‘Mmm…I must admit I shan’t be sorry,’ her mother responded, and then looked apologetically across the table to the fourth member of the quartet.
Over the years Liam Connolly had worked for her husband the two men had become very close and Sarah Jane knew it was no secret to Liam that she preferred the elegant New England home she had shared with her husband to the rather less intimate atmosphere of the Governor’s residence which was also home to the state’s small suite of administration offices.
‘Oh, Liam, it’s not that the house isn’t…’ She stopped and laughed, shaking her head. ‘What am I saying,’ she chuckled ruefully. ‘ You know all too well that I can’t wait to get back to our own home. I hope that when you do decide to marry that you’ll warn your wife-to-be just what she’s going to have to take on…when she moves in here…’
‘It isn’t a foregone conclusion that I’ll get elected to the governorship,’ Liam reminded her dryly.
‘Oh, but I hope you do,’ Samantha’s mother insisted. ‘You’re so obviously the very best man for the job.’
‘Sarah Jane is right,’ Samantha’s father cut in warmly. ‘And I can tell you, Liam, that I’ve heard on the grapevine that the New Wiltshire and even some Washington hostesses are already preparing their celebratory dinners for you.’
Dutifully Samantha joined in her mother’s amused laughter but for some reason she couldn’t define, she didn’t find the idea of Liam being vetted by the sophisticated women of Washington as pleasantly amusing as both her parents did.
‘There is one thing you are going to have to consider though, Liam,’ her father was continuing in a more serious vein. ‘I’m not saying that your election to the governorship is dependent on it, but there’s no getting away from the fact that as a married man you would significantly increase your appeal to the voters.’
Very carefully Liam put the pear he had been peeling back on his plate. He had, Samantha noticed, unlike her, managed to remove most of its skin without either drastically altering the shape of the fruit or covering himself in its juice. But then, Liam was like that. She had seen him remove his suit jacket to set about lending a hand to some mundane task requiring the kind of muscle power so very evident in his six-foot-four broad-shouldered frame and complete the job without even managing to get a speck of dirt on his immaculately clean shirt. She, on the other hand, couldn’t so much as open a fridge door without knocking something over.
‘It’s only a matter of months before voting takes place,’ Liam reminded her father dryly. ‘Somehow I feel that the voters would be less than impressed by a hasty and a very obviously publicity-planned marriage.’
‘There’s plenty of time before your first term of office would begin,’ her father pointed out. ‘I knew I wanted to marry Sarah Jane within days of first meeting her.’
Across the table Samantha’s parents exchanged tenderly loving looks. Sam looked away. Her parents were so very, very lucky.
Fiercely she worried at her lip. As a teenager her mother had once told her gently, chidingly, ‘Samantha Miller, if you keep on doing that, that poor bottom lip of yours is going to be permanently sore and swollen.’
‘Mom’s right,’ Bobbie had hissed teasingly at her when their mother had left the room. ‘But my, oh, my, how sexy it’s going to look. Boys are just going to die wanting to feel how it is to kiss you.’
‘Boys…yuck…’ Samantha had protested. Who wanted boys when there was Liam? What would it be like to be kissed by him? He had the sexiest mouth she had ever seen. Just thinking about it, never mind looking at it, made her shiver all over.
‘I understand what you’re saying,’ Liam was admitting to her father now, ‘but personally I don’t believe that getting married is necessarily going to make me a better Governor. In fact,’ he added wryly, ‘it would probably be more likely to have just the opposite effect. Men in love are, after all, notoriously unable to concentrate upon anything other than their beloved.’
‘Perhaps it’s just as well then that you are in love with your career,’ Samantha suggested, adding before Liam could comment, ‘You have to admit that you’ve always given it far more attention than you have any woman.’
‘Sam…’ her mother objected, but Liam simply shook his head.
‘No wonder you’re no good at chess,’ he taunted her, ‘making a move on your opponent is no good unless you keep yourself protected and have the next move already planned. I could point out that you are equally bereft of a partner and that you, too, would appear to have sacrificed your most personal intimate relationships in favour of your career.’
‘Not in the way that you have, I haven’t,’ Samantha objected hotly. ‘You deliberately pick women who you know you’re going to get bored with. You don’t want a serious relationship. You’re a commitment phobic, Liam,’ she told him dangerously. ‘Secretly you’re afraid of giving yourself emotionally to a woman.’
‘Oh, then it seems to me that we have something very much in common.’
‘What do you mean?’ Samantha asked him challengingly.
‘It’s so obvious that the kind of man you need is one who’d keep you earthed, provide a solid base to offset your own more tempestuous one, but instead you always go for the same type, emotionally unstable, manipulative, lame dogs. My guess is you feel more passionate about them as a cause than as men.
‘You accuse me of being afraid of giving myself emotionally to a woman, Samantha. Well I’d say that you are very much afraid of committing yourself, of giving yourself wholly and completely, sexually, to a man. Excuse me.’ Without giving her any opportunity to either defend herself or retaliate, he stood up, politely excusing himself to her parents.
‘I’ve got some work I really need to do. I’ll see you in the morning Stephen and I should have those figures you were asking me for by then.’
As he walked around the table and gave her mother a brief kiss on the cheek Samantha wondered if her face looked as hot with chagrin as it felt. How could he have said something like that to her, and in front of her parents? It wasn’t true, of course, how could it be?
It wasn’t, after all, as though she was some timid, cowering virgin who had never known physical intimacy. She had lost her virginity in the time-honoured way as a sophomore at college with her then boyfriend whom she had been dating for several months. And if the experience had turned out to be more of a rite of passage than the entry into a whole new world of perfect love and emotional and physical bliss and euphoria, well then she hadn’t been so very different from any of her peers, from what she had heard.
True that, unlike Liam, she didn’t have a list of sexual conquests as long as her arm. True, her own secret, somewhat mortifying view of herself was as a woman to whom sex was never going to be of prime importance, certainly nothing as important as emotional intimacy or as the love she would have for the children she would bear. But was that so very wrong? Did putting sex at the top of one’s list of what was important in life truly make for a better person? Samantha didn’t think so and she was certainly not going to pretend to either a sexual desire or a sexual history she did not possess simply because it might be expected of her.
‘You know, it’s at times like this that I wonder if you’re actually a teenager or really in your thirties,’ Samantha heard her father remark ruefully as he, too, stood up.
Imploringly she looked at her mother.
‘That’s not fair, Mom. It was Liam who started it and…’
‘Your father does have a point, darling,’ her mother interrupted her gently. ‘You do tend to ride Liam rather hard at times.’
‘ I ride him!