The Perfect Seduction

‘You’ve never really liked him, have you?’ James asked his brother.

‘No, I haven’t,’ Luke agreed, coldly adding, ‘it’s hard to think of him as Jon’s son. If David had been his father...’

‘That was an odd business, wasn’t it?’ James said. ‘The way David just upped and left like that after his heart attack, disappearing...’

‘Mmm...I dare say he had his reasons,’ Luke commented obliquely. He had heard certain rumours about David—none of them ever verified, but he had sensed that despite the strenuous and meticulous efforts that Jon had made to track down his twin brother, he was almost relieved not to have been able to find him.

In Luke’s opinion Jon had always been the better one of the pair even if Jon’s own father had always shown a public and very marked preference for David. And now Jon and Jenny’s twin daughters were eighteen. God, that made him feel old. He was virtually twice their age, and as his great-aunt Alice had reminded him pugnaciously the last time he had seen her, fast approaching an age where, in her words, he ran the danger of no longer being seen as an eligible bachelor but rather an unpleasant misanthrope.

He knew that he was commonly considered to be aloof and disdainful; that he had the reputation of being overly arrogant, too sure of himself and dismissive of women who made a play for him; that he was, in fact, immune to the vulnerability of falling in love.

Not so. He had once been in love and very, very deeply, or so he had thought at the time, but she had married someone else and lived to regret it. She had told him this when she had come to see him, tears filling her eyes as she confessed that her marriage was over and that she needed his help to find a good divorce lawyer.

‘Have you thought long and hard about what you’ll be giving up,’ he had asked her seriously.

‘Of course I have,’ she had cried, pushing trembling fingers into her hair as she went on tearfully, ‘but do you really think that any of that matters. That his wealth, his title, that any of it means anything when I’m so unhappy...?’

‘You married him,’ he pointed out bluntly to her.

‘Yes,’ she had agreed, her mouth trembling as much as her hand had done earlier. ‘At eighteen I believed I loved him. At eighteen you can convince yourself of anything you want to believe. He seemed so...’

‘So rich,’ he offered.

She had given him a hurt look.

‘I didn’t stop to think. He swept me off my feet. I thought then you should never have let me go, Luke,’ she told him quietly.

He paused for a moment before answering her evenly, ‘As I remember it, I didn’t have much choice in the matter. You told me that you loved him and that you didn’t love me.’

‘I was lying,’ she whispered huskily. ‘I did love you, very, very much, but...’

‘You loved him more,’ he offered cynically.

‘Yes,’ she agreed, tears filling her eyes, ‘or at least I believed that I did. Please help me, Luke,’ she implored him. ‘I don’t know who else to turn to.’

‘Go and see this man—he’s a first-class divorce lawyer,’ he told her stiffly, scribbling a name and address down on a piece of paper and handing it to her without looking at her.

That had been six weeks ago. He had not seen or heard from her since, but he had not stopped thinking about her, remembering... She had been eighteen to his twenty-two; all Eve, all woman, teasing him, taunting him, laughing at him as he was unable to prevent himself from showing how he felt about her. It had been his first real experience of the intensity of emotional and physical love. And his last. He had been determined on that. Never again would any woman be allowed to put him through what she had—the pain, the self-contempt, the sheer intensity of emotions that had led only to the destruction of his pride and the humiliation of watching her walk away with another man. Any woman ... no matter who she might be.

Oh yes, he had seen the look in Fenella’s eyes as she sat opposite him and had guessed just what she was thinking. Her husband, despite his title and his wealth, or maybe because of them, was not the kind of man a woman would dream of having as her lover. A man’s man was generally how others described him, if they wanted to be tactful and generous. Overweight, boorish, self-opinionated, a traditionalist who said openly that he believed a woman’s place was in the home and, his being closer now to fifty than forty, it was understandable, Luke acknowledged cynically, why Fenella might prefer a generous divorce settlement and the chance to find herself a more congenial and appealing man. But that man was most definitely not going to be him.

Jenny was putting the final touches to the icing on the twins’ decorative birthday cake when Joss came bursting in. Predictably, Louise had announced earlier in that slightly bossy way that characterised her that they did not want their cake decorated with sickly, yukky flowers and things.

