The Perfect Father. Penny Jordan
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chair beside the window.
The chair—an antique—had been a gift from her grandmother, a pretty early Victorian rocker which Samantha had had recaned and for which she had made her own hand-stitched sampler cushions. But it wasn’t the chair or the cushions which were holding Liam’s attention—Samantha knew that and she knew too exactly what he was looking at.
‘Mom made me keep him,’ she began defensively, pushing past Liam and rushing over to the chair, protectively picking up the battered and slightly threadbare teddy bear who was seated on it.
‘She says it reminds her of when we were little. It was her bear before us and then Tom had him, too, and…Oh, you don’t understand,’ she breathed crossly. ‘You’re too unemotional. Too cold…’
‘You should run for government office yourself,’ Liam told her sardonically. ‘With your mind-reading talents you’d be a wow.’
‘Mind-reading,’ Samantha breathed heavily. ‘Oh you…’
‘For your information I am neither unemotional nor cold and as for Wilfred…’ Ignoring Samantha he walked up to her and deftly took the bear from her unresisting grasp.
‘I had one very like him when I was young. He came originally from Ireland with my grandfather. He was just a boy then…’
Samantha’s eyes widened. Liam rarely talked about his family—at least not to her. She knew he had no brothers or sisters and that his grandparents, immigrants from Ireland, had built up a very successful haulage business which Liam’s father had continued to run and expand until his death from a heart attack whilst Liam was at college.
Liam had sold the business—very profitably—with his mother’s approval. From a very young age he had known that he wanted to enter politics and both his parents and his grandparents when they had been alive, had fully supported him in this ambition, but it was from her mother that Samantha had gleaned these facts about Liam’s background, not from Liam himself.
‘Why does he never talk to me…treat me as an adult?’ she had once railed at her mother when Liam had pointedly ignored some questions she had been asking him about his grandparents. She had been at college at the time and working on an essay about the difficulties experienced by the country’s immigrants in the earlier part of the century and she had hoped to gain some first-hand knowledge and insights into the subject from Liam’s memories of his grandparents.
‘He’s a very proud man, sweetheart,’ her father had responded, hearing her exasperated question. ‘I guess he kinda feels that he doesn’t want his folks looked down on or…’
‘Looked down on…Why should I do that?’ Samantha had interrupted him indignantly.
‘Well, Liam is very conscious of the fact that his grandparents came to this country with very little in the way of material possessions, just what they could carry with them in fact, whilst…’
‘He thinks that I’d look down on him because your family arrived with Cabots and Adamses and all those other “first families” on the Mayflower who went on to form the backbone of North American early politics, wealth and society,’ Samantha had protested hotly. ‘Is that what he really thinks of me?’
‘Sweetheart, sweetheart,’ her father had protested gently. ‘I’m sure that Liam thinks no such thing. It’s just that he’s as reluctant to have his family background put under the public microscope as your mother would be hers. Not out of any sense of shame—quite the reverse—but out of a very natural desire to protect those he loves.’
‘But Gran is still alive whilst Liam’s grandparents are dead,’ Samantha had objected.
‘The principle is still the same,’ her father had pointed out gently.
Now, some impulse she couldn’t name made Samantha ask Liam softly, ‘Do you still have it…the bear…?’
His austere features suddenly broke into an almost boyish grin and for one breath-stopping moment Samantha actually felt as though something or someone was physically jerking her heartstrings. Impossible, of course, hearts didn’t have strings and if hers had then there was no way that one Liam Connolly could possibly have jerked them. No, it was just the mental image she had had of him as a small boy listening solemnly to his grandfather whilst he related to him tales of his own Irish upbringing.
‘Yes.’
‘You’ll be able to keep it for your children and tell them the stories your grandparents told you,’ Samantha told him impulsively.
Immediately his features changed and became formidably harsh.
‘Don’t you jump on the bandwagon,’ he told her grittily. ‘Everyone seems determined to marry me off. I’ve even had Lee Calder giving interviews stating that a single, childless Governor won’t understand the needs of the state’s parents. My God, when I think of the way he’s been trying to cut down on our education.’
Lee Calder was Liam’s closest contender for the governorship, a radical right-winger whose views Samantha’s father found totally unsympathetic. Lee was an overweight, balding man in his mid-forties, twice married with five children who he had overdisciplined and controlled to such an extent that the eldest, a boy, was rumoured to have shown his unhappiness by stealing money from his parents and trashing the family home with a group of friends one summer when the family were on vacation without him.
No matter what her personal opinion of Liam might be, Samantha knew that her father was quite right when he said that Liam would make an excellent Governor. Highly principled, firm, a natural leader, the state would flourish with Liam at its helm.
Lee Calder on the other hand, despite cleverly managing to package himself as a devoted family man and churchgoer, had a string of shady dealings behind him—nothing that could be proved, but there was something about the man. Samantha vividly remembered the occasion at an official function when he had grabbed hold of her and tried to kiss her.
Fortunately she had been able to push him away but not before she had seen the decidedly nasty glint in his eyes as she rejected him.
She had been all of seventeen at the time and as she recalled his second wife had been pregnant with their first child.
‘Don’t accuse me of trying to marry you off,’ she challenged Liam now.
‘No. By the looks of what you’ve got in that case you’re more interested in changing your own single status,’ Liam agreed derisively.
‘I’ve told you, those are for Bobbie,’ Samantha insisted.
‘And I’ve told you if you really want to catch yourself a man, the best way to do it is by…’ He stopped when he saw her frown, then continued. ‘You know that I’m driving you to the airport in the morning, don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ Samantha agreed on a small sigh. She had a very early start and had been quite prepared to order a cab but her father could be an old-fashioned parent in some ways.
‘No, sweetheart, you know what you’re like for getting yourself anyplace on time.’
‘Dad,’ Samantha had protested, ‘that was years ago…and an accident…just because I once missed a plane doesn’t mean…’
‘Liam’s driving you,’ her father had announced, and Samantha had known better than to argue with him. ‘As it happens, he’s picking someone up, as well.’
‘Someone…Who?’ Samantha had asked her father curiously.
‘Someone from Washington. I want him to take her on board as his campaign PR, she’s very good.’
‘She?’ Samantha had raised her eyebrows, her voice sharpening slightly. ‘You wouldn’t be doing a little matchmaking would you, Dad?’
‘Give your sister our love, remember,’ he had answered her obliquely, ‘and tell her we can’t wait to see them