“There’s more to a relationship than…sex,” Katie said.

“Indeed there is, but I think you’ll find most men—and women—want the pleasure of enjoying and arousing their chosen partner’s sexual desires. You must have experienced that for yourself.”

She made no response other than tensing in Sebastian’s grasp.

“You have experienced it, haven’t you, Katie?” he asked her softly.

“What I have or have not experienced is no concern of yours.”

“Perhaps not,” Seb agreed, but instead of releasing her and turning away as she had expected, he suddenly moved closer to her, causing her stomach to turn in anxious protest. He bent his head and his mouth came down expertly and inescapably over hers.

“No…” she managed to protest sharply.

“You’re a liar, Katie, if what you say you want is a gentle, passive lover,” she heard him telling her savagely. “You want a man whose passion matches your own.”

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

A Perfect Night
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

EPILOGUE

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

AS SEB drove past the sign that read, Haslewich—Please Drive Carefully, he was aware of a dispiriting grey cloud of self-criticism and disappointment dulling what, if life mirrored fiction, by rights should be his triumphal return to the place of his birth.

He was thirty-eight years old, virtually at the top of his career ladder having just been headhunted by the international drug company Aarlston-Becker to head their research team. No small feat surely for man who, as a boy, had been sneeringly dismissed by one of his teachers as ‘just another hopeless by-product of the Cooke clan.’

He had money in the bank accumulated by hard work and shrewd investment, a family who even if he hadn’t seen much of them in recent years were by all accounts more than willing to do the modern equivalent of roasting a fatted calf to welcome him home, and he was about to take a kind of professional post that many among his colleagues would have given their eye-teeth for; all of which surely must be pretty heavyweight pluses on anyone’s balance sheet of life.

But then he needed some heavyweight assets to balance out the equally, to him at least, heavyweight negative aspects of his life.

‘What negative aspects?’ his second or was it third cousin Guy Cooke had asked him drily when they had been discussing the subject of his impending return.

‘How about an ill-judged early marriage followed predictably, I suppose, by a divorce.’

Guy’s eyebrows had lifted as he shrugged dismissively, ‘Divorce isn’t exactly a social sin any longer Seb, and from what you’ve told us your ex-wife has remarried very happily and the two of you are on relatively comfortable terms.’

‘Oh yes, from Sandra’s and my own point of view the divorce was the best thing we could have done other than not to have married in the first place.

‘No, it’s not the fact that we married far too young and for all the wrong reasons that I feel bad. It’s…’ He had paused, grimacing before continuing, ‘Sandy always used to complain that I was a selfish bastard not really fit to be either a husband or a father, too wrapped up in my career and my own professional goals. I thought at the time that she was being ridiculous. After all, I was working to provide a decent standard of living for her, or so I used to tell her and myself, but of course that was just the excuse I used to conceal the fact that she was right that I was being selfish, and that the rush I got from knowing I was right in there at the cutting edge of discovering new drugs that were going to provide the kind of breakthrough that would change the world was far more important to me, far more compelling and addictive than any pleasure I got from being with her.’

Guy and Chrissie, his wife, had exchanged ruefully happily married looks while Chrissie had lifted their son Anthony up off the floor to give him a hug, and although they had both made the right kind of protestingly reassuring noises Seb hadn’t been deceived. Of course privately they must both have thought that he had been selfish. How could they think otherwise? Seb had seen the loving commitment Guy was making to his own family, had witnessed at first hand during his stay with them when he had attended his initial interview the ‘hands on’ fathering that Guy was giving his son.

‘But at least you and Charlotte have formed a proper father and daughter bond now,’ Chrissie had reminded him gently.

‘Yes, more thanks to Charlotte’s maturity than any good parenting on my part,’ Seb had returned, adding, ‘After all she could very easily have refused to see me when I wrote and asked her if she would consider allowing me back into her life. George, Sandra’s second husband has been far more of a proper father to her than I have.’

‘Maybe so from a practical point of view,’ Guy had agreed, ‘But biologically you are her father and you only have to see the two of you together to see that.’

‘Oh yes, she’s got my genes when it comes to her physical looks,’ he agreed.

‘And she’s got your brains by all accounts too,’ Chrissie had laughed.

‘Well, Sandra and I met originally at university so I suppose that aspect of her nature is down to both of us, but I admit that I was surprised when she told me that she intends to follow much the same career path as I’ve chosen.’

‘And since she’s going to be studying for her A levels at a private sixth-form college near Manchester, you’re bound to be able to see a lot more of her.’

‘I hope so,’ Seb had agreed. ‘Although at sixteen she’s almost an adult now with her own life and her own friends. Sandra did say though that she was relieved to know that I would be on hand for her at the weekends especially now that Sandra and George are likely to be based abroad for the foreseeable future.’

‘Well we certainly loved meeting Charlotte,’ Chrissie had told him warmly. ‘Although I suspect she felt a little bit overwhelmed by the massed ranks and fervent curiosity of the Cooke clan in force.’

The Cooke clan. How he had hated and chafed under the burdensome weight of his family’s reputation when he had been growing up, Seb reflected now. Of course he hadn’t known then that he wasn’t on his own and that Guy, too, had suffered his own personal war between his inner needs and the town’s expectations. But then Guy had met Chrissie and in helping her to make peace with her family history Guy had come to terms with his own unhappy childhood memories.

Seb knew that without the incentive of having Charlotte at college in nearby Manchester there was no way he would have come back to his birthplace in the small historical Cheshire town where, or so the story went, his family line had come into being following the seduction of a local girl by a member of a notorious band of Romany travellers who visited the town every year.

The children—the clan—that union had given birth to down through the centuries, whether rightly or wrongly, had garnered a notorious reputation in the town for not always walking on the right side of the law, and of course predictably it had often been a case of ‘give a dog a bad name…’ Certainly it seemed that historically, their family had been a convenient peg for the townspeople to hang all their local crimes of theft and unlawfulness on.

Now, of course, those days were gone and his relatives so far as Seb knew were, in the main, sturdy and worthy citizens, and so intermarried and interwoven with the families and fabric of the area that they could not in all fairness any longer be considered to be a separate and dangerously untrustworthy clan of outsiders.

Even so the lusty lifestyle of the original ancestors had left its mark on the collective conscience of the other families in the town. Cooke men had a reputation for fathering sturdy sons whose dark eyes tended to hold the kind of gleam that mothers and young impressionable girls quite rightly found dangerous.

Seb had known from an early age that he wanted to escape from the restrictions of living in a small-town community where everyone knew everyone else. He had wanted to break through the glass ceiling imposed on him by the expectations and reservations of those around him simply because of the surname he carried. It had been his interest, cultivated and encouraged by his grandfather and a fascination with the problems that manifested themselves in the plants his grandfather grew because of their genetic make up which had initially led to his choice of career.

