At His Convenience Bundle by Penny Jordan, Maggie Cox, Kim Lawrence Page B

hands-on parenting.’
    Luke’s grim words evoked Suzy’s immediate sympathy on behalf of the two children. She too had had a parent—her mother, in her case—who had not been able to provide her with strong and loving parenting.
    Suzy’s eyes darkened as she became lost in her thoughts. Her mother had never really got over being widowed, and even before her health had begun to fail Suzy had found herself as a very young girl taking on the role of ‘mothering’ her own mother.
    Her sympathies aroused on behalf of the children, she demanded, ‘Why are they here, then? Or can I guess?’ she asked angrily. ‘I suppose you organised it for some machiavellian reason of your own. Have you no feelings? Don’t you realise how much harm it could do them, to be here under such circumstances? Doesn’t their mother—’
    Luke listened to her passionate outburst in silence. What would she say if he were to tell her that he himself had been orphaned at a young age? Would that fiercely passionate championship he could see in her eyes for Peter Verey’s children be there for the child he had been?
    â€˜Children are so vulnerable,’ Suzy railed furiously.
    â€˜Surely their mother…’
    Children are so vulnerable. Luke looked away from her, momentarily forgetting who she was. There was a bitter taste in his mouth and his gaze was clouded by painful memories.
    Some children—as he had good cause to know—were more vulnerable than others. Abruptly inside his head images he didn’t want to relive were starting to form. He banished them. They belonged to the past, and right now he needed to concentrate on the present.
    â€˜Their mother is more interested in scoring points against their father than concerning herself about the children they created together. She has a new partner now, who has no intention of playing happy families with them, so the children have become both a means of remaining a thorn in her ex-husband’s side, and a punishment, because she now sees them as a burden she is forced to bear. She’s put them both into boarding school, and it seems that the summer holidays and the departure of the girl she employed to take charge of them means their presence is a nuisance. Hence her decision to send them to their father. Conveniently, the day she informed Sir Peter he had to take charge of them was also the day she left on an extended holiday with her second husband.’
    As she saw the anger in Luke’s eyes Suzy immediately jumped to the wrong conclusion. It was obvious that he too considered the poor children to be an unwanted nuisance, she decided angrily—an inconvenience to mar his plans, just like her!
    â€˜Of course you don’t want them here any more than their father,’ she accused him.
    â€˜I don’t want them here,’ Luke agreed grimly.
    He didn’t want any child ever again to be anywhere it might be in danger, no matter how small that risk might be.
    If he closed his eyes now Luke knew he would see the most terrible images of carnage and destruction etched in fire and blood. Images he would never be able to forget.
    The situation here was dangerously volatile. The African President had a reputation for seeing threats round every corner and reacting punishingly to them. Violence was a way of life to him, and to his followers.
    A simple mission, MI5 had called it. But how could it possibly be simple with a woman like Suzy Roberts and two innocent children involved?
    â€˜Come on,’ Luke commanded, picking up Suzy’s case. ‘And remember, take one step just one centimetre over the line and you’ll be locked up in jail before you can take another.’
    He meant it Suzy recognised apprehensively, and she fought not to back away from him and let him know how much he was intimidating her.
    â€˜We’re lovers, remember?’ Luke warned her, closing the gap between