Penny Jordan's Crighton Family Series. PENNY JORDAN
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arms.
Just for a second her first reaction was to reject it...her...thrust her away, but then the baby opened her eyes and Bobbie’s heart caught in a painful lunge of recognition as she looked down into the tiny baby features and instinct took over from caution and she was holding Amelia tightly in her arms, cooing inanities and breathing in the delicious baby smell and hopelessly, desperately, falling head over heels in love with her.
The difficulty was not going to be whether she could take to Olivia and Caspar’s baby, she acknowledged shakily, but whether she could bear to let Amelia go!
‘She’s beautiful,’ she told Olivia huskily.
Olivia gave her a pleased maternal smile. ‘We certainly think so,’ she said, ‘although it is quite unusual in this family to have a redhead, and as for those eyes...’
‘It’s something to do with the combination of dark and fair genes,’ Bobbie explained absently. ‘It sometimes produces this particular colouring apparently—dark red hair and sea green eyes.’
‘Yes, Aunt Ruth said much the same thing,’ Olivia agreed, exclaiming happily, ‘Oh look, Luke’s just come in,’ and standing up, she waved him over before Bobbie could say or do anything.
As they waited for him to weave his way towards them through the busy room, Olivia confided to Bobbie, ‘At least he seems to have shaken Fenella off at last, thank goodness. There was a moment when we began to think she was going to manage to manoeuvre him into taking her back. That woman is a positive leech and Luke is such a softy at heart. Mind you,’ she added coyly, ‘I rather suspect that the two of you are on much better terms than you want the rest of us to believe.’ She explained knowingly, ‘I saw that he’d left you a note when I left mine. I recognised his handwriting.’
Bobbie’s heart sank. This was a development she hadn’t anticipated and certainly didn’t feel equipped to cope with. ‘Olivia, you don’t understand,’ she started to protest.
But Olivia simply gave her a mischievous smile and shook her head, telling her, ‘You don’t have to explain to me. I can still remember how it feels when you first fall in love.’
Fall in love! This was terrible! Dreadful! But before she could say anything more, Luke reached them.
‘Luke,’ Olivia exclaimed fondly as he leaned down to kiss her cheek before taking a seat.
Bobbie saw his eyebrows lift as he glanced at her, his gaze sharpening as he saw that she was holding Amelia.
‘It’s all right. Your god-daughter’s in perfectly good hands,’ Olivia teased him, adding, ‘so good in fact that we’re hoping to persuade Bobbie to keep on holding her.’
‘Oh?’ Luke questioned, looking sombrely from Bobbie to Olivia.
‘Yes,’ Olivia continued easily, patently unaware of the undercurrent of dislike and hostility emanating from Luke to her, which Bobbie was so keenly conscious of. ‘Caspar and I have asked Bobbie if she would be willing to stay on in the area for a few more weeks to take care of Amelia so that Caspar can get some work done prior to the start of the new term.’
‘I thought you already had a qualified nanny,’ Luke returned sharply, emphasising the word ‘qualified’.
‘We did,’ Olivia agreed.
‘I really must go,’ Bobbie announced, getting up ready to hand the baby back to her mother, but before she could do so, Luke, too, stood up, firmly removing Amelia from her arms and standing so close to her whilst he did so that she could actually smell the scent of his skin—and his body....
The baby gurgled delightfully up at him, a huge smile curling her mouth.
‘You can tell she’s going to be a man’s woman,’ Olivia said, laughing fondly as she, too, got to her feet. ‘I’ll ring you later ... about seven,’ she told Bobbie as she walked with her towards the exit. Then unexpectedly Olivia reached out and gave Bobbie a swift hug. ‘Oh, please don’t say no,’ she pleaded. ‘I know you’re going to be just right, and by the way, I forgot to say, you can live in with us if that’s convenient for you. You’d have your own room and bathroom, but if you prefer not to, then that’s equally fine.’
Bobbie had just got as far as the bank of lifts that gave access to the upper floors of the hotel when she heard Luke calling her name with crisp firmness. Suppressing a childish urge to pretend she hadn’t heard him and step into the lift that had temptingly opened, she turned round.
His ‘I want a word with you,’ instead of intimidating her as she suspected he had intended, made her straighten her spine and draw herself up to her full height, an impressive and, to some men she knew, an awesome sight, not one that sat well with their vulnerable male egos. However, it was obvious that Luke was not exactly impressed, but then of course, she did still have to tilt her chin just that betraying little bit extra in order to look into his eyes.
‘Why did you let me think that you were having lunch with Max?’ he asked her without preamble.
‘I let you think?’ Bobbie queried dryly.
‘You know what I mean,’ he flung back curtly. ‘You were perfectly aware of what I thought but you didn’t correct my misconception.’
‘Didn’t I?’ Bobbie asked him dulcetly, and then seeing that they were beginning to attract the interested and amused attention of a small group of people waiting to step into the adjacent lift, she told him quickly and quietly, ‘Whom I do or do not choose to have lunch with is no business of yours.’
‘Max is a married man,’ he reminded her grittily.
‘And so you keep saying, and for all you know I may very well be a married woman,’ Bobbie retaliated.
‘What?’
The look in his eyes as he stepped forward and took hold of her upper arm, drawing her back out of earshot of anyone else and into the partially secluded shadows of the corridor, gave her such a shock that she actually felt physically weak and light-headed.
‘Are you married?’ she heard him demanding.
‘No,’ Bobbie admitted shakily.
She had heard of people going weak with fear and even with nervousness but to actually feel this intense sense of physical dizziness simply because of the way a man was looking at her... A phrase she had heard a girlfriend use once and at the time teased her for suddenly came back to her.
‘He makes me feel quite literally weak with lust,’ she had said.
Weak with lust—her—for a man whom she positively disliked. Never. Impossible. She must be imagining things, getting her signals all mixed up.
‘Do you intend to accept this job that Olivia’s offered you?’ she heard Luke asking her abruptly.
‘I don’t know, I haven’t made up my mind yet. Why are you asking me all these questions?’ she asked him defensively, wishing that her voice didn’t sound quite so vulnerable and breathless and that her heart wasn’t beating quite so betrayingly fast.
He had released her arm now but he was still standing very close to her, and to her chagrin, she could actually feel her body reacting to the proximity of him. Thank the Lord she was wearing a jacket, because there was simply no way she could have passed off the sudden burgeoning of her nipples as a mere automatic reaction to an adverse change in temperature, and she knew that if Luke could see what she was feeling, he would be as aware as she was herself of what was happening to her.
He still hadn’t answered her question but as she started to look past him, back towards the lifts, he told her bluntly, ‘Well, let’s just say I’m following the same line of investigation as when I asked why you had a penchant for visiting graveyards.’
Bobbie could feel the anxious tension starting to chum her stomach. ‘Look,’ she told him huskily, ‘that was just a coincidence.’