Penny Jordan - Penny Jordan's Crighton Family Series

‘Luke...’ As she said his name on a shakily expelled breath, he covered her mouth with his, his hands coming up to cup her face and hold her still beneath his kiss. His thumb caressed the delicate curve of her cheek as his mouth moved equally caressingly on hers.

To Bobbie it seemed the most natural thing in the world to respond openly to him, reaching out to hold him, opening her mouth to him and welcoming the demanding thrust of his tongue within it with a soft, throaty murmur of delight.

Even their mouths might have been made to fit together, she acknowledged hazily as she purred her pleasure into his caressing mouth, arching her throat beneath the stroking touch of his hand, feeling her pulse quicken and her body tense as her nipples tightened beneath her clothes and the urge to press herself even closer to him became too strong to resist.

‘Luke...’ As he started to lift his mouth from hers, she whispered his name protestingly, reluctantly opening her eyes, their pupils dilated with passion, her expression softly drugged with all that she was feeling as she caught hold of his arm, intending to guide the hand he had let fall from her throat to her breast. And then, abruptly, she realised what she was doing and with whom, and like someone coming out of a trance her body stiffened as she cried out fiercely, ‘No!’

‘No,’ Luke agreed tersely as he, too, stepped back. He looked almost as shocked as she felt herself, Bobbie recognised, but that was impossible. There was no way he could be feeling the same emotional turmoil she was experiencing; the same anguished jolt of recognition and yearning so strong that it left her feeling physically dazed and weak, coupled with fear and panic and the self-protective need to blot out and deny the existence of such feelings to remind herself that he was, at best, a man she should treat with circumspection and caution and, at worst, someone who could turn out to be her most powerful foe.

And yes, she had quite definitely mistaken that look of shock she had thought she had seen in his eyes, she acknowledged achingly now as she looked at him and saw the hardness of his compressed mouth and the cold way he was watching her.

‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ she told him shakily.

‘Why?’ he asked derisively. ‘Because Sam, whoever he is, wouldn’t like it?’

For a moment Bobbie simply looked at him and then said quietly before she started to turn around to walk away from him, ‘Sam is not a he, she’s a she, and she’s also my sister, my twin sister,’ she emphasised.

‘Where do you think you’re going?’ he challenged her as he deliberately blocked her way.

‘To catch a bus,’ she replied simply.

‘I’ve already told you, I’ll drive you home.’

Bobbie toyed briefly with the idea of not just defying him but also of actively pushing her way past him, but as her eyes met his she read a warning in them that she would be very foolish to try to do so. It was a rather odd sensation to be aware of being so femininely vulnerable and powerless as she had lost count of the number of men over the years who had made jokey and not-so-jokey remarks to her about not wanting to get on her bad side, hinting that because of her height she was somehow less emotionally a woman than her shorter sisters.

In a face to face confrontation with Luke, she was all too likely to come off the loser, she recognised, and he certainly had no inhibitions at all about getting on her wrong side. Silently she turned round and walked back to the car.

‘So Sam is your twin sister,’ Luke commented once they were both in the car and he had driven out of the car park. ‘Have you any other family?’

‘Why the sudden interest in my family?’ Bobbie asked him.

‘Perhaps because I’m curious to know the reason for your interest in mine,’ Luke returned silkily.

Bobbie bit her lip. She had walked straight into that one.

‘I have a brother. My parents are both alive and so is my grandfather on my mother’s side. And although both my parents were only children, their parents came from large families, so we have any number of great-aunts and uncles as well as a whole string of second and third cousins.’

‘Twins are normally very close,’ Luke commented. ‘Are you and your sister?’

‘Yes,’ Bobbie affirmed curtly.

‘You must miss her.’

‘Yes. I do.’

‘Presumably she couldn’t come with you?’

‘No, she couldn’t,’ Bobbie responded in a tone of voice that indicated she didn’t want to answer any more questions, but Luke refused to take the hint.

‘Why was that?’ he pressed.

‘She had other commitments,’ Bobbie told him repressively, turning her head to look out of the window into the darkness as an added signal that she didn’t want him to keep interrogating her. So far as she was concerned, her sister was not a subject she wanted to discuss with him.

‘Other commitments. What does that mean? Is she married...does she have a family?’

‘No, she is not married and she does not have a family. If you must know, she is part way through her master’s and couldn’t take time off and that was why...’

Bobbie stopped.

‘That was why what?’ Luke asked suavely.

‘That was why I had to come on my own,’ Bobbie answered shakily, disturbed by how easily she had almost betrayed herself.

‘Had to,’ Luke repeated incisively. ‘Surely your trip could have been postponed until after her college work was finished or fitted in during her vacations.’

‘Maybe it could,’ Bobbie agreed, ‘but I wanted to come to Europe.’

‘Without your sister, your twin, even though you’ve just told me how close you are and how much you miss her? What exactly are you doing here in Haslewich, Bobbie, and why all the interest in my family?’

Bobbie drew in a sharp breath. ‘What is it exactly you’re trying to imply?’ she demanded. ‘I’m here in Haslewich because I’m working for Olivia, and as for my interest in your family...’ She paused.

‘Yes,’ Luke encouraged grimly.

‘I was just interested, that’s all,’ Bobbie fibbed weakly, giving a small shrug. ‘It’s not against the law, is it?’

To her relief they were almost in Haslewich; another ten minutes or so and she would safely be back at Olivia’s.

‘That all depends, doesn’t it,’ Luke answered as he turned into the road that led to the house, ‘on what it is you’re really doing here. I know you’re lying to me, Bobbie,’ he told her as he brought the car to a stop on the drive and turned to look at her. ‘What I don’t know as yet is why you’re lying and what it is you’re trying to conceal ... what it is you’re really doing here, but I promise you that I intend to find out...’

Bobbie climbed out of the car and shut the door firmly.

‘Wasn’t that Luke’s car?’ Olivia asked as she let Bobbie in.

‘Yes, I bumped into him in Chester and he brought me home,’ Bobbie told her.

‘Oh, why didn’t he come in?’ As she looked into Bobbie’s face, she asked gently, ‘Oh dear, you two haven’t had a fight, have you?’

To her own consternation, Bobbie suffered the indignity of feeling her eyes start to fill with tears. If there was one ultimate folly in a woman of six foot plus, it was surely crying in public.

‘Oh, Bobbie, don’t worry,’ Olivia soothed her as she gave her a quick, firm hug. ‘I’m sure the two of you will soon make it up.’

‘I don’t want to make it up,’ Bobbie declared defiantly, sniffing. ‘I hate him.’

‘Oh dear,’ Olivia commiserated. ‘That bad, was it?’

‘That’s right, take it out on the weeds,’ Bobbie heard Ruth’s amused voice telling her the next day as she tugged viciously at the weeds in Olivia’s herbaceous border whilst Amelia slept peacefully in her stroller nearby.