Читать книгу The Perfect Father - Пенни Джордан, Penny Jordan - Страница 9

‘J UST think, in a little over a week I shall be in Haslewich with Bobbie.’

Samantha closed her eyes and smiled in delicious anticipation, looking more like the teenager she had been when Liam had first met her than the sophisticated, independent career woman she now was.

On the opposite side of the elegant mahogany dining table, which was a family heirloom and which her mother had insisted on bringing with them from the family residence in the small town which her husband’s family had virtually founded to the Governor’s residence where they now all lived together, Sarah Jane Miller smiled tenderly at her daughter.

‘I really do envy you, darling,’ she told her. ‘I just wish that your father and I were coming with you but it’s impossible right now.’

‘I know, but at least you’ll be getting to spend Christmas with Bobbie this year. Dad’s term of office will have finished by then.’

‘Mmm…I must admit I shan’t be sorry,’ her mother responded, and then looked apologetically across the table to the fourth member of the quartet.

Over the years Liam Connolly had worked for her husband the two men had become very close and Sarah Jane knew it was no secret to Liam that she preferred the elegant New England home she had shared with her husband to the rather less intimate atmosphere of the Governor’s residence which was also home to the state’s small suite of administration offices.

‘Oh, Liam, it’s not that the house isn’t…’ She stopped and laughed, shaking her head. ‘What am I saying,’ she chuckled ruefully. ‘ You know all too well that I can’t wait to get back to our own home. I hope that when you do decide to marry that you’ll warn your wife-to-be just what she’s going to have to take on…when she moves in here…’

‘It isn’t a foregone conclusion that I’ll get elected to the governorship,’ Liam reminded her dryly.

‘Oh, but I hope you do,’ Samantha’s mother insisted. ‘You’re so obviously the very best man for the job.’

‘Sarah Jane is right,’ Samantha’s father cut in warmly. ‘And I can tell you, Liam, that I’ve heard on the grapevine that the New Wiltshire and even some Washington hostesses are already preparing their celebratory dinners for you.’

Dutifully Samantha joined in her mother’s amused laughter but for some reason she couldn’t define, she didn’t find the idea of Liam being vetted by the sophisticated women of Washington as pleasantly amusing as both her parents did.

‘There is one thing you are going to have to consider though, Liam,’ her father was continuing in a more serious vein. ‘I’m not saying that your election to the governorship is dependent on it, but there’s no getting away from the fact that as a married man you would significantly increase your appeal to the voters.’

Very carefully Liam put the pear he had been peeling back on his plate. He had, Samantha noticed, unlike her, managed to remove most of its skin without either drastically altering the shape of the fruit or covering himself in its juice. But then, Liam was like that. She had seen him remove his suit jacket to set about lending a hand to some mundane task requiring the kind of muscle power so very evident in his six-foot-four broad-shouldered frame and complete the job without even managing to get a speck of dirt on his immaculately clean shirt. She, on the other hand, couldn’t so much as open a fridge door without knocking something over.

‘It’s only a matter of months before voting takes place,’ Liam reminded her father dryly. ‘Somehow I feel that the voters would be less than impressed by a hasty and a very obviously publicity-planned marriage.’

‘There’s plenty of time before your first term of office would begin,’ her father pointed out. ‘I knew I wanted to marry Sarah Jane within days of first meeting her.’

Across the table Samantha’s parents exchanged tenderly loving looks. Sam looked away. Her parents were so very, very lucky.

Fiercely she worried at her lip. As a teenager her mother had once told her gently, chidingly, ‘Samantha Miller, if you keep on doing that, that poor bottom lip of yours is going to be permanently sore and swollen.’

‘Mom’s right,’ Bobbie had hissed teasingly at her when their mother had left the room. ‘But my, oh, my, how sexy it’s going to look. Boys are just going to die wanting to feel how it is to kiss you.’

