Love Me Tomorrow

by Patricia Robins

Genres: Romance

Synopsis

When Samantha's father dies, she marries Ronnie Curtis, an up and coming author who loves her dearly. Samantha still yearns for Andrew, her student flame, but feels Ronnie will be able to support her brother, Seymour. Andrew comes back and Ronnie insists that Smantha finds out just what she feels. When Paula, an ex-girlfriend of Ronnie's tells lies to Andrew and tries to cause trouble for Ronnie, Samantha finds she must decide who she really cares for.

Release date: January 1, 2015

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 400

Sample

‘You can’t marry a man you don’t love, Samantha. Some women could and survive—but not you!’

Peta lit a cigarette and flung herself down on one of the hard and singularly uncomfortable chairs in the digs she shared with her friend, Samantha.

‘People do marry for convenience. The French do. Everyone did in Victorian times. And sometimes “arranged” marriages work out better than love marriages.’

Peta grinned from beneath her short dark fringe.

‘Yes, darling, but you are neither French nor Victorian. This is 1966 and for all you are nearly nineteen, you’re a mere babe. You just don’t know enough about life to carry this idea of yours off. You aren’t sophisticated enough, hard enough, Sammy, my poor sweet.’

Samantha was not only young but she looked fragile and helpless, the older girl thought, surveying her friend’s thin face with its twin curtains of straight pale-gold hair shining only a little less brightly than the liquid brown eyes—eyes large and dark enough not to need heavy outlining or false lashes.

Peta swung her short slim legs in their purple velvet tights over the arm of the chair and sighed.

‘Getting married is Serious, with a capital S,’ she said. ‘Not like an affair. It’s for keeps, Sammy, or should be. Besides, I can’t accept the necessity for such drastic measures.’

Samantha sighed. She might have known Peta would disapprove because basically, she disapproved of anything Samantha did for her brother, Seymour. She had been stupid to believe that Peta, who was broad-minded and understanding about everything else, would also understand this—her compulsion to help the young brother who had been robbed so cruelly of all that made life important to him.

In the ensuing silence, her mind swept back to the past. Her thoughts winged back across the last two years and she was at home again, walking across the kale fields with Father in his old tweed shooting jacket and a gun on the crook of his arm; or pushing her brother Seymour’s wheel-chair along the flagged stone path through the rose garden and watching him struggle to reproduce the riotous beauty of the flowers in water-colours. In their simple way, they had been happy together despite the paralysis that had crippled Seymour in his first term at public school. Neither she nor Seymour nor old Nanny who had come out of retirement to nurse him, had known then of the fantastic debts Father had been running up to pay for the best specialists for his only son; to pay the living-in tutor to continue Seymour’s education; to pay for the continued moneyed way of life which he could no longer begin to afford.

Then Father had been killed in a horrible car accident and the old, carefree happy days had died with him.

It had really been Nanny who saved Samantha’s sanity, forcing her to overcome her own terrible grief for the sake of the young invalid brother, who was now her responsibility. The family lawyer’s announcement of the true state of her father’s financial affairs had temporarily brought her out of her blind suffering to a new kind of worry and distress. Even with the sale of the house and all its beautiful contents, there was very little left over. It was Nanny who offered salvation—at least for Seymour. She offered to take him to live with her in the tiny cottage at the end of the drive which had been Mr. Reynolds’ gift to her along with a small annuity on her retirement.

‘It’s the least I can offer, Samantha, seeing your father was so generous to me.’

Seymour’s tutor had had to go—and it seemed that his only interest in life now—his painting—would have to go, too, since he could not travel the distance to the neighbouring town where he could attend an art school. Once again, Nanny had come forward with a solution.

‘You could go to London, Samantha. I’ve heard they pay very well for good secretaries in the city. Then maybe you could send a little money home each week to pay for Seymour to go by taxi to his classes. It would give you a fresh interest, too.’

For the first time, Samantha was glad of the secretarial course her father had insisted she take when she left school. At the time she had argued against it for it had always been accepted that when she left school, she would run the house for her father and brother so that Nanny could retire. But her father, no doubt aware even then of his steadily diminishing private capital, had insisted.

Nanny had known the truth but Father had sworn her to secrecy.

