Penny Jordan's Crighton Family Series

‘Why not? You’re here, aren’t you?’ Caspar returned lovingly.

‘Oh, Caspar!’ she cried. ‘I love you, I love you so much.’

‘Thank you,’ he replied simply before adding, ‘and never mind “Oh, Caspar”. What I want to hear and what I fully intend to hear is “Oooh … oooh … ooooh, Caspar”.’

Olivia laughed. ‘Really. And there was I hoping you wouldn’t leave me breath for anything like that….’ she managed to say between kisses. She laughed again as he released her and she started to run towards the stairs, knowing perfectly well that he would catch her long before she made it to the comfortable guest bedroom with its cosy double bed.

David smiled at the receptionist.

‘You’re leaving us?’ she asked, frowning. ‘But …’

‘I have to go,’ David told her confidingly. ‘My wife isn’t very well unfortunately and I’m needed at home.’

‘Oh, well, in that case, I suppose …’

David gave her a second smile. He had been planning things all day. No need for him to concern himself with Tiggy any more, thank God. Someone else had that onerous responsibility now. Jack was safe with Jon and Jenny. There was the other matter, of course, but he knew that Jon would find a way of sorting things out. Good old Jon.

It was time he was allowed to choose what he wanted to do with his own life. High time. Ben would naturally be upset … but he would understand; he always had. Still smiling, David walked out into the darkness.

‘He’s left …? But how … where …?’ Jon asked the receptionist in exasperation. She had been summoned by the specialist, whom Jon had telephoned when he discovered that David had checked out of the nursing home, to explain exactly what had happened.

‘I don’t know,’ she replied unhelpfully. ‘He didn’t say. He just said that his wife needed him.’

Jon looked at the specialist, who shook his head. ‘I’ve already checked. I’m afraid they haven’t seen or heard from him.’

‘But where has he gone?’ Jon queried a second time, ‘and why?’

Mr Hayes frowned as he looked at him. ‘I don’t know,’ he admitted, ‘but what I do know is that every year, every day, people do disappear by choice. Some because they see it as their only way out of an impossible situation, and some, because … well … who knows?’

‘You think David has done that … simply disappeared?’

‘Chosen to disappear,’ the specialist corrected him.

Jon closed his eyes.

‘Try not to worry,’ the other man advised. ‘He may simply have gone to visit friends or …’ When he saw the look Jon was giving him, he stopped. ‘It happens,’ he said, shrugging. ‘It does happen.’

As he drove onto the ferry, David was whistling. God but he felt good. This was how life should be lived. How life, his life, was meant to be lived. Freely—unplanned, uncluttered and unencumbered by the needs of others. He was free at last!

‘What on earth are we going to tell Ben?’ Jon asked Jenny soberly after he told her what had happened.

‘Nothing,’ Jenny told him crisply. ‘Let the doctor tell him. David is not your responsibility, Jon,’ she reminded her husband. ‘He’s your brother, you are his twin, yes, but he is not your responsibility. Besides, we’ve got a wedding to plan,’ she reminded him.

‘And one to attend,’ Jon agreed.

Max had telephoned them earlier to announce his engagement just after Olivia and Caspar had left, Olivia having half-shyly asked Jenny if she would help her with her wedding plans.

‘I don’t want a big fussy affair, just something very traditional and simple….’

‘Don’t listen to her,’ Caspar had warned Jenny. ‘I want the whole works so that I can bore the pants off our grandchildren, talking about it to them.’

‘David’s made his choice about the way he wants to live his life,’ Jenny told Jon gently as she leaned across to kiss him. ‘That’s his right … just as it’s our right to choose how we live our lives.’

Lovingly he smiled back at her and then murmured, ‘Do you think two ancient people in their forties and fifties would be allowed by their offspring to plead tiredness and go to bed early?’

‘Not if it’s Joss you’re trying to convince,’ Jenny answered, laughing. ‘You promised you’d take him and Jack fishing tonight, remember …?’

Jon groaned and demanded plaintively, ‘What does a man have to do in this household to get time on his own with his wife?’

‘Put sleeping tablets in everyone else’s milk?’ Jenny suggested drolly.

‘I wish,’ was Jon’s heartfelt response as Joss came rushing in, demanding to know if his father was ready to leave. ‘Oh, I wish!’

The Perfect Seduction (#ufcc4f2fd-df2c-5918-87db-8cfc05f14296)

Welcome to Penny Jordan’s miniseries featuring the Crighton family.

This is no ordinary family because, although the affluent Crightons might appear to have it all, shocking revelations and heartache lie just beneath the surface of their perfect, charmed lives.

CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_3710aecc-8e64-5f4a-8f89-cb98afbc3240)

JOSS saw her first. He was on his way back from visiting his great-aunt Ruth in her house on Church Walk and she was standing in the churchyard studying the headstones, her head bent over one of them, a tumble of thick, glossy blonde curls obscuring her face. When she looked up, alerted to his presence by the sound of a small twig cracking under his foot, Joss stared at her in open wonder and awe.

She was tall, much much taller than him; at least six foot, he estimated.

‘And a couple of inches,’ she drawled in amusement as she watched the way he was assessing her height, ‘and then I guess you’d be somewhere roundabouts right. I-guess no one kinda likes to think of a woman being over six foot. Tell them you’re five-eleven, it’s okay and my, aren’t you lucky being so tall, but tell them you’re sixone going on six-two and they think you’re a freak. After all, what kinda right-thinking woman allows herself to grow too tall for most of your average guys.’

‘I don’t think you’re too tall,’ Joss told her gallantly, manfully squaring his own ten-year-old shoulders and looking up into her eyes.

And what eyes they were, surely the deepest, darkest blue that ever was. Joss had never seen eyes like them before. He had never seen anyone like her before.

She watched him gravely for a second before her mouth curled into a smile that made Joss’s insides turn to jelly and told him, ‘Why that’s mighty kind of you, but I guess I know what you’re really thinking ... that for a woman this tall finding a boy tall enough for me to look up to is kinda hard. Yes, well, you’re right,’ she went on with another dazzling smile, ‘and if you happen to know of any—’

‘I do,’ Joss told her quickly, already fiercely protective of her; already determined that no one should dare to criticise her or find her less than complete perfection, not even she herself. As he gazed at her, his eyes mirrored the intensity and immediacy of his first calf-love.

Speculatively she hesitated, not wanting to hurt him and yet at the same time wary of any involvement that might deflect her from her purpose in being there.

Haslewich might not be on any official tourist route like Chester, but she had been determined to visit it and, as yet, she had still not seen the remains of the castle and its wall, nor the newly sanitised salt-works that had recently been opened to the public as a tourist attraction, never mind the rest of the town’s historic sites. So far, in fact, all she had done was glance around the churchyard.

‘I’ve got two cousins,’ she heard Joss telling her. ‘Well, they aren’t exactly cousins,’ he acknowledged. ‘They’re really seconds, or maybe even thirds, I don’t know which. Aunt Ruth would know.

‘But anyway, James is six foot two and Luke is even taller and then there’s Alistair and Niall and Kit and Saul, too, I suppose, although he’s quite old—’

‘Gee...I’m really impressed,’ Bobbie interrupted him gently.

‘I could always introduce you to them,’ Joss offered enthusiastically. ‘That is, if you’re going to be here for a while...?’

He let the question hang.