The Perfect Father

by Penny Jordan

‘If I loved someone then I would want my child—our child—to have his genes,’ she reiterated firmly.

  Liam gave her a cynical smile.

  ‘Well, let’s hope the voters ‘‘love’’ me enough to overlook my lesser heritage,’ he told her wryly.

  Samantha frowned. ‘You don’t honestly think that people would be put off voting for you because of that?’ she demanded before telling him passionately, ‘It’s obvious that you’re the best man for the job, Liam, and any voter PENNY JORDAN

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  who can’t see that for themselves doesn’t, in my view, deserve to be allowed to vote.’

  ‘Very democratic,’ Liam told her, his expression light-ening to one of rueful amusement. ‘You really are an all-or-nothing person, Sam, you either love or hate, there’s no halfway house with you, no middle ground.’

  ‘Just because I have strong beliefs, that doesn’t mean that I can’t see another person’s point of view,’ Samantha objected. ‘I’m not intolerant, Liam.’

  ‘No, just passionately opposed to anyone who doesn’t share your point of view,’ Liam responded with another smile, glancing at his watch and then warning her, ‘Come on, we’d better go down and face the music.’

  CHAPTER NINE

  ‘COME on, in you go.’

  ‘Oh!’

  Samantha gave a small exclamation of stunned disbelief as Bobbie, who had been waiting for them in the hotel foyer, gave her a little push and stood to one side in the open doorway of the hotel’s private function room.

  Instead of half a dozen or less people Samantha had expected to see, the room seemed full of a sea of expec-tant faces. For a moment she was tempted to turn tail and run but as though he knew how overwhelmed she felt Liam stepped up behind her, his arm curling supportively around her as he drawled to Bobbie, ‘Seems like someone’s been busy...’

  Samantha heard Bobbie laugh, her initial panic subsid-ing as she realised that in truth the room only held a relatively small proportion of their many relatives, around a dozen or so, all of them smiling at her in loving happiness and expectancy.

  ‘Well, I just had to ring Jenny to give her the news because I knew that she’d already arranged a family lunch here today because Katie’s at home and she’d invited Max and Maddy to join them with the children and so I said why didn’t we all have lunch together. You don’t mind do you?’ she asked Samantha. ‘Only I’m just so excited for you, Sam. It’s like a romance story come true, you falling for Liam in such a big way all those years ago, worshipping him from a distance and having the biggest crush in the world on him,’ she teased. ‘And now, all 156

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  these years later the two of you falling for one another as equals. And now,’ she added expressively rolling her eyes as she gave them both a merry look, ‘Liam must love you to pieces to have followed you right across the Atlantic.

  She’ll make the world’s worst Governor’s wife, Liam,’

  she added warningly.

  ‘Oh, thanks,’ Samantha told her twin grimly.

  ‘It’s true,’ Bobbie laughed. ‘The first time there’s a march outside government house you’ll be the one leading it. Do you remember when she organised that protest march against hunting, Liam?’ she asked him.

  ‘Will I ever forget it,’ Liam responded ruefully. ‘ I was the one who had to go get her released from the police cells...’

  ‘Yes, and you were the one who, when we got home, told me I’d have to shower in the backyard just in case I’d picked up...something...’ Samantha gave a deep shudder at the memory his words had evoked. Perhaps it was true that she had reacted rather recklessly and dangerously, but surely Liam had over reacted in his furious cold anger to her when he had come to bail her, cruelly telling her that some of her co-marchers may not be too particular about their personal hygiene.

  Whether or not he had been right had never been proved. It had been enough that she had spent the whole night lying awake wondering if every tiny little scalp itch was the forerunner of some unpleasant and unwanted co-habiters.

  First thing in the morning she had taken herself off to the hairdressers where she had had her long hair cropped.

  She could still remember how her mother had cried when she had seen her and she could remember, too, the look of cold disgust in Liam’s eyes as he studied her boyishly barbered short hair. She had grown it long again, 158

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  but now preferred her hair cropped although in a much more feminine version of her original cut.

