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Penny Jordan's Crighton Family Series - Пенни Джордан - Читать любовный роман онлайн в женской библиотеке LadyLib.Net
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Джордан Пенни
Penny Jordan's Crighton Family Series
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WHEN Olivia rang later in the day as she had promised she would, Bobbie took a deep breath and made a fervent mental plea that she was making the right decision as she confirmed that she wanted to accept her offer of a job.
‘You’ll do it! Oh, that’s wonderful!’ Olivia enthused, adding, ‘I was so afraid that you were going to say no.’
Bobbie bit her lip as she prayed that Olivia would never have cause to wish that she had refused whilst she listened to her explain the finer details of their arrangement.
‘Oh, and don’t worry about transport,’ she told Bobbie. ‘We’ll provide you with a car. You’ll certainly need one because we are rather isolated, I’m afraid.’
Well, at least that solved the problem of how she was going to explain away being able to afford the cost of a hire-car, Bobbie acknowledged as Olivia went on to detail the generous amount of time off she would be given plus the use of the car for her personal needs.
It was agreed that Olivia would pick her up at the hotel in the morning, but despite the other woman’s enthusiasm, Bobbie was not surprised to discover that her hand was shaking and her stomach churning with nauseous apprehension when she finally replaced the receiver.
Still, at least there was a positive advantage to leaving Chester—she would not be likely to see Luke Crighton again.
‘I’ve told Joss that you might be coming to work for us,’ Olivia had informed her. ‘He’s thrilled to bits!’
Bobbie spent the rest of the evening packing her things and trying to ignore the sad little voice of her conscience.
After all, how could she have faced her twin sister if she had refused such a golden opportunity? And, given the choice, she would much rather confront and deal with her own conscience than Sam’s ire!
‘Here we are, home safe and sound,’ Olivia announced with a smile as she drove in between the gateposts towards the pretty low-roofed brick building that was her home and that, as she had already explained to Bobbie, had originally been a small block of three farm workers’ cottages.
‘They came up for auction along with a couple of paddocks just before we got married. It was Luke who tipped us off about them. He knew it was exactly the kind of place we were looking for—something large enough in which to bring up a family and with a good bit of land, but nothing too grand or expensive.
‘For the first six months we owned it, the place was completely uninhabitable, and we were still virtually knee-deep in builders and decorators and the like when Amelia was born.’
‘It looks wonderful,’ Bobbie enthused as she gazed appreciatively at the neatly painted windows and the mellow warmth of the old bricks.
‘Come on,’ Olivia instructed her as she stopped the car. ‘Let’s go in. Caspar is dying for you to arrive.’
‘I hope I’m not going to let you down.’ Bobbie hesitated. ‘I ... I really don’t know that much about babies or small children.’
‘Neither did I until I had Amelia,’ Olivia confessed cheerfully. ‘She liked you,’ she added warmly. ‘I could see that, and quite frankly that’s much more important to me than a long string of qualifications. Mmm...I’m surprised that Caspar hasn’t come out to welcome you.’
Uncertainly, Bobbie followed Olivia as she led her, not to the prettily painted front door of the now-amalgamated cottages but around the side of the house and through a gate into a walled courtyard area and towards what Bobbie guessed must be the back door.
As Bobbie followed her through it into the kitchen, she heard Olivia exclaim, ‘Ruth! I didn’t realise you were here!’ Bobbie followed Olivia’s gaze and saw an elegantly dressed, serenely attractive woman whose still dark, well-styled hair made her look nothing like the age that Bobbie knew her to be.
If Ruth’s clothes and supple, slender body looked elegant, the pose she had adopted on the floor where she was obviously playing with Olivia’s baby daughter most certainly was not. Her carelessly sprawled body and the warm, rich uninhibited sound of her laughter surely belonged more to a girl in her late teens or early twenties rather than a woman of such maturity, Bobbie decided, her own body stiffening slightly in a mixture of wariness and covert disdain as Ruth scrambled to her feet, still laughing as she explained, ‘Caspar had to go out—an urgent meeting. He phoned and asked me if I could come over.’
‘Oh, Ruth, we impose on you far too much,’ Olivia apologised as she hugged her great-aunt warmly, ‘but not, I promise you, any more. This is Bobbie. She’s going to be looking after Amelia for us for a few weeks to give us time to find a more permanent nanny.’
If Ruth Crighton’s demeanour and body language seemed surprisingly youthful, then the look of extraordinary wisdom and kindness in her eyes told a very different story, Bobbie acknowledged, shaken by the unexpectedness of the emotions that overwhelmed her as Ruth held out her hand towards her. Her first instinct was to step back from her to avoid any kind of physical contact with her. But her mother had had an old-fashioned attitude towards teaching her children good manners and Bobbie found that she was automatically extending her own hand.
Ruth’s clasp was firm but feminine, the bones in her hand fine and delicate. Bobbie had to look away and blink frantically in case the sudden rush of tears to her eyes betrayed her. The feel of that elegantly shaped, long-fingered hand with its smooth, delicate, English-rose skin was almost unbearably familiar.
‘I’ve been looking forward to meeting you,’ she heard Ruth telling her warmly before adding, ‘Joss drew a most intriguing verbal picture of you.’
‘I suppose he told you that I was a giant.’ Bobbie smiled back, taking refuge from her own chaotic emotions in making a joke about her height.
‘Actually, no, he didn’t,’ Ruth denied. ‘He told me that you liked reading tombstones and that you were just the right height for Luke.’
To her own dismay, Bobbie realised that she was actually blushing.
‘He also said that you were American and that he liked you,’ Ruth added with another smile, tactfully ignoring Bobbie’s embarrassment.
American and he liked her or American but he liked her? Bobbie wondered as her self-consciousness subsided and she was unable to stop herself from asking dryly, ‘I see. Does that mean that normally the two aren’t found to be compatible?’
Ruth’s eyebrows rose, her fine eyes rather thoughtful as she studied Bobbie’s face. There was no doubt that the American was a vibrantly beautiful young woman. Ruth could see intelligence as well as pride in her expression, but even more intriguingly she could also see an unexpected hint of uncertainty and defensiveness.
‘Oh dear,’ Olivia broke in ruefully. ‘I suspect that must mean that Joss has been telling you tales about how certain members of the Crighton clan have in the past been chauvinistically anti-American. I can remember how shocked I was when Caspar told me that he’d heard about it, but that’s all in the past now, Bobbie,’ she said reassuringly. ‘If it ever really existed.’
