Chapter 1
Attractive Jenni Lovelock stretched and yawned, looking out of her former bedroom window for the first time in seven years.
She'd arrived home the previous night from the UK, with a three-day stopover in Brisbane to reunite with her maternal grandparents.
Ah, the home-coming. What a disaster.
For a start, her mother Ruth hadn't liked Jenni's hair being long, and icily using the word 'blonde' at the airport for the naturally auburn-haired daughter as if Jenni was carrying an infectious disease on her head.
Then it was the turn of Jennie's body.
She was too thin and why had those breasts sprouted; had she had implants? At least her butt wasn't wide and poking out.
Fortunately, they were walking to the car park when that salvo was fired, unprofessionally considering who her mother was.
"Your mother, she's stressed out," smiled the shaggy dog who was her father, his greying hair six months from its last trip to the hairdressers; perhaps three months.
She loved seeing those smiling green eyes again. Jade green, which was her eye colour. Perhaps hers smiled like his, which could explain why eligible men were always hovering, one or two coming in for the kill or whatever they called it. Sadly, those males were in England and she as here, home in New Zealand.
End of story.
Perhaps not.
It could be time to captivate the heart of a good Kiwi (New Zealander) for a trip to church. She reminded herself she'd been thinking 'baby' for some time; she was thirty-three for heaven's sake.
On the walk to the car, her father had whispered, "I'm afraid my practice is failing, debts mounting up. The fear of scandal of financial collapse is driving your mother bonkers because of social repercussions. Please go easy on her J.L."
Impulsively, Jenni hugged him, not over any looming business calamity but because he'd called her J.L. which he'd always done until just after she turned fifteen when she created hysterically, insisting on being called Jenni.
Boys magically had begun appearing on the doorstep to her home and laughed when they heard her father would call, 'J.L. there's something that looks a scrawny specimen of the male species to see you', or words to that effect.
One of those callers asked if she were head of the women's division of the Mafia. That joke spread around school.
"Why is your business failing," she'd asked Shaggy Dog, not that she would ever call him that.
"It's because of my poor business management."
"I bet a charitable weakness and declining to chase up overdue billings is at the heart of your problem."
"Hush. Your mother. Don't set her off."
"If you promise to get your hair cut."
"You cheeky bitch," he grinned and she used that moment of intimacy to hug him and whisper she liked him calling her J.L."
"I thought you might."
In the car she'd said, "Tell me about your business woes?"
"Aagh," her mother groaned. "You told her, you fool."
"Cut the theatrics mum, everyone but dad knows you're hard as nuts. Give me the story; possibly I could assist by buying a partnership and taking over as managing partner."
Ruth turned around in her luxurious bucket seat of the eight-year-old car and positively gawked.
"Am I hearing correctly? In one of your emails, you stated you had landed a plum job."
"That was true, I'd the signed a contract. But Princeton Holdings Ltd was taken over by Australian investors and merged with its UK subsidiary manufacturing alcohol flavoured drinks production and my promising job as deputy CEO was no more because of the merger."
"I was declared redundant a month before I left England. I created a fuss and used a Legal Beaver specialising in employment issues but dumped the pathetic negotiator. I forced that company to accept independent mediation in preference to a long wait over haggling in Court and won in the telephone hook-up. I ended up with an apology and a cheque for £25,000 after expenses."
"Twenty-five thousand pounds, for doing nothing?"
"A bit like your work, eh mum? I'd fought tooth and nail because my pride was dented and I was returning home to no job. I'd sought £50,000."
"My God, you lawyers are really something, lawyers other than your father, that is."
"My father is a great lawyer, thank you mother. He can't help that he's a softie. We studied one of his strategies for winning civil actions in Law School, I'll have you know."
"What Chester Lovelock quoted at university; why wasn't I told?"
"Because you're never were interested in daddy in law, only in the cocktail circuit."
"Well, really!"
"Finger off the trigger, J.L."
"Yes daddy. Oh, let's talk business tomorrow."
"No, you'd be at a disadvantage suffering jet lag."
"Not so, I lost that in the spa pools with Grandma Ellen at the Royal Palm Apartments on the Gold Coast."
Looking at the old apple tree, no longer looking as robust as she remembered it, Jenni thought she'd stay resting until she heard the folk stir.
She decided to cook them breakfast, aware they always had cooked breakfast on Saturdays. She'd then send her mother off shopping so she could talk to her father without being interrupted with trivialities. She'd promise to accompany her mother shopping the following Saturday.
