The Perfect Father

by Penny Jordan

  ‘If you need to ask that, then you really have had too much champagne,’ Liam responded thickly.

  Dreamily she looked up into his eyes.

  ‘Mmm... Liam, you are just so sexy,’ she breathed happily.

  Abruptly he released her.

  ‘Am I? Not five minutes ago you were telling me that you were in love with James. Isn’t he the one you should be...’

  Samantha glared at him. Not for anything was she going to tell him just how disappointed she felt that he had stopped kissing her or just how much she was wishing that he had done more, much, much, more than merely kissed her. If the touch of his lips could make her feel like that, then what would it be like if he were to—

  A tiny tremor of excited fear ran down her spine as she recognised the dangerous route her thoughts were taking.

  Liam wasn’t the man for her. Liam wasn’t her kind of man at all. Liam was far too...too...too much of a man for her liking. What she wanted was someone...someone kinder, gentler, someone much more malleable. Someone who would not view her with the kind of cynical detach-ment she was so used to seeing in Liam’s eyes when he watched her. Someone, in short, who could not see into her thoughts quite so easily and dangerously as Liam could.

  ‘I really wanted to love James,’ she told Liam with the mournful honesty of the just-a-little-bit-too-tipsy.

  A muscle twitched at the side of Liam’s mouth but she couldn’t tell whether it was caused by amusement or disgust.

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  ‘It’s all right for you,’ she accused him defensively.

  ‘You...’

  ‘I what?’ Liam challenged her.

  ‘It’s different for a man.’ Samantha backed down a little.

  ‘Not anymore,’ Liam advised her wryly.

  ‘Maybe not in theory,’ Samantha was forced to agree,

  ‘but in reality...’

  She closed her eyes. In reality as she was painfully beginning to learn, a woman was both gifted and cursed by nature in that it was one of her strongest and most powerful basic instincts to nurture and protect the vulnerable life she gave birth to and that instinct went right back to wanting to give that child the very best she could, even before he or she had even been conceived. Even the sci-entists themselves were agreed, women instinctively and automatically picked the mate who would provide their child with the best start in life, which was why she had wanted—

  But there was no way she could continue with her plans now. Not after she had seen James with Rosemary.

  Whatever the truth was about their relationship, what Samantha had witnessed had made it overwhelmingly clear to her that there was unfinished business between them and that James was simply not free to father the children she so much longed to have.

  ‘All I wanted was to give my babies the very best father they could have,’ Samantha told Liam passionately. ‘A father who would put his or her needs first, a father who would be there for them. I don’t want my kids to grow up with only their mommy there, with a father whose career is more important to him than his family.

  ‘I’ve seen what it does to kids to have an ambitious career-orientated father. It’s like they’re constantly trying PENNY JORDAN

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  to win his attention—his approval. If you ever marry, your kids will be like that, Liam. Oh, no doubt you’ll love them, in your way, but your work, your career, will always come first...’

  ‘Things are changing,’ Liam told her quietly. ‘Men are beginning to recognise just what they’re missing out on...’

  ‘Not in Washington they aren’t,’ Samantha told him cynically.

  She was beginning to feel very tired, oppressed by the weight of her disappointment. She shivered, wrapping her arms around her body and closing her eyes as a wave of physical and emotional exhaustion swamped her.

  She had put so much effort into planning her future with James that now that she was being forced to accept that her plans were not going to be realised, reaction was starting to set in, her mercurial temperament causing her spirits to plummet to the depths of misery and desolation.

  All she wanted to do now was to crawl away and hide herself from the world and everyone in it until she had had time to come to terms with her disappointment. She wanted so badly to have a child...children... She had even mentally pictured their cute little faces, their heads of thick dark soft hair and their gorgeous grey eyes.

  Grey...but James’ eyes were brown and... Grey eyes—

  like Liam’s! That was the second time these compelling grey eyes had intruded on her dreams about future children.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Liam demanded sharply as he saw the way the blood drained from her face as she suddenly opened her eyes and focused on him.

