Buch lesen: «The Perfect Father»

CONTENTS

Cover

Excerpt

About the Author

The Crightons

Title Page

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

‘T HAT was some game you played over the weekend, Sam. I certainly never expected to see the Corporation’s gold trophy go to a woman…’

‘Sam isn’t a woman, women are small and cute and cuddly, they stay at home and make babies…. Sam…even her name isn’t womanly…’

Samantha Miller drew herself up to her full height—an inch over six feet—which was an impressive four inches above the man who had just so publicly and cruelly criticised her.

‘You know your trouble don’t you, Cliff,’ she drawled affably. ‘ You just don’t know a real woman when you see one. Seems to me that a man isn’t so very much of a man if the only kind of woman he can handle is the kind you’ve just described, and as for making babies…’ She paused for emphasis, well aware of the fact that she had the attention of their fellow employees who had happened to be in the large airy open-plan office with them, ‘I’m woman enough to have a baby any time I want one.’

Only now was she revealing the true extent of her anger at the way Cliff had insulted her; her eyes flashing challenging sparks, her voice trembling a little with the force of her feelings.

‘ You have a baby…’ her antagonist jeered angrily before she could continue. ‘Who the hell would want to impregnate a woman like you? No way. Your only chance of having a child would be via some med student’s sperm and a syringe…’

Enough of the people standing around broke into laughter for Samantha to recognise that no matter how publicly she might be accepted by her colleagues, an uncomfortable proportion of them seemed to share Cliff Marlin’s views.

Faced with the same situation another woman might have burst into tears or lost her temper but not Sam. You learned young when you were as tall as she was that crying didn’t look cute, and besides…

Looking down from the advantage of her extra inches Samantha bared her teeth in a totally false smile and gave a dismissive shrug.

‘You’re entitled to your opinion, Cliff, but gee, it’s a shame that you’re such a sore loser. Mind, if I played golf as badly as you do, I guess I might be a tad sore about it, too. And as for making babies… how many times did you miss that putt on the eighth…’

Now it was Samantha’s gibe that earned a responsive titter of amusement from around her.

Without giving Cliff the opportunity to retaliate she turned on her heel and walked quickly away, her head held high.

What did it matter that she knew the moment she was out of sight and earshot that the others would be talking about her, gossiping about her, the six foot Amazon of a woman who, in all the time she had been with the Corporation, had never attended any of its social events with an escort; the only one of her admittedly relatively small group of female peers in what was essentially a very male-biased industry who had not, at one point or another, confided the details of her private life to the others.

Now, at just over thirty, Samantha was well aware that she had entered a decade which might prove to be one of the most productive and fast-paced of her whole life. It was also a decade which would see the chance of her meeting a man, the man…the man she would be able to fall in love with, the man she would want to spend the rest of her life with, the man with whom she would have the babies she craved so much, sharply declining.

There would be men of course…were men…masses of them, men who didn’t want to commit, men who didn’t want children, men who did want children, but who most definitely did not want a wife, men who were already married…men who…Oh, yes, the list of men to avoid was endless and the choice narrowed even further when one was as picky as her.

‘Why don’t you at least have a date with him?’ her twin sister Roberta had demanded the last time she had been over visiting her family in the States from her newfound home in England. Their mother had been complaining to Bobbie about Sam’s obduracy in not accepting a date from the man who had been pursuing her at the time.

‘There isn’t any point. I already know he isn’t the one,’ Samantha had told her fatalistically. ‘It’s all very well for you to take Mom’s side,’ she had complained to her twin later when they were on their own. ‘You’ve found your man, your perfect “one and only,” and when I’ve seen how special what you and Luke have together is, how happy you are, how could I possibly settle for anything less.’

‘Oh, Sam.’ Bobbie had hugged her contritely. ‘I’m sorry, you’re right, you mustn’t but I have to say I hope you find him soon. Oh dear,’ she had then apologised as she’d started to yawn, ‘I do feel tired.’

‘Tired, I’m not surprised,’ Samantha had laughed, and then unable to stop herself she glanced with rueful envy at her twin’s heavily pregnant body—not with twins as Bobbie had first hoped, though. This was another single pregnancy. Seeing the look in her eyes Bobbie had asked her gently, ‘Have you never met anyone you could love, Sam? Has there never been anyone you have loved?’

Samantha had thought for a moment before shaking her head. Her blonde hair, unlike her twin’s, was cropped into a mass of short tender curls that framed her perfectly shaped face making her large blue eyes seem even larger and darker than Bobbie’s.

