Penny Jordan's Crighton Family Series. PENNY JORDAN

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СКАЧАТЬ Bobbie was merely attending the family get-together as Amelia’s temporary nanny, virtually as soon as they had entered the house, Olivia had deftly removed Amelia from her arms and told Bobbie firmly that she was to make sure she enjoyed herself and that she was certainly going to enjoy showing her daughter off to her relatives.

      Despite its generous proportions, the large drawing room was very crowded. Jon and Jenny, who had arrived ahead of them with the twins, Joss and Olivia’s younger brother, claimed her attention whilst Louise and Katie thanked her for the small antique brooches she had given them as their eighteenth-birthday presents.

      ‘I’ll have to take you over to introduce you to Gramps,’ Olivia told her as she handed Amelia over to an admiring Jenny.

      ‘Ben’s not in a very good mood, I’m afraid,’ Jenny warned them ruefully, adding quietly, ‘I think having Max here reminds him of your father, Olivia. I rather think he feels that Jon isn’t doing as much as he could to try to track David down.’

      ‘Dad won’t be found unless he wants to be found,’ Olivia responded tersely. ‘I just wish that Gramps could see that, but then he’s always had a blind spot where Dad is concerned. I wish sometimes I could tell him the truth,’ she declared fiercely.

      ‘I doubt that he would believe you if you did. He needs to cling on to his faith in David, his belief in him,’ Jenny told her wisely. ‘I’m sorry, Bobbie,’ Jenny apologised. ‘We’re being very rude, talking about family matters and ignoring you.’

      ‘Bobbie is almost a member of the family,’ Olivia insisted and then added slyly, ‘and very soon she might become one officially, as well.’

      Whilst Bobbie protested, her cheeks burning hotly, Jenny gave her an interested look but didn’t press the matter, leaving it to Olivia to explain.

      ‘Luke’s pretty smitten with Bobbie,’ she elaborated whilst teasingly shaking her head as Bobbie tried to contradict what she was saying. ‘It’s no good,’ Olivia said, laughing. ‘The pair of you have given yourselves away too clearly to start denying it now.’

      ‘Hello there. I was hoping we might get to meet again.’

      Bobbie turned thankfully towards Max as he strolled over to join them, his arrival a welcome interruption, although it was obvious that Olivia didn’t think so because almost immediately she announced, ‘I was just about to take Bobbie to introduce her to Gramps, Max, so I’m afraid you’ll have to excuse us.’

      ‘You haven’t met my grandfather yet?’ Max asked Bobbie, pointedly ignoring his cousin as he turned his back to her, effectively blocking her out of the conversation. Instead, he concentrated on Bobbie, giving her the benefit of his heated crocodile smile and a look that slid slowly from the top of her head all the way down to her toes. It lingered appreciatively on her body in a manner that was both extremely practised and, so far as Bobbie was concerned, extremely unappealing, but she kept her thoughts to herself, waiting politely whilst Max reached out and tucked her hand through his arm as he told her, ‘Come with me, but let me warn you that he—’

      ‘Doesn’t like Americans,’ Bobbie supplied dryly for him. ‘Yes, so I’ve been told.’

      ‘It isn’t an aversion I share,’ Max assured her softly with another appreciative look. ‘Far from it.’

      ‘But your wife, I believe, is British,’ Bobbie pointed out sweetly, just ever so slightly emphasising the words ‘your wife’.

      ‘Very much so,’ Max agreed suavely, looking more amused than concerned that she should have reminded him that he was a married man, confirming her inward assessment of him when he continued, ‘My wife is also small, plump and, I’m afraid, rather plain and a brunette, while I, I must admit, have a penchant for long-legged blondes, especially when they’re as beautiful as you are.’

      His audacity was unbelievable, Bobbie decided as she replied with cool firmness, ‘Really. Unfortunately I do not have a penchant for married men, especially those as unkind about the woman they’ve chosen to marry as you have just been. Please excuse me,’ she added as she detached herself from him and started to move away.

      Only she didn’t get very far because as she turned round, to her consternation, she found her way blocked by Luke. When had he arrived and why was he looking at her like that?

      ‘Er...Luke,’ she faltered as guiltily as a child caught with her fingers in the cookie jar, as she later angrily told herself.

      ‘Luke,’ she heard Max drawling in a far more composed voice, ‘I was just taking Bobbie over to introduce her to Grandfather.’

      ‘Really. Via a rather long detour I can only presume,’ Luke returned coldly as Max looked innocently round the empty room he had brought her to and told him, ‘Your grandfather is in the library with your wife.’

      ‘Oh, is he? That’s obviously why we couldn’t find him, then,’ Max replied cheerfully, but he made no attempt to remain with them, Bobbie noticed, excusing himself with some vague comment about needing to speak with his father and leaving Bobbie on her own to face Luke’s obvious ire.

      ‘I might have known,’ Luke said grimly. ‘I imagine it must be a case of like to like, but let me warn you, if you’re hoping to get anything more than a very brief tumble in bed and the dubious pleasure of boosting Max’s ego out of him, you’re going to be very disappointed.’

      ‘There’s obviously not much to choose between you, then, is there?’ Bobbie quipped, using flippancy to cover the churning havoc his presence was creating in her body.

      She knew she had gone too far, though, when Luke turned towards her, reaching for her wrists, his teeth baring in a feral smile of high-octane anger, but before he could say or do anything, mercifully Olivia popped her head round the door.

      ‘Not still quarrelling? I thought you’d have made it up by now, the pair of you. You should be kissing and making up, not fighting....’

      She was gone before either one could say anything, responding to Caspar’s summons from the other side of the door, leaving Luke to demand savagely, ‘And just what the hell was that all about?’

      ‘Olivia thinks that you and I...that we’re...that we’re romantically involved,’ Bobbie informed him shakily.

      ‘She what?’

      ‘Don’t blame me. I’m not the one who dragged you into my hotel room and then left a note at the reception desk that anyone could have seen,’ Bobbie reminded him grittily. ‘You were keen enough to have Fenella think we were involved. It’s a pity that you didn’t think a little harder and realise that others might make the same mistake.’

      ‘I see, and you, of course, being the person you are, obviously haven’t thought it desirable to put Olivia right.’

      The sarcastic contempt dripping from his words made Bobbie flinch, but she was determined not to let him see just how much he was hurting her.

      ‘Why should I do your dirty work for you?’ she challenged him spiritedly.

      ‘Why indeed,’ he returned unpleasantly, ‘especially when you could have some hidden agenda of your own that makes it an advantage for you to be publicly, at least, romantically attached to me?’

      He had come perilously close, too close, to guessing СКАЧАТЬ