Her One and Only (29 page)

‘You won’t say anything to Gareth about...about me having thought I loved him, will you?’ she begged Louise. ‘I realise now that...’ She stopped. Even if she hadn’t already recognised how unreal and unsupportable her supposed love for Gareth had really been, she knew that hearing Louise describe his anger with her when they had made love, and recognising that Gareth was the tender almost detached gentle lover she had imagined was nothing more than an unreal fantasy would have destroyed the fragile romantic image she had built up around her brother-in-law.

She had believed she loved him because there had been no one else there in her life for her
to
love, she realised with sudden wisdom. Loving Gareth had been a subtle form of emotional protection, of safeguarding her emotions. Rather like that thicket of briars which had grown up around Sleeping Beauty, and like the prince who had hacked his way through that thicket, Seb had found a way through
her
emotional protection and into her heart.

If she had gained nothing else from what had happened, she had at least gained maturity and a much deeper knowledge of her real self. And of course, she had regained the special closeness with Louise her twin.

An hour later as they strolled together through Brussels’s shopping area, Katie paused to study the display in a small boutique window.

The dress, a cobwebby knit creation that clung lovingly and seductively to every curve of the mannequin’s body, was both impossibly expensive and even more impossibly provocative.

‘He’ll be furious with you for wearing it in public where other men’s eyes could see what he wants to keep only for himself,’ Louise murmured to her before adding temptingly, ‘Why don’t you buy it?’

‘Certainly not,’ Katie demurred. ‘Have you seen the price, and besides, where would I wear it? Mind you I could do with something,’ she admitted ruefully. ‘There’s Gramps’s “do” coming up...’

Louise rolled her eyes expressively and groaned, ‘Don’t remind me,’ and then, as her voice changed tone and became quieter, she asked gently, ‘What will you do?’

‘...about Seb?’ Katie responded. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps I should look for another job...move away...’

‘Why not move here?’ Louise suggested promptly. ‘You’d get a job easily enough and we’ve got plenty of spare bedrooms... Or,’ she added, pausing and then looking at Katie before saying firmly, ‘you
could
always tell him how you feel, and then he...’

‘No! That’s impossible,’ Katie denied immediately.

Ten minutes later while they were sitting in a café drinking coffee, Louise suddenly gave a small exclamation and got up. ‘I’ve just remembered, I didn’t put enough money in the parking ticket machine. You wait there while I go and get another ticket. I shan’t be long...’

‘No,’ she insisted when Katie started to get up. ‘There’s no need for you to come. Finish your coffee and order us both a second cup... You don’t know what a treat...a luxury...it is for me to simply be able to sit and drink coffee. I love Nick to pieces but just occasionally it’s absolute bliss to have some time to myself. When you and Seb have that baby of yours you’ll understand what I mean,’ she added wickedly before hurrying down the street.

* * *

‘D
AD
! W
HAT
ARE
you
doing here?’

Seb grimaced as Charlotte came bounding into the foyer to the ward, stopping dead as she saw him. He had arrived at the hospital ten minutes earlier and had just reached the ward where Charlotte had been hospitalised.

‘What do you think?’ he responded grimly.

‘You came because of
me
?’ Charlotte shook her head. ‘But I’m fine, I promise. In fact I’ve just been discharged. Heaven knows why they insisted on keeping me in here.’

‘You had a bad fall,’ Seb pointed out curtly.

Charlotte rolled her eyes protestingly.

‘I had a bit of a tumble,’ she corrected him. ‘Hardly a fall at all and if I hadn’t bumped my head I doubt there would have been any of this silly panic. Heavens, if I’d been rushed off to hospital every time I fell over when I was growing up I’d have spent half my life there. Mum always used to complain that it must be the Cooke gene that made me so clumsy and so addicted to danger. According to her,
she
never so much as sustained the smallest scratch when she was growing up. I suppose I was a bit of a tomboy,’ Charlotte allowed ruefully, a huge smile dimpling her face as she slid her arm through Seb’s and teased him, ‘You’re going to have to get used to visits like this if you and Katie have that baby boy. No,’ she corrected herself firmly, ‘
when
you have him... How
is
Katie, by the way, is she here with you?’

Here with him?

‘No, why should she be?’ Seb demanded sharply.

‘No reason,’ Charlotte pacified him. ‘I was just hoping...thinking...that it would be nice to see her.’

Normally her teasing and almost maternal probings would have been something he could have sidestepped with ease but today, after last night, it was activating pain cells he hadn’t known he was capable of possessing. Just the sound of Katie’s name was enough to produce a series of flash cards inside his brain.