‘There was a certain amount of local resentment and male jealousy of the American forces stationed here during the Second World War,’ Ruth supplied quietly, ‘but that was all a long time ago and I believe what ill feeling there may have been has been exaggerated into a bit of a shaggy-dog story.’
‘Mmm... Uncle Jon seems to feel that it was your father who first started the whole anti-American thing,’ Olivia commented. ‘Something about some argument he’d had with someone in authority on the American side...’
Bobbie wondered if she was being over-sensitive in thinking that Ruth hesitated just that little bit too long before replying and that her voice was not quite so naturally or warmly pitched as it had been before as she responded, ‘That may very well have been the case. Your great-grandfather had his own very decided views on things and he certainly wasn’t too happy with the way the Ministry had appropriated land—especially when it was his land—for war use and I believe there were certain quarrels and petty arguments over his belief that he still had a right to walk on what he considered to be his own land while the authorities viewed that he was trespassing on what was now military property.’
Olivia laughed and, as she bent down to scoop up her small daughter who was now beginning to object to the lack of adult attention, told Bobbie, ‘Well, you can rest assured, Bobbie, that Americans are more than welcome in this household. You will stay for lunch, won’t you?’ she turned to ask Ruth as the older woman started to straighten her skirt.
‘I wish I could, but it’s the Simmonds’ wedding this weekend and I promised I’d help with the flowers for the church today,’ Ruth answered, turning away from Olivia and smiling gently at Bobbie as she added, ‘It’s been lovely to meet you. Perhaps Olivia will bring you over to see me before you leave.’
‘Bring her over to see you... How formal.’ Olivia pulled a face.
Without waiting for Bobbie to reply, Ruth turned back to her small great-great-niece, her eyes alight with tenderness and love as she bent her head to kiss her.
‘Ruth is wonderful with children,’ Olivia told Bobbie ten minutes later after Ruth had driven off.
‘Yes ... yes, I can see that she is,’ Bobbie agreed flatly. The day had suddenly started to turn sour on her. She had the beginnings of what promised to be a very bad headache, and for the first time since she had come to Britain, she missed her twin so much that she positively ached with the pain of wanting her.
‘Bobbie, what is it? Are you feeling all right?’ Olivia asked her anxiously. ‘You weren’t upset by what we were saying about Americans, were you? It was thoughtless of me to bring it up. It’s just that you’re almost bound to meet Gramps and, well, depending on what kind of mood he’s in and how much his hip is paining him, he can be rather...tactless. He’s rather behind the times, I’m afraid, and his outlook is very blinkered. You’d never believe that he and Ruth are brother and sister. She’s so modern and so forward-thinking. I know that Gramps is older than her but sometimes you’d think he’s got stuck in some kind of time warp, whereas Ruth—’
‘You obviously think very highly of her,’ Bobbie commented abruptly.
Olivia gave her a thoughtful look.
‘Yes ... yes ... I do,’ she agreed gravely. ‘You see... Well, let’s just say that if it wasn’t for Ruth, I doubt very much that Caspar and I would be together today and I certainly wouldn’t have you, would I, my wonderful, precious, naughty little one?’ She smiled, hugging her gurgling daughter.
‘In many ways, Ruth and Jon’s wife, Jenny, have been the true mother figures in my life, the people I’ve turned to for help and advice and, yes, for the definition of myself as a woman. My own mother...’ She gave Bobbie a sad look. ‘It’s no secret and you’re bound to hear about it sooner or later, so I may as well tell you myself. My mother, Tania, suffered very badly from...from an eating disorder. So badly, in fact, that even now, although she’s in recovery, she still needs help.’
‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ Bobbie commiserated, genuinely moved to compassion, not just for Olivia but for her unknown mother, as well.
‘Yes, so am I,’ Olivia agreed, ‘which is just one of the reasons why I’m so determined that this tittle madam gets a very different kind of mothering.’
‘And your father?’ Bobbie asked hesitantly.
‘Who knows?’ Olivia returned dryly. ‘He ... he disappeared shortly after my mother became ilt—he’d been recovering from a heart attack in a nursing home and he just walked out. We’ve tried to find him but...’
‘And you’ve heard nothing from him?’ Bobbie asked her, shocked.
‘Two postcards, one from Italy and the other from South America, but we still haven’t been able to trace him.’ Olivia gave a small shrug.
‘As Amelia grows up, Jenny and Jon will be her maternal grandparents and Ruth... Ruth, I hope, will always be Amelia’s special person and be there for her as she was for me when I was a child and as she is now for Joss. She’s convinced that, of all of us, he’s the one who will fulfil all of Gramps’s ambitions, and she’s probably right. Mind you, Joss is going to have a long way to go before he matches Luke’s awesome courtroom manner,’ Olivia noted, smiling.
‘Yes. I can imagine,’ Bobbie agreed grimly. ‘He must be a ruthless prosecutor.’
‘Prosecutor!’ Olivia stared at her. ‘Oh, but Luke specialises in defence, didn’t he tell you? That’s his forte.’
‘Whom does he defend?’ Bobbie muttered cynically, trying not to betray her discomfort. ‘Murderers and rapists?’
She could see from Olivia’s expression that she had gone too far and inwardly cursed her runaway tongue’s impulsiveness.
‘I’m sorry,’ she apologised guiltily. ‘It’s just...’
‘It’s all right,’ Olivia assured her. ‘You don’t have to explain to me. Caspar and I had some pretty horrendous fights in our time.’
Whilst Bobbie stared at her, she added illuminatingly, ‘I’m afraid that Fenella wasn’t too discreet in giving vent to her feelings about discovering the pair of you together. I don’t intend to pry,’ she declared firmly. ‘But, well, let’s just say that it’s pretty obvious that there’s a certain something smouldering away between you, and my experience is that when something smoulders, sparks can fly,’ Olivia finished more light-heartedly.
Bobbie didn’t say a word. How could she? She was too busy trying to grapple with the latest complication in her life. She doubted that Luke would be too pleased at discovering that at least one member of his extended family and possibly others appeared to think that they were something of an ‘item’. Well, he only had himself to blame, and unpleasant though she might find the thought of being linked romantically to him, she at least would soon be walking away from the situation—and from him.
For now, though, she was caught in something of a cleft stick. She either allowed Olivia to continue thinking that there was some kind of romance going on between herself and Luke or she told her that there wasn’t and left her believing that she had simply spent the night with him. Of the two, the second option was certainly the more unpalatable, Bobbie acknowledged, and besides, she rather suspected that Luke would find it much more difficult to explain his way out of a supposed romance than to dismiss a mere one-night stand, and if he was busy doing that, he would surely have far less time to indulge his suspicions of her. In fact, the more Bobbie thought about it, the more advantages she could see in allowing the fiction that she and Luke were attracted to one another to continue.
