It sounds horrendous, I know,’ Tullah finished for her, ‘and certainly not the sort of thing a sane, sensible, professional woman of my age should even think about buying. Even if it were a bargain, which it most certainly isn’t, it could be months before it’s even properly habitable.’

‘Well, you could always stay here,’ Olivia offered generously, and when Tullah shook her head, she asked, ‘So what did you do? Tell the agent it just wasn’t feasible?’

‘No,’ Tullah admitted with a shamefaced grin. ‘I made an offer....’

Both of them were still laughing when Caspar walked into the kitchen and, of course, just like a man, could not really comprehend the reason for their combined mirth even when Olivia had explained the situation to him.

‘Saul rang while you were out,’ he told Olivia. ‘He’s going to be a little later than planned getting here for dinner this evening, something about problems with the babysitter, but he said he’ll definitely be here for eight-thirty.’

‘That’s fine. I’ve invited Saul and Jon and Jenny round for dinner tonight,’ she explained to Tullah. ‘Which reminds me, your cottage—’ She broke off as the young retriever dog lying in its basket in front of the Aga gave a small protesting yelp as Amelia pulled its tail, gently chiding her daughter as she went to rescue the dog. ‘No, Amelia, you’re hurting Flossy. You have to be gentle with her.’

A couple of hours later as she stood in front of the pretty Victorian cheval-glass in Olivia’s best guest bedroom studying her appearance, Tullah reflected that she would much rather simply have spent the evening relaxing with Olivia and Caspar instead of having to sit down and make polite dinner-party conversation. She had met both Jon and Jenny, together with Saul before and whilst she had liked the older couple, so far as Saul was concerned...

The dress she had chosen to wear had been a sale bargain she had been coaxed into getting by her mother and sister up from Hampshire for a shopping weekend, and as she had protested at the time, she didn’t think it was really her.

Lucinda, her sister, had shaken her head in her elder sisterly way and told her to stop being silly. ‘Of course it’s you. That vanilla shade is perfect with your skin colouring and hair and the dress itself couldn’t be simpler or easier to wear. If I wasn’t so huge at the moment I’d be tempted to buy it myself.’

‘Well, you aren’t going to be pregnant for ever,’ Tullah had countered, but Lucinda had shaken her head and groaned.

‘Believe me, at this stage another three months feels like for ever, and besides, I doubt I’m ever going to be slim enough to wear anything like that again—or to have the occasion to wear it.’

The vanilla colour of the Ghost dress did suit her, Tullah was forced to admit, but she was still aware that the narrow, slender, slightly clinging effect of the silky fabric with its bias cut was not something she would ever have chosen for herself.

The dress’s round neckline was discreet enough, but the way the fabric moved, the way it clung sensuously to her curves... Fortunately she had spotted a separate jacket in the same fabric, which she had also brought with her. As she slipped it on, she acknowledged that she was going to be rather hot wearing it.

Downstairs the doorbell rang.

Pulling the jacket around her, Tullah hurried to the door and went downstairs, expecting to see Jon and Jenny standing in the hallway with Olivia. She came to an abrupt halt halfway down the stairs when she realised that the first arrival was not Olivia’s aunt and uncle but her cousin!

‘Tullah.’ Olivia’s eyes widened slightly and appreciatively as she saw her friend.

‘No matchmaking,’ Caspar had told her firmly, but really... it was such a waste....

‘You remember Saul, don’t you?’ She continued smiling from Tullah to Saul, who was standing next to her.

‘Yes,’ Tullah agreed coolly, pretending not to see the hand Saul had extended towards her and making sure that she stood on the opposite side of Olivia from him and just out of eyeshot.

‘Yes...well, Caspar’s in the dining room, Saul, if you’d like a drink. You obviously managed to sort out your babysitting problem,’ Olivia said, smiling.

‘Luckily yes,’ he agreed. ‘Since the custody case, I’m having to be a bit more careful about whom I leave them with...’

As she listened to him, Tullah was glad that neither he nor Olivia was looking at her because she knew her expression must be betraying her feelings. What kind of father exactly was Saul if it took the full weight of the legal system to compel him to ensure that his young children were left provided with a proper babysitter? One read of appalling cases where small children were left with inappropriate sitters or, in some reprehensible cases, no sitter at all, often with shocking consequences. It certainly couldn’t be any kind of financial hardship that prevented Saul from paying someone qualified to look after his children.

Personally she found it quite wrong that he should choose to go out during one of his children’s custody visits instead of spending time with them and she was rather surprised that Olivia had encouraged him to do so.

‘I’ll come and give you a hand in the kitchen,’ she offered, shaking her head when Olivia suggested she might like to join the men for a drink whilst they waited for Jon and Jenny to arrive. The last thing she wanted was to have to spend any more time than necessary in conversation with Saul Crighton.

‘Olivia was telling me that you’ll soon be joining us at Aarlston-Becker,’ Saul commented to Tullah, shaking his head as Caspar offered to refill his wineglass. ‘Better not,’ he told the other man. ‘I’m driving.’

Well at least he had some sense of responsibility, Tullah reflected, although she didn’t think much of a man who quite obviously considered his driving licence to be more important than his children.

‘Yes, that’s right,’ she agreed, answering his question and then turning to Jon, who was seated on the other side of her, to ask him if the arrival of the huge multinational locally had had much effect on their own business.

‘Well, it’s certainly bumped up our conveyancing work,’ Jon replied, smiling, ‘although, as you know, all of Aarlston’s internal and corporate legal work is handled by its own legal department. Olivia was saying that you specialised in European law.’

