by Penny Jordan
After all, the last time she had seen Jake without…wearing very little, she amended to herself hastily, had been the last time they had all gone swimming together before Jake had gone to university. And that had been years ago. She had been a child and Jake had been a young man…a boy…whereas the body she had been mentally visualising had most definitely been that of a man…very definitely that of a man.
‘Lucianna!’
Self-consciously Lucianna avoided Jake’s eyes as she heard the questioning note in his voice.
‘Right,’ Jake announced, lifting his wrist to glance at his watch. ‘That’s enough shopping for today. It’s time we were making our way back, I think. I’ve got some work to do and whilst I’m doing it you can make a start with your homework,’ he informed her dryly, nodding in the direction of the books she was carrying.
‘I can do that by myself at home,’ Lucianna told him spiritedly, not in the least relishing the idea of having to sit reading dutifully beneath Jake’s eagle eye like a schoolgirl. ‘John might ring,’ she added.
‘So much the better,’ Jake retorted firmly. ‘It will do him good to wonder where you are. No more excuses, Lucianna,’ he advised her. ‘Don’t forget you wanted to do this…’
Reluctantly Lucianna had to concede that he had a point. There had been moments during the morning, far too many of them in fact, when she had been in danger of forgetting just why she was putting herself through such a painful process.
As they turned into the car park they were greeted by the shrill sound of a car alarm ringing. To Lucianna’s surprise, Jake halted abruptly and cursed under his breath, muttering feelingly, ‘If that’s what I think it is, that damn garage…’
Lucianna’s eyes widened as she stared across the car park and saw that it was indeed Jake’s car alarm that was ringing, the car’s indicator lights flashing on and off as though someone had tried to break into the vehicle, and she couldn’t resist saying dulcetly, ‘Oh, dear, Jake, it looks like something has gone wrong with your car’s electronics.’
The look Jake gave her told her that he wasn’t in the least deceived by her mock-innocent concern.
‘I don’t have a problem,’ he told her forcefully, ‘but the garage is certainly going to have one. They assured me that they’d found the fault and solved the problem.’
‘The electronics systems in these expensive status cars are very complicated and sensitive,’ Lucianna told him sweetly, with triumph in her voice.
Only six months earlier, when Jake had first taken delivery of his new car, she had begged to be allowed to familiarise herself with its mechanical and electronics systems, but Jake had sternly refused, telling her in what she had considered at the time to be an extremely bossy manner that the car wasn’t a toy and that furthermore it would negate its warranty if he allowed anyone who wasn’t an approved mechanic to tamper with its inner workings.
‘I don’t want to tamper with them,’ she had told him through gritted teeth. ‘I simply want to look at them…’
‘I know your looking,’ Jake had reminded her grittily. ‘I haven’t forgotten what happened when you looked at the engine of my TR7.’
Lucianna had grimaced. The TR7 had been Jake’s pride and joy, a racy little sports car he had worked hard to buy, and just as soon as his back was turned she had ignored his veto on her touching it. He had returned earlier than expected one afternoon when he had been supposed to be away all day to discover her sitting on the floor of his garage, surrounded by the parts she had painstakingly removed from his car.
It hadn’t been her fault that he had flustered her so much with his ire that she had muddled up two very similar pieces when she had rushed to reassemble everything. Just as soon as she had realised what she had done and why it wouldn’t start, why the heating system was throwing out freezing-cold air instead of hot, she had quickly put matters right—but not, as it turned out, quickly enough to repair the damage the shock of icy cold air blasting over Jake’s girlfriend’s body had done to Jake’s budding romance with her.
It wasn’t her fault that his girlfriend had chosen to wear such a stupidly short skirt, Lucianna had defended herself, her already hot face growing even hotter when her amused elder brother had hooted with laughter and told Jake teasingly that it was probably the first time his passionate advances had been frozen off by a faulty car heater.
‘The first time and the last,’ Jake had replied grimly, then had advised Lucianna tersely, ‘Don’t you ever, ever tamper with my car again, otherwise you’ll be the one in need of a blast of cold air—on your backside, which will be smarting very hotly indeed…’
Lucianna had just been at an age when any reference to almost any part of her anatomy had had the power to raise a deeply mortifying crimson flood of colour through her body—and on that occasion, if she remembered aright, her self-consciousness had outdone itself.
Now she watched in secret glee as Jake tried to silence the car’s shrilling alarm, first by using the automatic door key and then, once he had got the car unlocked, by deactivating the alarm itself.
‘I thought these things were supposed to stop automatically after twenty minutes,’ Jake gritted through grated teeth as all his attempts to stop the alarm met with no response.
‘That’s house alarms,’ Lucianna informed him sunnily, her glee growing as she saw the faint tinge of colour beginning to burn his skin. For the first time in the whole of the time she had known him, Jake was actually beginning to exhibit the tell-tale signs of becoming harassed. His hair was rumpled where he had pushed his hand through it and she could see from his expression that he wasn’t enjoying the attention and pity they were attracting from other motorists.