For a start, it would allow her to be far more openly curious about Luke’s family background than she could allow herself to be as a mere substitute nanny and for another thing... Well, she admitted that she wouldn’t have been human if she wasn’t enjoying the prospect of seeing Luke wrong-footed and discomforted and she certainly knew exactly how he would feel at the idea of having her for a ‘girlfriend’.
And then another thought struck her.
‘I hope you didn’t offer me this job because...because of me and Luke,’ she asked Olivia uncomfortably.
‘Certainly not,’ Olivia reassured her immediately. ‘No, Caspar and I had already talked about approaching you on the night of the party. Which reminds me, could you hold Amelia for a moment, please, while I go and ring Caspar and find out what time he’s coming home?’
Left alone with her new charge, Bobbie smilingly returned the baby’s curious, round-eyed stare, enjoying the soft, warm feel of her in her arms, and instinctively started to talk to her.
When Olivia returned, Amelia was smiling hugely in Bobbie’s arms whilst Bobbie herself...
Some women just had a natural mothering instinct, Olivia believed, and Bobbie, whether she knew it yet or not, was definitely one of them.
Twenty-four hours later, even Bobbie herself was surprised at how easily she had fitted into the household. Caspar and Olivia treated her more as a friend than an employee, and as for Amelia...
She was delicious, Bobbie had happily and wholeheartedly told a grinning Caspar. Yummy, delicious, delectable and definitely the most intelligent and aware eight-month-old who had ever existed.
‘You’re almost as bad as Luke,’ Olivia teasingly scolded her later that evening. ‘He’s the most besotted godfather that ever was.’
‘And a far better choice than Saul would have been,’ Caspar chipped in, adding dryly, ‘He would have been more interested in making eyes at Amelia’s mother than at Amelia.’
‘Caspar!’ Olivia warned him.
‘Saul’s my father’s cousin,’ she explained to Bobbie. ‘You may have met him at the birthday party.’
‘He was the one Louise was desperately trying to impress,’ Caspar supplied helpfully, ‘but she’s wasting her time because Saul—’
‘Caspar...’ Olivia warned a little more firmly this time. ‘Saul’s much too old for Louise,’ she explained. ‘He’s well into his thirties now and Louise is only eighteen.’
‘He’s also getting divorced, has three children and is still half inclined to believe himself in love with you,’ Caspar interjected.
‘Saul was never in love with me,’ Olivia refuted firmly. ‘He may at one time have thought...felt... Oh, I’m sure Bobbie doesn’t want to hear all this ancient family history,’ she told her husband, then continued to explain to Bobbie, ‘As a teenager I did have a bit of a crush on Saul, and then when his marriage broke up and Caspar and I were estranged, Saul provided a welcome cousinly shoulder for me to cry on. His wife was an American, by the way. In fact, it’s rather ironic, given Gramps’s insistence on being so anti-American, that two of us have married across the Atlantic, as it were.’
‘If you ask me, a good deal of your grandfather’s antipathy towards us springs from Ruth’s mysterious relationship with her army major,’ Caspar conjectured.
‘Caspar, please,’ Olivia objected even more sternly this time, and good manners precluded Bobbie from asking any questions. Instead, Olivia tactfully changed the subject and talked about how Haslewich had developed as a town. Her enthusiasm was infectious, but she admitted her knowledge was limited.
‘If you really want to know more about its history, Ruth is the one to talk to. Which reminds me, I’ve got some books she loaned me and I really ought to get back to her. Could you possibly return them for me tomorrow, Bobbie, when you’re out with Amelia?’
‘Yes, of course,’ Bobbie agreed.
‘I’d take them back myself, after all she only lives a few minutes away from the office, but I’m in court in Chester tomorrow and possibly for the rest of the week, as well.’
‘Oh and, Cas, before I forget, we’ve all been summoned to Queensmead for lunch on Sunday. Apparently, Max is home and Gramps has issued a royal summons. You’re included, too,’ she told Bobbie, adding ruefully, ‘Not that it’s likely to be a particularly relaxing occasion, not with Max around.’
‘You’d have thought that marriage would have mellowed him a bit,’ Caspar grumbled.
‘The only thing that’s ever likely to mellow Max is a large helping of humble pie,’ Olivia responded forthrightly, ‘and he’s certainly not going to be fed that by Madeleine, who worships him.’
‘Mmm...I’ve noticed,’ Caspar agreed wryly. ‘Hardly a healthy foundation on which to base a marriage and it can’t but lead one to suspect that Max’s motivation for marrying her—’
‘Poor Madeleine,’ Olivia broke in, ‘I feel so sorry for her. She doesn’t work and she’s prepared to devote herself to Max and then to their children when they come along and, of course, she genuinely is a very lovable and kind-hearted person.
‘And although Luke doesn’t normally put in an appearance when he knows Max is going to be around, I suspect that we’ll be seeing him at Queensmead this Sunday,’ Olivia told Bobbie with a teasing smile.
Fortunately Amelia distracted them, freeing Bobbie from the necessity of making any reply, although she was uneasily aware that in refusing to correct Olivia’s misconception that she and Luke were romantically involved, she was potentially risking tangling with an unstable situation, but, she told herself firmly, it was Luke’s responsibility to tell his cousin exactly why he had virtually forced himself into her room, and not hers.
She was thinking about Luke again the following day as she wheeled Amelia through the sunshine and into Haslewich’s pretty town square on her way to return Ruth’s books. It was an unfathomable mystery to her how such a man—the type of man she would normally have sidestepped past with the same kind of politically correct disdain with which she would have avoided some offensively rabid right-winger spouting his views at a Washington dinner party—could have such a deep and profound impact on her at the deepest level of her emotional and physical self, especially when there was so much else that was far more important to occupy her thoughts. It must be because she disliked him that she was spending so much time thinking about him, she decided hastily, but the analytical and fiercely sharp streak of hard-hitting perseverance and brutal self-honesty she had inherited via her father from his Puritan forebears refused to allow her such an easy way out. If she disliked him so much, how come he had the kind of physical effect on her body and her female desires that she couldn’t remember having had so strongly or so bewilderingly activated since junior high?
So she was as vulnerable as the next woman to the kind of raw sexual energy that Luke positively exuded. So what? She knew otherwise perfectly sensible and intelligent women who went glassy-eyed over Brad Pitt and only admitted to it in the privacy of dark, sheltered wine bars after at least half a bottle of good wine.
Perhaps because she was thinking of Luke and therefore in defiance of her thoughts and his suspicions, she decided to wheel Amelia through the church walk instead of going straight across the square.