‘Boys…yuck…’ Samantha had protested. Who wanted boys when there was Liam? What would it be like to be kissed by him? He had the sexiest mouth she had ever seen. Just thinking about it, never mind looking at it, made her shiver all over.

‘I understand what you’re saying,’ Liam was admitting to her father now, ‘but personally I don’t believe that getting married is necessarily going to make me a better Governor. In fact,’ he added wryly, ‘it would probably be more likely to have just the opposite effect. Men in love are, after all, notoriously unable to concentrate upon anything other than their beloved.’

‘Perhaps it’s just as well then that you are in love with your career,’ Samantha suggested, adding before Liam could comment, ‘You have to admit that you’ve always given it far more attention than you have any woman.’

‘Sam…’ her mother objected, but Liam simply shook his head.

‘No wonder you’re no good at chess,’ he taunted her, ‘making a move on your opponent is no good unless you keep yourself protected and have the next move already planned. I could point out that you are equally bereft of a partner and that you, too, would appear to have sacrificed your most personal intimate relationships in favour of your career.’

‘Not in the way that you have, I haven’t,’ Samantha objected hotly. ‘You deliberately pick women who you know you’re going to get bored with. You don’t want a serious relationship. You’re a commitment phobic, Liam,’ she told him dangerously. ‘Secretly you’re afraid of giving yourself emotionally to a woman.’

‘Oh, then it seems to me that we have something very much in common.’

‘What do you mean?’ Samantha asked him challengingly.

‘It’s so obvious that the kind of man you need is one who’d keep you earthed, provide a solid base to offset your own more tempestuous one, but instead you always go for the same type, emotionally unstable, manipulative, lame dogs. My guess is you feel more passionate about them as a cause than as men.

‘You accuse me of being afraid of giving myself emotionally to a woman, Samantha. Well I’d say that you are very much afraid of committing yourself, of giving yourself wholly and completely, sexually, to a man. Excuse me.’ Without giving her any opportunity to either defend herself or retaliate, he stood up, politely excusing himself to her parents.

‘I’ve got some work I really need to do. I’ll see you in the morning Stephen and I should have those figures you were asking me for by then.’

As he walked around the table and gave her mother a brief kiss on the cheek Samantha wondered if her face looked as hot with chagrin as it felt. How could he have said something like that to her, and in front of her parents? It wasn’t true, of course, how could it be?

It wasn’t, after all, as though she was some timid, cowering virgin who had never known physical intimacy. She had lost her virginity in the time-honoured way as a sophomore at college with her then boyfriend whom she had been dating for several months. And if the experience had turned out to be more of a rite of passage than the entry into a whole new world of perfect love and emotional and physical bliss and euphoria, well then she hadn’t been so very different from any of her peers, from what she had heard.

True that, unlike Liam, she didn’t have a list of sexual conquests as long as her arm. True, her own secret, somewhat mortifying view of herself was as a woman to whom sex was never going to be of prime importance, certainly nothing as important as emotional intimacy or as the love she would have for the children she would bear. But was that so very wrong? Did putting sex at the top of one’s list of what was important in life truly make for a better person? Samantha didn’t think so and she was certainly not going to pretend to either a sexual desire or a sexual history she did not possess simply because it might be expected of her.

‘You know, it’s at times like this that I wonder if you’re actually a teenager or really in your thirties,’ Samantha heard her father remark ruefully as he, too, stood up.

Imploringly she looked at her mother.

‘That’s not fair, Mom. It was Liam who started it and…’

‘Your father does have a point, darling,’ her mother interrupted her gently. ‘You do tend to ride Liam rather hard at times.’

‘ I ride him! ’ Samantha objected indignantly, and then she suddenly felt her face flooding with scarlet colour, not because she felt guilty about what she had said but because she had suddenly realised the sexual connotations of her mother’s comment.

Liam…sex…and her? Oh no! No…She had outgrown that particular folly a long time ago.