University might have freed him from the restrictions imposed on him by his small-town upbringing but in order to get there he had had to focus on the more self-absorbed, self-interested side of his personality and that ultimately had created a blinkered concentration on his career to the detriment of his personal relationships.

It had taken a comment he had overheard from a female colleague to make him realise the error of his ways. She had been talking with another co-worker unaware that he was in an adjacent room and could hear them.

‘He actually hasn’t seen his daughter in over ten years. Can you believe that?’

‘It happens,’ the other woman had pointed out. ‘Divorced men do lose touch with their children.’

‘Yes, I know, but he just doesn’t seem to care. Doesn’t he have any human feelings?’

That night at home alone in his empty executive apartment Seb had replayed the overheard conversation in his head and he had asked himself the same question.

The answer had shocked him.

Yes, he did care, more than he had known, and he had cared even more after that first fateful reunion with Charlotte when he had recognised not just in her face, her physical features, but in her personality as well, such a strong resemblance to him that he had felt as though someone, something, some emotion, was cracking his heart in a vise.

It had not been an easy task building bridges that would allow them, allow her, to lower the guard she had quite naturally put up against him. She’d been outwardly pleasant and friendly, but he had nevertheless known that inwardly she was extremely wary of him. And who could blame her? But that had been three years ago, and now he was very much a part of her life. But he was still aware that nothing, no amount of remorse, or regret could totally eradicate the past.

Sandra, his ex-wife, had gone on to have two more children, both boys, with her second husband George and Charlotte was very much a part of that happy close-knit family, but she was also his daughter and, like him, a Cooke.

‘All these relatives,’ she had marvelled laughingly when she had visited the town with him. ‘I can’t believe it. We seem to be related to half the population.’

‘At least,’ Seb had agreed drily, but unlike him Charlotte seemed to delight in her heritage.

‘Things have changed,’ Guy had told him. ‘There’s been a large influx of new people into the town, opening it up, broadening both its boundaries and its outlook.

‘The women of the Cooke family have always had a special strong grittiness and that’s really showing itself now. There are Cooke women on the town council, running their own businesses, teaching their children that their inheritance is one to be proud of. Yes, of course, a proportion of the babies at Ruth Crighton’s mother and baby home are Cookes but on their fathers’ side and not their mothers’. Cooke girls are hard-working and determined, university and self-fulfilment is their goal…’

Seb knew all about the Crightons. Who living in Haslewich didn’t? Like the Cooke’s, the Crighton name was synonymous with the town even though they were relative newcomers to it having only arrived there at the turn of the century.

Chrissie was in part a Crighton although that fact hadn’t been realised even by Chrissie’s own parents until she’d become involved with Guy.

Jon Crighton was the senior partner in the family’s law firm. Olivia, his niece, the daughter of his twin brother David, was also a partner. David himself was someone who was surrounded by mystery, having left the town, some said under highly dubious circumstances. Jon and David’s father lived in a large Elizabethan house outside the town along with Max Crighton, Jon and Jenny’s eldest son, and his wife and children.

Max was the apple of his grandfather’s eye and, to Ben Crighton’s pride, was no mere solicitor but a barrister, working from chambers in Chester alongside Luke and James Crighton, sons of Ben’s cousin Henry.

The Crighton family had originated from Chester, but a family quarrel had led Josiah Crighton, Ben’s father, to move away from Chester and set up his own legal practice in Haslewich, and until relatively recently a certain degree of rivalry had existed between the two branches of the family.

Jenny Crighton, Jon’s wife had once owned and run an antiques business in Haslewich in which Seb’s cousin Guy had been a partner, but the pressure of her own family commitments had led to her giving up her share in the business, which Guy had kept on as a sideline.

Guy had, in fact, recommended Jon Crighton to Seb as someone to deal with the legal conveyancing side of his house purchase when he moved back into the area.

As yet Seb hadn’t found a property he wanted to buy and so instead he was renting somewhere.

‘Local property prices are high,’ Guy had warned him, ‘Thanks to Aarlston-Becker. Not that we can complain, they’ve brought prosperity to the area even though there are those who claim that their presence threatens the town.’

Seb changed gear as the traffic slowed to a crawl as he entered the town proper. He had thought that in rebuilding his relationship with Charlotte he had laid to rest the guilt he had felt at his shortcomings as a father, but returning to Haslewich had brought back some painful memories.

‘What you need Dad, is to fall in love,’ Charlotte had told him several months earlier, and even though she had laughed Seb had seen in her eyes that she had been semiserious.

‘Falling in love is for people of your age,’ he had told her drily.

‘Why have you never married again?’ she had asked him quietly.

‘Do you really need to ask?’ Seb had returned sardonically. ‘After all, you’ve had first-hand experience of the mess I made of it the first time. No Lottie,’ he had shaken his head, ‘I’m too selfish, too set in my ways. Falling in love isn’t for me.’

‘No you’re not, you just think you are,’ Charlotte had told him, adding with surprising maturity, ‘You’re just punishing yourself, Dad, because you feel guilty about me. Well, you needn’t. I wasn’t even two when you and Mum split up, and she and George were together by the time I was three. At least I never experienced the trauma of being torn between you and Mum, and she told me that that was thanks to you agreeing to let George bring me up.’

‘So what are you saying…that I did you a favour by turning my back on my responsibility towards you,’ Seb had asked her grimly. ‘That my selfishness was almost praiseworthy…’

‘No, of course not, but at least you did come to feel ultimately that as father and daughter we should be part of one another’s lives. At least I do know that you love me,’ she had added in a soft whisper.

Love her. Yes he did—now—but if he was honest with himself there had been years of her life when he had scarcely allowed himself to remember that she existed and he would carry the burden of that guilt for the rest of his life. Marry again? Fall in love? He cursed abruptly as just in front of him a young woman started across the road without looking causing him to stamp his foot down hard on the brakes. As his car screeched to a halt in front of her she froze in fear, her face turned towards him.

Seb had a momentary impression of her shocked expression, wide eyes set in a piquantly-shaped delicately feminine face, her hair tousled by the light breeze. Small and slender she was wearing a soft, brown linen wrap-around skirt, the pale colour of the cream silk top tucked into it complementing both the warmth of the skirt and the even more alluring light tan of her bare arms—and legs. But as his brain mentally digested these peripheral visual facts, the feeling, the emotion uppermost in Seb’s mind was one of anxiety fuelled by anger.

