by Unknown
'Mmm... Seb Cooke.' Olivia rolled her eyes naughtily and told Katie robustly,
'Now, in your shoes, were I single and fancy free, I rather suspect that if I had a Seb Cooke seated across my desk from me, I'd be the one doing the mental un-dressing and the sexy intimate visualisation...'
'Olivia!' Katie protested. 'I'm not... He doesn't...'
But Olivia was already on her way to her own office, leaving Katie to ask the receptionist to show Seb into her own small cupboard-like room.
She hadn't seen him since the incident at her parents'
home and as he walked in and she indicated to him that he was to sit down, Katie was sharply aware of how relaxed and in control he appeared in contrast to her own nervous discomfort.
'This shouldn't take very long,' she told him as crisply and professionally as she could as she, too, sat down.
"The contracts are pretty straightforward and it's only a matter of reading and signing them and then completion can take place virtually immediately.'
'Good. I've got a business conference to attend soon and if possible I want to move in to the apartment be-forehand.'
Katie didn't say anything. She, too, ought to have been looking forward to her own occupation of her apartment—she would have been doing so had it not been for the fact that he was going to be her closest neighbour.
Had what happened over the weekend occurred before she had made her decision to buy the apartment, would she have changed her mind?
Like her, Seb was wearing a formal business suit, its jacket unfastened over an immaculately laundered crisp, white shirt and a subtly patterned tie. Who ironed his shirts? she wondered absently. Surely not Seb himself.
Her father had occasionally ironed his own when they were all growing up and he had needed one of his 'court'
shirts in a rush. He had even ironed their school shirts once when her mother hadn't been well. Katie could still remember how oddly creased they had remained despite his best efforts, the mystery not being explained until her mother had discovered he had had the iron on the wrong setting.
Seb watched her furrowed forehead as he recognised both the deliberate distance she was putting between them and her not quite totally hidden anxiety.
What did she think he was? Some kind of potential sexual bully who might pounce on her given the least excuse? There was no point in him saying anything.
How could he when he couldn't even furnish himself with a rational explanation for what had happened...for what was still happening he recognised as she leaned across the desk pushing the contract towards him and he caught the clean, freshly washed scent of her hair and his stomach muscles contracted sharply in reaction to the savage surge of desire that kicked through him.
As she watched Seb virtually openly recoil back from her as she pushed the contract towards him, Katie could feel her body and then her face start to burn with cha-grin. What did he think she was going to do...flirt with him; come on to him? The urge to tell him that he was wrong, that she loved someone else, was almost overwhelming.
Deliberately keeping her eyes down so that she didn't have to look into his face, she watched him sign the contract. He had very long, strong looking fingers with well-kept clean nails. His hands, while large, possessed a flexibility that for some reason made her heart start to beat far too heavily.
Briefly she closed her eyes and then wished that she had not done so as she had a momentary vision of those hands, his hands resting against her own skin, her naked skin, stroking and caressing it, cupping the soft flesh of her breasts whilst his fingers...
In her mind's eye she could see the hard darkness of his hand contrasting with the softer paleness of her own flesh. She could feel the hot, dizzying ripples of sensation spreading through her body from that point of contact like liquid fire. She could actually see, as though somehow she were standing outside herself as another observer, the way she was lifting her own head and looking at him, focusing on his face...his eyes, his mouth, but what shocked and appalled her most of all was not what she was mentally visualising but the sensations she was experiencing—the hot, sharp female pleasure she was feeling...the longing.
Her office was suddenly as claustrophobic as the passageway of her parents' home had been and she could feel the same sense of panic and anxiety beginning to rush through her. She felt hot...faint...weak...and she wanted...
Seb had finished reading the contract, which he had signed and was now passing it back to her. With a tre-mendous effort of will Katie forced herself to focus on the reality of why he was here in her office.
Seb, meanwhile, was already standing up, patently anxious to leave, but surely not so anxious as she was for him to go.
So why then, as she witnessed his signature, did she have this absurd desire to cry?
Shakily she pushed her own chair back and stood up.
'We'll inform you just as soon as contracts have been exchanged and completion takes place so that you can pick up the keys to your apartment,' she told him quietly.
'I take it you're still going ahead with your own purchase?' Seb asked.
Katie tensed. What was he trying to say? That he had expected her to pull out of her purchase? That he didn't want her as his closest neighbour?
Lifting her head she looked him fully in the face for the first time since he had walked into her office.
'Is there any reason why I shouldn't?' she asked him shortly.
To her relief he didn't take up her challenge, instead merely shaking his head and walking away from her towards the door pausing once he got there to tell her,
'I shall be getting in touch with the agents to make arrangements to have the key made available so that measurements can be taken for carpets and curtains.'
'That's a matter for you to sort out with the agents,'
Katie told him briefly. 'As your solicitor I have, of course, to tell you that they are under no legal obligation to allow you to have access to the property until completion actually takes place.'