‘He deserves it,’ she told her mother fiercely. ‘He can be so damned arrogant. If he ever gets to be Governor he’s going to have to develop a far more human and gentle way of dealing with other people. When it comes to figures or logic Liam may be the best there is, but when it comes to his fellow human beings…’

‘Sam. Now you are being unfair,’ her mother chided her firmly. ‘And I think you know it. If you’d only seen the way Liam reacted to and spoke with the children at the Holistic Centre the other week.’

She paused and shook her head.

‘I could have sworn I saw tears in his eyes when he was holding that little boy,’ she commented to her husband as he prepared to leave the room. ‘You remember the one I mean, the autistic boy they had there for assessment.’

‘Yes, Liam told me himself that if he gets elected he intends to make sure that the centre gets the very best of funding and help he can give it.’

The Holistic Centre was one of Sam’s mother’s pet charities—the establishment and support of charities was very much a Crighton thing on the other side of the Atlantic. The series of special units Ruth, Samantha’s grandmother and Sarah Jane’s mother, had established were unique in the facilities they provided for single parents and their children and all the Crighton women were tireless in their fund-raising work for a diverse range of good causes.

Out of all the charities her own mother supported, the Holistic Centre, which treated children with special needs, was Samantha’s own favourite and whenever she could she gave her spare time to helping out there and working to raise money for it.

‘I didn’t know that Liam had visited the centre,’ she commented sharply now.

‘Mmm…He asked if he could come with me the last time I visited,’ her mother explained. ‘And I must say, I was impressed with the way he related to the children. For a man without younger siblings and no children of his own, he certainly has a very sure and special touch with kids.’

‘He’s probably practising his baby kissing techniques to impress the voters!’

‘Samantha!’ her mother objected, quite obviously shocked.

‘Samantha? Samantha what?’ Sam demanded shakily as she got up. She knew she was overreacting and perhaps even behaving a little unfairly but somehow she couldn’t help herself. Right now she was the one who needed her parents’ support, their complete and full approval…their understanding. Cliff’s cruel comments had hurt her very deeply, shaken her, disturbed her, uncovered a secret ache of unhappiness and dissatisfaction with herself and her life.

‘You always take Liam’s side,’ she accused her bewildered parents, her eyes suddenly brilliant with tears. ‘It’s not fair…’ And then, like the youthful teenager her father had accused her of resembling, she turned and fled from the room.

‘What on earth was all that about?’ Stephen asked in confusion when she had gone. ‘Is it one of those women’s things…?’

‘No. It’s not that.’ Sarah Jane shook her head, her forehead pleating in an anxious maternal frown.

‘I’m worried about Samantha, Stephen. I know she’s always been inclined to be a little up and down emotionally—she’s so passionate and intense about everything—but that’s what makes her the very special person she is…But, well…this last year…’ She paused, her frown deepening. ‘I’m glad she’s going on this visit with Bobbie. She never says it, but I know how much she misses her.’ She paused and gave him a wry smile.

‘Do you remember when they were growing up how it was always Sam who played big sister to the other kids on the block and how, when Tom came along she fussed over him like a little mother? We always said then that Sam would be the one to get married first and have children and that Bobbie would be the career girl.’

She saw that Stephen was looking a little nonplussed.

‘What is it you’re trying to say?’ he asked her.

‘I’m not sure,’ she admitted. ‘I just know that something’s upsetting Samantha.’

‘Well, she and Liam have never exactly seen eye to eye.’

‘No, it isn’t Liam,’ Sarah Jane told him positively. ‘Poor Liam, I do feel for him.’ She gave a small chuckle. ‘I rather suspect that if he hadn’t been sitting at our dinner table there was a moment this evening when he might definitely have reacted more forcefully to Sam’s remarks.’

‘Mmm…He and Sam have never got on,’ her husband agreed.

Sarah Jane’s eyes widened.

‘Oh, but…’ she began and then stopped. ‘Do you think he’ll seriously consider getting married in order to strengthen his position in running for Governor?’

