A Perfect Night. PENNY JORDAN

the note of desolation in Katie’s voice. Had the two women fallen out perhaps…had a rift developed between them due to the fact that their closeness had been breeched because one of them had married?

      Frowning, he stood back to allow Katie and Charlotte to step into the lift ahead of him. Why on earth was he wasting time wondering about a young woman whose acquaintance he had neither the time nor the desire to pursue? Without realising what he was doing Seb let his gaze drift down to Katie’s mouth. It was soft and full and oh, so infinitely kissable. He could just imagine how it would feel under his…how she would feel…how she would look, her eyes blind with a vulnerable haunted look of longing and desire that would make him want…

      ‘Here we are…This lift is, of course, exclusively for your use and both of you will have your own passkey.’

      With a start Seb dragged his thoughts back to reality.

      As Katie preceded Seb into the private hallway into which both their apartments opened she was aware of feeling distinctly wobbly. What on earth was happening to her? Why had she experienced that extraordinary sensation just now, as though…as though…

      Instinctively she lifted her fingers to her lips. The only man she had ever fantasised about having kissed her, the only man she wanted to have kiss her with the kind of intimacy and passion she had just been imagining was Gareth. Gareth and not…as her thoughts skittered to a frantic halt, refusing to allow her to question just why she had experienced that extraordinary sensation of having her mouth so expertly and intimately kissed, and by a man she neither knew nor even wanted to know, she told herself that Gareth was just about as far removed from Seb Cooke as it was possible for two men to be. Gareth was gentle, kind, reassuringly safe in his manner, while Seb Cooke was aggressive and possessed the kind of sexual aura that…Katie shuddered. What on earth would she want with such a raw, dangerous outright hunk of male sexuality…?

      ‘This is your apartment,’ the agent was saying chirpily to her, unlocking the door for her. ‘As you know, you have the benefit of your own private balcony while your flat…’ he turned to Seb, ‘has the addition of an extra room which could be used as a third bedroom or a study.’ Still smiling he crossed the hallway and unlocked the other door.

      Taking advantage of Seb’s preoccupation with the agent, Katie slipped inside her own apartment.

      Five minutes later, having completed a closer inspection of all the rooms, she was forced to admit that she was unlikely to find anything that would suit her better. All the rooms were a good size, all the period decorative details had been retained, giving the apartment a feeling of elegance and even grandeur, and the views from the windows, which she had not really taken full account of on her previous visit, extended not just over the grounds of the house itself, all of which were there for the residents to enjoy and which were tended by a firm of gardeners, but over the surrounding countryside.

      Left alone in his own apartment with Charlotte while the estate agent went to check to see if Katie had any questions she wanted to ask him, Seb turned to his daughter lifting one querying eyebrow as he asked her, ‘Well…’

      ‘It’s cool,’ Charlotte responded with a wide grin. ‘Love the bathrooms…Yours is even big enough to have a Jacuzzi fitted if you want one.’

      ‘If I want one,’ Seb agreed, adding firmly, ‘which I don’t…’

      ‘Dad, why haven’t you ever re-married?’ Charlotte asked him seriously now.

      While Seb was frowningly wondering how best to answer her, she continued a little uncertainly,

      ‘It isn’t because of me is it…I mean I know that…well Mum never really said much about…about things, but I did once overhear her talking to George about it and she said that having me had been the final straw for you…’

      Seb studied her downcast head wondering what on earth he could say. As close as they had grown the subject of his marriage to her mother and their subsequent divorce was not one they had ever discussed, and manlike he had always been reluctant to raise a subject which, he was forced to admit, did not reflect well on himself.

      ‘I rather think what your mother was trying to say was that my adolescent and totally selfish reaction to the demands a baby made on her time and our marriage were the last straw for her,’ Seb corrected Charlotte gently.

      ‘The reason our marriage didn’t survive was wholly and totally down to me, Charlotte…I was a selfish wretch, and far too immature when we got married to think about anyone other than myself. Your mother and I met at university, fell into what we believed was love but what, with a bit of perspective, I think we both soon realised was really only lust, married…and…and then you came along and you have no idea how much I regret the years I’ve lost with you and my own unforgivable selfishness…’

      ‘M-Mum did say once that had the pair of you been older or a bit more worldly-wise, you’d both have known that what you had together was wonderful for an intense and passionate affair, but not for marriage. She said, too, that while she was the one who initiated things between the two of you, you were the one with the old-fashioned moral principles who insisted that you should get married—if you were going to have sex.’

      Seb grimaced. What Charlotte had just said was quite true. Eighteen months his senior, Sandra had had other boyfriends, other relationships, before she had met him—neither of them had come to their own affair as novice lovers. But with his own upbringing, his knowledge of what could happen in the aftermath of a passionate relationship for the woman who was left on her own, seen first-hand through the history of his own family—Cooke men had a certain notorious reputation for their alleged propensity to father children outside wedlock—he had felt it necessary to prove that he was different, above the kind of much criticised behaviour his name had branded him with. Perhaps his insistence on marrying Sandra had been a righteous and ridiculous piece of over-reaction, but if he was honest with himself Seb knew that, given the same situation again, he would probably have reacted in exactly the same way.

      His father had always been a stern critic of the haphazard morals of some members of the Cooke clan. As a boy growing up, Seb could remember that there had been tight-lipped conversations between his parents about the sudden arrival of a new and unexpected member of the family who did not always carry his or her father’s name. Both of his parents had been insistent that that was a family inheritance of which they most certainly did not approve. And nor, no more so, did Seb.

      Seb was brought back to the present as Charlotte squeezed his arm lovingly and kissed his cheek.

      ‘I’m glad we’ve had this little talk,’ she told him almost maternally. ‘And I wish that you could find someone nice to marry Dad…I liked Katie Crighton, didn’t you?’

      Seb frowned as she looked at him, but Charlotte only returned his look with one of filial innocence and before Seb could warn her that even if he had been looking for someone, Katie Crighton was most definitely not his type, the estate agent had returned.

      Ten minutes later as Seb drove out of the house’s grounds behind Katie and the estate agent, he made a mental note to get in touch with Jon Crighton and set the wheels in motion for the purchase of the apartment. Now that he had decided to buy and had had his offer accepted, he wanted to get the formalities over and done with as soon as possible so that he could move in.

      As she drove out of the house’s grounds ahead of Seb Cooke, Katie was wishing that she might have had someone else, anyone else, but him, for her new and nearest neighbour. Not that she was likely to see much of him she acknowledged, on two counts. According to what Charlotte had told her she could guess that his job would be very demanding and from the way he had looked at her she had seen that he was as pleased about having her for a neighbour as she was him. What was his wife like? she wondered. Very glamorous and sexy no doubt. He was that kind of man—you could see at a glance. He just exuded sexuality…Not like Gareth. Gareth was a man for snuggling up to in front of a lovely log fire…Gareth was a comfort and reassurance, safe and…

      And there was no way that anyone, any woman, would ever describe Seb Cooke as any of those