by Penny Jordan
But stubbornly she omitted to mention anything of this as she responded to Jake’s instruction by simply saying, ‘I see a man, a woman and two children.’
‘You’re beginning to try my patience, Lucianna,’ Jake warned her. ‘Look again. Look at the way the man is behaving towards the three of them—protectively, lovingly—and the way the woman is responding to him, the way she obviously feels that he’s done something special; and the two children—look at their excitement.
‘At a guess I would say that they are a young couple who are just planning their first continental holiday with their children and that they have just been to obtain their family passport photographs. This holiday is probably something they’ve planned for and saved for for a very long time, something they’ve had to make sacrifices to afford, especially the man who’s probably had to work extra hours to pay for it…’
‘That’s sexist,’ Lucianna objected. ‘It might be the woman who’s had to do the extra work.’
‘It’s not sexist at all,’ Jake denied. ‘I’m simply interpreting their body language. Look at the way the man’s almost preening himself. Look at the way the woman’s looking at him, the pride and love in her expression, the way she keeps looking at him and touching his arm, and look at the way he’s responding. An animal psychologist would probably say they’re simply copying an ancient grooming ritual from the animal kingdom and that the one lower down the pecking order is grooming the ones higher up it, so that in this particular instance I would guess that it is the man who’s earned the extra money.
‘But he’s obviously a modern father; look at the way he’s bending down now to fasten the elder child’s shoes and the way she’s leaning against him. It’s obvious that fastening her shoes is a task he’s comfortably familiar with, just as she’s obviously comfortably familiar with him—’
‘Very interesting, but I can’t really see its relevance for me,’ Lucianna interrupted him crossly. Suddenly, for some reason, the sight of the small, happy family was making her feel acutely aware of her own aloneness. ‘After all, I’m not likely to want to start fastening John’s shoes or grooming him,’ she added sarcastically.
‘You might not want to fasten his shoes,’ Jake agreed, ‘but as for grooming…It’s normally considered to be an important and enjoyable part of the human courting ritual—to touch and be touched, to exchange those but oh, so meaningful caresses…Or am I being old-fashioned? Sex has been stripped of so much of its allure and sensuality these days.
‘It’s almost as though the race towards orgasm has become a fast-paced motorway requiring intense concentration and a total focus on reaching one’s goal, with no opportunity or desire to enjoy the pleasure of a more leisurely meander that allows one to pause and enjoy the moment, the caress.
‘Is that what you prefer, Lucianna—a sensible, no-nonsense approach to sex that reduces it simply to a biological urge which needs to be satisfied in the most efficient and least time-consuming manner?’
‘How I think and feel about sex has nothing to do with this nor with you,’ Lucianna told him fiercely.
‘No? Well, if that’s what you think no wonder you’re having so much trouble. On the contrary, sex has everything to do with it—or it should do. When you look at John, if you don’t want him to reach out and touch you and if you don’t want to reach out and touch him, then—’
‘John never touches me in public,’ Lucianna interrupted him, her colour rising as she told him angrily, ‘And nor would I want him to.’
‘Well, you certainly should,’ Jake told her, as calm as she herself was becoming flustered as he suddenly turned towards her and before she could stop him reached out and curled his fingers around her bare wrist.
His grip, although light, disturbed her. She could feel her heart start to beat faster with what she told herself was anger at his high-handed manner and her pulse was certainly racing because Jake himself was now placing his thumb over it, as though aware of her tension, his thumb beginning a slow, rhythmic stroking of the inside of her wrist which she assumed must be intended to calm and relax her but which, instead, was sending her heartbeat into a crazy, irregular volley of frantic thuds which were matched by the dizzying acceleration of her pulse. No wonder she was finding it difficult to breathe, she told herself hazily.
Through the ragged sound of her own breathing she could hear Jake telling her softly, ‘I’m touching you now, Lucianna; I’m touching you the way a man, a lover, the way John should want to touch you in public as an indication of his desire to touch you more intimately in private.’
Through the confused jumble of messages assaulting her sensory system Lucianna’s brain managed to isolate and hold onto one of them.