‘Not purely for that,’ Stephen announced positively. ‘He’s far too honest—and too proud—to stoop to those kinds of tactics, but like I said earlier, he is thirty-seven and, despite all the hassle Sam gives him about his girlfriends, he’s never given me the impression that he’s the kind of man who needs to feed his ego with a constant stream of sexual conquests—far from it.’

‘Mmm…I think you’re right. In fact—’ She stopped. ‘With his ancestry it’s entirely feasible that Liam’s rational exterior could hide a very emotional and romantic heart indeed. In fact I think that Liam, contrary to what Sam said, is looking for love and commitment—he just hasn’t found the right woman yet, that’s all.’

She got up from the table and dropped a loving kiss on her husband’s cheek as she walked past him.

‘I’d better go up and see if Sam’s okay.’

A week later Samantha gave a small sigh of achievement and relief as the clasps on her large suitcase finally responded to the pressure of her weight on top of the case and snapped closed.

‘Thank goodness,’ Sam muttered under her breath.

She would be way over the weight limit, she knew that, but what the heck. A series of long excited conversations with her twin over the intervening week had elicited the information that there were a series of social events coming up in both Chester and Haslewich which Bobbie intended to have her twin join in.

‘There’s the Lord Lieutenant’s Ball at the end of your stay. We’ve already got tickets for that. It’s going to be especially wonderful this year as the current Lord Lieutenant is stepping down. You’ll need a proper evening gown for that, and then there’s the charity cricket match and the strawberry tea afterwards. The bad news, though, is that Luke has three very important court cases pending so he could be called away at short notice. And of course with the baby due soon I shan’t be able to do as much as I would have liked. However, once he or she arrives, you and I are going to do some serious fashion shopping, I’m so tired of maternity clothes.’

‘Mmm…’ Sam had enthused. ‘I’ve read that Milan is the place to shop right now, the prices are really keen and you know how I love those Italian designers.’

‘Mmm…Which reminds me, don’t forget to bring some clam diggers, will you, and some jeans. They just don’t do them over here like they do back home. Oh, and dungarees for Francesca and shirts for Luke and for James…’

‘How is James?’ Samantha had asked her twin coyly.

‘He’s fine and he’s certainly looking forward to seeing you,’ Bobbie had taunted her.

Samantha had laughed back. Bobbie had taunted her mercilessly at the time of her own wedding that James had fallen for her, but then Samantha had simply thought of him as a very nice soon-to-be in-law and member of the large Crighton clan.

Now, though, things were a little different.

Milan wasn’t the only city to boast fine designer shops and she had paid an extended visit to Boston prior to doing her packing. The resultant purchases were all designed to underscore the fact that being tall did not in any way mean that was not wholly and completely a woman. A satisfied smile curled Samantha’s mouth as she contemplated the effect of her new purchases on her intended victim. James, she knew instinctively, was the kind of man who preferred to see a woman dressed like a woman.

Her smile was replaced by a small frown as she studied her closed suitcase. Closed it might be, but it still had to be gotten downstairs and there was no point in calling the man who helped with the garden to assist her. Hyram was a honey, but he was close on seventy and there was no way he could lift her case.

Nope…There were occasions when being tall and healthily muscled were an advantage—and this, she decided, was one of them.

She negotiated the suitcase to the top of the stairs so that she could leave it in the lobby ready for her early morning flight and had just paused to take a rest, muttering complainingly at the overstuffed case as she did so. Her face felt hot and flushed and the exertion had made her hair cling in silky strands to the nape of her neck and her flushed cheeks. Turning her back towards the stairs, she eyed the suitcase.

‘It’s not just my clothes,’ she told it sternly. ‘It’s that sister of mine and…’

‘What the…’

The unexpected sound of Liam’s voice on the stairs behind her caused Samantha to jump and turn round, forgetting that she had momentarily balanced the case precariously on one of the stairs whilst she leaned against it to hold it in position.