‘It could be worse,’ she comforted him with pseudo concern. ‘I believe the latest model of this car has an optional new alarm system that actually cries, “Help, I’m being stolen”…’
She managed to keep her face straight as Jake gave her a look that should have turned her to cinders.
‘Very funny,’ he told her savagely, reaching into the car to pick up his car phone, but Lucianna shook her head and told him gently,
‘It won’t work, Jake, not whilst the alarm’s ringing; there’s an automatic bar that means you can’t…’
‘Where’s the handbook?’ Jake growled, reaching towards the glove compartment, but once again Lucianna shook her head sorrowfully.
‘That won’t open, Jake, not—’
‘Not whilst the alarm’s ringing…I know,’ he cut in tightly. Then he asked her grimly, ‘What about the engine? I suppose that won’t start either…?’
‘I’m afraid not,’ Lucianna agreed gently.
‘All right. You stay here; there’s a public call box round the corner. I’ll go and ring the garage.’
‘All right, but you’d better leave me with the keys,’ she told him dutifully, and explained, ‘If you don’t someone might think that I’ve tried to break in…’
Silently Jake handed her the keys.
Lucianna waited until he was out of sight and then went into action. Just as well she had ignored his veto on her touching his precious car…
Humming to herself, she set to work. Ignoring the alarm and overriding the system to open the glove box and remove the owner’s manual, whilst deftly unlocking the bonnet, within three minutes she had silenced the alarm and within another two located the fault, which, as far as she could see, was simply a matter of replacing a fuse. The alarms would have to be reset, of course, because she had overridden them, but she still felt very pleased with herself as she stood back and enjoyed the consequent silence of her handiwork, patting the car and telling her that she was a very clever girl.
‘What the…?’
She smiled as she turned round in response to Jake’s ominous voice, telling him calmly, ‘It’s stopped…’
Out of the corner of her eye she could see a car bearing the insignia of the garage which had supplied Jake with his car. As it came to a halt alongside them Lucia
nna stepped forward and told the mechanic when he climbed out, ‘I’ve overridden the central nervous system and removed the electronic data coil, but I think the main problem lies with one of the fuses…’
‘More than likely,’ the mechanic agreed, giving her an initial appraising and then approving look as he lifted the bonnet and checked what she had done.
‘It’s a problem we’re having with these cars, and something that wasn’t discovered in the re-testing stage. We suspect it could be caused by changes in the air temperature, but we haven’t enough evidence to make a firm decision on that yet…’
That was all the encouragement Lucianna needed; within seconds the pair of them were deep in conversation and it took Jake’s grim, ‘When the pair of you have finished…’ to bring the young mechanic’s enthusiastic praise of the manufacturer’s latest electronic system to a faltering halt as he turned his attention back to Jake’s car.
Ten minutes later, after the mechanic had gone and they were driving out of the car park, Jake turned to Lucianna and demanded coldly, ‘All right, Lucianna, you’ve had your fun. When…?’
Lucianna didn’t pretend not to understand what he meant.
‘Er…the weekend you had to fly to Brussels. You asked David to drive you to the airport and then collect you when you got back because you didn’t want to leave the car parked there because so many had been stolen; so whilst it was at the farm…’
‘You ignored what I’d said and decided to start playing around with it…You do realise that it could have been your interfering that caused the fault in the first place.’
She watched his mouth harden as he swung the car out into the road. It felt good to know that there was one area at least where her knowledge was superior to Jake’s, and even better to know that he knew it as well—knew it and didn’t very much like it, if his thunderous silence was anything to go by.
Lucianna paused in the act of watering the plants she had lovingly rescued, freeing their poor constricted roots from the prison of the over-packed pots in which they had been planted, repotting them in a much more generously proportioned home.
They had repaid her love and care by flourishing despite all the taunting comments of her brother. Her father had been one of the old school of farmers, disdainful and impatient of anything grown for mere ornament and pleasure, and as a girl Lucianna had tended her small garden in secret, guiltily aware that her father would not have approved.
Now things were different, though, and even her brother had been impressed the previous summer when her planters and hanging baskets had not only attracted admiring comments from her customers and visitors, but had also won first prize at the local country fair.
On the other side of the yard her brother and sister-in-law were deep in conversation. Against all her own expectations Lucianna had quickly discovered that the books Jake had persuaded her to buy were giving her a fascinating new insight into other people’s reactions and feelings, and now, a week after their purchase, she was discovering that she was becoming something of a people-watcher.
The way her brother was leaning over his wife, the way their bodies were touching, the way she was smiling up at him were all indicative of their love and intimacy, and as she watched them Lucianna felt a painful welling of loneliness and envy.
Why was it that the ability to be attractive to and appeal to a man seemed to come so easily to others but not to her? Surely it wasn’t just a matter of looking docile and demure, of deliberately appealing to a man’s vanity, to his need to boost his own ego, because if it was she had too much respect for herself ever to adopt that kind of artifice. But no, it couldn’t be. She only had to think of how strong Janey could be and how determinedly she held her own against David whenever she felt the need.
