Her One and Only

by Penny Jordan

  Flinging him an indignant look, Samantha immediately hurried towards the bathroom. How dare he suggest anything of the kind. Just because last night she had seemed to...to want him... She had already told him the reason for that.

  Once inside the bathroom with the door locked safely between them, Samantha tossed her head indignantly. She want Liam... That was ridiculous...totally and absolutely ridiculous...wasn’t it? And the minute she had Bobbie to herself she was going to tell her.

  With the water from the shower cascading noisily behind her, Sam bit her lip. She was going to tell Bobbie what? That she and Liam had... She gave a small hurting swallow, the words ‘had sex’ almost physically hurting her as she tried to force herself to frame them mentally and discovered that, for some reason, the words she actually wanted to use were ‘made love.’

  But she and Liam had not made love. How could they when they did not love one another, when Liam did not love her?

  Sam could feel shock zigzagging down her spine in sharp ice-cold splinters of pain just like the ones that were embedding themselves in her heart.

  Tears welled up in her eyes. Angrily she blinked them away. What she was crying for was simply the loss of her childhood ideals, her belief that only within the loving intimacy of a committed relationship could she truly experience the physical fulfilment she had had with Liam last night, that only with a man she loved utterly and totally could she want to conceive a child...his child.

  What had happened to her and to those beliefs that she had been willing to trample on them and to ignore them?

  She deserved to be in the situation she now found herself in, she told herself uncompromisingly.

  As she stepped into the shower, her mouth twisted in a small sadly wry smile. Well, at least no one who knew them was likely to be too surprised when she and Liam decided that their relationship wasn’t going to work and that they wanted to go their separate ways.

  And there was another aspect to the situation which Liam had not mentioned but which she was uncomfortably aware of.

  Whilst Bobbie got on very well with her in-laws, Sam knew that her own mother had always felt a little bit uncomfortable with people because of the circumstances surrounding her own birth.

  In the Crighton family, Ruth was treated with the respect she thoroughly deserved and even the realisation by other members of her family that she had borne the illegitimate daughter of her wartime lover and then been forced by her family to give up that baby for adoption had not changed her family’s love or admiration for her. And nor, of course, should it have done. The story of Ruth’s love for Grant and the trauma of her having to give up their daughter Sarah Jane was an extremely harrowing one, but now the whole family was reunited, Ruth and Grant were married, but still their daughter had never totally overcome her insecurity about being harshly judged by others because of the circumstances of her birth.

  Her mother, Sam knew, would be very upset to think that Patricia Crighton had seen Sam in a compromising situation with Liam and might in consequence judge her daughter poorly.

  No, for her mother’s sake as much as anything else, Sam knew that she had to go along with Liam’s suggestion—go along with, maybe, but if Liam thought for one moment that she was about to be grateful to him for doing the gentlemanly thing...

  Angrily Sam stepped out of the shower and started to vigorously towel herself dry.

  She had just about finished when she heard a firm rap on the bathroom door.

  ‘I’m nearly through,’ she called out curtly to Liam.

  ‘Open the door, Sam,’ she heard him demanding, ignoring her response to his knock.

  Pulling on her robe she opened the door and told him waspishly, ‘There, I’ve finished and...’

  She had stopped abruptly as she saw the parcels Liam was carrying and started to frown. ‘You’ve been out to the stores, but...’

  ‘Trousers and a top,’ he told her laconically, handing over two of the shiny bags to her. ‘I think I’ve got the size right...’

  Sam stared at him, eyes widening.

  ‘I didn’t think you’d want to meet with everyone wearing the same dress you had on last night.’

  He was right of course, that had been a strictly-for-a-sexy-date dress and was hardly suitable for a family lunch. Even so, for some reason, the knowledge that Liam had actually taken the trouble to go out and shop for her was making her feel not just surprised but ridiculously over-emotional.

  She could feel the tears starting to burn her eyes and in an effort to conceal them from him she lowered her head over the bags and told him grumpily, ‘They probably won’t fit.’

