A Perfect Night

by Unknown

When you and Seb have that baby of yours you'll understand what I mean,' she added wickedly before hurrying down the street.

  'Dad What are you doing here?'

  Seb grimaced as Charlotte came bounding into the foyer to the ward stopping dead as she saw him. He had arrived at the hospital ten minutes earlier and had just reached the ward where Charlotte had been hospitalised.

  'What do you think?' he responded grimly.

  'You came because of me?" Charlotte shook her head.

  'But I'm fine, I promise. In fact I've just been discharged. Heaven knows why they insisted on keeping me in here.'

  'You had a bad fall,' Seb pointed out curtly.

  Charlotte rolled her eyes protestingly.

  'I had a bit of a tumble,' she corrected him. 'Hardly a fall at all and if I hadn't bumped my head I doubt there would have been any of this silly panic. Heavens, if I'd been rushed off to hospital every time I fell over when I was growing up I'd have spent half my life there.

  Mum always used to complain that it must be the Cooke gene that made me so clumsy and so addicted to danger.

  According to her, she never so much as sustained the smallest scratch when she was growing up. I suppose I was a bit of a tomboy,' Charlotte allowed ruefully, a huge smile dimpling her face as she slid her arm through Seb's and teased him, 'You're going to have to get used to visits like this if you and Katie have that baby boy.

  No,' she corrected herself firmly, ' When you have him...

  How is Katie by the way, is she here with you?'

  Here with him?

  'No, why should she be?' Seb demanded sharply.

  'No reason,' Charlotte pacified him. 'I was just hoping... thinking... that it would be nice to see her.'

  Normally her teasing and almost maternal probings would have been something he could have sidestepped with ease but today, after last night, it was activating pain cells he hadn't known he was capable of possessing.

  Just the sound of Katie's name was enough to produce a series of flash cards inside his brain.

  Katie wearing just that damned towel. Katie her mouth swollen from his kiss. Katie reaching out to touch him. Katie as he touched her... Katie...

  'Dad...where are you?'

  Collecting himself he frowned down at Charlotte.

  'Are you sure you're well enough to be discharged?'

  'Ask the doc if you don't believe me,' she retaliated flippantly.

  An hour later, having spoken with the duty doctor, the admissions staff and, in addition, having insisted on seeing the specialist in charge of the ward, Seb acknowledged that Charlotte had been right when she claimed that she was in perfect health.

  'Dad, you're over-protective. You're practically Neanderthal,' she said as they finally left the ward.

  'I'm your father,' Seb reminded her tersely looking at her in bafflement as she suddenly gave him a smile and hugged him.

  'Yes, I know,' Charlotte conceded. 'But when the time comes when I finally meet a man... the man, Dad,'

  she emphasised with a sidelong look at him and a soft pink tinge to her skin, 'There's no way that I'm going to tell you about it. At least not until afterwards.' Her skin colour deepened a little more betrayingly as she added defensively, 'You'll terrify him.'

  'Good,' Seb told her, but her semi-teasing words had set off a chain of thoughts of his own and there was no way he could share them with her.

  The man she had said, meaning quite plainly the man who would be her first lover. Charlotte and her peers looked on sex as a responsibility that had to be treated with caution and respect and that, of course, was a leg-acy of the tainted inheritance other generations had left them.

  He had been Katie's first lover. What would Jon Crighton think of him if he knew? Jon would not love his daughter any less than Seb loved Charlotte and Jon Crighton thought that he and Katie were a pair, a couple.

  If he were to disappear out of Katie's life now, what would Jon Crighton think of him? Would he think that he had used Katie, betrayed her, abandoned her? Would he condemn him as being every bit as bad as the worst of his Cooke ancestors? Would Seb be tarred by the same brush as them, a man totally without morals, without any kind of finer feelings?

  'Dad... Dad...' Abruptly he realised that Charlotte was talking to him. 'Dad, are you okay?' Charlotte asked him in concern. 'You were miles away again...'

  'I was thinking about...something...' Seb told her quickly.