What on earth had possessed her to step right out in front of him like that? Didn’t she realise how close she had come to causing an accident. The narrow town street was busy with shoppers and if his brakes had failed to work so swiftly or if he had skidded…or not been able to stop…And yet as the shock faded from her eyes, it wasn’t guilt or gratitude he could see replacing it, but rather a sharply condemnatory anger, as though he were the one to blame for what was quite patently her foolishness. Indeed, for a second it almost seemed as though she was about to walk right up to his car instead of finishing her journey across the busy street, but then the car driver behind him, growing impatient with the delay, tooted his horn and she hesitated and then turned aside, shooting him a searing look before marching stiffly away from him.

Just as equally infuriated by her behaviour as she seemed to have been by his, Seb shot her departing back a fulminating look of male contempt for her female foolishness before slipping the car back into gear and continuing with his journey.

As Katie walked through Haslewich’s busy main thoroughfare she was aware of a heavy weight of unhappiness dulling what, by rights, should have been a joyous and hopefully positive return to the bosom of her family.

She was twenty-four years of age, in excellent health, a fully qualified solicitor who had been not just asked, but beseeched by her father and her cousin to join them in the family partnership in their home town. Indeed she had even had the satisfaction of having her elder brother no less, add his persuasive arguments to those of the other members of the family.

‘Dad needs you Katie,’ Max had told her. ‘They’re absolutely inundated with work, and we all know how grandfather would react if Dad were to suggest taking on a non-Crighton partner, just as we all know that no solicitor worth his or her salt would join the partnership without the expectation of being offered their own partnership. For you to come home and join Dad and Olivia would be the ideal solution to the problem. You’re young in terms of legal experience at the moment, but a partnership in the not too distant future is assured.’

‘Yes, I daresay it is,’ Katie had agreed quietly. ‘But you seem to forget Max that I already have a job.’

‘I know you do,’ Max had agreed, ‘but I’m not completely blind Katie, something’s gone wrong in your life. Look, I’m not going to pry or ask questions, God knows I don’t have the right to act the big brother with you now, after all I was hardly a caring one to you when you and Louise were growing up. What I will say to you, though, is that some people need to seek solitude, to lick their wounds and heal themselves, and others need the care and comfort of their close family, and we both know which camp you fall into.’

It was true, Louise, Katie’s twin sister was more the type to seek the solitude Max had just described than her, but then Louise was hardly likely to need to do so. Louise after all was blissfully in love with and loved by Gareth.

Louise and Gareth.

Katie had closed her eyes thankful that no one had guessed her shameful poisonous secret. It made no difference that she had loved Gareth quietly and sedately and from a distance a long time before Louise had realised the exact nature of her feelings for him. And the reason it made no difference was not just because Louise was her other half, her dearly beloved if sometimes somewhat headstrong and exasperating twin, but because Gareth himself did not love her…Gareth loved Louise.

Stoically Katie had accepted the agonising searing burn of her own pain, claiming pressure of work for her increasingly infrequent visits home and her even more infrequent get-togethers with her twin, but then as though fate had not done enough she discovered that it had another blow in store for her.

Her boss, for whom she had worked ever since she had joined the legal department of the charity to do her articles after leaving university, had resigned, and the man who had taken his place…

Katie closed her eyes in midstep. Jeremy Stafford had at first seemed so charming, so very much on her own wavelength that even now she couldn’t properly come to terms with what had happened.

When he had started asking her to work late, she had done so willingly, enjoying not just the rapport between them but the knowledge that the work they were doing was ultimately benefiting people who were so very desperately in need of help.

The first time Jeremy had suggested dinner as a “reward” to them both for their hard work, she had felt nothing but pleasure, no sense of wariness or suspicion had clouded her happy acceptance of his suggestion. How naive she had been, but then from the way that Jeremy had always talked about his wife and small children she had assumed that he was so happily married that any kind of betrayal of his wife and their marriage vows—well, it had simply never crossed her mind that it might have crossed his…But she had been wrong…not only had it crossed his, it had lingered there and quite unequivocally taken up a very lustful and leering residence as she had so unpleasantly discovered.

At first when he had started to compliment her on her face and then her figure she had simply assumed that he was being pleasant, but then had come the night when he had put his arm around her when they were leaving the restaurant and then attempted to kiss her.

She had fobbed him off immediately, but to her consternation instead of apologising as she had expected him to do he had turned on her claiming that she had led him on; that she was a tease and worse, oh yes, much much worse. Of course after that there had been no more intimate dinners and no evenings working late, instead there had been hostility and even victimisation: accusations about missing reports which she knew she had filed, mistakes which she knew she had not made, errors which she knew were simply not hers.

Not that she had any intention of telling Max any of that. The change her elder brother had undergone following the attack he had suffered on a Jamaican beach while he was in that country trying to trace their father’s missing twin brother, David Crighton, had not merely converted him into a passionately devoted husband and father, it had also turned him into a surprisingly caring and concerned brother and son. If Max guessed for one moment what was going on, Katie knew that he would lose no time in seeking out Jeremy Stafford and demanding retribution for his behaviour.

Had they been children still involved in playground jealousies and quarrels that might just have been acceptable, but they were adults. She was supposed to be in charge of her own life. As a modern independent woman she was expected to be able to deal with her own problems. The sadness was, she loved her work, loved knowing that what she was doing no matter how small, was a benefit to other people.

The Crighton women carried a strong gene of responsibility and duty towards their fellow men and women. In her great-aunt, Ruth Crighton, it had manifested itself in the establishment of an enclave of charitably run accommodation units for single parents and their children. In her mother, Jenny, it showed in the way she gave so much of her time and energy to others. Katie’s sister had become involved in a programme to help young drug addicts in Brussels where she and Gareth lived and worked.

Katie froze as the sudden sharp screech of a car’s brakes brought her back to reality.

Without realising what she was doing she had started across the road without looking properly, but that in no way excused the manic dangerousness of the speed at which the driver of the car, now stopped in front of her, had to have been driving to have been forced to halt with such a screech. Katie knew nothing about cars and the fact that the very powerful engine of the Mercedes the man was driving was responsible for the intensity of his braking rather than his speed was therefore completely lost on her. Instead what she was aware of was the look of totally unwarranted fury in his eyes as he glowered ferociously out of the car at her.

As her own shock held her motionless she was distantly aware of the fact that he was outrageously good-looking with thick, virtually jet-black, well-groomed hair, chillingly icy grey eyes and a mouth that even when clamped grimly closed still betrayed the fact that he had a disturbingly full and sexy bottom lip.