  ‘Try them,’ Liam advised her coolly.

  Leaving the bathroom free for him, Samantha hurried into the bedroom.

  Inside the larger carrier was a small one which she opened curiously before removing the tissue-packed trousers it contained. Inside the small carrier, also tissue wrapped, was exactly the kind of elegant plain underwear she normally favoured. Even the colour of the semi-nude bra and briefs was exactly the shade she would have chosen and she realised with a small sense of shock the size was exactly right, as well.

  Now, how on earth had Liam known that? Either he had made a very inspired guess or he knew her much better than she thought. At a pinch, she guessed, she could have shopped for him and got everything in the right size but men were notorious for getting underwear measurements wrong. This bra he had bought for her was exactly right and the briefs were even in the style she favoured for wearing under trousers.

  Quickly checking that the shower was still running she closed the bedroom door and slipped them on. She had been feeling rather unhappy about the idea of donning last night’s worn things—one of the virtues or vices, depending on how you looked at it, of inheriting half of your genes from a strictly traditional New England family was a near obsession with cleanliness.

  A little curiously she removed the trousers Liam had bought for her from their tissue wrapping. From the carrier bag she knew he had bought them from an extremely expensive local store and the label on the caramel-coloured fine wool pants confirmed their quality—Ralph Lauren no less—and as she held them up in front of her Sam knew that they would be a perfect fit.

  Like the cream silk shirt he had bought her to go with them and the suede loafers she found in the third bag, everything was so very much in her own style that she could quite easily have bought them herself.

  When she turned up downstairs wearing these clothes, Bobbie would automatically assume that she had.

  She had just finished brushing her hair when Liam returned to the bedroom, one eyebrow raised as he asked her questioningly, ‘Everything okay?’

  ‘They fit fine,’ Sam agreed grudgingly, and then her natural sense of fair play and honesty forced her to add, ‘They’re exactly what I would have chosen for myself. You’ll have to give me the bills for them.’

  ‘There’s something else,’ Liam told her, ignoring the latter part of what she was saying and going over to the coffee table in the suite’s sitting room to pick up a small bag Sam had not noticed before.

  ‘I guess if we’re going to do this, we’d better go all the way,’ he told her mystifyingly as he opened the small shiny dark green bag and removed an even smaller square jeweller’s box.

  Samantha’s heart gave a shocked-bound thudding against her chest wall.

  Liam had bought her jewellery...a ring?

  ‘Give me your hand,’ she heard him demanding calmly.

  Her mouth had gone too dry for her to be able to utter the denial she wanted to make but her whole body trembled as Liam took hold of her left hand, giving her a slightly grim look as he warned her, ‘This is no time to start being dramatic, Samantha. You can be sure that right now, whoever is downstairs is expecting us to emerge as a blissfully happily committed couple.’


  ‘No,’ she denied quickly. ‘Why should they? Bobbie won’t have said anything...’

  Liam’s eyebrows lifted.

  ‘Maybe not in normal circumstances,’ he agreed, ‘but she wasn’t on her own when she saw us. She had Pat with her,’ he reminded Samantha, and although he didn’t want to provoke another row with Sam he had seen the look of relief in Bobbie’s eyes when neither of them had denied their love for one another.

  James’s parents, whilst welcoming Bobbie to their family, were a slightly old-fashioned and very traditional couple. Neither of James’s sisters had lived with their now husbands before their marriages and both of them had lived at home whilst attending university in Manchester. Even though it was over an hour’s drive away, and whilst there was no way that he was dependent on Sam’s father’s goodwill to further his political career, he liked the older man far too much to want to cause him any embarrassment or pain— A mutually broken off engagement would be far easier for Sam’s parents to accept than a mere one-night stand—not that he ever had any intentions—but his intention, his hopes and needs, had to be put on hold right now, especially with Sam reacting as she was doing.