'Indeed,' Seb drawled, equally briefly, opening the door as he informed her dryly, 'However, I wasn't actually seeking your professional advice, I was simply taking the precaution of warning you as my closest neighbour that should you happen to see anyone coming to or going from my apartment it will merely be the interior designers I'm commissioning to furnish the place for me in case their presence alarmed you.'
Interior designers. Katie digested this information in silence. She was planning to call on the combined ex-pertise and advice of her mother and female relatives for help to decorate and furnish her own apartment.
Neither did she have any intention of telling him that the only person whose presence was likely to alarm her was his.
After he had gone she opened the office window and breathed in deep lungfuls of air. But even after she had closed the window she could still smell the subtle scent that was purely him and in the end she had to resort to taking her work out into the general office to escape from the effect it was having on her.
'Oh Dad, please, I'd love to go.'
Seb grimaced a little at being confronted by his daughter's enthusiasm for something he himself had hoped to avoid becoming involved in.
'It is a very special day,' Chrissie told him winningly adding her own form of gentle persuasion to Charlotte's enthusiasm.
'Mmm...and as a member of Aarlston hierarchy here in Haslewich I suspect that you will be expected to put in an appearance,' Guy chimed in.
They were discussing the weekend's forthcoming
'Fun Day' that Aarlston were sponsoring at Fitzburgh Place for the single parents and their families who lived in Ruth (Brighton's sheltered accommodation and to which Aarlston employees were also permitted to take their own families.
'Have you met Lord Astlegh yet?' Guy was continuing, and when Seb shook his head Chrissie informed him with a smile,
'You'll like him. He's charming. Very much a gentleman of the old school.'
'Mmm... I can reme
mber scrumping apples from the estate when I was a boy. His gamekeeper certainly wasn't very gentlemanly when he evicted us and threatened us with horrible reprisals if we ever set foot there again,' Seb remembered, looking rueful.
'You, scrumping apples? Dad... I can't believe it,'
Charlotte laughed, shaking her head teasingly.
'Oh, he was quite a young tearaway as a boy,' Guy told Charlotte straight-faced. 'You ask my sister Laura...'
'No such thing,' Seb denied.
'But we are going to the Fun Day, aren't we?'
Charlotte coaxed. 'It will be fun.'
As he looked into his daughter's hopeful face, Seb knew that he had no real option.
Although he hadn't shown it he had been thrilled when Charlotte had telephoned earlier in the week to ask if she could spend the weekend with him.
He had finished work a little earlier in order to spend as much time as he could with her and it had been Chrissie's suggestion that they all have dinner together at the restaurant owned and run by Guy's sister Frances and her family.
Charlotte had fast become a favourite with those members of the Cooke family she had met, and if anything she fitted in far better and enjoyed their company much more than he could remember doing as a child, Seb acknowledged.
'So, it's decided then. What time are we going to go?'
Charlotte demanded excitedly.
'Well, I'd recommend a reasonably early start,' Guy suggested, but then he paused and frowned and turned to Seb asking him, 'Didn't you say you had someone to see at the apartment in the morning?'
'The interior designer you recommended,' Seb told him. 'I've got this conference coming up and...'
'Oh yes, of course. Well Jamie is very professional.
Once you've given her an idea of what you want you'll be able to leave everything safely in her hands.'
'Has Katie Crighton moved into her apartment yet?'
Charlotte asked Seb interestedly. 'She's nice. I...'
'She'll be moving in next week,' Chrissie told her, adding with a smile, 'She was complaining the other day that Maddy had walked her feet off when she took her on a tour of some fabric warehouses. Maddy is married to Katie's elder brother Max,' Chrissie explained for Charlotte's sake.
'She and Max and their children live at Queensmead which is Ben Crighton's home and I still can't believe how Maddy has managed to turn it from the rather drab and almost unwelcoming house it was into the lovely, warm home it is now.'
'I think it's called love,' Guy told her softly.
'Mmm... Well, she's certainly transformed the place.
She's marvellously multi-talented and seems to have a gift for finding a good bargain.'
'Katie was telling me that thanks to Maddy, she's found the most wonderful fabric for her curtains at a fraction of the original price.'
The arrival of Frances to chat with them and take their order put a stop to Chrissie's conversation for which Seb was profoundly thankful. He had not seen anything of Katie since he had visited her office to sign his contract and he suspected that she was deliberately avoiding him.
He had told himself that he was glad, that the last thing he wanted was the kind of complications in his life that getting involved in any kind of relationship with her would bring him.
He was bound to see her tomorrow though, of course.
From what he had heard, the Crighton family would be out in full force at the Fun Day. Ruth Crighton herself was apparently flying over from America with Grant, specially to be there.
'Come on everyone, it's time we were leaving.'
As Katie took a last gulp of her coffee early Saturday morning, she reflected that the annual Fun Day, with the constant stream of arrivals milling about in her parents'
comfortable kitchen, was becoming almost as much of an institution as the charity itself.
Up at Queensmead, Maddy would have a full house, too, and down in the town square the coaches hired to take everyone to Fitzburgh Place would already be filling up with excited children and their families.
