by Penny Jordan
‘If it is, she isn’t saying,’ Olivia informed her.
‘I can’t get over how much Max has changed, can you?’
Olivia and Max had never really got on and Samantha could hear the reluctance in Olivia’s voice as she agreed.
‘He does certainly seem to have undergone a very dramatic metamorphosis. I must say though that I thought Luke and James were very brave to admit him into their chambers.’
‘Luke says it’s working out extraordinarily well,’ Bobbie had told her. ‘In fact, he said the other night that he’s actually missing Max and that he’s really looking forward to him coming back from holiday.’
‘Mmm...well, he isn’t the only one,’ Olivia had responded wryly. ‘Uncle Ben has done nothing but complain the whole time Maddy has been away.’
In the renaissance of her marriage Maddy had become pregnant, so family gossip had it, and to her husband Max’s proud delight. So many fecund fertile Crighton women. Samantha closed her eyes. When she had confided in Liam her desire for a child, in the depths of her misery and despair, the last thing she had anticipated was that he was going to turn up here in Cheshire.
Damn Liam. Why, oh, why, couldn’t he have stayed safely and distantly where he was? And her feelings had nothing whatsoever to do with that sharp sizzling fusion of sexual chemistry she had felt so powerfully when he had kissed her at the airport, Samantha reassured herself—nothing whatsoever.
CHAPTER SEVEN
LIAM THANKED THE porter and tipped him generously as he showed him up to his suite.
The hotel was fully booked and as he quickly inspected the elegant suite of rooms he had been given he could understand why.
In the bedroom the bed was large and comfortably inviting, the closet space was generous and the bathroom, when he pushed open the door and glanced inside, was equipped not just with a large separate shower but with a huge Victorian-style bath, as well.
His small sitting room possessed a sofa and a large deep chair in addition to a good-sized desk and more than enough power points to satisfy even the busiest of businessmen.
Sarah Jane had enthused over the hotel to him, explaining that it was owned by the Grosvenor family. ‘That’s the Duke of Westminster,’ she had elucidated helpfully whilst Liam’s mouth had twitched slightly in amusement.
‘Gee, a real live duke,’ he had teased her a little, assuming a mock air of disingenuous excitement.
‘Louise and Katie had their joint eighteenth birthday party there,’ Sarah Jane added. ‘Bobbie was there. Joss had invited her. Of course none of the family knew who Bobbie was then and she believed...’ She made a small moue.
‘Why am I telling you all this? You know the whole story.’
He did, of course. He knew a lot about Bobbie’s tracing her mother’s roots.
He had been rather less successful in tracing his own family but he had not really expected anything else.
He had little close family left in Ireland and whilst he suspected if he persevered hard enough, he could no doubt find himself a whole clutch of cousins three and four times removed, it was not really a desire to meet his relatives which had spurred him into crossing the Atlantic.
Common sense told him that the urge, the need, the emotions, which had brought him here were, from a practical point of view, ones he would be best advised to ignore, just as he had forced himself to ignore them on countless previous occasions in the past.
He stood at the window looking down into the busy Saturday mill-race of shoppers and tourists flooding past the hotel and then closed his eyes.
Behind his closed eyelids he could see her so easily. Samantha at fourteen, all gangly legs and braces, her face hot with betraying colour every time she looked at him, tongue-tied and mortified by the extent of her teenage crush on him.
A few weeks later she had unexpectedly and disconcertingly suddenly sprouted a pair of eye-catchingly full breasts, the product, so he had discovered, of an illegally purchased well-padded bra.
Sarah Jane had confiscated the garment but it hadn’t been all that long afterwards that nature had compensated for this blow to Samantha’s teenage ego, only this time the softly rounded curves filling out the front of her T-shirts had had nothing to do with any kind of shop-bought padding. Liam’s expert eye had very quickly discerned the difference between the initial rigid protruberances and the much more alluring and distracting little bounce that the nature-provided pair possessed.
However, with typical female perversity, far from showing them off, Samantha had reacted to their arrival by taking to wearing huge concealing sloppy-joe tops.
‘They embarrass her,’ Stephen Miller had confided to Liam with a mystified male shake of his head. ‘Can you beat that? It’s damn near thirty-five degrees out there and she’s wearing a thick fleece sweatshirt. She says the sports jocks at school stare at her.’
Liam frowned. He could still remember just how that had made him feel.
The first afternoon he had turned up at the high school to collect the girls, Bobbie had calmly accepted his appearance with a grateful smile as he relieved her of her school books, but Sam had reacted so explosively that people had turned in the street to look at her.
‘I’m not a child,’ she had told her parents furiously at supper that night, ignoring Liam as she glowered over her meal.
‘We were just a bit concerned about you both, hon,’ her mother had palliated. There had been a spate of articles in the Washington press about diplomats’ children being kidnapped and Sarah Jane had been only too happy to accept Liam’s suggestion that he drive over to the high school and pick up her daughters.
Predictably, of course, Samantha had retaliated by getting herself a boyfriend—with a car—and announcing that this spotty, monosyllabic youth would, henceforth, drive her home.
