Her One and Only

by Penny Jordan

  ‘I thought you said just a quiet family lunch,’ Samantha complained to her twin.

  ‘Well... It’s what Mom would have wanted,’ Bobbie told her virtuously.

  ‘Mom...! You haven’t...’ Samantha began but Bobbie shook her head.

  ‘No. I’m leaving that to you—and Liam—not that... Oh...’

  ‘What is it?’ Samantha demanded, hearing the surprised and excited note in her sister’s voice as she looked towards the doorway.

  ‘It’s Gran and Gramps!’ Bobbie exclaimed, leaving her sister’s side to hurry over to the doorway where Ruth and Grant were standing together with one of Ruth’s nephews, Saul Crighton, his wife Tullah and their children.

  It was Saul’s parents Hugh and Ann who Ruth and Grant had been staying with in Pembroke and as she stared at them Samantha shook her head and told Liam, ‘I just don’t believe this. All it needs now is for Mom and Pop to walk in through the door.’

  ‘Well, I doubt that that’s going to happen, but I think we ought to go over and make our explanations to your grandparents—or rather, I ought,’ Liam told her ruefully.

  Samantha shot him a surprised look. She could actually hear a faint note of almost boyish uncertainty in Liam’s voice and there was quite definitely a slightly sheepish look in his eyes as he looked towards the group of people surrounding her grandparents. It was so unlike Liam to betray anything other than total self-confidence that such an unexpected display of vulnerability caused her to move closer to him and put her hand on his arm in a gesture that was almost protective.

  ‘Gran will understand,’ she told him. ‘After all, she and Gramps...’

  Abruptly Samantha stopped. What on earth was happening to her? Just for a moment it was almost as though she actually was Liam’s fiancée, as though they were actually two very newly committed lovers catapulted into a very public arena they had never expected to have to enter at such an early stage in their newly discovered love. But it was too late now to withdraw from Liam. At the touch of her hand he had moved closer to her and she could see the way the others were regarding them. Infuriatingly Samantha discovered that she was actually blushing and, even worse, that she was more than happy to have the solid bulk of Liam to lean a little shyly into as he started to guide her across the floor to where her grandparents were waiting.

  ‘So, it’s finally happened! The two of you have stopped fighting long enough to fall in love.’

  Samantha blinked as she heard the loving approval in her grandmother’s voice and saw the happiness in her eyes.

  ‘Liam, I just hope you know exactly what you’re taking on,’ Ruth was saying to Liam. ‘You’re never going to change her.’

  ‘There’s no way I’d want to,’ Liam was replying in true lover-like fashion.

  And, looking into his eyes heart-jerkingly for a breathless space of time, Samantha could almost believe he meant it.

  * * *

  THE AFTERNOON PASSED in a haze of hugs and kisses and congratulations, the Grosvenor rising to the occasion with true aplomb by producing a buffet luncheon fit for the most discerning diner. Dizzily Samantha listened to the various conversations humming in the air around her. The younger ranks of the family were entertaining themselves in one corner of the room whilst another group which included Jon and Jenny had formed around Ruth and Grant, whilst Bobbie, Luke, Tullah and Saul were also busy exchanging reminiscences of their childhoods and of their own early days as couples.

  Of them all only Katie was partnerless. A calm very private person, Katie, according to her mother Jenny, was dedicated, not perhaps so much to her job but to the cause it served.

  Like Ruth, Katie had a very strong philanthropic caring streak. Her work in the legal department of a large charity might not be going to bring her either fame or fortune but it had to give her a great deal of satisfaction, Samantha acknowledged.

  Not that Katie looked particularly happy right now though, she admitted, or was it simply that the very coupledness of everyone else there underlined the fact that Katie was on her own.

  When Saul and Tullah came over to congratulate them, Tullah remarked teasingly, ‘Perhaps you’re going to beat us to produce the first set of our generation of twin births, after all...’