But none of that compensated for the fact that he had nearly run her over. Determinedly Katie took a step towards the car and then stopped as the driver behind him hooted impatiently. Much as she longed to give Mr Sexy Mouth a piece of her mind, she really didn’t have time. She was due at the office ten minutes ago, hardly a good start to her first official working day with her father and Olivia.

It had been a wrench leaving her job, despite the problem she had suffered with Jeremy and she still wasn’t sure she had made the right decision in agreeing to join the family practice. Both her father and Olivia had held out the inducement, as Max had already indicated, that in time she could expect to become a full partner, even if right now she was simply being retained by them as a salaried employee. Money had never motivated Katie, but then to be fair she knew that it didn’t motivate either her father or Olivia either.

She was to start by taking over the conveyancing side of the business, the legal work attached to the buying and selling of properties. She had pulled a small face when her father had told her this.

‘Well at least I should have some practice by the time it comes to my buying my own home,’ she had told him ruefully.

Although her parents had offered her back her childhood room permanently, after several years of living independently at the University and then in London, she had felt that it would be more sensible to find her own separate accommodation. In London she had rented and while she waited for the right property to buy to present itself to her at home, she had, just temporarily she had told them, moved back in with her parents.

It had felt distinctly odd to be back in her old room—without her twin.

Louise had been more excited about Katie’s decision to return to Haslewich than she had herself; trying to cajole her into a flying visit to Brussels to spend the week with them before Katie took up her new duties.

‘Why don’t you go?’ her father had asked her when he had learned via Jenny of her decision to turn down Louise’s invitation.

There wasn’t any logical explanation she could give and she had been grateful to her younger brother Joss and her cousin Jack for creating a small diversion as they both pleaded with Jon to be allowed to take up Louise’s offer in her stead.

Since it was Joss’s all important GCSE year Katie had well been able to understand her father’s refusal to agree until after his exams were over and loyally Jack, who was two years older than his cousin, had announced that he didn’t want to go until they could both go together.

The pair of them were almost as close as the pairs of twins the Crighton family produced with such regularity, Jack having made his home with Katie’s parents after the break-up of his own parents’ marriage and the disappearance of his father David.

Ten minutes later, as Katie walked into her father’s office after a brief knock on the door, she apologised.

‘Sorry I’m late…I’d forgotten how busy the town is and I couldn’t find a close by parking spot…’

‘Mmm…if you think this morning is busy just wait until market day,’ her father warned her good-humouredly.

‘Olivia won’t be here until ten,’ he added. ‘During term time she does the morning school and nursery run. Caspar picks the children up in the afternoon.’

Caspar, Olivia’s American husband, held a Chair at a nearby university where he lectured in corporate law and it had been while she was on a course that Olivia had met and fallen in love with him.

‘It can’t be easy for her, working full-time with two young children,’ Katie commented.

‘No, it isn’t,’ her father agreed, adding briskly, ‘We’ve cleared out a room for you to use and I’ve organised some preliminary file reading for you. We’ll start you off on some straightforward conveyancing…’

‘That’s fine,’ Katie responded absently.

‘Is something wrong?’ he asked, sensing her preoccupation.

‘Not really…not unless you count nearly being run down by some speed-crazed driver,’ Katie told him, briefly explaining what had happened.

‘Mmm…it has been mooted that the town be made a no traffic area, but…’

‘But…’ Katie raised her eyebrows. The town had been there before the Romans, its surrounding salt making it a highly prized asset. The Normans had built a castle which the Roundheads virtually destroyed during the Civil War, and the town’s streets dated in the main from the Middle Ages and were consequently narrow and tortuous and certainly not designed for the volume of modern-day traffic that used them.

‘Well in order to make that a viable proposition, a new ring road would have to be built, and you can just imagine the cost of it…’

‘Mmm…but if it keeps drivers like Mr Sexy Mouth off the road…’

‘Like who?’ her father questioned.

Katie flushed a little. Now what on earth had prompted her to use that particular description of him out loud?

‘Er…Nothing,’ she denied hastily, quickly turning her attention to the files her father was showing her.

CHAPTER TWO

‘JENNY Crighton is giving an informal supper party in a few weeks’ time,’ Guy gave his cousin the date, ‘and she’s invited you to go along with us, Seb. You’ll enjoy it,’ he encouraged when he saw the way Seb was frowning.

He had called round to see him expressly to deliver Jenny’s invitation as well as to see how his cousin had settled in at Aarlston-Becker.

‘Shall I?’ Seb challenged him.

‘Which reminds me,’ Guy added before Seb could continue, ‘Chrissie said to tell you that you’re more than welcome to come round and dine with us any time you wish.’

‘Thanks, I really do appreciate the offer, but right now I’m so involved at work…’ Seb stopped and shook his head. Despite his misgivings about returning to the town of his birth, Seb had to admit that the sheer scope of the work he was involved with at Aarlston was proving enormously challenging and satisfying. The company was right at the forefront of research into and the creation of a new generation of drugs.

‘I had planned to drive over to Manchester that weekend to see Charlotte, but it seems she’s organised to go away with a group of friends, which means…’

‘Which means that you’ll be free to accept Jenny’s invitation,’ Guy told him firmly. ‘You’ll enjoy it. Saul is bound to be there. Have you met him yet? He’s head of a section of the Aarlston legal department and…’

‘Yes…I was introduced to him the other day. Nice chap…’

‘Have you found a house that appeals to you yet?’ Guy asked him.

‘Not so far. Ideally I’d like somewhere large enough for Charlotte to have her own space when she comes to stay, which means somewhere with two bedrooms and two bathrooms, but I don’t really want something quite as large as a three-or four-bedroom house, from a practical point of view if nothing else.’

‘Mmm…well there’s a large Edwardian house on the outskirts of town which was recently converted into a series of luxury apartments, although I think most of them have already been sold. From the sound of it one of them would suit you ideally.’

‘Mmm…who are the agents? It’s certainly worth looking into,’ Seb agreed.

The small terraced house he was currently renting was only two streets away from the one he had lived in as a child and Seb was finding staying in it faintly claustrophobic. His mother had moved away to live with her widowed sister following the death of Seb’s father and Seb had no immediate family left in the town, but it seemed that everywhere he turned he was confronted with the Cooke name and the Cooke features, battalion upon battalion of assorted aunts, uncles and cousins.

And as for the Jenny Crighton supper party, that was something he would have preferred to have got out of attending but he suspected that there was no way that Guy was going to allow him to do so.

There was a certain something in Guy’s voice when he mentioned Jenny Crighton’s name that made Seb wonder if those rumours about Guy’s feelings for Jenny before Chrissie had come into his life had been just mere rumour. Whatever the case though there was no doubt about the fact that he loved Chrissie now.