Katie wearing just that damned towel. Katie, her mouth swollen from his kiss. Katie reaching out to touch him. Katie as
he
touched
her
... Katie...

‘Dad...where
are
you?’

Collecting himself he frowned down at Charlotte.

‘Are you sure you’re well enough to be discharged?’

‘Ask the doc if you don’t believe me,’ she retaliated flippantly.

An hour later, having spoken with the duty doctor, the admissions staff and, in addition, having insisted on seeing the specialist in charge of the ward, Seb acknowledged that Charlotte had been right when she claimed that she was in perfect health.

‘Dad, you’re over-protective. You’re practically Neanderthal,’ she said as they finally left the ward.

‘I’m your
father
,’ Seb reminded her tersely, looking at her in bafflement as she suddenly gave him a smile and hugged him.

‘Yes, I know,’ Charlotte conceded. ‘But when the time comes when I finally meet a man...
the
man, Dad,’ she emphasised with a sidelong look at him and a soft pink tinge to her skin, ‘there’s no way that I’m going to tell
you
about it. At least not until afterwards.’ Her skin colour deepened a little more betrayingly as she added defensively, ‘You’ll terrify him.’

‘Good,’ Seb told her, but her semi-teasing words had set off a chain of thoughts of his own and there was no way he could share them with her.

The man, she had said, meaning quite plainly the man who would be her first lover. Charlotte and her peers looked on sex as a responsibility that had to be treated with caution and respect and that, of course, was a legacy of the tainted inheritance other generations had left them.

He
had been Katie’s first lover. What would Jon Crighton think of him if he knew? Jon would not love his daughter any less than Seb loved Charlotte and Jon Crighton thought that he and Katie were a pair, a couple.

If he were to disappear out of Katie’s life now, what would Jon Crighton think of him? Would he think that he had used Katie, betrayed her, abandoned her? Would he condemn him as being every bit as bad as the worst of his Cooke ancestors? Would Seb be tarred by the same brush as them, a man totally without morals, without any kind of finer feelings?

‘Dad... Dad...’ Abruptly he realised that Charlotte was talking to him. ‘Dad, are you okay?’ Charlotte asked him in concern. ‘You were miles away again...’

‘I was thinking about...something...’ Seb told her quickly.

‘Something or
someone
?’ Charlotte suggested, her face breaking into a wide smile when he wasn’t quite quick enough to hide his reaction.

‘I
knew
it. It is Katie, isn’t it? You do love her, don’t you, Dad? Oh, I’m so pleased,’ Charlotte said, hugging him excitedly. ‘But just don’t expect me to be a bridesmaid and dress in a pink tulle meringue.’ Charlotte pulled a face. ‘Okay, I know, Katie has far too much taste to want me to wear anything so uncool.’

‘You’re running ahead of the game,’ Seb admonished her gently, changing the subject determinedly by telling her, ‘Come on, let’s get you back to Manchester.’

‘Manchester! No way!’ Charlotte announced firmly. ‘I’m finishing my field trip first.’

They argued for several minutes but, in the end, Seb was forced to concede defeat and acknowledge that Charlotte was right to insist on continuing with her field trip.

‘I’m an adult now, Dad,’ she reminded him. ‘And even if
I
wasn’t... I love it that you are so protective of me, but sometimes I have to be allowed to feel the pain you know. It’s called living.’

‘Tell me about it,’ Seb advised her sardonically.

* * *

‘S
O
WHAT
ARE
you going to do when you get home?’ Louise asked Katie. They were at the airport waiting for Katie’s return flight.

‘You mean
after
I’ve called a meeting in Haslewich’s town square to explain why Seb and I are
not
an item?’ Katie replied ruefully.

‘Sorry about that,’ Louise apologised. ‘If I hadn’t said anything...’

‘It’s not
your
fault,’ Katie reassured her. ‘
I
should have had the courage to tell you the truth.’

‘...and I should have realised that you were holding back. At least something good’s come out of all this,’ Louise murmured.

Their shared confidences had brought them closer than Katie could ever remember them being, closer and on a much more equal footing. With Gareth and Nick away, they had spent their first evening together exchanging confidences and swapping memories of their shared growing-up years, talking long into the night but returning again and again to the extraordinariness of the circumstances surrounding the way they had both come to realise where their true feelings lay.

On the final day of Katie’s visit Gareth had returned home and it had been the most natural and the easiest thing in the world for Katie to go up to him and give him a sisterly hug and kiss.

She had known then when she did so, the fantasy, the
fear
that had gripped her for so long had gone. Gareth meant nothing to her apart from the fact that he was Louise’s husband.