‘Yes, that’s right,’ Tullah agreed again between spoonfuls of Olivia’s delicious home-made vichyssoise. She enjoyed cooking herself, not that it was something she got much time for.

‘Tullah spent a year working in The Hague,’ Olivia informed her uncle, smiling at her friend. ‘Something else you and Saul have in common,’ she added to Tullah. ‘Saul worked there for a while. That was how he met Hillary.’

‘Your wife?’ Tullah commented coolly to Saul.

‘My ex-wife,’ he corrected her evenly, but he was looking at her, Tullah noticed, in a way that said he was aware of her hostility towards him.

Aware of it, she suspected, but not particularly concerned by it. But then, why should he be? By any normal standards, Saul would be considered a very attractive and personable man, and it was plain from the way they talked to him that both Olivia and Jenny had something of a soft spot for him. He was certainly not the type of man who would ever lack female company or appreciation, but he would certainly never have hers, and Tullah could only admire the friendly and warm way that Caspar treated him in view of the fact that Saul had deliberately tried to break up Caspar’s own relationship with Olivia.

‘Aarlston’s certainly sounds an excellent firm to work for from what you’ve told us about them, Saul,’ Jon intervened tactfully.

‘They are,’ Saul confirmed, adding, ‘In fact, they’re acknowledged as being leaders in the field of sexual equality and they were one of the first multinationals to provide not just crèche facilities for the mothers amongst their employees, but also to introduce paternal leave on the birth of a new baby as automatic. I’ve certainly found them very good about the amount of time I’ve had to take off recently over the children, especially with the custody case.’

‘It always amazes me how many men seem to develop a strong paternal instinct when they’re threatened with losing their children,’ Tullah commented grittily, darting an acid look in Saul’s direction.

‘Fathers can tend to take their role in their children’s lives for granted,’ Jon agreed peaceably.

Saul said nothing but he was watching her very closely, Tullah knew, and the look in his eyes did not suggest that it was any kind of male desire or approval that was prompting his visual concentration on her.

Good! If she had probed beneath the arrogance of his self-confidence and found a vulnerable spot, so much the better. She could still remember the anguish her father had put them all through by insisting on his visiting rights with them—visits that more often than not were forgotten or, when remembered, turned out to be miserable afternoons spent watching television in his high-rise apartment, forbidden to disturb him whilst he worked. But then, of course, it had never been their company he wanted. No, what he had wanted was quite simply to deprive their mother of it and to cause as much upset in her life as he could.

Olivia started to collect their empty soup dishes, and Tullah jumped up to help her.

‘There’s no need...’ Olivia began, but Tullah shook her head, quickly gathering up her own and Jon’s dishes, and then tensing as she realised that Saul had picked his up to pass to her.

The temptation to simply ignore him was so strong that she was almost on the point of doing so and turning away when she happened to catch his eye.

The cynical comprehension she could see there was disconcerting but nowhere near as disconcerting as his easy but oh so calmly determined, ‘You sit down. I’ll take care of these,’ as he neatly turned the tables on her and stood up, towering above her, or so it seemed. He deftly relieved her of the dishes she was holding and then, turning away from her, told Olivia warmly, ‘That soup was delicious. You’ll have to give me the recipe.’

‘Oh, it’s simple enough, really,’ Olivia started to assure him as they both headed for the kitchen. ‘Just so long as you’ve got a decent blender.’

‘Saul’s really determined to give the children a stable home background, isn’t he?’ Jenny commented when the couple were both out of earshot. ‘I really do admire him for what he’s trying to do.’

‘Why is it that when a man’s a single parent he gets so much more sympathy than a woman in the same situation?’ Tullah asked grimly. ‘And Saul isn’t even a full-time single parent.’ She fell silent as the kitchen door reopened and Saul and Olivia returned.

Tullah could see that she had surprised Jenny a little by her antagonistic remark but she was growing irritated hearing Saul given so much praise that he patently did not deserve.

‘Did you get much chance to visit any of the museums while you were working in The Hague?’

‘Some,’ Tullah responded dismissively to Saul’s question. She had made up her mind not to respond to the man’s conversational overtures. The longer she sat and listened to the others, the more aware she was of the high esteem in which they all, but most especially Jenny and Olivia, held Saul, and for some reason that made her all the more determined to hold on to her own antagonism towards him.

Why, after all, should a man be praised simply because he took on the responsibility of his own children for one weekend in four or whatever it was that Saul’s access arrangements allowed for? Even then he apparently couldn’t bring himself to spend the whole of his time with them but instead found someone else to take care of them for him so that he could come out to dinner and bask in the admiration and affection of his female relatives. Some father!

She could well remember her own father doing much the same thing, leaving them with his mother, their grandmother, on the pretext of having to see someone about business.

‘Tullah...I was telling Saul in the kitchen just now about the cottage you saw this afternoon. Tullah’s fallen in love with a cottage she viewed earlier today,’ she explained for the benefit of the others. ‘It’s—’

‘It’s completely out of the question,’ Tullah interrupted her quickly, ‘and totally impractical.’

‘Sometimes it does us good to be impractical, to indulge ourselves in our daydreams...our fantasies,’ she heard Saul saying. ‘They are, after all, an important part of what makes us human.’

Tullah felt a small frisson of sensation run down her spine but when she looked at him to refute what he had said she saw that he wasn’t looking at her but at Olivia...and she was quite openly smiling back at him.

