Penny Jordan's Crighton Family Series

‘I responded to being kissed,’ Bobbie protested. ‘It had nothing to do with you. You were ... I thought you were someone else,’ she lied again.

‘Is that a fact? Well, let’s just put that to the test, shall we?’ Luke told her and she could tell from the deceptive softness of his voice that he was very, very angry, indeed, far more angry in fact, than he had been when he had physically stopped her from leaving.

The panic that flared inside her and had her struggling and trying to break free from his imprisoning grip had nothing to do with any fear or horror at the thought of being kissed or even touched by him. No, it was the fear, her fear, of what she might do, how she might react when he did that was urging her to struggle so desperately to break free of him, Bobbie acknowledged. But all her struggles could not break his firm hold of her. All they were doing, she had to admit, was exhausting her strength and bruising her ego far worse than his strong hands on her wrists were likely to be bruising her flesh.

He waited until she paused to draw a deep lungful of air before releasing her wrists so that he could use his arms to bind her tightly against him, so tightly that she could feel the hard imprint of his body against her own, even through both their layers of clothing, Bobbie realised. So closely that...

‘Look at me, Bobbie,’ she heard him commanding her grimly, and to her own self-disgust she found that she was obeying him, lifting her gaze to meet his. ‘Good,’ he told her mock-softly. ‘Now we both know that this time you know exactly who I am, don’t we?’ And before she could argue or object, he did what she had known he intended to do all along and what she had told herself she would resist with every ounce of her mental, emotional and physical strength. He bent his head and started to kiss her.

It was a bruising, hard, angry kiss that cerebrally Bobbie realised should have left her completely cold and unmoved, a kiss of icy, arrogant male passion, born of a male need to dominate and conquer, the kind of kiss a conquering warlord would give a captive victim and yet, the moment his mouth touched hers, Bobbie knew she was lost.

Oh, she still felt angry—bitterly, furiously so—still resented what he was doing, resented him. She still rejected with her mind, her reason, everything he was, everything he was doing to her, but her body, her senses, had urges and needs of their own and to them the hard possession of Luke’s kiss had nothing of the gloating male triumph her mind flinched from, none of the sense of subjugation that her feminine pride fought so hard against. No, they saw and felt only a heady sense of power and heat; a sweet, soaring obliterating surge of feminine triumph that she...they, could make this man, who resented her so much, who disliked her so much, ache so much for her that he couldn’t stop himself from touching her, kissing her, wanting her and most empowering of all, reacting to her. And wantonly they played on that reaction, teasing it, enticing it, inciting it, so that without being able to do a thing to stop herself, Bobbie discovered that she had raised her own arms to wrap them tightly around Luke as she opened her mouth to the demanding pressure of his probing tongue, that the anger fuelling her was making her body ache and yearn, that the low growl of sound Luke made deep in his throat as she raked his tongue passionately with her teeth and pushed herself even closer to his body so that she could feel the powerful surge of male arousal that jolted through him, made her emit a small, purring, femininely feline sound of triumphant pleasure of her own.

As she felt his hands on her body, a fierce, wild thrill of hunger swept through her, banishing logic and reason and even reality; they were man and woman, yin and yang, cause and effect, two primitive forces that when combined together...

When Bobbie felt Luke’s hand covering her breast, pushing aside her clothes with savage urgency to reach the soft warmth of her flesh, she moaned a sharp protest beneath her breath, but the protest wasn’t because he was touching her. She was trembling from head to foot, the sheer force of the desire that had erupted inside her from out of nowhere making her body ache with something approaching an actual physical pain.

She had never dreamt that physical desire could generate such an intense and immediate reaction, such a sense of urgency and aching, teeth-grinding immediacy.

‘Luke...’ She neither knew nor cared what she might be betraying as she dragged her mouth from his to whisper his name in female need, the look in her eyes as they met his, his flashing a message of intense pride and equally intense desire.

