Should she go to bed with Liam? Conceive his child?

No, she couldn’t. It was just a mad thought conjured up by the loneliness of the night. Tears filled Samantha’s eyes. She so much wanted to be a mother.

As she walked unsteadily toward his bedroom door, Samantha felt her breathing become fast and uneven. As she saw Liam’s sleeping form on the bed, a quick, hot tug of excitement pulled at her heart, accompanied by a sharp sense of the awesomeness of what she was contemplating.

At her husky, slightly tremulous “Liam,” he woke up instantly, his body tensing.

“Sam, what is it…? What do you want?”

He had fed her the perfect line, Samantha recognized. All she needed now was the courage to take it…use it….

“What I want, Liam, is you….” Then she placed her mouth very delicately over his.

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

The Perfect Father
Penny Jordan

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

‘T HAT was some game you played over the weekend, Sam. I certainly never expected to see the Corporation’s gold trophy go to a woman…’

‘Sam isn’t a woman, women are small and cute and cuddly, they stay at home and make babies…. Sam…even her name isn’t womanly…’

Samantha Miller drew herself up to her full height—an inch over six feet—which was an impressive four inches above the man who had just so publicly and cruelly criticised her.

‘You know your trouble don’t you, Cliff,’ she drawled affably. ‘ You just don’t know a real woman when you see one. Seems to me that a man isn’t so very much of a man if the only kind of woman he can handle is the kind you’ve just described, and as for making babies…’ She paused for emphasis, well aware of the fact that she had the attention of their fellow employees who had happened to be in the large airy open-plan office with them, ‘I’m woman enough to have a baby any time I want one.’

Only now was she revealing the true extent of her anger at the way Cliff had insulted her; her eyes flashing challenging sparks, her voice trembling a little with the force of her feelings.

‘ You have a baby…’ her antagonist jeered angrily before she could continue. ‘Who the hell would want to impregnate a woman like you? No way. Your only chance of having a child would be via some med student’s sperm and a syringe…’

Enough of the people standing around broke into laughter for Samantha to recognise that no matter how publicly she might be accepted by her colleagues, an uncomfortable proportion of them seemed to share Cliff Marlin’s views.

Faced with the same situation another woman might have burst into tears or lost her temper but not Sam. You learned young when you were as tall as she was that crying didn’t look cute, and besides…

Looking down from the advantage of her extra inches Samantha bared her teeth in a totally false smile and gave a dismissive shrug.

‘You’re entitled to your opinion, Cliff, but gee, it’s a shame that you’re such a sore loser. Mind, if I played golf as badly as you do, I guess I might be a tad sore about it, too. And as for making babies… how many times did you miss that putt on the eighth…’

Now it was Samantha’s gibe that earned a responsive titter of amusement from around her.

Without giving Cliff the opportunity to retaliate she turned on her heel and walked quickly away, her head held high.

What did it matter that she knew the moment she was out of sight and earshot that the others would be talking about her, gossiping about her, the six foot Amazon of a woman who, in all the time she had been with the Corporation, had never attended any of its social events with an escort; the only one of her admittedly relatively small group of female peers in what was essentially a very male-biased industry who had not, at one point or another, confided the details of her private life to the others.

Now, at just over thirty, Samantha was well aware that she had entered a decade which might prove to be one of the most productive and fast-paced of her whole life. It was also a decade which would see the chance of her meeting a man, the man…the man she would be able to fall in love with, the man she would want to spend the rest of her life with, the man with whom she would have the babies she craved so much, sharply declining.

There would be men of course…were men…masses of them, men who didn’t want to commit, men who didn’t want children, men who did want children, but who most definitely did not want a wife, men who were already married…men who…Oh, yes, the list of men to avoid was endless and the choice narrowed even further when one was as picky as her.

‘Why don’t you at least have a date with him?’ her twin sister Roberta had demanded the last time she had been over visiting her family in the States from her newfound home in England. Their mother had been complaining to Bobbie about Sam’s obduracy in not accepting a date from the man who had been pursuing her at the time.

‘There isn’t any point. I already know he isn’t the one,’ Samantha had told her fatalistically. ‘It’s all very well for you to take Mom’s side,’ she had complained to her twin later when they were on their own. ‘You’ve found your man, your perfect “one and only,” and when I’ve seen how special what you and Luke have together is, how happy you are, how could I possibly settle for anything less.’

‘Oh, Sam.’ Bobbie had hugged her contritely. ‘I’m sorry, you’re right, you mustn’t but I have to say I hope you find him soon. Oh dear,’ she had then apologised as she’d started to yawn, ‘I do feel tired.’

‘Tired, I’m not surprised,’ Samantha had laughed, and then unable to stop herself she glanced with rueful envy at her twin’s heavily pregnant body—not with twins as Bobbie had first hoped, though. This was another single pregnancy. Seeing the look in her eyes Bobbie had asked her gently, ‘Have you never met anyone you could love, Sam? Has there never been anyone you have loved?’

Samantha had thought for a moment before shaking her head. Her blonde hair, unlike her twin’s, was cropped into a mass of short tender curls that framed her perfectly shaped face making her large blue eyes seem even larger and darker than Bobbie’s.

‘No. Not unless you count that crush I had on Liam way back when he first started working for Dad…I must have been all of fourteen at the time and Liam pretty soon made it clear that he wasn’t interested in a juvenile brat with braces on her teeth and her hair in plaits.’

Roberta had laughed. Liam Connolly was their father’s most senior assistant and it was no secret in the family that Stephen Miller was encouraging him to run for the position of State Governor when he himself retired.

‘Yeah, well I guess to a man of twenty-one, especially one as good-looking as Liam, the idea of having a fourteen-year-old adoringly worshipping him doesn’t hold that much appeal.’

‘Believe me, so far as Liam was concerned it didn’t have any appeal,’ Sam had returned feelingly. ‘Do you know he even refused to kiss me one particular Thanksgiving. Can you believe that—and me his boss’s daughter…’

‘Yeah, that could have been a real bad career move,’ Bobbie had agreed tongue-in-cheek, ‘ and an even worse one if Dad had found out Liam was encouraging you.’

‘Mmm…and Liam has always put his career ahead of everything else.’

Bobbie had raised her eyebrows a little at the critical note in her twin’s voice, inviting an explanation of Sam’s acidic one.

‘Oh, come on, Bo Bo, there’s been a succession of women in his life—and his bed—but even Dad’s commented on the fact he’s never come anywhere near making a serious commitment to anyone. Lordy, he hasn’t even allowed any of them to move into his house.’

‘Perhaps he’s still looking for Ms. Right…’

Samantha had given her sister an old-fashioned look.

‘If he is, then all I can say is that he surely is having one hell of a good time with an awful lot of Ms. Wrongs first!’

Now, all too well aware of what was likely to be being said about her behind her back in the general office, Samantha headed for the elevators. So what if officially she wasn’t due to take her lunch break for another full half an hour? Right now she needed to breathe fresh clean air and not the stale rancid stuff she had just been forced to endure, contaminated as it had been by Cliff’s malice and envy. Because that was what had sparked his attack on her, Samantha knew that…He had been riding her hard for the last six weeks—ever since she had been offered the promotion he himself had wanted.

