The Perfect Father Read online

  ‘Hey if you ever get tired of it, you can junk it in my direction puleeze...’

  PENNY JORDAN

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  Samantha laughed.

  ‘Let me see it on,’ Bobbie commanded.

  Dutifully Samantha took it off the hanger and slipped it over her head.

  The soft vanilla fabric settled down over her body as though it had been made expressly for her, the heavy fabric draping perfectly over her curves.

  She had chosen the bra, carefully picking one with a low back, knowing that the deep vee of the dress would expose a normal bra.

  ‘It’s wonderful,’ Bobbie breathed, and then frowned.

  ‘Can you step out of it?’ she asked Samantha.

  Her sister stared at her.

  ‘I don’t know, I haven’t tried. Why do you ask.’

  Bobbie grinned.

  ‘Well, it’s just that there’s something seriously sexy about a dress that can be slithered out of. You know the kind that just somehow falls to the floor of its own accord.

  Although,’ she paused and eyed her twin judiciously, ‘I suppose there is something to be said for one that needs an extra pair of hands to aid its removal.’

  ‘I did not buy this dress with...with anything like that in mind,’ Samantha told her firmly.

  ‘Anything like ‘‘that’’... You mean, sex?’ Bobbie teased, round-eyed.

  ‘It’s six o’clock, James is picking me up at half past,’

  Samantha warned her, ‘and he’ll expect me to be ready on time.’

  ‘Okay, okay, I get the message. Subject closed, although...’ As she headed for the door she paused and told her thoughtfully, ‘if you want my opinion that bit of frivolous sexy nonsense you’re wearing is very much more Liam than James!’

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  ‘For the last time, I did not choose my underwear with a man in mind...any man...’

  ‘Who says I was talking about your underwear, ’

  Bobbie laughed. ‘I meant the dress. Very...sexy...very Liam...’

  She was still laughing as she closed the door behind herself.

  ‘Very Liam...’ Samantha studied her reflection worriedly. She had noticed, it was true, that James seemed to prefer it when she wore more classically styled clothes, clothes which were elegant and perhaps even a little strait-laced rather than discreetly sexy. Only the previous evening she had seen him frowning over the revealing little tank top which Rosemary had been wearing. Bright cerise in colour, it shouldn’t really have suited a redhead, but somehow Rosemary had got away with it—just.

  ‘Do you really think you should be wearing something like that?’ James had asked her.

  ‘Why not?’ Rosemary had challenged him immediately.

  ‘Well, a woman in your position...’ James had responded quietly.

  ‘A woman in my position?’ For a moment Rosemary had looked baffled and then she had laughed.

  ‘You mean, because I’m a doctor.’

  ‘No, actually I mean because you’re engaged,’ James had told her stiffly, quite plainly offended by her laughter.

  In reply Rosemary had given him a wide taunting smile.

  ‘It just so happens that my fianceáctually bought me this top,’ she told him softly.

  ‘I’ll be glad when she finally goes back home,’ James had fumed afterwards when they were on their own.

  It was on the tip of Samantha’s tongue to point out that if he disliked Rosemary’s company so much, then the eas-iest way to avoid having to endure it would be to cut down PENNY JORDAN

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  on his visits to his parents whilst Rosemary was there, but then she reminded herself that she was perhaps being a little unfair. On each occasion they had called round to see them James had done so at his father’s behest.

  ‘Officially, of course, he’s now retired, but he likes to be kept au fait with what’s going on,’ James had explained to Samantha.

  His concern and consideration for his parents was another indication of the kind of man he was, Samantha recognised.

  James, she suspected, would never miss a child’s sports day or Christmas play. He would always be there to cheer his children on on the sports field and to listen to their problems.

  From speaking to Olivia, Sam had quickly guessed that she would like to add to her family.

  ‘The biological urge runs very strongly through the female side of the Crighton line,’ Olivia had told Samantha cheerfully. ‘So be warned.’