  ‘Er...nothing...nothing... I just...I’m just so tired, Liam,’ she admitted. ‘Everything has gone so wrong...

  Why...what is it about me...?’ She stopped and shook her head, fresh tears of self-pity clogging her throat. By 126

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  rights she ought to call a taxi and go home to Bobbie’s but the thought of facing her sister whilst she was so emotionally upset, of having Bobbie demand to know what was wrong, was just too much for her.

  ‘I...I think I’ll call reception and ask them for a room,’

  she told Liam drearily.

  ‘They’re fully booked,’ Liam informed her, frowning as he studied her pale face and defeated expression.

  In all the years he had known her he had seen her go through many highs and lows, but he had never seen anything affect her as badly as this.

  She felt things so fiercely, so passionately, there were no comfortable shades of grey in Samantha’s emotional reactions, only blacks and whites.

  She hadn’t loved James and in losing him she was not losing a lover she was losing a potential father for her children. It was her pride and her belief in her own judge-ment that was hurting her now, that and her longing for a child, and it was typical of her that she didn’t want to be with anyone, even someone as close as her own twin sister.

  He glanced through the sitting room of his suite to the closed bedroom door and then looked at Samantha.

  ‘You could always stay here,’ he offered.

  ‘Here...in your room.’ Samantha frowned. ‘But...’

  ‘It isn’t a room, it’s a suite, ’ Liam pointed out. ‘You can sleep in the bedroom, I’ll sleep in here on the sofa.

  It’s only for one night, after all...’

  He was right, Samantha could see that. The effects of the alcohol she had consumed were wearing off now but she still felt tired and heavy-headed.

  ‘Well, if you’re sure you don’t mind. Only, I’ll sleep on the sofa,’ she told him firmly, adding, ‘It makes much more sense, Liam, after all, you are much bigger than me and it is your room.’

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  Much bigger. How often did she get to say that to a man? Samantha wondered ruefully, but in Liam’s case it was true. He was a good few inches taller than her and he had the physique to match his height.

  It was a mystery to her how he managed to keep so fit given the demands of his career. She knew he played tennis and that he enjoyed walking. Whenever he could he back-packed into the mountains.

  ‘You should try it sometime,’ he had teased her once when she had shuddered over the lack of civilised amen-ities his vacations involved.

  ‘What, without a proper bed or a shower...or anything.’

  She had grimaced fastidiously. ‘No thanks.’

  ‘What do you mean, no showers,’ Liam had objected with a wicked glint in his eyes. ‘Nature provides some of the best ones there are. Believe me there is nothing but nothing to compare with standing under a cool mountain waterfall and then swimming in a lake so clear that you can see the bottom...’

  ‘Yeah, and having to share it with coyotes and bears and heaven knows what else, as well,’ Samantha had objected. ‘Like
I just said, no thanks.’

  ‘You don’t know what you’re missing,’ Liam had told her softly. ‘There’s nothing like the cool clean feel of mountain water over naked skin...nothing like cooking out in the open air.’

  ‘Skinny-dipping and barbecues might be your scene but they most definitely are not mine,’ Samantha had informed him censoriously.

  Liam had still been laughing as she walked away from him, head held high.

  She had been much younger then, of course.

  Her head was really beginning to ache. Wearily she stifled a jaw-stretching yawn and then a second one.

  ‘Come on. You’re exhausted,’ Liam told her. ‘I guess there’ll be some spare bedding in one of the closets, I’ll go find it whilst you use the bathroom....’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  SAMANTHA woke up and gave a small grunt of pain. The sofa, pretty though it was, had never been designed to be used as a bed and certainly not by a full functioning woman of six foot plus. She winced as she sat up and her contorted muscles howled their protest.

  She looked at her watch. She had been asleep for less than two hours.

