Penny Jordan's Crighton Family Series

Olivia was upstairs when the doorbell rang. She almost decided against going down to answer it; she didn’t really feel up to seeing anyone. Jon had already rung her earlier to tell her about Ruth’s visit.

‘I didn’t mean to tell her,’ Olivia had confessed. ‘I don’t really know why I did. She caught me at a weak moment, I suppose….’

‘Well, I must admit that I’m certainly grateful that you did,’ Jon had told her. ‘Oh, at first I wasn’t really convinced by what she said but I have to say I was wrong and she was right. The accountants and the bank did seem loath to ask too many questions about David’s “loans” and I got the impression they were just happy that the money was being repaid. There are no heirs, of course. Inland Revenue will get the bulk of Jemima’s estate and we must hope that they, too, are content to accept the status quo.’

She knew that it couldn’t be either him or Jenny calling. Jon had told her that they were going out for a celebration meal.

‘Alone,’ Jon had told her wryly, adding, ‘Ruth’s babysitting and Jack says to tell you that he’s going to call round tomorrow for his sports kit.’

Jack. Olivia bit her lip. She felt that she ought to have insisted on taking charge of her brother, but there was no doubt that he was better off with Jon and Jenny. Staying with them, not only would he have the company of his cousins to occupy him and stop him from brooding, but as Jenny had pointed out, since both he and Joss were at the same school, it made things far simpler to have the two of them under one roof than two separate ones. She certainly would have found it hard to give him the time and attention she knew he needed. It was gone six o’clock most evenings before she got home and she left at eight in the morning.

She and Jon had found themselves working together as a team as Jon himself had commented, and they were now beginning to get through the backlog of work her father had stacked up. There was a good deal of satisfaction to be found in managing to achieve a clear desk, Olivia had decided, and what surprised her even more was that she didn’t really miss the fast pace of her previous job.

She did miss Caspar, though.

Tiredly she went downstairs and opened the door.

‘Caspar!’ She cried out his name in disbelief, staring at him as though she couldn’t believe her eyes, which in truth she couldn’t.

‘Is it too late to admit that I’ve been a fool and say that I’ve changed my mind?’ Caspar asked simply. ‘I thought I was already a man, Livvy, whole and complete, but I’ve discovered over these past few weeks that I’m not. Nowhere near. I can’t be a man if I can still behave like a spoiled child. And as for my being complete, I will never be complete again without you.’

‘I tried to ring you,’ Olivia could only think to say as she stepped back so that he could walk into the house, ‘but you weren’t there….’

‘No, I was probably on my way here,’ Caspar agreed, ‘praying with every mile that you weren’t going to give me the treatment I deserved and tell me to go straight back again. Is it too late, Livvy?’ he asked her directly.

Olivia shook her head and then told him rawly, ‘Yes, very much too late for me to stop loving you. Oh, Caspar,’ she wailed as she flung herself into his arms, ‘I’ve missed you so much. I’ve wanted you so much. I thought it was so important to assert my independence and not let you bully me emotionally by demanding to be the most important person in my life, but that’s exactly what you are … who you are,’ she amended.

‘Stop talking, woman, and let me kiss you,’ Caspar commanded lovingly as he drew her into his arms, tightening them possessively around her. He started to bend his head towards her whilst Olivia reached up eagerly towards him, but then he stopped and glanced up and down the hallway. ‘Where are your parents?’ he asked her in a whisper. ‘The kind of behaviour I’m about to indulge in right now isn’t something I feel I want anyone to witness.’

‘Dad’s in a nursing home,’ Olivia explained, ‘and Tiggy …’

As Caspar saw the sadness darken her eyes, he held her even more tightly and watched her tenderly.

‘You were right about her, Caspar. She was … she did need help. Hopefully she’s going to get it now….’ Quietly she told him what had happened.

‘Uncle Jon and I went to the clinic this afternoon and talked to the specialist who runs it. She was very kind but very honest, as well. She says there aren’t any statistics to show how many bulimics recover simply because, as yet, none have been out of addiction long enough to be considered recovered. In Tiggy’s case … well, she suspects that her addiction has gone on for a long time, which means, of course, that helping her to acknowledge and overcome it will be very much harder. She had hoped to talk to Dad, but …’

‘Does David know what’s happened to your mother?’ Caspar asked her, concerned about the pain he could see in her eyes.

