Her One and Only by Penny Jordan Page B

she had anticipated that he would be, a thoughtful and protective escort when he took her out and an entertaining and interesting companion, but no matter how hard she tried she just couldn’t seem to advance their relationship to a more intimate level.
    Take the first night he had asked her out, for instance. After they had left the restaurant they had strolled alongside the river, the perfect romantic setting. Samantha had leant a little against James, smiling warmly and encouragingly at him when he had stopped walking and turned to face her, but instead of taking her in his arms and kissing her as she had expected, he had started to frown a little and caution her that her knit was in danger of slipping off her shoulders.
    She had been so irritated by his overcautious behaviour that later on, when he had moved to take her in his arms when he had stopped his car outside Luke and Bobbie’s home, she had pretended not to be aware of his intentions, slipping out of the car before he could stop her and then kissing him coolly and distantly on the cheek before bidding him a stiff goodnight outside the front door.
    Later on she had regretted giving in to her chagrin and irritation but, of course, by then it had been too late.
    The following day, at her insistence, he had taken her to the zoo, but the antics of the animals had quite plainly not been to his taste and he had cut their visit short, suggesting instead that she might like to visit Haslewich’s salt museum which he was sure she would find far more worthwhile.
    As Samantha was coming to discover, underneath James’s apparent easygoing gentleness there was a markedly determined, not to say stubborn, streak. It wasn’t that he was either domineering or dictatorial, it was simply that he could at times adopt a smiling loftiness which irritated her into the kind of rebellious behaviour she thought she had left behind with her teens. And yet he was everything she knew she ought to want. She only had to see him with Olivia’s children and Bobbie’s Francesca, to see what a wonderful father he would make.
    An added complication to her plans was Rosemary. Despite her avowed dislike of him and her engagement, she tried to attach herself to them with all the persistence and much the same effect as an unwanted burr.
    ‘Poor Rosemary, I’m afraid she finds it rather dull being with someone so much older than herself,’ James’s mother had commented indulgently to Samantha the previous day when, for the third time, Rosemary had insisted on accompanying them.
    If Rosemary was so bored then why didn’t she go home to her own life and her own friends? Samantha longed to ask, but she managed to keep her views to herself.
    ‘She and James can’t bear one another so why she insists on attaching herself to us I just don’t know,’ she had told Bobbie furiously the previous evening when, at the last minute, Rosemary had prevailed upon James’s mother to ask if she could be included in their outing to an open-air play—one of a series which were held every summer at a pretty local Elizabethan manor house.
    Bobbie had given her a telling look.
    But at the weekend James was taking her to the Grosvenor for dinner and that was an invitation she intended to make sure Rosemary did not gate crash.
    James lived in the city within walking distance of the Grosvenor, Chester’s most prestigious hotel, and Samantha had privately decided to boldly suggest after they had had dinner that James might show her over his home. If that didn’t give him a hint of what she had in mind then nothing would!
    It was not that she was planning to deliberately seduce him. Of course not. And anyway, she had seen from the expression in his eyes when he looked at her that he found her attractive and he had certainly hinted at as much with the compliments he had paid her. No, it was just that she felt their relationship needed a small nudge in the right direction to move it on a little faster than it was