‘It isn’t over with Seb yet,’ Louise reminded her.

‘Yes, it is,’ Katie responded fiercely, adding gently, ‘I know that for my sake you’d love this to have a happy ending—for Seb to love
me
—but it isn’t going to happen, Lou. You said yourself that Gareth told you that he had loved you that first time you were lovers even though
you
hadn’t known it at the time. But Seb
doesn’t
love me...’

‘How do
you
know that?’

‘Because
if
he did, he could have told me so,’ Katie pointed out softly. ‘Gareth
couldn’t
tell you because you’d told him you loved someone else.’

‘I hear what you’re saying, but I still think you’re wrong,’ Louise insisted firmly.

‘
Don’t
, Lou,’ Katie begged her, her eyes suddenly darkening with pain. ‘Don’t give me any hope, all it’s going to do is to make things worse.’

Louise saw the pain in her twin’s eyes and hugged her tightly before reminding her, ‘It won’t be long before we come over...’

‘...for Gramps’s party, the one
I’m
supposed to produce Seb at for his inspection,’ Katie replied dryly.

As she gave her a final hug, Louise sent up a private mental prayer for her sister’s happiness, waiting until the last minute to thrust a prettily wrapped package into her sister’s hand.

‘What is it?’ Katie asked her in surprise.

‘It’s the dress...the one we saw in the boutique window—the “for Seb’s eyes only” dress. Remember?’ Louise told her. ‘I went back to get it when I told you I had to get a parking ticket for the car. I knew you wouldn’t buy it yourself...’

‘You knew right,’ Katie told her feelingly and then, remembering the cost of the silky sensual slip, she protested, ‘You shouldn’t have, Lou... There’s no way I can ever wear it.’

‘Of course you will.... Wear it for the family gathering,’ Louise told her.

‘What?’

‘I dare you,’ Louise challenged her wickedly, adding, ‘You’d better go, otherwise you’re going to miss your flight.’

Without giving Katie any chance to respond she gave her a little push and then stood watching her until she had disappeared.

CHAPTER NINE

‘A
ND
SO
,
IF
you would face the Court please and tell the jury exactly what you saw on the night of the eighteenth of October last year...’

Katie closed her eyes and tried to concentrate on what the witness who had just taken the stand was saying.

The delay in the jury reaching a verdict in a case in which Olivia had been acting had resulted in Katie having to take over from her at the last minute on another case being heard at Chester’s Crown Court which had been brought forward. Although in many ways she was grateful to have the excuse for having to spend several days in Chester while the case was being heard, and therefore not having to run the risk of bumping into Seb, Katie was forced to admit that she was finding it hard to give her work her full attention; to blank Seb out of her mind completely.

‘The Court will rise.’

Automatically Katie stood up. The judge had declared a recess. It was hot and stuffy in the courtroom despite the whir of the fans, and she was glad to be able to go outside and breathe in some fresher unrecycled air.

Her head had started to ache, a tight band of pain gripping her forehead. There was a chemist’s shop close to the court, so she crossed the road and made her way towards it.

There was a queue at the counter and as she waited to be served she looked absently around. The array of drugs on sale was bewildering. Out of the corner of her eye Katie caught sight of a display of condoms and contraceptive products alongside pregnancy testing kits.

‘You never know,’ Louise had told her during their late night heart-to-heart. ‘You may have already conceived Seb’s child...’

‘I haven’t,’ Katie had told her immediately and positively. ‘Don’t ask me how I know. I just
know
, but even if I
had
...that would be something, wouldn’t it?’ she had added sardonically. ‘Having to tell the family that I’m pregnant and that Seb doesn’t love me. Not that they’ll need much telling about that. After all it will be pretty obvious I should imagine when I turn up at Gramps’s “do” without him.’

She reached the till and paid for her headache tablets. Quite how she knew so positively that she wasn’t carrying Seb’s child she had no idea, she just knew that the gypsy woman had got it wrong, there wasn’t going to be any baby... Any little boy so like his father... At least not for her.

* * *

I
T
WAS
A
perfect afternoon as Katie drove back to Haslewich, the Welsh hills sharply clear against the skyline, the rich fields of the Cheshire plains laid out before her. Roman soldiers and merchants had once crossed this plain on their way from their port at Chester to the salt mines of Northwich, Nantwich, Middlewich and Haslewich. Salt mining had been the principal industry of the area along with farming right down through the centuries. Until the introduction of frozen and refrigerated foods, salt had been the only way that meat could be stored and safely preserved. Now the old workings had been turned into a museum and a tourist attraction. There was a local story that, during the Civil War, when the area had been heavily fought over by the rival Cavalier and Roundhead forces, a certain very famous royal fugitive, the Stuart prince who would ultimately be King Charles II, had taken refuge in Haslewich’s mines, but it had never actually been proved.