Tullah’s head ached. She felt tired and very much aware of the fact that she stood outside the tightly knit and obviously very close family network that bonded together the other five people seated round the table with her.

‘When does Louise finish university for the year?’ Saul asked Jenny apparently casually.

As Tullah stiffened with shock and disgust to hear Saul questioning Jenny so carelessly about her daughter, a girl who must be almost twenty years younger than Saul himself and whom she had heard described illuminatingly as having a very intense crush on Saul, she saw that Jenny was looking uncomfortable, as well, her glance straying to her husband before she responded quietly, ‘Officially not for another few months although she did say she might come home earlier. Apparently her lectures finish a little ahead of the official end of term.’

It was obvious that Jenny was ill at ease discussing her daughter with Saul, and no wonder, given what Tullah knew about the situation between them. In fact, Tullah could only marvel at both Jenny’s forbearance and Saul’s breathtaking arrogance and obvious disregard for Jenny and Jon’s feelings as Louise’s parents.

All in all, Tullah felt relieved when the evening finally came to an end and Jon and Jenny got up to leave. Shortly afterwards, declining a nightcap, Saul, too, announced that he must go.

Caspar offered to see him out and whilst they were gone Tullah followed Olivia into the kitchen to help her clear up.

‘Saul’s a darling,’ Olivia began warmly as she started to stack the dishwasher. ‘I just hope...wish...’ She stopped speaking as she saw Tullah’s expression. ‘You don’t like him, do you?’ she asked her friend quietly.

‘I’m sorry, Olivia,’ Tullah apologised. ‘But no, I don’t. I know he’s your cousin, a member of your family but...’ She took a deep breath and lifted her head, forcing herself to meet Olivia’s expression of shocked dismay. ‘He’s everything I most dislike in a man, Olivia. I know that you...that you and he...’ She shook her head awkwardly. ‘I mean, just look at the way he left his children tonight to come here. A man like that doesn’t deserve to be a father. He—’

‘Tullah...’ she heard Olivia interrupting her in a stifled warning voice, but it was too late. Tullah followed her gaze and, turning round, saw Saul standing behind her in the open doorway, a tight, furiously angry expression on his face.

‘For your information, the only reason I left my children as you so ill-informedly put it to come here tonight was because Olivia asked me—’

‘Saul,’ Olivia intervened pleadingly, ‘Tuilah didn’t mean...she doesn’t realise—’

‘On the contrary, I realise all too well,’ Tullah objected curtly.

‘I came back to check if it was still all right to leave Meg with you on Monday night,’ Saul asked Olivia, totally ignoring Tullah.

‘Yes, of course it is. Caspar will collect her from school and bring her back here.’

Saul turned to leave and then seemed to hesitate, turning to look at Tullah scathingly before saying quietly, ‘I hope you prove to be rather more thorough and responsible in your attitude to your work than you appear to be in your attitude to your fellow human beings,’ he told her coldly. ‘Because if not...’

‘Because if not, what?’ Tullah challenged him, lifting her chin. He might be above her in status in the company, but his involvement with the transatlantic side of the business meant, thankfully, that they were hardly likely to come into much contact with one another.

‘I must go, Livvy,’ Saul said, ignoring her once more. ‘I promised Bobbie I’d be back before twelve. She and Luke want to spend some time with Aunt Ruth and Grant before they fly back to Boston.’

‘Yes, I know,’ Olivia returned. ‘I think it was wonderful the way Ruth and Grant made a prenuptial agreement to each spend six months of every year living in one another’s country.’

‘A decision worthy of Solomon,’ Saul agreed with a smile. His smile disappeared as he turned back towards Tullah and gave her a small, terse nod of his head before saying curtly, ‘Good night.’

Tullah barely waited for the door to close behind Saul’s departing back before saying huskily, ‘Would you mind if I went up to bed, Liwy? I’ve got a bit of a headache and—’

‘No, no, you go up,’ Olivia assured her. Tullah knew her antagonism towards Saul had disturbed her but still she couldn’t apologise for it or take back what she had said.

An hour later as she snuggled up in bed next to Caspar, Olivia told him sleepily, ‘I can’t understand why Tullah is so antagonistic towards Saul of all people. He really is one of the nicest men you could ever meet. Uncle Hugh used to say that it was just as well Saul decided to go into industry because, despite all his professional qualifications, he just doesn’t have that aggressive hard edge you need to make it to the top as a barrister. Luke’s got it, of course, and—’

‘Mmm...she does seem to have taken rather a dislike to him,’ Caspar agreed, kissing the top of her head before adding reassuringly, ‘It’s just as well you didn’t have him picked out as a possible father for the children you’ve decided Tullah wants to have.’ He chuckled at the thought.

‘Saul and Tullah... No, that would never work,’ Olivia declared, laughing.

‘Daddy...’

‘Mmm...’ Saul responded, bending down to tuck a stray curl off his younger daughter’s face. She had been crying in her sleep in the grip of one of the bad nightmares she had started having whilst she was staying in America with her mother and Hillary’s second husband. Having woken her gently from it and calmed her down, Saul watched her tenderly in the light from the small child’s lamp as he waited for her to go back to finish whatever it was she wanted to say to him.

‘You won’t ever go away and leave us, will you?’

Somehow he managed to resist the impulse to snatch her up out of her small bed and hold her close.

‘Well, sometimes I do have to go away on business,’ he responded calmly and matter-of-factly, ‘and sometimes you go away, too, when you leave to stay with Mummy, but I promise you I won’t ever go away from you for very long, poppet.’