‘No. Not unless you count that crush I had on Liam way back when he first started working for Dad…I must have been all of fourteen at the time and Liam pretty soon made it clear that he wasn’t interested in a juvenile brat with braces on her teeth and her hair in plaits.’

Roberta had laughed. Liam Connolly was their father’s most senior assistant and it was no secret in the family that Stephen Miller was encouraging him to run for the position of State Governor when he himself retired.

‘Yeah, well I guess to a man of twenty-one, especially one as good-looking as Liam, the idea of having a fourteen-year-old adoringly worshipping him doesn’t hold that much appeal.’

‘Believe me, so far as Liam was concerned it didn’t have any appeal,’ Sam had returned feelingly. ‘Do you know he even refused to kiss me one particular Thanksgiving. Can you believe that—and me his boss’s daughter…’

‘Yeah, that could have been a real bad career move,’ Bobbie had agreed tongue-in-cheek, ‘ and an even worse one if Dad had found out Liam was encouraging you.’

‘Mmm…and Liam has always put his career ahead of everything else.’

Bobbie had raised her eyebrows a little at the critical note in her twin’s voice, inviting an explanation of Sam’s acidic one.

‘Oh, come on, Bo Bo, there’s been a succession of women in his life—and his bed—but even Dad’s commented on the fact he’s never come anywhere near making a serious commitment to anyone. Lordy, he hasn’t even allowed any of them to move into his house.’

‘Perhaps he’s still looking for Ms. Right…’

Samantha had given her sister an old-fashioned look.

‘If he is, then all I can say is that he surely is having one hell of a good time with an awful lot of Ms. Wrongs first!’

Now, all too well aware of what was likely to be being said about her behind her back in the general office, Samantha headed for the elevators. So what if officially she wasn’t due to take her lunch break for another full half an hour? Right now she needed to breathe fresh clean air and not the stale rancid stuff she had just been forced to endure, contaminated as it had been by Cliff’s malice and envy. Because that was what had sparked his attack on her, Samantha knew that…He had been riding her hard for the last six weeks—ever since she had been offered the promotion he himself had wanted.

She had a month’s leave coming up soon, thank goodness, and she had already made arrangements to spend most of it in England with her twin.

Her father’s term as State Governor had only a little more time to run, otherwise he and her mother would have been joining her.

Theirs was a very close family, made all the more so because of its history. Her mother had been born illegitimately to Ruth Crighton, the unmarried daughter of the Crighton family of Haslewich in Cheshire, England, at the time when unmarried girls of Ruth’s class simply did not become pregnant or certainly were not supposed to.

It had been during the Second World War. Ruth had fallen deeply in love with Samantha’s grandfather but, due to a misunderstanding and the disapproval of her own father who had a bias against Americans, Ruth had erroneously believed that Grant had lied to her about being single and actually already had a wife and a child in the States. Pressured by her family, Ruth had given her baby, Samantha and Roberta’s mother, up for adoption.

By one of those quirks of fate that always seemed too far-fetched to be possible, Ruth’s baby had been adopted in secret by Grant, who had assumed that Ruth was rejecting her child in the same way she had rejected him.

It had only been when, on realising how badly their mother, Sarah Jane, was still affected by the dreadful hurt caused to her by her mother’s rejection, that Samantha and Roberta had hatched a plan to bring Ruth to book for her desertion of her child. It was then that the whole real circumstances surrounding the birth had come to light.

Not only had their grandparents been reunited, but Roberta had also met Luke to whom she was now married and already had one child. Another was on the way.

Like their grandmother, Luke, too, was a Crighton. Only from the Chester, not the Haslewich branch of the family.

Crightons and the law went together like peaches and cream and so it was no surprise that Luke should be one of the city’s leading counsel.

Initially Samantha had been inclined to be a little in awe of her slightly austere brother-in-law, but beneath that austerity lay hidden a wicked sense of humour and a very dry wit. True, he had stolen away Sam’s beloved twin sister and put the width of the Atlantic between them, but he had also, it had to be admitted, made Bobbie deliriously happy and they were not the kind of twins who needed to live in one another’s pockets. But there were times like now when the one person, the only person, she wanted was her twin sister.

Cliff Marlin might be little more than a pathetic apology for a real man but he was a pathetic apology for a real man who had hurt her far more badly than she wanted him or anyone else to see.

His malicious taunt had cut deep and dirty. Not even Bobbie knew how gut-wrenchingly envious Sam sometimes felt or how shocked she had been to recognise how strong her own inner conviction that she would be the first one of them to marry and have children had been.

