The Perfect Lover

by Penny Jordan

  Louise, despite her determination to focus on her career, had always liked children and enjoyed their company. As a teenager she had often babysat for Saul, and had formed quite a close bond with his three, and now, to her chagrin, she suddenly felt her eyes filling with emotional feminine tears as Scott's baby kisses touched her skin.

  Quickly she handed him back to Tullah, telling her chokingly, 'Tullah, I'm sorry...'

  And both of them knew that it wasn't what was happening now that she was apologising for.

  Very gently Tullah touched her arm.

  'It's over, Lou,' she told her softly. 'Forget it. We have. You were missed at Christmas—by all of us...' As she turned to return to Saul and the children, she paused and dropped a light kiss on Louise's cheek.

  'Forget it', Tullah had said. Louise closed her eyes as Tullah walked away. If only she could. Tullah and Saul might have forgiven her, but she doubted that she would ever be able to forgive herself...

  'Is everything all right, darling?'

  Louise forced a determined smile as she read the concern in her mother's eyes.

  'Fine,' she assured her. A quick look around her grandfather's drawing room reassured her that she was no longer the object of everyone's discreet attention. Taking a deep breath, Louise commented as steadily as she could, 'I was just saying to Tullah that Scott has Saul's eyes but her colouring...'

  'Yes, he has, hasn't he?' Jenny Crighton agreed gratefully, relief leaking through the anxiety that had gripped her.

  In one sense it had been a relief when Louise had finally agreed to come home for her grandfather's birthday, but in another...

  Louise was her daughter, and she loved her, worried over her—how could she not do so?—but she had to admit that she had been anxious.

  Louise had a quick temper coupled with a very easily bruised sense of pride. Watching Max talking with his sister earlier had made Jenny pray that Max wouldn't do or say something to upset his sister and put her on the defensive.

  Tullah and Olivia—Jenny's niece and Louise's cousin—had both tried to reassure Jenny that everything would be all right, that teenage crushes were something that happened to everyone, and that it was just Louise's misfortune that hers had happened to be conducted under such a public glare of family attention, and that the object of her untrammelled teenage passion had been a member of her own family.

  'She behaved so very badly,' Jenny had reminded them sorrowfully.

  'Things did get a little out of hand,' Tullah had agreed. 'But since Louise's behaviour resulted in Saul and I getting together, and recognising how we really felt-about one another far more quickly than we might otherwise have done, I have to admit that I feel more inclined to be grateful to her than anything else.'

  'Louise made a mistake,' Olivia had added. 'Making mistakes is something we all do, and personally I think she'll end up a better, more well-rounded person for having had it brought home to her that she is fallible and human. She was rather inclined to think herself above everyone else,' she had reminded Jenny ruefully. 'A combination, perhaps, of a certain Crighton gene plus a very, very shrewd brain. What happened has softened her, made her realise that she's a human being and that there are some things she can't programme herself to achieve...'

  'Have you had anything to eat yet?' Jenny pressed now. Jon, her husband, kept reminding her that Louise was now an adult woman, living her own life and holding down a very high-pressured job, but to Jenny she was still very much one of her babies, and to a mother's concerned eye Louise looked just that little bit too slender.

  'I was just going to get myself something,' Louise fibbed. She was well aware of just how generous Tullah had been in coming over to her like that, but despite that generosity there was still a small knot of anxiety in Louise's stomach which made her feel that it would be unwise trying to eat.

  'I was just on my way to wish Gramps a happy birthday,' she told her mother, and hopefully, once she had done so, she would be able to leave without the others thinking that...that what? That she was running away?

  Running away. No, she wasn't doing that, had never done that, despite what some people chose to think!

  'European Parliament... bunch of committee- making bureaucrats who are far too removed from what's going on in the real world...'

  Louise gritted her teeth as she listened to Ben Crighton, her grandfather and family patriarch, a few minutes later. As she was perfectly well aware, so far as he was concerned the only real way, the only worthwhile way, to practise the law was from a barrister's chambers.