‘Do I really have to go and stay with Mummy even if I don’t want to?’

Saul’s heart sank.

He had tried his best to explain to the children that they were Hillary’s children as well as his and that she loved them and wanted them with her. The older two, Robert and Jemima, had understood even though they had both forcefully expressed their desire to stay with him. With Meg, however, it was proving much harder to explain that it was not just a legal requirement that her mother had access to her, but also his own conviction that at some stage in their lives all three children were going to want to have contact with their mother and that if he acceded to their desire now not to have to visit her, then not only would he be guilty of depriving them of an emotional bond he believed they needed to have, but ultimately there could possibly come a time when they would blame him as an adult and their father for allowing them to make a decision they were at present too immature emotionally to make. And it was for that reason, for their sakes, that he had been at such pains to keep his divorce from Hillary and the subsequent custody case as unacrimonious as possible.

As it was, it would be a long time before he forgot the telephone call he had received from Hillary three months ago, hysterically demanding that he fly over to America immediately and collect the children because they were destroying her relationship with her new husband, who had demanded that she make a choice between the children of her first marriage and him.

Predictably, being Hillary, she had chosen him. But then, Hillary had never been a particularly maternal woman. They had married impetuously and without really knowing one another, and Saul still felt guilty about the fact that despite knowing how ill-equipped emotionally Hillary was to cope with two small children, how resentful of them she felt, he had given in to her desire to have a third child to try to mend their failing marriage.

But much as he might regret the reasons for Meg’s conception, Meg herself he could never regret, and he was determined that she would never know that in many ways she had been the final nail in the coffin of her parents’ faltering marriage.

‘I never wanted children. I don’t like children,’ Hillary had stormed petulantly at him during one of their all too frequent rows.

And Saul was ashamed now to remember that he had re taliated equally bad-temperedly. ‘Well, you certainly don’t seem to like mine.’

His. Well, they were certainly his by law as well as by birth.

‘But how will you cope?’ Ann, his mother, had asked him anxiously when he had initially told her of his decision to fight for full custody of the children. ‘I’ll do what I can, of course, but...’

‘Look,’ Saul had told his mother, ‘you and Dad have your own lives to lead. We all know how much Dad is looking forward to retiring. I’ll manage, don’t worry.’

And so far he had, but there were times, like tonight for instance, when his regular babysitter couldn’t make it and he was forced to swallow his pride and turn to his family for extra help.

One answer, of course, would be to employ someone full time to live in, but he didn’t want the children to feel that he was offloading them onto someone else and he certainly didn’t want them to start thinking that he didn’t either love or want them and especially not little Meg, who had come back from the States so heartbreakingly insecure and clingy.

‘Did you have a nice time at Auntie Livvy’s?’ Meg asked him.

‘Very nice, thank you,’ Saul fibbed.

When Olivia had telephoned him to invite him over for dinner and to tell him excitedly about her friend who was relocating to work for the same firm as him, reminding him that they had previously met both at her and Caspar’s wedding and Amelia’s christening, he had had no intimation or warning of what the evening held in store.

Yes, he remembered Tullah. What red-blooded heterosexual man would not? She had the kind of looks, the kind of figure, that was instantly appealing to the male psyche. There was something about that combination of thick, lustrous hair, creamy skin and wonderfully curvy body that suggested a sensuality, a lushness that had a far more instant and dizzying effect on male hormones than any bone-thin, media-lauded model-type of woman.

What man looking at Tullah’s full, soft mouth and her even fuller and softer breasts could resist imagining what it would be like to lose himself in the sheer pleasure of touching her, caressing her, kissing her, making love with her?

Politically incorrect such thoughts might be, but they were undoubtedly an important part of what made a man a man, and to Saul’s mind at least, tolerably acceptable as long as they remained restrained and controlled in the male mind. But then, as he had discovered tonight, Tullah had her own inimitable way of ensuring that any private male fantasies involving herself were very quickly squashed.

Perhaps it was the shock of the contrast between the soft, feminine lushness and apparent warmth of her body and the antagonistic, almost aggressive sharpness of her manner that had made him feel so taken aback by her obvious hostility towards him, or perhaps it was simply a rebel male gene of vanity because she was so plainly dismissive and contemptuous of him. He didn’t know. What he did know was that he had a hard time fighting with himself not to respond to her aggressive and spiked remarks both as a defendant and a protagonist.

And the problem wasn’t confined to the fact that she was simply a friend of Olivia’s. There were other complications. She was going to be working for the same organisation and...

Meg made the little snuffling sound that meant that she had finally fallen asleep. As he bent down to gently kiss her cheek and tuck her in, Saul wondered wryly what on earth he had done to offend fate so much that she insisted on sending him so many problems.

First his marriage to Hillary and then the problem he was currently facing with Louise and now this. Tiredly he made his way back to his own bedroom, throwing his robe onto a chair before pushing back the covers and getting into bed.

It was ironic the effect a bad marriage—a bad relationship —could have on you. He now actually enjoyed sleeping alone. It was a relief to wake up in the morning without Hillary there next to him, both of them ready to begin the next round in their ongoing battle.

Wearily he closed his eyes.

Saul groaned pleasurably in his sleep, inhaling a deep, sensual breath of the delicious scent of the woman in his arms; she smelled not of some expensive designer perfume but of her own special, deeply feminine and intensely erotic scent. He had been aware of it and her all through dinner and had ached then to do as he was doing right now, breathing in the scent of her; he tasted it on his lips as he kissed the soft curve of her throat, nibbled his way along her jaw towards her mouth.