  ‘That was when you had your hair cut,’ Bobbie added, almost as though twin-fashion, she had followed Samantha’s own train of thought.

  ‘Do you remember, Liam?’ she asked. ‘Poor Mom cried.’

  ‘Yes,’ Liam said. ‘I remember.’

  How terse and angry Liam sounded. Samantha turned her head to look at him and then stood completely still in the circle of his arm, their onlookers forgotten as she saw the look in his eyes.

  ‘Your lovely hair... I didn’t know whether to throttle you or...’ Liam was telling her softly. ‘Not that it didn’t suit you short then or now...’

  Suspecting that he was trying to sound diplomatic and lover-like because Bobbie was listening Samantha was just about to try to reply in a way that was equally pseudo lover-like when, to her disbelief she heard Bobbie chim-ing in, ‘Oh, yes, I can still remember how chagrined I felt a while back when I overheard Liam telling someone that he thought your cropped curls were just the most alluringly sexy tease on a woman with such a sensationally curvy body.’

  Her eyes rounding, Samantha stared at him.

  ‘You said that, ’ she questioned faintly, ‘about me... ’

  ‘I suppose I should have guessed then,’ Bobbie was saying as she determinedly ushered them into the Grosvenor’s private function room and called out to the assembled throng, ‘Here they are everyone. The Crighton family’s latest formally accredited ‘‘couple.’’’

  Out of nowhere a waiter suddenly appeared circulating the room with trays of bubbling champagne, or so it seemed to Samantha as she and Liam were engulfed by PENNY JORDAN

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  the excited and enthusiastic members of her family who were waiting to congratulate them.

  ‘I thought you said just a quiet family lunch,’ Samantha complained to her twin.

  ‘Well... It’s what Mom would have wanted,’ Bobbie told her virtuously.

  ‘Mom...! You haven’t...’ Samantha began but Bobbie shook her head.

  ‘No. I’m leaving that to you—and Liam—not that...

  Oh...’

  ‘What is it?’ Samantha demanded hearing the surprised and excited note in her sister’s voice as she looked towards the doorway.

  ‘It’s Gran and Gramps!’ Bobbie exclaimed leaving her sister’s side to hurry over to the doorway where Ruth and Grant were standing together with one of Ruth’s nephews, Saul Crighton, his wife Tullah, and their children.

  It was Saul’s parents Hugh and Ann who Ruth and Grant had been staying with in Pembroke and as she stared at them Samantha shook her head and told Liam,

  ‘I just don’t believe this. All it needs now is for Mom and Pop to walk in through the door.’

  ‘Well, I doubt that that’s going to happen, but I think we ought to go over and make our explanations to your grandparents—or rather, I ought,’ Liam told her ruefully.

  Samantha shot him a surprised look. She could actually hear a faint note of almost boyish uncertainty in Liam’s voice and there was quite definitely a slightly sheepish look in his eyes as he looked towards the group of people surrounding her grandparents. It was so unlike Liam to betray anything other than total self-confidence that such an unexpected display of vulnerability caused her to move closer to him and put her hand on his arm in a gesture that was almost protective.

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  ‘Gran will understand,’ she told him. ‘After all, she and Gramps..
.’

  Abruptly Samantha stopped. What on earth was happening to her? Just for a moment it was almost as though she actually was Liam’s fianceé, as though they were actually two very newly committed lovers catapulted into a very public arena they had never expected to have to enter at such an early stage in their newly discovered love. But it was too late now to withdraw from Liam. At the touch of her hand he had moved closer to her and she could see the way the others were regarding them. Infuriatingly Samantha discovered that she was actually blushing and, even worse, that she was more than happy to have the solid bulk of Liam to lean a little shyly into as he started to guide her across the floor to where her grandparents were waiting.

  ‘So, it’s finally happened! The two of you have stopped fighting long enough to fall in love.’

  Samantha blinked as she heard the loving approval in her grandmother’s voice and saw the happiness in her eyes.