‘He wanted you children to have the best of everything,’ she told Samantha after the tragedy. ‘At least for as long as possible. He felt obligated to make it up to you both for the fact that you never had a mother either of you could remember. Nothing was too good for you. I tried to make him see that to live on his capital was to live in a fool’s paradise, but he never stopped hoping his investments would take a turn for the better and that you children need never know how serious things were. Maybe things would have improved but that we’ll never know now. He was a good man, Samantha, too good for these times, but quite impractical in the ways of the world.’

Seymour blamed his father bitterly.

‘All that money wasted, keeping up a stately home!’ he had railed. ‘If he had saved a bit we wouldn’t be in this position now.’

‘Oh, Seymour, don’t!’ Samantha had pleaded. ‘He wanted the house for you, not for himself!’

She had been too kind to remind Seymour of the hundreds of pounds spent on specialists and private nursing homes in the hope of curing him, or at least of bringing him back partial use of his lower limbs. But Seymour himself had brought up the matter.

‘Look at all the money thrown away on treatment for me!’ he stormed. ‘It could all have been done through the Health Scheme and for all the good the specialists did, it might as well have been paid for by the government.’

‘But Father always hoped the miracle could be worked!’ Samantha had argued. Seymour’s mouth had twisted. Samantha was torn with pity for him. He had been such a sport-loving boy, a good rugger player, tennis player, squash player. His fondness for painting had been very much a side-line in those days when action and movement had been the major part of his enjoyment of life.

She had resolved then to devote her life to making things as happy as she could for Seymour, no matter what the cost to herself. Fortunately she had been able to send enough money to Nanny to enable Seymour to continue with his art studies. The odd investments left from her father’s estate after death duties had been paid had, until a few weeks ago, brought in the vital few hundred pounds a year Seymour needed. Then, suddenly, the washing machine company in which her father had had such faith had gone bankrupt and the shares became worthless overnight.

That was when Ronnie had asked her to marry him, Ronnie with the laughing brown eyes and gay smile; with the kind of face which isn’t a bit handsome and is extremely attractive; the kind of face one instinctively trusted.

Ronnie was an author. His first and second novels had been very nearly best sellers and they had enabled him to pack in his job as a solicitor’s clerk and devote himself to his writing. Compared with Samantha’s other friends Ronnie was rich!

‘One day,’ he’d told Samantha, ‘I’m going to be famous. That’s more important to me than being rich.’

Samantha worked for the publishing house which bought Ronnie’s books. That was how she had come to meet him. Mr. Peters, whose secretary she was, had been lunching another author the day Ronnie came to see him and Ronnie had taken Samantha off to lunch with him instead.

Their friendship had developed over the last eight months, almost entirely through weekly lunches together. They talked mostly about Ronnie’s first novel—a very funny story in the first person about a solicitor’s clerk. It made fun of the job Ronnie currently had and hated. He had only gone into the profession because his father had so passionately wanted him in the old firm. Ronnie confided in Samantha his dream of making enough money from his writing to become a freelance, and now he had managed this. The money he had received in advance and royalties had been augmented by selling a lot of foreign rights.

Ronnie lived in a fairly large and sunny flat in Hampstead. Samantha had once been to tea with him there and envied him the spaciousness compared with the poky all-in-one room in Bayswater she shared with Peta, an art student. Ronnie’s flat overlooked Hampstead Heath and gave the illusion of being in the country. Her digs were dingy, dark and in a narrow street, the view restricted to the opposite row of grey terraced houses.

It was in his sitting-room over a cup of tea that Ronnie had suddenly and without preface, proposed to her.

‘Marry me, Samantha. I’ll look after you—your brother, too, if you want.’

She had been astounded. Until now their friendship had been entirely platonic. He’d given not the slightest inkling that he was fond of her except as a very casual friend.

Even now his brown eyes were laughing at her.

‘You’re not serious, Ronnie?’

‘Darling, I am—never been more serious in my life. I love you—I’ve been in love with you for weeks.’