  'Something or someone?" Charlotte suggested, her face breaking into a wide smile when he wasn't quite quick enough to hide his reaction.

  'I knew it. It is Katie, isn't it? You do love her, don't you, Dad? Oh, I'm so pleased,' Charlotte said hugging him excitedly. 'But just don't expect me to be a bridesmaid and dress in a pink tulle meringue.' Charlotte pulled a face. 'Okay, I know, Katie has far too much taste to want me to wear anything so uncool.'

  'You're running ahead of the game,' Seb admonished her gently, changing the subject determinedly by telling her, 'Come on, let's get you back to Manchester.'

  'Manchester! No way!' Charlotte announced firmly.

  'I'm finishing my field trip first.'

  They argued for several minutes but, in the end, Seb was forced to concede defeat and acknowledge that Charlotte was right to insist on continuing with her field trip.

  'I'm an adult now, Dad,' she reminded him. 'And even if I wasn't... I love it that you are so protective of me, but sometimes I have to be allowed to feel the pain you know. It's called living.'

  'Tell me about it,' Seb advised her sardonically.

  'So what are you going to do when you get home?'

  Louise asked Katie. They were at the airport waiting for Katie's return flight.

  'You mean after I've called a meeting in Haslewich's town square to explain why Seb and I are not an item?'

  Katie replied ruefully.

  'Sorry about that,' Louise apologised. 'If I hadn't said anything...'

  'It's not your fault,' Katie reassured her. 'I should have had the courage to tell you the truth.'

  '...and I should have realised that you were holding back. At least something good's come out of all this,'

  Louise murmured.

  Their shared confidences had brought them closer than Katie could ever remember them being, closer and on a much more equal footing. With Gareth and Nick away, they had spent their first evening together exchanging confidences and swapping memories of their shared growing-up years, talking long into the night but returning again and again to the extraordinariness of the circumstances surrounding the way they had both come to realise where their true feelings lay.

  On the final day of Katie's visit Gareth had returned home and it had been the most natural and the easiest thing in the world for Katie to go up to him and give him a sisterly hug and kiss.

  She had known then when she did so, the fantasy, the fear that had gripped her for so long had gone. Gareth meant nothing to her apart from the fact that he was Louise's husband.

  'It isn't over with Seb yet,' Louise reminded her.

  'Yes, it is,' Katie responded fiercely, adding gently, 'I know that for my sake you'd love this to have a happy ending—for Seb to love me—but it isn't going to happen Lou. You said yourself that Gareth told you that he had loved you that first time you were lovers even though you hadn't known it at the time. But Seb doesn't love me...'

  'How do you know that?'

  'Because if he did, he could have told me so,' Katie pointed out softly. 'Gareth couldn't tell you because you'd told him you loved someone else.'

  'I hear what you're saying, but I still think you're wrong,' Louise insisted firmly.

  'Don't Lou,' Katie begged her, her eyes suddenly darkening with pain. 'Don't give me any hope, all it's going to do is to make things worse.'

  Louise saw the pain in her twin's eyes and hugged her tightly before reminding her,

  'It won't be long before we come over...'

  '...for Gramps' party, the one I'm supposed to produce Seb a
t for his inspection,' Katie replied dryly.

  As she gave her a final hug, Louise sent up a private mental prayer for her sister's happiness, waiting until the last minute to thrust a prettily wrapped package into her sister's hand.

  'What is it?' Katie asked her in surprise.

  'It's the dress...the one we saw in the boutique window—the "for Seb's eyes only" dress. Remember?'

  Louise told her. 'I went back to get it when I told you I had to get a parking ticket for the car. I knew you wouldn't buy it yourself...'

  'You knew right,' Katie told her feelingly and then, remembering the cost of the silky sensual slip she protested, 'You shouldn't have, Lou... There's no way I can ever wear it.'

  'Of course you will.... Wear it for the family gathering,' Louise told her.

  'What?'