‘Mmm…that looks interesting,’ Olivia commented as she walked past Katie’s desk and saw the estate agent’s details lying there.

‘Who is the prospective purchaser?’ she asked curiously as she studied photographs of the elegantly shaped Edwardian rooms and the sweeping views of the grounds that surrounded the newly converted apartments.

‘Me, hopefully,’ Katie told her, adding ruefully, ‘although the price they are asking is rather high.’

‘Can’t you bargain them down?’ Olivia suggested practically.

Katie shook her head. ‘I doubt it, there are only two apartments left.’

‘Mmm…well I can see why they’ve sold so well, two double bedrooms, each with its own bathroom and dressing-room, a large sitting-room, dining-room and good-sized kitchen, and those views…’

‘Yes, and because this one is on the top floor it’s got its own balcony,’ Katie told her.

‘I went to view it with Dad last night and I must say that I was really impressed even if it’s still an awful lot of money, but with Mum and Dad so generously offering to help me out I can just about afford it.’

‘Well, you certainly won’t lose out by buying it,’ Olivia told her, ‘not with Aarlston-Becker expanding at the rate it is and the demand for housing expanding along with them.’

‘True…I see we’re getting an increasing number of farming clients applying for change of use in planning permission for some of their agricultural land.’

‘Yes, and there’s been a lot of controversy about it with a huge continuing debate in the local press. Those against any kind of new building on existing farmland are claiming that there are plenty of infill sites which should be used up first, while those who are in favour of granting planning permission insist the infill sites simply aren’t adequate to cope with the growing demand for housing, stating that the town’s prosperity is too closely linked with Aarlston to risk the threat of the company moving elsewhere because their employees can’t find homes.’

‘I should imagine that argument is something of a double-edged sword,’ Katie murmured thoughtfully.

‘Very much so,’ Olivia agreed. ‘The old die-hards are bitterly opposed to the Aarlston presence on the outskirts of the town claiming that it threatens its identity as a traditional market town in the centre of an agricultural area.’

‘It’s going to be a long-running battle, I suspect.’

After Olivia had left, Katie picked up the telephone receiver and punched in the number of the estate agents. There was no point in trying to persuade them to get the developers to drop the price of the apartment, she would just have to bite the bullet and offer the price they were asking. The apartment was, after all, perfect for her in every way, and if Olivia and her father were to be believed it would ultimately appreciate in value and prove to be a good financial investment.

While she was on the phone to the agents she decided that she would also arrange to look over the apartment again so that she could take proper measurements. Her mother had offered her some pieces of furniture she herself no longer needed including some very pretty antiques, but she would need to buy new carpets and curtains if the purchase went ahead.

Seb frowned as he studied the details of the apartment he had looked over the previous evening. On the top floor of the original Edwardian house it was one of a pair and ideally suited to his requirements. Guy had been right about that, it was exactly what he wanted even if the price was a little on the high side—not that that was a prime consideration for him—it was easily within his price range.

He had phoned Charlotte to tell her about it and she was going to travel to Haslewich from Manchester today after her classes had finished in order that she could see it. He had given her directions so that she could get a cab there and find it, and had arranged a time to meet. Afterwards he had promised to take her out for dinner.

One of the reasons Sandra had been so comfortable about accepting George’s overseas posting had been because they had known that the live-in, sixth form private college where Charlotte was studying, which specialised in her chosen subjects—and where she had begged her parents to be allowed to go—placed a huge priority on its students’ welfare and safety. It had been agreed that she could go, but only after a long, reassuring discussion with the school’s principal about the precautions they took to supervise the students and ensure their safety. Charlotte would, also, have the benefit of members of her father’s close-knit family on hand to turn to should she ever need to do so.

That of course had been before Seb himself had been headhunted by Aarlston-Becker and everything seemed to fall into place for him to be near his daughter.

Reaching for the telephone he punched in the numbers of the selling agents to confirm the appointment he had made to re-view the property this evening with Charlotte and to tell them that he was prepared to offer the full asking price.

The next stage of the purchase would involve him finding himself a solicitor and once again he suspected he would be wise to accept Guy’s advice and instruct Jon Crighton to act for him.

Katie glanced at her watch. Time for her to leave if she was to meet the agent on time. Tidying up her desk she reached for her mobile phone, popping it into her bag. They were having a spell of good weather with long sunshiny days and high temperatures, which made the wearing of traditional formal office clothes too heavy and uncomfortable.

Instead, aided and abetted by her mother and her cousin, Katie had paid a visit to Chester, which she had combined with a brief but very enjoyable lunch with Luke Crighton’s wife, Bobbie, and a whirlwind shopping trip that had resulted in the purchase of what she had complained to her mother was virtually a completely new wardrobe.

She had felt even more guilty about the extravagance of her purchases when her mother had insisted ‘these are my treat, Katie.’

Now though, as the elegant cut of the smart black linen mix, button-back dress swirled softly round her legs, she had to admit that she was glad she had allowed herself to be persuaded. The dress was smart enough for the office without being too stuffy or formal. She had also bought a complementary jacket to go with it, and a couple of wrap skirts which could also be worn with the jacket in addition to one of several tops in matching tones.

It had been a long time since she had had any new clothes. Although her work for the charity had not involved working at the front line, she had nevertheless been conscious of the fact that a huge discrepancy existed between her comfortably affluent Western lifestyle and those of the people they were trying to help, and besides…

She could feel the back of her throat starting to tighten with emotion. What had been the point in making herself look attractive, and allowing herself to feel womanly and sensual when she already knew that the man she wanted to be those things for would not and could not ever be hers?

Perhaps it was one of those ironic twists of their twinship that her own unrequited love for Louise’s husband Gareth should echo the love Louise had once had for a married man. But then Louise had found love with Gareth and although Katie doubted that she would ever find a man to match him, she knew, too, that for her own inner peace and happiness she had to find a way of moving her life forward and of leaving that love behind.

Katie walked towards the window of her small office and stared out into the busy town square. To one side of it stood the church and running parallel to it but outside her view was a prettily elegant close of Georgian houses where her father’s aunt, Ruth, lived with her American husband, Grant, whenever they were over in England.

The other three sides of the square were filled with a jumble of mixed-era buildings, Tudor wattle-and-daub cheek by jowl with Georgian town houses. The square itself had, thanks to the determination of its townspeople, retained much of its original medieval aura even if the stocks were now purely decorative and the original well had been turned into an ornamental fountain.