‘But you aren’t John,’ she reminded Jake breathlessly.
‘No,’ he agreed, his stroking thumb suddenly ceasing its inflammatory circular movement against her skin and his voice hardening slightly. ‘And I promise you that if I were you would be in no doubt as to my feelings for you, Lucianna…’
‘I’m not,’ she managed to find the robustness to say. ‘I do know exactly how you feel about me, Jake,’ she told him, and then added succinctly, ‘And I promise you I feel exactly the same way about you, only more so.’
Some feminine instinct made her tilt her head determinedly as she threw the words at him, but the look of blazing heat in his eyes as he gazed back at her made her look away again hastily.
She had never seen him look so…so…passionate…so…intense. Normally he was such a calm, controlled man. Too calm and controlled—aggravatingly so at times.
‘Luc.’
She turned her head, frowning slightly as she recognised the voice of John’s colleague, Felicity. She didn’t particularly like Felicity especially since the shopping debacle. She was a tall, leggy brunette with a faintly supercilious manner and a habit of shortening Lucianna’s name and pronouncing it as though indeed she had been christened as a boy in the same slightly patronising, sneering manner she was using now.
‘Have you heard anything from John yet?’ she asked Lucianna, speaking to her but plainly far more visually interested in concentrating on Jake, at whom she was smiling.
Somehow or other she’d managed to stand so that she was facing Jake, keeping her body half turned away from Lucianna, effectively excluding her, and had placed herself closer to Jake than Lucianna herself was. She added, ‘We had a fax from him this morning saying that he’s settled in safely but that he’s missing us.’
‘Yes, he faxed me as well,’ Lucianna heard herself fibbing, much to her own surprise and shock.
It must be something to do with the lecture Jake had just been giving her about observing other people’s body language that was making her so crossly aware of the unsubtle manoeuvres Felicity was using to attempt to create an aura of intimacy between herself and Jake which totally excluded Lucianna.
Well, let her. Let them, she decided angrily. She didn’t care and it was typical of Jake that he should have attracted Felicity’s attention. He was that kind of man.
‘Are you one of Luc’s customers?’ she heard Felicity questioning Jake, her voice low and musical, her laughter a soft feminine gurgle as she added depreciatingly, ‘I think she’s wonderful doing what she does. To my shame I have to admit I don’t even know how to change a tyre…’
‘It isn’t the tyre you change, it’s the wheel,’ Lucianna informed her shortly. She stood up and said pointedly to Jake, ‘I thought you said we were going shopping…’
‘Shopping? Now that is something I do know about,’ Felicity enthused.
For one appalling moment Lucianna thought that she was going to have to suffer the additional humiliation of hearing Jake invite Felicity to join them, but to her relief he simply smiled at her instead and then turned towards Lucianna, placing his hand beneath her elbow as he rose, and standing firmly close to her.
If someone had told her ten minutes ago that she would actually be grateful to have Jake display such old
-fashioned male courtesy and protectiveness towards her she would have denied it with scorn, so it was just as well someone hadn’t, because if they had right now she would have been eating her own words, she admitted uncomfortably.
Jake waited until they were out of Felicity’s earshot before saying smoothly, ‘You never said anything about John getting in touch with you.’
‘I don’t tell you everything,’ Lucianna returned. Jake was still lightly holding her arm, but when she tried to pull away from him she discovered that his hold on her was much firmer than she had imagined and rather than subject herself to an undignified tussle of physical strength which she knew he would win she had to satisfy herself with glowering at him and a brief and, although she didn’t know it, betrayingly feminine toss of her head that made Jake fight to hide a rueful smile.
He pointed out dryly, ‘Evidently not. Like you didn’t tell me you’d acquired a fax machine.’
‘Oh!’ Lucianna couldn’t manage to control the stricken look that crossed her face as he reminded her of the lie she had told Felicity. ‘Well, I couldn’t let her think that John had got in touch with his office and not me,’ she defended herself.