  ‘Liam, I just hope you know exactly what you’re taking on,’ Ruth was saying to Liam. ‘You’re never going to change her.’

  ‘There’s no way I’d want to,’ Liam was replying in true lover-like fashion.

  And, looking into his eyes heart-jerkingly for a breathless space of time, Samantha could almost believe he meant it.

  The afternoon passed in a haze of hugs and kisses and congratulations, the Grosvenor rising to the occasion with true aplomb produced a buffet luncheon fit for the most discerning diner. Dizzily Samantha listened to the various PENNY JORDAN

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  conversations humming in the air around her, the younger ranks of the family were entertaining themselves in one corner of the room whilst another group which included Jon and Jenny had formed around Ruth and Grant, whilst Bobbie, Luke, Tullah and Saul were also busy exchanging reminiscences of their childhoods and of their own early days as couples.

  Of them all only Katie was partnerless. A calm very private person, Katie, according to her mother Jenny, was dedicated, not perhaps so much to her job but to the cause it served.

  Like Ruth, Katie had a very strong philanthropic caring streak. Her work in the legal department of a large charity might not be going to bring her either fame or fortune but it had to give her a great deal of satisfaction, Samantha acknowledged.

  Not that Katie looked particularly happy right now though, she admitted, or was it simply that the very coupledness of everyone else there underlined the fact that Katie was on her own.

  When Saul and Tullah came over to congratulate them, Tullah remarked teasingly, ‘Perhaps you’re going to beat us to produce the first set of our generation of twin births, after all...’

  ‘Twins... With Liam running for the governorship I doubt they’re going to have time to conceive one child never mind two,’ Saul told his wife outspokenly.

  Mortifyingly, whilst the other three laughed, Samantha could feel herself starting to blush as though she were, in reality, in love with Liam.

  ‘When will you get married?’ Tullah was asking. ‘After voting or...’

  Liam gave Samantha a warning squeeze of her hand, 162

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  answering before she could say anything, ‘We haven’t settled on a date yet.’

  ‘Well, I guess that means the end of your visit over here,’

  Bobbie commented ruefully several hours later when everyone else had gone bar Bobbie and Luke and their grandparents, Luke’s parents having taken Francesca home with them for the night to give Bobbie some extra time to spend with her twin. She continued before Samantha could say anything,

  ‘I know Liam can’t stay over here very long and, of course, you’re going to want to go back with him. When are you going to tell the folks?’

  As Bobbie had already confided to Luke, the fact that Sam and Liam were lovers had proved to her how much her twin must love Liam.

  ‘Sam has always been so picky—and never ever ca-sually intimate with men in any kind of way—for her to have committed herself to Liam like this proves how much she loves him.’

  ‘I don’t need convincing,’ Luke had responded knowingly. ‘ I knew she and James wouldn’t suit.’

  ‘We’re going to ring them just as soon as we can,’ Liam answered for them both now.

  ‘Well, I know that Sarah Jane won’t be too surprised,’

  Ruth confounded Samantha by commenting. ‘I know from what she’s told me that she did have hopes...’

  Her mother had hopes...hopes of her and Liam... How on earth could she have done? Samantha wondered bemusedly whilst Liam veiled his eyes.

  He was not entirely surprised that Samantha’s mother had guessed how he felt about her daughter. Mothers were, after all, notoriously very insightful in that way.

  Samantha herself, thank the Lord, was far less intuitive.

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  As he looked sideways at the ring glittering on Samantha’s left hand he could almost taste the bittersweet flavour of the sharp cruelty of the gulf between the relationship the two of them were pretending to and reality.

  He was still searingly aware of the double blow Samantha had given him in firstly accusing him of trying to use her to improve his chances of winning the vote—

  how could she think him capable of that kind of under-handedness?—and of secondly and even more hurtful telling him that she had cold-bloodedly decided to have sex with him because she wanted not his child but a child.

  That revelation hadn’t just hurt him it had shocked him, as well.

