boss, for whom she had worked ever since she had joined the legal department of the charity to do her articles after leaving university, had resigned, and the man who had taken his place…
Katie closed her eyes in midstep. Jeremy Stafford had at first seemed so charming, so very much on her own wavelength that even now she couldn’t properly come to terms with what had happened.
When he had started asking her to work late, she had done so willingly, enjoying not just the rapport between them but the knowledge that the work they were doing was ultimately benefiting people who were so very desperately in need of help.
The first time Jeremy had suggested dinner as a “reward” to them both for their hard work, she had felt nothing but pleasure, no sense of wariness or suspicion had clouded her happy acceptance of his suggestion. How naive she had been, but then from the way that Jeremy had always talked about his wife and small children she had assumed that he was so happily married that any kind of betrayal of his wife and their marriage vows—well, it had simply never crossed her mind that it might have crossed his…But she had been wrong…not only had it crossed his, it had lingered there and quite unequivocally taken up a very lustful and leering residence as she had so unpleasantly discovered.
At first when he had started to compliment her on her face and then her figure she had simply assumed that he was being pleasant, but then had come the night when he had put his arm around her when they were leaving the restaurant and then attempted to kiss her.
She had fobbed him off immediately, but to her consternation instead of apologising as she had expected him to do he had turned on her claiming that she had led him on; that she was a tease and worse, oh yes, much much worse. Of course after that there had been no more intimate dinners and no evenings working late, instead there had been hostility and even victimisation: accusations about missing reports which she knew she had filed, mistakes which she knew she had not made, errors which she knew were simply not hers.
Not that she had any intention of telling Max any of that. The change her elder brother had undergone following the attack he had suffered on a Jamaican beach while he was in that country trying to trace their father’s missing twin brother, David Crighton, had not merely converted him into a passionately devoted husband and father, it had also turned him into a surprisingly caring and concerned brother and son. If Max guessed for one moment what was going on, Katie knew that he would lose no time in seeking out Jeremy Stafford and demanding retribution for his behaviour.
Had they been children still involved in playground jealousies and quarrels that might just have been acceptable, but they were adults. She was supposed to be in charge of her own life. As a modern independent woman she was expected to be able to deal with her own problems. The sadness was, she loved her work, loved knowing that what she was doing no matter how small, was a benefit to other people.
The Crighton women carried a strong gene of responsibility and duty towards their fellow men and women. In her great-aunt, Ruth Crighton, it had manifested itself in the establishment of an enclave of charitably run accommodation units for single parents and their children. In her mother, Jenny, it showed in the way she gave so much of her time and energy to others. Katie’s sister had become involved in a programme to help young drug addicts in Brussels where she and Gareth lived and worked.
Katie froze as the sudden sharp screech of a car’s brakes brought her back to reality.
Without realising what she was doing she had started across the road without looking properly, but that in no way excused the manic dangerousness of the speed at which the driver of the car, now stopped in front of her, had to have been driving to have been forced to halt with such a screech. Katie knew nothing about cars and the fact that the very powerful engine of the Mercedes the man was driving was responsible for the intensity of his braking rather than his speed was therefore completely lost on her. Instead what she was aware of was the look of totally unwarranted fury in his eyes as he glowered ferociously out of the car at her.
As her own shock held her motionless she was distantly aware of the fact that he was outrageously good-looking with thick, virtually jet-black, well-groomed hair, chillingly icy grey eyes and a mouth that even when clamped grimly closed still betrayed the fact that he had a disturbingly full and sexy bottom lip.
But none of that compensated for the fact that he had nearly run her over. Determinedly Katie took a step towards the car and then stopped as the driver behind him hooted impatiently. Much as she longed to give Mr Sexy Mouth a piece of her mind, she really didn’t have time. She was due at the office ten minutes ago, hardly a good start to her first official working day with her father and Olivia.
It had been a wrench leaving her job, despite the problem she had suffered with Jeremy and she still wasn’t sure she had made the right decision in agreeing to join the family practice. Both her father and Olivia had held out the inducement, as Max had already indicated, that in time she could expect to become a full partner, even if right now she was simply being retained by them as a salaried employee. Money had never motivated Katie, but then to be fair she knew that it didn’t motivate either her father or Olivia either.
She was to start by taking over the conveyancing side of the business, the legal work attached to the buying and selling of properties. She had pulled a small face when her father had told her this.
‘Well at least I should have some practice by the time it comes to my buying my own home,’ she had told him ruefully.
Although her parents had offered her back her childhood room permanently, after several years of living independently at the University and then in London, she had felt that it would be more sensible to find her own separate accommodation. In London she had rented and while she waited for the right property to buy to present itself to her at home, she had, just temporarily she had told them, moved back in with her parents.
It had felt distinctly odd to be back in her old room—without her twin.
Louise had been more excited about Katie’s decision to return to Haslewich than she had herself; trying to cajole her into a flying visit to Brussels to spend the week with them before Katie took up her new duties.
‘Why don’t you go?’ her father had asked her when he had learned via Jenny of her decision to turn down Louise’s invitation.
There wasn’t any logical explanation she could give and she had been grateful to her younger brother Joss and her cousin Jack for creating a small diversion as they both pleaded with Jon to be allowed to take up Louise’s offer in her stead.
Since it was Joss’s all important GCSE year Katie had well been able to understand her father’s refusal to agree until after his exams were over and loyally Jack, who was two years older than his cousin, had announced that he didn’t want to go until they could both go together.
The pair of them were almost as close as the pairs of twins the Crighton family produced with such regularity, Jack having made his home with Katie’s parents after the break-up of his own parents’ marriage and the disappearance of his father David.
Ten minutes later, as Katie walked into her father’s office after a brief knock on the door, she apologised.
‘Sorry I’m late…I’d forgotten how busy the town is and I couldn’t find a close by parking spot…’
‘Mmm…if you think this morning is busy just wait until market day,’ her father warned her good-humouredly.
‘Olivia won’t be here until ten,’ he added. ‘During term time she does the morning school and nursery run. Caspar picks the children up in the afternoon.’
Caspar, Olivia’s American husband, held a Chair at a nearby university where he lectured in corporate law and it had been while she was on a course that Olivia had met and fallen in love with him.
‘It can’t be easy for her, working full-time with two young children,’ Katie commented.
‘No, it isn’t,’ her father agreed, adding briskly, ‘We’ve cleared out a room for you to use and I’ve organised some preliminary file reading for you. We’ll start you off on some straightforward