The Perfect Seduction, page 13
‘What?’
‘Now don’t panic. Just listen up, will you? He found out I’d been ringing you in Chester, and you know Dad. He put two and two together and came up with four. He grilled me like he was one of his own Secret Service gorillas,’ she told Bobbie indignantly.
‘Oh, Sam, no...’ Bobbie had to sit down. Her legs, her whole body, had gone weak with shock and stress. She sank into the comfortable leather swivel chair behind the desk and clutched the receiver. ‘What did he say?’
‘Oh, you know Pop. There was a lot of idealistic stuff about how we should be above wanting to make others pay for their errors. How it should be simply enough for us to be aware of them and to feel sorry for them because of the way they are. He said that nothing we would do could make things any easier for Mom, and then Grandpa had to get in on the act and he said—’
‘Grandpa!’ Bobbie interrupted her twin on a stifled gasp. ‘Oh, Sam, no... How did Grandpa find out?’
‘He came in while Dad was reading me the Riot Act,’ Samantha confessed, ‘and of course, he had to hear the whole thing. Anyway, I told them it was too late to do anything now and I told them what you were going to do and—’
There was a sharp click on the telephone line as though someone had picked up another handset.
Nervously Bobbie asked her sister, ‘What was that? . Has someone come in...Dad or...?’
‘No. There’s no one else here,’ Samantha assured her. ‘We’re not going to give up, Bobbie, not now. We can’t afford to. She’s got to be made to pay.’
Bobbie bit her lip. She had never been totally happy with her twin’s plans but weakly she had allowed herself to be persuaded into going along with them. Knowing now that her father and her grandfather had discovered what they were doing brought home to her how much they would both dislike and disapprove of Samantha’s scheme.
‘Bobbie,’ she heard her sister warning her grimly, before pausing and then telling her bitterly, ‘Look, over fifty years ago, Ruth Crighton pretended that she’d fallen in love with Grandpa and even promised to marry him. He believed her, they were lovers and then he got a message—not from her, mind you—but from her father via his own commanding officer announcing that Ruth never wanted to see him again, and when he tried to telephone her to talk to her, she told him that it was true and that she wanted nothing more to do with him.
‘No explanations were given, no reasons, no apologies, but worse than that, a thousand times worse, she never even told him that she was already carrying his child. She simply took herself off to the other side of the country, gave birth to Grandpa’s baby, our mother, in secret, and then walked away...walked away... abandoned Mom totally, leaving her to be given away for adoption like...like an unwanted kitten.
‘If Grandpa hadn’t been visiting an injured airman in that same hospital, if he hadn’t happened to overhear two nurses gossiping about “that poor little motherless Crighton baby” and made enquiries, he would never even have known that Mom existed. When I think of what might have happened to her, it makes my blood run cold.
‘You know what a hard time Grandpa had convincing first his commanding officers and then the British authorities that he was Mom’s father and that he had a right to bring her up himself. You know the hardship that both he and Mom suffered when he first brought her back to this country. How first his family treated her and then Pop’s. You know what it’s done to Mom, knowing that her own mother didn’t want her...that she hadn’t even left so much as a letter for her...a note...anything...so that at least Mom could have felt that she had been loved by her...that she hadn’t wanted to part with her. It’s like Mom says. It’s not just the fact that she’s never known her mother that hurts. What hurts much, much more is that Ruth has never, ever wanted to know her...that she’s never, ever tried to find her, to make even the most basic enquiries to find out what happened to her.’
‘It was a very difficult time, Sam,’ Bobbie told her sister in a low voice. ‘The end of the war. British servicemen were coming home. Perhaps Ruth felt guilty about the fact that she’d been involved with an American. She had been engaged to someone else and...well, as Mom always says, she couldn’t have had a more loving father or been a more loved child.’
‘So guilty that she abandoned her own child? That’s some guilt,’ Samantha told Bobbie bitterly. ‘Pity she hasn’t felt even a quarter of it for what she did to Mom. We have to see this through, Bobbie. She has to be made to pay...she deserves to pay. We agreed....’