  Concentrating on digesting the unpalatable truth of what Liam was saying, Samantha did not at first pay much attention to the ring he was removing from its box until the white flash of diamonds not so much caught as regally demanded her attention.

  When she did look at the ring he was coolly slipping onto her finger she couldn’t prevent herself from giving a stunned betraying gasp.

  The central flawless sapphire was the deepest densest blue she had ever seen and just about as close to the colour of her own eyes as it could possibly be, whilst the diamonds which surrounded it were sharply white, perfectly clear glittering stones.

  It was, Samantha recognised, the kind of ring any woman would be thrilled to receive. Surely only a man deeply in love would choose a stone that so exactly matched his adored one’s own eye colour and he would certainly have to be totally besotted to spend the amount of money Samantha guessed this ring must have cost Liam.

  ‘What did you do,’ she joked shakily, ‘hire it for the day...’

  The look of hauteur Liam gave her made her feel even more shaky.

  ‘Liam, it’s...it’s...’ She shook her head, unable to find the words to tell him what she thought of his quixotic impulse. ‘It must have been so expensive,’ she told him weakly. ‘What on earth will you do with it...afterwards...’

  ‘Concern—for me?—that must be a first,’ Liam told her dryly as he closed the box with a firmly businesslike air.

  ‘Hopefully in the fuss over our “engagement” surprise, the way in which our relationship was exposed to the light of day will be overlooked,’ he told her sardonically.

  ‘Engaged.’ Samantha shook her head. ‘But Mom and Dad...’

  ‘...will understand when I explain that it was only the discovery of how much I was missing you and what I stood to lose that prompted me to act impetuously and rush over here to propose to you,’ Liam told her calmly.

  ‘Lovers seldom act rationally...so why should we be any exception? I proposed, you accepted, and of course, I couldn’t wait to show the world that you’re mine by waiting until we got home to get you a ring. After all, it isn’t as though I have your ability to trace my family back to the Pilgrim Fathers and beyond and there are certainly no family heirlooms waiting in bank vaults to be handed over to my wife-to-be,’ he told her grimly.

  Samantha gave a thoughtful look. She knew of Liam’s family history and how, as immigrants, they had arrived in America with virtually nothing, but his words brought home to her again how sensitive Liam felt about the subject.

  ‘You can’t think that if I were in love it would matter to me who my partner’s antecedents were,’ she challenged him.

  ‘No, but surely you’d want to know what kind of genes you were passing on to your kids, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘If I loved someone then I would want my child—our child—to have his genes,’ she reiterated firmly.

  Liam gave her a cynical smile.

  ‘Well, let’s hope the voters “love” me enough to overlook my lesser heritage,’ he told her wryly.

  Samantha frowned. ‘You don’t honestly think that people would be put off voting for you because of that?’ she demanded before telling him passionately, ‘It’s obvious that you’re the best man for the job, Liam, and any voter who can’t see that for themselves doesn’t, in my view, deserve to be allowed to vote.’

  ‘Very democratic,’ Liam told her, his expression lightening to one of rueful amusement. ‘You really are an all-or-nothing person, Sam, you either love or hate, there’s no halfway house with you, no middle ground.’

  ‘Just because I have strong beliefs, that doesn’t mean that I can’t see another person’s point of view,’ Samantha objected. ‘I’m not intolerant, Liam.’

  ‘No, just passionately opposed to anyone who doesn’t share your point of view,’ Liam responded with another smile, glancing at his watch and then warning her, ‘Come on, we’d better go down and face the music.’

  CHAPTER NINE

  ‘COME ON, IN YOU GO.’

  ‘Oh!’

  Samantha gave a small exclamation of stunned disbelief as Bobbie, who had been waiting for them in the hotel foyer, gave her a little push and stood to one side in the open doorway of the hotel’s private function room.

  Instead of half a dozen or less people Samantha had expected to see, the room seemed full of a sea of expectant faces. For a moment she was tempted to turn tail and run but as though he knew how overwhelmed she felt Liam stepped up behind her, his arm curling supportively around her as he drawled to Bobbie, ‘Seems like someone’s been busy...’