  ‘I wonder if Maddy’s pregnancy will be twins,’ Bobbie had mused a little enviously.

  ‘If it is, she isn’t saying,’ Olivia informed her.

  ‘I can’t get over how much Max has changed, can you?’

  Olivia and Max had never really got on and Samantha could hear the reluctance in Olivia’s voice as she agreed.

  ‘He does certainly seem to have undergone a very dramatic metamorphosis. I must say though that I thought Luke and James were very brave to admit him into their chambers.’

  ‘Luke says it’s working out extraordinarily well,’

  Bobbie had told her. ‘In fact, he said the other night that he’s actually missing Max and that he’s really looking forward to him coming back from holiday.’

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  ‘Mmm...well, he isn’t the only one,’ Olivia had responded wryly. ‘Uncle Ben has done nothing but complain the whole time Maddy has been away.’

  In the renaissance of her marriage Maddy had become pregnant, so family gossip had it, and to her husband Max’s proud delight. So many fecund fertile Crighton women. Samantha closed her eyes. When she had confided in Liam her desire for a child, in the depths of her misery and despair, the last thing she had anticipated was that he was going to turn up here in Cheshire.

  Damn Liam. Why, oh, why, couldn’t he have stayed safely and distantly where he was? And her feelings had nothing whatsoever to do with that sharp sizzling fusion of sexual chemistry she had felt so powerfully when he had kissed her at the airport, Samantha reassured herself—

  nothing whatsoever.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  LIAM thanked the porter and tipped him generously as he showed him up to his suite.

  The hotel was fully booked and as he quickly inspected the elegant suite of rooms he had been given he could understand why.

  In the bedroom the bed was large and comfortably inviting, the closet space was generous and the bathroom, when he pushed open the door and glanced inside, was equipped not just with a large separate shower but with a huge Victorian-style bath, as well.

  His small sitting room possessed a sofa and a large deep chair in addition to a good-sized desk and more than enough power points to satisfy even the busiest of busi-nessmen.

  Sarah Jane had enthused over the hotel to him, explaining that it was owned by the Grosvenor family. ‘That’s the Duke of Westminster,’ she had elucidated helpfully whilst Liam’s mouth had twitched slightly in amusement.

  ‘Gee, a real live duke,’ he had teased her a little, assuming a mock air of disingenuous excitement.

  ‘Louise and Katie had their joint eighteenth birthday party there,’ Sarah Jane added. ‘Bobbie was there. Joss had invited her. Of course none of the family knew who Bobbie was then and she believed...’ She made a small moue.

  ‘ Why am I telling you all this? You know the whole story.’

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  THE PERFECT FATHER

  He did, of course. He knew a lot about Bobbie’s tracing her mother’s roots.

  He had been rather less successful in tracing his own family but he had not really expected anything else.

  He had little close family left in Ireland and whilst he suspected if he persevered hard enough, he could no doubt find himself a whole clutch of cousins three and four times removed, it was not really a desire to meet his relatives which had spurred him into crossing the Atlantic.

  Common sense told him th
at the urge, the need, the emotions, which had brought him here were, from a practical point of view, ones he would be best advised to ignore, just as he had forced himself to ignore them on countless previous occasions in the past.

  He stood at the window looking down into the busy Saturday mill-race of shoppers and tourists flooding past the hotel and then closed his eyes.

  Behind his closed eyelids he could see her so easily.

  Samantha at fourteen, all gangly legs and braces, her face hot with betraying colour every time she looked at him, tongue-tied and mortified by the extent of her teenage crush on him.

  A few weeks later she had unexpectedly and discon-certingly suddenly sprouted a pair of eye-catchingly full breasts, the product so he had discovered, of an illegally purchased well-padded bra.