She had a month’s leave coming up soon, thank goodness, and she had already made arrangements to spend most of it in England with her twin.

Her father’s term as State Governor had only a little more time to run, otherwise he and her mother would have been joining her.

Theirs was a very close family, made all the more so because of its history. Her mother had been born illegitimately to Ruth Crighton, the unmarried daughter of the Crighton family of Haslewich in Cheshire, England, at the time when unmarried girls of Ruth’s class simply did not become pregnant or certainly were not supposed to.

It had been during the Second World War. Ruth had fallen deeply in love with Samantha’s grandfather but, due to a misunderstanding and the disapproval of her own father who had a bias against Americans, Ruth had erroneously believed that Grant had lied to her about being single and actually already had a wife and a child in the States. Pressured by her family, Ruth had given her baby, Samantha and Roberta’s mother, up for adoption.

By one of those quirks of fate that always seemed too far-fetched to be possible, Ruth’s baby had been adopted in secret by Grant, who had assumed that Ruth was rejecting her child in the same way she had rejected him.

It had only been when, on realising how badly their mother, Sarah Jane, was still affected by the dreadful hurt caused to her by her mother’s rejection, that Samantha and Roberta had hatched a plan to bring Ruth to book for her desertion of her child. It was then that the whole real circumstances surrounding the birth had come to light.

Not only had their grandparents been reunited, but Roberta had also met Luke to whom she was now married and already had one child. Another was on the way.

Like their grandmother, Luke, too, was a Crighton. Only from the Chester, not the Haslewich branch of the family.

Crightons and the law went together like peaches and cream and so it was no surprise that Luke should be one of the city’s leading counsel.

Initially Samantha had been inclined to be a little in awe of her slightly austere brother-in-law, but beneath that austerity lay hidden a wicked sense of humour and a very dry wit. True, he had stolen away Sam’s beloved twin sister and put the width of the Atlantic between them, but he had also, it had to be admitted, made Bobbie deliriously happy and they were not the kind of twins who needed to live in one another’s pockets. But there were times like now when the one person, the only person, she wanted was her twin sister.

Cliff Marlin might be little more than a pathetic apology for a real man but he was a pathetic apology for a real man who had hurt her far more badly than she wanted him or anyone else to see.

His malicious taunt had cut deep and dirty. Not even Bobbie knew how gut-wrenchingly envious Sam sometimes felt or how shocked she had been to recognise how strong her own inner conviction that she would be the first one of them to marry and have children had been.

She did not begrudge Bobbie her happiness, of course she didn’t, and she had seen the anguish and pain Bobbie had gone through when she had thought that Luke didn’t return her feelings, it was just that…It was just what? she asked herself tersely, worrying at the thought with the same intensity she was worrying at her bottom lip as she strode out into the spring sunshine.

It was just that she had this yearning, this hunger to be a mother. It was just that she felt raw with the pain of not fulfilling the tender nurturing side of her nature. But how could she compromise? How could she have a child when there was no man in her life?

Earlier when Bobbie had teased her that she would have to hurry up and find someone so that she could provide her own baby with cousins, Sam had laughed and mocked her twin that a man wasn’t necessary for the purpose of procreation any more, at least, not the kind of loving personal contact with one that Bobbie seemed to be enjoying so much. She hadn’t meant it of course, she had simply been giving in to that slightly offbeat side of her nature that had gotten her into trouble so many, many times when she had been growing up. There was an impetuous, an impulsive and very strong streak of determination running through her character, Samantha acknowledged wryly.

Back there in the office just now for instance, the temptation to throw Cliff’s words back at him and tell him that she would prove to him just how much of a woman she was, that she would prove to them all just how easily she could find herself a partner, have herself a baby, had almost been too strong for her to resist, but fortunately she had resisted it.

It would have been foolhardy in the extreme for her—a career woman who worked in the hard-nosed business of modern computer technology, where logic was a necessity—to give in to the impulse to throw caution to the winds and go with the heady wave of emotion which had stormed her, riding its crest triumphantly like Pacific surf as she told Cliff that not only could she disprove his words but that she actually would.

Naturally it ill behoved the daughter of the State’s Governor to give in to such a hotheaded impulse. Her father was another mark against her in Cliff’s eyes, of course. She had overheard the sneering comments he had made to another colleague when she had been offered the job he had tried so desperately hard to win for himself.

‘It’s obvious she wouldn’t have had a chance if it hadn’t been for the fact that her father is the State Governor,’ she had heard him saying bitterly. ‘No prizes for guessing just what’s going on. The company has put in tenders for government work and what better way to tip the odds in their favour than by getting in the Governor’s good books by promoting his daughter…’

It wasn’t true, Samantha knew that. She had won that promotion on merit. She was, quite simply, the better person for the job and she had told Cliff so in no uncertain terms. He hadn’t liked hearing her saying it, no sirree, and he had liked it even less when she had beaten him hands down in the firm’s annual golf tournament.

She had Liam to thank for that. He was a first-rate player and, even as a teenager, he had never allowed her the indulgence of beating him, mercilessly telling her just where she was going wrong. He was equally good at playing chess—and poker—which was why her father claimed he would make a first-rate Governor.

Her parents had been discussing that very subject when they had all sat down to supper earlier in the week.

‘Well, I can understand why you’re so keen that Liam should run for Governor when you retire,’ her mother had agreed, ‘but if he gets elected he’s going to be the youngest Governor this state has ever had.’

‘Mmm…he’s thirty-seven, which I guess does make him a little on the young side.’

‘Thirty-seven and unmarried,’ Sarah Jane had persisted. ‘He’d stand a far better chance of getting in if he had a wife…’

As Stephen Miller raised his eyebrows, Sam’s mother had insisted, ‘Don’t look at me like that. You know it’s true. Voters like the idea of their Governor being a happily married family man. It makes them feel secure and it reinforces their instinctive beliefs that…’

‘…that what? A married man is a better Governor than an unmarried one?’ her father had asked dryly. But he still had to concede that Sarah Jane had a point.

‘Well, Liam certainly isn’t short of suitable candidates for the position of his wife,’ her father had admired, immediately looking a little shamefaced as her mother had expostulated.

‘Stephen Miller, I do believe you are envious of him!’

‘Envious. No, of course I’m not,’ he had protested.

‘Well, I should think you should look a mite ashamed,’ her mother scolded mock severely. ‘Otherwise I might start to believe that you don’t appreciate either me or your family.’

‘Honey, you know that just isn’t true,’ her father had responded immediately and so tenderly that tears had filled Samantha’s eyes.

How could she ever accept second-best when she had before her not just the example of her twin’s fervently happy marriage, but that of her darling, wonderful parents and, of course, her grandparents who were still just as much in love with one another now as they had been that fateful war-torn summer they had first met.

Only she seemed unable to find a mate for herself, a mate who would love her and father the children Cliff had so hatefully taunted her that no man would want to give her.