The result was inevitable.

The suitcase, disobligingly ignoring her wailed protest, slid heavily down the stairs, past Liam, bouncing on the half landing before coming to a halt against a solid wooden chest where the combined effect of its speedy fall and its heavy weight caused the clasps to burst open and the contents of the case to tumble out all over the stairs.

‘Oh, there now, see what you’ve done,’ Samantha accused Liam angrily. ‘If you hadn’t crept up on me like that…’

‘I rather think, more to the point, you shouldn’t have overpacked the thing in the first place,’ Liam corrected her dryly, turning his back on her as he headed down the stairs, hunkering down on the half landing as he proceeded to gather up the case’s disgorged garments.

It was, as Samantha later seethed to herself in the privacy of her bedroom, revoltingly unfair of fate to have decreed that the stuff which had fallen out of her case wasn’t the sturdy, sensible jeans she had bought for her sister, nor the dungarees for Francesca, her niece, nor even the shirts requested by her brothers-in-law, but instead, the frivolous bits of silky satin and lace items of underwear she had recklessly bought for herself on her shopping spree in Boston.

Creamy satin lace-trimmed bras with the kind of boning that meant that the kind of things they did for a woman’s figure were strictly seriously flirtatious. And, even worse, there on the carpet beside them were the ridiculously un-functional French knickers that had helped swallow up a large portion of her pay cheque. Add to that the equally provocative garter belt and the silk stockings and combine them with the incredulous disdain with which Liam was looking from her scarlet face to the fragile pieces of feminine lingerie he was holding in his hands and it was no wonder that she was feeling uncomfortably hot and embarrassed, Samantha reflected.

‘I guess you aren’t planning to do much sport in Cheshire,’ Liam commented laconically. ‘Or—’ his eyebrows shot up as he gave her a very thorough look ‘—perhaps I’m wrong…’ He continued silkily, ‘Thinking of going hunting are you, Sam? If so…’

‘They aren’t mine, they’re a present for Bobbie,’ Samantha lied feverishly, hurrying down the stairs to snatch them away from him.

‘Mmm…. Well, if you’ll take my advice…as a man…something a little simpler and less structured would serve your purpose much better. These,’ he told her with a contemptuous look at the boned demi bra he was holding, ‘might be exciting for boys, but men…real men, prefer something a little more subtle and a lot more tactile…A sexy slither of silk and satin with tiny shoestring straps, something silky and fluid that drapes itself softly over a woman’s curves, hinting at them rather than…There’s nothing quite so sexy as that little hint of cleavage you get when a woman’s strap slips down off her shoulder…’

‘Well, thank you very much for your advice,’ Samantha snapped furiously at him. ‘But when I want your opinion on what a man finds sexy, Liam, you can be sure I’ll ask you for it. And anyway—’ She stopped abruptly.

‘Anyway what?’ Liam asked her mildly as he bent down again to retrieve a pretty silk wrap which was lying under the suitcase.

Samantha glared at him.

How could she tell him that when you were a woman with breasts as generously rounded and full as hers were, the type of silky clingy unstructured top he was describing was quite simply a “no-no” unless you wanted to stop all the traffic on the freeway.

‘This isn’t for Bobbie,’ he told her positively as he handed her the wrap.

‘What makes you say that?’ Samantha demanded.

‘It’s not her colour,’ he told her simply. ‘Her skin is paler than yours and her eyes lighter. This is your colour, but coffee or caramel would suit you even better.’

‘Thank you so much,’ Samantha gritted acidly as she snatched the wrap from him.

As she bent to try to stuff her possessions back into her suitcase, Liam knelt down beside her.

‘You need another case,’ he told her calmly. ‘This one, if you get it as far as the airport, will probably break the baggage conveyor belt. That’s if it doesn’t burst open again first.