She did not begrudge Bobbie her happiness, of course she didn’t, and she had seen the anguish and pain Bobbie had gone through when she had thought that Luke didn’t return her feelings, it was just that…It was just what? she asked herself tersely, worrying at the thought with the same intensity she was worrying at her bottom lip as she strode out into the spring sunshine.

It was just that she had this yearning, this hunger to be a mother. It was just that she felt raw with the pain of not fulfilling the tender nurturing side of her nature. But how could she compromise? How could she have a child when there was no man in her life?

Earlier when Bobbie had teased her that she would have to hurry up and find someone so that she could provide her own baby with cousins, Sam had laughed and mocked her twin that a man wasn’t necessary for the purpose of procreation any more, at least, not the kind of loving personal contact with one that Bobbie seemed to be enjoying so much. She hadn’t meant it of course, she had simply been giving in to that slightly offbeat side of her nature that had gotten her into trouble so many, many times when she had been growing up. There was an impetuous, an impulsive and very strong streak of determination running through her character, Samantha acknowledged wryly.

Back there in the office just now for instance, the temptation to throw Cliff’s words back at him and tell him that she would prove to him just how much of a woman she was, that she would prove to them all just how easily she could find herself a partner, have herself a baby, had almost been too strong for her to resist, but fortunately she had resisted it.

It would have been foolhardy in the extreme for her—a career woman who worked in the hard-nosed business of modern computer technology, where logic was a necessity—to give in to the impulse to throw caution to the winds and go with the heady wave of emotion which had stormed her, riding its crest triumphantly like Pacific surf as she told Cliff that not only could she disprove his words but that she actually would.

Naturally it ill behoved the daughter of the State’s Governor to give in to such a hotheaded impulse. Her father was another mark against her in Cliff’s eyes, of course. She had overheard the sneering comments he had made to another colleague when she had been offered the job he had tried so desperately hard to win for himself.

‘It’s obvious she wouldn’t have had a chance if it hadn’t been for the fact that her father is the State Governor,’ she had heard him saying bitterly. ‘No prizes for guessing just what’s going on. The company has put in tenders for government work and what better way to tip the odds in their favour than by getting in the Governor’s good books by promoting his daughter…’

It wasn’t true, Samantha knew that. She had won that promotion on merit. She was, quite simply, the better person for the job and she had told Cliff so in no uncertain terms. He hadn’t liked hearing her saying it, no sirree, and he had liked it even less when she had beaten him hands down in the firm’s annual golf tournament.

She had Liam to thank for that. He was a first-rate player and, even as a teenager, he had never allowed her the indulgence of beating him, mercilessly telling her just where she was going wrong. He was equally good at playing chess—and poker—which was why her father claimed he would make a first-rate Governor.

Her parents had been discussing that very subject when they had all sat down to supper earlier in the week.

‘Well, I can understand why you’re so keen that Liam should run for Governor when you retire,’ her mother had agreed, ‘but if he gets elected he’s going to be the youngest Governor this state has ever had.’

‘Mmm…he’s thirty-seven, which I guess does make him a little on the young side.’

‘Thirty-seven and unmarried,’ Sarah Jane had persisted. ‘He’d stand a far better chance of getting in if he had a wife…’

As Stephen Miller raised his eyebrows, Sam’s mother had insisted, ‘Don’t look at me like that. You know it’s true. Voters like the idea of their Governor being a happily married family man. It makes them feel secure and it reinforces their instinctive beliefs that…’

‘…that what? A married man is a better Governor than an unmarried one?’ her father had asked dryly. But he still had to concede that Sarah Jane had a point.

‘Well, Liam certainly isn’t short of suitable candidates for the position of his wife,’ her father had admired, immediately looking a little shamefaced as her mother had expostulated.

‘Stephen Miller, I do believe you are envious of him!’

‘Envious. No, of course I’m not,’ he had protested.

‘Well, I should think you should look a mite ashamed,’ her mother scolded mock severely. ‘Otherwise I might start to believe that you don’t appreciate either me or your family.’

‘Honey, you know that just isn’t true,’ her father had responded immediately and so tenderly that tears had filled Samantha’s eyes.

How could she ever accept second-best when she had before her not just the example of her twin’s fervently happy marriage, but that of her darling, wonderful parents and, of course, her grandparents who were still just as much in love with one another now as they had been that fateful war-torn summer they had first met.