  Sarah Jane had confiscated the garment but it hadn’t been all that long afterwards that nature had compensated for this blow to Samantha’s teenage ego, only this time the softly rounded curves filling out the front of her T-shirts had had nothing to do with any kind of shop-bought padding. Liam’s expert eye had very quickly discerned the difference between the initial rigid protruber-PENNY JORDAN

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  ences and the much more alluring and distracting little bounce that the nature-provided pair possessed.

  However, with typical female perversity, far from showing them off Samantha had reacted to their arrival by taking to wearing huge concealing sloppy-joe tops.

  ‘They embarrass her,’ Stephen Miller had confided to Liam with a mystified male shake of his head. ‘Can you beat that? It’s damn near thirty-five degrees out there and she’s wearing a thick fleece sweatshirt. She says the sports jocks at school stare at her.’

  Liam frowned. He could still remember just how that had made him feel.

  The first afternoon he had turned up at the high school to collect the girls, Bobbie had calmly accepted his appearance with a grateful smile as he relieved her of her school books, but Sam had reacted so explosively that people had turned in the street to look at her.

  ‘I’m not a child,’ she had told her parents furiously at supper that night, ignoring Liam as she glowered over her meal.

  ‘We were just a bit concerned about you both, hon,’

  her mother had palliated. There had been a spate of articles in the Washington press about diplomats’ children being kidnapped and Sarah Jane had been only too happy to accept Liam’s suggestion that he drive over to the high school and pick up her daughters.

  Predictably, of course, Samantha had retaliated by getting herself a boyfriend—with a car—and announcing that this spotty, monosyllabic youth would, henceforth, drive her home.

  And so it had gone on and with every twist of the emotional knife now sunk deep in his guts Liam had warned himself that what he was doing was wholly and completely self-destructive; that even if she had returned 108

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  his feelings, their relationship would be so intense and volatile that it would leave him with no energy for anything else, never mind a politician’s career. Sam was too outspoken, too opinionated, too much her own person to be right for him.

  In order to accomplish what he wanted to accomplish, in order to go out and do battle and to win in the hostile minefield that was the political arena, when the smallest careless step, the briefest unguarded word could result in one being thrown out of office as carelessly as the Romans had once thrown their Christian prisoners to the lions, having a home life that was a haven of peace and calm, an oasis of sanity, a place as protective of his ego and his self as though it had been his mother’s womb, was as vitally essential as breathing oxygen was for life.

  And whilst Samantha could be guaranteed to be fiercely protective of her chosen mate and whilst she most certainly would defend him and the children she bore him with every ounce of her skill and fortitude, a calm oasis and a haven of peace she most certainly was not. The relationship; the marriage he had envisaged for himself was one of mutual respect; mutual coexistence, mutual awareness that their relationship was not the motivating prime force of his life. No way would Samantha ever tolerate that!

  And yet, she was prepared to marry a man simply because she considered him to be ideal husband and father material. An Englishman who, in her opinion, would prove to be a far better father than her American country-men.

  And who was he to try to prove her wrong? Why should he want to? If he had any sense, what he ought to be doing right now was praying for James to marry her PENNY JORDAN

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  just as fast as possible. But when had a man deeply in love ever exhibited any kind of sense?

  A man deeply in love!

  Liam opened his eyes.

  Too many years of loving the wrong woman had quite plainly addled his senses. It must have, otherwise he simply wouldn’t be here... So where should he be instead—

  in Washington with Toni?

  Of course, if Samantha was determined to marry James then there was nothing he could morally do to stop her, just as there had been nothing he could do to stop her from dating that adolescent high school jerk.

  She was, after all, a woman grown and he...

  ‘Oh, what a coincidence,’ Bobbie had exclaimed when he had telephoned to tell her that he had booked into the Grosvenor. ‘Sam and James are having dinner there together on Saturday night.’

  Dinner together and then what? Or were they already lovers? Liam discovered that he had started to grind his teeth. The thought of Sam’s magnificent body sensually entwined with that of another man, any other man, evoked the kind of primitive reaction inside him that made him want to throw back his head and howl like a hunting wolf.