  Excusing herself before she allowed him to provoke her into an argument, Louise couldn't help feeling sorry for Maddy, who had moved into the old man's large country house following an operation on his hip the year before.

  The move, at first merely a temporary one to ensure that he had someone to care for him in the short term, had turned into a more permanent arrangement, with Maddy and the children living full time in Haslewich with Max's grandfather while Max spent most of his time living and working in London.

  Louise couldn't understand how or why Maddy put up with Max's blatant selfishness—and his equally blatant infidelities. She certainly would never have done so, but then she would never have married a man like her brother in a thousand lifetimes. She knew how much it distressed her parents that he had turned out the way he had. Max was as unprincipled and selfish in other areas of his life as he was in his role aVa husband.

  Unlike their uncle David, Olivia's father and her own father's twin brother, Max might never have actually broken the law, but Louise suspected that he was perfectly capable if not of doing so, then certainly of bending it to suit his own purposes.

  'He doesn't change, does he?' The rueful, familiar tones of Saul's voice coming from behind her caused Louise to whirl round, her face a stiff mask of wariness as she watched him.

  The last time she and Saul had spoken to each other had been when he had consigned her to Olivia's charge, having just made it clear to her that, far from returning her feelings for him, he would really prefer never to have to set eyes on her again.

  Words spoken in the heat of the moment, perhaps, but they had left their mark, their scar upon her, not least because she knew how richly deserved his fury and rejection of her had been.

  'I suppose at his age...' Louise began, and then shook her head and agreed huskily, 'No. No, he doesn't.'

  Ridiculous for her, at twenty-two, to feel as uncomfortable and ill at ease as a guilty child, but nevertheless she did.

  Whatever malign fate had decided to make Saul the object of her teenage fantasies and longings had long since upped sticks and decamped from her emotions. The man she saw standing in front of her might not have changed but she certainly had. The Saul she saw standing before her now was once again, thankfully, nothing more to her than another member of her family.

  'Your mother says you're only paying a flying visit home this time.'

  'Yes. Yes, that's right,' Louise agreed. 'Pam Carlisle, my boss, has been asked to sit on a new committee being set up to look into the problems caused by potential over-fishing in the seas off the Arctic. Obviously from the legal angle there's going to be a lot of research work involved, which I'll be involved in.''Mmra...sounds like a good breeding ground for potential future Euro politicians in the Crighton family,' Saul teased, but Louise shook her head.

  'No. Definitely not,' she denied firmly. 'Politics isn't for me. I'm afraid I'm far too outspoken for a start,' she told him ruefully. 'And politics requires a great deal more finesse than I'll ever possess.'

  'You're too hard on yourself,' Saul told her. 'In more ways than one,' he added meaningfully, forcing her to hold his gaze as he added quietly, 'It's time for us to make a fresh start, Lou. What happened happened, but it's in the past now...'

  Before she could say anything he added, 'Tullah and I will be coming over to Brussels some time in the next few months on company business. It would be nice if we could meet up...go out for dinner toge
ther...'

  Saul worked for Aarlston-Becker, a large multinational company whose European head office was based just outside Haslewich. He and Tullah had met when she had gone to work in the company's legal department under Saul.

  Unable to do anything other than simply nod her head, Louise was stunned when Saul suddenly reached out and took her in his arms, holding her tightly in a cousinly hug as he told her gruffly, 'friends again, Lou.'

  'Friends,' she managed to agree chokily, fiercely blinking back her tears.

  'And don't forget...write to me...'

  Louise grimaced as she listened to Katie's firm command. 'Why on earth did you have to go and get yourself involved with some wretched charity outfit that can't even run to the expense of a fax machine?' she groaned.

  'YOU tell me...but I do enjoy my job,' Katie pointed out.

  They were saying goodbye at the airport, their mother having dropped them off on her way to a meeting of the charity she and their great-aunt Ruth had set up in their home town some years earlier.