The walk ran along one side of the square and down to the gated church close that housed Ruth’s home. All of the four benches were already filled, mainly with the town’s more elderly residents, Bobbie noticed as she smiled in response to their admiring comments about Amelia. From the walk she could see the churchyard, and the temptation to visit it a second time proved irresistible. Amelia gurgled happily as she reached out to try to grab a handful of the pretty wild poppies that had seeded themselves in the grass verge and it was whilst Bobbie was gently detaching her from them that she heard someone calling her name.
Looking round she saw Ruth coming towards her. She was carrying an empty flower trug and explained, as she reached them, that she had been to do the church flowers.
‘We were just on our way to see you,’ Bobbie informed her quietly. ‘Olivia asked me to return some books she borrowed from you and I thought that we’d take a small detour through the church walk,’ she explained a little uncomfortably.
But to her relief Ruth didn’t seem to share Luke’s suspicious objections of her behaviour and simply replied, ‘Yes, there’s something fascinating about old churches. They always seem to hold such an air of peace and tranquillity. We can cut through here,’ she added, indicating by waving her hand in the direction of the churchyard. ‘It will save us walking all the way back.’
‘It was here that I first met Joss,’ Bobbie offered conversationally as they followed the path that meandered between the gravestones.
‘Yes, I know,’ Ruth returned. ‘He often comes here. Jon and Jenny lost their first baby,’ she explained quietly. ‘He’s buried here and Joss often comes to bring flowers and to talk to him. He’s that kind of boy.’
‘Yes, he is,’ Bobbie agreed, suddenly discovering that there was a lump in her throat and that her eyes were filming with tears. Without really thinking about what she was saying, she murmured emotionally, ‘That must just be the hardest thing...to lose a child...a baby....’
There was a long silence before Ruth replied and when she did Bobbie could hear the tension in her voice as she responded, ‘Yes, it is.... Here we are,’ she said in a more normal voice, indicating a small gate set into the neatly clipped hedge that separated the churchyard from the close. ‘We go this way.’
Ruth’s home was everything that Bobbie had expected and a good many things she had not The antique furniture, the Persian rugs, the smell of polish and flowers, the family heirlooms and photographs. She had known those would all be there, but the other things... A carefully chosen and displayed collection of polished stones and pebbles that were of no material value at all, other than the fact that someone—probably Joss—had found them and lovingly polished them to give to her, children’s toys suitable for nephews and nieces of different ages; a book of modeRN flower arrangements and a rather racy novel along with several political biographies that Bobbie would never have thought of as typical reading for a spinster living in a quiet rural backwater.
On the bookshelves as well, though, were some very well-worn copies of Jane Austen’s novels plus several leather-bound volumes of poetry.
Amelia, it was obvious, was delighted to be in the company of her great-great aunt and Bobbie was compelled to admire the very practised and confident way in which Ruth changed the baby’s nappy, covering the little girl’s face with kisses as she re-dressed her.
Angry with herself for her own emotional reaction, she had to turn her head away to hide tears as she watched the loving rapport between Amelia and Ruth. Bobbie, too, had great-great aunts but they were nothing like Ruth.
‘It will be interesting to see if this young lady follows family tradition and chooses a career in law,’ Ruth commented as she knelt back and looked from Amelia to Bobbie.
Bobbie took a deep breath. Here was her chance and she trembled in her shoes; Sam would not have sidestepped it and neither must she.
‘Joss told me a little about the family’s history. He said that the Haslewich branch was started by someone from Chester who broke away from his own family....’
‘Yes,’ Ruth agreed. ‘Josiah was the youngest of three sons. He quarrelled with his father over his choice of a wife and was in effect disinherited. As a result he began his own practice here in Haslewich and, I suspect, because of the reason behind the split, there has always in the past been a distinct degree of rivalry between the two branches, more keenly felt in my observation by our branch than the family in Chester.’ She gave Bobbie a friendly smile and asked, ‘Do you have any brothers or sisters?’
Bobbie hesitated briefly before replying. ‘I have a brother and a sister,’ she said carefully, keeping her voice as neutral as she could before adding, ‘As a matter of fact, my sister and I are twins. She’s called Samantha.’
‘Twins ...’ Ruth raised her eyebrows. ‘What a coincidence. Of course you know by now, that twins feature very heavily in our genealogy and in fact...’
Bobbie’s heart was thumping just a little bit too heavily as she listened to Ruth talk about the occurrence of twins in the Crighton family. But she was also obviously interested in finding out more about Bobbie’s parents.
‘Olivia mentioned that your father was a politician...?’
‘Yes, he is,’ Bobbie confirmed and felt pressured to add as Ruth waited patiently, ‘My father’s family are from New England—that’s where Sam and I grew up. But he and my mother spend a lot of time in Washington.’
‘Does your mother have a career?’
‘No...not now.’ Bobbie bit her lip as she heard the curtness in her own voice. ‘She...we... My mother hasn’t been very well lately,’ she said quietly. ‘And we...my...my father... No, she doesn’t have a career.’
Ruth eyed her young guest thoughtfully, sensing not just Bobbie’s reluctance to talk about her family and in particular her mother, but also her unexpressed concern and anguish over her mother’s health, remembering how she had felt when she had lost her own mother, her only support in a household that was ruled by her father and his prejudices—prejudices that to a great extent had been backed up and continued by her brother.
‘You’re obviously very concerned about your mother,’ she said with gentle sympathy. ‘If you’re worried about using Olivia’s telephone to ring home, I’m sure if you explained the situation to her, she’d be only too glad for you to do so. If she isn’t, which I can’t imagine, then you must certainly feel free to come over here and telephone from here.’ When Bobbie stared at her, she added quietly, ‘I do know what it’s like to be separated from someone you love, you know. How it feels to worry about them, to imagine all manner of horrid things happening to them when you aren’t there to help, to be with them.’
‘My mother had a serious operation last year and she still hasn’t fully recovered.’ Bobbie swallowed back the tears she could feel thickening at the back of her throat. What on earth had come over her?
The nature of her mother’s illness—the change in her from a positive, warm, happy person to someone who could, at times, be so desperately low—had shocked and frightened them all. It was regarded as a family secret they had all instinctively and automatically chosen to keep closely hidden in order to protect not just their mother, but their father, as well. Normally Bobbie would no more have dreamt of discussing her mother’s health with someone outside their immediate family than she would have taken off her clothes and walked naked through the streets of her home town. And now, feeling that she had not just broken some sacred rule but also, and even more distressingly, betrayed her mother into the bargain, she found it hard to both understand why she had mentioned her mother’s health at all and to forgive herself for having done so.