  'I dare you,' Louise challenged her wickedly, adding,

  'You'd better go, otherwise you're going to miss your flight'

  Without giving Katie any chance to respond she gave her a little push and then stood watching her until she had disappeared.

  CHAPTER NINE

  'AND SO, if you would face the Court please and tell the jury exactly what you saw on the night of the eighteenth of October last year...'

  Katie closed her eyes and tried to concentrate on what the witness who had just taken the stand was saying.

  The delay in the jury reaching a verdict in a case in which Olivia had been acting had resulted in Katie having to take over from her at the last minute on another case being heard at Chester's Crown Court which had been brought forward. Although in many ways she was grateful to have the excuse for having to spend several days in Chester while the case was being heard, and therefore not having to run the risk of bumping into Seb, Katie was forced to admit that she was finding it hard to give her work her full attention; to blank Seb out of her mind completely.

  'The Court will rise.'

  Automatically Katie stood up. The judge had declared a recess. It was hot and stuffy in the courtroom despite the whir of the fans, and she was glad to be able to go outside and breathe in some fresher unrecycled air.

  Her head had started to ache, a tight band of pain gripping her forehead. There was a chemist's shop close to the court, so she crossed the road and made her way towards it.

  There was a queue at the counter and as she waited to be served she looked absently around. The array of drugs on sale was bewildering. Out of the corner of her eye Katie caught sight of a display of condoms and con-traceptive products alongside pregnancy testing kits.

  'You never know,' Louise had told her during their late night heart-to-heart. 'You may have already conceived Seb's child...'

  'I haven't,' Katie had told her immediately and positively. 'Don't ask me how I know. I just know, but even if I had...that would be something, wouldn't it?' she had added sardonically. 'Having to tell the family that I'm pregnant and that Seb doesn't love me. Not that they'll need much telling about that. After all it will be pretty obvious I should imagine when I tum up at Gramps's

  "do" without him.'

  She reached the till and paid for her headache tablets.

  Quite how she knew so positively that she wasn't carrying Seb's child she had no idea, she just knew that the gypsy woman had got it wrong, there wasn't going to be any baby... Any little boy so like his father... At least not for her.

  It was a perfect afternoon as Katie drove back to Haslewich, the Welsh hills sharply clear against the sky-line, the rich fields of the Cheshire plains laid out before her. Roman soldiers and merchants had once crossed this plain on their way from their port at Chester to the salt mines of Northwich, Nantwich, Middlewich and Haslewich. Salt mining had been the principal industry of the area along with fanning right down through the centuries. Until the introduction of frozen and refriger-ated foods, salt had been the only way that meat could be stored and safely preserved. Now the old workings had been turned into a museum and a tourist attraction.

  There was a local story that, during the Civil War, when the area had been heavily fought over by the rival Cavalier and Roundhead forces, a certain very famous royal fugitive, the Stuart prince who would ultimately be King Charles II, had taken refuge in Haslewich's mines, but it had never actually been proved.

  At her own suggestion, instead of returning to her own apartment, Katie drove over to her parents' where she had arranged to spend the night so that she would be on hand from early in the morning to help her mother and Maddy with their preparations for Ben's party.

  As she walked in her mother's kitchen she was welcomed by the warm scent of baking and as Jenny enveloped her in a hug and asked her how her court case had gone, Katie thrust away the image that had been tormenting her all the way home of walking up to her apartment to find Seb waiting there for her with open arms.

  But of course, that was never going to happen.

  Over supper she chatted with her parents about her visit with Louise and the recent concluded court case.

  She'd met with Max while she'd been in Chester and he'd confided to her, 'It looks very much as though I'm going to be elevated to the ranks of Queen's Counsel.'

  'Oh Max,' Katie had beamed with sisterly pride.

  'That's wonderful.'

  'Well, it should help to cheer Gramps up a bit,' Max had agreed. 'I've talked it over with Maddy and we've both agreed that I should tell him during the party.'