  'Sorry I can't see you off properly,' she had apologised as they climbed out of her small car.

  'Don't worry about it, Mum; we understand,' Louise had consoled her.

  'You could always come over to Brussels to see me, you know,' Louise told her twin abruptly now. 'I'll pay for the ticket, if that would help.'

  Katie gave her a brief hug. She knew how difficult it was for her sister to admit that there were any chinks in her emotional armour, even to her twin. To the world at large, Louise always came across as the more independent one of the two of them, the leader. But in reality Katie believed that she was the one with the less sensitively acute emotions, even though she knew that Louise would have sharply denied such an allegation. Louise had always taken upon herself the role of the bigger, braver sister, but Katie knew that inside Louise was nowhere near as confident or as determinedly independent as others seemed to think.

  Even their parents seemed to have been deceived by Louise's outward assumption of sturdy bravado, and consequently she was the one .who was always treated that little bit more gently, the one for whom extra allowances were always made, Katie acknowledged. A fact which made her oddly protective of her sister.

  'Oh, by the way, did you know that Professor Simmonds has been seconded to Brussels? Apparently he's been asked to head some committee on fishing rights in the North Sea,' Katie told her vaguely.

  'What? No, I didn't know,' Louise responded, her face paling.

  'No? I thought that perhaps you may have bumped into him,' Katie told her innocently.

  'No, I haven't!' But if what Katie had just told her was true, Louise suspected that she was certainly going to do so. The committee Katie was talking about had to be the same one that Louise's boss had just been co-opted onto. Of all the unwanted coincidences!

  Louise's thoughts rioted frantically, her stomach churning, but she dared not let Katie see how shocked and disturbed she was.

  'I know you don't like him,' Katie was saying quietly.

  'No. I don't,' Louise agreed curtly. 'After all, he cost me my first, and—'

  'Louise, that's not fair,' Katie objected gently.

  Louise looked away from her. There was so much that Katie didn't know, that she couldn't tell her.

  Gareth Simmonds had been her tutor at Oxford at a particularly traumatic time in her life, and he had been a witness not just to that trauma, and the way she had made a complete and utter fool of herself, but he had also...

  Louise bit her lip. The feeling of panic churning her stomach was increasing instead of easing.

  'That's the final call for my flight,' she told Katie thankfully, giving her twin a swift hug before grabbing hold of her flight bag and heading for her gateway.

  Gareth Simmonds in Brussels!

  That was all she needed!

  CHAPTER TWO

  GARETH SIMMONDS in Brussels! Louise gave a small groan and closed her eyes, shaking her head in refusal of the stewardess's offer of a drink.

  Trust Katie to wait to drop that bombshell on her until the last minute. Still, at least she had warned her, and forewarned was, as they say, forearmed.

  Gareth Simmonds. She ground her teeth in impotent fury. She had been halfway through her first year when he had stepped into the shoes of her previous tutor, who'd had to retire unexpectedly on the grounds of ill health, and he and Louise had clashed right from the start.

  She had resented the far more pro-active role he had made it plain he intended to play as her tutor. She had been used to his elderly and ailing predecessor, who had, in the main, been content to leave her to her own devices—something which had suited Louise down to the ground, giving her, as it had, ample opportunity to give the minimum amount of attention to her studies whilst she concentrated on what had become the far more important matter of making Saul fall in love with her.

  The situation would have been bad enough if Gareth Simmonds had merely concerned himself with his official role as her tutor, but, no, that hadn't been enough for him. He had had the gall... the cheek...the...the effrontery to take it upon himself to interfere in her personal life as well.

  Louise's tense shoulders twitched angrily. The last thing she needed right now—just when she was beginning to feel she was getting her life back on an even keel again, just when the events of the weekend had made her feel that at last, finally, she had begun to reclaim her sense of self-respect—was to have the whole ugly mess of her past dragged up again in the person of Gareth Simmonds.

