The Perfect Seduction

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‘Why don’t we hire someone to make enquiries for us before we do anything?’ Bobbie had suggested when they had first discussed the matter, a little queasily aware of how uncomfortable she would feel prying into other people’s private business, but Samantha had shaken her head forcefully.

‘We can’t ... take the risk of involving anyone else,’ she reminded her sister. ‘We’re going to have to do it ourselves.’

‘You mean I’m going to have to do it,’ Bobbie retorted feelingly. ‘After all, you can’t just take off for Europe. Not now you’re halfway through your master’s.’

‘No, I can’t,’ Samantha agreed cheerfully, then added teasingly, ‘You should have come with me when I took that couple of years out and travelled. We have to go through with this, Bobbie,’ she went on to say more seriously. ‘Remember all those years ago how we said we would?’

‘Yes, I remember,’ Bobbie had agreed. How could she have forgotten the childhood vow she and Sam had made? ‘I just hate the feeling that we’re doing anything underhand...spying...’

‘Us do anything underhand?’ Sam had shouted bitterly.

Silently Bobbie looked down now at Joss.

‘Where are your sisters?’ she asked him conversationally.

‘Over there,’ he replied, indicating the pair of identical twins who stood chatting with what was obviously a large group of shared friends. They were, Bobbie was pleased to note, wearing completely different outfits and had completely different hairstyles, but there was still no mistaking those shared inherited features.

‘My goodness, who on earth is that with Joss?’ Jenny exclaimed, having caught sight of her youngest child for the first time since he had entered the room.

‘She’s certainly not someone you could fail to notice, is she?’ Olivia laughed as she, too, studied the endearingly odd combination of a very youthful Joss and the magnificently eye-catching young woman who was with him.

‘She reminds me of a lioness,’ Jenny murmured, ‘all golden grace and power. I wonder where Joss met her?’

‘I think I know,’ Jon informed them, having turned round to see what was occupying his wife’s attention. ‘Minnie Cooke at the wine bar mentioned that Joss had been in the other day with a tall blonde American.’

‘American, eh... I think I’d just better go over and say hello ... a fellow countrywoman and all that.’

‘Caspar,’ Olivia warned, adding firmly, ‘We’ll both go over.’

As families went, this one certainly liked to give the impression that it was protective of its own. Bobbie reflected cynically as she registered the interest she was beginning to excite amongst certain adult members of Joss’s family.

Max had already prised his shoulders off their resting place on the wall to give her a lazy once-over. Luke, peering past the head of his blonde companion, had sent a look of frowning scrutiny in her direction. Jenny appeared frankly astonished and now here was Olivia with Caspar in tow bearing down on them.

Bobbie held her breath and then counted to ten before easing herself into her chosen role.

‘Hello there.’ Olivia smiled warmly, extending her hand towards Bobbie. ‘You must be Joss’s friend.’

‘I hope so,’ Bobbie responded with equal warmth, shaking Olivia’s hand firmly as she introduced herself. ‘Bobbie Miller. Bobbie being short for Roberta.’

‘I’m Olivia Johnson, Joss’s cousin, and this is Caspar, my husband.’

By the time Caspar had returned with the drinks that Olivia had dispatched him to fetch for them, she had elicited the information that Bobbie, having finished her studies, was taking time out to ‘do’ Europe before returning home to work in her father’s law firm.

‘So your father’s a lawyer... what a coincidence. Our family, the Crightons, are nearly all involved in the law in one form or another.’

‘Dad was an attorney,’ Bobbie informed her carefully. ‘Right now he’s in Congress.’

‘So what exactly brought you to Haslewich?’ Caspar asked cheerfully, handing Bobbie her drink. ‘It’s not exactly on the normal tourist route.’

‘No,’ Bobbie agreed. ‘I guess I just got kinda interested in the place when I overheard someone talking about it in Chester, so I thought I’d drive out and take a look around. That’s when I met Joss.’

‘She was in the churchyard,’ Joss informed them.

‘It feels rather scary to see those headstones with dates going back so far,’ Bobbie cut in... ‘I guess your family must have been in the town for centuries.’

‘Not really,’ Olivia responded. ‘The Crightons came originally from Chester, but our branch of it broke away at the beginning of this century. So far as putting down our roots in Haslewich goes, we’re relative newcomers.’ Then conversationally she asked, ‘Are you planning to stay in the area long?’

‘I wasn’t going to, but I’d booked myself into the Grosvenor as a small treat before I realised how expensive it was and I guess I’m going to have to look around for some kind of temporary work so that I can earn a little money before I move on.’