‘The office or her?’ Jake questioned cynically, and then, to Lucianna’s astonishment, he raised his free hand and touched her cheekbone lightly with his thumb as though he were brushing away some dirt or a tear, before saying softly, ‘Well, your feminine instincts are there all right. Now let’s see if we can unearth a few more of them. When did you last wear something that wasn’t a pair of jeans or dungarees, Lucianna?’
‘Last night,’ she told him smartly as she fought to get back the breath that had suddenly deserted her when he’d touched her face with such mock tenderness. As his eyebrows rose she added sweetly, ‘I don’t sleep in my work clothes, Jake.’
‘No, you sleep in a cotton nightdress,’ he agreed sardonically. ‘The same one you’ve been wearing since you were fifteen years old, I imagine.’
‘It’s still cold at night,’ she protested, feeling her face starting to heat up at the taunting note in his voice. ‘I like to curl my feet up into it…’
‘A woman in love…a woman with a lover…wouldn’t need a nightdress to keep her warm,’ Jake told her mockingly, adding hurtfully, ‘But then you aren’t a woman, are you, Lucianna? Not yet…’
‘Not according to you,’ she agreed, driven recklessly to answer him back to make him stop taunting her, and she added, ‘What’s wrong, Jake? Are you having second thoughts, beginning to feel that you’ve taken on too much, that you can’t transform me after all…make me a woman…?’
The look that crossed his face, the utter stillness of his body whilst his eyes turned dark and hot with an emotion she couldn’t recognise made her tense warily, not sure what it was she had said or done to unleash the fury she could sense he was trying to control, only knowing that she had suddenly and frighteningly strayed into an area of his personality she wasn’t familiar with.
‘Don’t tempt me,’ she heard him saying softly to her. ‘Just don’t tempt me, Lucianna.’
Don’t tempt him to what? she wondered shakily as his hand dropped from her arm as though her skin had burned him. Don’t tempt him to wring her neck, probably, she decided unhappily, forced to increase her stride to try to keep up with him as he strode down the street.
Scowling darkly, she flirted momentarily with the idea of telling him that she had changed her mind and that she didn’t want or need his help after all, but then she remembered the triumphant mockery she had heard in Felicity’s voice when she had told her about John’s fax and the slanting-eyed come-hither look she had given Jake, the same look Lucianna had seen her giving John on several previous occasions, and her head lifted and her spine straightened.
Jake, who had turned to wait for her to catch up with him, watched her discreetly.
She looked for all the world like a youthful teenager, her slender body encased in oversized clothes, but she wasn’t a child, she was an adult, a woman. A woman whose most basic instincts had been aroused by the threat of losing her man.
Her man. Jake’s frown returned as he turned abruptly away from Lucianna. The task he had taken on was fraught with innumerable perils, not the least of which was the fact that he might succeed and that Lucianna would get her way—and her man.
CHAPTER FOUR
‘WHAT are you looking at?’ Lucianna demanded of Jake as he paused on the corner of the street they were entering to watch something, or rather someone. When Lucianna realised she flushed and gave a rather self-conscious, ‘Oh,’ as she saw the girl Jake had obviously been admiring come sauntering into view.
Like Lucianna she was dressed in jeans, and like her she also had tawny-coloured long hair, but that was where the resemblance between them ended.
Whereas Lucianna’s hair was tied back uncompromisingly this girl’s was worn loose and slightly messy, giving the impression that she had been doing something far too pleasurable to waste time grooming her hair before coming out, and she had obviously also neglected to put on any proper underwear beneath the neatly fitting cream stretch jeans she was wearing, Lucianna decided scathingly as she saw Jake’s glance move from the other girl’s face to her body.
There might not be anything openly tarty about the girl’s appearance, Lucianna acknowledged, but there was still definitely an air about her and about the way she was dressed that somehow suggested even to Lucianna’s inexperienced eye that she was a person who enjoyed her own sexuality.
‘Typical.’ Lucianna couldn’t quite stop herself from saying this disparagingly as she saw the small, teasing look the girl gave Jake before turning away and strolling across the road—or rather sashaying across the road, Lucianna acknowledged—if that wasn’t too old-fashioned a word to use for the provocatively swaying movement of the girl’s pert bottom.
