Coming Home. Penny Jordan
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isn’t quite as easy as that, Joss,’ Jenny told him. ‘There are problems … and—’
‘Because of the money,’ Joss interrupted her. ‘But he could still come back. He could still see Gramps. Surely if he knew how much Gramps wants him …’
‘Maybe if he did,’ Jenny agreed. Privately, she didn’t think it would make the least difference. David had always been self-absorbed and selfish; a vain, weak man who had never put another person’s feelings or needs before his own in the whole of his life. ‘But since we have no idea where he is nor any way of contacting him—’
‘But he and Dad are twins,’ Joss interrupted, startling them both by adding not entirely jokingly, ‘There’s supposed to be a bond between twins that means they are telepathically linked.’ When neither of his parents responded, he reminded them urgently, ‘Katie and Louise have it.’
Jenny sighed. It was true their twin daughters did have that special bond that twins do sometimes experience, that ability to know when the other was in need or in pain despite the miles separating them.
‘Joss, I don’t think …’ she started to respond, then stopped, turning to look at Jon.
‘David and I were never close in that kind of way,’ Jon told Joss gruffly.
‘But you could try,’ the boy persisted. ‘For Gramps’s sake.’
Uneasily, Jenny studied his set face. Something was bothering him, something that he wasn’t saying.
‘Joss—’ she began gently, but as though he had read her mind, Joss continued quickly.
‘When Gramps mistook me for David, he …’ He hesitated and then told her chokily, ‘He started to cry … he said that he had missed me … and that life hadn’t been worth living without me. I never really had much to do with Uncle David and I know what you all think about him. Even Jack says he wishes that you were his father, Dad, but Gramps …’
Wordlessly, Jon reached out and put his arm around his son. Tall as he was, just that little bit taller than Jon himself now, his body, his bones, still had that terrifyingly vulnerable feeling of youth.
As he hugged him fiercely and ruffled his hair, Jon knew that the tears he could see gleaming in his son’s eyes were mirrored in his own.
‘We’ve tried to find him, son,’ he told him huskily. ‘But sometimes people just don’t want to be found. He could be anywhere,’ he added gently.
‘But what about Gramps? Doesn’t he care that Gramps is missing him and that he’s getting older?’
Not knowing what to say, Jon sighed as he heard the emotion breaking up his son’s voice.
His twin and their father had always been close, far closer than he had ever been to either of them, but it had been a closeness founded on their mutual promotion of David into a person he had never actually been. Keeping up that kind of fiction, that kind of falsity, year after year, decade after decade, had ultimately resulted in the relationship self-destructing or being destroyed, which, in effect, was what David had done with his disappearance.
Of course, Jon knew how much his father missed David, but the David Ben missed was someone he himself had created.
Jon suspected that the realisation that he was not the superhuman that his father had always lauded him as being had been as traumatic to David as its discovery would have been to their father. But that was in the past now. David’s dramatic exit from their lives had heralded a series of transformations that had seen his own marriage develop into the deeply fulfilling emotional and physical bond he had always longed for.
If David were to return now, Jon suspected that he would be thoroughly bemused by the changes that had taken place. David’s daughter, Olivia, was now married and a mother. Jack, his son, had grown from a boy into a young man, just nineteen and about to start his first year at university. Max, Jon’s son, was married and the father of three.
Yes, there had been plenty of changes and a whole new generation of babies born, including David’s own granddaughters.
Olivia, he knew, had never forgiven her father for what he had done nor for the fact that his actions had almost resulted in the destruction of her relationship with her husband, Caspar.
Her mother, Tania, a victim of the eating disorder, bulimia, had been more the child in the relationship between herself and Olivia than Olivia herself had ever been, and although she had never said so, Jon knew that Olivia placed a large part of the blame for her mother’s disorder on David’s shoulders.
Olivia. Jon frowned as he released his son. He had become increasingly concerned about his niece over the past few months. When he had tried to suggest to her that she was working too hard and that for her to be at the office before him in the morning and still there when he left at night was an excessive devotion to duty, she had snapped crossly at him.
Later, she had apologised, explaining tiredly that it was impossible for her to take work home. ‘Caspar feels that when we’re at home we should spend as much time as we can with the children. Of course I agree with him, but sometimes when I’ve got statements or counsel’s opinions to read through …’
Jon had given her a sympathetic smile, but he couldn’t help thinking a sense of responsibility to one’s work was one thing, but using it as a means of putting a barrier between oneself and one’s family was another entirely. Perhaps he ought to ask Jenny if she could have a word with Olivia. They had always got on well together.
A LITTLE LATER that evening as they were preparing for bed, Jenny told Jon musingly, ‘I was just thinking about that time when Louise gashed her leg so badly and Katie, who was miles away at the time playing with a school friend, insisted on coming home because Lou had hurt her leg and needed her to be with her. Do you remember?’
‘Mmm …’ Jon acknowledged, guessing what his wife was leading up to.
‘When you were boys, did you and David ever …?’ Jenny persisted, then stopped as she saw the look in his eyes.
‘David and I never shared the kind of relationship that Lou and Katie have. You know that,’ Jon told her quietly and then added almost brusquely, ‘Do you think if there was any way, any way at all I could bring him home for Dad that I wouldn’t use it?’
As she heard the pain in her husband’s voice that couldn’t be masked by his anger, Jenny went up and put her arms around him.
Even though he was in his fifties and had a relatively sedentary lifestyle, Jon still had a very sexy body—well, she certainly thought so, and after all the sterile, weary years of having to hide her feelings for him, to be able to caress it … him … freely and openly was something that never failed to give her joy, but the caress she gave him now was one of tender emotion rather than teasing sensuality.
Like all the Crighton men, Jon was good-looking, tall, broad shouldered with a very masculine profile. His hair was thick and closer to caramel colour than blond. Women’s eyes still followed him when they went out and hers followed them. Not that Jon ever noticed their glances of discreet female appreciation. He was a wonderfully loyal and loving husband and she was a very lucky woman to have such a fulfilling marriage, such a truly loving and lovable man, but Jon was no saint. He could be stubborn and even a little blinkered at times, but for him to be angry was a very rare occurrence indeed and she knew that the fact he was now was an indication of how deep his feelings went over the issue of his twin.
A man with a weaker personality than Jon’s, a man lacking in his emotional strength and compassion, might have been badly warped by the obvious and relentless favouritism of their father for David. But Jon was too kind, too caring a person to fall into that trap, and Jenny loved him all the more for what his father had once so contemptuously dismissed as Jon’s softness.
‘Come on,’ she said now, kissing his chin. ‘Let’s go to bed.’
JON