‘I must go,’ she told Ruth, standing up and picking Amelia up as she did so. ‘Caspar will be back soon and he’ll wonder where we are.’
‘I expect I shall see you on Sunday,’ Ruth said as she escorted her to the door, and then, to Bobbie’s shock, as she turned to leave, Ruth reached out and touched her arm lightly. ‘Try not to let your very natural concern for your mother make you over-fearful. I’m sure if there was anything you should know that your sister would tell you. It’s easy enough for me to say, I realise,’ she added ruefully, ‘but I was once your age and I do know how it feels to ... to worry about someone you love....’
As she spoke she looked down at Amelia and said inconsequentially, ‘Babies always seem so very vulnerable....’
‘Perhaps because they are,’ Bobbie returned curtly. ‘After all, they have no control over how they’re treated, have they? They’re totally dependent on the adults around them for everything. Protection...nourishment ... love!’
Bobbie’s head was aching by the time she had returned to Olivia and Caspar’s. Tonight was one of her evenings off and she intended to drive into Chester, ostensibly to call at the Grosvenor to check if there were any messages for her but, in reality, in order to telephone her sister.
At the Grosvenor the receptionist remembered her and greeted her with a warm smile. There were no messages but Bobbie hadn’t expected any, and fortunately the lobby was relatively empty as she went to use the pay phone.
Samantha answered her call so quickly that Bobbie guessed she had been waiting impatiently for her to ring. After giving her the pay phone number, Bobbie waited for her to call back, glancing around the foyer as she did so and then freezing as she spotted Luke on the opposite side of the room, standing by the entrance to the restaurant. Fortunately he had not seen her, and as the telephone rang, Bobbie turned her back on him and made herself as inconspicuous as possible, praying that he would not do so. He had been talking to another man, and Bobbie kept her fingers crossed that the pair of them were on the way to have dinner in the restaurant.
On hearing about the family gathering on Sunday, Samantha excitedly said that that would be the perfect time for Bobbie to stand up and say what they had rehearsed. She was quite adamant that the time for retribution had arrived.
‘I know,’ Bobbie agreed steadily, ‘but—’
‘But me no buts,’ Samantha insisted fiercely and then, relenting, Bobbie heard her twin saying in a softer voice, ‘Love you, Bo bo....’
Bo bo had been her childhood nickname and Bobbie felt her eyes filling and was torn between laughter and tears as she heard Sam use it now.
‘Love you, too, Sam,’ she returned shakily, her voice husky with emotion as she blew a kiss into the receiver before replacing it and then murmuring, ‘Oh, Sam, I miss you,’ before she started to turn round.
Bobbie stiffened apprehensively as she heard Luke saying cynically over his shoulder, ‘Joss, Max and now Sam ... You certainly like to share your favours around generously, don’t you?’
Unable to believe her ears, Bobbie shot back furiously, ‘For your information, Sam is...Sam is very, very special to me.’
‘Really.’ Luke’s eyes narrowed as he told her grittily, ‘You do surprise me. From the way you responded to me, it didn’t feel like there was anyone even special in your life, never mind very, very special.’
Bobbie could feel her face growing hot as she hissed back at him before turning on her heel and heading determinedly for the exit, ‘I did not respond to you. You made a grab for me.’
She pushed through the door and walked out onto the street, thankful to feel the cool night air on her burning face and even more thankful to have left Luke and his barbed comments behind her in the hotel foyer. Only, as she quickly discovered, she hadn’t left him behind after all. Angrily she glared at him before she demanded, ‘Go away. Stop following me.’
‘I am not following you,’ Luke contradicted her forcefully, ‘and neither did I make a “grab” for you as you term it.’
‘Oh yes, you did,’ Bobbie argued back insistently, the heat returning to her face as she realised that they were attracting the amused looks of people entering the hotel. Quickly she instinctively sought the protective cover of a nearby shadowy gap between the buildings. ‘You made a grab for me and you ... you assaulted me,’ Bobbie accused Luke furiously as he followed her into the shadows, ignoring the inner voice that warned her that the language she was using was dangerously close to being deliberately aggressive as well as not totally true.
‘Assaulted you...? I did no such thing,’ Luke denied grimly. ‘I kissed you, yes, but if the reaction you gave me was anything to go by...’
‘That was a fluke ... a mistake—I was thinking of someone else,’ Bobbie defended herself quickly. ‘It could never happen again.’
‘No?’ Luke challenged her softly.
‘No,’ Bobbie answered, but she knew her voice lacked conviction and she looked apprehensively past Luke, desperate to escape from him and the situation she herself had helped to create, before any further damage was done either to her ego or her credibility. ‘Look, I’ve got to go,’ she informed him. ‘The last bus for Haslewich leaves at ten and—’
‘The last bus.’
Bobbie could see that he was frowning.
‘Surely Olivia offered you the use of a car...?’
‘Yes, she did,’ Bobbie agreed steadily, ‘but since I was coming into Chester on my own personal business and Olivia had to use the car this evening, I felt it was unfair of me to borrow it.’
‘Then you’re a fool,’ Luke scolded her roundly. ‘No woman should take the risk of having to wait for, or travel, on public transport on her own late at night these days unless she has to. I’ll drive you home.’
Bobbie tried to protest but he refused to accept her claim that she was perfectly safe, telling her chillingly instead that he had seen far too many assault cases where the victim had been a young woman travelling on her own to take the risk of her swelling their numbers.
‘I’m over six foot and hardly vulnerable,’ Bobbie felt bound to point out.
‘You’re a woman,’ Luke told her flatly, ‘and as for not being vulnerable...height has nothing to do with it. Although, I suppose from your point of view, it’s only natural that you should feel defensive about it. For a woman to be so unusually tall must be—’
‘Must be what?’ Bobbie demanded furiously. ‘Must be a turn-off to men? Well, you might find it one, but I can promise you...’
They were out in the square now, Luke having taken hold of her arm whilst they were arguing and cleverly outmanoeuvred her almost without her realising what he was doing.
‘I’m parked over here,’ he told her without letting go of her and then adding in the same, almost casual, tone, ‘I have no idea what it was you were about to promise me, but what I can promise you is that personally, while any woman with hang-ups about her body can be something of a turn-off, the thought of having to contort myself into a position suitable for making love with a woman more than several inches shorter than I am myself is even more of one and, in fact, there is something that is very much a turn-on being physically matched with a woman who fits neatly into my own body.’