‘Jealous?’ Jake asked her mockingly.
‘Certainly not,’ Lucianna told him scathingly, adding pithily, ‘And I wouldn’t dream of coming out without my…not wearing any underwear…’
‘Not wearing…?’ Jake was frowning slightly as he turned to give the girl another brief look, but when he turned back towards her Lucianna could see that he was struggling not to laugh.
‘You really do need educating, don’t you?’ he told her with a grin that made him suddenly look much younger and made her equally suddenly wonder why she was finding it such a struggle to fill her lungs properly with air.
‘If being educated means dressing like a…like that, then I’d rather stay the way I am,’ she began crossly, but Jake shook his head.
Still laughing, he told her, ‘You’re wrong, you know. She’s more than likely wearing a string of some type underneath her jeans, and—’
‘A string…?’
‘Yes, you know, an item of underwear…an item of female underwear…that is commonly worn beneath fitted clothing to prevent the unforgivable fashion solecism of VPL…’
‘VPL…?’ Lucianna repeated in irritation.
‘Visible panty line,’ Jake explained patiently.
‘I know what it means,’ Lucianna told him. She might not be fashion-conscious, but she did read her sister-in-law’s magazines and she knew perfectly well what he meant. Her anger was directed not so much at him for teasing her but at herself for giving him the opportunity to do so.
‘I take it that it isn’t an item of underwear you favour?’ Jake said to her as they continued to walk down the street.
‘My underwear is not something I intend to discuss with you,’ Lucianna told him frostily.
‘Pity,’ Jake returned, his voice suddenly crisply ominous, ‘because, much as it pains me to say it, the male of the species, still at heart being the un-newmanish creature that he is, is still very much influenced and intrigued by women’s underwear, let’s be honest, is perhaps still regrettably prone to making character and personality judgements on a woman based on her choice of underwear and his idea of what he personally finds exciting and e
rotic…’
‘If you’re talking about stockings and suspenders…’ Lucianna began warily. She had heard more than enough about the allure and potential of such garments from her brothers during the years they were growing up to have been put off wearing them for life.
‘Amongst other things,’ Jake agreed. ‘Personally, what I find erotic is the knowledge that a woman cares enough for herself and for me to want the act of undressing her to become a sensually special appetiser to our loveplay…Rather like the anticipation and buzz one gets from unwrapping an enticingly wrapped present…’
‘Oh, you would see a woman like that…as a thing…a toy…a…a present…’ Lucianna told him furiously. ‘Well, for your information, I would rather die than present myself like that…than humiliate and degrade myself like that…’
‘So you expect John to enjoy the sight and act of watching you strip down to the utilitarian and functional underwear you no doubt favour, do you? Tell me something, Lucianna,’ Jake challenged her. ‘Do you permit him to be equally uncompromising with you? Do you enjoy the sight of him wearing a pair of well-washed baggy boxer shorts, or perhaps the gimmicky jockstrap his pals gave him as a joke for his birthday?’
Lucianna’s face had gone scarlet, as much with embarrassment as with anger.
‘John and I don’t have that kind of relationship, and I don’t…’
When she stopped Jake demanded with dangerous softness, ‘Yes, do go on; you don’t what?’
Stubbornly Lucianna pursed her lips and looked away, refusing to speak. She wasn’t going to tell Jake that she had no idea what kind of underwear John favoured any more than she was going to admit that the mental images he had just drawn for her, especially the one of John, had somehow or other rung unpalatably true. His pals were the type who would give him jokey and embarrassing underwear as a present.
Jake, on the other hand, would not doubt—Her thoughts careened to an unsteady halt as she abruptly realised that the mental image she had conjured up of Jake’s body, superimposed over the image of an unknown model posing in a pair of immaculate pristine white and very close-fitting undershorts that she had glimpsed in an advertisement in one of her sister-in-law’s magazines, was one she most certainly should not be entertaining. One she most certainly should not be entertaining at all, and she had no idea exactly why she was—or, even more importantly, how she was.