She could see Luke’s response in the way his pupils dilated, feel it in the unexpected tremor that passed through his body as he responded as though by telepathy to the need conveyed in her husky moaning of his name to run the hard pad of his thumb over the soft curve of her breast until he found her nipple and then to circle it and go on circling it as Bobbie gasped her physical pleasure in his touch and instinctively pressed herself even closer to him. And she could hear it in the harsh sound of the air escaping from his lungs as he muttered something unintelligible under his breath and then, leaning back against the wall, urged her between his parted thighs. Then, under the protective shadows, he dragged her clothes completely free of her breast so that he could satisfy the need pounding through both their tormented bodies by fastening his mouth over the swollen point of her nipple and sucking rhythmically on it.

It was the sound of a child crying in the hallway outside that broke the dark spell that was binding them together, causing them to spring apart and watch one another breathing harshly, confronting one another not as lovers but as warriors, foes, enemies, Bobbie recognised sickly as she tried to come to terms with what had happened, what she had done.

Denied the physical protection of the warmth of Luke’s body and the emotional and mental protection of the sheer heat of the need that had possessed her, Bobbie started to shiver.

Luke’s face was hidden from her by the shadows, not that she wanted to look at him, to see the contemptuous triumph she was sure must be in his eyes. No matter how much one might deplore it, there was still this unspoken belief that whilst it was still just acceptable for a man to be motivated by and give in to sexual desire, where a woman was concerned the waters were far more muddied and dangerous. Bobbie wasn’t even sure herself which side of the fence she stood on. Certainly she would never condemn another woman for admitting that she felt only physical desire and lust for a man, but when that woman was herself... She pushed away the idea that love could be tangled up in her emotions.

‘I hate you, do you know that?’ she told Luke huskily, adjusting her top before she opened the door and walked shakily through it—and away from him—moving down the hallway blindly to mingle with the other guests, her fists clenched as she fought to suppress her emotions, coming only to a halt when she realised she had reached the far side of the drawing room and could go no farther.

‘So you’re the American I’ve been hearing so much about.’

As Bobbie turned her head, she saw that there was someone seated in the wing-chair next to the window, a man in his seventies whom she had no difficulty whatsoever in guessing to be Ben Crighton.

‘I imagine so,’ she concurred warily.

‘Hah. Been telling you about me, have they? Warning you!’ he exclaimed with a dry laugh.

‘It has been mentioned that you don’t particularly care for my countrymen,’ Bobbie agreed calmly.

‘They were over here during the war. Caused a lot of trouble, a lot of resentment, turning women’s heads whilst their own men were away fighting.’

Bobbie forced herself not to make any kind of response, instead simply listening.

‘You’re looking after young Amelia, so I hear,’ Ben commented gruffly.

‘For the time being,’ Bobbie returned.

‘Joss said he met you in the churchyard looking at the gravestones, our gravestones.... Interested in us, are you?’

‘You’re a very...interesting family,’ was all Bobbie allowed herself to be provoked into saying.

‘Saw you talking to young Max earlier.’

Bobbie waited, expecting to be told once again that Max was a married man, but to her surprise, Ben didn’t refer to Max’s marriage at all.

‘He’s the image of my son, David...always was,’ he related instead. ‘Much more like him than his own father. Same character...’

Bobbie said nothing. From what she had heard about David, Olivia’s father, she doubted that she would have liked him very much.

‘He’s abroad at the moment....’

Bobbie had no idea why she should be swept by compassion for a man she barely knew and who, from what she had heard, was as obstinate, narrow-minded and bigoted as any man could be. But whatever the reason, instead of pointing out that his son David was abroad—period—having simply disappeared in the night, leaving his family to deal with the havoc his disappearance had caused, she continued to say nothing.

The silence between them was only broken when Jenny suddenly appeared at her side, announcing, ‘Bobbie, there’s a telephone call for you...your sister... she sounded...’ She touched Bobbie’s arm gently. ‘She said she needed to speak with you urgently. You can take the call in the study. You’ll be private in there.’

Her mouth dry with apprehension, Bobbie followed Jenny as she weaved her way through the throng, her heart thudding nervously as Jenny guided her across the hallway and pushed open the door to a small, cosy room almost filled by a huge desk.

As Jenny gently closed the door and left, Bobbie walked over to the desk and picked up the telephone receiver, saying uncertainly, ‘Sam...?’

‘Bobbie. Thank the Lord. Listen, have you said anything yet?’

‘No...no, not yet. Sam, why are you calling me here? Is it Mom?’

