Her One and Only (13 page)

Concentrating on digesting the unpalatable truth of what Liam was saying, Samantha did not at first pay much attention to the ring he was removing from its box until the white flash of diamonds not so much caught as regally demanded her attention.

When she did look at the ring he was coolly slipping onto her finger she couldn’t prevent herself from giving a stunned betraying gasp.

The central flawless sapphire was the deepest densest blue she had ever seen and just about as close to the colour of her own eyes as it could possibly be, whilst the diamonds which surrounded it were sharply white, perfectly clear glittering stones.

It was, Samantha recognised, the kind of ring any woman would be thrilled to receive. Surely only a man deeply in love would choose a stone that so exactly matched his adored one’s own eye colour and he would certainly have to be totally besotted to spend the amount of money Samantha guessed
this
ring must have cost Liam.

‘What did you do,’ she joked shakily, ‘hire it for the day...’

The look of hauteur Liam gave her made her feel even more shaky.

‘Liam, it’s...it’s...’ She shook her head, unable to find the words to tell him what she thought of his quixotic impulse. ‘It must have been so expensive,’ she told him weakly. ‘What on earth will you do with it...afterwards...’

‘Concern—for me?—
that
must be a first,’ Liam told her dryly as he closed the box with a firmly businesslike air.

‘Hopefully in the fuss over our “engagement” surprise, the way in which our relationship was exposed to the light of day will be overlooked,’ he told her sardonically.

‘Engaged.’ Samantha shook her head. ‘But Mom and Dad...’

‘...will understand when I explain that it was only the discovery of how much I was missing you and what I stood to lose that prompted me to act impetuously and rush over here to propose to you,’ Liam told her calmly.

‘Lovers seldom act rationally...so why should we be any exception? I proposed, you accepted, and of course, I couldn’t wait to show the world that you’re mine by waiting until we got home to get you a ring. After all, it isn’t as though I have your ability to trace my family back to the Pilgrim Fathers and beyond and there are certainly no family heirlooms waiting in bank vaults to be handed over to my wife-to-be,’ he told her grimly.

Samantha gave a thoughtful look. She knew of Liam’s family history and how, as immigrants, they had arrived in America with virtually nothing, but his words brought home to her again how sensitive Liam felt about the subject.

‘You can’t think that if I were in love it would matter to
me
who my partner’s antecedents were,’ she challenged him.

‘No, but surely you’d want to know what kind of genes you were passing on to your kids, wouldn’t you?’

‘If I loved someone then I would want my child—our child—to have his genes,’ she reiterated firmly.

Liam gave her a cynical smile.

‘Well, let’s hope the voters “love”
me
enough to overlook my lesser heritage,’ he told her wryly.

Samantha frowned. ‘You don’t honestly think that people would be put off voting for you because of that?’ she demanded before telling him passionately, ‘It’s obvious that you’re the best man for the job, Liam, and any voter who can’t see that for themselves doesn’t, in my view, deserve to be allowed to vote.’

‘Very democratic,’ Liam told her, his expression lightening to one of rueful amusement. ‘You really are an all-or-nothing person, Sam, you either love or hate, there’s no halfway house with you, no middle ground.’

‘Just because I have strong beliefs, that doesn’t mean that I can’t see another person’s point of view,’ Samantha objected. ‘I’m not intolerant, Liam.’

‘No, just passionately opposed to anyone who doesn’t share your point of view,’ Liam responded with another smile, glancing at his watch and then warning her, ‘Come on, we’d better go down and face the music.’

CHAPTER NINE

‘C
OME
ON
,
IN
YOU
GO
.’

‘Oh!’

Samantha gave a small exclamation of stunned disbelief as Bobbie, who had been waiting for them in the hotel foyer, gave her a little push and stood to one side in the open doorway of the hotel’s private function room.