Bobbie was just about to try to convince her sister that they should abandon their plan when the study door opened. Her eyes widened in shock as she saw Luke striding towards her. It wasn’t so much the total unexpectedness of his appearance that left her speechless and virtually unable to move as he snatched the receiver from her hand and slammed it down, cutting her off from Samantha, as the look of murderously cold fury in his eyes.
‘So, you’re going to make Ruth pay, are you,’ he demanded, thin-lipped as he took hold of her upper arm in a painfully hard grip. ‘I don’t think so. I don’t think so at all. In fact, what I think you are going to do right now is to leave.’
‘Leave...?’ Bobbie protested squeakily. ‘But—’
‘My God, I was right about you all along, wasn’t I?’ Luke charged, overriding her nervous protest. ‘But even I hadn’t realised just how...how much you were going to demand from Ruth to keep quiet about her past.’ His mouth twisted as though soured by something foul tasting.
‘Blackmail... In my book it’s the shabbiest, meanest, most heartless crime of them all, but I suppose I shouldn’t be shocked. After all, it’s not the first time I’ve come across it, although thankfully the closest contact I’ve had to have with the perpetrator has been when I’ve refused to handle his defence.’
‘Blackmail!’ Bobbie’s eyes rounded with horror. ‘Luke. You’ve got it all wrong—’ she started to deny it but then broke off to wince in helpless protest as his angry grip on her upper arm tightened as he swung her round to face him.
‘No. You’ve got it wrong,’ he contradicted her flatly, ‘and if I were you, I shouldn’t bother wasting my breath trying to convince me otherwise, Bobbie. I’m not quite that much of a fool. Come on...this way....’
To Bobbie’s chagrin, she found that she was actually being compelled to walk and, in fact, almost run as he positively dragged her out of the room and down the corridor in the opposite direction she had originally come.
‘Let me go...what are you doing? Where are you taking me?’ she protested in panic as she tried in vain to wriggle free.
‘Let you go? No way, and as for what I’m doing...I’m doing what I should have done the first time I met you if I’d had any sense,’ he told her grimly, stopping so abruptly in front of a small, almost invisible door set into the wall that Bobbie cannoned painfully into him.
When he opened it, Bobbie saw that it led into the garden. Her legs shook with relief. For one awful moment she had actually wondered...dreaded... feared...that he might be going to imprison her somewhere.
‘This way,’ he instructed, yanking her round and virtually marching her along a narrow path. Beyond the hedge in front of them, she could just make out the glimmer of car roofs.
Without giving her the chance to say anything, Luke forced her across to his own car, using his body as well as his constraining arm to imprison her between the car and himself as he unlocked the passenger door.
‘Get in,’ he told her curtly.
‘Well now, what’s going on here? No prizes for guessing why you two are sneaking off. I wonder...?’
Relief flooded through Bobbie as she recognised Max strolling towards them, but before she could open her mouth to ask him for help, Luke had all but pushed her into the passenger seat of the car and was shutting the door on her.
‘Roberta isn’t feeling very well,’ she heard Luke telling Max in a distant voice. Tell Olivia not to worry and that I’ll take care of her, will you, Max? Oh, and give your grandfather my apologies, as well.’
As Luke started to walk round to the driver’s side of his car, Bobbie tried to push open the passenger door and call out to Max, who was now disappearing in the direction of the house. She found that Luke had locked her in, and even as her shaky fingers tried to activate the electric windows, she realised that they wouldn’t operate without the ignition key. Then Luke was opening the door and sliding into the car beside her, setting it in motion with the doors already relocked and leaving her no alternative but to stay where she was.
‘You have no right to do this,’ she finally managed to say as he swung the car out onto the main road. ‘You’re kidnapping me and that’s a crime and—’
‘So’s blackmail,’ Luke countered tightly, ‘and as for my kidnapping you...we’re lovers...an item...an accredited couple...remember?’
The aggressively angry way in which Luke was driving the car caused Bobbie to be thrown back against her seat, the jolt making her gasp for breath, but it wasn’t that that made it impossible for her to respond to Luke’s taunt. She was still in shock from hearing him accuse her of wanting to blackmail Ruth.