‘What do you want, then?’ Jenny had asked her, slightly exasperated. Both the girls were due to start university at the beginning of the autumn term and whilst she knew she was going to miss them, as she had commented ruefully to Jon, there were going to be certain advantages to their departure. The lack of arguments over their constant breaking of what Jenny considered to be a perfectly reasonable and even overgenerous curfew during school term time was one thing, and the other was the ability to go into her wardrobe without discovering that the very thing she wanted to wear was missing, presumed grubby and crumpled on the twins’ bedroom floor.

‘Something serious and meaningful,’ Louise had responded in answer to her mother’s wry question. She had given her father a lofty look as he teased, ‘Oh, you mean something like the Benjamin Bunny cake you drove us all crazy over...?’

‘That was years ago,’ she protested, turning her back on him as she informed her mother, ‘No. What we want is something that shows what Katie and I are planning to do with our lives.’

‘Oh, you mean a replica of your mother’s car with the petrol tank empty and a scraped front number plate,’ Jon offered helpfully.

‘No, that is not what I mean,’ Louise informed her father frostily, adding, ‘and anyway it wasn’t me who cracked the number plate, and as for the petrol... Do you know how much petrol actually costs?’

‘I have a fair idea, yes,’ Jon agreed mildly, causing Jenny to remind them both firmly that they were straying off the subject.

‘Oh, you know, Mum... something with a bit of a legal flavour to it.’

In the end, having got no further help from either of her daughters, Jenny had opted for a huge, plain iced cake decorated in darker icing with the scales of Justice.

‘Mum,’ Joss demanded, throwing down his school bag before going straight to the fridge and opening the door.

‘Joss, supper will be ready in half an hour,’ Jenny reminded him firmly, adding, ‘and you’re late. Where have you been?’

‘Mum, you know you said I could take a friend to the party on Saturday?’ Joss reminded her, ignoring her question.

‘I did say that, yes,’ Jenny agreed cautiously, ‘but...’

As a special treat Jon had announced that he had booked a large suite at the Grosvenor so that the girls and Jenny could get changed without worrying about crumpling their dresses on the journey from home and so that they did not have to travel back again until the morning after the party. Now Jenny, who had been planning to make sure that Joss went up to bed well before the party ended, wondered if they were going to be called upon to provide accommodation for Joss’s friend, as well.

‘You know we’re all staying overnight at the Grosvenor, Joss?’ she warned her son, ‘and I don’t know if your friend—’

‘That’s all right. I...I’ve arranged to meet them there,’ Joss told her hurriedly.

‘Oh well, in that case,’ Jenny agreed, relieved. There were innumerable things she still had to do and typically Louise had suddenly started being difficult about the outfit she had decided to wear, claiming that she had never wanted a dress at all and that she would much rather have worn trousers.

‘Mum, about my friend...’ Joss began excitedly.

But Jenny shook her head and told him impatiently, ‘Not now, Joss, please. I’ve got a hundred and one things left to do and you really ought to go and make a start on your homework before supper.’

‘But, Mum,’ Joss protested.

‘Homework,’ Jenny commanded firmly, adding, ‘and while you’re upstairs you might remind Jack that he still hasn’t produced his sports kit and if he wants it clean for football practice tomorrow...’

‘I’ll tell him,’ Joss agreed, going through the kitchen and heading for the stairs and the large, comfortably furnished bedroom-cum-study he shared with his cousin Jack, who had been living with them since the break-up of his parents’ marriage and the disappearance of his father, David.

Jack’s mother, Tania, after a long period of rehabilitation at a special centre for the treatment of people with eating disorders, was now living with her parents on the South Coast. Not yet entirely recovered from the years of suffering from bulimia, she had asked Jenny and Jon if Jack, her son, could continue to live with them.

Jenny had been happy to agree. In the time that he had been with them, Jack had become almost another son, the blood tie between him and her own children very close; their fathers were twins and everyone, but most importantly Jack himself, felt that it was better for him to remain in his present stable and familiar surroundings than to be uprooted to move south to live with his mother and maternal grandparents.

