Penny Jordan's Crighton Family Series

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.