One innovative practice that Ruth and Maddy had brought into existence had been the creation of special family rooms within the houses occupied by single mothers and their children so that the men, or more often boys, who had fathered them but who, for one reason or another, had not previously been a part of those children's lives, could be encouraged to visit and establish contact with their children.
Another innovative scheme, recently been put into practice, taught the young parents parenting skills, and Maddy was currently trying to persuade the local sec-ondary school to allow her to establish a scheme that would mean teenage girls and boys became responsible for a computer programmed 'baby doll' which would mimic the responses of a real baby and give them a taste of just what parenthood was really all about.
'It's not about frightening them into not having sex, but rather of showing them, warning them, just how much an unplanned pregnancy will change their lives,'
Maddy had told Katie earnestly when she had been explaining what they hoped to do.
'I'm so pleased that Louise and Gareth were able to make it,' Katie heard her mother enthusing as she expertly loaded empty breakfast dishes into the dishwasher.
'I can't believe how much little Nick has grown.'
Nick was Louise and Gareth's young son and Katie forced herself to smile as her mother started to extol the virtues of her small grandson.
'Goodness, just look at the time,' Jenny Crighton exclaimed. 'Katie, will you run upstairs and warn Louise that we've got to leave in ten minutes.'
By the time Seb and Charlotte reached Fitzburgh Place the Fun Day was in full swing. They had stopped off on the way at the apartment where Seb had arranged to meet the interior designer who, as Guy had promised him, proved to be extremely professional and knowl-edgeable.
'You want something comfortable and homey,'
Charlotte had informed him when Jamie had been asking him about his own preferences for the decor of the apartment. 'Not something high-tech and modern...'
'I want something that's in keeping with the period of the building and the features of the rooms,' Seb told the designer calmly. 'The office you can leave to me...
I intend to commission a desk specifically to house my computer and files. Oh, and I shall need a proper bed in the master bedroom, so please make sure it's both large and comfortable.'
'What are you planning to do in there?' Charlotte had teased him. 'Hold orgies?'
'Believe it or not ...sleep,' Seb had corrected her dryly.
Predictably Charlotte had had her own opinions about how she thought her room should be furnished, explaining to the designer just what she wanted and then pausing breathlessly to ask Seb if he approved of her choice.
'I don't mind, just so long as you don't have it Barbie-doll pink...' Seb told her truthfully.
Charlotte had flashed him an indignant look.
'I grew out of that years ago, Dad.'
Now, as they left his parked car, Seb surveyed the excited throng of people milling around and reflected that it was just as well that it had turned out to be a warm sunny day.
'Oh look Dad, over there, that must be Katie's twin sister and her husband,' Charlotte told him tugging on his arm and directing his attention to where a girl who was quite definitely Katie's twin was standing, or rather leaning against the impressively tall man standing with her.
Yes, she was quite definitely Katie's twin, Seb recognised, and yet at the same time he knew that he would have known instantly that she wasn't Katie, even without the difference in their hairstyles.
'I wonder where Katie is?' Charlotte mused. 'Perhaps we could go over and ask her sister.'
Seb raised his eyebrows. 'I don't think that's a good idea. Katie will probably be very busy,' he warned her.
Ten minutes later as they walked past the informal crfcche, which had been organised for the children, Seb realised that he had been right.
Katie was in the mi
ddle of a large circle of children reading them a story oblivious to their presence until Charlotte waved to her.
Although her voice faltered and her face changed colour slightly, she continued with what she was doing causing Seb to suggest to Charlotte that they should move on and leave her in peace.
'No, she's almost finished, but you don't have to stay if you want to walk round. I'll catch up with you at the tea stall in half an hour or so,' Charlotte told him.
Shrugging his shoulders Seb left her where she was and walked away to talk with Saul who he had spotted standing several yards away with his family.
'Charlotte,' Katie smiled, as her story finished.
Charlotte came hurrying towards her.
'I've just seen your twin sister,' Charlotte told her warmly. 'She was over past the bouncy castle with her husband and the most gorgeous little boy.'
"Their son, Nick,' Katie agreed.
'I think what you're all doing here is wonderful,'
Charlotte told her. 'My mother always says how lucky she was that after she and Dad decided their marriage wasn't working out, Dad always made sure that he provided for me financially and then, of course, Mum met George and they fell in love.' She gave Katie a rueful grin.
'Dad tends to beat himself about the chest with guilt a bit because he wasn't there for me when I was growing up, but to tell the truth, George was such a wonderful loving step-father that I didn't even realise for ages that he wasn't my birth father, and then once I did... I was curious about Dad of course, but once Ma had explained that she had felt that it would only confuse me and make me feel torn between them both if she encouraged Dad to be there more for me, I felt she'd made the right decision.'
'It was actually George who encouraged me to go for it when Dad did contact me. I was apprehensive about how he would react but when Dad explained to me how much he regretted the break-up of his and Mum's marriage and how bad he felt about it and me, how much he'd wanted to make contact with me but hadn't felt that he had the right to do so...