Although only two years separated them in age, at twelve going on thirteen to Joss’s ten, Jack had already entered puberty whereas Joss had not. Both boys got on well together, but Jack was now virtually a teenager growing towards young manhood, whilst Joss in many ways was still a boy, and being male, neither of them was inclined to confide in the other. Since Jack was engrossed in reading a sports magazine when Joss walked into their shared bedroom, the younger boy saw no reason to tell him about his encounter with Bobbie or inform him of the fact that he had invited her to his sisters’ party.

Possessed of a sunny, happy temperament with little inclination to brood or go looking for trouble and a logical way of reasoning things, it simply hadn’t occurred to Joss that his parents might not view with equanimity the discovery that his ‘friend’ and their guest at the party was not another ten-year-old boy but, in fact, a twenty-six-year-old woman.

It had occurred to Bobbie, though, as she ruefully admitted during the course of her telephone call home, surreptitiously timed so that she could speak to her sister when no one else was about to overhear them.

‘It’s the perfect access to the family and right into the heart of it, Sam,’ Bobbie admitted a little reluctantly. ‘I couldn’t believe it when he introduced himself to me as Joss Crighton.’

‘And how old did you say this kid was?’ Samantha Miller demanded of her sister.

‘I’m not sure, somewhere around ten or maybe eleven. He’s a real cutie, huge brown eyes and thick hair.’

‘Sounds great,’ Samantha commented enthusiastically.

Bobbie laughed. ‘Oh, he is!’

‘And you say he’s asked you to his sisters’ eighteenth birthday party?’

‘Mmm...’

‘What else did you find out? Did you—’

‘No, not yet,’ Bobbie interrupted her sister quickly. ‘We were a bit public for me to cross-question him too deeply and we might have been overheard. I don’t want anyone getting suspicious of either of us.’

‘Cross-question, I like that,’ Samantha told her grimly.

‘How are things at home?’ Bobbie asked, her voice suddenly becoming slightly tense and anxious. ‘How is Mom?’

‘She doesn’t have a clue,’ Samantha assured her, ‘although even if I say so myself I am doing rather a good job of running interference for you. The first couple of days you were gone she was going crazy, asking me if I knew where you were, if there was some man... Poor Mom, she’s just so desperate to get at least one of us married off.’

‘What did you tell her?’ Bobbie asked.

‘I said you’d mentioned something about needing to get away now that you aren’t seeing Nat any more.’

‘Oh thanks. So now she’ll be thinking I’m suffering from a broken heart,’ Bobbie told her sister indignantly.

‘Having her thinking that is better than having her guess the truth. When is this party by the way? We don’t have a lot of time, not if...’

‘No, I know. It’s on Saturday, at the Grosvenor in Chester where, as good luck has it, I’m staying. It will be the perfect opportunity, not just for me to find out as much as I can from Joss, but also to study the family in general.’

‘Do you think you-know-who will be there?’ Samantha asked, her voice suddenly tensing and becoming brittle with hostility and anger.

‘I don’t know.’

‘When I think of what they’ve done, the unhappiness they’ve caused...’

‘I know, I know....’ Bobbie paused, then said, ‘Look, Sam, I’d better go. I’ll ring you after the party and tell you what I’ve managed to find out.’

She was just about to replace the receiver when she remembered something she had omitted to tell her sister.

‘I nearly forgot,’ she hastened to add. ‘You’ll never guess what...’ Laughing ruefully, she proceeded to tell Samanatha about Joss’s descriptions of, and revelations about, his Chester cousins.

‘What? Cousin Luke sounds like a real ape,’ came Samantha’s immediate and gutsy response, ‘the type that goes for cutesy, brain-dead little blonde bimbos he can wear like a Band-Aid on his pathetic inadequacies. Personally, I’ve always preferred to judge a man by the size and warmth of his heart, not—’

‘Sam...’ Bobbie warned her sister, laughing.

‘What? Oh! What a thing to suggest. I meant size as in height and not...’ Samantha began in wounded dignity, only to break down in a fit of giggles. ‘Well, good luck with Cousin Luke,’ she teased her sister before ringing off. ‘He sounds the perfect match for you, Bobbie, everything you’ve always wanted in a man.’

‘Doesn’t he just,’ Bobbie agreed with heavy irony.

After she had replaced the receiver, she walked over to her window and stared unseeing through the glass. It was no mere whim or casual impulse that had brought her to England, to Chester, to Haslewich, but rather a quest that had been a part of both her and her twin sister’s lives for as long as they had been old enough to understand the story of their mother’s life.