‘No, or at least not in the way you mean. She’s okay. Look, Bobbie, you’ve got to do it today, confront her, show her, show them.’

‘Sam,’ Bobbie protested, ‘it isn’t that easy...I...’

‘Bobbie, you’ve got to, that’s why I’m ringing. Dad’s on to us and—’

‘What?’

‘Now don’t panic. Just listen up, will you? He found out I’d been ringing you in Chester, and you know Dad. He put two and two together and came up with four. He grilled me like he was one of his own Secret Service gorillas,’ she told Bobbie indignantly.

‘Oh, Sam, no...’ Bobbie had to sit down. Her legs, her whole body, had gone weak with shock and stress. She sank into the comfortable leather swivel chair behind the desk and clutched the receiver. ‘What did he say?’

‘Oh, you know Pop. There was a lot of idealistic stuff about how we should be above wanting to make others pay for their errors. How it should be simply enough for us to be aware of them and to feel sorry for them because of the way they are. He said that nothing we would do could make things any easier for Mom, and then Grandpa had to get in on the act and he said—’

‘Grandpa!’ Bobbie interrupted her twin on a stifled gasp. ‘Oh, Sam, no... How did Grandpa find out?’

‘He came in while Dad was reading me the Riot Act,’ Samantha confessed, ‘and of course, he had to hear the whole thing. Anyway, I told them it was too late to do anything now and I told them what you were going to do and—’

There was a sharp click on the telephone line as though someone had picked up another handset.

Nervously Bobbie asked her sister, ‘What was that? . Has someone come in...Dad or...?’

‘No. There’s no one else here,’ Samantha assured her. ‘We’re not going to give up, Bobbie, not now. We can’t afford to. She’s got to be made to pay.’

Bobbie bit her lip. She had never been totally happy with her twin’s plans but weakly she had allowed herself to be persuaded into going along with them. Knowing now that her father and her grandfather had discovered what they were doing brought home to her how much they would both dislike and disapprove of Samantha’s scheme.

‘Bobbie,’ she heard her sister warning her grimly, before pausing and then telling her bitterly, ‘Look, over fifty years ago, Ruth Crighton pretended that she’d fallen in love with Grandpa and even promised to marry him. He believed her, they were lovers and then he got a message—not from her, mind you—but from her father via his own commanding officer announcing that Ruth never wanted to see him again, and when he tried to telephone her to talk to her, she told him that it was true and that she wanted nothing more to do with him.

‘No explanations were given, no reasons, no apologies, but worse than that, a thousand times worse, she never even told him that she was already carrying his child. She simply took herself off to the other side of the country, gave birth to Grandpa’s baby, our mother, in secret, and then walked away...walked away... abandoned Mom totally, leaving her to be given away for adoption like...like an unwanted kitten.

‘If Grandpa hadn’t been visiting an injured airman in that same hospital, if he hadn’t happened to overhear two nurses gossiping about “that poor little motherless Crighton baby” and made enquiries, he would never even have known that Mom existed. When I think of what might have happened to her, it makes my blood run cold.

‘You know what a hard time Grandpa had convincing first his commanding officers and then the British authorities that he was Mom’s father and that he had a right to bring her up himself. You know the hardship that both he and Mom suffered when he first brought her back to this country. How first his family treated her and then Pop’s. You know what it’s done to Mom, knowing that her own mother didn’t want her...that she hadn’t even left so much as a letter for her...a note...anything...so that at least Mom could have felt that she had been loved by her...that she hadn’t wanted to part with her. It’s like Mom says. It’s not just the fact that she’s never known her mother that hurts. What hurts much, much more is that Ruth has never, ever wanted to know her...that she’s never, ever tried to find her, to make even the most basic enquiries to find out what happened to her.’

‘It was a very difficult time, Sam,’ Bobbie told her sister in a low voice. ‘The end of the war. British servicemen were coming home. Perhaps Ruth felt guilty about the fact that she’d been involved with an American. She had been engaged to someone else and...well, as Mom always says, she couldn’t have had a more loving father or been a more loved child.’

