The Perfect Seduction

‘Go and see this man—he’s a first-class divorce lawyer,’ he told her stiffly, scribbling a name and address down on a piece of paper and handing it to her without looking at her.

That had been six weeks ago. He had not seen or heard from her since, but he had not stopped thinking about her, remembering... She had been eighteen to his twenty-two; all Eve, all woman, teasing him, taunting him, laughing at him as he was unable to prevent himself from showing how he felt about her. It had been his first real experience of the intensity of emotional and physical love. And his last. He had been determined on that. Never again would any woman be allowed to put him through what she had—the pain, the self-contempt, the sheer intensity of emotions that had led only to the destruction of his pride and the humiliation of watching her walk away with another man. Any woman ... no matter who she might be.

Oh yes, he had seen the look in Fenella’s eyes as she sat opposite him and had guessed just what she was thinking. Her husband, despite his title and his wealth, or maybe because of them, was not the kind of man a woman would dream of having as her lover. A man’s man was generally how others described him, if they wanted to be tactful and generous. Overweight, boorish, self-opinionated, a traditionalist who said openly that he believed a woman’s place was in the home and, his being closer now to fifty than forty, it was understandable, Luke acknowledged cynically, why Fenella might prefer a generous divorce settlement and the chance to find herself a more congenial and appealing man. But that man was most definitely not going to be him.

Jenny was putting the final touches to the icing on the twins’ decorative birthday cake when Joss came bursting in. Predictably, Louise had announced earlier in that slightly bossy way that characterised her that they did not want their cake decorated with sickly, yukky flowers and things.

‘What do you want, then?’ Jenny had asked her, slightly exasperated. Both the girls were due to start university at the beginning of the autumn term and whilst she knew she was going to miss them, as she had commented ruefully to Jon, there were going to be certain advantages to their departure. The lack of arguments over their constant breaking of what Jenny considered to be a perfectly reasonable and even overgenerous curfew during school term time was one thing, and the other was the ability to go into her wardrobe without discovering that the very thing she wanted to wear was missing, presumed grubby and crumpled on the twins’ bedroom floor.

‘Something serious and meaningful,’ Louise had responded in answer to her mother’s wry question. She had given her father a lofty look as he teased, ‘Oh, you mean something like the Benjamin Bunny cake you drove us all crazy over...?’

‘That was years ago,’ she protested, turning her back on him as she informed her mother, ‘No. What we want is something that shows what Katie and I are planning to do with our lives.’

‘Oh, you mean a replica of your mother’s car with the petrol tank empty and a scraped front number plate,’ Jon offered helpfully.

‘No, that is not what I mean,’ Louise informed her father frostily, adding, ‘and anyway it wasn’t me who cracked the number plate, and as for the petrol... Do you know how much petrol actually costs?’

‘I have a fair idea, yes,’ Jon agreed mildly, causing Jenny to remind them both firmly that they were straying off the subject.

‘Oh, you know, Mum... something with a bit of a legal flavour to it.’

In the end, having got no further help from either of her daughters, Jenny had opted for a huge, plain iced cake decorated in darker icing with the scales of Justice.

‘Mum,’ Joss demanded, throwing down his school bag before going straight to the fridge and opening the door.

‘Joss, supper will be ready in half an hour,’ Jenny reminded him firmly, adding, ‘and you’re late. Where have you been?’

‘Mum, you know you said I could take a friend to the party on Saturday?’ Joss reminded her, ignoring her question.

‘I did say that, yes,’ Jenny agreed cautiously, ‘but...’

As a special treat Jon had announced that he had booked a large suite at the Grosvenor so that the girls and Jenny could get changed without worrying about crumpling their dresses on the journey from home and so that they did not have to travel back again until the morning after the party. Now Jenny, who had been planning to make sure that Joss went up to bed well before the party ended, wondered if they were going to be called upon to provide accommodation for Joss’s friend, as well.

‘You know we’re all staying overnight at the Grosvenor, Joss?’ she warned her son, ‘and I don’t know if your friend—’

‘That’s all right. I...I’ve arranged to meet them there,’ Joss told her hurriedly.

‘Oh well, in that case,’ Jenny agreed, relieved. There were innumerable things she still had to do and typically Louise had suddenly started being difficult about the outfit she had decided to wear, claiming that she had never wanted a dress at all and that she would much rather have worn trousers.