Sombrely Bobbie walked back towards the bed. She supposed she would have to find something suitable to wear for this party. It had been difficult enough getting away without her mother asking what she was up to and without worrying about packing any kind of formal evening wear; as she knew, to her cost, when you were six foot plus, buying off the peg wasn’t always an option.

In the small New England town where Bobbie and her sister had grown up, people were accustomed to their height; after all, it was a family trait. Dad was nearly six-five and his parents were tall, as well, and so were all their paternal kith and kin who were scattered around the area.

Stephen Miller’s family could trace their ancestors right back to one of the founding Pilgrim families and it had not been easy for their mother to gain their acceptance in view of her own family background or rather... Fiercely Bobbie checked her thoughts. As Sam had told her before she left the States, it was high time that justice was done, the tables turned, and a certain person made to see just what they had lost through their pride and cruelty, and her own niggling sense of reluctance and unease had to be severely restrained.

CHAPTER TWO

‘JENNY dear, I’m awfully sorry but I’m afraid I’m not going to be able to make it on Saturday after all.’

‘Oh, Aunt Ruth,’ Jenny protested into the telephone receiver. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing’s wrong,’ Ruth assured her niece by marriage firmly. ‘It’s just that Olivia and Caspar’s babysitter has let them down at the last minute and so I’ve offered to babysit Amelia for them instead. I don’t think they’ve had a single night out since Amelia arrived eight months ago.’

‘No, they haven’t,’ Jenny agreed. ‘Jon tried to persuade Olivia not to rush back to work, but you know how conscientious she is, she insisted. At least during the summer holiday, Caspar has been at home to look after her.’

‘Mmm... I know she’s beginning to get a bit anxious because they haven’t managed to find another suitable nanny as yet.’

‘Poor girl, it must be so hard for her. I know how much she loves her work but I’d have hated to have to let someone else bring up my children especially when they were babies. When you read these stories of mothers giving up their babies, I often wonder... I know it’s something that I could never bring myself to do. Ruth, are you still there?’ she asked anxiously into the silent receiver.

‘Yes, I’m still here,’ Ruth answered crisply, adding, ‘What you say is all very well, Jenny, but some women just don’t have any option.’

‘No, I realise that,’ Jenny agreed sombrely, catching the faint note of criticism in Ruth’s voice.

She had been lucky both in her marriage and more importantly in her husband, Jenny acknowledged as she replaced the receiver, very lucky.

‘You’re looking very pensive,’ Jon commented as he came into the bedroom where Jenny had just been finishing packing their overnight cases when the phone rang. ‘Not more problems?’

‘Not exactly. Ruth just rang. She isn’t going to be able to make it. She’s offered to babysit for Olivia and Caspar. Apparently their original babysitter has let them down. I rather annoyed her, I think.’

‘You?’ Jon gave his wife an affectionate look as he took her in his arms. ‘I doubt that, my love. You’re far too kind-natured to annoy anyone.’

‘Mmm... I did make rather a sweeping generalisation, I suppose,’ she told him, explaining what had happened.

‘Ah well, you know how hard Aunt Ruth has campaigned to raise funds for the town’s special new mother and baby home.’

‘Yes,’ Jenny agreed. ‘It’s a very innovative idea. Ruth is determined that it won’t be anything like the old unmarried mother and baby homes where girls used to be banished in disgrace if they were pregnant, and where the staff tried to persuade them to give their babies up for adoption.’

‘To be fair, in those days it was generally believed that such children were better off being adopted,’ Jon reminded her fair-mindedly.

‘Mmm ... I realise that. I suppose I just can’t help thinking that if you hadn’t married me when you did...’

‘I know,’ Jon told her gently, holding her tighter, ‘and I know, as well, that you are as dedicated to raising money for this home as Ruth is. I ought to—you’ve persuaded me to part with enough money to help fund it.’

‘Well, it is a good cause,’ Jenny protested. ‘We’ve bought the house and the land, and once it’s been converted into small, private bedsitting rooms, we can give both the girls and their babies a protected environment.’

‘Shall I take these cases down?’ Jon asked, reminding her. ‘You said you wanted to be at the Grosvenor early.’