‘But you never said …’

‘No, I know!’ he broke in. The smile was no longer in his eyes. He turned away from her. He didn’t want to tell her about the affair he’d had with a woman called Paula. In fact, he’d lost interest in the affair ages ago—before he’d even met Samantha, but Paula had clung and because she was so much older and was afraid of that age, he’d been too soft-hearted to make the break, hoping it could be by mutual consent and thereby save Paula’s pride. The fact was he had never been in love with her, merely attracted to her. The relationship was basic and became meaningless to Ronnie, the idealist. He knew it was a mistake but didn’t know that it was sometimes much better to be blunt and cut the ties quickly.

It was only now that he and Paula had finally said goodbye that he felt justified in asking Samantha to marry him This time, he knew, it was the Real Thing. Samantha was his Ideal Woman, sweet, innocent and utterly selfless. She worked like a slave to help support her invalid brother and denied herself practically everything but the barest necessities in order to make the best life she could for him. Girls like Samantha were few and far between. Most girls he knew were like Samantha’s friend, young Peta. Nothing wrong with her except that she lived to get what she could out of life. ‘Having fun,’ she called it. Ronnie had met her once or twice when he’d called for Samantha at their digs and Peta had offered him a drink and chatted to him in her lighthearted, rather frivolous way. He hadn’t disliked her—but he’d not found in her the depth and goodness and sweetness that had caused him to fall in love with Samantha.

‘Don’t give me your answer yet—I know it’s probably come as something of a shock!’ Ronnie was smiling again but his hand lay warm and reassuringly on her shoulder. ‘Think about it, Sammy. Get used to the idea and then decide you want to!’

So she had gone back to her flat to think over Ronnie’s extraordinary proposal.

It could all have been so easy and so perfect, she told herself, if she’d been in love with Ronnie. He was offering her love, security, a home for Seymour—all the things she so desperately needed. But Peta had, as always, hit the nail on the head. She just wasn’t ‘in love’ with him.

‘I do love him, though!’ she spoke her thoughts aloud. ‘I don’t see how anybody could help loving Ronnie.’

‘Hardly the point in question, my sweet!’ Peta said bluntly. ‘We are talking about marriage, a tricky enough relationship even if you start off crazy about each other. Anyway, what about the Scots boyfriend? I thought you were madly in love with him.’

A rush of colour crimsoned Samantha’s cheeks and faded again, leaving her paler than ever.

‘I told you that was all off ages ago!’ she said.

Peta’s eyebrows, carefully plucked and outlined with mascara, raised meaningly.

‘So you’ve finally given him up as hopeless?’

Samantha hesitated. She found it difficult to talk about Andrew. It hurt too much. She’d been so terribly in love with him. His home was in Leicestershire and he was studying medicine at Edinburgh University. It was on one of his vacations that he’d come to see Seymour with his father, one of the many specialists her own father had called in in the hope of finding a cure for the boy. They had fallen in love at first sight, but the Fates seemed set against them. Andrew’s studies kept him so large a part of the year hundreds of miles away in Edinburgh. Then, after her father’s death she had moved to London to get a job and Andrew’s letters had become less and less frequent. Eighteen months ago they had finally managed to coincide their visits home. Secretly, Samantha had been hoping Andrew would ask her to become officially engaged to him. Instead, Andrew had said awkwardly:

‘I’ve three more years before I qualify. It wouldn’t be fair to ask you to wait so long. It’s probably a good thing we don’t see much of each other.’

She’d been too proud to tell him that she would have waited; that no one in the world, except Seymour, mattered to her if she could only be near him. If he’d asked her to, she would have left London and found a job in Edinburgh where they could see each other more often. But Andrew had seemed anxious to let the romance drop for the time being. He even went out of his way to tell her that he was utterly dedicated to his studies and found it far easier to concentrate on his work when Samantha was out of mind as well as out of sight.

There was no formal engagement to break off—only the silken threads of memories of those few wonderful weeks together when they found it unbearable to be out of sight of one another. Samantha couldn’t believe it was over—that they couldn’t get back to the sweetness of that first violent loving. But something had gone from Andrew’s kisses. He was afraid of becoming emotionally involved with her a second time. He’d found it difficult to concentrate on his work after their first meeting and had nearly flunked his exams. He would have liked their romance to have been a quieter, gentler affair with no emotional strings or ties. But that wasn’t possible with Samantha. She loved so fully and completely and innocently. She just didn’t seem to under. . .