Her One and Only Read Free

could she ever accept second-best when she had before her not just the example of her twin’s fervently happy marriage, but that of her darling, wonderful parents and, of course, her grandparents, who were still just as much in love with one another now as they had been that fateful war-torn summer they had first met.
    Only she seemed unable to find a mate for herself, a mate who would love her and father the children Cliff had so hatefully taunted her that no man would want to give her.
    Oh, but what she would give to prove him wrong, to walk into that general office not just with her wonderful Mr. Right on her arm but with her stomach triumphantly, wonderfully big with his child...his children... As yet Bobbie hadn’t followed in the Crighton family tradition and conceived twins. She had hoped earlier on in her current pregnancy she might have done, but her routine scans had shown that there was only one baby, although now in the late stages of her pregnancy Bobbie was grumbling that she felt large enough to be carrying quads.
    Twins!
    Twins... They ran through the history of the Crighton family like an often-repeated refrain and yet, oddly, despite all the new marriages which had taken place these last few years amongst her cousins—first, seconds and thirds—no one had, as yet, produced the next generation of double births.
    Samantha closed her eyes. She could see herself now, leaning a little heavily onto the strong supporting arm of her love, her smile beatific, her body weighed down by the twin babies she was carrying perhaps, but her spirits, her heart, buoyed up with love and excitement.
    ‘Sam.’
    The sharp warning note in her twin’s voice was so clear, so real, that Bobbie could almost have been there beside her.
    Guiltily she opened her eyes and then realised that someone had actually spoken to her but that that someone was most definitely not her beloved twin sister.
    Exhaling warily she looked up into the silver-grey eyes of Liam Connolly.
    Yes, looked up because Liam, thanks, or so he said, to the Viking ancestry he claimed he possessed through his mother’s Norwegian family and in spite of his quite definitely un-Nordic very dark hair, was actually a good three inches taller than she was herself, taller even than her own father—just.
    ‘Er, L-Liam...’ Why on earth was she stuttering and stammering like a child caught with her fingers in a forbidden cookie jar? Samantha wondered.
    Liam indicated the busy road in front of them and told her dryly, ‘I know you like to think you’re super-human but somehow I don’t think the right way to try to prove it is to cross the freeway with your eyes closed. Besides, we have a law in this state against jaywalking, you know.’
    As Sam heaved a small rebellious sigh, she had no idea what it was about Liam that always made her feel as though she was still fourteen years old and hot-headedly troublesome with it, but somehow or other he always did.
    ‘Dad says you’ve agreed to run for State Governor when he retires,’ she announced, trying to change the subject.
    ‘Mmm...’ He shot her a perceptive look from those incredible eyes that sometimes could seem so sexily smoky and smouldering and at other times could look so flintily cold that they could turn your heart to ice and your conscience to a clear piece of Perspex with every small sin clearly visible through it.
    ‘I take it you don’t approve?’
    ‘You’re thirty-seven. New Wiltshire County practically runs itself. I should have thought you’d want something you could get your teeth into a little more.’
    ‘Like what? President?’ Liam drawled. ‘New Wiltshire County might not mean much to you, but believe me it’s got a hell of a lot going for it. Do you realise that we’re well on our way to passing new state legislation which will actually have our people voluntarily giving up their guns? Did you know that we have one of the lowest rates of unemployment in the entire union and that our