‘Your grandfather asked Olivia if she would put Ruth on the phone. I guess she was rather surprised, but she called Ruth over and—’
‘I could hardly believe it, but Ruth recognised Grandpa’s voice right away,’ Samantha interrupted excitedly again. ‘And then Ruth, Grandmother, started to cry and Grandpa he was practically in tears, too, and Olivia, she had to take the phone from Ruth, but then she had to put her on again because Grandpa wouldn’t speak to anyone else and then—’
‘Samantha...’ her father warned sternly before turning back to Bobbie and continuing, ‘Ultimately both Ruth and your grandfather realised that what they’d been told all those years ago, that what they’d believed about one another had been complete untruths. Your grandfather had never been married nor even close to it, never mind having a child.’
Their father looked grave and thoughtful.
‘Ruth wanted desperately to keep her baby but in those days...’ He shook his head. ‘She was told both by the hospital and by her mother’s family that she owed it to your mom to sever herself completely from her, and she wasn’t allowed to have any contact with her from just after she was born.
‘She told us over the phone how for months after your mother’s birth she would wake up in the night, distraught to discover that she was no longer pregnant, unable to work out why, until she remembered that she had already given birth and that her baby was gone.’
Bobbie could feel her eyes starting to fill with tears again as the starkness of her father’s revelations stirred her emotions, and Sam, too, she could see was close to tears herself.
‘What did Mom say when... when she knew... about Ruth, about her mother?’ Bobbie whispered.
Her father smiled gently at her.
‘Well, you can imagine she was pretty stunned to learn after all these years that far from not wanting her, her mother had, in fact, never stopped missing her or thinking about her. It probably was a bit much for her to take in at first. I left it to your grandfather to tell her, and well, there were some tears and then... Anyway, it was Ruth who took the initiative, phoning your mom to tell her herself just how she felt about her, and that must have broken the ice. After the first half-hour, the pair of them have hardly been off the phone for ten minutes at a time.’
‘I can hardly believe how much has happened,’ Bobbie told him, shaking her head.
‘Mmm...and where were you when it was happening?’ Samantha questioned her.
‘With Luke,’ Bobbie replied simply.
‘So Olivia said,’ Samantha returned, adding, ‘I’m dying to get to know her. She sounds great and, of course, I’m even keener to meet your Luke.’
‘He’s not...’ Just in time Bobbie stopped herself from announcing that Luke was not hers and said quietly instead, ‘He’s busy at the moment.’
Now that she was over the first shock of learning everything that had happened and despite her happiness for her mother, she was miserably aware that sooner rather than later she was going to have to tell her family just what the real situation was with Luke. Sooner because the last thing she wanted was the embarrassment of their falling on him en masse and greeting him as some kind of prospective, soon-to-be family member as they obviously seemed to think he was going to be.
‘What’s wrong?’
Bobbie and Samantha were sitting in their double room of the hotel suite the family had taken over at the airport hotel. Their parents were having dinner with Jon and Jenny whilst their grandfather had admitted that he was taking Ruth out to dinner—alone.
‘We’ve got a lot of catching up to do,’ Grant had informed them when Samantha had raised her eyebrows.
‘Sounds like Bobbie’s isn’t the only romance that’s likely to be going on around here,’ Samantha had said, adding wryly, ‘I’m beginning to feel a little out of place as the only one without a partner.’
Somehow or other Bobbie had managed to force herself to smile.
‘Roberta...’ Samantha warned.
‘It’s Luke,’ Bobbie admitted, unable to keep her feelings to herself any longer.
‘You’ve had a fight,’ Samantha pounced.
Bobbie shook her head. ‘It isn’t as simple as that,’ she told her sister, then went on to briefly outline what had happened.
‘He thought what?’ Samantha yelped in furious anger when Bobbie got to the part where Luke had accused her of wanting to blackmail Ruth. ‘My word, but that’s so untrue it’s almost funny,’ she declared hotly. ‘When I think of all the hard times we had as kids persuading Dad and Mom, yes and Grandpa, too, that we weren’t going to be turned into a couple of freaks surrounded by bodyguards and so overprotected that we wouldn’t know what it was like to live in the real world. When I think of the problems that our family’s having serious money has caused for us... Did you tell him that far from wanting to blackmail anyone, the pair of us, but you more especially, have spent your grown-up years afraid to let yourself trust any man too much just in case he turns out to be more interested in getting his hands on your money rather than your body? Boy, is he going to have some crawling to do when he finds out the truth,’ Samantha asserted in evident satisfaction.
Bobbie permitted herself a sad smile.
‘No, Sam,’ she said, ‘it isn’t going to be like that. Luke... well... apart from the fact that he doesn’t... that he... He might want me, but he doesn’t love me,’ she owned painfully. ‘And he’s the kind of man...well, I just know that his pride will make it impossible for him to admit how badly he’s misjudged us...me and my pride. I can’t face him again, Sam, not after all that’s happened, not now that he knows how I feel about him. I just wish...’ She paused. ‘If only everyone wasn’t so convinced that we’re already a couple, then I could just disappear back home and lick my wounds in private... try to forget him.’ She frowned suddenly and then announced, ‘Sam, I want you to do something for me.’
‘No,’ Samantha told her firmly.
‘I haven’t told you what it is yet,’ Bobbie complained.
‘I don’t care. I can tell just by looking at you...just by listening to you, that I’m not going to like it,’ Samantha insisted.
‘It isn’t anything very hard,’ Bobbie coaxed her. ‘Nothing that I wouldn’t do for you....’
Samantha was watching her suspiciously.
Bobbie took a deep breath. ‘I want you to pretend to be me,’ she told her twin.
Samantha stared at her.
‘What...? But the family—’
‘No, not to them,’ Bobbie corrected her impatiently, ‘to Luke. I want you to go and see him and tell him that you hate him and that you never want to see him again.’
Samantha whistled softly and then said, ‘Wow!’
‘You can be as horrible as you like,’ Bobbie encouraged her. ‘In fact, the more horrible the better. I want you to make him feel that any idea he had that I might ever have wanted him or felt anything for him, was the wrong idea. In fact, I want you to make him thoroughly dislike me so much so that...that in future he isn’t even going to want to speak to me, never mind anything else.’
‘You’ve got it that bad, huh?’ her sister enquired with loving sympathy.
‘It’s the only way I can stop myself from weakening and...and hoping...perhaps even making a complete fool of myself by...’ Bobbie closed her eyes for a moment. ‘I love him so much,’ she whispered huskily, ‘that I’m afraid of what I might do if I have to be around him for too long. This way... I’m going to tell everyone that we’ve had a fight and that...that I’ve decided to go home.’
‘They won’t like that. They’re planning to stay here a month and maybe more,’ Samantha warned her sister.
‘They’ll accept it, especially if...well, Mom will understand if she knows I’m hurting and she’ll talk to Dad and Grandpa. And then when I’m gone...’