Her One and Only

by Penny Jordan

  It took a long time before she finally managed to drop off to sleep and even then she didn’t sleep very well. The bed felt uncomfortable and empty without Liam in it...

  Liam... Liam... Liam...

  She sat upright, drawing up her knees and wrapping her arms around them. What was happening to her? What had happened to her? She had never been any good at pretending to feel or be what she did not. Never...and yet today, pretending to be in love with Liam had come so easily and naturally to her that— Abruptly her body tensed as the unpalatable truth struck her. Perhaps the pretence had been easy because, in reality, it was no pretence at all.

  But how could that be? How could she possibly have been in love with Liam without knowing it?

  Perhaps she had, at some deep level of her subconscious, known it. Perhaps that was why she had responded to Liam the way she had. Perhaps that was why she had been so consumed by the desire to conceive his child. Nature worked in complex and not always totally clear ways.

  But she couldn’t love Liam. He didn’t love her. She had had to learn that as a girl...and although she had never admitted it even to Bobbie, accepting that he didn’t return her feelings had been one of the hardest and most painful lessons she had ever had to bear. Her feelings for him might have been those of an adolescent girl rather than a woman, but that hadn’t made them any the less real. But Liam had made it stingingly clear that there was no way he was going to allow her to dream hopeless dreams about him and her pride had done the rest. Now she knew she was going to need that same determination, that same pride, again.

  ‘Remember how very different you feel about all the issues that are important to you,’ Samantha warned herself, but listening to Liam this evening as he discussed his altruistic ambitions and hopes for the state she had been forced to acknowledge that, idealistically, they were not so very far apart, after all.

  But what was she thinking? Even if by some miracle, Liam actually came to return her love, she would never in a million years ever make the kind of wife he was going to need. Even her own family were agreed on that, although they seemed to think that she would change...compromise...but Samantha knew that she couldn’t, not and still be true to herself.

  She unclasped her knees and lay down again, silent tears dampening her pillow as she cried for the man she knew she could never share her life with and the babies they would never make together.

  CHAPTER TEN

  ‘SWEETHEART, ISN’T IT EXCITING, the Washington Post is predicting that Liam is definitely going to win. Sam...what’s wrong?’ her mother asked anxiously as her comment failed to bring the reaction she had expected from her daughter.

  ‘You’re not still worrying about becoming the Governor’s wife, are you?’ she asked Samantha gently. ‘Oh, but that’s my fault. If I hadn’t disliked it so much...’ She paused and shook her head. ‘But, Samantha, you are so much stronger than I am and even though you won’t admit it, you love the kind of challenges you and Liam are going to be facing. People are already predicting that you’re going to be the most progressive couple to ever hold state governorship, and your father is so very, very proud of you both.’

  Samantha couldn’t bring herself to look at her mother. Ever since her return with Liam some weeks ago it had been the same. Both her parents had been thrilled with their news and, despite the demands on her time with her father’s impending retirement, her mother had still thrown herself into excited preparations for Samantha’s wedding.

  ‘We want to wait until after...after the inauguration,’ Samantha had protested as she fought down the panicky feeling that was filling her, but it seemed that the news of their engagement had started a roller coaster, a tidal wave of reaction, which once set in motion there was no way of stopping.

  There had been rallies and meetings, interviews, TV chat shows and such, a whole host of calls upon her time that Samantha in the end had had to concede that her father was right when he had advised her that she was going to have to put her career temporarily on hold at least until after the vote.

  One unexpected consequence of her engagement had been the fact that Cliff had started to fawn over her in a way that she found totally nauseating, but now she had far, far more important things on her mind to worry about than him.

  The stress she was under was beginning to tell. She had lost weight and the sparkle had gone from her eyes. Now the sapphire on her left hand looked a much deeper blue than they did. She and Liam hardly ever managed to get any time together such was the build-up towards the vote and so they had simply not had a chance to discuss how and when they were going to break the news that they had decided, after all, that they did not love one another.

  Samantha closed her eyes. And that was another lie she was going to have to learn to live with. Liam might not love her but she certainly loved him. Oh, how she loved him. Her eyes burned with anguished tears.

  ‘Sam, sweetheart, what is it?’ her mother begged anxiously as she hurried over to wrap her arms around her.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ Samantha fibbed. ‘I guess everything’s become so pressured and...’

  ‘...and Liam isn’t here and you miss him. Honey, I do know,’ her mother consoled her. ‘But never mind, he’ll be back this weekend and the two of you should be able to get some time on your own. Oh, and by the way, I thought we might fly into New York the weekend after and check out some wedding gowns.’

  Wedding gowns. Samantha’s heart gave a frantic bound. There was nothing she wanted to do more than walk down the aisle on her father’s arm and to have Liam waiting there at the altar for her. Nothing... But that was just an impossible dream...a totally impossible dream.

  When Liam rang her later that day, for once she was on her own and able to tell him quickly, ‘Liam, we’ve got to talk.’