And so it had gone on and with every twist of the emotional knife now sunk deep in his guts Liam had warned himself that what he was doing was wholly and completely self-destructive; that even if she had returned his feelings, their relationship would be so intense and volatile that it would leave him with no energy for anything else, never mind a politician’s career. Sam was too outspoken, too opinionated, too much her own person to be right for him.
In order to accomplish what he wanted to accomplish, in order to go out and do battle and to win in the hostile minefield that was the political arena, when the smallest careless step, the briefest unguarded word, could result in one being thrown out of office as carelessly as the Romans had once thrown their Christian prisoners to the lions, having a home life that was a haven of peace and calm, an oasis of sanity, a place as protective of his ego and his self as though it had been his mother’s womb, was as vitally essential as breathing oxygen was for life.
And whilst Samantha could be guaranteed to be fiercely protective of her chosen mate and whilst she most certainly would defend him and the children she bore him with every ounce of her skill and fortitude, a calm oasis and a haven of peace she most certainly was not. The relationship; the marriage he had envisaged for himself was one of mutual respect; mutual coexistence, mutual awareness that their relationship was not the motivating prime force of his life. No way would Samantha ever tolerate that!
And yet, she was prepared to marry a man simply because she considered him to be ideal husband and father material. An Englishman who, in her opinion, would prove to be a far better father than her American countrymen.
And who was he to try to prove her wrong? Why should he want to? If he had any sense, what he ought to be doing right now was praying for James to marry her just as fast as possible. But when had a man deeply in love ever exhibited any kind of sense?
A man deeply in love!
Liam opened his eyes.
Too many years of loving the wrong woman had quite plainly addled his senses. It must have,
otherwise he simply wouldn’t be here... So where should he be instead—in Washington with Toni?
Of course, if Samantha was determined to marry James then there was nothing he could morally do to stop her, just as there had been nothing he could do to stop her from dating that adolescent high school jerk.
She was, after all, a woman grown and he...
‘Oh, what a coincidence,’ Bobbie had exclaimed when he had telephoned to tell her that he had booked into the Grosvenor. ‘Sam and James are having dinner there together on Saturday night.’
Dinner together and then what? Or were they already lovers? Liam discovered that he had started to grind his teeth. The thought of Sam’s magnificent body sensually entwined with that of another man, any other man, evoked the kind of primitive reaction inside him that made him want to throw back his head and howl like a hunting wolf. Somehow he didn’t think that the Grosvenor would consider him to be a very welcome guest should he attempt to do so.
He glanced at his watch—four o’clock. Bobbie had promised to telephone him in the morning to arrange a get-together. Right now he needed a shower and he could do with something to eat. Picking up the telephone receiver he proceeded to call room service.
* * *
‘LIAM’S STAYING AT the Grosvenor.’ James looked pleased. ‘Perhaps we should give him a ring when we get there and invite him to join us for dinner.’
Samantha gritted her teeth. Really, James was just too good-natured and polite at times.
‘Oh, but I was looking forward to just us having dinner together,’ she protested huskily, adding for reinforcement just in case he needed it, ‘On our own.’
Was she imagining it or was James deliberately avoiding looking at her?
‘Er, well, yes, that would be lovely,’ James was agreeing, but his voice wasn’t very convincing, Sam recognised a little irritably.
What was the matter with him? Initially, when she had arrived in Chester he had seemed thoroughly delighted to see her but these last couple of days she had noticed that, although he was meticulous about keeping to the arrangements they had made, he also seemed to be becoming increasingly distant and preoccupied.
Why...? Surely she hadn’t been coming on too strong to him? She had made sure that she wasn’t pushing things faster than he wanted to go, but both last night and the night before he had said goodnight to her with little more than a dry-lipped fraternal kiss, even though she had allowed her own lips to part invitingly when he touched them.
‘How much longer will Rosemary be staying with your parents?’ she asked him conversationally as he drove into the Grosvenor’s car park.
‘Er... I... I’m not sure...’ he replied, adding, ‘I hope we can find a car parking spot, otherwise I’m going to have to drop you here whilst I park somewhere else.’
‘Mmm... Have you met her fiancé?’ Samantha asked him. ‘She doesn’t seem to mention him very often.’
James was frowning and Samantha heard him curse as another driver nipped into the only remaining car park spot ahead of him.
‘I’ll have to drop you here,’ he told her curtly, leaning over to unlock the passenger door for her.
‘I’ll meet you in the foyer just as soon as I’ve managed to park.’
It was so unlike him to behave irritably that Samantha had felt a little nonplussed. She was aware, of course, that he and Rosemary did not get on but surely her innocent comment about the other girl was not really responsible for his bad temper?
The Grosvenor’s foyer was busy and Samantha guessed from the number of smartly dressed people milling around the area that one or more private functions must be taking place.
It was a good fifteen minutes before James finally appeared and he was still frowning Samantha noticed as he made his way towards her and apologised.
‘I couldn’t find anywhere to park so in the end I drove over to my parents and I’ve left the car there. We’ll have to get a taxi back there to pick up the car.’