Only she seemed unable to find a mate for herself, a mate who would love her and father the children Cliff had so hatefully taunted her that no man would want to give her.

Oh, but what she would give to prove him wrong, to walk into that general office not just with her wonderful Mr. Right on her arm but with her stomach triumphantly, wonderfully big with his child…his children…As yet Bobbie hadn’t followed in the Crighton family tradition and conceived twins. She had hoped earlier on in her current pregnancy she might have done, but her routine scans had shown that there was only one baby, although now in the late stages of her pregnancy Bobbie was grumbling that she felt large enough to be carrying quads.

Twins!

Twins…They ran through the history of the Crighton family like an often-repeated refrain and yet, oddly, despite all the new marriages which had taken place these last few years amongst her cousins—first, seconds and thirds—no one had, as yet, produced the next generation of double births.

Samantha closed her eyes. She could see herself now, leaning a little heavily onto the strong supporting arm of her love, her smile beatific, her body weighed down by the twin babies she was carrying perhaps, but her spirits, her heart, buoyed up with love and excitement.

‘Sam.’

The sharp warning note in her twin’s voice was so clear, so real, that Bobbie could almost have been there beside her.

Guiltily she opened her eyes and then realised that someone had actually spoken to her but that that someone was most definitely not her beloved twin sister.

Exhaling warily she looked up into the silver-grey eyes of Liam Connolly.

Yes, looked up because Liam, thanks, or so he said, to the Viking ancestry he claimed he possessed through his mother’s Norwegian family and in spite of his quite definitely un-Nordic very dark hair, was actually a good three inches taller than she was herself, taller even than her own father—just.

‘Er, L—Liam…’ Why on earth was she stuttering and stammering like a child caught with her fingers in a forbidden cookie jar? Samantha wondered.

Liam indicated the busy road in front of them and told her dryly, ‘I know you like to think you’re super-human but somehow I don’t think the right way to try to prove it is to cross the freeway with your eyes closed. Besides, we have a law in this state against jaywalking, you know.’

As Sam heaved a small rebellious sigh, she had no idea what it was about Liam that always made her feel as though she was still fourteen years old and hot-headedly troublesome with it, but somehow or other he always did.

‘Dad says you’ve agreed to run for State Governor when he retires,’ she announced, trying to change the subject.

‘Mmm…’ He shot her a perceptive look from those incredible eyes that sometimes could seem so sexily smoky and smouldering and at other times could look so flintily cold that they could turn your heart to ice and your conscience to a clear piece of Perspex with every small sin clearly visible through it.

‘I take it you don’t approve?’

‘You’re thirty-seven. New Wiltshire County practically runs itself. I should have thought you’d want something you could get your teeth into a little more.’

‘Like what? President?’ Liam drawled. ‘New Wiltshire County might not mean much to you, but believe me it’s got a hell of a lot going for it. Do you realise that we’re well on our way to passing new state legislation which will actually have our people voluntarily giving up their guns? Did you know that we have one of the lowest rates of unemployment in the entire union and that our kids have one of the highest overall pass out grades from high school? Did you know that our welfare programme has just been applauded as one of the finest in the union and that…’

‘Yes…Yes, I do know all those things, and I’m not knocking the county. It’s my home, after all, and I love it. My father is its Governor and…’

Fixing his steel-grey gaze on her, Liam ignored what she was saying, demanding seriously, ‘Did you know that the gardens surrounding the Governor’s residence have been declared a tribute to our Governor’s lady’s taste and knowledge of—’

‘Oh, but I designed those,’ Sam began and then stopped, glaring accusingly at him.

‘Oh, all right, you got me there,’ she acknowledged ruefully, her own mouth curving into a reluctant smile as she saw the humour in the curl of Liam’s mouth.

‘New Wiltshire County is a wonderful place, Liam, I know that. I just thought you might prefer something a little bit more…a little bit less parochial,’ she told him dryly, unable to resist adding, ‘After all, you seem to spend an awful lot of time in Washington.’

‘With your father,’ Liam replied promptly before adding, ‘but if I’d realised that you were missing me…’

Sam gave him a withering look.

‘Don’t give me that,’ she warned him. ‘I know you—remember…I don’t know what all those girls you date see in you Liam—’ she began severely.

‘No?’ he interrupted her swiftly. ‘Want me to show you?’

To her own irritation Sam could feel herself starting to colour up a little.

She knew perfectly well that Liam was only teasing her. She ought to; after all, he had been doing it for long enough.

