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‘Why don’t you find yourselves a table I’ll send someone over to take your order We can sort out the bill later,’ she added to Joss quietly, as Bobbie made her way to a table

Whoever Joss’s coly beautiful woed as she dispatched one of her uest they had staying with the family Olivia, Joss’s cousin, was married to that American, wasn’t she?

‘Jade,’ she told her niece sharply, ‘go and serve table four’

‘I’ll have a glass of Perrier with leh’

‘I’ll have the same’ Joss couldn’t quite conceal his relief as he heard Bobbie order, bea his approval at her across their shared table

‘So,’ she proht them their drinks ‘These cousins of yours’ She put her elbow on the table and leaned her chin on her hand as she smiled at him

Joss was coe lu that he always got when he watched the young badger or fox cubs co, watched over by their mothers Like them, she touched his emotions in a way he simply didn’t have the words to describe

Guiltily Bobbie nibbled on her botto and so vulnerable She was here for a purpose, she reminded herself sternly, and she couldn’t let herself be swayed from that self-chosen task now, especially not by

‘I guess with their kinda height they must be sports jocks, huh,’ she joked to Joss as she banished her unwanted thoughts

‘No,’ Joss told her seriously

He couldn’t take his eyes off her; he had never seen anyone remotely like her There couldn’t be anyone like her She was unique, wonderful, perfect and certainly nothing like his oin sisters or the other girls he knew She was older than them, of course, just how much older he wasn’t quite sure but she

‘Luke and James are both barristers,’ he told her ‘That is, they’re’ He tried to think of the Aht not fully understand just what a barrister was

But apparently she did, because she shook her head and told hiuess I’d have preferred it if they were sports jocks,’ she confessed, wrinkling her nose

‘Well, they are, sort of,’ Joss assured her ‘Jaer for his school and so did Luke and Luke was an Oxford Blue, as well That’sthat’s with rowing,’ he explained

‘Rowing’ Bobbie justher e working alongside her ‘And you’re sure that they’re as tall as you say they are?’ she teased him mock-seriously

Joss nodded his head

‘And they’re really your cousins?’

‘Third cousins, I think,’ Joss agreed

‘Third cousins Gee I guess you’d better explain tothe scornful inner voice that demanded to knohy she needed to ask that question when she had a whole string of thirds and fourths of her own back home

‘Well, I’an, ‘but you see in the beginning there was Great-Grandfather Josiah He came from Chester with his wife to start a new solicitor’s practice here in Haslewich because of a quarrel he had had with his father and brothers in Chester and so the Crighton fahtons who live in Chester, but we are still related Luke and James and their sisters, Alison and Rachel, as well as Alistair, Niall and Kit all belong to the Chester branch of the family Luke’s father, Henry, and his brother, Laurence, are both barristers, too, or at least they were They’re now both retired Luke is a QC, that’s Queen’s Counsel That’s what Gramps wants Max to be, but I’m not sure—’

‘

Whoa, hang onhang on’ Bobbie laughed ‘Who are Gra’ She shook her head

‘It wouldn’t be,’ Joss assured her with great daring, ‘if you met them’

‘Met them?’ Bobbie’s dense blue eyes widened in curiosity ‘Well now, there’s a thought, but—’

‘Wea party this weekend to celebrate their eighteenth birthdays,’ Joss hurried on eagerly ‘It’s going to be held at the Grosvenor that’s a hotel in Chester You could come and then you could meet them all’

‘I could cohty kind of you, but I don’t think’

‘You could come as my friend,’ Joss told her ‘It’s allowedI aht’

A friend maybe, Bobbie conceded but she doubted that the type of friend his parents had in reement was a twenty-six-year-old wo herwaiting, a look ofand hope in his eyes, and she didn’t have the heart to disappoint hiift horse in the mouth after all?

‘And I’ll get to meet these tall cousins of yours, you say?’ she responded, pretending to be weighing the matter up

Joss nodded his head

‘And you think he’ll like me, do you, this Luke? Wasn’t that who you said was the taller of the two?’

‘Well, er’ Suddenly Joss was flushing and unable to meet her eyes

‘What is it?’ she quizzed him ‘Doesn’t he like blondes?’

‘Oh yes, he does,’ Joss assured her fervently, iht hard not to explode into laughter as she guessed rong