The Perfect Father. PENNY JORDAN

a woman. A satisfied smile curled Samantha’s mouth as she contemplated the effect of her new purchases on her intended victim. James, she knew instinctively, was the kind of man who preferred to see a woman dressed like a woman.

      Her smile was replaced by a small frown as she studied her closed suitcase. Closed it might be, but it still had to be gotten downstairs and there was no point in calling the man who helped with the garden to assist her. Hyram was a honey, but he was close on seventy and there was no way he could lift her case.

      Nope…There were occasions when being tall and healthily muscled were an advantage—and this, she decided, was one of them.

      She negotiated the suitcase to the top of the stairs so that she could leave it in the lobby ready for her early morning flight and had just paused to take a rest, muttering complainingly at the overstuffed case as she did so. Her face felt hot and flushed and the exertion had made her hair cling in silky strands to the nape of her neck and her flushed cheeks. Turning her back towards the stairs, she eyed the suitcase.

      ‘It’s not just my clothes,’ she told it sternly. ‘It’s that sister of mine and…’

      ‘What the…’

      The unexpected sound of Liam’s voice on the stairs behind her caused Samantha to jump and turn round, forgetting that she had momentarily balanced the case precariously on one of the stairs whilst she leaned against it to hold it in position.

      The result was inevitable.

      The suitcase, disobligingly ignoring her wailed protest, slid heavily down the stairs, past Liam, bouncing on the half landing before coming to a halt against a solid wooden chest where the combined effect of its speedy fall and its heavy weight caused the clasps to burst open and the contents of the case to tumble out all over the stairs.

      ‘Oh, there now, see what you’ve done,’ Samantha accused Liam angrily. ‘If you hadn’t crept up on me like that…’

      ‘I rather think, more to the point, you shouldn’t have overpacked the thing in the first place,’ Liam corrected her dryly, turning his back on her as he headed down the stairs, hunkering down on the half landing as he proceeded to gather up the case’s disgorged garments.

      It was, as Samantha later seethed to herself in the privacy of her bedroom, revoltingly unfair of fate to have decreed that the stuff which had fallen out of her case wasn’t the sturdy, sensible jeans she had bought for her sister, nor the dungarees for Francesca, her niece, nor even the shirts requested by her brothers-in-law, but instead, the frivolous bits of silky satin and lace items of underwear she had recklessly bought for herself on her shopping spree in Boston.

      Creamy satin lace-trimmed bras with the kind of boning that meant that the kind of things they did for a woman’s figure were strictly seriously flirtatious. And, even worse, there on the carpet beside them were the ridiculously un-functional French knickers that had helped swallow up a large portion of her pay cheque. Add to that the equally provocative garter belt and the silk stockings and combine them with the incredulous disdain with which Liam was looking from her scarlet face to the fragile pieces of feminine lingerie he was holding in his hands and it was no wonder that she was feeling uncomfortably hot and embarrassed, Samantha reflected.

      ‘I guess you aren’t planning to do much sport in Cheshire,’ Liam commented laconically. ‘Or—’ his eyebrows shot up as he gave her a very thorough look ‘—perhaps I’m wrong…’ He continued silkily, ‘Thinking of going hunting are you, Sam? If so…’

      ‘They aren’t mine, they’re a present for Bobbie,’ Samantha lied feverishly, hurrying down the stairs to snatch them away from him.

      ‘Mmm…. Well, if you’ll take my advice…as a man…something a little simpler and less structured would serve your purpose much better. These,’ he told her with a contemptuous look at the boned demi bra he was holding, ‘might be exciting for boys, but men…real men, prefer something a little more subtle and a lot more tactile…A sexy slither of silk and satin with tiny shoestring straps, something silky and fluid that drapes itself softly over a woman’s curves, hinting at them rather than…There’s nothing quite so sexy as that little hint of cleavage you get when a woman’s strap slips down off her shoulder…’

      ‘Well, thank you very much for your advice,’ Samantha snapped furiously at him. ‘But when I want your opinion on what a man finds sexy, Liam, you can be sure I’ll ask you for it. And anyway—’ She stopped abruptly.

      ‘Anyway what?’ Liam asked her mildly as he bent down again to retrieve a pretty silk wrap which was lying under the suitcase.

      Samantha glared at him.

      How could she tell him that when you were a woman with breasts as generously rounded and full as hers were, the type of silky clingy unstructured top he was describing was quite simply a “no-no” unless you wanted to stop all the traffic on the freeway.

      ‘This isn’t for Bobbie,’ he told her positively as he handed her the wrap.

      ‘What makes you say that?’ Samantha demanded.

      ‘It’s not her colour,’ he told her simply. ‘Her skin is paler than yours and her eyes lighter. This is your colour, but coffee or caramel would suit you even better.’

      ‘Thank you so much,’ Samantha gritted acidly as she snatched the wrap from him.

      As she bent to try to stuff her possessions back into her suitcase, Liam knelt down beside her.

      ‘You need another case,’ he told her calmly. ‘This one, if you get it as far as the airport, will probably break the baggage conveyor belt. That’s if it doesn’t burst open again first.

      ‘You’re wrong, by the way,’ he added mystifyingly as Samantha tried to ignore the reality of what he was telling her.

      ‘It isn’t only women with tiny breasts who can go braless. You’ve got far too many hang-ups about your body, Samantha, do you know that?’

      ‘Is that a fact? Well. I’ll thank you to keep your opinions on my hang-ups and my…my breasts…to yourself if you don’t mind,’ Samantha gritted hot-faced at him, wondering how he had followed her embarrassed train of thought.

      ‘Of course, when it comes to bouncing around the tennis court, I agree that a woman needs a good sports bra,’ Liam was continuing as if she hadn’t spoken.

      Samantha shot him a wary look. She played tennis in the residence’s court most mornings with her father and she always wore a sports bra—so what was Liam implying?

      ‘Look, why don’t I carry this back to your room for you so that you can repack it in two cases,’ Liam was offering.

      To Samantha’s chagrin, as he picked up the case she could see that he was able to carry it far more easily than she herself had been able to do—carrying it not downstairs where she had intended to take it, she recognised, but back in the direction she had just come—to her bedroom.

      As he elbowed open the door and dumped the heavy case on the floor, Samantha followed Liam into her room.

      ‘I was taking that downstairs…’ she began to upbraid him and then stopped abruptly.

      Standing with his feet apart and his hands on his hips, Liam wasn’t watching her but instead was focusing on the pretty upholstered chair beside the window.

      The chair—an antique—had been a gift from her grandmother, a pretty early Victorian rocker which Samantha had had recaned and for which she had made her own hand-stitched sampler cushions. But it wasn’t the chair or the cushions which were holding Liam’s attention—Samantha knew that and she knew too exactly what he was looking at.

      ‘Mom made me keep him,’ she began defensively, pushing past Liam and rushing over to the chair, protectively picking up the battered and slightly threadbare teddy bear who was seated on it.

      ‘She says it reminds her of when we were little. It was her bear