Bobbie could feel her face starting to burn even more hotly with a mixture of chagrin and a shocking sense of sensual excitement whose existence felt like it was choking her. ‘Joss told me you liked petite dumb blondes,’ she countered weakly.
‘Joss has made the same mistake that too many other people make,’ Luke informed her dryly. ‘It’s the petite dumb blondes who prefer me, not the other way round.’
They had reached his car now, a large, roomy BMW, Bobbie was relieved to see. Olivia’s car, nippy though it was, had her hunching over the steering wheel, her back aching after she had driven it for any great distance.
As he stood next to her, deactivating the alarm and preparing to open the passenger door for her, she heard Luke saying softly, ‘I’m a lawyer by training and by custom and it would be illogical of me to prefer a sexual partner with whom even the mildest form of sensual pleasure would be physically ungratifying.’
When he saw the way Bobbie was frowning back at him in confusion, Luke closed the distance between them and, putting his hands on her waist, drew her firmly against his body so that they were standing thigh to thigh, torso to torso.
Bobbie took a deep, protesting breath, about to launch herself into a furious verbal attack and then stopped as the very act of drawing breath brought her into sharp awareness of exactly what Luke meant.
‘See what I mean,’ he whispered as the grip of his hands tightened. ‘If I were to kiss you now, it wouldn’t just be our mouths that made matching and sensual physical contact, would it?’
As she felt herself starting to tremble, Bobbie wasn’t sure if her reaction was caused by anger or ... or what? Not physical awareness of Luke, surely...not physical arousal, physical responsiveness to him.
‘If this is some kind of joke...’ she began warily as she tried to step back from him.
‘It’s no joke,’ Luke responded grimly. ‘No joke at all,’ he repeated in a much softer tone as he bent his head towards her and his hands started to slide caressingly down over the curves of her behind, pulling her even more intimately into his own body so that... Bobbie held her breath, the sensation of Luke’s body against her own somehow activating a dangerous physical transformation within her and an even more dangerous reaction without. She had experienced physical arousal before, physical attraction, and she knew perfectly well just how illusionary and charismatic it could be—and how meaninglessly empty—but this sensation, this feeling...this emotion that held her in such shocking and powerful thrall, was far too intense and overwhelming to be that. It was more, much more, than the provocative thrust of Luke’s body against hers and the fierce primal throb of desire quickening within her own, more than the sexually charged atmosphere of heat and need she could feel shimmering around them. So strong that she could almost reach out and touch it, taste it...just as she felt she wanted to reach out and touch and taste Luke himself.
All of those feelings, no matter how strong, how shocking, how unwanted they were to her, were capable of analysis and explanation; a cause for them could be found and once found they themselves could be dismissed. But there was no cause, no means of analysing or understanding, never mind denying or dismissing that shock wave of emotional oneness and rightness she had experienced as Luke drew her close to him; that bewildering notion that somehow she had found that special wondrous place; that special wondrous person who was her real home, that knowledge that somehow or other Luke had reached out and touched the very core of her innermost being and that because of that ... because of him the whole of her life would be changed for ever.
Bobbie had always assumed that one day she would fall in love deeply and permanently and she had hoped that when she did that love would be returned; that together she and her beloved would form a close-knit unit that would one day expand to include the children she hoped they would have, but it had never occurred to her that loving could ever be like this; that from one moment to the next, one heartbeat to the next, she would suddenly and irrevocably know the man she loved and know just as intensely her love for him could never be destroyed.
‘Luke...’ As she said his name on a shakily expelled breath, he covered her mouth with his, his hands coming up to cup her face and hold her still beneath his kiss. His thumb caressed the delicate curve of her cheek as his mouth moved equally caressingly on hers.
To Bobbie it seemed the most natural thing in the world to respond openly to him, reaching out to hold him, opening her mouth to him and welcoming the demanding thrust of his tongue within it with a soft, throaty murmur of delight.
Even their mouths might have been made to fit together, she acknowledged hazily as she purred her pleasure into his caressing mouth, arching her throat beneath the stroking touch of his hand, feeling her pulse quicken and her body tense as her nipples tightened beneath her clothes and the urge to press herself even closer to him became too strong to resist.
‘Luke...’ As he started to lift his mouth from hers, she whispered his name protestingly, reluctantly opening her eyes, their pupils dilated with passion, her expression softly drugged with all that she was feeling as she caught hold of his arm, intending to guide the hand he had let fall from her throat to her breast. And then, abruptly, she realised what she was doing and with whom, and like someone coming out of a trance her body stiffened as she cried out fiercely, ‘No!’
‘No,’ Luke agreed tersely as he, too, stepped back. He looked almost as shocked as she felt herself, Bobbie recognised, but that was impossible. There was no way he could be feeling the same emotional turmoil she was experiencing; the same anguished jolt of recognition and yearning so strong that it left her feeling physically dazed and weak, coupled with fear and panic and the self-protective need to blot out and deny the existence of such feelings to remind herself that he was, at best, a man she should treat with circumspection and caution and, at worst, someone who could turn out to be her most powerful foe.
And yes, she had quite definitely mistaken that look of shock she had thought she had seen in his eyes, she acknowledged achingly now as she looked at him and saw the hardness of his compressed mouth and the cold way he was watching her.
‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ she told him shakily.
‘Why?’ he asked derisively. ‘Because Sam, whoever he is, wouldn’t like it?’
For a moment Bobbie simply looked at him and then said quietly before she started to turn around to walk away from him, ‘Sam is not a he, she’s a she, and she’s also my sister, my twin sister,’ she emphasised.
‘Where do you think you’re going?’ he challenged her as he deliberately blocked her way.
‘To catch a bus,’ she replied simply.
‘I’ve already told you, I’ll drive you home.’
Bobbie toyed briefly with the idea of not just defying him but also of actively pushing her way past him, but as her eyes met his she read a warning in them that she would be very foolish to try to do so. It was a rather odd sensation to be aware of being so femininely vulnerable and powerless as she had lost count of the number of men over the years who had made jokey and not-so-jokey remarks to her about not wanting to get on her bad side, hinting that because of her height she was somehow less emotionally a woman than her shorter sisters.
In a face to face confrontation with Luke, she was all too likely to come off the loser, she recognised, and he certainly had no inhibitions at all about getting on her wrong side. Silently she turned round and walked back to the car.
‘So Sam is your twin sister,’ Luke commented once they were both in the car and he had driven out of the car park. ‘Have you any other family?’
‘Why the sudden interest in my family?’ Bobbie asked him.
‘Perhaps because I’m curious to know the reason for your interest in mine,’ Luke returned silkily.
Bobbie bit her lip. She had walked straight into that one.
