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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.’
‘So you said earlier,’ he agreed, ‘but not, I have to say, very convincingly.’
‘What are you trying to suggest?’ Bobbie demanded, hoping that he couldn’t tell just how nervous and guilty he was making her feel.
‘Nothing,’ he replied, but before she could draw a shaky breath of relief, he added warningly, ‘as yet. Let’s just say that I’m holding a watching brief.’
‘It’s Fenella you should be watching and not me,’ Bobbie advised as she quickly stepped away from him and darted into the lift. She reached out to press the button and then tensed as he followed her and placed his hand against the door, preventing it from closing.
‘I rather suspect that in comparison to you, any element of danger that Fenella might represent would be minimal indeed,’ he parried.
‘That’s your expert opinion as a barrister, is it?’ Bobbie quipped flippantly.
‘No, that’s my gut instinct as a man,’ he told her cynically.
She removed his hand from the door and it slid shut before Bobbie could come up with any suitable reply.
Once she had gained the relative sanctuary of her room and double bolted the door, Bobbie picked up the telephone receiver and punched in her parents’ New England home number, keeping her fingers crossed that it would be her sister who answered her call and not her mother.
Fortunately it was. ‘Sam...?’
‘Yes, it’s me,’ her twin affirmed unnecessarily, adding, ‘You sound a mite out of breath. Anything wrong?’
‘Nooo...’ Bobbie denied unconvincingly, then asked anxiously, ‘How are things back there?’
Their mother had been advised by her gynaecologist to have a hysterectomy some time ago, and whether as a result of this or because of her having hit fifty, in the months since the operation she had suffered from uncharacteristic bouts of a troubling depression.
She was over the worst now and they were not to worry, nor were they to pamper her or indulge her foolishness, she had insisted to both her daughters and her husband, but all three of them were very much aware of the shadowed sadness in her eyes and the unfamiliar droop of her mouth when she thought that no one was watching her.
‘So so,’ Samantha replied guardedly. ‘The folks are still down in Washington but they’re due back tomorrow. I spoke to Dad last night and he said they’d both be glad to get home. I guess he’s thinking that he may not run for office next time around. He thinks it might be too stressful for Mom.’
‘Oh, Sam,’ Bobbie protested.
‘I know,’ her elder twin sympathised, asking her, ‘How are you getting on?’
‘I...I’m not sure,’ Bobbie told her hesitantly. ‘You remember I told you about the party I was invited to? Well, one of the other guests, a member of the family, invited me out to lunch today to ask me if I’d like a temporary job with them, looking after their baby, but—’
She stopped speaking as her sister interrupted her excitedly, saying, ‘Wow, that’s wonderful, just the kind of break we needed. You’ll be able to—’
‘Sam. I’m not so sure that I ... I like Olivia,’ she tried to explain hesitantly to her sister, who had suddenly gone ominously quiet, wishing as she had wished so often over these past few days that Samantha were here with her. ‘She’s so genuine ... so kind, and I feel—’
‘You like her?’ Samantha questioned fiercely. ‘Bobbie—Roberta—have you forgotten who she is ... who they are,’ she demanded insistently, ‘what they did?’
‘No...of course I haven’t. It’s just...I hate to be deceitful like this, Sam, and—’
‘This is no time to go all soft-hearted,’ Samantha told her sister assertively. ‘Look, I’ve got to go. Ring me tomorrow.’
After she had replaced the receiver, Samantha stood staring out of the window of her parents’ handsome drawing room at the empty drive
outside. The creeperclad, solidly built New England mansion was one of the finest examples of late eighteenth-century buildings in the area. It had originally been built by one of their father’s ancestors and in due course would pass on into the ownership of their brother Tom, now presently at Harvard, but it was not the thought of her younger brother ultimately inheriting the house in which both she and Bobbie had grown up that was causing a deep frown to crease her forehead.