Olivia listened speculatively as she saw Bobbie’s rueful expression and then frowned as she glanced at her watch and told Caspar, ‘I’d better go and ring Aunt Ruth and check that everything’s okay. Our nanny left us unexpectedly—her mother isn’t very well and since I’m now back at work in the family law practice and Caspar goes back to university next week, we’re desperately trying to find a replacement. I don’t suppose you know anything about child care...?’ Olivia half joked.

Bobbie took a deep breath. ‘Well now, it just so happens that I do,’ she returned lightly. ‘I spent the last year of high school and nearly all of my college vacations helping out at a...at a special local crèche...’

‘Really.’ Olivia gave her a searching glance and asked her, ‘If you were serious about looking for a job, perhaps we could get together and have a chat?’

‘Sure,’ Bobbie agreed warmly.

‘I’ll be in touch,’ Olivia promised her as she hurried off to make her telephone call.

‘Wow, that would be great if you did stay on,’ Joss enthused.

‘Well, that’s up to Olivia to decide,’ Bobbie warned him. ‘I’m not a qualified nanny and—’

‘But I could tell that she really liked you and so did Caspar,’ Joss interrupted her enthusiastically.

‘Well, I kinda liked them, as well,’ Bobbie agreed—and meant it—but her conscience was beginning to trouble her a little.

Back home, the plans she and Sam had made had seemed perfectly logical, but now... She had liked Olivia and Caspar, and as for Joss... She frowned as she looked down and saw that he was scowling. A quick glance across the room told her why; Max was walking purposefully towards them.

‘Well now, young Joss, and who exactly is this?’

Bobbie sympathised with Joss as she watched the tip of his ears burning a furious red at his brother’s deliberately condescending manner towards him.

‘Hi, I’m Bobbie,’ Bobbie introduced herself calmly.

The dark eyebrows lifted. ‘An American... Oh dear, Joss, you will be popular with the old man. Our grandfather, I’m afraid to say, has an aversion to Americans,’ he told Bobbie.

Joss, Bobbie could see, was looking miserably embarrassed.

‘That’s okay,’ she responded easily. ‘My grandfather feels exactly the same way about you British.’

Max gave her a narrow-eyed look. ‘Hopefully not an aberration you’ve inherited,’ he suggested softly.

‘Who says it’s an aberration?’ Bobbie replied and had the satisfaction of seeing the extraordinary effect of his amazing physical good looks dimmed by the unpleasant expression in his eyes.

No wonder Joss was so wary around him.

‘Oh, Max, there you are. I—’

‘Oh, for God’s sake, Maddie, must you follow me around like an idiotic sheepdog?’ Max demanded irritably as he turned towards his wife.

Bobbie felt for her as the other woman’s face burned a painful dark red. Joss was chewing the side of his cheek and Bobbie herself had to suppress an urge to tell Max exactly what she thought of his arrogance and cruelty.

‘Your husband and I were just discussing our respective grandfathers,’ Bobbie informed Madeleine with a genuinely friendly smile.

‘Oh, I see.’ She had a shy, hesitant voice and a very uncertain manner, Bobbie noticed as Madeleine went on to tell her, ‘It’s a shame that Ben can’t be here tonight. He had a fall some years ago and it’s left him with a very painful and rheumaticky hip joint that the doctors say he should have replaced.’

Relief wiped the tense anxiety from Madeleine’s face. Poor soul, she obviously lived in fear and dread of losing her husband. She need not, Bobbie decided. Like the fancy icing on an otherwise repulsively unappealing cake, those good looks were all that there was to him.

She didn’t want to totally alienate Max, though, she acknowledged. He could prove to be a valuable source of information.

So his grandfather had an aversion to Americans, did he? He wasn’t the only member of the Crighton family who felt like that as she had good cause to know.

CHAPTER THREE (#u888e2c95-fc47-5720-9f2b-4bf303d3aa26)

TWO hours later, Bobbie broke off in mid-banter with Saul to whom she had been comfortably chatting very happily for the past twenty minutes or so, recognising guiltily that not only was it over half an hour since she had last seen Joss, but that she was also actually enjoying herself.

It had been Olivia who had introduced her to Saul and Saul himself who had explained ruefully to her that he was currently in Louise’s bad books. ‘She wanted me to partner her this evening, but as I told her, as a divorced man in my mid-thirties and her cousin to boot, I’m hardly the right partner for her.’