  Somehow he didn’t think that the Grosvenor would consider him to be a very welcome guest should he attempt to do so.

  He glanced at his watch—four o’clock. Bobbie had promised to telephone him in the morning to arrange a get-together. Right now he needed a shower and he could do with something to eat. Picking up the telephone receiver he proceeded to call room service.

  *

  *

  *

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  ‘Liam’s staying at the Grosvenor.’ James looked pleased.

  ‘Perhaps we should give him a ring when we get there and invite him to join us for dinner.’

  Samantha gritted her teeth. Really, James was just too good-natured and polite at times.

  ‘Oh, but I was looking forward to just us having dinner together,’ she protested huskily, adding for reinforcement just in case he needed it, ‘On our own.’

  Was she imagining it or was James deliberately avoid-ing looking at her?

  ‘Er, well, yes, that would be lovely,’ James was agree-ing, but his voice wasn’t very convincing, Sam recognised a little irritably.

  What was the matter with him? Initially, when she had arrived in Chester he had seemed thoroughly delighted to see her but these last couple of days she had noticed that, although he was meticulous about keeping to the arrangements they had made, he also seemed to be becoming increasingly distant and preoccupied.

  Why...? Surely she hadn’t been coming on too strong to him? She had made sure that she wasn’t pushing things faster than he wanted to go, but both last night and the night before he had said goodnight to her with little more than a dry-lipped fraternal kiss, even though she had allowed her own lips to part invitingly when he touched them.

  ‘How much longer will Rosemary be staying with your parents?’ she asked him conversationally as he drove into the Grosvenor’s car park.

  ‘Er... I... I’m not sure...’ he replied, adding, ‘I hope we can find a car parking spot, otherwise I’m going to have to drop you here whilst I park somewhere else.’

  ‘Mmm... Have you met her fiance´?’ Samantha asked him. ‘She doesn’t seem to mention him very often.’

  James was frowning and Samantha heard him curse as PENNY JORDAN

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  another driver
nipped into the only remaining car park spot ahead of him.

  ‘I’ll have to drop you here,’ he told her curtly, leaning over to unlock the passenger door for her.

  ‘I’ll meet you in the foyer just as soon as I’ve managed to park.’

  It was so unlike him to behave irritably that Samantha had felt a little nonplussed. She was aware, of course, that he and Rosemary did not get on but surely her innocent comment about the other girl was not really responsible for his bad temper?

  The Grosvenor’s foyer was busy and Samantha guessed from the number of smartly dressed people milling around the area that one or more private functions must be taking place.

  It was a good fifteen minutes before James finally appeared and he was still frowning Samantha noticed as he made his way towards her and apologised.

  ‘I couldn’t find anywhere to park so in the end I drove over to my parents and I’ve left the car there. We’ll have to get a taxi back there to pick up the car.’

  His parents—so that explained the touch of lipstick she could just see smudged against his mouth, Samantha acknowledged. Teasingly she pointed it out to him, touched to see the way his colour rose as he took the tissue she was offering him to wipe it off.

  It was his mother’s of course, and no doubt he was embarrassed at being kissed by her as though he was still a small boy. Tenderly Samantha reached for his hand, intending to give it a little squeeze and to reassure him that she personally found the devotion he had for his parents sweet and touching, but to her chagrin as she did so he moved back from her.

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  Trying not to feel hurt Samantha allowed him to guide her towards the hotel’s main restaurant.

  Once they were inside it he gave his name to the maıˆtre de and then frowned as he removed Samantha’s coat for her.

  ‘I do hope you aren’t going to be cold,’ he told Samantha pessimistically as he eyed her bare back.

  The temptation to whisper throatily to him that if she was she would have to rely on him to do something about it died unspoken as Samantha looked into his frowning preoccupied eyes.

  James, quite obviously, had something on his mind and even more obviously it was not the same something which was currently on hers. So much for her plans for an evening of seduction, she acknowledged ruefully as the maıˆ-