‘Yes, he knows,’ Olivia answered quietly. ‘Mr Hayes told him this afternoon, but it seems that Dad doesn’t … doesn’t …’

‘Doesn’t what?’ Caspar waited, not wishing to push her. ‘Doesn’t care?’

Much as that knowledge must have hurt Olivia, he wasn’t totally surprised. There had been something about them as a couple that somehow hadn’t quite rung true, something that despite their apparent togetherness had suggested that they were simply two people who lived under the same roof.

‘He’s still recovering from his own heart attack, of course, and the doctor has told us that sometimes the shock of that happening, the fear it can generate, can make people behave irrationally and … and selfishly. They’re afraid, I suppose, that he could have another heart attack, and so anything that causes him any kind of stress … or soul-searching, has to be avoided.’

In other words, David Crighton was quite happy to let his brother and his daughter take over his responsibilities towards his wife for him.

‘That’s not all, is it?’ Caspar probed gently, ‘Something else is bothering you. What is it?’

Olivia gave him a startled look. ‘I went to see you at the airport,’ she said evasively. ‘You were kissing …’

Caspar smiled. So she had tried to get in touch with him after all; she hadn’t simply let him walk away.

‘In actual fact,’ he explained, ‘Hillary was the one kissing me and she was most certainly not the one I wanted to be kissing me, and that one kiss was as far as it went. Now, tell me what’s really bothering you, apart from the fact that there’s no way I’m letting you sleep alone tonight or sharing that ridiculous pint-size bed with you, no matter how much your grandfather might disapprove.’

Olivia laughed. ‘Gramps won’t know,’ she teased back. ‘He’s confined to bed at the moment with his bad leg.’

‘Confined to bed. Now that sounds like a very, very good idea,’ Caspar began and then stopped.

Olivia saw the look he was giving her and shook her head lightly. ‘It’s Dad,’ she told him simply. ‘There’s been a … a problem. It’s … it’s all sorted out now but …’

She knew it was up to her whether or not she chose to tell him. If she did and he didn’t approve of the way they had dealt with the problem, then there was a risk that it would lead to a renewed alienation between them, and if she didn’t … Well, that wasn’t the kind of relationship she wanted with her man, she acknowledged, a relationship where things had to be kept hidden, secret, because they couldn’t trust one another’s reactions.

She took a deep breath and hoped for the best. ‘Dad stole some money from a client. Luckily Aunt Ruth was able to come up with a scheme whereby it could be paid back without Uncle Jon having to report it. I suspect Uncle Jon still thinks that he should have reported it, even though it would not have been Dad who would have carried the brunt of any penalties the Law Society might have chosen to impose, but Uncle Jon. Aunt Ruth was very insistent.’

Quickly she told him the whole sorry tale and then stood back searching his face for some indication of his reaction. When she could find none, her stomach muscles started to tighten in knots of tension.

Caspar looked at her.

‘So Aunt Ruth was ruthless, was she?’ he quipped at last. ‘And quite rightly so. What your father did was wrong but Ruth is on the mark when she says that all of you would have been affected if his theft had become public.’

‘It still doesn’t seem fair that Dad should get away with … with what he did,’ Olivia confessed seconds later as she leaned her head in grateful love against Caspar’s shoulder. ‘Just as he’s always got away with things….’

‘Perhaps not, but justice, as they say, is blind and sometimes the innocent can be hurt along with the guilty. Oh, by the way,’ he added as he turned her gently towards the stairs. ‘I almost forgot. I’ve checked with the university in Manchester and there’s a lectureship coming up that I can apply for if I wish. It would mean one or both of us commuting, I suppose, but …’

Olivia stared at him. ‘You mean you’ve actually … you’re really prepared … You’d really come back here to live and work?’ Her voice broke.

‘Why not? You’re here, aren’t you?’ Caspar returned lovingly.

‘Oh, Caspar!’ she cried. ‘I love you, I love you so much.’

‘Thank you,’ he replied simply before adding, ‘and never mind “Oh, Caspar”. What I want to hear and what I fully intend to hear is “Oooh … oooh … ooooh, Caspar”.’

