âSAFFRON, my dear, you look wonderfulâso like your mother!â
Behind the pride in her fatherâs voice, Saffron caught the note of pain and understood the reasons for it.
For so long they had been estranged from one anotherâalmost from the day of her motherâs death when she was a schoolgirl of twelve and her father a busy, grief-stricken man of forty. Now that was over, miraculously they had found the way back to one another, and both of them treasured their new-found relationship.
âYou approve then?â Saffron pirouetted in front of her father, the gauzy skirts of her dress fluttering round her body. The dress had been hideously expensive! She had bought it in London, especially for this occasion, which had been meant to herald the beginning of their long-awaited holiday together, but as he was the head of Wykeham Industries, Sir Richardâs time was not entirely his own, and on the eve of their departure for Rome he had had to tell Saffron that it would be several days before he could join her at their villa in southern Italy.
âMost definitely,â Sir Richard assured her. âAnd thatâs after being presented with the bill.â He marvelled at the change in her, from rebellious teenager to poised young woman; and it had happened almost overnight. He was so proud of this daughter, the child he had so nearly lost completely through his own bitterness following his wifeâs death. He had forgotten that Saffron had lost a mother too, and his guilt showed a little in the concern with which he regarded her.
âI am sorry about our holiday,â he added, âbut with luck I shouldnât need to be in San Francisco for long. Youâll enjoy yourself tonight at least. Signor Veldini appears to have invited most of Rome society to this party.â
âTo impress you so that youâll agree to invest in his business,â Saffron commented shrewdly. The warm gold skin and dark red hair she had inherited from her mother, coupled with a bone structure a model would have envied, had resulted in looks that had made her a photographerâs favourite almost all her teenage life. Add to the sculptured perfection of her face, a perfect pocket Venus-shaped body, and it was no wonder that his daughter never lacked male escorts, Richard Wykeham thought as he watched her.
The dress she had chosen for tonightâs party made her look as fragile and ethereal as a water-nymph. A frown creased his forehead momentarily, and seeing it Saffron smiled encouragingly.
âDonât worry,â she whispered as she took his arm and he opened the door of her hotel room. âI wonât let you down by sulking all evening because you canât come with meâthose days are gone.â
âThey should never have been. If I hadnât been so wrapped up in my businessâ¦â
âWe made a pact not to dwell on the past,â Saffron reminded him, the green depths of her eyes momentarily shadowed as she remembered the arid years of her adolescence and the pain of losing her mother.
A limousine was waiting to ferry them to the Veldinisâ impressive villa in one of Romeâs most exclusive suburbs. Saffron had spoken no less than the truth when she had stated that Signor Veldini was hoping to persuade her father to invest in his company, but Richard Wykeham had a formidable reputation as an astute businessman and Saffron knew that it would take far more than a society party to convince him.
As they sped through the city she glanced at her fatherâs face. She had been so looking forward to their holidayâtheir first together since the death of her mother. Her father had done his best. There had been a constant stream of mother-substitutes in the form of boarding schoolmistresses and housekeepers, but it hadnât been enough, and in an effort to make her father take notice of her she had involved herself in scrape after scrape. It was only within the last twelve monthsâsince her twentieth birthdayâthat she had abandoned the wild set she had taken up with after leaving schoolâyoung adults like herself; the first generation offspring of self-made men, whose fathers had more money than time to spend on them and who themselves had been set apart from their parents by virtue of the public school education their parents had so proudly bought for them.
When would parents learn that children needed love, not money? Saffron wondered to herself. The greater part of her own rebellion had sprung not from any desire to share the wilder exploits of her set, but simply to draw her fatherâs attention to her. It had taken the death of one of that set from drug abuse to shock her into the realisation of where her life was going, forcing her to attempt to reach out for her father one last time, and miraculously he had responded.