Free The Real Katie Lavender by Erica James

wanted to be no better than a carpenter! ‘Just like Christ,’ Rosco had teased his cousin. ‘Next you’ll be saying you can walk on water.’
    To Gina’s astonishment, Lloyd had made a go of his business. Some of his garden furniture was too wacky for her taste – a touch too much Mad Hatter’s Tea Party in style – but he seemed content enough muddling along playing the part of callus-handed artisan to the tune of his parents’ praise.
    Of course they’d say they were proud in public, but in private it had to be otherwise. Or at least for Neil: Pen would probably argue that all she wanted was for their son to be happy, but fathers had a different relationship with their sons; they had different expectations. Unquestionably that was true of Stirling and the poles-apart-way he treated Rosco and Scarlet – Scarlet could get away with murder, but not so her brother.
    A daddy’s girl right from the word go, Scarlet had openly hero-worshipped her father throughout her childhood. She still did. In turn, Stirling had tolerated her legendary tantrums and her capricious nature with fond indulgence. When Charlie had come along and shown himself to be serious about Scarlet, Gina had doubted that Stirling would be able to stand aside and accept that a greater being had eclipsed him. Amazingly he had.
    Things had been quite different with Rosco. From an early age he had been taught by Stirling to do his best, that anything less was not acceptable. Lucky for Stirling, then, that Rosco had been born with a blistering sense of determined ambition. He cut his first tooth nearly a full month before most babies did, he sat up early, and he talked and walked early. As one paediatrician had described him, he had been a high-achieving baby and toddler. He had been hard work, though, and all too often Gina had been exhausted and nightmarishly near the end of her tether. Oh how she had envied Pen! It was the only time she had ever been jealous of her sister-in-law. Slow to talk and walk, as if he really couldn’t be bothered, Lloyd had been such an easy, placid baby. She could remember how he would sit on his own, propped up by cushions and seemingly fascinated by nothing but a tiny ball of fluff. In contrast, Rosco was toddling about on his sturdy legs, demanding to be played with and screaming at the top of his voice if anyone dared to ignore him. One was a thinker, the other a doer was how the family had described the two boys. Gina had felt the slight of the labels; she had thought it disparaged Rosco, casting him as an empty-headed bull in a china shop and Lloyd as some great philosopher.
    All these years later, it was plain for all to see that Rosco had easily outperformed his cousin. Gina would never admit this to anyone, but she firmly believed that genes always won out. Rosco’s genes were of an indisputable pedigree, but with Lloyd, well, who knew their origin?
    Another thought she would never openly voice, not even with Stirling, was that the up side of Lloyd not wanting to work for the family firm was that the way was clear for Rosco to take over the running of things one day. In her opinion, this was exactly how it should be. Lloyd didn’t have the same drive that Rosco did, and had he joined Nightingale Ridgeway, he would only have been a hindrance. In exactly the same way as Pen’s help in arranging a party could only ever be a tiresome interference.
    The caterers had arrived forty-five minutes ago, and deciding she had given them sufficient time to unload the van, Gina went through to the kitchen to see how they were getting on.
    She was informed of a small hitch, nothing for her to worry about, they assured her; the problem would be resolved. She viewed this assertion with unease. Unexpected problems were anathema to her. She simply didn’t countenance things not going perfectly to plan.

Chapter Nine
    Admittedly Katie hadn’t started the day with too much of a plan, other than to go with the flow and see what