‘Yes, I know.’ She glanced uncertainly at the telephone. ‘I haven’t rung Queensmead today, and—’

‘Dad will be fine,’ Jon assured her firmly. ‘He’s got Max and Madeleine with him, remember?’

‘I know,’ Jenny replied worriedly, ‘but you know how impatient Max can be.’

‘Yes, I do, but Madeleine will make sure that Dad’s all right. You know how fond of him she is.’

‘And him of her. It’s ironic, really, isn’t it, that the only woman he really approves of is one who isn’t related to him by blood?’

‘That’s because Madeleine is the perfect stereotype of what Dad believes a woman should be,’ Jon told her dryly.

‘She’s a lovely person,’ Jenny countered. ‘Kind, gentle, generous and...’

‘Vulnerable?’ Jon suggested.

They looked at one another in silence.

‘I must admit I was surprised when we first met her after Max announced they were getting married.’

‘Mmm...me, too. I wonder if he’d have been as keen to marry her if her father hadn’t been who he is,’ Jon speculated cynically.

‘Oh, Jon, don’t say that,’ Jenny protested. ‘She loves him so much.’

‘Too much, perhaps?’ Jon asked her.

‘She seems so happy.’

‘She’s happy because Max is happy and Max is happy because at the moment he’s getting what he wanted. Whether or not he’ll continue to be happy is another matter.’

Again they exchanged looks. Max might be their son but in temperament and outlook he was much closer and always had been to his uncle David than to either of them, although it hurt them both to admit it. Jenny knew that Max was a selfish and egotistical man who was ruthlessly determined in whatever he did.

Half past seven. Bobbie glanced up from her secluded position in the hotel lobby. She had tucked herself away in a shadowy corner so that she could see everyone who came into the hotel without being noticed herself—not an easy feat given her height and the colour and luxurious vibrancy of her hair.

She had already seen Joss arrive with another slightly older boy and a couple who must be his parents. Joss’s hair was slicked back and the formality of his clothes made him look younger rather than older. She had hidden a smile.

Now the early arrivals for the party were beginning to gather in the lobby—a cheerful, happy crowd spanning the generations, who quite plainly all seemed to know one another from the greetings they were exchanging.

Joss’s parents arrived back downstairs, his mother looking elegant in a dress that Bobbie’s judicious and expert inspection informed her was very probably an Armani. Nice, very nice, she acknowledged as she watched the way the cream crêpe moved elegantly with Jenny’s body.

The diamonds in her ears and around her neck were quite obviously real, and to judge both from the venue they had chosen for their twin daughters’ birthday celebration and the appearance of their guests, financial hardship was not a problem that afflicted the Crighton family. But then, she had already known that, hadn’t she? Already known all about their pride and arrogance, their belief that they were somehow better than anyone else and most certainly better than... She frowned as a fresh batch of guests arrived, her attention caught, oddly enough, not by the imposing height of the man walking so purposefully into the hotel, but rather the air, the aura of tautly controlled energy and impatience he seemed to bring with him.

‘Luke,’ she heard Joss’s father exclaiming as he went forward to welcome him with a smile and a handshake, ‘and James,’ he added warmly as he turned to the man following behind him.

Luke and James. She had known who he was immediately, of course, Bobbie acknowledged, unaware of the dangerous allocation and use of the word ‘he’ in the singular rather than ‘they’ in the plural.

He was every bit as tall as Joss had told her, she admitted, and as for the rest...certainly he was an extremely physically powerful-looking and charismatically masculine-looking man, but she detected a certain hardness and hauteur...a coldness about him that in her view more than outweighed the appeal of his really too stunning good looks. There was, after all, such a thing as overkill, and rather like a strong perfume the effect of his physical magnetism was too overpowering to be attractive, a turn-off rather than a turn-on, she decided disparagingly.

The tiny, fragile-looking little blonde clinging to his arm obviously didn’t share her view, though. She was gazing up at him adoringly and extremely possessively, Bobbie noticed as Luke turned to introduce her to Joss’s parents, and on closer inspection she was not quite so young as her girlishly feminine silk dress seemed to proclaim. In her thirties rather than her twenties, Bobbie guessed, and very adept at using her delicacy to create the impression of being somewhat younger. He would, of course, go for that type. Bobbie’s contempt for him grew.