‘I have a brother. My parents are both alive and so is my grandfather on my mother’s side. And although both my parents were only children, their parents came from large families, so we have any number of great-aunts and uncles as well as a whole string of second and third cousins.’
‘Twins are normally very close,’ Luke commented. ‘Are you and your sister?’
‘Yes,’ Bobbie affirmed curtly.
‘You must miss her.’
‘Yes. I do.’
‘Presumably she couldn’t come with you?’
‘No, she couldn’t,’ Bobbie responded in a tone of voice that indicated she didn’t want to answer any more questions, but Luke refused to take the hint.
‘Why was that?’ he pressed.
‘She had other commitments,’ Bobbie told him repressively, turning her head to look out of the window into the darkness as an added signal that she didn’t want him to keep interrogating her. So far as she was concerned, her sister was not a subject she wanted to discuss with him.
‘Other commitments. What does that mean? Is she married...does she have a family?’
‘No, she is not married and she does not have a family. If you must know, she is part way through her master’s and couldn’t take time off and that was why...’
Bobbie stopped.
‘That was why what?’ Luke asked suavely.
‘That was why I had to come on my own,’ Bobbie answered shakily, disturbed by how easily she had almost betrayed herself.
‘Had to,’ Luke repeated incisively. ‘Surely your trip could have been postponed until after her college work was finished or fitted in during her vacations.’
‘Maybe it could,’ Bobbie agreed, ‘but I wanted to come to Europe.’
‘Without your sister, your twin, even though you’ve just told me how close you are and how much you miss her? What exactly are you doing here in Haslewich, Bobbie, and why all the interest in my family?’
Bobbie drew in a sharp breath. ‘What is it exactly you’re trying to imply?’ she demanded. ‘I’m here in Haslewich because I’m working for Olivia, and as for my interest in your family...’ She paused.
‘Yes,’ Luke encouraged grimly.
‘I was just interested, that’s all,’ Bobbie fibbed weakly, giving a small shrug. ‘It’s not against the law, is it?’
To her relief they were almost in Haslewich; another ten minutes or so and she would safely be back at Olivia’s.
‘That all depends, doesn’t it,’ Luke answered as he turned into the road that led to the house, ‘on what it is you’re really doing here. I know you’re lying to me, Bobbie,’ he told her as he brought the car to a stop on the drive and turned to look at her. ‘What I don’t know as yet is why you’re lying and what it is you’re trying to conceal ... what it is you’re really doing here, but I promise you that I intend to find out...’
Bobbie climbed out of the car and shut the door firmly.
‘Wasn’t that Luke’s car?’ Olivia asked as she let Bobbie in.
‘Yes, I bumped into him in Chester and he brought me home,’ Bobbie told her.
‘Oh, why didn’t he come in?’ As she looked into Bobbie’s face, she asked gently, ‘Oh dear, you two haven’t had a fight, have you?’
To her own consternation, Bobbie suffered the indignity of feeling her eyes start to fill with tears. If there was one ultimate folly in a woman of six foot plus, it was surely crying in public.
‘Oh, Bobbie, don’t worry,’ Olivia soothed her as she gave her a quick, firm hug. ‘I’m sure the two of you will soon make it up.’
‘I don’t want to make it up,’ Bobbie declared defiantly, sniffing. ‘I hate him.’
‘Oh dear,’ Olivia commiserated. ‘That bad, was it?’
‘That’s right, take it out on the weeds,’ Bobbie heard Ruth’s amused voice telling her the next day as she tugged viciously at the weeds in Olivia’s herbaceous border whilst Amelia slept peacefully in her stroller nearby.
Hot and grubby, her face flushed and her hair tousled, Bobbie hadn’t heard Ruth arrive and now she turned round, her mouth forming a startled ‘Oh’ of surprise.
‘I used to do very much the same thing when my father or brother were being particularly chauvinistic and difficult,’ Ruth confided to Bobbie as she walked across the grass towards her, ‘and I’m afraid I even used to give vent to the most undaughterly and unsisterly feelings beneath my breath, which was a most unacceptable thing for one to do in those days.’
When she saw the way Bobbie was looking at her, she explained gently, ‘You see, I grew up in an era where one was obliged to accept that one did what one’s parents, especially one’s father, thought best. His word was law. My mother was very much the old-fashioned type of wife and my father rather steRN and autocratic, very decided in his views and opinions.’
Her face clouded a little. ‘In many ways our lives were over-restricted and limited, the brief taste of freedom we were given during the war when we were needed all too swiftly snatched away again once our usefulness was over, and yet I suspect there was a certain security in knowing what was expected of us.
‘Luke, I know, can seem rather autocratic and severe at times. Like all of us, Luke, too, has suffered from being a victim of this family’s overriding need to prove themselves worthy of being a Crighton. It’s a handicap that has been passed down from generation to generation, from father to son, as the virtues and achievements of past Crightons are extolled from babyhood almost and the growing child informed that it is his duty to prove himself worthy of following in the same footsteps.
‘Fortunately things are changing. Jon’s children, while they all are determined to take up the law as a career, are also resilient and have a sense of independence, of self-worth, a belief in themselves, which hopefully will free them from the expectations that controlled earlier generations’ lives. Apart from Max, who unfortunately is cast in a very different mold... Perhaps marriage to Madeleine will change him. I hope so for her sake.’
‘Why are you telling me all this?’ Bobbie asked her uncertainly.
‘Why?’ Ruth tilted her head on one side and studied Bobbie for a moment. ‘Perhaps because I like you and I hate to see you looking so unhappy. Luke may not be perfect but I do believe that the handicaps that come with being a Crighton could be very much alleviated in him, given the right encouragement. It isn’t always easy to say why we should be so instantly drawn to one person and not to another,’ Ruth added gently.
‘In fact, for most of us, it’s very hard to accept, never mind admit, that we have such feelings, that we’re capable of such instant and illogical, emotional reactions. Why I should be so specifically drawn to you, Bobbie, I can’t say. All I can say is that I am, in much the same way that out of all my great-nieces and nephews, Joss and this young lady here have a special place in my heart. It doesn’t mean that I love the others any the less, merely that I love these two just that little bit more. How is your mother by the way?’
Bobbie’s hand jerked as she lost her grip on the weed she had been trying to work loose, glad that Ruth couldn’t see her face as she replied in a choked voice, ‘I...she’s still not very well. Her... her doctor has suggested that she should consider going into analysis,’ Bobbie elaborated reluctantly.
‘It isn’t analysis Mom needs,’ Samantha had denied passionately when she had been telling Bobbie this latest piece of family news. ‘It’s—’
‘I know what it is, Sam,’ she had responded, ‘but we can’t give it to her. No one can.’