Oh, but what she would give to prove him wrong, to walk into that general office not just with her wonderful Mr. Right on her arm but with her stomach triumphantly, wonderfully big with his child…his children…As yet Bobbie hadn’t followed in the Crighton family tradition and conceived twins. She had hoped earlier on in her current pregnancy she might have done, but her routine scans had shown that there was only one baby, although now in the late stages of her pregnancy Bobbie was grumbling that she felt large enough to be carrying quads.

Twins!

Twins…They ran through the history of the Crighton family like an often-repeated refrain and yet, oddly, despite all the new marriages which had taken place these last few years amongst her cousins—first, seconds and thirds—no one had, as yet, produced the next generation of double births.

Samantha closed her eyes. She could see herself now, leaning a little heavily onto the strong supporting arm of her love, her smile beatific, her body weighed down by the twin babies she was carrying perhaps, but her spirits, her heart, buoyed up with love and excitement.

‘Sam.’

The sharp warning note in her twin’s voice was so clear, so real, that Bobbie could almost have been there beside her.

Guiltily she opened her eyes and then realised that someone had actually spoken to her but that that someone was most definitely not her beloved twin sister.

Exhaling warily she looked up into the silver-grey eyes of Liam Connolly.

Yes, looked up because Liam, thanks, or so he said, to the Viking ancestry he claimed he possessed through his mother’s Norwegian family and in spite of his quite definitely un-Nordic very dark hair, was actually a good three inches taller than she was herself, taller even than her own father—just.

‘Er, L—Liam…’ Why on earth was she stuttering and stammering like a child caught with her fingers in a forbidden cookie jar? Samantha wondered.

Liam indicated the busy road in front of them and told her dryly, ‘I know you like to think you’re super-human but somehow I don’t think the right way to try to prove it is to cross the freeway with your eyes closed. Besides, we have a law in this state against jaywalking, you know.’

As Sam heaved a small rebellious sigh, she had no idea what it was about Liam that always made her feel as though she was still fourteen years old and hot-headedly troublesome with it, but somehow or other he always did.

‘Dad says you’ve agreed to run for State Governor when he retires,’ she announced, trying to change the subject.

‘Mmm…’ He shot her a perceptive look from those incredible eyes that sometimes could seem so sexily smoky and smouldering and at other times could look so flintily cold that they could turn your heart to ice and your conscience to a clear piece of Perspex with every small sin clearly visible through it.

‘I take it you don’t approve?’

‘You’re thirty-seven. New Wiltshire County practically runs itself. I should have thought you’d want something you could get your teeth into a little more.’

‘Like what? President?’ Liam drawled. ‘New Wiltshire County might not mean much to you, but believe me it’s got a hell of a lot going for it. Do you realise that we’re well on our way to passing new state legislation which will actually have our people voluntarily giving up their guns? Did you know that we have one of the lowest rates of unemployment in the entire union and that our kids have one of the highest overall pass out grades from high school? Did you know that our welfare programme has just been applauded as one of the finest in the union and that…’

‘Yes…Yes, I do know all those things, and I’m not knocking the county. It’s my home, after all, and I love it. My father is its Governor and…’

Fixing his steel-grey gaze on her, Liam ignored what she was saying, demanding seriously, ‘Did you know that the gardens surrounding the Governor’s residence have been declared a tribute to our Governor’s lady’s taste and knowledge of—’

‘Oh, but I designed those,’ Sam began and then stopped, glaring accusingly at him.

‘Oh, all right, you got me there,’ she acknowledged ruefully, her own mouth curving into a reluctant smile as she saw the humour in the curl of Liam’s mouth.

‘New Wiltshire County is a wonderful place, Liam, I know that. I just thought you might prefer something a little bit more…a little bit less parochial,’ she told him dryly, unable to resist adding, ‘After all, you seem to spend an awful lot of time in Washington.’

‘With your father,’ Liam replied promptly before adding, ‘but if I’d realised that you were missing me…’

Sam gave him a withering look.

‘Don’t give me that,’ she warned him. ‘I know you—remember…I don’t know what all those girls you date see in you Liam—’ she began severely.

‘No?’ he interrupted her swiftly. ‘Want me to show you?’

To her own irritation Sam could feel herself starting to colour up a little.

She knew perfectly well that Liam was only teasing her. She ought to; after all, he had been doing it for long enough.

‘No thanks,’ she responded automatically. ‘I prefer exclusivity in my men. Exclusivity and brown eyes,’ she told him mock musingly. ‘Yes, there is quite definitely something about a man with brown eyes.’

‘Brown eyes…Mmm…Well, I guess I could always keep mine closed—or wear contact lenses. What were you thinking about when I saw you just then?’ he demanded, completely changing tack.

‘Thinking about?’

Samantha knew perfectly well how he would read it if she was to tell him. He would be even more disapproving and dismissive than her twin sister.

‘Er…nothing…not really,’ she fibbed, then as she saw him start to frown and guessed that he wasn’t going to let her answer stand without some further questioning, she added quickly, ‘I was thinking about my upcoming visit to Bobbie.’

‘You’re going to England?’

Samantha shot him an uncertain look. He was frowning and his voice had sharpened almost to the point of curtness.

‘Uh-huh, for a whole month. More than long enough I guess for Bobbie to put her matchmaking plans into practice,’ she told him flippantly.

‘Bobbie’s trying to matchmake for you?’

‘You know what she’s like.’ Samantha shrugged. ‘She’s so besotted with Luke that she wants to see me equally happily married off. You’d better watch out, Liam,’ she joked, ‘You’re even older than me. She could be matchmaking for you next! Mind you, perhaps she’s right. England could be the place to find a man,’ Samantha mused, her eyes clouding as she remembered Cliff’s taunt. ‘There is something deeply attractive about English men.’

‘Especially when they’ve got brown eyes?’ Liam asked in an unfamiliarly hard voice.

‘Umm…especially then,’ Samantha agreed unseriously. But Liam, it seemed, was taking the subject much more seriously than she was because he looked away from her and when he looked back his eyes were a particularly cold and analytical shade of grey.

‘It wouldn’t be one specific brown-eyed Englishman we are talking about, would it?’

‘One specific…’ Samantha was lost. ‘Well, gee, I guess one would be enough,’ she agreed, putting on her best country-cousin hill-billy voice. ‘At least to start with, but then…What are you getting at, Liam?’ she asked him, dropping the fake accent as she saw the way he was watching her.

‘I was just remembering the way Luke’s brother was watching you at Luke and Bobbie’s wedding,’ he told her coolly. ‘ His eyes were brown, if I remember correctly.’

‘James…’ Samantha frowned. She couldn’t quite remember what colour his eyes had been and most certainly James had been a real honey, seriously good-looking and seriously open about his own desire to settle down and raise a family, no commitment phobia there and most definitely no bias against tall independent women. No sirree.

‘Mmm…you’re right, they were, ’ she agreed, giving Liam an absent smile.

‘Of course, we’d have brown-eyed babies.’

‘ What did you say…’

Vaguely, Samantha looked at Liam. She had just had the most wonderful idea.

‘Brown-eyes genes dominate over blue, don’t they?’ she asked him, not expecting a response.