‘Which naturally makes you all the more attractive to her,’ Bobbie had agreed mock-gravely. ‘Come on, admit it,’ she had coaxed him humorously. ‘It must be quite some ego boost to have as stunningly pretty an eighteen-year-old as Louise crazily in love with you.’

‘Just occasionally, yes, it is,’ Saul had agreed openly, ‘but the rest of the time quite frankly it’s rather terrifying, which just goes to show how old I actually am getting.’

‘I really ought to go and find Joss,’ Bobbie now told Saul.

It was so frustrating having the opportunity to meet and mix with the family at such close hand and yet at the same time feeling restrained from asking what she really wanted to know just in case they should guess what she was up to.

‘The last time I saw him he was talking with Luke.’ He paused when he saw Bobbie’s expression. ‘You don’t like Luke? You’re in a minority,’ he assured her. ‘Most of your sex appear to find him extremely attractive.’

‘But I am not most women,’ Bobbie informed him firmly.

‘No, you aren’t, are you?’ Saul agreed softly.

Smiling at him, Bobbie shook her head and turned away. She had spotted Joss on the other side of the room, and as Saul had said, he was talking to Luke. Bobbie started to make her way towards them.

The evening had done nothing to improve Luke’s mood. Fenella had proved to be every bit as clingy and possessive as he had feared, subtly managing to create the impression amongst his family that they were something of an ‘item’ and making it impossible for him to refute her allusions without causing a public scene.

He had no intention of letting her get away with it, though. Before they parted company tonight, she was going to be left in no doubt whatsoever that the past was quite definitely over and there was no place for her in his present or his future, in any shape or form.

‘Oh, I’m staying at the Grosvenor,’ he heard her saying softly now to one of his aunts, giving him an adoring sideways look as she confided, ‘Luke thought it best in the circumstances. After all, officially I’m still married.’ She paused delicately whilst Luke watched his aunt’s head nodding sagely.

Ignoring Fenella, he turned towards Joss and joked, ‘So where did you find the quarterback, Joss?’

Bobbie, who was just within earshot, ground her teeth in silent outrage. She was used to comments about her height, of course, but there was nothing remotely unfeminine or gross about her—quite the opposite.

As he saw the look on Joss’s face, Luke cursed himself under his breath. It wasn’t fair of him to vent his irritation and fire at Fenella’s manipulative behaviour on Joss, even if there was something about the stately, almost queenly stunning beauty of the unknown woman he had brought into their midst that brought the tiny hairs on the back of his neck to prickle with atavistic awareness. Perhaps it was something about that thick, honey-coloured mass of glorious hair, or perhaps it was the way she carried her impressive height and her even more impressive body. Perhaps it was just something about her manner, or perhaps the reason lay much closer to home, within his own emotional consciousness that he couldn’t somehow dismiss.

She might not be the type to actively go looking for a fight, but she certainly wasn’t going to run from this particular one, Bobbie decided as she ignored the temptation in the face of Luke’s taunting overheard comment to pretend she hadn’t heard and simply walk away. Instead she stalked purposefully to where he and Joss were standing, bestowing on Joss the beneficence of a multi-watt smile whilst cleverly managing to angle her body so that she could also look Luke Crighton straight in the eye ... well, almost straight in the eye. Joss had not lied about his height and it was oddly disconcerting to be forced to tilt her chin upwards to meet his dispassionate gaze.

‘You must be Luke,’ Bobbie announced, taking the initiative before Joss could introduce them.

‘Must I?’ Luke asked her dryly. ‘Now why, I wonder, should you assume that?’

‘Oh, it wasn’t an assumption,’ Bobbie told him breezily. ‘I recognised you from Joss’s description...or rather his description of your addiction to a certain type of female accessory. I shouldn’t worry too much about it,’ she told him with a kind voice. ‘They do say it’s a phase that most men grow out of once they mature.’

Out of the corner of her eye, Bobbie could see Joss looking worriedly from Luke to herself. It wasn’t really fair of her to involve him, she acknowledged.

‘Come on, Joss,’ she invited him mischievously. ‘It looks like they’re serving the buffet and a girl my size needs one heck of a lot of feeding.’

Joss looked relieved as he heard the note of humour in her voice, but one glance at Luke’s steRN face warned Bobbie that he wasn’t deceived and that he certainly wasn’t about to overlook or ignore her comment about his girlfriend.

‘Well, I guess we can scratch Luke off our list,’ Bobbie told Joss ruefully as they headed for the buffet.