His parents—so that explained the touch of lipstick she could just see smudged against his mouth, Samantha acknowledged. Teasingly she pointed it out to him, touched to see the way his colour rose as he took the tissue she was offering him to wipe it off.
It was his mother’s of course, and no doubt he was embarrassed at being kissed by her as though he was still a small boy. Tenderly Samantha reached for his hand, intending to give it a little squeeze and to reassure him that she personally found the devotion he had for his parents sweet and touching, but to her chagrin as she did so he moved back from her.
Trying not to feel hurt Samantha allowed him to guide her towards the hotel’s main restaurant.
Once they were inside it he gave his name to the maître d’ and then frowned as he removed Samantha’s coat for her.
‘I do hope you aren’t going to be cold,’ he told Samantha pessimistically as he eyed her bare back.
The temptation to whisper throatily to him that if she was she would have to rely on him to do something about it died unspoken as Samantha looked into his frowning preoccupied eyes.
James, quite obviously, had something on his mind and even more obviously it was not the same something which was currently on hers. So much for her plans for an evening of seduction, she acknowledged ruefully as the maître d’ led the way to their table.
Instead of bringing her secret longing for motherhood closer, it seemed instead that it was, in actual fact, receding and becoming even further out of reach.
Bravely refusing to allow herself to get downhearted, Samantha opened the menu the waiter had handed her.
The Grosvenor boasted an innovative and highly acclaimed chef and after Bobbie’s descriptions of the wonderful meals she had enjoyed at the hotel, Sam had been looking forward to hers.
James, though, seemed increasingly ill at ease. In an attempt to relax him Samantha asked him if everything was all right.
‘Yes, of course, why shouldn’t it be?’ he responded quickly, too quickly, Samantha felt.
They had just finished their aperitifs and were waiting to give their order when the maître d’ came over to their table to tell James that there was a phone call for him.
In common with a good many other high-class restaurants, the Grosvenor did not allow mobile phones into the dining room.
Excusing himself to Samantha, James got up and followed the maître d’ into the foyer where a room was put at the use of guests to take their telephone calls.
When the wine waiter approached the table and asked Samantha if she would like another drink she hesitated and then nodded her head. Perhaps a drink would help her to relax a little bit more; she certainly needed to do so, James’s tension was beginning to communicate itself to her.
She had almost finished her drink before he returned looking flushed and anxious.
‘What is it? What’s wrong?’ Samantha asked him solicitously.
‘Oh, nothing...it was...it was just a client wanting to know when his case is likely to be heard.’
A client? How had he known where to find James? Samantha wondered soberly. She was strongly tempted to accuse James of being less than honest with her but, she reasoned with herself, she could be wrong. After all, there was no reason why he should lie to her.
The waiter came and took their order. After the briefest look at the wine list and without consulting her, James ordered the accompanying wine.
That alone was out of character for him. He was normally extremely solicitous about consulting her and almost too fussy about making sure he had chosen a good wine.
The first course came and with it the wine waiter, who filled both their glasses.
Samantha had a healthy appetite and enjoyed her food, but watching James pick at his, quite obviously too preoccupied to eat it, destroyed her own desire to eat.
Sam
antha took a deep breath. Enough was enough. Putting down her cutlery she leaned across the table and began quietly, ‘James, something is obviously wrong and...’ She stopped, her eye caught by the woman standing in the entrance to the restaurant, a small frown puckering her forehead.
‘What is it? What’s wrong?’ James asked her.
He had his back to the restaurant door but as he saw where Samantha was looking he swivelled round.
Samantha heard the sharp exclamation he made under his breath as he saw Rosemary standing in the doorway.
‘James, what...?’ Samantha began.
But he was already on his feet, telling her curtly, ‘Please wait here, Samantha. I’d better go and see what she wants.’
As he reached the redhead, Samantha saw him take hold of her by her arm and almost march her out into the foyer and beyond her own sight.
The waiter came to ask if they were ready for their main course and Samantha shook her head, instead she allowed the wine waiter to refill her glass.
Sipping on her wine she watched the entrance to the restaurant. Five minutes went by and then ten and then another five. Suddenly Samantha had had enough. Finishing her wine she stood up and, ignoring the enquiring looks of the waiters, she marched purposely towards the foyer.
Initially she was unable to see either James or Rosemary. The foyer was now relatively empty though, certainly empty enough for her to be able to hear their voices coming from the room to one side of the foyer.
Frowning she approached it. By the sound of Rosemary’s raised voice, although she couldn’t make out exactly what she was saying, they were having an argument.
The door to the room was half open. Determinedly, Samantha gave it a push and then gave a small shocked gasp.
Rosemary and James were standing just inside the small room. Rosemary had her back to her whilst James was facing her but he couldn’t see her and the reason he couldn’t see her was because he was engaged in exchanging an extremely passionate kiss with Rosemary and his eyes were closed. Even so, something must have alerted him to the fact that they weren’t alone because, suddenly, he opened his eyes and looked straight at Samantha.