‘You’re wrong, by the way,’ he added mystifyingly as Samantha tried to ignore the reality of what he was telling her.

‘It isn’t only women with tiny breasts who can go braless. You’ve got far too many hang-ups about your body, Samantha, do you know that?’

‘Is that a fact? Well. I’ll thank you to keep your opinions on my hang-ups and my…my breasts…to yourself if you don’t mind,’ Samantha gritted hot-faced at him, wondering how he had followed her embarrassed train of thought.

‘Of course, when it comes to bouncing around the tennis court, I agree that a woman needs a good sports bra,’ Liam was continuing as if she hadn’t spoken.

Samantha shot him a wary look. She played tennis in the residence’s court most mornings with her father and she always wore a sports bra—so what was Liam implying?

‘Look, why don’t I carry this back to your room for you so that you can repack it in two cases,’ Liam was offering.

To Samantha’s chagrin, as he picked up the case she could see that he was able to carry it far more easily than she herself had been able to do—carrying it not downstairs where she had intended to take it, she recognised, but back in the direction she had just come—to her bedroom.

As he elbowed open the door and dumped the heavy case on the floor, Samantha followed Liam into her room.

‘I was taking that downstairs…’ she began to upbraid him and then stopped abruptly.

Standing with his feet apart and his hands on his hips, Liam wasn’t watching her but instead was focusing on the pretty upholstered chair beside the window.

The chair—an antique—had been a gift from her grandmother, a pretty early Victorian rocker which Samantha had had recaned and for which she had made her own hand-stitched sampler cushions. But it wasn’t the chair or the cushions which were holding Liam’s attention—Samantha knew that and she knew too exactly what he was looking at.

‘Mom made me keep him,’ she began defensively, pushing past Liam and rushing over to the chair, protectively picking up the battered and slightly threadbare teddy bear who was seated on it.

‘She says it reminds her of when we were little. It was her bear before us and then Tom had him, too, and…Oh, you don’t understand,’ she breathed crossly. ‘You’re too unemotional. Too cold…’

‘You should run for government office yourself,’ Liam told her sardonically. ‘With your mind-reading talents you’d be a wow.’

‘Mind-reading,’ Samantha breathed heavily. ‘Oh you…’

‘For your information I am neither unemotional nor cold and as for Wilfred…’ Ignoring Samantha he walked up to her and deftly took the bear from her unresisting grasp.

‘I had one very like him when I was young. He came originally from Ireland with my grandfather. He was just a boy then…’

Samantha’s eyes widened. Liam rarely talked about his family—at least not to her. She knew he had no brothers or sisters and that his grandparents, immigrants from Ireland, had built up a very successful haulage business which Liam’s father had continued to run and expand until his death from a heart attack whilst Liam was at college.

Liam had sold the business—very profitably—with his mother’s approval. From a very young age he had known that he wanted to enter politics and both his parents and his grandparents when they had been alive, had fully supported him in this ambition, but it was from her mother that Samantha had gleaned these facts about Liam’s background, not from Liam himself.

‘Why does he never talk to me…treat me as an adult?’ she had once railed at her mother when Liam had pointedly ignored some questions she had been asking him about his grandparents. She had been at college at the time and working on an essay about the difficulties experienced by the country’s immigrants in the earlier part of the century and she had hoped to gain some first-hand knowledge and insights into the subject from Liam’s memories of his grandparents.

‘He’s a very proud man, sweetheart,’ her father had responded, hearing her exasperated question. ‘I guess he kinda feels that he doesn’t want his folks looked down on or…’

‘Looked down on…Why should I do that?’ Samantha had interrupted him indignantly.

‘Well, Liam is very conscious of the fact that his grandparents came to this country with very little in the way of material possessions, just what they could carry with them in fact, whilst…’

‘He thinks that I’d look down on him because your family arrived with Cabots and Adamses and all those other “first families” on the Mayflower who went on to form the backbone of North American early politics, wealth and society,’ Samantha had protested hotly. ‘Is that what he really thinks of me?’

