by Alexis Moore
“Come and dance,” he’d encouraged.
“I don’t dance,” she’d lied. She may not have enjoyed the ballet lessons the school had insisted would teach poise and grace, but she loved all other forms of dance.
“I’ll teach you.” He’d come further into the room and stood smiling down at her.
Up close he’d taken her breath away. His eyes were an unusual shade of green and framed by long, thick, dark lashes and his lightly tanned skin was flawless. And as if he hadn’t been blessed with more good looks than anyone had a right to, the cutest dimple dented his left cheek when he smiled.
Until that moment Samantha had been oblivious to the opposite sex. In an instant she’d fallen head over heels, hopelessly in love.
“Zachary, you’d better leave my cousin alone if you don’t want to end up in jail!” Helen’s voice had broken the spell as she had breezed in to grab another chilled bottle of wine from the fridge. She’d then thrown over her shoulder as she’d exited the room, “She’s only a little girl.”
Zachary had straightened hastily, the teasing light fading from his eyes. “How old are you?”
“Fifteen.” She would have been sixteen in five weeks, though the angry flush that stained his cheekbones and the tightening of his jaw told her he wouldn’t be interested in the minor detail. She’d quickly apologized, “I was just about to tell you!”
“You’re too young to be dressed like that.” His voice and eyes had been icy with condemnation.
“It’s Helen’s,” she’d explained, pulling her wavy, waist-length hair forward to cover her cleavage. “She said the dress I brought with me was frumpy.”
“Better frumpy than looking like a…” He’d broken off then, but she’d known that he’d almost said the word “prostitute”. “Go change into your own dress and come back.”
Wanting to die of embarrassment, Samantha had sidled out of the room, past Helen’s half-drunken friends and up to the bedroom she would be sharing with her cousin for the night. She’d changed hurriedly, pulled her hair back into a ponytail and washed the makeup off her face.
“That’s better,” Zachary had said, his smile a little wry as he took in her altered appearance.
Then he’d grasped her by the waist tightly and for a moment she had panicked, heart hammering in her chest, wondering what he’d do next. All he’d done is lift her onto the high kitchen worktop and then jump up beside her.
They had talked like old friends until Helen returned for more alcohol. Her eyes had narrowed as she’d looked at them, their heads close together to catch each other’s words over the loud music.
“I think you should go up to bed now, Samantha,” she’d ordered. “I promised your father I’d look after you.”
“I’m giving her a lift home,” Zachary had informed Helen, surprising Samantha.
“You’re not taking my fifteen-year-old cousin anywhere!” Helen had stated angrily, grabbing Samantha’s arm and pulling her off the worktop. Shoving her younger cousin behind her, she had faced Zachary like a lioness protecting her cub. “She’s a minor and I can’t in all conscience let her go home at this time of night in a car alone with a grown man.”
“Zoë will be in the car, too,” Zachary had stated with distain. He’d clearly seen right through Helen’s unconvincing little act—after all she’d been the one responsible for dressing her cousin inappropriately in a house full of horny young men who were freely imbibing of the endless supply of alcohol available.
“Oh,” Helen’s relief had seemed odd to Samantha—she’d acted as if she was jealous. “I thought you meant to take her home and then return for Zoë.”
“Helen, what’s taking you so long?” a dark-haired young woman demanded as she’d burst into the kitchen, looking unsteady in four-inch heels. She shared Zachary’s features, but was incredibly even more gorgeous. It was only then that Samantha remembered Helen mentioning earlier in the day that she hoped her friend Zoë brought her dishy twin brother Zachary to the party.
“Get your stuff, Zoë. We’re leaving.” Zachary hopped lightly off the worktop and walked over to his sister.
“You’re such a spoilsport, Zac,” she’d accused with a pout, but had leaned against him and wrapped her arms around his waist.
“And you’ve had more than enough to drink,” he’d responded, tenderly brushing her hair off her forehead.
The image of them, so clearly fond of each other, stayed in Samantha’s memory.
“Why did you tell Helen you would drop me home?” she’d asked when both his twin and her cousin had left the room.
“It’s not safe for you to stay here.”
“What do you mean?” She’d stayed overnight with Helen’s parents dozens of times before.
“There are no adults in the house and there’s still a lot of alcohol left. Things could get out of control later. Trust me, you wouldn’t want to be around then.”
It was only years later when she’d attended similar parties while at university that she’d understood the danger she’d been in that night. At the time she’d been more concerned with ensuring that he hadn’t drunk any alcohol himself.
“You haven’t been drinking too, have you?” she’d double checked.
All he’d drunk when they were chatting was some Coca Cola, but her mother had been killed by a driver who had been over the drink-drive limit and she’d vowed never to get into a car with anyone who had been drinking.
“All I’ve had is two glasses of Coke.” he’d reassured her. “I don’t drink and drive.”
The cool air as they had stepped outside minutes later seemed to suddenly increase Zoë’s inebriety. She’d crawled into the back of the car and promptly fallen asleep.
“Poor thing. She doesn’t have a head for liquor,” Zachary had explained as he’d tried to prop his sister up and fit the seatbelt around her. “But she only has a couple of glasses of wine when I’m around to look after her.”