As young girls she and Louise used to call to see their father on their way home from school, specifically on ‘pocket-money’ days, hoping that he might be persuaded to add a little extra to the permitted allowance. They had giggled over the boys as they sat side by side beneath the trees on the bench donated by past worthy citizens. Together they had visited Aunt Ruth and helped her with her innovative displays of church flowers. Together they had attended regulation church services. Together they had cycled through the square to the small antique shop their mother had once half owned with Guy Cooke. Together…

As twins they had always been close, even though temperamentally they were in many ways so very different. Together they had gone to university and it had been there that they had both met Gareth Simmonds who had been one of the course lecturers.

Gareth with whom she had fallen quietly and idealistically in love…

Gareth who epitomised everything she had ever wanted in a man…Gareth who was so kind, so calm, so gentle and perceptive…Gareth who loved her sister, her twin…Gareth who could never be hers…

The view below her wavered and swam as her eyes filled with tears. Quickly she blinked them away. She had promised herself when Louise and Gareth married that she would find a way to stop loving him, that she would make herself accept him simply as her brother-in-law, as her beloved twin’s husband, but every time she saw him the ache of loneliness and pain she felt at seeing the two of them so happy together was still there. She knew that Louise was hurt by her rejection of her constant invitations to go and stay with them, and she knew, too, that the gulf that was developing between the two of them disturbed her parents, especially her mother, but what could she do? What could she say? There was no way she could admit what the real problem was. And now there was the additional pain of seeing Louise with her new baby—hers and Gareth’s child.

A small bitter smile twisted the softness of her mouth. Was she destined always to be wanted by men who were already committed to someone else; to always be ‘second best’? She knew that Gareth would never approach her with a view to an illicit affair the way her ex-boss had done. He loved Louise far too much for that. He was so totally unaware of Katie’s own anguished feelings that it seemed to her, in her present state of low self-esteem and self-respect, that it was almost as though she didn’t deserve to be loved or treated well, that something about her actively encouraged men to think they could treat her badly.

No man would ever have suggested to her twin that she should have a seedy, hole-in-the-corner sexual relationship with him. No man would dream of suggesting it to any of her female cousins either, she was sure of it. Even Maddy, her brother Max’s wife, who had always been regarded as the most downtrodden and to-be-pitied member of the family because of Max’s appalling uncaring behaviour towards her, had turned out far stronger and determined than any of them could ever have imagined. Look at the way she had taken control of their marriage and of Max following his return home after his attack.

At last year’s wedding of Bobbie’s twin sister, Samantha, all the family had remarked on how much of an adoring husband and father Max had become. He was even taking on his full share of parenting following the birth of their third child, another little boy, so that Maddy could continue with her work for the charity Aunt Ruth had originally set up. Once, the very idea of Max changing nappies and bathing babies would have been a total impossibility, but now…

So what was it about her that denied her the emotional happiness and support all the other Crighton women, both by birth and marriage, seemed to expect and get as their birthright? Sometimes she felt as though there was something about her that meant that she was forever condemned to live in other people’s shadows…other people’s or her twin’s.

She could still remember the plans that Louise had made for them as they were growing up, plans which involved the two of them practically running the world, or at least Louise running the world; with Katie’s devoted support. And Katie of course had willingly given her that support, that loyalty, that commitment, but now Louise had someone else in her life to give her those things…now Louise had the man that she, Katie, had loved and she, Katie…she, Katie had…nothing…

Outside in the square the church clock chimed the hour. Hastily Katie gathered her scattered thoughts. If she didn’t leave now she was going to be late for her appointment with the selling agent.

Reaching for her jacket she headed for the door.

Half an hour later when Katie drove into the visitor’s section of the apartment’s car park the only other person there was a young girl who was obviously quite patiently waiting for someone. Tall and slim, wearing jeans and a cropped white top she gave Katie a warm smile as she climbed out of her car. Instinctively Katie smiled back. The girl had long dark hair and widely spaced apart warm grey eyes. For some reason Katie felt that there was something familiar about her although she had no idea what because she was certain she had never seen her before.

‘Hi, I’m just waiting for my father,’ the girl told Katie. ‘I can see why he’s decided to buy one of the apartments, Mum will love the location. I don’t know where Dad is,’ she added, glancing at her watch. ‘He said to meet him at four-thirty. Has he telephoned you to say he’s going to be late for his viewing appointment?’

As she listened to her Katie realised that the girl must have mistaken her for the viewing agent, but before she could correct her mistake the girl continued, ‘I expect Dad’s already told you that he works for Aarlston-Becker. He’s head of their research department,’ she confided with touching daughterly pride. ‘I’m at a sixth form college in Manchester and we’ve got family in Haslewich so…

‘Oh, here he is now,’ she exclaimed as a large Mercedes swept round the curve of the gravel drive.

Behind it was the much smaller car driven by the estate agent which Katie recognised from her previous meeting with him, but she wasn’t paying either the agent or his car any attention, instead she was concentrating on the Mercedes—and its driver. Now she knew why the dark hair and grey eyes the young girl had seemed so familiar. The man now stepping out of his stationary car was none other than the man who had virtually tried to run her down on her first day at work.

It was plain from his expression that he had recognised her, too, but before Katie could challenge him over his behaviour the estate agent was hurrying to join them, announcing, ‘I do hope that neither of you mind but since you both want to view the properties at virtually the same time I thought we could combine the appointments.’

‘You’re buying one of the apartments?’

The words came out before Katie could silence them and she knew that her expression and tone of voice betrayed exactly what her feelings were.

The cold look she was thrown in disdainful response informed her that her dismay was more than matched by his reaction to the thought of having her as a neighbour, but since his daughter was flinging herself into his arms and hugging him lovingly and claiming his attention, Katie was relieved to recognise that he wasn’t going to be able to respond verbally to her impetuous and betraying comment.

‘Very well, if you’d like to come this way,’ the estate agent suggested.

‘You are interested in and are planning to purchase flat nine, Miss Crighton,’ he checked as he activated the main alarm system and lock to the entrance lobby to the apartments and waited to usher them inside before continuing, ‘And you are purchasing flat number ten, Mr Cooke, is that correct?’

Cooke…this man who looked nowhere near old enough to be the father of a teenage daughter was a Cooke, Katie reflected. Curiously she flicked a discreet look in his direction and then wished she hadn’t as she realised that he’d caught her studying him.

She looked away as quickly as she could, but not before she had recognised that he did indeed bear the very distinctive dark and sensual Cooke good looks—the rakish and very disturbing aura of maleness and danger they all seemed to have inherited in some measure or other from their long-ago gypsy ancestor.

‘In fact,’ the agent continued, as he led the way to the discreetly concealed lifts that serviced the house’s upper floors, ‘seeing as you are going to be close neighbours—yours are the only two apartments on the top floor—perhaps I should introduce you to one another.’