At her own suggestion, instead of returning to her own apartment, Katie drove over to her parents’ where she had arranged to spend the night so that she would be on hand from early in the morning to help her mother and Maddy with their preparations for Ben’s party.

As she walked in her mother’s kitchen she was welcomed by the warm scent of baking and as Jenny enveloped her in a hug and asked her how her court case had gone, Katie thrust away the image that had been tormenting her all the way home of walking up to her apartment to find Seb waiting there for her with open arms.

But of course, that was never going to happen.

Over supper she chatted with her parents about her visit with Louise and the recent concluded court case.

She’d met with Max while she’d been in Chester and he’d confided to her, ‘It looks very much as though I’m going to be elevated to the ranks of Queen’s Counsel.’

‘Oh, Max.’ Katie had beamed with sisterly pride. ‘That’s wonderful.’

‘Well, it should help to cheer Gramps up a bit,’ Max had agreed. ‘I’ve talked it over with Maddy and we’ve both agreed that I should tell him during the party.’

‘So that he can boast about it to everyone who’s there,’ Katie had teased, adding truthfully, ‘Max, he will be so thrilled, this is what he’s always wanted, to be able to claim a member of his own immediate family has those all important initials after his name—Max Crighton, QC. Oh, Max...’ She had hugged him excitedly and then shared the bottle of champagne that Luke had insisted on opening in their chambers when Max confessed to him that he hadn’t been able to resist telling her his good news.

‘You deserve it, Max,’ Luke assured him and the two men had exchanged such a look of warmth and respect that Katie had felt her eyes start to fill with emotional tears.

‘I’ve already told the folks,’ Max had added to Katie just before she left.

‘They will be thrilled,’ Katie said.

‘Yes,’ Max agreed, and then giving her a wry look he had added, ‘but like me, they feel that what I’ve got with Maddy and the children is of far more value.’

Katie had hugged him again, knowing how much soul-searching and pain had been endured by both Max and Maddy before they had reached the loving intimacy of the marriage they now shared.

Now, seated at the table with her parents, Katie reflected that at least Max’s news would take the pressure off her. With Max’s elevation to boast about, her grandfather was hardly likely to concern himself with her relationship—or lack of it—with Seb. The female members of the family had never been accorded or merited as much importance in her grandfather’s eyes as the males and for once Katie was happy to let that be so.

‘Have you seen Seb since you got back?’ her mother was asking her in a little concern now. ‘You must have missed one another this last week...’

‘I...’ Now was her chance—her golden opportunity—to tell her parents the truth, Katie recognised, but as she took a deep breath ready to do so the phone rang and her mother got up from the table and hurried out of the room to answer it.

Before she returned, Max’s wife, Maddy, had arrived to drop off the fruit that Jenny needed to fill the tart cases she had been baking and then, within the hour, Maddy was on her way back to Queensmead where various members of the family were going to be staying for the weekend. Then Louise, Gareth and Nick had arrived and any chance Katie might have had to talk to her parents in private had gone.

* * *

‘W
ELL
,
THAT
’
S
THE
last batch of food delivered to Queensmead, and it’s time for us to get ourselves ready,’ Louise announced, deftly removing the chocolaty crumbs her son was about to scrunch into her clean outfit.

‘I can’t wait to see you in that dress,’ she enthused to Katie, who immediately looked down at the floor, causing Louise to stop what she was doing and demand determinedly, ‘You
are
going to wear it, aren’t you, Katie?’

‘I can’t,’ Katie protested. ‘It’s not...it’s too...anyway, I don’t have it here with me, it’s at the apartment and there isn’t time...’

‘Lou,’ Katie protested as her twin immediately reached for Katie’s handbag and deftly extracted her keys, telling her in a voice that brooked no argument, ‘There
is
time. I shall
make
time, and you, my dear darling twin, will wear it. Gareth,’ she called over her shoulder to her husband, who had just walked into the kitchen with Jon, ‘you’re going to have to wash and change Nick. His things are all laid out on the bed upstairs...’

‘Louise,’ Katie protested but it was too late, her sister was already out of the doorway and heading for hers and Gareth’s rented car.

* * *

S
EB
FROWNED
AS
he put down the telephone receiver. He had just rung Katie’s flat for the fifth time without getting any reply that morning.

It had only been when he had telephoned the office and spoken with Olivia that he had discovered that Katie had returned from an unplanned visit to Brussels and then had virtually gone straight to court in Chester.