Her hair was a heavy, silky dark cloud of satin softness where it lay against his skin as subtly perfumed as the rest of her, her arms as rounded and smooth as the intoxicatingly female contours of her breasts. He deliberately delayed allowing himself the longed-for pleasure of kissing her mouth.

Drawing his lips along the velvet softness of her inner arm, he felt her whole body quiver as he gently caressed the inside of her elbow with the tip of his tongue until she wrenched her arm away from him to wrap both of them tightly around him and begged him to make love to her ‘property.’

‘Properly...what do you mean properly...what is properly?’ he teased her huskily whilst she pressed herself closer and even closer to him, the hard points of her breasts pushing against his skin, driving him insane with their sensual demand for attention.

‘Stop talking and kiss me,’ she whispered, her palm insistently turning his face towards her own, her lips already parting....

‘Mmm...’ Saul stroked his hand down the side of her body, trying not to allow himself to linger anywhere, not even on the satin warmth of the inside of her thigh when she trembled as he caressed her. ‘Oh, I’m going to kiss you all right, Tullah,’ he told her thickly. She gave another soft, protesting moan and writhed eagerly against him. ‘I’m going to kiss you until that deliciously soft, irresistible mouth of yours is—’

‘Daddy...daddy. Wake up. I feel sick...’

Reluctantly Saul opened his eyes and blinked dazedly up at his son.

‘I feel sick,’ Robert repeated urgently. ‘I—’

‘Yes, all right...come on....’ Saul was already on his feet, swinging Robert up into his arms and hurrying towards the bathroom with him.

Robert had had a very severe bout of infant gastroenteritis as a baby, so severe, in fact, that at one point their doctor had warned them that he might not survive. He had, but with the legacy of a digestive system that was acutely sensitive. They made it just in time.

Saul knew from experience that Robert’s bouts of sickness were wrenching but thankfully short-lived. However, it certainly looked as though he wasn’t going to get much more sleep tonight, which probably wasn’t a bad thing, given the nature of the extremely erotic and extraordinarily inappropriate dream Robert had woken him from.

The subconscious was an odd thing. a very odd thing, he decided before firmly banishing the enticing, lingering image his mind had conjured up of Tullah lying voluptuously naked in his bed, still warm from their shared lovemaking.

That he should have dreamt about her at all was bad enough, but that he had been enjoying the dream so much, had been so aroused by it. so determined to hang on to it that he had fought against waking up and responding to Robert, was even worse.

He couldn’t remember the last time he had had a dream like that. In fact, if he was honest with himself, he couldn’t remember any time he had been so intensely and so physically aroused. Not even with—

‘Daddy...’

‘It’s OK, Robert.’

Sternly rebuking himself for his thoughts, he turned to minister to his son.

CHAPTER THREE

‘AND I’ll keep my fingers crossed that the offer you’ve made on the cottage is accepted,’Olivia promised as she gave Tullah a goodbye hug.

As she returned it, Tullah was guiltily aware of the fact that she had not exactly been the perfect weekend guest. It went against her whole credo for living to be manipulative or underhand in any way. She couldn’t pretend to share Olivia’s rose-tinted view of her cousin Saul, but neither5 did she want to leave without at least making some attempt to explain to Olivia why she felt so antagonistic towards his type.

‘Livvy, about last night,’ she began a little awkwardly. ‘I realise that you probably thought I was overreacting with Saul and—’

‘Well, you did rather surprise me,’ Olivia admitted ruefully as she interrupted her. ‘You’re certainly the first woman I’ve ever known to react to Saul in quite that way.’ tullah opened her mouth to point out that at least one other woman must share her animosity towards him, otherwise he wouldn’t be divorced, but before she could say anything, Olivia was continuing cheerfully, ‘Mind you, it’s probably just as well. The situation’s difficult enough at the moment with Louise deep in the throes of an intense crush on him.’

‘Yes,’ Tullah sympathised readily. ‘I appreciate that that must be an awful situation for...for her parents. I could see how distressed Jenny looked last night when Saul asked her when Louise home.’

All the distaste and disapproval she felt about Saul’s be-haviour in not just allowing but actively encouraging Louise’s crush on him showed in Tullah’s voice as she spoke.

‘It’s typical of the kind of man that the Sauls of this world are that he didn’t even think twice about how he might be offending or hurting Jon and Jenny by introducing the subject of Louise. It was obvious that they weren’t at all happy with the situation and who could blame them?

‘I mean, I know he’s your cousin, Livvy,’ Tullah told her fiercely, her emotions darkening her eyes as she remembered how she had felt for the older couple the previous evening. ‘But what kind of man...what kind of decent, caring, mature man who feels good about himself as a man and who feels really at ease with his masculinity, his sexuality, experiences the need to keep on massaging his ego by seducing a string of younger and younger naive girls?’

As Tullah paused for breath, she saw that Olivia was looking rather shocked.

‘I’m sorry,’ she apologised contritely. ‘I know, of course, that you probably don’t share my views and that your opinion of Saul is bound to be different from mine especially in view of the...the relationship you and he—’

‘Tullah, Saul and I—’ Olivia began, only to break off in maternal concern as Amelia, who had been playing quite happily a few yards away in the garden, let out a frightened cry. ‘Oh no! She’s probably trying to catch another bee,’ she told Tullah. ‘Amelia darling...’

‘Oh dear,’ Tullah sympathised as they exchanged another brief hug and stepped back from each other, leaving Olivia free to go and rescue both the indignant bee and her small daughter whilst Tullah got into her car.

