Her One and Only by Penny Jordan Read Free Book Online Page A

sake.’
    ‘Mmm... I can’t get over how their relationship has turned around,’ Bobbie had continued. ‘Max seems to have completely given up his old ways. He’s based himself in Chester now and he and Luke have developed a rapport I would have thought completely impossible at one time.
    ‘It’s Maddy who’s changed the most, though. I thought that with Max back at home, recovered from the vicious attack he suffered in Jamaica and so completely repentant and determined to make their marriage work that Maddy would have reverted to her previous role of full-time wife and mother—after all, it’s no sinecure, not when you think of what running a house like Queensmead entails, and the fact that she’s also got Ben living with them.
    ‘I know she thinks the world of him and him of her, and of course Max has always been his favourite grandchild, but that doesn’t alter the fact that he can be very irascible and that he holds very strong and old-fashioned views. But no, instead, she’s not only kept on the work she was doing for Grandma Ruth’s mother and children charity, but she’s actually got even more involved. Luke told me the other day that Max had admitted that he sometimes felt as though he needed to make an appointment in order to get Maddy’s undivided attention these days.’
    ‘Mmm...well, I certainly noticed how much she’s blossomed the last time I was over,’ Samantha had agreed.
    Previously she had found that Maddy, with her self-effacing timid ways, although sweet-natured and gentle, wasn’t someone she felt particularly drawn to, but on her last visit she had been not just amazed and intrigued by the change in her, but she had also discovered how interesting and entertaining Maddy was to talk with.
    ‘She certainly has. Her latest thing is that she’s instituted a bi-monthly women’s night out when we all get together and leave the men in charge of the babes. We all host the event in turn and it’s amazing the different things everyone comes up with. It’s my turn next and I was wondering if we could bribe the men into extending their child-minding so that we might have a weekend in New York.’
    Recalling their conversation now, Sam remembered, too, how she had felt just that little bit envious of her sister’s almost idyllic lifestyle. Her own friends, the girls she had grown up with and then met at college, were scattered all over the States and beyond them, some married, some not, and whilst they all kept in sporadic touch there was not the close-knit sense of community, of family, between them that Bobbie had become so much a part of in her life in England.
    Samantha knew enough of small close-knit communities from her childhood in New England to be aware that sometimes they could be restrictive and even stultifying but... But the pluses were greater than the minuses in the balance sheet of life, at least in her opinion, and the teasing affectionate friendships which she had witnessed existing between her twin and the other members of the Crighton clan were something she couldn’t help contrasting with her own sense of alienation and separateness from her own work colleagues.
    They were approaching the airport now, the freeway increasingly busy. What was she like, Liam’s new PR? Intelligent? Sparky? Glamorous? All of those and very probably a whole lot more, Samantha decided. Her father had certainly sounded impressed by her.
    Was that why she was experiencing these unfamiliar little tickles of antipathy and this disobliging sense of not wanting to like the other woman? Samantha wondered ruefully.
    Liam had parked the car and was opening his door.
    ‘I’ll get you a trolley,’ he was informing her.
    ‘For goodness’ sake, Liam,’ she snapped. ‘Stop smothering me. I’m perfectly capable of getting my own trolley. I’m a big girl, remember...’
    ‘Maybe, but I’m an old-fashioned man,’ he reminded her almost tersely. ‘Wait here...’
    ‘Wait here!’ Samantha