‘Sam, just what the hell is going on?’

Liam grabbed hold of her upper arm, not painfully but firmly enough for Samantha to recognise that he wasn’t easily going to let go of her.

She gave a small sigh and looked up at him.

‘Liam, would you say that I was the kind of woman who couldn’t…who a man wouldn’t…’ She stopped as her throat threatened to clog with tears, swallowing them down fiercely before continuing gruffly, ‘Someone told me today that I’m not woman enough for a man to want her to…to…to become a mother. Well, I’m going to prove him wrong, Liam…I’m going to prove him so wrong that…

‘I’m going to go to England and I’m going to find myself a man who knows how to love and value a real woman, the real woman in me and he’s going to love me and I’m going to love him so much that…

‘Let me go, Liam,’ she demanded, aware that he’d tightened his grip on her. ‘I’ve already overrun my lunch hour and I’ve got about a million and one things I have to do…’

‘Samantha,’ Liam began warningly, but she’d already pulled free of him and was walking away. Her mind was made up even if rather ironically it had taken Liam of all people to point her in the right direction and there was no way she was going to let anyone change it. In England she would find love just as her twin had done. Why on earth hadn’t she thought of that…realised that before? English men were different. English men weren’t like Cliff. English men…One Englishman would love her as she so longed to be loved and she would love him right back.

Already she was regretting having told Liam as much as she had. Oh, that wilful impetuous tongue of hers, but she certainly wasn’t going to tell anyone else—not even Bobbie. No, her quest to find her perfect Mr. Right, the perfect father for the babies she so longed to have, was going to be her secret and hers alone.

Her eyes sparkling with elation, Samantha walked back into her office building.

CHAPTER TWO

‘J UST think, in a little over a week I shall be in Haslewich with Bobbie.’

Samantha closed her eyes and smiled in delicious anticipation, looking more like the teenager she had been when Liam had first met her than the sophisticated, independent career woman she now was.

On the opposite side of the elegant mahogany dining table, which was a family heirloom and which her mother had insisted on bringing with them from the family residence in the small town which her husband’s family had virtually founded to the Governor’s residence where they now all lived together, Sarah Jane Miller smiled tenderly at her daughter.

‘I really do envy you, darling,’ she told her. ‘I just wish that your father and I were coming with you but it’s impossible right now.’

‘I know, but at least you’ll be getting to spend Christmas with Bobbie this year. Dad’s term of office will have finished by then.’

‘Mmm…I must admit I shan’t be sorry,’ her mother responded, and then looked apologetically across the table to the fourth member of the quartet.

Over the years Liam Connolly had worked for her husband the two men had become very close and Sarah Jane knew it was no secret to Liam that she preferred the elegant New England home she had shared with her husband to the rather less intimate atmosphere of the Governor’s residence which was also home to the state’s small suite of administration offices.

‘Oh, Liam, it’s not that the house isn’t…’ She stopped and laughed, shaking her head. ‘What am I saying,’ she chuckled ruefully. ‘ You know all too well that I can’t wait to get back to our own home. I hope that when you do decide to marry that you’ll warn your wife-to-be just what she’s going to have to take on…when she moves in here…’

‘It isn’t a foregone conclusion that I’ll get elected to the governorship,’ Liam reminded her dryly.

‘Oh, but I hope you do,’ Samantha’s mother insisted. ‘You’re so obviously the very best man for the job.’

‘Sarah Jane is right,’ Samantha’s father cut in warmly. ‘And I can tell you, Liam, that I’ve heard on the grapevine that the New Wiltshire and even some Washington hostesses are already preparing their celebratory dinners for you.’

Dutifully Samantha joined in her mother’s amused laughter but for some reason she couldn’t define, she didn’t find the idea of Liam being vetted by the sophisticated women of Washington as pleasantly amusing as both her parents did.

‘There is one thing you are going to have to consider though, Liam,’ her father was continuing in a more serious vein. ‘I’m not saying that your election to the governorship is dependent on it, but there’s no getting away from the fact that as a married man you would significantly increase your appeal to the voters.’

Very carefully Liam put the pear he had been peeling back on his plate. He had, Samantha noticed, unlike her, managed to remove most of its skin without either drastically altering the shape of the fruit or covering himself in its juice. But then, Liam was like that. She had seen him remove his suit jacket to set about lending a hand to some mundane task requiring the kind of muscle power so very evident in his six-foot-four broad-shouldered frame and complete the job without even managing to get a speck of dirt on his immaculately clean shirt. She, on the other hand, couldn’t so much as open a fridge door without knocking something over.

‘It’s only a matter of months before voting takes place,’ Liam reminded her father dryly. ‘Somehow I feel that the voters would be less than impressed by a hasty and a very obviously publicity-planned marriage.’

‘There’s plenty of time before your first term of office would begin,’ her father pointed out. ‘I knew I wanted to marry Sarah Jane within days of first meeting her.’

Across the table Samantha’s parents exchanged tenderly loving looks. Sam looked away. Her parents were so very, very lucky.

Fiercely she worried at her lip. As a teenager her mother had once told her gently, chidingly, ‘Samantha Miller, if you keep on doing that, that poor bottom lip of yours is going to be permanently sore and swollen.’

‘Mom’s right,’ Bobbie had hissed teasingly at her when their mother had left the room. ‘But my, oh, my, how sexy it’s going to look. Boys are just going to die wanting to feel how it is to kiss you.’

‘Boys…yuck…’ Samantha had protested. Who wanted boys when there was Liam? What would it be like to be kissed by him? He had the sexiest mouth she had ever seen. Just thinking about it, never mind looking at it, made her shiver all over.

‘I understand what you’re saying,’ Liam was admitting to her father now, ‘but personally I don’t believe that getting married is necessarily going to make me a better Governor. In fact,’ he added wryly, ‘it would probably be more likely to have just the opposite effect. Men in love are, after all, notoriously unable to concentrate upon anything other than their beloved.’

‘Perhaps it’s just as well then that you are in love with your career,’ Samantha suggested, adding before Liam could comment, ‘You have to admit that you’ve always given it far more attention than you have any woman.’

‘Sam…’ her mother objected, but Liam simply shook his head.

‘No wonder you’re no good at chess,’ he taunted her, ‘making a move on your opponent is no good unless you keep yourself protected and have the next move already planned. I could point out that you are equally bereft of a partner and that you, too, would appear to have sacrificed your most personal intimate relationships in favour of your career.’

‘Not in the way that you have, I haven’t,’ Samantha objected hotly. ‘You deliberately pick women who you know you’re going to get bored with. You don’t want a serious relationship. You’re a commitment phobic, Liam,’ she told him dangerously. ‘Secretly you’re afraid of giving yourself emotionally to a woman.’

‘Oh, then it seems to me that we have something very much in common.’

‘What do you mean?’ Samantha asked him challengingly.

‘It’s so obvious that the kind of man you need is one who’d keep you earthed, provide a solid base to offset your own more tempestuous one, but instead you always go for the same type, emotionally unstable, manipulative, lame dogs. My guess is you feel more passionate about them as a cause than as men.