Memories flowed as Jenni looked around her old bedroom. This would do for a week max; then she'd need her own space.
Her mother wouldn't like that but her father would understand.
God, those two were so unalike. She loved her father and she really liked her mother. Liked? Yes, even Grandma Ellen only really liked her daughter. She'd confessed to Jenni that in the pools two days ago Ruth had not been a lovable daughter. Grandma thought nobody really loved Ruth, not even Chester. Grandma said Ruth had never learned to open her heart.
Although shocked at hearing that, Jenni recognised the truth as soon as grandma expressed it.
Jenni had always stopped short at thinking the worst about her relationship with her mother. She just viewed her as not being soft and accessible like most, but not all, of her friends' mothers. But as a wife and mother, she was always there. She was house-proud and a fantastic cook, providing almost everything a husband and a daughter wanted; almost everything.
Splitting the family turned out to be no problem. Ruth had already arranged to go shopping with Alice Reilly as Steven's summer sale was on.
Not unexpectedly, when she walked into the bedroom in a hi-thigh hemmed nightdress, Ruth told Chester to face the wall and keep looking there until his unsuitably-dressed daughter had left the room.
"Your father is a man, young woman," Ruth declared. Jenni resisted the temptation to scratch her head and look perplexed. Her mother was jealous because she had next to nothing on her chest. It had to be that because the nightie wasn't sheer.
"Put on a robe before you return with the food."
"I'll lower your pulse rate by getting dressed, mother."
Jenni couldn't resist it. When dressing, she left off her bra and threw on a loose polo shirt and a pair of white cut-offs. The guys of this world would think she looked sensational whereas her mother would be left either biting her tongue or pulling the bedclothes over her head and counting down from twenty loudly.
For some reason, her mother really liked putting on an act when 'her irritating daughter' was around.
Surprisingly, all her mother said was: "Promise you won't leave home wearing clothing like that."
"I promise."
"Don't leer at her Chester. Please understand she's in a provocative mood."
Ruth, a child psychology consultant at the Healthland Private Hospital, knew all about girls with behaviour problems and with little regard for authority and conventions.
Later, Jenni went weak at the knees when her mother backed out of the garage in a yellow BMW with the hood down, the interior beautiful in two shades of tan.
Ruth saw the admiration and called, "If you become my lovely daughter, you may get to drive this occasionally. I've had it for six weeks. It's disgusting that you father drives than eight-year-old Jag."
"Thanks. I'll probably buy a car on Monday once I know what salary and position that I have with the firm."
"Don't join him, Pet. He'd going bust."
"Not if I can help it."
"I expected you to say that, but felt I had to warn you. You always were a headstrong girl. Remember, that often landed you in trouble."
"His predicament really has upset me as we rowed about it. I piled in money to pull him out of the mire on two previous occasions and this time I refused. We went at it hammer and tongs. As you know, your father and I rarely row as he's too docile for the cut and thrust. That's why I enjoyed rowing with you. You began giving as good as you got from the age of eight."
"You enjoyed it?"
"Oh yes. Because I have to be passive and understanding in my work, I need release when away from my job."
Jenni risked it and said, "Hence that string of so-called uncles."
"Comments like that are best left unsaid, dear. Bye. Listen to the quadruple exhausts, that powerful rumble makes me feel alive."
Father and daughter sat at the small table under the window in a side room the family had always called 'the den.' It wasn't the home office, that was just inside the front door on the cooler southern side of the sprawling brick house with its wide dark-green painted veranda that Jenni used to dream about when living in England.
Chester began the business session in lawyer mode. "It is my duty to advise you, Jenni, that joining me in the firm is not a good idea. I'm nearing insolvency."
"Alas, that's the reason why you need me."
"I need you like a sore toe."
"I think I prefer you speaking like a lawyer."
Chester said he believed he could find her a great job in corporate law.
She said finding her a position in his firm was more to the point. "If we fail, then find me a job elsewhere; that would be great."
Palming his forehead as if clearing his mind, Chester sighed and explained the current structure of the legal practice, which specialized in family law and business law and offered traffic and general court presentation to existing clients only. The seven lawyers, including him, were supported by ten staff including three legal executives.
Chester indicated the average figures of monthly billings and outgoings and, with a sigh, admitted currently the office was only just breaking even. Three excellent months earlier in the financial year had been a God-send.
He eyed his daughter, looking somewhat embarrassed and invited, "Do you have you a proposal?"