He and Samantha had continued to chat on the way to her home. When they got there, he’d walked her to the front door and on a whim she’d said hopefully, “I’ll be sixteen on the 24th of next month.”
“You’re too young for me, sweetheart,” he’d said with seeming regret, but had taken the sting out of the words by bending to kiss her lightly on the lips.
The kiss may have been innocent by his standards but Samantha had felt the thrill of it all the way to her toes. She’d watched, dazed, as he’d run back to the car, waved goodbye and roared off into the night.
On her sixteenth birthday he’d sent her sixteen white roses and a ‘Sweet Sixteen’ birthday card.
On her eighteenth he’d given her an orange topaz necklace and taken her to dinner. Later they’d shared their first and only adult kiss.
***
Chapter Two
As soon as Zachary’s car came to a stop on the driveway of her father’s six-bedroom home, Celia Herbert, his housekeeper and the closest to a mother figure Samantha had known since she’d lost hers, flew out of the front door and enveloped Samantha in a cinnamon-scented embrace.
“It’s so good to have you home, Samantha!”
“It’s good to be home.” Samantha swallowed the sudden obstruction in her throat and asked, “How’s he?”
Zachary’s hand closed over hers reassuringly.
“Not good,” the woman’s eyes rapidly filled. It confirmed two things to Samantha: that her father’s condition was as bad as she’d feared and that the housekeeper had been secretly in love with her father for years. “I begged him to call you months ago but the stubborn fool refused.”
Her father’s empty rocking chair made Samantha’s heart summersault as she stepped into the living room.
Surely…?
“Where’s he?” she demanded, clutching the housekeeper’s arm in fear.
“He’s in his room sleeping.” The older woman patted Samantha’s hand gently, ignoring the tightness of her grip. “The nurse is with him.”
“Nurse?”
“I hired someone to be with him during the day. I sit with him at night. He should be in hospital, but he insisted on dy…” The housekeeper gave a strangled gasp and hastily corrected her words, “He insisted on being in his own bed.”
Distraught, Samantha released the woman’s arm and pulled her hand away from Zachary’s to cover her face as she fought to catch her breath. Then whirling quickly, she ran to the central staircase, kicked off her high-heeled pumps and took the steps inelegantly, two at a time, in stockinged feet. Her heart felt as if it would explode out of her chest as she raced along the corridor to her father’s room.
The middle-aged woman sitting on the chair at his bedside placed a finger to her lips to indicate her patient was fast asleep.
His breathing was laboured and he seemed to have suddenly shrunk Samantha noted as she approached the bed, took his right hand and held it gently between hers. As a child she had often done that, fascinated by the fact that though she looked like her mother, her hands were replicas of his. They had been so much larger than hers then—now they’d shrunk to nothing more than skin stretched tautly over bone.
The coolness of his hand forcibly brought home the reality that he was close to dying.
She had hoped against hope that her fears were unfounded, that he’d have months not days to live.
Hope had not been enough.
Zachary came up behind her and wrapped his arm around her shoulders as they started to quiver. She turned and buried her face against his solid chest as despair overwhelmed her. Gently he placed her father’s hand back on the top of the sheet and led her out of the room.
“He looks so helpless, Zac,” she sobbed into his crisp white shirt. At 6’5” her father had always been a giant of a man, seeming strong and indestructible even when she’d matured and grown to her full height of 5’9”. She had prepared herself for the fact that he would have lost some weight, but the sheer scale of weight loss in the relatively short space of time since she’d last seen him was staggering—he was barely recognizable to her.
“Miss McMillan?” The nurse’s Irish brogue was so similar to her late paternal grandmother’s Samantha knew that the housekeeper must have deliberately chosen the woman because of it. Her father had been his mother’s “delightful surprise” at the age of forty-four and they’d loved each other dearly. Samantha’s heart felt a little lighter at the thought of the woman’s voice evoking pleasant memories of his mother and undoubtedly bringing her father comfort when he most needed it. “Your father’s awake.”
The nurse had inclined the head of the bed before coming to summon Samantha and her father’s blue eyes lit up when they caught sight of her at the doorway. She flew across the room, remembering at the last minute not to throw herself into his embrace as she’d always done.
“So sorry…my darling girl.” Samantha had blamed the less-than-state-of-the-art Rwandan telecommunication system for the change she’d heard in her father’s voice the day before. It hadn’t been responsible—every syllable of every word seemed to cause him effort. It was painful to hear and see.
“Don’t try to talk, Dad.” Leaning forward, she placed her face gently against his and wrapped her arms around him. “I’m here now.”
It had been almost impossible to get her arms fully around him when he’d been at his prime. Now she could do so with room to spare.
She held back her tears until she felt his trickling down her skin.
Dimly she heard Zachary tell the nurse to have a coffee break. Then she felt his hand on her back, rubbing in soothing circles.
Her father died two days later. He opened his eyes one last time and smiled at her, then he whispered her mother’s name and quietly passed away, holding her hand and looking at peace.
***
A light tap on her bedroom door was followed by Celia Herbert’s head around it. “Zachary’s here. Do you feel up to company?”
