A Perfect Family. PENNY JORDAN

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СКАЧАТЬ it was too late. Ben was swinging round to frown at her, sensing a much softer target than the unexpectedly obdurate barrier Caspar had thrown up against him. Ben wasn’t used to being challenged and he didn’t like it.

      ‘What’s this …? Her own department …? What’s this …?’

      ‘It’s just a small promotion, Gramps. Nothing really at all,’ Olivia was already hurriedly protesting. ‘Just an interdepartmental thing, but of course—’

      ‘But of course it no doubt carries a whacking great salary increase,’ Max interrupted, going over to join in. ‘You certainly fell on your feet there, old thing. I—’

      ‘Olivia did not fall on her feet,’ Caspar corrected him coolly. ‘She happens to be an extremely highly qualified and hard-working lawyer.’

      ‘You would say that,’ Max responded. ‘After all, she was one of your pupils—out of bed as well as in it.’

      Jenny could feel her face burning with embarrassment on behalf of her son, but typically Max was oblivious both to his rudeness and his lack of generosity.

      ‘I hear that there’s shortly to be a vacancy coming up in your chambers. Do you intend to apply for it?’ Caspar asked Max.

      Max frowned. How the hell had Caspar learned about that?

      ‘He doesn’t need to apply for it,’ Ben interjected, answering the question for him. ‘He’s already been told that the vacancy will be his and so it should be. He’s already had to stand aside once in favour of someone else.’

      Max fought to conceal the irritation his grandfather’s comment was causing him. Normally he was only too glad to have the old man champion him, but on this occasion just how much did Olivia’s damned American know about what was going on?

      He had to have some kind of inside information just to know that the vacancy was coming up. In any other circumstances Max would immediately have started pumping him to discover just how much he knew and if that information included the name of his female rival, but of course he could hardly do that now without admitting to his grandfather that his appointment wasn’t as cut and dried as he’d let him think.

      Max could feel himself starting to sweat slightly. His grandfather was indulgent towards him—to a point—and Max knew how important it was to Ben that Max fulfilled his ambitions for him. He had already been disappointed once and ultimately David had been forgiven for that disappointment, but Max shuddered at the thought of having to live his uncle’s life.

      It had been bad enough living under his grandfather’s restrictive eye when he was younger; to do so now … His grandfather still held the family purse strings and Max had seen the way he controlled his sons and their lives through them. Max had no illusions about the price attached to being his grandfather’s favourite.

      But his success meant just as much to him as it did to his grandfather, probably more so. Max liked money and he liked the things it could buy. He wanted to be successful and, if possible, famous, and no mere woman was going to stand in his way.

      ‘Did your mother’s shoes arrive safely?’ Jenny asked Olivia as they walked back to the car.

      ‘No. She’s gone into Chester this morning to see if she can find another pair.’

      Olivia hesitated for a moment, remembering the scene she had interrupted in her parents’ bedroom earlier. She still felt disturbed about it.

      ‘Aunt Jenny,’ she began, ‘I know that you and Mum aren’t particularly close, but have you, has she …?’

      She stopped abruptly, recalling how on the way here after he had met her aunt and uncle, Caspar had mentioned how much everyone seemed to depend on Jenny. Seeing how not only Jenny’s own younger offspring but Olivia’s brother Jack, as well, had produced sets of grubby sports kits to be washed, Caspar had remarked wryly that the older members of the family dumped their problems on her in much the same way as the younger ones seemed to dump their dirty washing.

      They all did have a tendency to turn to Jenny when things went wrong in their lives, Olivia acknowledged but she was an adult now and …

      ‘Is something wrong with your mother, Livvy?’ Jenny was asking her but Olivia shook her head, ignoring the temptation to confide in her aunt.

      ‘No,’ she replied lightly, ‘but you know Mum. She’d be worrying herself silly about those shoes….’

      Olivia winced inwardly as she heard her own voice. What would Jenny have said if she had told her what was really bothering her?

      She and Caspar had just been on the point of leaving the house that morning when Olivia realised that she had forgotten her jacket. As she dashed back upstairs to get it, she saw that her parents’ bedroom door was open and she could hear her mother inside the room apparently talking to herself.

      Automatically Olivia had walked into the bedroom. The scene that met her eyes was one she doubted she would ever be able to forget. And neither was the mingled look of shame, guilt, defiance and fear she had seen in her mother’s eyes.

      ‘You won’t say anything, will you?’ she had pleaded with Olivia as she sat surrounded by dozens of glossy carrier bags, their contents plainly never unpacked, the result, Livvy felt sure, of many shopping trips. ‘Don’t tell your father. He wouldn’t … He wouldn’t understand….’

      Olivia had left without making any response. Beneath her mother’s familiar perfume had been another smell, rank and unpleasantly pervasive, a smell Olivia had recognised as actually familiar to her. Her gorge had started to rise in response to it and she had had to leave the bedroom without responding to her mother’s plea of secrecy.

      ‘What’s wrong?’ she heard Caspar asking her quietly as they drove away from her grandfather’s. ‘You’re not brooding over what he said, are you?’

      ‘Who?’ Olivia questioned, her face set.

      ‘Your grandfather,’ Caspar reminded her. ‘I know he must have upset you, dismissing everything you’ve achieved professionally by …’

      Olivia’s expression cleared then. Caspar thought she was upset because her grandfather had compared her adversely with Max. Once she might have been but not now, not when …

      ‘No. My grandfather’s too old-fashioned and chauvinistic to change now and Max has always been his favourite.’

      ‘Mmm … Well, things will be different in America,’ Caspar promised her. When Olivia made no immediate response, he gave her a thoughtful look. ‘You’re not having second thoughts about our plans, are you?’ he prodded, then added, ‘You still haven’t told your family?’

      ‘How could I have second thoughts?’ Olivia challenged him lovingly. ‘You know how much you mean to me … how much our future together means to me,’ she amended.

      She laughed as he warned her softly, ‘Just watch it. I don’t know what your laws are over here about stopping on the freeway to—’

      ‘This isn’t a freeway,’ Olivia interjected mock-severely. ‘It’s a quiet country road and if you want to stop …’ She glanced at him provocatively, laughing again when Caspar shook his head at her.

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