  There was a small pause and she guessed he was probably not on his own by the guarded tone in his voice as he responded, ‘Uh-huh...is something wrong?’

  ‘Mom’s talking about us going to New York the weekend after next to look at wedding gowns,’ she told him, hoping he would be able to decode the message contained in what she was saying. ‘She thinks we ought to be discussing which of the Crighton cousins we will be having as attendants and she wants me to go upstate to visit with Dad’s family there to see what furniture we might want to get out of store. You know when Dad’s folks passed away that Bobbie and I were left some antique furniture and that it’s still in store.’ She was starting to babble, Samantha recognised as she forced herself to take a deep calming breath.

  There was a family business in New England, as well, that her father intended returning to.

  Liam, although he never really discussed it, having sold his father’s business, was a comfortably wealthy man, probably even more wealthy than her own parents, but money for its own sake had never interested Samantha.

  One of the innovative measures Liam wanted to bring in if he was elected was a special form of scholarship for young people who otherwise would not have been able to afford to go to college and he had told Samantha that he intended to underwrite such scholarships himself from his own private means.

  The political gap between them was closing with what for Samantha was a heart-wrenching speed. Now she could not even cling to her ideals as a reason to stop loving him.

  ‘I’ll be home at the weekend,’ she heard Liam saying quietly in response to her call. ‘We can talk then.’

  The weekend. Wearily Samantha replaced the receiver. That was two whole days away yet. So, for two more whole days, forty-eight hours, she was still going to be Liam’s wife-to-be. After that... After that she would need to go as far away from him as she could...to go somewhere where she could hide away and learn to live with her loss and her pain.

  * * *

  A FORLORN LOOK darkened Samantha’s eyes as she studied the photograph in the article she had just b
een reading. It depicted her and Liam. They were seated together in the library of the Governor’s house, Liam’s arm resting tenderly around her shoulders whilst she was turning slightly towards him, her lips gently parted as though in anticipation of his kiss. It was a photograph of two lovers, two people who couldn’t wait to be alone together, and it had been taken to accompany the article alongside it in which Liam had been interviewed about his plans for the state should he be elected into office.

  And they said the camera didn’t lie. Since her telephone conversation with Liam the previous day Samantha had been mentally rehearsing just what she was going to say to him when he returned. Being Liam, he would be bound to demand to know why it was so urgently imperative that their pseudo engagement was brought to an immediate end and, of course, there was no way that she could tell him, so she would have to invent a reason and so far she had not managed to come up with one which she knew would convince him.

  So why not tell him the truth? Quickly she got up and walked across her room and stood staring unseeingly down into the garden that her mother loved so much.

  She had got up early this morning and left before breakfast, having told her mother the previous evening that she needed a little time on her own and promising that, yes, she would go and look over the furniture stored in the depository whilst she was here in her father’s home town, the same New England town that her parents intended to come back to when his term of office had ended.

  This house was old by New England standards, although in Crighton terms it would no doubt have been termed relatively new. She and Bobbie had grown up in this quiet traditional town and their family was a part of it. If she were to go into the town now people would stop her and ask her not just about her parents but about her sister and her sister’s child, as well. They would ask after her brother Tom, currently at college and destined to take over the family business from her father when ultimately he stepped down from its overall control—in the time whilst her father had been State Governor he had had to appoint a deputy to take care of the day-to-day running of the business but he had still retained overall responsibility for it.

  Tell Liam the truth! How simple it sounded but how totally impossible that would be. Even if she could bear to expose herself to the humiliation of actually telling him that she loved him...he a man who never could and never would return those feelings, how could she be sure that in telling him she wasn’t somehow subconsciously trying to put emotional pressure on him to feel sorry for her, to take pity on her and to... To what? To marry her because she loved him? No! Immediately she shrank from the very thought. No! No. That was the last thing she wanted. If only she had a less volatile and more phlegmatic personality she might be able to contain her feelings a little better, to simply stoically wait out things until after the election, but the day-to-day effect of playing a false role was beginning to rasp so painfully on her nerves that she knew she couldn’t trust herself to somehow betray the truth.

  No, their engagement would have to be brought to an official end with a proper public announcement that they had both decided that they had made a mistake.

  Out of the corner of her eye she saw a car turning into the drive to the house. Her heart started to hammer heavily as she recognised it.

  It was Liam’s.

  Liam!

  What was he doing here? There was still another twenty-four hours to go before he was due back.

  Quickly she started to hurry downstairs, dragging open the heavy front door just as he reached it.

  The house, although not presently lived in, was cleaned twice a week but it still had that sad lonely air to it that unlived-in homes possess, Samantha reflected as she closed the door behind Liam and demanded shakily, ‘Liam, what are you doing here? You said you wouldn’t be back until tomorrow.’

  ‘I know but...you didn’t sound too good when we spoke and when I rang this morning and your mother told me that you’d left early to come over here, I decided to cancel the rest of my meetings and drive over.’