  ‘Twins... With Liam running for the governorship I doubt they’re going to have time to conceive one child never mind two,’ Saul told his wife outspokenly. Mortifyingly, whilst the other three laughed, Samantha could feel herself starting to blush as though she were, in reality, in love with Liam.

  ‘When will you get married?’ Tullah was asking. ‘After voting or...’

  Liam gave Samantha a warning squeeze of her hand, answering before she could say anything, ‘We haven’t settled on a date yet.’

  * * *

  ‘WELL, I GUESS that means the end of your visit over here,’ Bobbie commented ruefully several hours later when everyone else had gone bar Bobbie and Luke and their grandparents, Luke’s parents having taken Francesca home with them for the night to give Bobbie some extra time to spend with her twin. She continued before Samantha could say anything.

  ‘I know Liam can’t stay over here very long and, of course, you’re going to want to go back with him. When are you going to tell the folks?’

  As Bobbie had already confided to Luke, the fact that Sam and Liam were lovers had proved to her how much her twin must love Liam.

  ‘Sam has always been so picky—and never ever casually intimate with men in any kind of way—for her to have committed herself to Liam like this proves how much she loves him.’

  ‘I don’t need convincing,’ Luke had responded knowingly. ‘I knew she and James wouldn’t suit.’

  ‘We’re going to ring them just as soon as we can,’ Liam answered for them both now.

  ‘Well, I know that Sarah Jane won’t be too surprised,’ Ruth confounded Samantha by commenting. ‘I know from what she’s told me that she did have hopes...’

  Her mother had hopes...hopes of her and Liam... How on earth could she have done? Samantha wondered bemusedly whilst Liam veiled his eyes.

  He was not entirely surprised that Samantha’s mother had guessed how he felt about her daughter. Mothers were, after all, notoriously very insightful in that way. Samantha herself, thank the Lord, was far less intuitive.

  As he looked sideways at the ring glittering on Samantha’s left hand he could almost taste the bittersweet flavour of the sharp cruelty of the gulf between the relationship the two of them were pretending to and reality.

  He was still searingly aware of the double blow Samantha had given him in firstly accusing him of trying to use her to improve his chances of winning the vote—how could she think him capable of that kind of underhandedness?—and of secondly and even more hurtful telling him that she had cold-bloodedly decided to have sex with him because she wanted not his child but a child. That revelation hadn’t just hurt him it had shocked him, as well.

  The closeness of the Miller family had appealed to an idealism within Liam that he tried to keep hidden and protected and that Samantha, the woman he loved, should be prepared to deny her own child the kind of upbringing she herself had been so lovingly nurtured in was something he was finding hard to understand. And what he was finding even harder to understand or forgive was his own dangerous awareness that given a second opportunity to furnish Sam with the child she so much wanted, he doubted that he would be able to resist the temptation to do so; that way at least he’d have some kind of permanent tie with her...through their child.

  As Samantha listened to her grandparents she acknowledged that her grandfather and Liam had always got on well. Grant’s family was from the Deep South and he and Liam, in common with her father, shared a belief that it was of vital importance to find a way of integrating the diehards of both the Southern states and the Northern ones in a common purpose that would
benefit everyone. Ruth and Liam had immediately taken to one another so that now, as the whole family, including Luke, began a passionate discussion about the increasingly urgent need to give those young people of both countries the incentive and the help to free themselves from what Western journalists were currently referring to as ‘the poverty trap,’ momentarily Samantha felt somehow as though she was excluded from a particularly charismatic and exclusive circle.

  Her views were not that much out of accord with those of the others, she recognised, it was just that she favoured a much more direct and possibly contentious method of putting them into operation.

  ‘I guess it looks like we’re going to be having dinner here,’ Grant commented jovially at one point. ‘We’d better book a table.’

  Whilst the others were all eagerly assenting, only Liam hesitated, looking at Samantha and asking her in a quiet voice, ‘You’re very quiet, would you prefer to do something else?’