Sexual chemistry was easy to recognise but hard to define, according to The Art of Flirtation, and without it…
Lucianna turned back to her plants, but this time as she nipped off the dead heads her fingers weren’t quite as steady. The relationship she had with John might not be smouldering with sexuality and passion but there was more to a good relationship, a meaningful relationship, the kind of relationship she, Lucianna, wanted with a man, than mere sex…
She glanced at her watch. Jake was due back this evening. He had been away on business for the last few days but he had telephoned her from his hotel this morning, instructing her to present herself at the Hall this evening so that they could start work on the new phase of ‘The Plan’.
Out of the corner of her eye she suddenly noticed the way her brother’s hand had dropped to Janey’s stomach.
It was no secret to Lucianna that her brother and Janey had been wanting to start a family for quite some time. Did that small possessive gesture she had just witnessed mean that she had now conceived?
Thoughtfully Lucianna watched the way her brother kept his arm around his wife’s shoulders as they walked back to the house together. He was certainly being rather more physically protective and careful of her these days…or was it simply that she was more aware of the subtle messages of other people’s body language which had hitherto been a closed book to her?
‘Jake’s still obviously not got around to taking you shopping yet’ David teased, as Lucianna joined them in the kitchen tugging affectionately on her hair. ‘I can’t wait to see what he’s got in mind for you. It will have to be black, of course—that way the oil stains won’t show.’
‘David…’ Janey began to warn, but Lucianna shook her head and smiled.
‘It’s all right, Janey,’ she told her. ‘I know when I’m being wound up.’
Yes, she knew, but in the past she had always reacted with defensive anger to such teasing, she acknowledged. Overreacted, some might say, but since her eyes had been opened to the power and the potential of using her body language to work for her she had discovered that there were far more subtle ways of getting her arguments across than verbal arguing—and apparently, if the book on flirtation was to be believed, more ways of attracting a man’s interest than by dressing provocatively.
In the privacy of her own bedroom she had already secretly been practising the small, telling gestures which were supposed to draw a man’s attention…
CHAPTER FIVE
HALFWAY through cross-questioning her on how much time and attention she had given the books she had bought, Jake had had to excuse himself to take a business call in the library. From the way he had been speaking to her since her arrival at the Hall she might have been a schoolgirl, Lucianna decided wrathfully, absently glancing at the TV screen she had just switched on, her eyes widening as she saw the couple on the screen start to kiss one another with passionate intensity. As the camera closed up on their faces Lucianna tensed and watched closely.
When she and John kissed she felt none of the intense passion this couple were so enviably sharing. No, John had certainly never kissed her the way the man on the screen was kissing the woman, holding her face in his hands as he pressed hungry, biting kisses onto her mouth and she responded, twisting and turning in his arms as though she couldn’t get close enough to him.
Lucianna felt her heart start to beat faster, oblivious to Jake’s return as she stared in fascination at the screen. The couple were kissing differently now, their mouths fused together, their breathing laboured.
‘What’s wrong, Lucianna? Hasn’t John ever kissed you like that?’
At the sound of Jake’s voice Lucianna spun round, her face burning hotly, embarrassed at being caught studying the screen as though she had actually been guilty of voyeurism.
‘Y-yes, of course he has,’ she told Jake fiercely, starting to stammer slightly and somehow unable to meet his eyes.
‘I don’t believe you,’ she heard him challenge her suavely. ‘In fact I don’t believe you even know how to kiss like that…’
‘Of course I do,’ Lucianna asserted quickly.
‘Yes? Then prove it,’ Jake demanded softly. ‘Come over here now and prove it to me, Luci
anna…Kiss me…’
At first Lucianna thought that Jake couldn’t possibly mean what he had said—either that or she must have misheard him—but when she searched his face for confirmation she realised with a fierce, sharp thrill of fear that he had meant it.
‘You can’t, can you?’ she heard him saying softly to her. ‘You can’t and you don’t—’
‘I can,’ Lucianna lied immediately.
‘Prove it, then…’
How had Jake managed to move so quickly that he was now standing right next to her, one hand already cupping the back of her head, constraining her, preventing her from moving? His mouth was only centimetres away from hers. Nervously she licked her lips and heard him say, ‘Well, that’s an interesting start, but you’re supposed to be the one kissing me, not enticing me into kissing you…’
Enticing him! Fear and anger, always a dangerously volatile cocktail of emotions, exploded inside her and before she could lose her courage Lucianna closed the distance between them, her lips firmly pressed together as she brushed them against Jake’s mouth. His lips felt cool and smooth and nothing whatsoever like John’s, which if she was honest always felt just a little too wet and soft and—
‘Call that a kiss? If that’s the best you can do then no wonder you’re having so much trouble with your love life…The wonder is that you’ve got one at all,’ Jake told her succinctly.
Furious now, Lucianna opened her mouth to retaliate and then discovered that it was impossible for her to speak for the very good reason that, despite the fact that she was sure she had removed her lips from his, Jake’s mouth was now covering hers, covering it and…