Penny Jordan - Perfect Marriage Material

But it was pointless harking back to the past. She had very firmly closed the door on that particular episode of her life when she had come to live and work in London. The young girl who had fallen so intensely and so damagingly in love with the married man who had cold-bloodedly fed on her naïvety and inexperience, her belief that when he said he loved her and his marriage was an empty sham, he truly meant it, no longer existed. How could she? She had been damaged beyond repair, destroyed by the trauma of discovering just how much her lover had deceived her, by learning that not only had he no intention of leaving his wife but that also, far from being the love of his life, she was actually just one in a long, long chain of affairs he had lured his victims into over the years.

If she was honest with herself, she could see now that it wasn’t so much her youthful love and adoration that still festered deep down inside her, but the humiliation he had wrought, the self-hatred, the awareness of her own foolishness and gullibility.

His wife had told her wearily at the time that the only reason she had not left him was because of their children.

‘They still need him even if I don’t,’ she had told Tullah tiredly, and Tullah, aware humiliatingly of how much she missed her own father since her own parents’ divorce, had to bite down hard on her bottom lip to prevent herself from crying like a child herself.

Over the years she had come into contact with a good many men who suffered from the same egocentric needs as the man who had hurt her so badly—shallow, vain creatures, possessed of a dangerously alluring charm that could all too easily deceive the vulnerable and naïve, and so far there was no doubt whatsoever in her mind that Saul Crighton was yet another example of the breed.

She remembered that he had asked her to dance at Olivia and Caspar’s wedding, frowning down at her from his admittedly impressive height of over six feet when she had refused as tersely and abruptly as a child.

She could remember, too, watching Olivia fuss over him, explaining when she saw Tullah watching her that he had been going through a bad time and that he carried a heavy burden of responsibility.

‘He and his wife...are separated,’ she had explained, a little uncomfortably when Tullah had made no response. Tullah had said nothing, not wanting to cause any discord between Olivia and her by informing her friend that she was not surprised. After all, she had just overheard about Saul’s attempt to seduce Olivia away from Caspar.

It had been Max Crighton, another of Olivia’s cousins, Jon and Jenny’s elder son, who had explained the whole situation to her.

‘Saul likes ’em young...he’s at that age,‘ Max had told her cynically. ‘Mind you, he’s not exactly the faithful type. No sooner had he realised that he’d lost Olivia than he started making a play for my sister Louise.’

She had spent a good half an hour listening to Max explaining the intricate interfamily relationships that existed between the various members of the Crighton clan. He himself was quite obviously very much a man who liked to flirt, but Tullah had found his frank and open attempts to engage her in a subtly sensual exchange of banter far more healthy and easy to deal with than, to her mind, Saul’s much more sinister and underhanded pseudo sincerity, especially when she had seen Louise, all coltish limbs and soft, trembling mouth, watching him with her heart in her eyes. No, she hadn’t liked Saul Crighton a bit...not one tiny little bit.

‘You’re looking very thoughtful and broody,’ Caspar commented to his wife as he walked into the kitchen, put down the essays he had brought home to read and went over to the table where she was standing to take her in his arms and kiss her. ‘Mmm...that was nice.’

‘Mmm...very,’ she agreed, telling him, ‘I spoke to Tullah earlier. She’s definitely coming up this weekend.’

‘Ah, now I understand. It’s the thought of doing a little bit of matchmaking that’s turning you all broody, isn’t it, and not—’

‘Well, Tullah is twenty-eight, just the right age to settle down,’ Olivia told her husband defensively. ‘And she’s so motherly....’

‘Motherly?’ Caspar gave a shout of laughter as he visualised his wife’s friend. ‘Is this the same Tullah we’re talking about? Tullah with the figure that’s straight out of every man’s fantasy...somewhere between Claudia Schiffer and a Baywatch babe? The same Tullah with those wonderful, dark gypsy eyes and curls and that gorgeous pouting mouth that makes her look so provocative and yet at the same time somehow more vulnerable and less knowing, if you know what I mean...and—’

‘Caspar,’ Olivia warned.

‘Sorry,’ he apologised unrepentantly. His eyes twinkled as he admitted, ‘Perhaps I was getting a trifle carried away...but you have to admit that no one would ever think she’s a highly qualified lawyer. She looks as though her sex-appeal rating would be through the roof while her IQ—’

‘Caspar!’ Olivia warned more darkly.

‘OK, OK...calm down. You know perfectly well that my taste runs to sassy blondes with flashing eyes and... All I’m trying to say,’ he added patiently, ‘is that stunning and sensual and very, very sexy Tullah may be, but motherly...’

‘That’s just because you’re judging her on the way she looks,’ Olivia told him severely. ‘As you’ve just said yourself, she is highly qualified. She actually started working in a small professional practice, you know, but the trauma of dealing with so many divorce and custody cases got to her so much that she decided to switch to industry instead. Her own parents split up when she was in her teens, and from what she’s told me about it, I suspect it had a very traumatic effect on her.’

‘Mmm...very probably.’ They exchanged long, understanding looks with one another. Caspar’s own childhood had not been an easy one, passed as he had been from parent to parent, forced to take a back seat as they both remarried and produced further families, which in his mind seemed to supplant him.

Olivia’s childhood, too, had not been without its problems. Her father, David, her uncle Jon’s twin brother, had disappeared whilst recovering from a serious heart attack, simply discharging himself and walking out, leaving no trace of where he was going or what he intended to do and her mother...

Tania, her mother, after years of suffering from an eating disorder, was now living in the south of England. She had telephoned Olivia several weeks ago to tell her excitedly that there was a new man in her life whom she wanted her daughter to meet.

‘I was thinking of how perfectly one of the Chester cousins would be for Tullah,’ Olivia told Caspar.

‘One of them?’ he repeated, raising his eyebrows.

‘Well, there are so many to choose from,’ she defended herself, ‘and now that Luke and Bobbie are married...well, it might just give the others the impetus they need. After all, it can’t be lack of financial security that’s holding them back.’

‘You sound like one of Jane Austen’s characters,’ Caspar teased her.

Olivia laughed again. ‘You mean, “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”’ she quoted. ‘I was thinking more of the emotional need,’ she informed Caspar with great dignity. Now let me see... There’s James and Alistair, Niall and Kit.’ She ticked their names off on her fingers.

‘She can’t marry all of them,’ Caspar interrupted her.

‘Of course not,’ she agreed, giving him a scathing look. ‘But I am sure that one of them... After all, just think what she’s got in common with them.’

‘What?’ Caspar invited.