Olivia laughed. ‘Really. And there was I hoping you wouldn’t leave me breath for anything like that….’ she managed to say between kisses. She laughed again as he released her and she started to run towards the stairs, knowing perfectly well that he would catch her long before she made it to the comfortable guest bedroom with its cosy double bed.

David smiled at the receptionist.

‘You’re leaving us?’ she asked, frowning. ‘But …’

‘I have to go,’ David told her confidingly. ‘My wife isn’t very well unfortunately and I’m needed at home.’

‘Oh, well, in that case, I suppose …’

David gave her a second smile. He had been planning things all day. No need for him to concern himself with Tiggy any more, thank God. Someone else had that onerous responsibility now. Jack was safe with Jon and Jenny. There was the other matter, of course, but he knew that Jon would find a way of sorting things out. Good old Jon.

It was time he was allowed to choose what he wanted to do with his own life. High time. Ben would naturally be upset … but he would understand; he always had. Still smiling, David walked out into the darkness.

‘He’s left …? But how … where …?’ Jon asked the receptionist in exasperation. She had been summoned by the specialist, whom Jon had telephoned when he discovered that David had checked out of the nursing home, to explain exactly what had happened.

‘I don’t know,’ she replied unhelpfully. ‘He didn’t say. He just said that his wife needed him.’

Jon looked at the specialist, who shook his head. ‘I’ve already checked. I’m afraid they haven’t seen or heard from him.’

‘But where has he gone?’ Jon queried a second time, ‘and why?’

Mr Hayes frowned as he looked at him. ‘I don’t know,’ he admitted, ‘but what I do know is that every year, every day, people do disappear by choice. Some because they see it as their only way out of an impossible situation, and some, because … well … who knows?’

‘You think David has done that … simply disappeared?’

‘Chosen to disappear,’ the specialist corrected him.

Jon closed his eyes.

‘Try not to worry,’ the other man advised. ‘He may simply have gone to visit friends or …’ When he saw the look Jon was giving him, he stopped. ‘It happens,’ he said, shrugging. ‘It does happen.’

As he drove onto the ferry, David was whistling. God but he felt good. This was how life should be lived. How life, his life, was meant to be lived. Freely—unplanned, uncluttered and unencumbered by the needs of others. He was free at last!

‘What on earth are we going to tell Ben?’ Jon asked Jenny soberly after he told her what had happened.

‘Nothing,’ Jenny told him crisply. ‘Let the doctor tell him. David is not your responsibility, Jon,’ she reminded her husband. ‘He’s your brother, you are his twin, yes, but he is not your responsibility. Besides, we’ve got a wedding to plan,’ she reminded him.

‘And one to attend,’ Jon agreed.

Max had telephoned them earlier to announce his engagement just after Olivia and Caspar had left, Olivia having half-shyly asked Jenny if she would help her with her wedding plans.

‘I don’t want a big fussy affair, just something very traditional and simple….’

‘Don’t listen to her,’ Caspar had warned Jenny. ‘I want the whole works so that I can bore the pants off our grandchildren, talking about it to them.’

‘David’s made his choice about the way he wants to live his life,’ Jenny told Jon gently as she leaned across to kiss him. ‘That’s his right … just as it’s our right to choose how we live our lives.’

Lovingly he smiled back at her and then murmured, ‘Do you think two ancient people in their forties and fifties would be allowed by their offspring to plead tiredness and go to bed early?’

‘Not if it’s Joss you’re trying to convince,’ Jenny answered, laughing. ‘You promised you’d take him and Jack fishing tonight, remember …?’

Jon groaned and demanded plaintively, ‘What does a man have to do in this household to get time on his own with his wife?’

‘Put sleeping tablets in everyone else’s milk?’ Jenny suggested drolly.

‘I wish,’ was Jon’s heartfelt response as Joss came rushing in, demanding to know if his father was ready to leave. ‘Oh, I wish!’

The Perfect Seduction

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

This is no ordinary family because, although the affluent Crightons might appear to have it all, shocking revelations and heartache lie just beneath the surface of their perfect, charmed lives.

CHAPTER ONE

JOSS saw her first. He was on his way back from visiting his great-aunt Ruth in her house on Church Walk and she was standing in the churchyard studying the headstones, her head bent over one of them, a tumble of thick, glossy blonde curls obscuring her face. When she looked up, alerted to his presence by the sound of a small twig cracking under his foot, Joss stared at her in open wonder and awe.