‘You accuse me of being afraid of giving myself emotionally to a woman, Samantha. Well I’d say that you are very much afraid of committing yourself, of giving yourself wholly and completely, sexually, to a man. Excuse me.’ Without giving her any opportunity to either defend herself or retaliate, he stood up, politely excusing himself to her parents.

‘I’ve got some work I really need to do. I’ll see you in the morning Stephen and I should have those figures you were asking me for by then.’

As he walked around the table and gave her mother a brief kiss on the cheek Samantha wondered if her face looked as hot with chagrin as it felt. How could he have said something like that to her, and in front of her parents? It wasn’t true, of course, how could it be?

It wasn’t, after all, as though she was some timid, cowering virgin who had never known physical intimacy. She had lost her virginity in the time-honoured way as a sophomore at college with her then boyfriend whom she had been dating for several months. And if the experience had turned out to be more of a rite of passage than the entry into a whole new world of perfect love and emotional and physical bliss and euphoria, well then she hadn’t been so very different from any of her peers, from what she had heard.

True that, unlike Liam, she didn’t have a list of sexual conquests as long as her arm. True, her own secret, somewhat mortifying view of herself was as a woman to whom sex was never going to be of prime importance, certainly nothing as important as emotional intimacy or as the love she would have for the children she would bear. But was that so very wrong? Did putting sex at the top of one’s list of what was important in life truly make for a better person? Samantha didn’t think so and she was certainly not going to pretend to either a sexual desire or a sexual history she did not possess simply because it might be expected of her.

‘You know, it’s at times like this that I wonder if you’re actually a teenager or really in your thirties,’ Samantha heard her father remark ruefully as he, too, stood up.

Imploringly she looked at her mother.

‘That’s not fair, Mom. It was Liam who started it and…’

‘Your father does have a point, darling,’ her mother interrupted her gently. ‘You do tend to ride Liam rather hard at times.’

‘ I ride him! ’ Samantha objected indignantly, and then she suddenly felt her face flooding with scarlet colour, not because she felt guilty about what she had said but because she had suddenly realised the sexual connotations of her mother’s comment.

Liam…sex…and her? Oh no! No…She had outgrown that particular folly a long time ago.

‘He deserves it,’ she told her mother fiercely. ‘He can be so damned arrogant. If he ever gets to be Governor he’s going to have to develop a far more human and gentle way of dealing with other people. When it comes to figures or logic Liam may be the best there is, but when it comes to his fellow human beings…’

‘Sam. Now you are being unfair,’ her mother chided her firmly. ‘And I think you know it. If you’d only seen the way Liam reacted to and spoke with the children at the Holistic Centre the other week.’

She paused and shook her head.

‘I could have sworn I saw tears in his eyes when he was holding that little boy,’ she commented to her husband as he prepared to leave the room. ‘You remember the one I mean, the autistic boy they had there for assessment.’

‘Yes, Liam told me himself that if he gets elected he intends to make sure that the centre gets the very best of funding and help he can give it.’

The Holistic Centre was one of Sam’s mother’s pet charities—the establishment and support of charities was very much a Crighton thing on the other side of the Atlantic. The series of special units Ruth, Samantha’s grandmother and Sarah Jane’s mother, had established were unique in the facilities they provided for single parents and their children and all the Crighton women were tireless in their fund-raising work for a diverse range of good causes.

Out of all the charities her own mother supported, the Holistic Centre, which treated children with special needs, was Samantha’s own favourite and whenever she could she gave her spare time to helping out there and working to raise money for it.

‘I didn’t know that Liam had visited the centre,’ she commented sharply now.

‘Mmm…He asked if he could come with me the last time I visited,’ her mother explained. ‘And I must say, I was impressed with the way he related to the children. For a man without younger siblings and no children of his own, he certainly has a very sure and special touch with kids.’

‘He’s probably practising his baby kissing techniques to impress the voters!’

‘Samantha!’ her mother objected, quite obviously shocked.

‘Samantha? Samantha what?’ Sam demanded shakily as she got up. She knew she was overreacting and perhaps even behaving a little unfairly but somehow she couldn’t help herself. Right now she was the one who needed her parents’ support, their complete and full approval…their understanding. Cliff’s cruel comments had hurt her very deeply, shaken her, disturbed her, uncovered a secret ache of unhappiness and dissatisfaction with herself and her life.

‘You always take Liam’s side,’ she accused her bewildered parents, her eyes suddenly brilliant with tears. ‘It’s not fair…’ And then, like the youthful teenager her father had accused her of resembling, she turned and fled from the room.

‘What on earth was all that about?’ Stephen asked in confusion when she had gone. ‘Is it one of those women’s things…?’

‘No. It’s not that.’ Sarah Jane shook her head, her forehead pleating in an anxious maternal frown.

‘I’m worried about Samantha, Stephen. I know she’s always been inclined to be a little up and down emotionally—she’s so passionate and intense about everything—but that’s what makes her the very special person she is…But, well…this last year…’ She paused, her frown deepening. ‘I’m glad she’s going on this visit with Bobbie. She never says it, but I know how much she misses her.’ She paused and gave him a wry smile.

‘Do you remember when they were growing up how it was always Sam who played big sister to the other kids on the block and how, when Tom came along she fussed over him like a little mother? We always said then that Sam would be the one to get married first and have children and that Bobbie would be the career girl.’

She saw that Stephen was looking a little nonplussed.

‘What is it you’re trying to say?’ he asked her.

‘I’m not sure,’ she admitted. ‘I just know that something’s upsetting Samantha.’

‘Well, she and Liam have never exactly seen eye to eye.’

‘No, it isn’t Liam,’ Sarah Jane told him positively. ‘Poor Liam, I do feel for him.’ She gave a small chuckle. ‘I rather suspect that if he hadn’t been sitting at our dinner table there was a moment this evening when he might definitely have reacted more forcefully to Sam’s remarks.’

‘Mmm…He and Sam have never got on,’ her husband agreed.

Sarah Jane’s eyes widened.

‘Oh, but…’ she began and then stopped. ‘Do you think he’ll seriously consider getting married in order to strengthen his position in running for Governor?’

‘Not purely for that,’ Stephen announced positively. ‘He’s far too honest—and too proud—to stoop to those kinds of tactics, but like I said earlier, he is thirty-seven and, despite all the hassle Sam gives him about his girlfriends, he’s never given me the impression that he’s the kind of man who needs to feed his ego with a constant stream of sexual conquests—far from it.’

‘Mmm…I think you’re right. In fact—’ She stopped. ‘With his ancestry it’s entirely feasible that Liam’s rational exterior could hide a very emotional and romantic heart indeed. In fact I think that Liam, contrary to what Sam said, is looking for love and commitment—he just hasn’t found the right woman yet, that’s all.’

She got up from the table and dropped a loving kiss on her husband’s cheek as she walked past him.

‘I’d better go up and see if Sam’s okay.’

A week later Samantha gave a small sigh of achievement and relief as the clasps on her large suitcase finally responded to the pressure of her weight on top of the case and snapped closed.

‘Thank goodness,’ Sam muttered under her breath.