‘I think I’ve discovered why Tullah is so antagonistic towards Saul,’ Olivia commented to Caspar over dinner several hours after Tullah had left.

‘Mmm... You mean there is a reason and it isn’t just that she’s a woman of incomparable taste and good sense who couldn’t help but prefer me?’ Caspar joked.

‘No, I’m afraid I cornered the market in that particular brand of good taste and sense.’ Olivia informed him gravely, trying not to giggle.

‘Oh well, go on, then. What deeply traumatic reason lies behind her aversion?’

‘It isn’t funny, Caspar,’ Olivia warned him. ‘At least it isn’t when you know about Tullah’s background. Her parents divorced when she was in her teens, and very shortly after that an older man...a family friend, in fact, on whom she’d got a massive crush, instead of realising that what she was really looking for was a father substitute, someone to treat her gently and give her the nonsexual love her father had deprived her of, decided instead to use Tullah’s innocence and naivety to boost his own flagging ego.

‘She was only sixteen at the time and she believed he loved her. He told her that his marriage was over, the usual kind of thing, and of course, she fell for it and she now seems to have jumped to the totally wrong conclusion that Saul is doing exactly the same thing to Louise as this man did to her.’

‘Ahh...I’m beginning to see daylight. You put her right, of course,’ Caspar commented as he helped himself to a second helping of pudding.

‘No...Amelia tried her latest bee-catching trick before I could and then by the time I’d rescued the bee and calmed Amelia down, it was too late. Tullah had left. Do you really think you should eat that?’ she asked her husband conversationally. ‘All that cream will be loaded with cholesterol, and you—’

‘I need the energy,’ Caspar told her. ‘Or have you changed your mind about enlivening our incipient bee-keeper’s life with a little bit of sibling rivalry?’

‘Not at all,’ Olivia responded, adding provocatively, ‘but if we’re going to do that, I can think of far better uses to put that cream to....’

‘Such as?’ Caspar invited.

‘I thought you weren’t going to make it,’ Olivia commented warmly to Saul as he and the children joined them in the departures lounge.

The whole family had gathered to wave Ruth and Grant off for their regular biannual visit to the States.

After fifty years apart with each believing the other bad betrayed their love, they were now happily reunited, and in keeping with the spirit of the mock prenuptial agreement both of them constantly teased the other with, they had fallen into a pleasant routine of spending three months in Haslewich followed by three months in Grant’s home town in New England.

It was Bobbie, Ruth’s American granddaughter and her cousin Luke’s wife, who would miss them the most, Olivia acknowledged. For this trip a very special concession was being made for Joss, Jon and Jenny’s younger son who had always been especially close to Ruth, who together with Jack, Olivia’s own brother, was being allowed to go with the older couple and spend some time with the New England side of the family.

‘Mmm...I was afraid we wouldn’t make it,’ Saul responded after he had hugged Ruth warmly and shaken Grant by the hand. ‘Robert had another bad night.’

‘Oh dear, is he...?’

‘He’s fine now,’ Saul assured her, anticipating her question and nodding in the direction of his three children who were huddled in a small group with all the younger members of the family, including Joss and Jack.

‘What with Robert’s sickness and Meg’s nightmares, you can’t be getting much sleep,’ Olivia sympathised.

‘Nowhere near enough,’ Saul agreed ruefully, ‘and not just because of the kids.’

But when Olivia looked questioningly at him he simply shook his head. There was no way he was going to enlighten even someone as close to him as Olivia about the fact that his sleep had been broken not just by the children but far more disturbingly by dreams about her weekend guest, dreams of such intense sensuality and sexuality that if he hadn’t been a mature man in his thirties he would have blushed to even have recalled them.

‘Oh, Gramps...I so wish I was going with you,’ Bobbie wailed, hugging her grandfather tightly as the notice flashed up to say that their plane was boarding.

‘Thanks a lot,’ Luke, her husband, teased her ruefully, looking round for someone to hand their baby daughter to whilst he comforted his wife.

‘Here, let me take her,’ Saul offered, deftly taking the child from him and expertly settling her comfortably against his shoulder as his own Meg sidled up to him and slipped her small hand into his.

‘Can I have a look at Francesca?’ she asked him. As she studied the sleeping baby. Meg informed him chattily, ‘My friend Grace at school, well, her mummy’s going to have a baby. Will we ever have a new baby, Daddy?’ she asked him, crinkling her forehead.

‘Don’t be stupid, Meg. Only mummies can have babies and we...’

Saul grimaced to himself as Robert overheard their conversation and spoke scornfully to his younger sister.

‘I’m not stupid,’ Meg responded heatedly, ‘am I, Daddy?’

Jemima, his elder daughter, eyed them both with disfavour. His little Jem, Saul called her, and in many ways he felt that the break-up of their marriage had been the hardest for her to cope with. At eight, she was mature mentally for her years and just beginning to grasp the concept of the intricacies of adult relationships and to know that adults were not infallible.

He had always felt that she was more her mother’s child than his, and it had surprised him to discover how passionately and intensely she had wanted to return to England and to him.

‘Our mother won’t have any more babies.’ she informed her siblings sharply. ‘She doesn’t like children.’

Saul caught his breath.

What Jemima had said in essence was the truth. Hillary did not like children and she had already informed him that since her new husband did not like them, either, she had decided to be sterilised.

‘Something I should have done before I married you,’ she had told him starkly and more than a little bitterly when she had informed him that she wasn’t going to contest his having full custody of the children.