  The closeness of the Miller family had appealed to an idealism within Liam that he tried to keep hidden and protected and that Samantha, the woman he loved, should be prepared to deny her own child the kind of upbringing she herself had been so lovingly nurtured in was something he was finding hard to understand. And what he was finding even harder to understand or forgive was his own dangerous awareness that given a second opportunity to furnish Sam with the child she so much wanted, he doubted that he would be able to resist the temptation to do so; that way at least he’d have some kind of permanent tie with her...through their child.

  As Samantha listened to her grandparents she acknowledged that her grandfather and Liam had always got on well. Grant’s family was from the Deep South and he and Liam, in common with her father, shared a belief that it was of vital importance to find a way of integrating the diehards of both the Southern states and the Northern ones in a common purpose that would benefit everyone. Ruth and Liam had immediately taken to one another so that now, as the whole family, including Luke, began a pas-164

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  sionate discussion about the increasingly urgent need to give those young people of both countries the incentive and the help to free themselves from what western jour-nalists were currently referring to as ‘the poverty trap,’

  momentarily Samantha felt somehow as though she was excluded from a particularly charismatic and exclusive circle.

  Her views were not that much out of accord with those of the others, she recognised, it was just that she favoured a much more direct and possibly contentious method of putting them into operation.

  ‘I guess it looks like we’re going to be having dinner here,’ Grant commented jovially at one point. ‘We’d better book a table.’

  Whilst the others were all eagerly assenting, only Liam hesitated, looking at Samantha and asking her in a quiet voice, ‘You’re very quiet, would you prefer to do something else?’

  Samantha’s eyes widened, a very definite tug of emotion dragging on her heart, a very real sense of warmth and happiness enveloping her. Liam at least had noticed that she wasn’t joining in the others’ enthusiastic discussion and he had felt concerned enough about her to ask what she wanted to do.

  A small fluffy euphoric cloud materialised out of nowhere to wrap itself around her and cushion her.

  Instinctively she moved closer to Liam, virtually snuggling into his side without realising what she was doing.

  Not even the comforting strength
of his arm going around her as he drew her even closer warned her of the danger she was courting or the vulnerability she was exposing, something which she later put down to the fact that she had, over the course of the afternoon, become so steeped PENNY JORDAN

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  in her role of newly affianced woman that playing that part had become second nature to her.

  ‘Uh-huh...it looks to me like she would,’ Bobbie teased her unmercifully, forcing Samantha to realise what she was doing and to push herself away from Liam as she denied fiercely, ‘No...dinner here will be fine by me.’

  ‘Well now, here’s a thing,’ Grant chuckled. ‘It looks to me, Liam, like love is already taming our firebrand. She’s even learning the art of tactful social fibbing. Perhaps she’s not going to make such a bad Governor’s wife, after all...’

  ‘For your information,’ Samantha began indignantly, her eyes flashing warning storm signals. But Liam silenced her quickly, leaning forward to kiss her briefly on the lips.

  The dizziness that flooded her must be because she hadn’t eaten much of the buffet, Samantha decided as she forced herself not to give in to the disturbing urge to wrap her arms around Liam and return his kiss—with interest—

  with very passionate interest.

  ‘She’s going to make a wonderful Governor’s wife,’

  Liam told Grant throatily without taking his eyes off Samantha’s face. ‘And certainly the only wife that this potential Governor is ever going to want...’

  Surrounded by the others’ laughter Samantha tried to tear her gaze away from Liam’s and discovered that she couldn’t. She felt as though she were drowning, melting, as though her whole body was on fire...dissolving, aching, so much so that right now...

  Her whole body went hot with mortified colour as she recognised just what direction her thoughts were taking and there was no use kidding herself, the urgent desire she had just felt flooding her body had nothing whatsoever to do with any maternal desire to make a baby. What was 166

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  happening to her? When had acting the part of being in love with Liam, of having to pretend there was nothing she wanted more than to be alone with him...having to pretend that there was no one she wanted more than him, had right now become so easy, so natural, so necessary, that it was as automatic as just breathing?