‘Sweetheart, sweetheart,’ her father had protested gently. ‘I’m sure that Liam thinks no such thing. It’s just that he’s as reluctant to have his family background put under the public microscope as your mother would be hers. Not out of any sense of shame—quite the reverse—but out of a very natural desire to protect those he loves.’

‘But Gran is still alive whilst Liam’s grandparents are dead,’ Samantha had objected.

‘The principle is still the same,’ her father had pointed out gently.

Now, some impulse she couldn’t name made Samantha ask Liam softly, ‘Do you still have it…the bear…?’

His austere features suddenly broke into an almost boyish grin and for one breath-stopping moment Samantha actually felt as though something or someone was physically jerking her heartstrings. Impossible, of course, hearts didn’t have strings and if hers had then there was no way that one Liam Connolly could possibly have jerked them. No, it was just the mental image she had had of him as a small boy listening solemnly to his grandfather whilst he related to him tales of his own Irish upbringing.

‘Yes.’

‘You’ll be able to keep it for your children and tell them the stories your grandparents told you,’ Samantha told him impulsively.

Immediately his features changed and became formidably harsh.

‘Don’t you jump on the bandwagon,’ he told her grittily. ‘Everyone seems determined to marry me off. I’ve even had Lee Calder giving interviews stating that a single, childless Governor won’t understand the needs of the state’s parents. My God, when I think of the way he’s been trying to cut down on our education.’

Lee Calder was Liam’s closest contender for the governorship, a radical right-winger whose views Samantha’s father found totally unsympathetic. Lee was an overweight, balding man in his mid-forties, twice married with five children who he had overdisciplined and controlled to such an extent that the eldest, a boy, was rumoured to have shown his unhappiness by stealing money from his parents and trashing the family home with a group of friends one summer when the family were on vacation without him.

No matter what her personal opinion of Liam might be, Samantha knew that her father was quite right when he said that Liam would make an excellent Governor. Highly principled, firm, a natural leader, the state would flourish with Liam at its helm.

Lee Calder on the other hand, despite cleverly managing to package himself as a devoted family man and churchgoer, had a string of shady dealings behind him—nothing that could be proved, but there was something about the man. Samantha vividly remembered the occasion at an official function when he had grabbed hold of her and tried to kiss her.

Fortunately she had been able to push him away but not before she had seen the decidedly nasty glint in his eyes as she rejected him.

She had been all of seventeen at the time and as she recalled his second wife had been pregnant with their first child.

‘Don’t accuse me of trying to marry you off,’ she challenged Liam now.

‘No. By the looks of what you’ve got in that case you’re more interested in changing your own single status,’ Liam agreed derisively.

‘I’ve told you, those are for Bobbie,’ Samantha insisted.

‘And I’ve told you if you really want to catch yourself a man, the best way to do it is by…’ He stopped when he saw her frown, then continued. ‘You know that I’m driving you to the airport in the morning, don’t you?’

‘Yes,’ Samantha agreed on a small sigh. She had a very early start and had been quite prepared to order a cab but her father could be an old-fashioned parent in some ways.

‘No, sweetheart, you know what you’re like for getting yourself anyplace on time.’

‘Dad,’ Samantha had protested, ‘that was years ago…and an accident…just because I once missed a plane doesn’t mean…’

‘Liam’s driving you,’ her father had announced, and Samantha had known better than to argue with him. ‘As it happens, he’s picking someone up, as well.’

‘Someone…Who?’ Samantha had asked her father curiously.

‘Someone from Washington. I want him to take her on board as his campaign PR, she’s very good.’

‘She?’ Samantha had raised her eyebrows, her voice sharpening slightly. ‘You wouldn’t be doing a little matchmaking would you, Dad?’

‘Give your sister our love, remember,’ he had answered her obliquely, ‘and tell her we can’t wait to see them all….’