Was it a set of freak circumstances that was preventing him from being able to speak with her or was she
deliberately
avoiding him? Today was the date set for her grandfather’s party—an event to which
he
was supposed to be escorting her—at least according to Guy.

Oh, yes, he had enough, and to spare, practical reasons for needing to see Katie, but it wasn’t those that were causing the aching longing which had taken over not just his emotions but his thoughts and time as well. Like a series of vivid flashbacks he kept getting mental images of the night they had made love, images which tormented every one of his five senses.

Broodingly he wondered what Katie herself was thinking and feeling. Did she regret what had happened? Did she blame him for it...hate him for it? Was she avoiding him out of embarrassment or anger? Did she... Did he really need to ask himself those questions? he derided himself bitterly. He only had to remember what he had said to her before they had made love, the accusations he had made, the anger he had shown. But once they had touched, kissed, held one another... There was no point in him staying here, he decided, he might as well go out.

Louise was just crossing the hallway to Katie’s flat when Seb opened his own front door.

‘Katie...’ he began and then stopped as he realised his mistake and Louise, who had seen the hope and longing flare quickly in his eyes only to die when he saw
her
, made a mental promise to herself that her twin would most definitely wear her new dress even if she herself had to dress her in it and drag her forcibly to the party.

‘Katie’s at home helping my mother get ready for Gramps’s party,’ Louise told him easily.

‘Yes. Yes, of course. I...er...how is she?’ Seb asked lamely.

Louise looked at him. Although they were identical twins, Seb knew that he could never mistake Louise for her twin. Katie was special, unique, she was...

‘If you’re
really
concerned, if you
really
care...’ Louise emphasised, ‘Then perhaps you should tell her so,’ she suggested firmly.

Seb frowned.

Had Katie discussed what had happened between them with her twin? It seemed out of character for her. He knew instinctively that she was a very private and even reserved person, but twins shared a relationship and an intimacy that went far beyond that shared by non-twin siblings.

Louise brandished the elegant carrier bag she was holding.

‘Katie’s dress...for the party...’ she told him conversationally, adding more pointedly and not entirely truthfully, ‘She bought it in Brussels to wear today. For you...’

She was taking a huge risk, Louise knew that, and even worse she was not the one she was doing the risk taking for. If she had got it wrong and Seb did not care... If he was merely being polite...if what had happened between the two of them
had
simply been an impulsive act of the moment with no emotional importance in it for him, but no...there had been no mistaking that uncertain moment when he had asked about Katie, the very way he had been there, wanting to ask about her.

‘The party starts at three,’ she told him quietly, and then before he could say anything she hurried towards the lift.

Back at her parents’ home Louise made no mention of seeing Seb much less of having spoken with him. Instead, she bundled Katie upstairs, ignoring her protests that the dress was far too over the top for the nature of the event, pausing only to kiss Gareth as he emerged from their bedroom holding Nick.

‘Mmm...you both smell wonderful,’ she told him, adding impishly, ‘Baby powder is soooo sexy on a man...’

* * *

‘L
OU
, I
CAN
’
T
possibly
wear this,’ Katie wailed. ‘You can see right through it.’

‘No, you can’t, it’s got a nude slip, you just think you can...’

‘That’s what I mean,’ Katie told her despairingly. ‘It looks as though I haven’t, as though I’m not...it’s...’

‘It’s provocative and sexy and you look stunning in it,’ Louise told her firmly.

She
did
look stunning in it, Katie acknowledged as Louise determinedly turned her round to the mirror and commanded, ‘Look...yes, I
know
you can see through it, but like I said, all you can actually see through to is the lining. Yes, I
know
it’s flesh-coloured but look, it isn’t as though you’re showing masses of cleavage, not with that neat little round neck-hugging neckline, and, in fact, the only bits of you that are really bare are your arms and legs...’

‘Maybe, but everyone will think that
all
of me...’

‘Let them,’ Louise interrupted her and then said with quiet sincerity, ‘Katie, it looks wonderful on you. You
must
wear it. It makes you look...it makes you look like you should look...’

As she gave Louise an old-fashioned glance Louise shook her head and said, ‘No, not like that. Yes, all right, it
is
sexy, but it’s also stylish, elegant and sensual, not sleazy as you seem to be trying to say. There’s nothing cheap or sleazy about it...or about you...

‘Come on, it’s time we went down, otherwise we’re going to be late. Oh, no,’ she added when Katie told her that she needed to get her car keys, ‘You don’t think for one minute that I’m going to let you out of my sight, much less into your own car so that you can sneak back to your apartment and get changed behind my back. You’re coming with us...come on...’