‘You can’t do this, Luke,’ she warned him, but the sideways glance of derision he gave her made her heart bang heavily against her chest.
‘Who’s going to stop me?’ he scoffed. ‘Your partner in crime?’ He shook his head and laughed mirthlessly. ‘I think not, and besides, you didn’t leave me much option. After I’d heard what the nasty, cold-blooded little pair of you were planning, I knew I had to act swiftly to protect Ruth.’
Since that one statement encompassed three errors on which she urgently needed to take issue with him, it was, as Bobbie was forced to acknowledge later, rather odd that it should be the least important of them she should protest to him about first, telling him shakily, ‘We are not little and I resent your use of that kind of demeaning and discriminative language, especially when—’
‘Oh please,’ Luke interrupted her savagely. ‘Spare me at least the politically correct whinge. My God, you really are in a class of your own, aren’t you?’ Luke breathed aggrievedly. ‘You haven’t a scrap of conscience about what you were planning to do, the hurt you were about to inflict, and yet you’ve got the gall to come on to me about calling you little...for all the world as though you’re the wronged party.’
‘I am,’ Bobbie insisted fiercely. ‘And how dare you talk to me about conscience. You must have deliberately listened in on our conversation. A private conversation...’
‘Only accidentally,’ Luke told her tersely. ‘I wanted to make a phone call of my own and had no idea the line was already in use until I picked up the receiver—’
‘At which point any normal, decent person would have replaced it,’ Bobbie rebuked him smartly, ‘not eavesdropped.’
‘For Ruth’s sake, I had no other option,’ Luke returned grimly. ‘And thank God I did. How much were you intending to blackmail her for? Not that it matters—be it one penny or a million pounds, the concept is still the same.’
‘We were not planning to blackmail Ruth,’ Bobbie denied angrily. ‘You’ve got it all wrong.’
‘No, you’re the one who’s got it all wrong,’ Luke replied acidly. ‘Just how wrong you’re about to find out....’
They were heading for Chester, Bobbie noticed. Inwardly she was quaking with apprehension and a sick sense of aching disillusionment.
Why on earth did she have to be such an idealistic and romantic fool? Now was quite definitely not the time to have herself mentally and emotionally confronting the fact that a small, deep and very secret feminine place within her had hoped against hope that if Luke were to be told the truth he would instantly and unhesitatingly share her feelings and not just share them, but also want to champion them, to champion her, she admitted; to love her so unequivocally and totally that he immediately and completely understood the complexity of her emotions.
But then, of course, Luke did not love her, did he? And if she was honest with herself, she had already known that.
‘Where are you taking me?’ she demanded as she firmly closed the door on her foolish dreams.
‘Somewhere where you won’t get the chance to put your nasty little plan into action—where you won’t get the chance to make any contact with Ruth at all, somewhere where I can keep an eye on you until I can make arrangements to get you sent back where you came from.’
‘What! Sent back...? You can’t do that.’
‘No? Even in this country we can and do deport undesirable aliens.’
Undesirable aliens! Bobbie took a deep breath and then counted to ten before saying coolly, ‘I appreciate that your massive ego, your superiority complex and sense of justice give you the delusion that you can do whatever you like, Luke, but unfortunately for you and fortunately for me you are just as subject to the laws of the land as I am myself and not even you can have me forcibly imprisoned or forcibly repatriated just because it’s what you want.’
Luke gave her a look that turned her blood to ice as he warned her, ‘Don’t tempt me. If that’s a challenge you’ve just issued, then consider it taken up. The prison I have in mind for you may not be Chester gaol but rather my flat, and as for your repatriation, well, let’s just say I am sure I shall be able to think of some way to encourage you to want to return home....’
Bobbie dared not look at him.
‘You must think a lot of Ruth to go to all this trouble on her behalf,’ Bobbie offered shakily.
‘Yes, I do,’ Luke agreed calmly, ‘but it wouldn’t matter who you were trying to blackmail. My reaction would be the same. If that’s the kind of behaviour you’ve been brought up to think of as the norm, then no wonder Ruth dumped your grandfather.’