Turning to Katie and before either of them could stop him he announced, ‘Miss Katie Crighton…Mr Seb Cooke…’

She was a Crighton, so where exactly did she fit into the extensive family tree? Seb wondered curiously as he gave Katie a narrow-eyed contemplative look. He could see at close quarters she was far prettier than he had realised that day in the street.

Her eyes were veiled now as they mirrored her body language’s mute dislike of both the situation and him. Her hair, smoothly brushed instead of tousled by the breeze, hung in a thick soft wave down past her shoulders. The black dress she was wearing hinted at rather than revealed the femininity of her body.

It might not be revealing the lushly full curves of her breasts but he had a vivid memory of just how she and they had looked with the wind pressing the fabric of the top she had been wearing against their softness. In fact, unless his memory was playing tricks on him, she possessed a surprisingly voluptuous body for someone so slim.

Without realising how stern or disapproving it made him look Seb frowned. What on earth was he doing even registering the voluptuousness of an unknown young woman’s body, never mind remembering it? He may not have lived totally like a monk in the years since his divorce but the demands of his work coupled with his awareness of just what an appalling husband and father he had been ensured that he kept whatever relationships he had had to discreet liaisons with women who shared his beliefs that he was simply not good marriage material.

As she saw him frown, Katie immediately felt a return of her earlier dislike of him. Heightened by her lack of self-esteem, this fuelled her inner conviction that such a sensual, rawly male man, must surely find her lacking in the kind of feminine attributes that would appeal to him. Not that she would want to appeal to him. Not under any circumstances.

One look at him at close quarters had confirmed that he was most definitely not her type. Too aggressive, too arrogant and far, far too sexy. Oh yes, far, far too sexy, because, hidden away among all the other emotional burdens she was compelling herself to carry, Katie had what she considered to be a most uncool and unappealing secret and that was…

‘If you’re a Crighton, can I ask…Are you one of the twin Crightons?’

As Charlotte’s semi-shy but wholly warm voice broke into her thoughts, Katie focused bemusedly on her. Charlotte too, like her father, had heard all about the Crightons from Guy and Chrissie, but unlike her father she felt no self-consciousness about wanting to satisfy her curiosity about just where Katie fitted into the family jigsaw. For Charlotte, the most fascinating and interesting part of the Crighton family saga was the fact that they so regularly produced sets of twins.

‘Charlotte…’ Seb began warningly, but Katie shook her head. Unlike her father Charlotte was someone she had immediately felt at home with. She knew instinctively that the younger girl’s question was simply a natural expression of her justifiable curiosity and so it was easy for her to smile and nod her head, explaining easily, ‘Well, yes, as a matter of fact I am.’

‘Does your twin live in Haslewich too? Are you and she going to share the apartment?’ Charlotte pressed her.

Katie shook her head. ‘No.’ A small shadow crossed her face dulling her expression, a fact which Seb noticed but which Charlotte, too engrossed in waiting for her to answer and too youthfully immature to be aware of, did not.

‘No, Louise my twin is married and is presently living in Brussels with…Gareth, her husband…’

Now why had she hesitated and then stumbled so awkwardly over saying her brother-in-law’s name? Seb wondered thoughtfully as he caught the note of desolation in Katie’s voice. Had the two women fallen out perhaps…had a rift developed between them due to the fact that their closeness had been breeched because one of them had married?

Frowning, he stood back to allow Katie and Charlotte to step into the lift ahead of him. Why on earth was he wasting time wondering about a young woman whose acquaintance he had neither the time nor the desire to pursue? Without realising what he was doing Seb let his gaze drift down to Katie’s mouth. It was soft and full and oh, so infinitely kissable. He could just imagine how it would feel under his…how she would feel…how she would look, her eyes blind with a vulnerable haunted look of longing and desire that would make him want…

‘Here we are…This lift is, of course, exclusively for your use and both of you will have your own passkey.’

With a start Seb dragged his thoughts back to reality.

As Katie preceded Seb into the private hallway into which both their apartments opened she was aware of feeling distinctly wobbly. What on earth was happening to her? Why had she experienced that extraordinary sensation just now, as though…as though…

Instinctively she lifted her fingers to her lips. The only man she had ever fantasised about having kissed her, the only man she wanted to have kiss her with the kind of intimacy and passion she had just been imagining was Gareth. Gareth and not…as her thoughts skittered to a frantic halt, refusing to allow her to question just why she had experienced that extraordinary sensation of having her mouth so expertly and intimately kissed, and by a man she neither knew nor even wanted to know, she told herself that Gareth was just about as far removed from Seb Cooke as it was possible for two men to be. Gareth was gentle, kind, reassuringly safe in his manner, while Seb Cooke was aggressive and possessed the kind of sexual aura that…Katie shuddered. What on earth would she want with such a raw, dangerous outright hunk of male sexuality…?

‘This is your apartment,’ the agent was saying chirpily to her, unlocking the door for her. ‘As you know, you have the benefit of your own private balcony while your flat…’ he turned to Seb, ‘has the addition of an extra room which could be used as a third bedroom or a study.’ Still smiling he crossed the hallway and unlocked the other door.

Taking advantage of Seb’s preoccupation with the agent, Katie slipped inside her own apartment.

Five minutes later, having completed a closer inspection of all the rooms, she was forced to admit that she was unlikely to find anything that would suit her better. All the rooms were a good size, all the period decorative details had been retained, giving the apartment a feeling of elegance and even grandeur, and the views from the windows, which she had not really taken full account of on her previous visit, extended not just over the grounds of the house itself, all of which were there for the residents to enjoy and which were tended by a firm of gardeners, but over the surrounding countryside.

Left alone in his own apartment with Charlotte while the estate agent went to check to see if Katie had any questions she wanted to ask him, Seb turned to his daughter lifting one querying eyebrow as he asked her, ‘Well…’

‘It’s cool,’ Charlotte responded with a wide grin. ‘Love the bathrooms…Yours is even big enough to have a Jacuzzi fitted if you want one.’

‘If I want one,’ Seb agreed, adding firmly, ‘which I don’t…’

‘Dad, why haven’t you ever re-married?’ Charlotte asked him seriously now.

While Seb was frowningly wondering how best to answer her, she continued a little uncertainly,

‘It isn’t because of me is it…I mean I know that…well Mum never really said much about…about things, but I did once overhear her talking to George about it and she said that having me had been the final straw for you…’

Seb studied her downcast head wondering what on earth he could say. As close as they had grown the subject of his marriage to her mother and their subsequent divorce was not one they had ever discussed, and manlike he had always been reluctant to raise a subject which, he was forced to admit, did not reflect well on himself.

