A Perfect Night (18 page)

'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 cafe 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.

'Dad\
What 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 leg-acy 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.

'So 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' 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.

'AND 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 con-traceptive 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 tum 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.

It was a perfect afternoon as Katie drove back to Haslewich, the Welsh hills sharply clear against the sky-line, 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 fanning right down through the centuries. Until the introduction of frozen and refriger-ated 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.