‘So guilty that she abandoned her own child? That’s some guilt,’ Samantha told Bobbie bitterly. ‘Pity she hasn’t felt even a quarter of it for what she did to Mom. We have to see this through, Bobbie. She has to be made to pay...she deserves to pay. We agreed....’

Bobbie was just about to try to convince her sister that they should abandon their plan when the study door opened. Her eyes widened in shock as she saw Luke striding towards her. It wasn’t so much the total unexpectedness of his appearance that left her speechless and virtually unable to move as he snatched the receiver from her hand and slammed it down, cutting her off from Samantha, as the look of murderously cold fury in his eyes.

‘So, you’re going to make Ruth pay, are you,’ he demanded, thin-lipped as he took hold of her upper arm in a painfully hard grip. ‘I don’t think so. I don’t think so at all. In fact, what I think you are going to do right now is to leave.’

‘Leave...?’ Bobbie protested squeakily. ‘But—’

‘My God, I was right about you all along, wasn’t I?’ Luke charged, overriding her nervous protest. ‘But even I hadn’t realised just how...how much you were going to demand from Ruth to keep quiet about her past.’ His mouth twisted as though soured by something foul tasting.

‘Blackmail... In my book it’s the shabbiest, meanest, most heartless crime of them all, but I suppose I shouldn’t be shocked. After all, it’s not the first time I’ve come across it, although thankfully the closest contact I’ve had to have with the perpetrator has been when I’ve refused to handle his defence.’

‘Blackmail!’ Bobbie’s eyes rounded with horror. ‘Luke. You’ve got it all wrong—’ she started to deny it but then broke off to wince in helpless protest as his angry grip on her upper arm tightened as he swung her round to face him.

‘No. You’ve got it wrong,’ he contradicted her flatly, ‘and if I were you, I shouldn’t bother wasting my breath trying to convince me otherwise, Bobbie. I’m not quite that much of a fool. Come on...this way....’

To Bobbie’s chagrin, she found that she was actually being compelled to walk and, in fact, almost run as he positively dragged her out of the room and down the corridor in the opposite direction she had originally come.

‘Let me go...what are you doing? Where are you taking me?’ she protested in panic as she tried in vain to wriggle free.

‘Let you go? No way, and as for what I’m doing...I’m doing what I should have done the first time I met you if I’d had any sense,’ he told her grimly, stopping so abruptly in front of a small, almost invisible door set into the wall that Bobbie cannoned painfully into him.

When he opened it, Bobbie saw that it led into the garden. Her legs shook with relief. For one awful moment she had actually wondered...dreaded... feared...that he might be going to imprison her somewhere.

‘This way,’ he instructed, yanking her round and virtually marching her along a narrow path. Beyond the hedge in front of them, she could just make out the glimmer of car roofs.

Without giving her the chance to say anything, Luke forced her across to his own car, using his body as well as his constraining arm to imprison her between the car and himself as he unlocked the passenger door.

‘Get in,’ he told her curtly.

‘Well now, what’s going on here? No prizes for guessing why you two are sneaking off. I wonder...?’

Relief flooded through Bobbie as she recognised Max strolling towards them, but before she could open her mouth to ask him for help, Luke had all but pushed her into the passenger seat of the car and was shutting the door on her.

‘Roberta isn’t feeling very well,’ she heard Luke telling Max in a distant voice. Tell Olivia not to worry and that I’ll take care of her, will you, Max? Oh, and give your grandfather my apologies, as well.’

As Luke started to walk round to the driver’s side of his car, Bobbie tried to push open the passenger door and call out to Max, who was now disappearing in the direction of the house. She found that Luke had locked her in, and even as her shaky fingers tried to activate the electric windows, she realised that they wouldn’t operate without the ignition key. Then Luke was opening the door and sliding into the car beside her, setting it in motion with the doors already relocked and leaving her no alternative but to stay where she was.

‘You have no right to do this,’ she finally managed to say as he swung the car out onto the main road. ‘You’re kidnapping me and that’s a crime and—’

‘So’s blackmail,’ Luke countered tightly, ‘and as for my kidnapping you...we’re lovers...an item...an accredited couple...remember?’

The aggressively angry way in which Luke was driving the car caused Bobbie to be thrown back against her seat, the jolt making her gasp for breath, but it wasn’t that that made it impossible for her to respond to Luke’s taunt. She was still in shock from hearing him accuse her of wanting to blackmail Ruth.