‘Maybe not, but at least we can have the satisfaction of knowing they haven’t got away with what they’ve done, that they’re being punished, too.’
‘Two wrongs don’t make a right, Sam,’ Bobbie had remonstrated gently to her sister, but Sam, as she had known she would, had refused to accept such a point of view.
Sam would never have got herself in the situation she had managed to get herself in, Bobbie acknowledged. She knew that Sam was expecting her to make use of the family gathering on Sunday to reveal her true identity, to speak out and make the denouncement they had planned, to shame the person responsible for her mother’s unhappiness by publicly revealing what they had done.
‘Amelia’s waking up,’ she told Ruth unnecessarily as they both heard the little girl start to gurgle. ‘I’d better take her in and get cleaned up. It’s almost time for her lunch.’
Ruth wasn’t Bobbie’s only unexpected visitor that day. Joss arrived later in the afternoon looking both pleased with himself and slightly self-conscious as he hugged the baby and then proceeded to tell Bobbie about the family of otters he had seen playing in the river as he cycled past.
‘Mum says that you’re going to Gramps’s on Sunday,’ he remarked.
‘Yes, that’s fight,’ Bobbie agreed neutrally.
‘You mustn’t mind if Gramps says anything to you about your being American,’ Joss told her earnestly. ‘He doesn’t mean... Well, he’s not... Mum says that a lot of his grumpiness is because of the pain in his hip.’
Bobbie tried to stop her mouth from twitching in wry amusement at Joss’s unguarded honesty.
He stayed for almost an hour drinking Bobbie’s homemade lemonade and eating the cookies she had baked earlier in the afternoon for Caspar, who had teased Olivia that at last he had found someone who could make him proper American cookies.
‘Do you know something, Bobbie?’ Joss confided to her as he got up to leave. ‘You really look like one of my cousins, only she’s got red hair—that’s Meg, Saul’s daughter. She’s only four, though, but Aunt Ruth noticed it, as well,’ he added informatively.
Bobbie was glad there was no one there but Joss to witness the shock his words had caused her and fortunately he was too engrossed in finishing off his last cookie to look directly at her. If he had...
Bobbie could remember Saul from the party. Tall, dark-haired, good-looking and very sexy. He had once been in love with Olivia, Caspar had told her. He was now in his mid-thirties, over a decade younger than her mother. How ironic that Joss should comment that while she and Saul’s child looked alike, she had red hair.
‘See you on Sunday,’ Joss called out to her as he rode off.
Oh yes, she would definitely see him, but Bobbie doubted that he would ever look so warmly on her again.
It had all seemed so simple when she and Sam had discussed it at home. So easy. So straightforward and right. Then she had expected that the hardest thing she would have to do would be to get close enough to the family to put their plan into action.
‘It’s no good just going for a one-to-one confrontation,’ Samantha had insisted when Bobbie had suggested this course.
‘Perhaps if I just explained how Mom feels, how it has affected her, how much she needs to know why she was so ruthlessly rejected.’
‘That won’t work,’ Samantha had told her. ‘There’s no point in appealing to someone’s finer feelings or their sense of compassion when it’s obvious that they don’t have any. No! What we have to do is to show them up for what they are, confront them in public in front of their family.’
It had never occurred to her then that once she actually met the family she would like them. Well, certain members of it at least, she amended hastily, dismissing the far too detailed and accurate mental portrait of Luke her memory had just supplied her with. People who had just been names to her at first were now so very much more.
What did a person do when the facts led in one direction and one’s emotions in another that was completely opposite? How did one make a decision—a judgement—like the one she had to make? She wasn’t used to playing God and it wasn’t a role that sat easily on her shoulders, but then...
‘Think of Mom...think of what she’s suffered...how she’s been hurt,’ Samantha had urged her, and Bobbie only had to picture her mother’s face when she talked about her past to be filled with the same aching, angry, but helpless feeling of furious resentment on her behalf that she had experienced when she had first heard what had happened.
‘We can’t alter what’s been done,’ her father had said gently once to Bobbie when, as a teenager, she had burst into an impassioned speech about the unhappiness in her mother’s past.
‘But it’s all so unfair,’ Bobbie had protested. ‘It nearly even stopped you and Mom getting married.’
‘I know. I know,’ her father agreed. ‘But fortunately your grandfather was able to make it a bit easier for us. He used that special brand of Southern charm he has to coax the family around.’ Her father chuckled. ‘It was certainly the first time I’ve ever seen Great-Aunt Emma actually flirting.’
‘Great-Aunt Emma flirted with Grandpa...?’ She stood wide-eyed.
‘She certainly did, and then, of course, when they realised that he was connected through his mother’s side to an influential and wealthy family...’
‘They still didn’t really want you to marry Mom, though, did they, Dad, even though Grandpa is very rich and Mom his only child...?’
‘No, they didn’t,’ her father affirmed honestly. ‘But I can tell you this, when you love someone as much as I love your mother, no power on earth can stop you from being together. The reason I wanted my family to accept and value her was because I knew it was what she wanted. As far as I was concerned, I’d have gladly turned my back on the whole pack of them rather than lose your mother.’
‘Even your parents?’ Bobbie asked him quietly.
‘Even my folks,’ her father agreed. ‘Don’t misunderstand me, Bobbie. I loved them very much and I had a great deal of respect for them. I still do. But I love your mom more...much, much more. You see, honey, the kind of love you have for that one special person in your life is just so different from any other kind of love that once you’ve experienced it... Well, you just wait and see.’
‘I wouldn’t want to fall in love with someone you and Mom didn’t like,’ Bobbie had protested.
Prophetic words. She could just imagine how her parents, especially her mother, would feel if she were to announce that she had fallen in love with a Crighton. Fallen in love with? Bobbie tensed.
Restlessly she paced the room. She wasn’t in love with Luke....
She wasn’t silly enough to let herself fall in love with someone like Luke. She had far too much regard for her own emotional well-being, too strong a sense of self-esteem, too much awareness of the pain that lay ahead of her in loving a man who not only most assuredly did not return her feelings but who, even if he had, was quite simply someone she could never share her life with.
Yet, perversely, instead of looking forward to Sunday in the knowledge that once it was over, once she had carried out the task that had originally brought her to Cheshire, she would be free to leave and return home, safe from any more heart-searching over Luke who surely, with the Atlantic safely between them, would quickly become nothing more than a distant—a very distant—memory, Bobbie acknowledged that she was actually dreading it.
But of course, there was nothing that she could do to stop Sunday coming. Nothing at all!
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