She was tall, much much taller than him; at least six foot, he estimated.

‘And a couple of inches,’ she drawled in amusement as she watched the way he was assessing her height, ‘and then I guess you’d be somewhere roundabouts right. I-guess no one kinda likes to think of a woman being over six foot. Tell them you’re five-eleven, it’s okay and my, aren’t you lucky being so tall, but tell them you’re sixone going on six-two and they think you’re a freak. After all, what kinda right-thinking woman allows herself to grow too tall for most of your average guys.’

‘I don’t think you’re too tall,’ Joss told her gallantly, manfully squaring his own ten-year-old shoulders and looking up into her eyes.

And what eyes they were, surely the deepest, darkest blue that ever was. Joss had never seen eyes like them before. He had never seen anyone like her before.

She watched him gravely for a second before her mouth curled into a smile that made Joss’s insides turn to jelly and told him, ‘Why that’s mighty kind of you, but I guess I know what you’re really thinking ... that for a woman this tall finding a boy tall enough for me to look up to is kinda hard. Yes, well, you’re right,’ she went on with another dazzling smile, ‘and if you happen to know of any—’

‘I do,’ Joss told her quickly, already fiercely protective of her; already determined that no one should dare to criticise her or find her less than complete perfection, not even she herself. As he gazed at her, his eyes mirrored the intensity and immediacy of his first calf-love.

Speculatively she hesitated, not wanting to hurt him and yet at the same time wary of any involvement that might deflect her from her purpose in being there.

Haslewich might not be on any official tourist route like Chester, but she had been determined to visit it and, as yet, she had still not seen the remains of the castle and its wall, nor the newly sanitised salt-works that had recently been opened to the public as a tourist attraction, never mind the rest of the town’s historic sites. So far, in fact, all she had done was glance around the churchyard.

‘I’ve got two cousins,’ she heard Joss telling her. ‘Well, they aren’t exactly cousins,’ he acknowledged. ‘They’re really seconds, or maybe even thirds, I don’t know which. Aunt Ruth would know.

‘But anyway, James is six foot two and Luke is even taller and then there’s Alistair and Niall and Kit and Saul, too, I suppose, although he’s quite old—’

‘Gee...I’m really impressed,’ Bobbie interrupted him gently.

‘I could always introduce you to them,’ Joss offered enthusiastically. ‘That is, if you’re going to be here for a while...?’

He let the question hang.

‘Well, that kinda depends. You see ... gee ... I’m sorry but I don’t know your name. We haven’t introduced ourselves yet, have we? I’m Bobbie, short for Roberta,’ she told him whilst inwardly acknowledging ruefully that she really didn’t have the time to waste on this sort of thing, but he was just so appealing and not a day over ten or eleven. Give him another ten or fifteen years and he was going to be dynamite. She wondered absently what his cousins were actually like.

‘Bobbie...I like that,’ he told her and she hid her smile as the look in his eyes told her that whatever her name had turned out to be, it would have got an equally enthusiastic response. ‘I’m Joss,’ he added, ‘Joss Crighton.’

Joss Crighton. That altered everything. Thick eyelashes veiled her eyes.

‘Well now, Joss Crighton, suppose you and I go find a diner and get to know one another a little bit better and you can tell me all about these cousins of yours. Would they be Crightons, too?’ she asked him casually.

‘Yes, they are,’ he agreed. ‘But ... well, it’s a long story.’

‘I can’t wait to hear it. They’re my favourite kind,’ she assured him solemnly.

As he fell into step beside her, matching his own stride to her long-legged, elegantly feminine walk, Joss couldn’t help stealing awed glances at her.

She was wearing cream trousers and a shirt in the same colour with a camelly-coloured coat over the top; her blonde hair, now that she had lifted her head, hung down past her shoulders in thick, luxurious waves. Joss could feel his heart threatening to burst with pride and delight as he guided her through the town square and into one of the pretty, narrow streets that led off it.

‘Gee, is that really real?’ she paused to enquire as they passed a clutch of half-timbered Elizabethan buildings, huddled together for support.

‘Yes, they were built in the reign of Elizabeth I,’ Joss told her importantly. ‘The main structure of wooden beams is infilled with panels of wattle and daub—that’s sort of bits of branches held together with a mixture of straw, mud and other things,’ he told her kindly.