  Now that the alcohol had cleared from her head she was depressingly aware of the failure of her mission.

  What were her chances, she wondered, of persuading Saul Crighton to give her a job with Aarlston-Becker thus saving her from the humiliation of having to return home and face Cliff?

  She closed her eyes. They felt dry and gritty and her lips, when she touched them with her tongue tip, felt sensitive and faintly swollen—a legacy from Liam’s kiss?

  That had been such a dangerous thing for her to allow to happen. Now, with her head clear of the effects of the wine and champagne she had drunk she could see just how her behaviour must have looked to Liam. He would have been less than human if he hadn’t... If he hadn’t what? Taken her to bed? Certainly nothing she had done or said would have given him the impression that she wasn’t willing—anything but!

  Go to bed with Liam... What a thought... He was the last person... Abruptly Samantha tensed.

  Go to bed with Liam... Seduce Liam into giving her a child... Liam, as she already knew, was a very highly 128

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  sexed man—look at the number of girls he had dated—

  and anyway, anyone could see just by looking at him how sexy he was. With Liam there would be no need to coax or coerce him into responding; no need to be delicately guarded or femininely passive. Go to bed with Liam. It was impossible. Conceive Liam’s child... No, she couldn’t, it was totally out of the question, just a mad thought conjured up by her despair and the loneliness of the night.

  What she was thinking, contemplating, was total and absolute madness. Was it? Wasn’t she, in seducing Liam into impregnating her, merely following the deepest instinct of her sex? There could be no doubt that genetically Liam was an A1 choice. He was highly intelligent, physically strong, with the kind of skills that any child would rejoice in inheriting.

  Maybe so, her sterner and more cautious inner self argued, but he was not a man who could be a father to her child in all the ways that were so important to her.

  Did such a man exist? her other more emotional self protested. She had thought she had found the perfect husband in James and look how wrong she had been.

  But, to have a child outside marriage and by Liam...her parents...her family... Bobbie would... Never mind her own strong feelings about shared parenthood.

  Did any of them need to know? She could always pretend that the baby, her baby, was the result of a coolly taken clinical decision and an equally coldly clinical non-sexual act—an act which she had already vigorously denied to Bobbie that she could ever contemplate. And then there was Liam himself. But she wouldn’t be the first woman to choose to be a single mother.

  Liam, with his political ambitions to consider would probably be only too happy when faced with a fait ac-130

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  compli and her pregnancy confirmed to keep his own role in her baby’s conception a secret, a small inner voice tempted her dangerously.

  No, what she was thinking was totally inconceivable.

  Tears filled her eyes. She so much wanted to be a mother.

  But, if she was going to pretend to the world that that was how her child had been conceived then why not do so, why take the risk of being rejected yet again, of having Liam turn away from her as James had done?

  Why indeed, but in having Liam father her child she would have the security of knowing just what her baby’s genetic inheritance was. She owed it to her child, too, and as for Liam rejecting her, well there was only one way she was going to discover whether or not he would.

  In place of the night wear she did not have, she had wrapped herself in one of the hotel’s complimentary tow-elling robes after having undressed and showered and now, as she pushed aside the covers on her makeshift bed and stood up, its soft folds settled warmly around her body.

  He wanted her, Liam had told her earlier, and even through the fog of alcohol her brain had retained those words, that admission, and when it came to wanting...

  As she walked unsteadily towards the bedroom door Samantha felt her pulse start to rise and her breathing become fast and uneven. Perhaps those teenager longings and desires she had thought so transient had had far deeper roots than she had imagined and were not quite dead, after all.

  Very gently she opened the bedroom door and walked into the room. Now that her eyes had accustomed themselves to the darkness she could easily see Liam’s sleeping form on the bed. A quick hot tug of excitement pulled at her heart, accompanied by a sharp sense of the awesome-PENNY JORDAN

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  ness of what she was contemplating, but there was no hesitation or reluctance in the way she moved swiftly and softly towards the bed, waiting until she was close enough to lean over him and whisper his name against his lips before she said anything.