‘She loves you,’ he told the three of them now as they watched him. And how could it not be true? Hillary might not like children but surely she must love her own. What mother could not do?

At eight, seven and five, their three had, he accepted, been conceived too closely together for a woman who was not particularly maternal. He accepted, too, that the larger part of the responsibility for them in their early years, especially Jemima and Robert, had fallen on Hillary.

With Meg it had been different; their last-ditch attempt to rescue their marriage and cement it together with Meg’s conception had been a sanity-threatening mistake and grossly unfair to Meg herself.

Six weeks after her birth, he had arrived home one afternoon, prompted by heaven alone knew what paternal sixth sense, to find Hillary on the point of leaving for America—without the children and without apparently having any intention of telling him what she was doing.

Later that day, having failed to persuade Hillary to change her mind, he had gone to pick the children up from the child-minder and had promised them mentally then that even if he might have failed as a husband and a lover, he would not fail them as a father...a parent....

‘When is Louise coming to see us again?’ Meg asked later when they were on their way home, ‘I like her.’

‘She doesn’t like you.’ Jemima sniffed disparagingly. ‘She only comes round to see Dad, really.’

‘Jem...’ Saul warned her, glancing in the rear-view mirror to give her a stern look whilst he monitored Meg’s quivering bottom lip.

They were just so vulnerable...all of them in their different ways. Meg with her fear of the dark, clinging to him, Rob who thought that boys shouldn’t cry and who made himself sick instead, and Jem...big, brave, cynical Jemima who wrung his heart with her studied and oh so heartachingly fragile defence of contemptuous disdain mixed with anger.

Listening to Tullah on Saturday night had reminded him of Jemima.

Tullah...

Don’t start that, he warned himself. You’ve got enough problems without going looking for any more.

‘It’s amazing to think Louise and Katie’s first year at college will be over soon,’ Jenny reflected to Jon as they drove home from seeing Ruth and Grant off.

‘I know,’ Jon replied.

‘I was hoping that now Louise is at university she’d start to grow out of this crush she’s got on Saul. He’s been so good about it. She worries me sometimes, Jon. She’s so headstrong and so single-minded.’

‘Tell me about it,’ Jon returned dryly. ‘She’s a Crighton all right, through and through.’

‘I’m afraid she’s going to have a hard life ahead of her if she doesn’t learn to bend a little,’ Jenny sighed. ‘It’s hard to believe that she and Katie are twins. At times they’re so different temperamentally.’

‘Not so hard, surely,’ Jon commented. ‘Look at David and me.’

Jenny glanced at her husband. After all these years and all that David had done, Jon still put his twin ahead of himself even when he spoke about him.

‘Do you think we’ll ever hear from him again?’ she asked, referring to the fact that while recovering from a severe heart attack Jon’s brother and Olivia’s father had simply walked out of their lives without any explanation. That was over three years ago now and they still hadn’t heard anything definite from him.

‘Who knows? For Dad’s sake, I wish and hope we do. He won’t admit it, you know how stubborn the old man is, but I think he suspects that it wasn’t just the pressure of Tiggy’s illness that made David leave. We can’t risk telling him the whole truth, of course, but he’s changed since David left. He’s still as stubborn as he always was, but now it’s as though he’s clinging to that stubbornness like a crutch he needs to support himself with instead of using it like a stick to beat the rest of us.’

Jenny laughed.

‘Ben is getting older,’ she reminded her husband.

‘Aren’t we all,’ Jon retorted feelingly.

‘What are we going to do about Louise?’ Jenny prodded him. ‘The last time she was home she made a positive nuisance of herself with Saul, inviting herself to go and stay with Hugh and Ann like that and then... And now with Saul living so close, it’s going to be even worse.’

‘She’s your daughter,’ Jon told her tongue-in-cheek, adding mock-virtuously, ‘and it’s a mother’s duty.’

‘She’s your daughter, as well,’ Jenny lost no time in retaliating, concluding triumphantly, ‘and as you’ve just said yourself, she is quite definitely a Crighton. All joking aside, Jon, we’re going to have to do something...say something. If it was Katie, for instance, she’d be mortified at the thought of anyone knowing how she felt, but on the other hand she would never pursue anyone the way Louise is pursuing Saul.’

Jon nodded his agreement. ‘It’s a pity Ruth’s going to be away while she’s home. She’s very good at that sort of thing. Of course, the best thing would be for Saul to find himself someone else...get married again.’

‘Saul marry again?’ Jenny frowned. ‘Do you think he would? It hit him very hard when he and Hillary broke up. I remember him telling me at the time that he felt as though he had failed. Not just failed Hillary and himself and the children, but his parents, the family, his upbringing and his beliefs... everything. He as good as said that even knowing he didn’t love Hillary any more he’d have been prepared to continue with the marriage for the sake of the children.

‘What did you think of Olivia’s weekend guest, by the way,’ Jenny asked her husband in amusement. ‘She was very anti Saul, wasn’t she?’

‘Was she?’ Jon asked, a fatuous semi-glazed expression enveloping his face. ‘I didn’t pay much attention to what she said,’ he admitted, grinning at Jenny.

‘It’s just as well you’re the one driving this car,’ Jenny warned him, ‘otherwise I’d be tempted to push you out. Why is it that when a man sees a more than averagely pretty girl he immediately forgets that she’s also a fully functioning, intelligent and equal human being?’