‘Uh-huh,’ Bobbie responded, refraining from telling him that she had majored in British history before switching her talents to a more modeRN and financially rewarding field.

‘We don’t actually have diners in this country,’ Joss informed her politely, ‘but there is a ... a place just down here....’

Bobbie hid her amusement. No doubt he was taking her to the town’s McDonald’s. Only, as she soon discovered, he wasn’t and she hesitated fractionally as he directed her attention to a very smart and up-market-looking wine bar, glancing thoughtfully from the sign above the doorway that stipulated that alcoholic beverages were not supplied to persons under eighteen to Joss’s very obviously nowhere near eighteen-year-old face and back again. She didn’t want to hurt his dignity, but at the same time she didn’t exactly relish the thought of being asked to leave because she was accompanied by a minor.

‘I can go in so long as I don’t have anything alcoholic to drink. I know the people who run it,’ he explained as he pushed the door open for her. At the same time he crossed his fingers behind his back as he tried to calculate just what he could buy with what was left of his week’s bus fare and spending money, which was all he had in his pocket, and whether or not Minnie Cooke, who ran the wine bar, would give him any credit.

Minnie’s brother, Guy, was in partnership with Joss’s mother in an antique business, which they ran. She recognised Joss as soon as he walked into the wine bar, her eyebrows lifting slightly as she looked from Joss to his companion.

‘Yes, Joss?’ she asked him cautiously.

‘I ... er ... we’d both like a drink and something to eat,’ he told her firmly, adding in a far less certain voice, ‘Minnie, could I have a word with you?’

‘Look, why don’t you let me make this my treat?’ Bobbie offered, guessing his dilemma. He was just at an age when any kind of public humiliation, no matter how slight, was a major issue, and the last thing she wanted to do was to hurt or slight him in any way, but Minnie Cooke, too, had summed up the situation and stepped into the breach.

‘Why don’t you find yourselves a table. I’ll send someone over to take your order. We can sort out the bill later,’ she added to Joss quietly, as Bobbie made her way to a table.

Whoever Joss’s companion was, she certainly was a stunningly beautiful woman, Minnie acknowledged as she dispatched one of her many nieces to take their order. She was most probably a guest they had staying with the family. Olivia, Joss’s cousin, was married to that American, wasn’t she?

‘Jade,’ she told her niece sharply, ‘go and serve table four.’

‘I’ll have a glass of Perrier with lemon and ice,’ Bobbie told Jade easily. ‘Nothing to eat, though.’

‘I’ll have the same.’ Joss couldn’t quite conceal his relief as he heard Bobbie order, beaming his approval at her across their shared table.

‘So,’ she prompted after Jade had brought them their drinks. ‘These cousins of yours.’ She put her elbow on the table and leaned her chin on her hand as she smiled at him.

Joss was completely bewitched. A huge lump filled his throat and he had the same indescribable feeling that he always got when he watched the young badger or fox cubs coming out for their first night’s play in the spring, watched over by their mothers. Like them, she touched his emotions in a way he simply didn’t have the words to describe.

Guiltily Bobbie nibbled on her bottom lip. She really ought not to be doing this. He was so young and so vulnerable. She was here for a purpose, she reminded herself sternly, and she couldn’t let herself be swayed from that self-chosen task now, especially not by...

‘I guess with their kinda height they must be sports jocks, huh,’ she joked to Joss as she banished her unwanted thoughts.

‘No,’ Joss told her seriously.

He couldn’t take his eyes off her; he had never seen anyone remotely like her. There couldn’t be anyone like her. She was unique, wonderful, perfect and certainly nothing like his own twin sisters or the other girls he knew. She was older than them, of course, just how much older he wasn’t quite sure but she must be twenty-something.

‘Luke and James are both barristers,’ he told her. ‘That is, they’re...’ He tried to think of the American term, suddenly realising that she might not fully understand just what a barrister was.

But apparently she did, because she shook her head and told him firmly, ‘Yes, I know ... lawyers, huh. Gee. I guess I’d have preferred it if they were sports jocks,’ she confessed, wrinkling her nose.

‘Well, they are, sort of,’ Joss assured her. ‘James played rugger for his school and so did Luke and Luke was an Oxford Blue, as well. That’s...that’s with rowing,’ he explained.