  At her husky slightly tremulous ‘Liam,’ Liam woke up instantly, his body tensing, his eyes probing the darkness.

  Samantha was leaning over him, her face, her mouth, so close to his that if he breathed a little deeply her lips would be touching his. He had no idea what she wanted but he knew, all too well, what he did. His body was making its needs all too urgently clear.

  He lifted his arm to switch on the bedside lamp but Samantha stopped him, clasping his forearm and digging her nails a little into his skin in her urgency.

  Liam closed his eyes. God, did she have the slightest idea what she was doing to him? He could smell the warm scent of her skin and her robe was so loosely knotted that he could see the full soft swell of her breasts.

  The temptation to reach out and push the cloth aside to fully reveal her body, to slide his palm against the heavy fullness of her naked breast and tease the dark burgeoning flesh of her nipple into an aching peak so that she begged for him to take it in his mouth, was so strong that he had to grit his teeth to prevent himself from telling her rawly and explicitly what he wanted to do to her, how he wanted to make her feel...react...need and want him the way he did her. Under the bedclothes his own body was reacting to his thoughts as urgently as though he had actually put them into action.

  Swallowing hard, he demanded shortly, ‘Sam, what is it...what do you want...?’

  He had fed her the perfect line, Samantha recognised.

  All she needed now was the courage to take it...use it...

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  Beneath her fingertips the silky hair-covered flesh of his forearm felt so secure and steady. She guessed that, if necessary, it... he...could take the whole of her weight and support it... support her, without flinching and certainly without letting her fall...in any way...

  The idea of Liam representing any form of security was a novel one and it made her eyes open a little wider in bemused recognition that she was standing on the brink of an unexpected discovery, but there wasn’t time to explore suc
h thoughts right now. Right now...

  She took a deep breath. Liam was still waiting for her answer. Using her free hand to unfasten the loose tie of her robe, Samantha deliberately slid it free of her shoulders, releasing his arm and leaning ever further towards him as she told him softly, murmuring the words in his ear, ‘What I want, Liam, is you...’ Then taking her courage in both hands, before he could say or do anything, she turned her head and placed her mouth very delicately and deliberately over his.

  For a second the shock of what she was doing held Liam rigid and completely unable to move, but then, almost automatically, he reached out to grasp her shoulders so that he could push her gently away, the strong core of responsibility that was so much a part of his personality overriding the predatory male instincts of his aroused body.

  Samantha tensed as she felt his lack of reaction but she was not about to give up now, not without a fight.

  Reaching out she clasped his face with her hands and proceeded to deepen the intimacy of her kiss, probing the hard shuttered line of his mouth with her tongue, willing him with every ounce of her willpower to respond to her and then, just when she thought she was going to have to give up and admit defeat, she felt the shudder of reaction PENNY JORDAN

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  that ripped through his body, the dry hard heat of the closed line of his lips suddenly giving way as he turned from rejection to responsiveness. Her own body shuddered in relief and then, even more intensely, in almost shocking pleasure as his hands started to knead the tense muscles of her shoulders, his fingers spreading over her skin, massaging and stroking her flesh.

  It must be her relief that was making her so responsive to him, Samantha decided dizzily as she twined her arms around him, eagerly opening her mouth to the probing force of his tongue.

  He was the one controlling their intimacy now, his hands sliding down her arms and then gripping hold of her as he rolled back onto the bed, lifting the upper half of her body over him as he did so.

  Delicious shivers of sensation were washing all through her as his actions brought the full weight of her breasts in tantalising close contact with his bare chest. The soft friction of the silky dark hair that covered it moving against her nipples as he kept on kissing her with ever-increasing intimacy made Samantha long to move closer to him, to press her body against him so that the tor-mentingly delicate friction became a soothing closeness that would take away the ache flooding through her body.