‘I didn’t forget,’ Jon protested in a mock-injured tone. ‘Obviously she’s intelligent...and very highly qualified, but you’ve got to admit that she’s...well, she’s...’

‘Sexy,’ Jenny suggested with dangerous sweetness.

‘Sexy.’ Jon rolled his eyes. ‘That’s like describing the Grand Canyon as a valley. She’s—’

‘Stop drooling, Jon,’ Jenny advised. ‘It makes you look senile. Mind you,’ she added fair-mindedly, ‘I have to say that she came across very much to me as a woman’s woman. Hardly the type to flirt or make use of her, er, assets.’

‘No, she was a bit on the serious side. Still, living in Haslewich will probably help her to ease down a gear or two. By the way, when are Max and Madeleine next due to visit?’ he asked.

Jenny gave him a shrewd look.

Max, their elder son, was a fast-track barrister with a prestigious set of London chambers. He was also the epitome of his uncle David with most of his faults and several more of his own thrown in. Add to that the fact that he was a handsome and highly sexed young man married to a very sweet but rather plain young woman whose sole claim on his affections was the fact that she was the daughter of a prominent High Court judge with a Law Lord for a grandfather.

Include in the recipe the highly volatile ingredients of a young baby, whom Max made no secret of not having wanted, and several rich and well-connected female clients whom, if the gossip they had heard was correct, he had been equally open about not only wanting but actually having and it was no wonder that Jenny should feel her heart start to sink at the thought of Max coming into contact with Tullah.

He would lay seige to her, of course, because quite simply he was that kind of man, but thankfully Tullah had not struck her as the kind of woman who would come anywhere near being tempted to respond.

As he heard her sigh, Jon looked at his wife with a twinkle in his eyes. ‘Well, it certainly isn’t from me that your son and your daughter get their high-octane sex drives,’ he told her virtuously.

Jenny’s mouth had started to form a round O of rebuttal before she realised he was teasing her, but once she did she simply smiled at him and said softly, ‘Oh no? What about last night, then?’

‘What about it?’ Jon asked innocently, but he was blushing slightly and Jenny shook her head as she reminded him, ‘I wasn’t the one who had to lie to Joss and Jack that I needed an extra hour in bed because I’d got a headache.’

‘No. But you still came up with me,’ he reminded her.

‘That was my duty as your wife,’ she retaliated firmly. ‘After all, a man of your age...a headache could be...could be...’

‘An excuse to get my wife into bed so that I could make love to her,’ Jon suggested softly, adding, ‘Well, tonight we won’t need an excuse, will we? We’ve got the house to ourselves.’

‘Twice in one week,’ Jenny mock protested.

‘What do you mean, twice in one week,’ Jon growled back. ‘We went past that last night!’

“Well, that’s the last of them.’ Sitting back on her heels, Tullah smiled as she looked across the neatly stacked boxes at her mother. ‘Thanks for coming to help me.’ She shook her head as she added ruefully, ‘I had no idea I owned so much stuff.’

‘Well, you can’t get to nearly thirty without accumulating some possessions,’ her mother responded.

Tullah gave her a wry look. ‘You’re just sorry that I don’t happen to number a husband and a couple of children amongst mine, is that it?’ she teased.

Despite the break-up of her first marriage after Tullah’s father had left her for his secretary, Jean had remained incurably romantic, marrying a second time when Tullah was in her early twenties after a whirlwind courtship with a man she had met whilst on holiday.

Tullah liked her stepfather, who adored and doted on her mother. He was a kind, gentle man whose first wife had died ten years before he and her mother had met, and was nothing like her father.

‘It isn’t that I wish you were married, darling,’ Jean told her now. ‘It’s just...well, I can’t help feeling if your father and I hadn’t divorced and if that dreadful man hadn’t—’

‘The divorce wasn’t your fault,’ Tullah reminded her, ‘and, as for that dreadful man... I should have realised what he really was instead of being so gullible.’

‘Darling, you were sixteen,’ her mother protested. ‘Still, perhaps now you’re moving out of London you might meet someone nice.’

‘I doubt it. Haslewich is Crighton territory and judging by the—’

‘Crighton territory?’ Jean looked puzzled.

Tullah laughed. ‘Sorry,’ she apologised. ‘Just my little joke. Olivia Crighton as she was then, whom I used to work with, lives in Haslewich. Her family come from the area.’

‘Olivia...oh yes, you went to her wedding.’

‘And her daughter’s christening. She invited me to stay with her last month when I went to Haslewich to meet the relocation agent.’

After getting to her feet, Tullah went into the small kitchen of her soon-to-be ex-flat and started to fill the kettle.

‘Oh? You don’t sound as though you enjoyed it. Didn’t the two of you get on?’

‘Oh, we got on. It’s just that Olivia has this cousin...of a sort. There are so many of them, I’m not quite sure how Saul slots into place.’

Her mother came to join her in the kitchen. ‘Decaff for me, darling, if that’s coffee you’re making,’ she instructed. ‘But who is Saul?’

Tullah hid a small smile. Her mother was, if not subtle, certainly disarmingly difficult to sidetrack.

‘Saul is...Saul,’ she told her uninformatively, pouring the boiling water into the coffee mugs. As she handed one to her mother, she added quietly, ‘He’s another Ralph...only worse.’

Tullah paused and frowned before taking a sip of her coffee, then explained the situation.

‘He’s got children of his own, three of them, two girls and a boy,’ Tullah eventually finished by saying. ‘So you’d think as a parent he’d understand at least some of what Jenny and Jon must be feeling.’

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