‘No thanks,’ she responded automatically. ‘I prefer exclusivity in my men. Exclusivity and brown eyes,’ she told him mock musingly. ‘Yes, there is quite definitely something about a man with brown eyes.’

‘Brown eyes…Mmm…Well, I guess I could always keep mine closed—or wear contact lenses. What were you thinking about when I saw you just then?’ he demanded, completely changing tack.

‘Thinking about?’

Samantha knew perfectly well how he would read it if she was to tell him. He would be even more disapproving and dismissive than her twin sister.

‘Er…nothing…not really,’ she fibbed, then as she saw him start to frown and guessed that he wasn’t going to let her answer stand without some further questioning, she added quickly, ‘I was thinking about my upcoming visit to Bobbie.’

‘You’re going to England?’

Samantha shot him an uncertain look. He was frowning and his voice had sharpened almost to the point of curtness.

‘Uh-huh, for a whole month. More than long enough I guess for Bobbie to put her matchmaking plans into practice,’ she told him flippantly.

‘Bobbie’s trying to matchmake for you?’

‘You know what she’s like.’ Samantha shrugged. ‘She’s so besotted with Luke that she wants to see me equally happily married off. You’d better watch out, Liam,’ she joked, ‘You’re even older than me. She could be matchmaking for you next! Mind you, perhaps she’s right. England could be the place to find a man,’ Samantha mused, her eyes clouding as she remembered Cliff’s taunt. ‘There is something deeply attractive about English men.’

‘Especially when they’ve got brown eyes?’ Liam asked in an unfamiliarly hard voice.

‘Umm…especially then,’ Samantha agreed unseriously. But Liam, it seemed, was taking the subject much more seriously than she was because he looked away from her and when he looked back his eyes were a particularly cold and analytical shade of grey.

‘It wouldn’t be one specific brown-eyed Englishman we are talking about, would it?’

‘One specific…’ Samantha was lost. ‘Well, gee, I guess one would be enough,’ she agreed, putting on her best country-cousin hill-billy voice. ‘At least to start with, but then…What are you getting at, Liam?’ she asked him, dropping the fake accent as she saw the way he was watching her.

‘I was just remembering the way Luke’s brother was watching you at Luke and Bobbie’s wedding,’ he told her coolly. ‘ His eyes were brown, if I remember correctly.’

‘James…’ Samantha frowned. She couldn’t quite remember what colour his eyes had been and most certainly James had been a real honey, seriously good-looking and seriously open about his own desire to settle down and raise a family, no commitment phobia there and most definitely no bias against tall independent women. No sirree.

‘Mmm…you’re right, they were, ’ she agreed, giving Liam an absent smile.

‘Of course, we’d have brown-eyed babies.’

‘ What did you say…’

Vaguely, Samantha looked at Liam. She had just had the most wonderful idea.

‘Brown-eyes genes dominate over blue, don’t they?’ she asked him, not expecting a response.

‘Sam, just what the hell is going on?’

Liam grabbed hold of her upper arm, not painfully but firmly enough for Samantha to recognise that he wasn’t easily going to let go of her.

She gave a small sigh and looked up at him.

‘Liam, would you say that I was the kind of woman who couldn’t…who a man wouldn’t…’ She stopped as her throat threatened to clog with tears, swallowing them down fiercely before continuing gruffly, ‘Someone told me today that I’m not woman enough for a man to want her to…to…to become a mother. Well, I’m going to prove him wrong, Liam…I’m going to prove him so wrong that…

‘I’m going to go to England and I’m going to find myself a man who knows how to love and value a real woman, the real woman in me and he’s going to love me and I’m going to love him so much that…

‘Let me go, Liam,’ she demanded, aware that he’d tightened his grip on her. ‘I’ve already overrun my lunch hour and I’ve got about a million and one things I have to do…’

‘Samantha,’ Liam began warningly, but she’d already pulled free of him and was walking away. Her mind was made up even if rather ironically it had taken Liam of all people to point her in the right direction and there was no way she was going to let anyone change it. In England she would find love just as her twin had done. Why on earth hadn’t she thought of that…realised that before? English men were different. English men weren’t like Cliff. English men…One Englishman would love her as she so longed to be loved and she would love him right back.

Already she was regretting having told Liam as much as she had. Oh, that wilful impetuous tongue of hers, but she certainly wasn’t going to tell anyone else—not even Bobbie. No, her quest to find her perfect Mr. Right, the perfect father for the babies she so longed to have, was going to be her secret and hers alone.