‘Mum, about my friend...’ Joss began excitedly.

But Jenny shook her head and told him impatiently, ‘Not now, Joss, please. I’ve got a hundred and one things left to do and you really ought to go and make a start on your homework before supper.’

‘But, Mum,’ Joss protested.

‘Homework,’ Jenny commanded firmly, adding, ‘and while you’re upstairs you might remind Jack that he still hasn’t produced his sports kit and if he wants it clean for football practice tomorrow...’

‘I’ll tell him,’ Joss agreed, going through the kitchen and heading for the stairs and the large, comfortably furnished bedroom-cum-study he shared with his cousin Jack, who had been living with them since the break-up of his parents’ marriage and the disappearance of his father, David.

Jack’s mother, Tania, after a long period of rehabilitation at a special centre for the treatment of people with eating disorders, was now living with her parents on the South Coast. Not yet entirely recovered from the years of suffering from bulimia, she had asked Jenny and Jon if Jack, her son, could continue to live with them.

Jenny had been happy to agree. In the time that he had been with them, Jack had become almost another son, the blood tie between him and her own children very close; their fathers were twins and everyone, but most importantly Jack himself, felt that it was better for him to remain in his present stable and familiar surroundings than to be uprooted to move south to live with his mother and maternal grandparents.

Although only two years separated them in age, at twelve going on thirteen to Joss’s ten, Jack had already entered puberty whereas Joss had not. Both boys got on well together, but Jack was now virtually a teenager growing towards young manhood, whilst Joss in many ways was still a boy, and being male, neither of them was inclined to confide in the other. Since Jack was engrossed in reading a sports magazine when Joss walked into their shared bedroom, the younger boy saw no reason to tell him about his encounter with Bobbie or inform him of the fact that he had invited her to his sisters’ party.

Possessed of a sunny, happy temperament with little inclination to brood or go looking for trouble and a logical way of reasoning things, it simply hadn’t occurred to Joss that his parents might not view with equanimity the discovery that his ‘friend’ and their guest at the party was not another ten-year-old boy but, in fact, a twenty-six-year-old woman.

It had occurred to Bobbie, though, as she ruefully admitted during the course of her telephone call home, surreptitiously timed so that she could speak to her sister when no one else was about to overhear them.

‘It’s the perfect access to the family and right into the heart of it, Sam,’ Bobbie admitted a little reluctantly. ‘I couldn’t believe it when he introduced himself to me as Joss Crighton.’

‘And how old did you say this kid was?’ Samantha Miller demanded of her sister.

‘I’m not sure, somewhere around ten or maybe eleven. He’s a real cutie, huge brown eyes and thick hair.’

‘Sounds great,’ Samantha commented enthusiastically.

Bobbie laughed. ‘Oh, he is!’

‘And you say he’s asked you to his sisters’ eighteenth birthday party?’

‘Mmm...’

‘What else did you find out? Did you—’

‘No, not yet,’ Bobbie interrupted her sister quickly. ‘We were a bit public for me to cross-question him too deeply and we might have been overheard. I don’t want anyone getting suspicious of either of us.’

‘Cross-question, I like that,’ Samantha told her grimly.

‘How are things at home?’ Bobbie asked, her voice suddenly becoming slightly tense and anxious. ‘How is Mom?’

‘She doesn’t have a clue,’ Samantha assured her, ‘although even if I say so myself I am doing rather a good job of running interference for you. The first couple of days you were gone she was going crazy, asking me if I knew where you were, if there was some man... Poor Mom, she’s just so desperate to get at least one of us married off.’

‘What did you tell her?’ Bobbie asked.

‘I said you’d mentioned something about needing to get away now that you aren’t seeing Nat any more.’

‘Oh thanks. So now she’ll be thinking I’m suffering from a broken heart,’ Bobbie told her sister indignantly.

‘Having her thinking that is better than having her guess the truth. When is this party by the way? We don’t have a lot of time, not if...’

‘No, I know. It’s on Saturday, at the Grosvenor in Chester where, as good luck has it, I’m staying. It will be the perfect opportunity, not just for me to find out as much as I can from Joss, but also to study the family in general.’

‘Do you think you-know-who will be there?’ Samantha asked, her voice suddenly tensing and becoming brittle with hostility and anger.

‘I don’t know.’

‘When I think of what they’ve done, the unhappiness they’ve caused...’