  Samantha heard Bobbie laugh, her initial panic subsiding as she realised that in truth the room only held a relatively small proportion of their many relatives, around a dozen or so, all of them smiling at her in loving happiness and expectancy.

  ‘Well, I just had to ring Jenny to give her the news because I knew that she’d already arranged a family lunch here today because Katie’s at home and she’d invited Max and Maddy to join them with the children and so I said why didn’t we all have lunch together. You don’t mind, do you?’ she asked Samantha. ‘Only I’m just so excited for you, Sam. It’s like a romance story come true, you falling for Liam in such a big way all those years ago, worshipping him from a distance and having the biggest crush in the world on him,’ she teased. ‘And now, all these years later the two of you falling for one another as equals. And now,’ she added expressively, rolling her eyes as she gave them both a merry look, ‘Liam must love you to pieces to have followed you right across the Atlantic. She’ll make the world’s worst Governor’s wife, Liam,’ she added warningly.

  ‘Oh, thanks,’ Samantha told her twin grimly.

  ‘It’s true,’ Bobbie laughed. ‘The first time there’s a march outside government house you’ll be the one leading it. Do you remember when she organised that protest march against hunting, Liam?’ she asked him.

  ‘Will I ever forget it,’ Liam responded ruefully. ‘I was the one who had to go get her released from the police cells...’

  ‘Yes, and you were the one who, when we got home, told me I’d have to shower in the backyard just in case I’d picked up...something...’ Samantha gave a deep shudder at the memory his words had evoked. Perhaps it was true that she had reacted rather recklessly and dangerously, but surely Liam had overreacted in his furious cold anger to her when he had come to bail her, cruelly telling her that some of her co-marchers may not be too particular about their personal hygiene.

  Whether or not he had been right had never been proved. It had been enough that she had spent the whole night lying awake wondering if every tiny little scalp itch was the forerunner of some unpleas
ant and unwanted cohabiters.

  First thing in the morning she had taken herself off to the hairdressers where she had had her long hair cropped.

  She could still remember how her mother had cried when she had seen her and she could remember, too, the look of cold disgust in Liam’s eyes as he studied her boyishly barbered short hair. She had grown it long again, but now preferred her hair cropped, although in a much more feminine version of her original cut.

  ‘That was when you had your hair cut,’ Bobbie added, almost as though twin-fashion, she had followed Samantha’s own train of thought.

  ‘Do you remember, Liam?’ she asked. ‘Poor Mom cried.’

  ‘Yes,’ Liam said. ‘I remember.’

  How terse and angry Liam sounded. Samantha turned her head to look at him and then stood completely still in the circle of his arm, their onlookers forgotten as she saw the look in his eyes.

  ‘Your lovely hair... I didn’t know whether to throttle you or...’ Liam was telling her softly. ‘Not that it didn’t suit you short then or now...’

  Suspecting that he was trying to sound diplomatic and lover-like because Bobbie was listening, Samantha was just about to try to reply in a way that was equally pseudo lover-like when, to her disbelief, she heard Bobbie chiming in, ‘Oh, yes, I can still remember how chagrined I felt a while back when I overheard Liam telling someone that he thought your cropped curls were just the most alluringly sexy tease on a woman with such a sensationally curvy body.’

  Her eyes rounding, Samantha stared at him.

  ‘You said that,’ she questioned faintly, ‘about me...’

  ‘I suppose I should have guessed then,’ Bobbie was saying as she determinedly ushered them into the Grosvenor’s private function room and called out to the assembled throng, ‘Here they are, everyone. The Crighton family’s latest formally accredited “couple.”’

  Out of nowhere a waiter suddenly appeared circulating the room with trays of bubbling champagne, or so it seemed to Samantha as she and Liam were engulfed by the excited and enthusiastic members of her family who were waiting to congratulate them.