She would be way over the weight limit, she knew that, but what the heck. A series of long excited conversations with her twin over the intervening week had elicited the information that there were a series of social events coming up in both Chester and Haslewich which Bobbie intended to have her twin join in.

‘There’s the Lord Lieutenant’s Ball at the end of your stay. We’ve already got tickets for that. It’s going to be especially wonderful this year as the current Lord Lieutenant is stepping down. You’ll need a proper evening gown for that, and then there’s the charity cricket match and the strawberry tea afterwards. The bad news, though, is that Luke has three very important court cases pending so he could be called away at short notice. And of course with the baby due soon I shan’t be able to do as much as I would have liked. However, once he or she arrives, you and I are going to do some serious fashion shopping, I’m so tired of maternity clothes.’

‘Mmm…’ Sam had enthused. ‘I’ve read that Milan is the place to shop right now, the prices are really keen and you know how I love those Italian designers.’

‘Mmm…Which reminds me, don’t forget to bring some clam diggers, will you, and some jeans. They just don’t do them over here like they do back home. Oh, and dungarees for Francesca and shirts for Luke and for James…’

‘How is James?’ Samantha had asked her twin coyly.

‘He’s fine and he’s certainly looking forward to seeing you,’ Bobbie had taunted her.

Samantha had laughed back. Bobbie had taunted her mercilessly at the time of her own wedding that James had fallen for her, but then Samantha had simply thought of him as a very nice soon-to-be in-law and member of the large Crighton clan.

Now, though, things were a little different.

Milan wasn’t the only city to boast fine designer shops and she had paid an extended visit to Boston prior to doing her packing. The resultant purchases were all designed to underscore the fact that being tall did not in any way mean that was not wholly and completely a woman. A satisfied smile curled Samantha’s mouth as she contemplated the effect of her new purchases on her intended victim. James, she knew instinctively, was the kind of man who preferred to see a woman dressed like a woman.

Her smile was replaced by a small frown as she studied her closed suitcase. Closed it might be, but it still had to be gotten downstairs and there was no point in calling the man who helped with the garden to assist her. Hyram was a honey, but he was close on seventy and there was no way he could lift her case.

Nope…There were occasions when being tall and healthily muscled were an advantage—and this, she decided, was one of them.

She negotiated the suitcase to the top of the stairs so that she could leave it in the lobby ready for her early morning flight and had just paused to take a rest, muttering complainingly at the overstuffed case as she did so. Her face felt hot and flushed and the exertion had made her hair cling in silky strands to the nape of her neck and her flushed cheeks. Turning her back towards the stairs, she eyed the suitcase.

‘It’s not just my clothes,’ she told it sternly. ‘It’s that sister of mine and…’

‘What the…’

The unexpected sound of Liam’s voice on the stairs behind her caused Samantha to jump and turn round, forgetting that she had momentarily balanced the case precariously on one of the stairs whilst she leaned against it to hold it in position.

The result was inevitable.

The suitcase, disobligingly ignoring her wailed protest, slid heavily down the stairs, past Liam, bouncing on the half landing before coming to a halt against a solid wooden chest where the combined effect of its speedy fall and its heavy weight caused the clasps to burst open and the contents of the case to tumble out all over the stairs.

‘Oh, there now, see what you’ve done,’ Samantha accused Liam angrily. ‘If you hadn’t crept up on me like that…’

‘I rather think, more to the point, you shouldn’t have overpacked the thing in the first place,’ Liam corrected her dryly, turning his back on her as he headed down the stairs, hunkering down on the half landing as he proceeded to gather up the case’s disgorged garments.

It was, as Samantha later seethed to herself in the privacy of her bedroom, revoltingly unfair of fate to have decreed that the stuff which had fallen out of her case wasn’t the sturdy, sensible jeans she had bought for her sister, nor the dungarees for Francesca, her niece, nor even the shirts requested by her brothers-in-law, but instead, the frivolous bits of silky satin and lace items of underwear she had recklessly bought for herself on her shopping spree in Boston.

Creamy satin lace-trimmed bras with the kind of boning that meant that the kind of things they did for a woman’s figure were strictly seriously flirtatious. And, even worse, there on the carpet beside them were the ridiculously un-functional French knickers that had helped swallow up a large portion of her pay cheque. Add to that the equally provocative garter belt and the silk stockings and combine them with the incredulous disdain with which Liam was looking from her scarlet face to the fragile pieces of feminine lingerie he was holding in his hands and it was no wonder that she was feeling uncomfortably hot and embarrassed, Samantha reflected.

‘I guess you aren’t planning to do much sport in Cheshire,’ Liam commented laconically. ‘Or—’ his eyebrows shot up as he gave her a very thorough look ‘—perhaps I’m wrong…’ He continued silkily, ‘Thinking of going hunting are you, Sam? If so…’

‘They aren’t mine, they’re a present for Bobbie,’ Samantha lied feverishly, hurrying down the stairs to snatch them away from him.

‘Mmm…. Well, if you’ll take my advice…as a man…something a little simpler and less structured would serve your purpose much better. These,’ he told her with a contemptuous look at the boned demi bra he was holding, ‘might be exciting for boys, but men…real men, prefer something a little more subtle and a lot more tactile…A sexy slither of silk and satin with tiny shoestring straps, something silky and fluid that drapes itself softly over a woman’s curves, hinting at them rather than…There’s nothing quite so sexy as that little hint of cleavage you get when a woman’s strap slips down off her shoulder…’

‘Well, thank you very much for your advice,’ Samantha snapped furiously at him. ‘But when I want your opinion on what a man finds sexy, Liam, you can be sure I’ll ask you for it. And anyway—’ She stopped abruptly.

‘Anyway what?’ Liam asked her mildly as he bent down again to retrieve a pretty silk wrap which was lying under the suitcase.

Samantha glared at him.

How could she tell him that when you were a woman with breasts as generously rounded and full as hers were, the type of silky clingy unstructured top he was describing was quite simply a “no-no” unless you wanted to stop all the traffic on the freeway.

‘This isn’t for Bobbie,’ he told her positively as he handed her the wrap.

‘What makes you say that?’ Samantha demanded.

‘It’s not her colour,’ he told her simply. ‘Her skin is paler than yours and her eyes lighter. This is your colour, but coffee or caramel would suit you even better.’

‘Thank you so much,’ Samantha gritted acidly as she snatched the wrap from him.

As she bent to try to stuff her possessions back into her suitcase, Liam knelt down beside her.

‘You need another case,’ he told her calmly. ‘This one, if you get it as far as the airport, will probably break the baggage conveyor belt. That’s if it doesn’t burst open again first.

‘You’re wrong, by the way,’ he added mystifyingly as Samantha tried to ignore the reality of what he was telling her.

‘It isn’t only women with tiny breasts who can go braless. You’ve got far too many hang-ups about your body, Samantha, do you know that?’

‘Is that a fact? Well. I’ll thank you to keep your opinions on my hang-ups and my…my breasts…to yourself if you don’t mind,’ Samantha gritted hot-faced at him, wondering how he had followed her embarrassed train of thought.