  He was going to Brussels to head a committee, Katie had said, when repeating to her the information she had garnered at an informal reunion of her old university classmates, and not just any committee either. Louise could feel her body starting to tense defensively. The thought that she might have to have any kind of contact with Gareth Simmonds was unacceptable, untenable. Anger, pride and panic started to well up inside her, causing her throat to tighten as though her own despairing emotions were threatening to choke her.

  Gareth Simmonds. They had clashed straight away, something about him sending sharp, prickling, atavistic feelings of dislike and apprehension quivering through her body, and that had been before that disastrous confrontation between them at the end of her first year at Oxford, when he had sent for her and warned her of the potentially dire consequences of her not giving more time and attention to her work.

  She had been far more headstrong and self-willed in those days, and the fact that he had had the gall to challenge her over anything, never mind the torment of .her love for Saul, had driven her to retaliate. But he had been too quick for her, too subtle...too...

  She had hated him with much the same intensity with which she had loved Saul, and with just as little effect, and the last thing she wanted or needed at this stage in her life was to be confronted with the physical evidence of her own youthful stupidity.

  She could still remember...

  There had been a good deal of giggling and gossip when he had first arrived at Oxford—the youngest Chair they had ever had, and the sexiest, according to his female students. Louise had shrugged her shoulders in disdain. However sexy others might find him, she was not interested. In her eyes he could never match up to Saul. No man could.

  True, he might be over six feet with the kind of Celtic colouring that produced a lethal combination of thick dark hair and incredibly brilliant dark blue eyes, but for all Louise cared he could have modelled for the hunchback of Notre Dame.

  'Have you heard his voice,' one besotted student had breathed, wild-eyed. 'I could orgasm just listening to him.'

  Louise had looked witheringly at her. Saul's voice made her go weak at the knees, and Gareth Simmonds sounded nothing like him. In fact, the only things they did have in common were that they were both in their thirties—although Gareth Simmonds was a good seven years younger than Saul—and they could both display a decidedly brutal verbal toughness when they so chose. From Saul, the merest hint of a sharp word could reduce her
to choking black misery. From Gareth Simmonds it tended to provoke a fierce desire to retaliate in kind.

  He might have been her tutor, but that hadn't given him the right to interfere in her life in the way he had done—and besides... But, no, she must not think about that—not now.

  Abruptly Louise realised that the plane had landed.

  Automatically she stood up and reached to retrieve her bag from the overhead locker, and then froze as the man occupying the seat behind her also stood up to do the same thing.

  'You!' she whispered as she came face to face with the very man who had just been occupying her thoughts and exercising her temper.

  'Hello, Louise.' Gareth Simmonds acknowledged her calmly. Shakily Louise grabbed her bag and turned her back on him. What an appalling coincidence that he should be on the same flight as her!

  Determinedly keeping her back towards him, Louise edged her way into the aisle and headed for the exit.

  A sharp wind whipped across the tarmac as they left the plane, and as she hurried towards the arrivals lounge Louise reassured herself that her quickened pace was caused by the chilly evening air, and certainly not by any fear of coming face to face with Gareth Simmonds a second time.

  Once through Customs Louise headed for the taxi rank, giving the cab driver her address at the large block of apartments where she lived. The apartment she rented was small, and fearsomely expensive, but at least she lived on her own, she comforted herself as., she paid off the taxi driver and walked into the apartment block foyer.

  While she filled the kettle, Louise ran her answering machine tape. A small rueful smile curled her mouth as she heard Jean Claude's familiar, sexy, smoky French accent. She had dated the Frenchman casually a few times, but was well aware of his reputation as an incorrigible flirt.

  He was telephoning to ask if she was free for dinner during the week. Louise went to pick up and open her diary. She was due to accompany her boss to an inaugural meeting of the new committee in the morning. She suspected it might possibly run on until after lunch, and then at night there was an official dinner.