‘You can’t do this, Luke,’ she warned him, but the sideways glance of derision he gave her made her heart bang heavily against her chest.

‘Who’s going to stop me?’ he scoffed. ‘Your partner in crime?’ He shook his head and laughed mirthlessly. ‘I think not, and besides, you didn’t leave me much option. After I’d heard what the nasty, cold-blooded little pair of you were planning, I knew I had to act swiftly to protect Ruth.’

Since that one statement encompassed three errors on which she urgently needed to take issue with him, it was, as Bobbie was forced to acknowledge later, rather odd that it should be the least important of them she should protest to him about first, telling him shakily, ‘We are not little and I resent your use of that kind of demeaning and discriminative language, especially when—’

‘Oh please,’ Luke interrupted her savagely. ‘Spare me at least the politically correct whinge. My God, you really are in a class of your own, aren’t you?’ Luke breathed aggrievedly. ‘You haven’t a scrap of conscience about what you were planning to do, the hurt you were about to inflict, and yet you’ve got the gall to come on to me about calling you little...for all the world as though you’re the wronged party.’

‘I am,’ Bobbie insisted fiercely. ‘And how dare you talk to me about conscience. You must have deliberately listened in on our conversation. A private conversation...’

‘Only accidentally,’ Luke told her tersely. ‘I wanted to make a phone call of my own and had no idea the line was already in use until I picked up the receiver—’

‘At which point any normal, decent person would have replaced it,’ Bobbie rebuked him smartly, ‘not eavesdropped.’

‘For Ruth’s sake, I had no other option,’ Luke returned grimly. ‘And thank God I did. How much were you intending to blackmail her for? Not that it matters—be it one penny or a million pounds, the concept is still the same.’

‘We were not planning to blackmail Ruth,’ Bobbie denied angrily. ‘You’ve got it all wrong.’

‘No, you’re the one who’s got it all wrong,’ Luke replied acidly. ‘Just how wrong you’re about to find out....’

They were heading for Chester, Bobbie noticed. Inwardly she was quaking with apprehension and a sick sense of aching disillusionment.

Why on earth did she have to be such an idealistic and romantic fool? Now was quite definitely not the time to have herself mentally and emotionally confronting the fact that a small, deep and very secret feminine place within her had hoped against hope that if Luke were to be told the truth he would instantly and unhesitatingly share her feelings and not just share them, but also want to champion them, to champion her, she admitted; to love her so unequivocally and totally that he immediately and completely understood the complexity of her emotions.

But then, of course, Luke did not love her, did he? And if she was honest with herself, she had already known that.

‘Where are you taking me?’ she demanded as she firmly closed the door on her foolish dreams.

‘Somewhere where you won’t get the chance to put your nasty little plan into action—where you won’t get the chance to make any contact with Ruth at all, somewhere where I can keep an eye on you until I can make arrangements to get you sent back where you came from.’

‘What! Sent back...? You can’t do that.’

‘No? Even in this country we can and do deport undesirable aliens.’

Undesirable aliens! Bobbie took a deep breath and then counted to ten before saying coolly, ‘I appreciate that your massive ego, your superiority complex and sense of justice give you the delusion that you can do whatever you like, Luke, but unfortunately for you and fortunately for me you are just as subject to the laws of the land as I am myself and not even you can have me forcibly imprisoned or forcibly repatriated just because it’s what you want.’

Luke gave her a look that turned her blood to ice as he warned her, ‘Don’t tempt me. If that’s a challenge you’ve just issued, then consider it taken up. The prison I have in mind for you may not be Chester gaol but rather my flat, and as for your repatriation, well, let’s just say I am sure I shall be able to think of some way to encourage you to want to return home....’

Bobbie dared not look at him.

‘You must think a lot of Ruth to go to all this trouble on her behalf,’ Bobbie offered shakily.

‘Yes, I do,’ Luke agreed calmly, ‘but it wouldn’t matter who you were trying to blackmail. My reaction would be the same. If that’s the kind of behaviour you’ve been brought up to think of as the norm, then no wonder Ruth dumped your grandfather.’