Bobbie stared at him in silence for several seconds, not because shock had deprived her of the ability to respond but because of the sheer weight and intensity of her fury.
When she did speak, she spaced her words carefully and slowly, reminding herself that there was nothing to be achieved in doing what she most wanted to do, which was to scream at him and beat her fists against his chest as she forced him to take back his insults.
‘My grandfather and my parents,’ she began and then had to stop because her voice had started to tremble so much her mouth could barely shape the words. ‘You aren’t fit to be in the same room with them,’ she told him shakily when she could speak. ‘To breathe the same air...to exist in the same universe.’
‘Abused children often display an intense degree of loyalty towards their parents. It’s a phenomenon social workers often remark on,’ Luke said brusquely. ‘Apparently it’s because they don’t know any other way of relating, any other kind of relationship.’
‘My parents...my family, are not child abusers,’ Bobbie denied furiously. ‘You don’t understand....’
‘I understand perfectly,’ Luke corrected her flatly. ‘After all, I heard your sister telling you that Ruth had to be made to pay.’
‘To pay for abandoning our mother, yes,’ Bobbie protested, ‘but not to pay in financial terms. What we meant—’
‘Don’t waste your time lying to me, Bobbie,’ Luke warned her coldly as he negotiated a difficult turning.
They were in Chester now and Bobbie realised with a sinking heart that there was every possibility that he would be able to carry out his threat and incarcerate her in his flat. But he couldn’t keep her there for ever. Sooner or later he would have to leave her on her own and when he did...
Fiercely she started to make plans. If it came to the worst, she would just have to phone Sam and...
She tensed as she realised that Luke had stopped the car. Instinctively she reached for the door but Luke gave her a warning look and told her softly, ‘I shouldn’t bother making a run for it if I were you. I used to play rugger and I promise you that if I have to I’m quite willing to bring you down in the kind of tackle that could do a lot of expensive damage to those perfect teeth of yours.’
‘My teeth happen to be my own, thank you very much, and not the result of some expensive cosmetic dentistry,’ Bobbie responded sharply, tilting her chin at him so that he would know that she wasn’t in the least bit intimidated by his threat.
Even so, she decided that it might not be a good idea to risk humiliating herself by trying to run away from him, remembering the ease with which he had constrained her earlier and, of course, the street was empty, which meant that there was no one she could call out to for help.
‘You can’t keep me here for ever,’ she warned him ten minutes later after he had bundled her unceremoniously up the entry stairs and into his surprisingly spacious and elegant living quarters above the firm’s offices. ‘For a start, Olivia is bound to want to know what’s going on. I am supposed to be working for her after all....’
‘I can promise you that keeping you here for ever is the last thing on my mind,’ Luke assured her unkindly, ‘and as for Olivia... Well, I think she will understand when I explain to her that the pair of us were just so overcome by our emotions that we had to be together. Just as she’ll also understand why you decided you had to return home once we had decided that our...er... passion for one another had worn itself out.’
Bobbie stared at him. ‘You’ve got it all planned out, haven’t you?’ she accused him, ‘but you’ve still got it all wrong.’
‘So you keep protesting,’ Luke agreed coldly, ‘but I’m sure you’ll understand when I say that you just aren’t convincing me.’
‘No, I don’t,’ Bobbie objected spiritedly. ‘Isn’t there a law in this country that says a person is presumed innocent until proven guilty? You want me to be guilty, Luke, and that’s why you’ve already prejudged me. You want to think the worst of me. You want to believe that I’m...I’m...’
‘A blackmailer,’ Luke supplied relentlessly for her. ‘You condemned yourself with your own words, Bobbie.’
‘That was a private conversation,’ she told him angrily, ‘and one that you’ve completely misinterpreted. Ruth abandoned my mother when she was less than a couple of days old. Have you any idea what that meant? No, of course you haven’t. My mother was rejected at birth by her own mother—totally and completely abandoned. Something like that hurts and goes on hurting all through a person’s life....’