  ‘You cancelled your meetings because of me.’ Samantha looked at him in surprise. Although Liam’s ambition was more of the steely determined sort than the aggressive go-getting type, she was still surprised that he had been concerned enough to behave so impulsively.

  ‘Your mother says you aren’t eating...’

  ‘I’ve got a lot on my mind,’ Samantha told him defensively. ‘I guess I just don’t feel that hungry. Liam...I...’ She stopped and then took a deep breath, turning away from him so that she wouldn’t have to look at him whilst she told him, so that he couldn’t look at her and see the truth in her eyes, because she knew that if he did she couldn’t bear to see the corresponding pity in his.

  ‘I can’t go on with this... It’s got to end. The longer we leave it the worse it’s going to get. Mom’s already making plans for our wedding and Dad...’ She stopped and swallowed.

  ‘They’re going to hate me for us not getting married. I never realised...’ She stopped again. ‘We’ve got to tell them that we’ve changed our minds, Liam, and that it’s over.’

  He was silent for so long that in the end she had to turn round and look at him, but although she searched his face for some clue in his expression that would tell her what he was feeling and thinking she could see none.

  ‘It would never have worked out anyway,’ she told him, forcing herself to try to make a joke of it. ‘Can you really see me as a Governor’s wife?’

  ‘Yes, as a matter of fact I can.’

  Open-mouthed, Samantha stared at him, unable to conceal her reaction from him.

  ‘But you’ve always said how impossible I would be and...’

  ‘No. You’ve always said how impossible you would be,’ Liam corrected her. ‘And maybe twenty, even ten years ago you would have been right. The restrictions imposed on you to ensure my success would have been impossible for you to bear and such that no one would have had the right to want to impose them on you, but things have changed, Samantha, and are still changing.

  ‘We’re living in a new world, a world that’s coming to not just see but to welcome and embrace all manner of different kinds of thinking and all manner of different views. We’re a strong, braver people now, and we no longer feel threatened by new ideas or innovative ways of dealing with problems. The kind of Governor I intend to be would never have been tolerated a decade ago. The men and women we’ll be representing are people like ourselves. The men know that their roles have to be interchangeable with those of their partners and, men and women alike, they recognise that the old style of a woman “standing by her man” has gone, that now both partners in a relationship have the right to expect support from the other, that both partners are equal and mutually supportive of one another, that a woman has as much right to expect her man to stand by her as he does her.

  ‘We’re on the threshold of a new era, Sam, and I predict that it’s one that will allow people to coexist in harmony as individuals and that the old straitjackets which required people to conform to certain rigid patterns will be swept aside as people overcome their fears and prejudices to accept one another as they are, to respect them as they are...

  ‘No, you may not have made a good traditional Governor’s wife, the kind that was always there two steps behind her husband and faded into the wallpaper, but that isn’t the kind of wife I’ve ever wanted. I want a wife who will be my partner in every sense of the word and she’ll be standing there right alongside me and sometimes, I guess, right in front of me,’ Liam concluded, almost humorously.

  For a moment Samantha was too moved to speak. Everything he had said had touched her so emotionally that she knew she was frighteningly close to breaking down and telling him exactly how she felt about him. How could she not love him now, after what he had just said?

  ‘Do the voters know about all this?’ she managed to joke shakily.

 
; ‘The voters have no role to play in my private relationship with you, Sam. Besides,’ he added quietly, ‘it may have been true that I did once think of you as a woman too individual by far to conform to being a politician’s wife, but I was wrong. It wasn’t you who needed to change your thinking but me who needed to change mine, and I have done, Sam. I don’t just love you, I admire and respect you, as well. There’s nothing about you I could ever want to change—not one single thing—apart, of course, from changing your name to mine!’ Liam told her in a slow smoky voice that made her stomach tie itself in knots and her heart turn somersaults inside her chest.

  Oh, why, why was he doing this to her...? Why couldn’t he just agree with what she had said and walk away from her?

  ‘Uh...but we don’t have a private relationship,’ she told him huskily. ‘It’s just pretend, Liam...it’s...’

  ‘Is it?’ he challenged her, and then the next minute she was in his arms and he was holding her, kissing her gently at first and then he felt the soft tremulous response of her lips and the betraying shudder of pleasure that racked through her with a fierce hungry passion that had all Samantha’s objections dying unspoken. All she could do, all she wanted to do, was to simply cling to him; respond to him, give him all the love in her that was bursting to be expressed.

  ‘If the voters can’t see what an asset you’d be, what a gift you are, then that’s their loss,’ she could hear Liam saying thickly to her as he cupped her face and looked down into her eyes with such a blaze of love in his that Samantha felt as though its heat was going to melt her right through to her toes.

  ‘And their loss isn’t going to be mine. Rather than lose you I’d step down from the race.’

  Samantha’s eyes widened. She could see in his eyes, hear in his voice, that he meant exactly what he was saying.