The Perfect Lover. PENNY JORDAN

      Table of Contents

      Cover Excerpt About the Author The Crightons Title Page CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER EIGHT CHAPTER NINE Copyright

       CHAPTER ONE

      ‘MY GOODNESS, we are honoured, aren’t we? It isn’t very often these days that you manage to tear yourself away from the bureaucratic delights of Brussels.’

      Louise tensed as she heard the sarcastic voice of her elder brother, Max. They had never got on particularly well, even as children, and in her view maturity had done nothing to improve either their relationship or her brother.

      ‘It was commented at Christmas that you weren’t around,’ Max continued jibingly. ‘But, of course, we all know Saul was really the reason for that, don’t we?’

      Louise gave him an angry look before retorting, ‘Perhaps if you spent more time thinking about your own relationships and less talking about other people’s you might learn something genuinely worthwhile, but then you never were much good at appreciating what’s really of value in this life, were you, Max?’

      Without giving him any opportunity to retaliate, Louise turned on her heel and walked quickly away from him.

      She had promised herself that on this, her first visit home since she had started working in Brussels over twelve months ago, she would prove to her family just how much she had changed...matured...and just how different, distant almost, she was from the girl who...

      Out of the corner of her eye she caught sight of Saul, her father’s cousin, who was standing with his wife, Tullah, and the three children from his first marriage. Tullah had her arm around Megan, Saul’s daughter, while Saul held the little boy they had had together.

      The large drawing room of her grandfather’s house seemed to be filled by the presence of her peers, proudly showing off their growing families.

      Clustered around the fireplace were her cousin Olivia, with her husband and their two children, talking animatedly with Luke, from the Chester branch of the family, and his American wife Bobbie and their little girl, while Maddy, her brother Max’s wife, kept a discreet eye on Gramps, who was becoming increasingly irascible.

      According to her mother, Maddy was close to a saint for humouring him the way she did. When Jenny Crighton had made this comment this morning, over breakfast, Louise had immediately pointed out that if Maddy could put up with being married to Max, then her grandfather must come as a form of light relief.

      ‘Louise,’ her mother had protested, but Louise had remained unrepentant

      It was no secret in the family that Max was not a good or kind husband to Maddy, and privately Louise couldn’t understand why on earth Maddy stayed with him.

      ‘You’re looking very cross.’

      Louise grimaced as she saw her twin sister. Twins were a feature of the Crighton family, in the same way that poppies were a feature of a field of corn—they sprang up all over the place, although as yet there were no sets in the current new generation.

      ‘They’ll come,’ her father’s aunt Ruth had predicted.

      ‘I’ve just been receiving the benefit of Max’s brotherly conversation,’ Louise informed her grimly. ‘He doesn’t change...’

      ‘No...’ Katie looked at her twin. ‘You know, in a lot of ways I feel quite sorry for him. He—’

      ‘Sorry for Max?’ Louise exploded. ‘What on earth for? He’s got everything he’s ever wanted—a cushy place in one of the country’s leading sets of chambers, with his pick of all the best briefs—and all he’s had to do to get it is to persuade poor Maddy to marry him.’

      ‘Yes, I know what he’s got in the material sense, Lou, but is he happy?’ Katie persisted. ‘I think he feels what happened with Uncle David far, far more than he’s ever shown. After all, they—’

      ‘They