The Perfect Father

Now, some impulse she couldn’t name made Samantha ask Liam softly, ‘Do you still have it…the bear…?’

His austere features suddenly broke into an almost boyish grin and for one breath-stopping moment Samantha actually felt as though something or someone was physically jerking her heartstrings. Impossible, of course, hearts didn’t have strings and if hers had then there was no way that one Liam Connolly could possibly have jerked them. No, it was just the mental image she had had of him as a small boy listening solemnly to his grandfather whilst he related to him tales of his own Irish upbringing.

‘Yes.’

‘You’ll be able to keep it for your children and tell them the stories your grandparents told you,’ Samantha told him impulsively.

Immediately his features changed and became formidably harsh.

‘Don’t you jump on the bandwagon,’ he told her grittily. ‘Everyone seems determined to marry me off. I’ve even had Lee Calder giving interviews stating that a single, childless Governor won’t understand the needs of the state’s parents. My God, when I think of the way he’s been trying to cut down on our education.’

Lee Calder was Liam’s closest contender for the governorship, a radical right-winger whose views Samantha’s father found totally unsympathetic. Lee was an overweight, balding man in his mid-forties, twice married with five children who he had overdisciplined and controlled to such an extent that the eldest, a boy, was rumoured to have shown his unhappiness by stealing money from his parents and trashing the family home with a group of friends one summer when the family were on vacation without him.

No matter what her personal opinion of Liam might be, Samantha knew that her father was quite right when he said that Liam would make an excellent Governor. Highly principled, firm, a natural leader, the state would flourish with Liam at its helm.

Lee Calder on the other hand, despite cleverly managing to package himself as a devoted family man and churchgoer, had a string of shady dealings behind him—nothing that could be proved, but there was something about the man. Samantha vividly remembered the occasion at an official function when he had grabbed hold of her and tried to kiss her.

Fortunately she had been able to push him away but not before she had seen the decidedly nasty glint in his eyes as she rejected him.

She had been all of seventeen at the time and as she recalled his second wife had been pregnant with their first child.

‘Don’t accuse me of trying to marry you off,’ she challenged Liam now.

‘No. By the looks of what you’ve got in that case you’re more interested in changing your own single status,’ Liam agreed derisively.

‘I’ve told you, those are for Bobbie,’ Samantha insisted.

‘And I’ve told you if you really want to catch yourself a man, the best way to do it is by…’ He stopped when he saw her frown, then continued. ‘You know that I’m driving you to the airport in the morning, don’t you?’

‘Yes,’ Samantha agreed on a small sigh. She had a very early start and had been quite prepared to order a cab but her father could be an old-fashioned parent in some ways.

‘No, sweetheart, you know what you’re like for getting yourself anyplace on time.’

‘Dad,’ Samantha had protested, ‘that was years ago…and an accident…just because I once missed a plane doesn’t mean…’

‘Liam’s driving you,’ her father had announced, and Samantha had known better than to argue with him. ‘As it happens, he’s picking someone up, as well.’

‘Someone…Who?’ Samantha had asked her father curiously.

‘Someone from Washington. I want him to take her on board as his campaign PR, she’s very good.’

‘She?’ Samantha had raised her eyebrows, her voice sharpening slightly. ‘You wouldn’t be doing a little matchmaking would you, Dad?’

‘Give your sister our love, remember,’ he had answered her obliquely, ‘and tell her we can’t wait to see them all….’

CHAPTER THREE (#u484b5b7f-b59b-5ba4-82b7-bdaa86c6313e)

S AMANTHA checked a sleepy yawn as she ruffled her fingers through her still-damp curly crop. Despite the invigorating shower she had just taken her body was protestingly aware that it was only just gone three in the morning.

Still, she could sleep during the flight, she promised herself as she slicked a soft peachy-pink lipstick across her mouth and grimaced at her refection.

Not bad for a woman who’d slipped over thirty. Her skin was still as clear and fresh-looking as it had been ten years ago and even if there was now a deeper maturity and wisdom in her eyes than any twenty-year-old could have, a person was going to have to stand pretty close to her to see it.

James was in his mid-thirties but he had that boyish look about him that a few Englishmen have. Although equally as tall and strongly built as his elder brother Luke and just as stunningly handsome, James had about him a certain sweetness of nature which more austere men like his brother, and to some extent Liam, too, lacked. James was, in short, an absolute honey. He would be very easy to love, a wonderful husband and father…and an equally wonderful lover? The kind of lover she knew instinctively a man like Liam would be.

Samantha put down her lipstick and frowned. Now what on earth had put that thought into her head?

Liam as a lover…! Her lover? No way at all!

She glanced at her watch. Time she was downstairs. Liam would be picking her up in five minutes and he was very hot on good timekeeping.

Even though she had said her goodbyes to her parents the previous evening, she wasn’t totally surprised to have them rush downstairs minutes before she left to hug and kiss her and reiterate their messages of love to her twin as well as the rest of the Crightons.

‘Don’t forget that your grandparents should be arriving in Haslewich during the time you are there,’ Samantha’s mother reminded her.

‘How could I forget anything involving Grandma Ruth?’ Samantha teased her mother.

Ruth Crighton, as she had been before her late marriage to Sarah Jane’s father, was affectionately known as Aunt Ruth to virtually all of the Crighton family and so had become Grandma Ruth to Bobbie, Samantha and their younger brother.

Blissfully married at last to the American soldier she had first met during the Second World War, Ruth divided her time together with her husband between Haslewich and Grant’s beautiful American house.

‘Better not keep Liam waiting,’ her father counselled as they all heard the knock on the door.

She went to let him in and he thanked her before going over to her mother to give her a very easy and natural almost filially warm hug. Samantha acknowledged grudgingly that there was no way she could ever fault Liam’s behaviour towards her parents. He might deliberately rub her up the wrong way, inciting her to open rebellion and sometimes even outright war, but no one could have faked the look of very real warmth and affection he was giving her folks.

‘I see you took my advice about the suitcases,’ was his only comment to her once they were inside his car and he had loaded her two cases into its trunk.

Samantha scowled at him.

‘My decisions to repack had nothing to do with you,’ she told him loftily and a mite untruthfully. ‘Mom wanted me to take some extra gifts over for the family.’

The derisory look Liam was giving her silenced her.

‘Dad said you were picking up a Washington PR expert from the airport,’ she commented, deliberately changing the subject.

‘Mmm…’

‘You surprise me, Liam,’ she told him. ‘I thought you were far too confident to feel you needed any image polishing or manipulating.’

‘ I don’t,’ Liam assured her, ‘but some of your father’s supporters are concerned that Lee Calder could be planning to market himself as the family’s champion and they want to start up a damage limitation exercise.’

‘By what, marrying you off to this PR woman?’ Samantha asked flippantly before adding, ‘Wouldn’t it be simpler just to marry your current date…whoever she is…’

‘There is no current date,’ Liam told her. ‘And to be frank, Samantha, I’m getting rather tired of this image you keep trying to push of me as some kind of serial lady-killer. For your information—’ He broke off, cursing as a truck suddenly swerved out of a side street in front of them.

Samantha was far too glad of the diversion to reintroduce the same topic of conversation once the truck had gone. Much as she enjoyed baiting Liam, she also knew when it was wise to back off a little.

‘I could say much the same thing to you, you know,’ Liam murmured, turning his head to look directly at her as she turned towards him, warily waiting for what he was going to say.