  Samantha’s eyes widened, a very definite tug of emotion dragging on her heart, a very real sense of warmth and happiness enveloping her. Liam at least had noticed that she wasn’t joining in the others’ enthusiastic discussion and he had felt concerned enough about her to ask what she wanted to do.

  A small fluffy euphoric cloud materialised out of nowhere to wrap itself around her and cushion her. Instinctively she moved closer to Liam, virtually snuggling into his side without realising what she was doing. Not even the comforting strength of his arm going around her as he drew her even closer warned her of the danger she was courting or the vulnerability she was exposing, something which she later put down to the fact that she had, over the course of the afternoon, become so steeped in her role of newly affianced woman that playing that part had become second nature to her.

  ‘Uh-huh...it looks to me like she would,’ Bobbie teased her unmercifully, forcing Samantha to realise what she was doing and to push herself away from Liam as she denied fiercely, ‘No...dinner here will be fine by me.’

  ‘Well now, here’s a thing,’ Grant chuckled. ‘It looks to me, Liam, like love is already taming our firebrand. She’s even learning the art of tactful social fibbing. Perhaps she’s not going to make such a bad Governor’s wife, after all...’

  ‘For your information,’ Samantha began indignantly, her eyes flashing warning storm signals. But Liam silenced her quickly, leaning forward to kiss her briefly on the lips.

  The dizziness that flooded her must be because she hadn’t eaten much of the buffet, Samantha decided as she forced herself not to give in to the disturbing urge to wrap her arms around Liam and return his kiss—with interest—with very passionate interest.

  ‘She’s going to make a wonderful Governor’s wife,’ Liam told Grant throatily without taking his eyes off Samantha’s face. ‘And certainly the only wife that this potential Governor is ever going to want...’

  Surrounded by the others’ laughter Samantha tried to tear her gaze away from Liam’s and discovered that she couldn’t. She felt as though she were drowning, melting, as though her whole body was on fire...dissolving, aching, so much so that right now...

  Her whole body went hot with mortified colour as she recognised just what direction her thoughts were taking and there was no use kidding herself, the urgent desire she had just felt flooding her body had nothing whatsoever to do with any maternal desire to make a baby. What was happening to her? When had acting the part of being in love with Liam, of having to pretend there was nothing she wanted more than to be alone with him...having to pretend that there was no one she wanted more than him, had right now become so easy, so natural, so necessary, that it was as automatic as just breathing?

  Whilst the others fussed over practicalities Samantha sat in bemused silence.

  ‘My, oh, my,’ Grant commented jokingly at one stage later in the evening when Samantha hadn’t even responded to the very obvious lure he had been trailing for her. ‘I know they say that love changes a person but...’

  To Samantha’s surprise it was Liam who came to her rescue, shaking his head and saying firmly, ‘Samantha’s and my beliefs, our ideals, have never been as far apart as some folk like to think, it’s just that my way of instituting them is a little less assertive than Sam’s...’

  Whilst the others were still laughing, he turned to her and picked up her left hand and carried it to his lips, kissing her ring finger in a gesture that was simple and loving and so totally without any kind of self-consciousness that Samantha felt her eyes smart with sharp tears. What would it be like if Liam really did love her? Previously her dreams of loving a man and being loved by him had all revolved around the family they would have. It had never occurred to her that she might feel such an overwhelming sense of bliss and security nor such a profound sense of belonging, of knowing that she could totally relax and allow someone else to carry her just for a little while.

  Bemusedly she looked up into Liam’s eyes. He was watching her with a mixture of gravity and an expression she couldn’t define. All she knew was that it set her pulse rate rocketing and made her whole body go hot and sensitive just as though he had suddenly touched and caressed it.

  Whilst the others were ordering their food he leaned towards her, closing the gap between them, and then whispered against her mouth, ‘Keep on looking at me like that, Samantha Miller, and I might just forget all the reasons why this engagement of ours isn’t for real and I might forget, too, just why those precautions I took last night so as not to get you pregnant were the right thing to do...’