Instead of half a dozen or less people Samantha had expected to see, the room seemed full of a sea of expectant faces. For a moment she was tempted to turn tail and run but as though he knew how overwhelmed she felt Liam stepped up behind her, his arm curling supportively around her as he drawled to Bobbie, ‘Seems like someone’s been busy...’

Samantha heard Bobbie laugh, her initial panic subsiding as she realised that in truth the room only held a relatively small proportion of their many relatives, around a dozen or so, all of them smiling at her in loving happiness and expectancy.

‘Well, I just
had
to ring Jenny to give her the news because I knew that she’d already arranged a family lunch here today because Katie’s at home and she’d invited Max and Maddy to join them with the children and so I said why didn’t we all have lunch together. You don’t mind, do you?’ she asked Samantha. ‘Only I’m just so excited for you, Sam. It’s like a romance story come true, you falling for Liam in such a big way all those years ago, worshipping him from a distance and having the biggest crush in the world on him,’ she teased. ‘And now, all these years later the two of you falling for one another as equals. And now,’ she added expressively, rolling her eyes as she gave them both a merry look, ‘Liam must love you to pieces to have followed you right across the Atlantic. She’ll make the world’s worst Governor’s wife, Liam,’ she added warningly.

‘Oh, thanks,’ Samantha told her twin grimly.

‘It’s true,’ Bobbie laughed. ‘The first time there’s a march outside government house you’ll be the one leading it. Do you remember when she organised that protest march against hunting, Liam?’ she asked him.

‘Will I ever forget it,’ Liam responded ruefully. ‘
I
was the one who had to go get her released from the police cells...’

‘Yes, and you were the one who, when we got home, told me I’d have to shower in the backyard just in case I’d picked up...something...’ Samantha gave a deep shudder at the memory his words had evoked. Perhaps it was true that she
had
reacted rather recklessly and dangerously, but surely Liam had
over
reacted in his furious cold anger to her when he had come to bail her, cruelly telling her that some of her co-marchers may not be too particular about their personal hygiene.

Whether or not he had been right had never been proved. It had been enough that she had spent the whole night lying awake wondering if every tiny little scalp itch was the forerunner of some unpleasant and unwanted cohabiters.

First thing in the morning she had taken herself off to the hairdressers where she had had her long hair cropped.

She could still remember how her mother had cried when she had seen her and she could remember, too, the look of cold disgust in Liam’s eyes as he studied her boyishly barbered short hair. She had grown it long again, but now preferred her hair cropped, although in a much more feminine version of her original cut.

‘That was when you had your hair cut,’ Bobbie added, almost as though twin-fashion, she had followed Samantha’s own train of thought.

‘Do you remember, Liam?’ she asked. ‘Poor Mom cried.’

‘Yes,’ Liam said. ‘I remember.’

How terse and angry Liam sounded. Samantha turned her head to look at him and then stood completely still in the circle of his arm, their onlookers forgotten as she saw the look in his eyes.

‘Your lovely hair... I didn’t know whether to throttle you or...’ Liam was telling her softly. ‘Not that it didn’t suit you short then or now...’

Suspecting that he was trying to sound diplomatic and lover-like because Bobbie was listening, Samantha was just about to try to reply in a way that was equally pseudo lover-like when, to her disbelief, she heard Bobbie chiming in, ‘Oh, yes, I can still remember how chagrined I felt a while back when I overheard Liam telling someone that he thought your cropped curls were just the most alluringly sexy tease on a woman with such a sensationally curvy body.’

Her eyes rounding, Samantha stared at him.

‘You said
that,
’ she questioned faintly, ‘about
me...
’

‘I suppose I should have guessed then,’ Bobbie was saying as she determinedly ushered them into the Grosvenor’s private function room and called out to the assembled throng, ‘Here they are, everyone. The Crighton family’s latest formally accredited “couple.”’

Out of nowhere a waiter suddenly appeared circulating the room with trays of bubbling champagne, or so it seemed to Samantha as she and Liam were engulfed by the excited and enthusiastic members of her family who were waiting to congratulate them.