‘Of course, when it comes to bouncing around the tennis court, I agree that a woman needs a good sports bra,’ Liam was continuing as if she hadn’t spoken.

Samantha shot him a wary look. She played tennis in the residence’s court most mornings with her father and she always wore a sports bra—so what was Liam implying?

‘Look, why don’t I carry this back to your room for you so that you can repack it in two cases,’ Liam was offering.

To Samantha’s chagrin, as he picked up the case she could see that he was able to carry it far more easily than she herself had been able to do—carrying it not downstairs where she had intended to take it, she recognised, but back in the direction she had just come—to her bedroom.

As he elbowed open the door and dumped the heavy case on the floor, Samantha followed Liam into her room.

‘I was taking that downstairs…’ she began to upbraid him and then stopped abruptly.

Standing with his feet apart and his hands on his hips, Liam wasn’t watching her but instead was focusing on the pretty upholstered chair beside the window.

The chair—an antique—had been a gift from her grandmother, a pretty early Victorian rocker which Samantha had had recaned and for which she had made her own hand-stitched sampler cushions. But it wasn’t the chair or the cushions which were holding Liam’s attention—Samantha knew that and she knew too exactly what he was looking at.

‘Mom made me keep him,’ she began defensively, pushing past Liam and rushing over to the chair, protectively picking up the battered and slightly threadbare teddy bear who was seated on it.

‘She says it reminds her of when we were little. It was her bear before us and then Tom had him, too, and…Oh, you don’t understand,’ she breathed crossly. ‘You’re too unemotional. Too cold…’

‘You should run for government office yourself,’ Liam told her sardonically. ‘With your mind-reading talents you’d be a wow.’

‘Mind-reading,’ Samantha breathed heavily. ‘Oh you…’

‘For your information I am neither unemotional nor cold and as for Wilfred…’ Ignoring Samantha he walked up to her and deftly took the bear from her unresisting grasp.

‘I had one very like him when I was young. He came originally from Ireland with my grandfather. He was just a boy then…’

Samantha’s eyes widened. Liam rarely talked about his family—at least not to her. She knew he had no brothers or sisters and that his grandparents, immigrants from Ireland, had built up a very successful haulage business which Liam’s father had continued to run and expand until his death from a heart attack whilst Liam was at college.

Liam had sold the business—very profitably—with his mother’s approval. From a very young age he had known that he wanted to enter politics and both his parents and his grandparents when they had been alive, had fully supported him in this ambition, but it was from her mother that Samantha had gleaned these facts about Liam’s background, not from Liam himself.

‘Why does he never talk to me…treat me as an adult?’ she had once railed at her mother when Liam had pointedly ignored some questions she had been asking him about his grandparents. She had been at college at the time and working on an essay about the difficulties experienced by the country’s immigrants in the earlier part of the century and she had hoped to gain some first-hand knowledge and insights into the subject from Liam’s memories of his grandparents.

‘He’s a very proud man, sweetheart,’ her father had responded, hearing her exasperated question. ‘I guess he kinda feels that he doesn’t want his folks looked down on or…’

‘Looked down on…Why should I do that?’ Samantha had interrupted him indignantly.

‘Well, Liam is very conscious of the fact that his grandparents came to this country with very little in the way of material possessions, just what they could carry with them in fact, whilst…’

‘He thinks that I’d look down on him because your family arrived with Cabots and Adamses and all those other “first families” on the Mayflower who went on to form the backbone of North American early politics, wealth and society,’ Samantha had protested hotly. ‘Is that what he really thinks of me?’

‘Sweetheart, sweetheart,’ her father had protested gently. ‘I’m sure that Liam thinks no such thing. It’s just that he’s as reluctant to have his family background put under the public microscope as your mother would be hers. Not out of any sense of shame—quite the reverse—but out of a very natural desire to protect those he loves.’

‘But Gran is still alive whilst Liam’s grandparents are dead,’ Samantha had objected.

‘The principle is still the same,’ her father had pointed out gently.

Now, some impulse she couldn’t name made Samantha ask Liam softly, ‘Do you still have it…the bear…?’

His austere features suddenly broke into an almost boyish grin and for one breath-stopping moment Samantha actually felt as though something or someone was physically jerking her heartstrings. Impossible, of course, hearts didn’t have strings and if hers had then there was no way that one Liam Connolly could possibly have jerked them. No, it was just the mental image she had had of him as a small boy listening solemnly to his grandfather whilst he related to him tales of his own Irish upbringing.

‘Yes.’

‘You’ll be able to keep it for your children and tell them the stories your grandparents told you,’ Samantha told him impulsively.

Immediately his features changed and became formidably harsh.

‘Don’t you jump on the bandwagon,’ he told her grittily. ‘Everyone seems determined to marry me off. I’ve even had Lee Calder giving interviews stating that a single, childless Governor won’t understand the needs of the state’s parents. My God, when I think of the way he’s been trying to cut down on our education.’

Lee Calder was Liam’s closest contender for the governorship, a radical right-winger whose views Samantha’s father found totally unsympathetic. Lee was an overweight, balding man in his mid-forties, twice married with five children who he had overdisciplined and controlled to such an extent that the eldest, a boy, was rumoured to have shown his unhappiness by stealing money from his parents and trashing the family home with a group of friends one summer when the family were on vacation without him.

No matter what her personal opinion of Liam might be, Samantha knew that her father was quite right when he said that Liam would make an excellent Governor. Highly principled, firm, a natural leader, the state would flourish with Liam at its helm.

Lee Calder on the other hand, despite cleverly managing to package himself as a devoted family man and churchgoer, had a string of shady dealings behind him—nothing that could be proved, but there was something about the man. Samantha vividly remembered the occasion at an official function when he had grabbed hold of her and tried to kiss her.

Fortunately she had been able to push him away but not before she had seen the decidedly nasty glint in his eyes as she rejected him.

She had been all of seventeen at the time and as she recalled his second wife had been pregnant with their first child.

‘Don’t accuse me of trying to marry you off,’ she challenged Liam now.

‘No. By the looks of what you’ve got in that case you’re more interested in changing your own single status,’ Liam agreed derisively.

‘I’ve told you, those are for Bobbie,’ Samantha insisted.

‘And I’ve told you if you really want to catch yourself a man, the best way to do it is by…’ He stopped when he saw her frown, then continued. ‘You know that I’m driving you to the airport in the morning, don’t you?’

‘Yes,’ Samantha agreed on a small sigh. She had a very early start and had been quite prepared to order a cab but her father could be an old-fashioned parent in some ways.

‘No, sweetheart, you know what you’re like for getting yourself anyplace on time.’

‘Dad,’ Samantha had protested, ‘that was years ago…and an accident…just because I once missed a plane doesn’t mean…’

‘Liam’s driving you,’ her father had announced, and Samantha had known better than to argue with him. ‘As it happens, he’s picking someone up, as well.’

‘Someone…Who?’ Samantha had asked her father curiously.

‘Someone from Washington. I want him to take her on board as his campaign PR, she’s very good.’

‘She?’ Samantha had raised her eyebrows, her voice sharpening slightly. ‘You wouldn’t be doing a little matchmaking would you, Dad?’

