The Perfect Father

‘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.

Her eyes sparkling with elation, Samantha walked back into her office building.

CHAPTER TWO

‘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.