The Perfect Lover. PENNY JORDAN
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she had done so, she would be able to leave without the others thinking that...that what? That she was running away?
Running away. No, she wasn’t doing that, had never done that, despite what some people chose to think!
‘European Parliament...bunch of committee-making bureaucrats who are far too removed from what’s going on in the real world...’
Louise gritted her teeth as she listened to Ben Crighton, her grandfather and family patriarch, a few minutes later. As she was perfectly well aware, so far as he was concerned the only real way, the only worthwhile way, to practise the law was from a barrister’s chambers.
Excusing herself before she allowed him to provoke her into an argument, Louise couldn’t help feeling sorry for Maddy, who had moved into the old man’s large country house following an operation on his hip the year before.
The move, at first merely a temporary one to ensure that he had someone to care for him in the short term, had turned into a more permanent arrangement, with Maddy and the children living full time in Haslewich with Max’s grandfather while Max spent most of his time living and working in London.
Louise couldn’t understand how or why Maddy put up with Max’s blatant selfishness—and his equally blatant infidelities. She certainly would never have done so, but then she would never have married a man like her brother in a thousand lifetimes. She knew how much it distressed her parents that he had turned out the way he had Max was as unprincipled and selfish in other areas of his life as he was in his role as a husband.
Unlike their uncle David, Olivia’s father and her own father’s twin brother, Max might never have actually broken the law, but Louise suspected that he was perfectly capable if not of doing so, then certainly of bending it to suit his own purposes.
‘He doesn’t change, does he?’ The rueful, familiar tones of Saul’s voice coming from behind her caused Louise to whirl round, her face a stiff mask of wariness as she watched him.
The last time she and Saul had spoken to each other had been when he had consigned her to Olivia’s charge, having just made it clear to her that, far from returning her feelings for him, he would really prefer never to have to set eyes on her again.
Words spoken in the heat of the moment, perhaps, but they had left their mark, their scar upon her, not least because she knew how richly deserved his fury and rejection of her had been.
‘I suppose at his age...’ Louise began, and then shook her head and agreed huskily, ‘No. No, he doesn’t.’
Ridiculous for her, at twenty-two, to feel as uncomfortable and ill at ease as a guilty child, but nevertheless she did.
Whatever malign fate had decided to make Saul the object of her teenage fantasies and longings had long since upped sticks and decamped from her emotions. The man she saw standing in front of her might not have changed but she certainly had. The Saul she saw standing before her now was once again, thankfully, nothing more to her than another member of her family.
‘Your mother says you’re only paying a flying visit home this time.’
‘Yes. Yes, that’s right,’ Louise agreed. ‘Pam Carlisle, my boss, has been asked to sit on a new committee being set up to look into the problems caused by potential over-fishing in the seas off the Arctic. Obviously from the legal angle there’s going to be a lot of research work involved, which I’ll be involved in.’
‘Mmm...sounds like a good breeding ground for potential future Euro politicians in the Crighton family,’ Saul teased, but Louise shook her head.
‘No. Definitely not,’ she denied firmly. ‘Politics isn’t for me. I’m afraid I’m far too outspoken for a start,’ she told him ruefully. ‘And politics requires a great deal more finesse than I’ll ever possess.’
‘You’re too hard on yourself,’ Saul told her. ‘In more ways than one,’ he added meaningfully, forcing her to hold his gaze as he added quietly, ‘It’s time for us to make a fresh start, Lou. What happened happened, but it’s in the past now...’
Before she could say anything he added, ‘Tullah and I will be coming over to Brussels some time in the next few months on company business. It would be nice if we could meet up...go out for dinner together... ’
Saul worked for Aarlston-Becker, a large multinational company whose European head office was based just outside Haslewich. He and Tullah had met when she had gone to work in the company’s legal department under Saul.
Unable to do anything other than simply nod her head, Louise was stunned when Saul suddenly reached out and took her in his arms, holding her tightly in a cousinly hug as he told her gruffly, ‘Friends again, Lou.’
‘Friends,’ she managed to agree chokily, fiercely blinking back her tears.
‘And don’t forget...write to me...’
Louise grimaced as she listened to Katie’s firm command. ‘Why on earth did you have to go and get yourself involved with some wretched charity outfit that can’t even run to the expense of a fax machine?’ she groaned.
‘You tell me...but I do enjoy my job,’ Katie pointed out
They were saying goodbye at the airport, their mother having dropped them off on her way to a meeting of the charity she and their great-aunt Ruth had set up in their home town some years earlier.
‘Sorry I can’t see you off properly,’ she had apologised as they climbed out of her small car.
‘Don’t worry about it, Mum; we understand,’ Louise had consoled her.
‘You could always come over to Brussels to see me, you know,’ Louise told her twin abruptly now. ‘I’ll pay for the ticket, if that would help.’
Katie gave her a brief hug. She knew how difficult it was for her sister to admit that there were any chinks in her emotional armour, even to her twin. To the world at large, Louise always came across as the more independent one of the two of them, the leader. But in reality Katie believed that she was the one with the less sensitively acute emotions, even though she knew that Louise would have sharply denied such an allegation. Louise had always taken upon herself the role of the bigger, braver sister, but Katie knew that inside Louise was nowhere near as confident or as determinedly independent as others seemed to think.
Even their parents seemed to have been deceived by Louise’s outward assumption of sturdy bravado, and consequently she was the one who was always treated that little bit more gently, the one for whom extra allowances were always made, Katie acknowledged. A fact which made her oddly protective of her sister.
‘Oh, by the way, did you know that Professor Simmonds has been seconded to Brussels? Apparently he’s been asked to head some committee on fishing rights in the North Sea,’ Katie told her vaguely.
‘What? No, I didn’t know,’ Louise responded, her face paling.
‘No? I thought that perhaps you may have bumped into him,’ Katie told her innocently.
‘No, I haven’t!’ But if what Katie had just told her was true, Louise suspected that she was certainly going to do so. The committee Katie was talking about had to be the same one that Louise’s boss had just been co-opted onto. Of all the unwanted coincidences!
Louise’s thoughts rioted frantically, her stomach churning, but she dared not let Katie see how shocked and disturbed she was.
‘I know you don’t like him,’ Katie was saying quietly.
‘No. I don’t,’ Louise agreed curtly. ‘After all, he cost me my first, and—’
‘Louise, that’s not fair,’ Katie objected gently.
Louise looked away from her. There was so much that Katie didn’t know, that she couldn’t tell her.
Gareth Simmonds had been her tutor at Oxford at a particularly traumatic time