‘I thought you said just a quiet family lunch,’ Samantha complained to her twin.

‘Well... It’s what Mom would have wanted,’ Bobbie told her virtuously.

‘Mom...! You haven’t...’ Samantha began but Bobbie shook her head.

‘No. I’m leaving
that
to you—and Liam—not that... Oh...’

‘What is it?’ Samantha demanded, hearing the surprised and excited note in her sister’s voice as she looked towards the doorway.

‘It’s Gran and Gramps!’ Bobbie exclaimed, leaving her sister’s side to hurry over to the doorway where Ruth and Grant were standing together with one of Ruth’s nephews, Saul Crighton, his wife Tullah and their children.

It was Saul’s parents Hugh and Ann who Ruth and Grant had been staying with in Pembroke and as she stared at them Samantha shook her head and told Liam, ‘I just don’t believe this. All it needs now is for Mom and Pop to walk in through the door.’

‘Well, I doubt that
that’s
going to happen, but I think we ought to go over and make our explanations to your grandparents—or rather, I ought,’ Liam told her ruefully.

Samantha shot him a surprised look. She could actually hear a faint note of almost boyish uncertainty in Liam’s voice and there was quite definitely a slightly sheepish look in his eyes as he looked towards the group of people surrounding her grandparents. It was so unlike Liam to betray anything other than total self-confidence that such an unexpected display of vulnerability caused her to move closer to him and put her hand on his arm in a gesture that was almost protective.

‘Gran will understand,’ she told him. ‘After all, she and Gramps...’

Abruptly Samantha stopped. What on earth was happening to her? Just for a moment it was almost as though she actually
was
Liam’s fiancée, as though they
were
actually two very newly committed lovers catapulted into a very public arena they had never expected to have to enter at such an early stage in their newly discovered love. But it was too late now to withdraw from Liam. At the touch of her hand he had moved closer to her and she could see the way the others were regarding them. Infuriatingly Samantha discovered that she was actually blushing and, even worse, that she was more than happy to have the solid bulk of Liam to lean a little shyly into as he started to guide her across the floor to where her grandparents were waiting.

‘So, it’s finally happened! The two of you have stopped fighting long enough to fall in love.’

Samantha blinked as she heard the loving approval in her grandmother’s voice and saw the happiness in her eyes.

‘Liam, I just hope you know exactly what you’re taking on,’ Ruth was saying to Liam. ‘You’re
never
going to change her.’

‘There’s no way I’d want to,’ Liam was replying in true lover-like fashion.

And, looking into his eyes heart-jerkingly for a breathless space of time, Samantha could almost believe he meant it.

* * *

T
HE
AFTERNOON
PASSED
in a haze of hugs and kisses and congratulations, the Grosvenor rising to the occasion with true aplomb by producing a buffet luncheon fit for the most discerning diner. Dizzily Samantha listened to the various conversations humming in the air around her. The younger ranks of the family were entertaining themselves in one corner of the room whilst another group which included Jon and Jenny had formed around Ruth and Grant, whilst Bobbie, Luke, Tullah and Saul were also busy exchanging reminiscences of their childhoods and of their own early days as couples.

Of them all only Katie was partnerless. A calm very private person, Katie, according to her mother Jenny, was dedicated, not perhaps so much to her job but to the cause it served.

Like Ruth, Katie had a very strong philanthropic caring streak. Her work in the legal department of a large charity might not be going to bring her either fame or fortune but it had to give her a great deal of satisfaction, Samantha acknowledged.

Not that Katie looked particularly happy right now though, she admitted, or was it simply that the very coupledness of everyone else there underlined the fact that Katie was on her own.

When Saul and Tullah came over to congratulate them, Tullah remarked teasingly, ‘Perhaps you’re going to beat us to produce the first set of our generation of twin births, after all...’