‘Give your sister our love, remember,’ he had answered her obliquely, ‘and tell her we can’t wait to see them all….’

CHAPTER THREE

S AMANTHA checked a sleepy yawn as she ruffled her fingers through her still-damp curly crop. Despite the invigorating shower she had just taken her body was protestingly aware that it was only just gone three in the morning.

Still, she could sleep during the flight, she promised herself as she slicked a soft peachy-pink lipstick across her mouth and grimaced at her refection.

Not bad for a woman who’d slipped over thirty. Her skin was still as clear and fresh-looking as it had been ten years ago and even if there was now a deeper maturity and wisdom in her eyes than any twenty-year-old could have, a person was going to have to stand pretty close to her to see it.

James was in his mid-thirties but he had that boyish look about him that a few Englishmen have. Although equally as tall and strongly built as his elder brother Luke and just as stunningly handsome, James had about him a certain sweetness of nature which more austere men like his brother, and to some extent Liam, too, lacked. James was, in short, an absolute honey. He would be very easy to love, a wonderful husband and father…and an equally wonderful lover? The kind of lover she knew instinctively a man like Liam would be.

Samantha put down her lipstick and frowned. Now what on earth had put that thought into her head?

Liam as a lover…! Her lover? No way at all!

She glanced at her watch. Time she was downstairs. Liam would be picking her up in five minutes and he was very hot on good timekeeping.

Even though she had said her goodbyes to her parents the previous evening, she wasn’t totally surprised to have them rush downstairs minutes before she left to hug and kiss her and reiterate their messages of love to her twin as well as the rest of the Crightons.

‘Don’t forget that your grandparents should be arriving in Haslewich during the time you are there,’ Samantha’s mother reminded her.

‘How could I forget anything involving Grandma Ruth?’ Samantha teased her mother.

Ruth Crighton, as she had been before her late marriage to Sarah Jane’s father, was affectionately known as Aunt Ruth to virtually all of the Crighton family and so had become Grandma Ruth to Bobbie, Samantha and their younger brother.

Blissfully married at last to the American soldier she had first met during the Second World War, Ruth divided her time together with her husband between Haslewich and Grant’s beautiful American house.

‘Better not keep Liam waiting,’ her father counselled as they all heard the knock on the door.

She went to let him in and he thanked her before going over to her mother to give her a very easy and natural almost filially warm hug. Samantha acknowledged grudgingly that there was no way she could ever fault Liam’s behaviour towards her parents. He might deliberately rub her up the wrong way, inciting her to open rebellion and sometimes even outright war, but no one could have faked the look of very real warmth and affection he was giving her folks.

‘I see you took my advice about the suitcases,’ was his only comment to her once they were inside his car and he had loaded her two cases into its trunk.

Samantha scowled at him.

‘My decisions to repack had nothing to do with you,’ she told him loftily and a mite untruthfully. ‘Mom wanted me to take some extra gifts over for the family.’

The derisory look Liam was giving her silenced her.

‘Dad said you were picking up a Washington PR expert from the airport,’ she commented, deliberately changing the subject.

‘Mmm…’

‘You surprise me, Liam,’ she told him. ‘I thought you were far too confident to feel you needed any image polishing or manipulating.’

‘ I don’t,’ Liam assured her, ‘but some of your father’s supporters are concerned that Lee Calder could be planning to market himself as the family’s champion and they want to start up a damage limitation exercise.’

‘By what, marrying you off to this PR woman?’ Samantha asked flippantly before adding, ‘Wouldn’t it be simpler just to marry your current date…whoever she is…’

‘There is no current date,’ Liam told her. ‘And to be frank, Samantha, I’m getting rather tired of this image you keep trying to push of me as some kind of serial lady-killer. For your information—’ He broke off, cursing as a truck suddenly swerved out of a side street in front of them.

Samantha was far too glad of the diversion to reintroduce the same topic of conversation once the truck had gone. Much as she enjoyed baiting Liam, she also knew when it was wise to back off a little.

‘I could say much the same thing to you, you know,’ Liam murmured, turning his head to look directly at her as she turned towards him, warily waiting for what he was going to say.

‘If you’re as keen to prove to your colleagues as you said that you are woman enough to be a mother, then there are far easier ways of doing so than going looking in England for a man to father your child.’

‘What are you suggesting—artificial insemination. No way!’ Angrily Samantha turned away from him, staring in silence out of the car window.

Liam was a good driver and long before they had crossed the state line Samantha had dropped off to sleep, her body angled towards Liam’s, one hand resting under her face.

After he’d safely overtaken a truck, Liam turned his head to look at her. She had to be one of the most breathtakingly stunning women he had ever seen. Her sister Bobbie was beautiful but where Bobbie exuded an air of relaxed self-control, Samantha was a bundle of quicksilver fieriness, impulsive, impatient, almost too sensitive for her own good at times, proud and…

Liam cursed under his breath. As he knew all too well, there were almost no lengths Samantha would not go to to prove her point if someone hurt her pride. And he knew better than most, having watched both girls grow up, that despite all the positive influences they had received from their parents and family, both of them, but especially Samantha, were privately a little sensitive about their height.

Liam could remember overhearing a much younger Samantha telling her mother in a low voice choked with tears, ‘Mom, the other girls at school say that I should have been a boy because I’m so big…but I’m not a boy, I’m a girl and…’

‘They’re just jealous of you, darling,’ her mother had reassured her quickly. ‘You are indeed a girl, a very beautiful, clever and lovable girl, a very feminine girl,’ she had reinforced, and Liam had watched as Sarah Jane had very cleverly and with maternal love and concern, made sure that her daughters learned how to focus on the very feminine aspects of their personalities, to hold their heads up with pride and grace.

They were tall, and as a teenager Samantha especially had gone through a phase when she had been all gangly limbs, a little lanky and perhaps almost boyish, but that had been as a teenager. Now she was all woman…Oh, yes…now she was very definitely all woman!

Waking up beside him, Samantha wondered what had caused that sudden burst of fire to ignite the darkness of Liam’s eyes. Whatever it was, whoever it was…Was it a whoever rather than a whatever? Samantha suddenly wondered. The new PR woman perhaps? She gave a small, quick, sharp intake of breath. Liam might be prepared to bow to the fears of the more conservative lobby and do the conventional thing, marry in order to improve his public appeal, but there was no power on earth that could ever force her to do the same thing. Her principles, her need of her own self-respect, were far too strong, but Liam of course, was far too pragmatic to understand such a sensitive point of view. Cousin James in Chester was very sensitive. She had noticed that in him the moment they had met, and had been touched and warmed by it and by his concern for her.

James.

She was already beginning to feel a very definite tingle of excitement at the thought of seeing him again. The Crighton men made wonderful fathers, even the family’s erstwhile outcast Max had totally and unexpectedly shown that he possessed the loving Crighton gene when it came to parenting.

‘He seems more thrilled about this new baby they’re expecting than Maddy is,’ Bobbie had confided to her sister when she had passed on to her the news that Max’s wife Maddy was pregnant with their third child.

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