‘I rather think what your mother was trying to say was that my adolescent and totally selfish reaction to the demands a baby made on her time and our marriage were the last straw for her,’ Seb corrected Charlotte gently.

‘The reason our marriage didn’t survive was wholly and totally down to me, Charlotte…I was a selfish wretch, and far too immature when we got married to think about anyone other than myself. Your mother and I met at university, fell into what we believed was love but what, with a bit of perspective, I think we both soon realised was really only lust, married…and…and then you came along and you have no idea how much I regret the years I’ve lost with you and my own unforgivable selfishness…’

‘M-Mum did say once that had the pair of you been older or a bit more worldly-wise, you’d both have known that what you had together was wonderful for an intense and passionate affair, but not for marriage. She said, too, that while she was the one who initiated things between the two of you, you were the one with the old-fashioned moral principles who insisted that you should get married—if you were going to have sex.’

Seb grimaced. What Charlotte had just said was quite true. Eighteen months his senior, Sandra had had other boyfriends, other relationships, before she had met him—neither of them had come to their own affair as novice lovers. But with his own upbringing, his knowledge of what could happen in the aftermath of a passionate relationship for the woman who was left on her own, seen first-hand through the history of his own family—Cooke men had a certain notorious reputation for their alleged propensity to father children outside wedlock—he had felt it necessary to prove that he was different, above the kind of much criticised behaviour his name had branded him with. Perhaps his insistence on marrying Sandra had been a righteous and ridiculous piece of over-reaction, but if he was honest with himself Seb knew that, given the same situation again, he would probably have reacted in exactly the same way.

His father had always been a stern critic of the haphazard morals of some members of the Cooke clan. As a boy growing up, Seb could remember that there had been tight-lipped conversations between his parents about the sudden arrival of a new and unexpected member of the family who did not always carry his or her father’s name. Both of his parents had been insistent that that was a family inheritance of which they most certainly did not approve. And nor, no more so, did Seb.

Seb was brought back to the present as Charlotte squeezed his arm lovingly and kissed his cheek.

‘I’m glad we’ve had this little talk,’ she told him almost maternally. ‘And I wish that you could find someone nice to marry Dad…I liked Katie Crighton, didn’t you?’

Seb frowned as she looked at him, but Charlotte only returned his look with one of filial innocence and before Seb could warn her that even if he had been looking for someone, Katie Crighton was most definitely not his type, the estate agent had returned.

Ten minutes later as Seb drove out of the house’s grounds behind Katie and the estate agent, he made a mental note to get in touch with Jon Crighton and set the wheels in motion for the purchase of the apartment. Now that he had decided to buy and had had his offer accepted, he wanted to get the formalities over and done with as soon as possible so that he could move in.

As she drove out of the house’s grounds ahead of Seb Cooke, Katie was wishing that she might have had someone else, anyone else, but him, for her new and nearest neighbour. Not that she was likely to see much of him she acknowledged, on two counts. According to what Charlotte had told her she could guess that his job would be very demanding and from the way he had looked at her she had seen that he was as pleased about having her for a neighbour as she was him. What was his wife like? she wondered. Very glamorous and sexy no doubt. He was that kind of man—you could see at a glance. He just exuded sexuality…Not like Gareth. Gareth was a man for snuggling up to in front of a lovely log fire…Gareth was a comfort and reassurance, safe and…

And there was no way that anyone, any woman, would ever describe Seb Cooke as any of those things, but most especially safe. Why, you only had to think about his family’s reputation. There was a smouldering sexual energy about him that rubbed her up the wrong way and brought all of her own antagonism towards him out making her feel prickly and on her guard, wary and filled with unfamiliarly strong emotions.

Even the way he had looked at her. Katie tensed as she tried to banish the unwanted memory of that startling reaction she had experienced when she had almost felt as though she could sense the heat of his breath, his mouth on hers. It had been a mistake, an accident, a ridiculous fluke caused by heaven alone knew what mix up of signals inside her body. No doubt Seb himself would have an explanation for such awareness. He, after all, was the research scientist and no doubt fully au fait with the confusing mixture of chemicals and in-built programming which were responsible for what less rational people called ‘emotions.’

To her relief as she looked in her driving mirror she saw that they were going in opposite directions to their different destinations as she indicated to turn left to drive home to her parents’ house.

CHAPTER THREE

‘MMM… What a wonderful smell,’ Katie enthused as she walked into the kitchen where her mother was busy cooking. Originally a farmer’s daughter from Cheshire, Jenny Crighton had the kind of homemaking skills that at one stage of her young married life had made her feel very dull and old-fashioned. Who wanted a wife who could grow, preserve and cook her own fruit and vegetables in an era which had fallen in love with Twiggy look-alikes; fragile, big-eyed dolly birds? Who wanted a wife with a healthy build, thick curly hair and freckles when the fashion was for chalk-white pallor and long straight locks?

It had taken a long time for her to learn that Jon Crighton, her husband, loved her very deeply, but these last few years since the birthday party thrown to celebrate her husband’s and his twin brother’s half century, had seen a renaissance in their marriage and had brought her more joy and happiness than she had once believed she could ever have—and it showed. She still had the trim feminine figure of her youth, but as a young girl she had been self-effacing, a little awkward and shy, now she had a mature self-confidence that came not just from knowing how much her husband loved her nor even from being the pivot of her busy family household, but from feeling at ease with herself.

‘It’s for supper tonight. You haven’t forgotten that we’re having an informal party have you?’

Katie gave her an apologetic look.

‘Oh heavens, yes I had,’ she admitted, adding by way of explanation, ‘It’s been such a frantic week, what with my own conveyance and then Olivia having to take extra time off.’

‘Mmm…Well at least the doctor has confirmed the fever and temperature is only a childhood upset and not meningitis as Olivia first feared. You will be joining us this evening though, won’t you?’

‘Mmm…What time are you expecting people?’

‘In about an hour,’ her mother told her.

‘Right, I’ll go up and have a shower and get changed and then I’ll come down and give you a hand. Is Dad back?’ she asked as she helped herself to one of the too-tempting and still-warm fruit buns her mother had just put onto a wire rack to cool.

‘Yes…just…That will give you indigestion,’ she warned Katie with a mock serious look as she tapped her hand.

‘Oh, and by the way, I rang Louise this morning…’

Katie, who had been about to go upstairs, tensed, her heart starting to thud unevenly. Every mention of her twin reminded her of Gareth and brought home to her the emptiness of her own life in contrast to the love that filled Louise’s.

‘You know we’re having a special party for your grandfather soon,’ her mother was continuing. ‘Well, both Maddy and I think that we ought to have as many from the family there as possible. Having the family around him means so much to Ben and he’s getting so frail…’