‘Twins... With Liam running for the governorship I doubt they’re going to have time to conceive one child never mind two,’ Saul told his wife outspokenly. Mortifyingly, whilst the other three laughed, Samantha could feel herself starting to blush as though she were, in reality, in love with Liam.

‘When will you get married?’ Tullah was asking. ‘After voting or...’

Liam gave Samantha a warning squeeze of her hand, answering before she could say anything, ‘We haven’t settled on a date yet.’

* * *

‘W
ELL
, I
GUESS
that means the end of your visit over here,’ Bobbie commented ruefully several hours later when everyone else had gone bar Bobbie and Luke and their grandparents, Luke’s parents having taken Francesca home with them for the night to give Bobbie some extra time to spend with her twin. She continued before Samantha could say anything.

‘I know Liam can’t stay over here very long and, of course, you’re going to want to go back with him. When are you going to tell the folks?’

As Bobbie had already confided to Luke, the fact that Sam and Liam were lovers had proved to her how much her twin must love Liam.

‘Sam has always been so picky—and never ever casually intimate with men in any kind of way—for her to have committed herself to Liam like this proves how much she loves him.’

‘I don’t need convincing,’ Luke had responded knowingly. ‘
I
knew she and James wouldn’t suit.’

‘We’re going to ring them just as soon as we can,’ Liam answered for them both now.

‘Well, I know that Sarah Jane won’t be too surprised,’ Ruth confounded Samantha by commenting. ‘I know from what she’s told me that she did have hopes...’

Her mother had
hopes...hopes
of her and Liam... How on earth could she have done? Samantha wondered bemusedly whilst Liam veiled his eyes.

He was not entirely surprised that Samantha’s mother had guessed how he felt about her daughter. Mothers were, after all, notoriously very insightful in that way. Samantha herself, thank the Lord, was far less intuitive.

As he looked sideways at the ring glittering on Samantha’s left hand he could almost taste the bittersweet flavour of the sharp cruelty of the gulf between the relationship the two of them were pretending to and reality.

He was still searingly aware of the double blow Samantha had given him in firstly accusing him of trying to use her to improve his chances of winning the vote—how could she think him capable of that kind of underhandedness?—and of secondly and even more hurtful telling him that she had cold-bloodedly decided to have sex with him because she wanted not
his
child but
a
child. That revelation hadn’t just hurt him it had shocked him, as well.

The closeness of the Miller family had appealed to an idealism within Liam that he tried to keep hidden and protected and that Samantha, the woman he loved, should be prepared to deny her own child the kind of upbringing she herself had been so lovingly nurtured in was something he was finding hard to understand. And what he was finding even harder to understand or forgive was his own dangerous awareness that given a second opportunity to furnish Sam with the child she so much wanted, he doubted that he would be able to resist the temptation to do so; that way at least he’d have some kind of permanent tie with her...through their child.

As Samantha listened to her grandparents she acknowledged that her grandfather and Liam had always got on well. Grant’s family was from the Deep South and he and Liam, in common with her father, shared a belief that it was of vital importance to find a way of integrating the diehards of both the Southern states and the Northern ones in a common purpose that would benefit everyone. Ruth and Liam had immediately taken to one another so that now, as the whole family, including Luke, began a passionate discussion about the increasingly urgent need to give those young people of both countries the incentive and the help to free themselves from what Western journalists were currently referring to as ‘the poverty trap,’ momentarily Samantha felt somehow as though she was excluded from a particularly charismatic and exclusive circle.

Her views were not that much out of accord with those of the others, she recognised, it was just that she favoured a much more direct and possibly contentious method of putting them into operation.

‘I guess it looks like we’re going to be having dinner here,’ Grant commented jovially at one point. ‘We’d better book a table.’

Whilst the others were all eagerly assenting, only Liam hesitated, looking at Samantha and asking her in a quiet voice, ‘You’re very quiet, would you prefer to do something else?’