Samantha nodded and the housekeeper withdrew.
It was exactly one week after her father’s funeral and she felt no desire to do anything but sleep. She knew that she had to snap out of her lethargy soon—it was the slippery slope to depression. But not yet. She’d been dealt another blow too soon after her father’s death. She needed time to recover.
Hearing Zachary’s firm thread on the stairs, she hastily pulled the covers up to her chest, although the cotton nightgown she was wearing could hardly be called indecent.
He tapped on the open door and then walked slowly into the room, his eyes meeting hers sympathetically. “Feeling any better?”
“The shock’s worn off, but I still feel numb.”
“I brought something to cheer you up.”
He had kept both hands behind him. Now he brought his right hand forward to reveal a gift bag with the logo of a top chocolatier who sold the most decadent dark-chocolate covered Brazil nuts.
“Thank you.” She took the bag and placed it on her bedside table. Ordinarily her mouth would have watered at the sight of the logo alone and she would have immediately sampled one at least. Right now she had no appetite for them.
“What about these?” He brought his left hand around and brandished two new romance novels. “I didn’t know if you still read them, but I took the chance that you did.”
“I haven’t in years.” She had been too busy with real life to spent time fantasizing. “But they’re just what I need at the moment—something to make me forget my troubles.”
“The bookstore owner assured me that they’re new…only arrived yesterday. They’re both about Russian billionaires and British virgins.”
“Russian billionaires are hot at the moment,” Samantha told him.
Well, billionaires full stop.
“I’ll have to change my nationality, then.” He smiled roguishly. “Although I don’t know what I would do with a virgin.”
“The same thing you do with supermodels,” she retorted.
She had known there was no hope of their friendship deepening when she’d met his first girlfriend Melanie, a fellow Oxford student, with her slender body and cool, blonde beauty. That conviction had been reinforced when she’d watched the entertainment news years later and seen him with the actress who had won the coveted supporting role in that summer’s British blockbuster. Later that week he had taken Samantha and the actress to Heston Blumenthal’s The Fat Duck. In person the actress had been even slimmer than she’d appeared on the screen. Samantha had secretly dubbed her a size ‘minus-two’. The restaurant was renowned for its unusual dishes, yet the actress had slowly and daintily picked her way through half a green salad with no dressing and watched in horror as Samantha sampled each of the delights placed in front of her.
After the actress Zachary seemed to develop a taste for blonde supermodels.
“I haven’t slept with half as many models as the tabloids claim.”
“Are you saying that some of the pictures were Photoshoped?” she challenged.
“I’m saying that I don’t sleep with every woman I date.”
Samantha gave a disbelieving snicker.
“Where’s the copy of the will?” he asked, changing the subject and bringing Samantha back to reality with a bump.
The day after the funeral Samantha had met with her father’s lawyer, Mr Truman. By then Zachary had flown back to Italy to finalize negotiations with the car manufacturer. The will should have been a mere formality. Born seventeen years apart, her father and his older sister hadn’t been particularly close. She had retired as the head of an Inner London school, married and moved to the Maldives. She’d sent her condolences but hadn’t attended the funeral. Her younger brother hadn’t left her anything in his will, probably assuming that she would have predeceased him. He bequeathed Mrs Herbert fifty thousand pounds. The housekeeper had wept openly when informed and Samantha had been thrilled for the woman, thinking that perhaps her father hadn’t been as oblivious to the woman’s love for him as Samantha had always thought.
&n
bsp; He had left Samantha everything else…but with a small proviso.
She reached under her pillow and handed Zachary the document she’d read a dozen times already, looking for the tiniest flaw she could exploit to her advantage. She could have recited the words to him.
I bequeath all my other worldly goods to my beloved daughter Samantha Louise, with the provision that she marries and gives birth to a child by her thirtieth birthday or within three years of my death, whichever is the later. If she fails to meet these conditions, all remaining assets will be donated to Cancer Research.
Her father had been more upset than she’d realize by her going to Rwanda.
Now she understood what he’d been apologizing for!
“I’m not upset about the money,” she explained as Zachary raised his head after perusing the document twice. “Cancer Research is a worthy cause and it’s fitting considering what he died of, but he knew how much I love Rosewood. I grew up there. I feel my mother’s presence more strongly here that anywhere else. I can’t lose it, Zac. I just can’t!”
“Sam, there’s nothing here that says you can’t have it.”
“Only the minor detail of finding a husband. And oh, let’s not forget having a baby within the next thirty-four months! No pressure.”
“Your father loved you and worried that you would volunteer your service to one war-torn country after the next. This was just his way of keeping you in the UK.”
“But he knew that I intended to return to the UK permanently in three weeks’ time.”
“You returned permanently at Christmas,” Zachary reminded her. “And less than two weeks later, you went back to Rwanda.”
“You know I hadn’t planned to, but I couldn’t leave Daniel in the lurch when Christopher left after only a week!”
“You’d already spent a year instead of six months.” His voice had unconsciously risen and Samantha stared at him in surprise. He prided himself on always keeping his cool—she’d never realized that her decision had angered him too. “Why did you have to be the one to return?”