  And then he kissed her. Not just an ordinary little old kiss, either, but a long, slow, deeply passionate this-is-my-woman-and-I-love-her kind of kiss, right there at the restaurant table with nearly all her family looking on. And, much as she loved them, just for a second Samantha wished very passionately that they weren’t there and that Liam would do exactly what he had just been whispering to her that he wanted to do and that they were alone, upstairs, in his suite and that...

  ‘You never did tell me what happened to James last night,’ Bobbie announced, breaking the dangerous spell holding Samantha entranced.

  ‘James...’

  For a moment Samantha actually had difficulty in remembering who her sister meant. ‘Oh, yes...well, he had...’ She stopped, not sure how much she should say about just what had happened. After all, Rosemary was engaged to another man and she and James were supposed to thoroughly dislike one another.

  ‘Er...there was a phone call,’ Samantha fibbed in the end, ‘and he said he had to leave.’

  ‘It must have been fate,’ Bobbie told her with a broad smile before adding in a semi-audible whisper, ‘By the way, have you told Liam yet about you know what...’

  ‘“You know what”?’ Samantha frowned. ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she began, but Bobbie stopped her, shaking her head and reminding her wickedly, ‘Remember when you and I had our joint confession fest and I told you about my water fantasy and you...’

  ‘Oh...yes...that...’ Samantha headed her off quickly. There was no way she wanted Liam to hear about that idiotic sensual fantasy of hers about making love out of doors, not when they were not really a couple, not when he didn’t, couldn’t, really love her, but it was no use rolling an anguished look in her twin’s direction and whilst Luke and their grandparents were engaged in their own conversation, Bobbie proceeded to inform Liam in a soft undertone just what Samantha’s secret fantasy actually was.

  ‘Bobbie, that was a teenage thing,’ Samantha hissed, totally unable to bring herself to look at Liam to see how he was reacting to Bobbie’s confidences.

  ‘So were your feelings for Liam and now look what’s happened,’ Bobbie teased her unrepentantly.

  * * *

  IT WAS LATE when they finally called the evening to an end, Luke and Bobbie leaving first and then Ruth and Grant following them within minutes.

  ‘We’ll tal
k tomorrow,’ Bobbie had promised her sister before she left, adding, ‘I know you’ll want to fly back home with Liam but at least, with the two of you planning to get married, it won’t be very long before we’re all together again.’

  It was gone midnight when Samantha and Liam walked through the foyer towards the lifts.

  ‘The hotel’s emptied out a little now,’ Liam informed her quietly as he buzzed for the lift, ‘so I’ve been able to book you your own room.’

  Her own room... Samantha tried to look appropriately appreciative. Bobbie had thoughtfully returned home before the lunch and she had discreetly handed over to Samantha a large holdall containing some of her clothes and toiletries.

  With the old-fashioned courtliness that had so often caused her to rebel against him in the past, Liam insisted on walking Samantha to her hotel room door and unlocking it for her. As she stepped past him into the room Sam had a wild longing to stop and turn straight into his arms.

  The depth of her own longing unnerved her. What was happening to her? Surely she wasn’t so easily suggestible that less than twenty-four hours of playing at being Liam’s lover and wife-to-be had made her feel so wrapped up in the role that she couldn’t divorce herself from it and return to reality. She actually had to grit her jaw to stop herself from whispering to him that she wanted to spend the night in his room, in his bed, in his arms, and not just because she wanted his child—no, not just for that at all. What she wanted, she realised shakily, was Liam himself.

  ‘We’ll ring home in the morning,’ Liam was saying to her.

  It was as much as Samantha could trust herself to do to simply shake her head. If she opened her mouth, if she looked at him, if her body even thought that he might make the smallest move in her direction... Even after he had closed the door behind himself it was still several seconds before Samantha could trust herself to move; her fingers shook as she locked the door. The ring Liam had given her caught the light. Despite its weight she was barely aware of wearing it; it was almost as though it had always been there. Reluctantly she took it off. Her hand felt bare...naked...