  'So that he can boast about it to everyone who's there,' Katie had teased, adding truthfully, 'Max, he will be so thrilled, this is what he's always wanted, to be able to claim a member of his own immediate family has those all important initials after his name—Max Crighton, QC. Oh Max...' She had hugged him excitedly and then shared the bottle of champagne that Luke had insisted on opening in their chambers when Max confessed to him that he hadn't been able to resist telling her his good news.

  'You deserve it, Max,' Luke assured him and the two men had exchanged such a look of warmth and respect that Katie had felt her eyes start to fill with emotional tears.

  'I've already told the folks,' Max had added to Katie just before she left.

  'They will be thrilled,' Katie said.

  'Yes,' Max agreed, and then giving her a wry look he had added, 'but like me, they feel that what I've got with Maddy and the children is of far more value.'

  Katie had hugged him again knowing how much soul-searching and pain had been endured by both Max and Maddy before they had reached the loving intimacy of the marriage they now shared.

  Now, seated at the table with her parents, Katie reflected that at least Max's news would take the pressure off her. With Max's elevation to boast about, her grandfather was hardly likely to concern himself with her relationship—or lack of it—with Seb. The female members of the family had never been accorded or merited as much importance in her grandfather's eyes as the males and for once Katie was happy to let that be so.

  'Have you seen Seb since you got back?' her mother was asking her in a little concern now. 'You must have missed one another this last week...'

  'I...' Now was her chance—her golden opportunity—

  to tell her parents the truth, Katie recognised, but as she took a deep breath ready to do so the phone rang and her mother got up from the table and hurried out of the room to answer it.

  Before she returned, Max's wife Maddy had arrived to drop off the fruit that Jenny needed to fill the tart cases she had been baking and then, within the hour, Maddy was on her way back to Queensmead where var-ious members of the family were going to be staying for the weekend. Then Louise, Gareth and Nick had arrived and any chance Katie might have had to talk to her parents in private had gone.

  'Well, that's the last batch of food delivered to Queensmead and it's time for us to get ourselves ready,'

  Louise announced, deftly removing the chocolaty crumbs her son was about to scrunch into her clean outfit

  'I can't wait to see you in that dress,' she enthused to Katie who immediately looked down at the
floor, causing Louise to stop what she was doing and demand determinedly,

  'You are going to wear it, aren't you, Katie?'

  'I can't,' Katie protested. 'It's not...it's too...anyway, I don't have it here with me, it's at the apartment and there isn't time...'

  'Lou,' Katie protested as her twin immediately reached for Katie's handbag and deftly extracted her keys, telling her in a voice that brooked no argument,

  'There is time. I shall make time, and you my dear darling twin will wear it. Gareth,' she called over her shoulder to her husband who had just walked into the kitchen with Jon, 'You're going to have to wash and change Nick. His things are all laid out on the bed upstairs...'

  'Louise,' Katie protested but it was too late, her sister was already out of the doorway and heading for hers and Gareth's rented car.

  Seb frowned as he put down the telephone receiver. He had just rung Katie's flat for the fifth time without getting any reply that morning.

  It had only been when he had telephoned the office and spoken with Olivia that he had discovered that Katie had returned from an unplanned visit to Brussels and then had virtually gone straight to court in Chester.

  Was it a set of freak circumstances that was prevent-ing him from being able to speak with her or was she deliberately avoiding him? Today was the date set for her grandfather's party—an event to which he was supposed to be escorting her—at least according to Guy.

  Oh yes, he had enough, and to spare, practical reasons for needing to see Katie, but it wasn't those that were causing the aching longing which had taken over not just his emotions but his thoughts and time as well. Like a series of vivid flashbacks he kept getting mental images of the night they had made love, images which tormented every one of his five senses.

  Broodingly he wondered what Katie herself was thinking and feeling. Did she regret what had happened?

  Did she blame him for it...hate him for it? Was she avoiding him out of embarrassment or anger? Did she...

  Did he really need to ask himself those questions he derided himself bitterly? He only had to remember what he had said to her before they had made love, the accusations he had made, the anger he had shown. But once they had touched, kissed, held one another... There was no point in him staying here, he decided, he might as well go out.