Mission: Make-Over

by Penny Jordan

  He had been right to dread Lucianna’s reaction to last night and more than right to guess that she would blame him; that she would be distraught with guilt and despair over what to her would be a betrayal of the love she believed she felt for John. But he’d been wrong, it seemed, to think he could talk to her about it—help her, reassure her.

  Halfway back to the farm Lucianna suddenly pulled up and stopped the car. There was no way she could return home looking and feeling as she did right now.

  Dry-eyed, she stared unseeingly into the distance. What she felt hurt too much for tears. What she felt right now went so deep into her heart and body that she knew the pain would never ease, that she would never get over Jake’s rejection of her, that she loved him so much, that…

  Lucianna’s teeth chattered as her body shuddered under the uncontrollable waves of pain that struck her. She loved Jake and suddenly, like someone whose vision had previously been blurred and distorted without them being aware of it, now that she had the benefit of true clarity, real vision, she could see and understand how shallow and childish, how laughable in so many ways the love she had claimed she had had for John had actually been.

  She hadn’t loved John at all, didn’t love him at all…What she had loved had been the idea of being in love, of being loved in return, and she had imagined love between a man and a woman as something gentle and passive, something that would be a comfortable, simple part of her life without really touching her or changing her.

  She couldn’t have been more wrong. Love wasn’t like that at all; love wasn’t sweet and gentle, easily malleable, allowing itself to be manipulated and set neatly into the controlled framework of one’s life.

  This love, her love, was a tumultuous force, an overpowering, overwhelming surge of emotion and need that affected every single part of her life and every single particle of her. Love was pain and despair, a helpless sense of longing and need, an endless grieving for what she could never have, the person she could never have.

  Love was…Jake.

  But Jake didn’t love her. Jake didn’t want…Jake didn’t need her. He didn’t even particularly like her. He hadn’t been able to wait to remind her that John was her boyfriend.

  John. Lucianna frowned as she tried to summon up a mental image of him and discovered that she couldn’t, that his features simply refused to form, that behind her tightly closed eyelids the only features which would form were those belonging to Jake.

  Jake frowned as he watched Lucianna’s car disappear in a cloud of dust. She was an exceptionally good driver and very little other traffic used the quiet country lane which linked his home to the farm, but even so, in her present mood, she was all too likely…

  He reached into his pocket for his own car keys and had just got to the door when the telephone rang. For a moment he was tempted to ignore it but he knew it would be the call he had been expecting regarding a joint venture he had recently entered into and which hopefully, if necessary, would bring the estate some valuable extra income.

  Reluctantly he replaced his car keys in his pocket and went to answer his call.

  It was almost an hour before Lucianna felt composed enough to return to the farm. The anger and hurt pride which had fuelled her furious flight from Jake had been replaced by a dull, numbing emptiness which enclosed her in a protective but oh, so fragile bubble—so fragile that she was instinctively cautious about allowing anything or anyone to get close to her in case they accidentally damaged it and allowed all the pain it was holding at bay to swamp back over her.

  Janey, who had seen her park her car, watched her walk slowly and carefully towards her workshop, all her female instincts aroused by the pall of despair that seemed to hang over her like an invisible cloud. Putting aside the pastry she had been mixing, she made two mugs of coffee and carried them both out to where Lucianna was working.

  Lucianna looked up apathetically as her sister-in-law knocked and then walked into her workshop, carefully placing the tray of coffee on an empty space on the workbench.

  ‘I don’t know what I’m going to feel like in five months’ time,’ Janey groaned conversationally as she sat down. ‘I feel huge and worn out already…’

  ‘You don’t look it,’ Lucianna assured her, putting down the manual she had been trying to read and studying Janey instead.

  In fact if anything her sister-in-law looked positively blooming, her happiness at having conceived so apparent that she positively glowed with it. Already, too, Lucianna had noticed a difference in her brother. It had always been obvious how much David loved Janey but now…now he treated her as though she was the most precious, fragile, wonderful woman who had ever walked the earth.

  As she looked at Janey, suddenly, for no reason at all that she could think of, Lucianna felt her eyes fill with sharp, hot tears. Quickly she turned away before Janey could see them, pretending to busy herself with some papers whilst Janey continued lightly, ‘Jake rang about half an hour ago wanting to know if you were back. He sounded rather concerned…’

  Jake, concerned about her? That would be the day…Concerned, more like, that she would ignore his warning and tell Janey and David just what had happened.

  ‘He mentioned that John’s coming home earlier than expected.’

  ‘Yes,’ Lucianna agreed stiffly and uncommunicatively.

  Janey frowned a little as she drank her coffee. Something was quite obviously upsetting Lucianna, but knowing her sister-in-law as she did she felt reluctant to pry too deeply. On the other hand, if Luce wanted someone to talk to…

  ‘I expect you’re feeling a little bit nervous and uncertain about seeing him again. In the circumstances that’s quite natural…and—’

  ‘Nervous…of seeing Jake? Why should I be?’ Lucianna demanded savagely, forgetting the tell-tale signs of her tears glittering in her eyes as she wheeled round and glowered miserably at Janey. Despite everything he had said to her Jake had obviously said something to Janey about what had happened between them, probably to get Janey to reinforce what he himself had already said to her. Poor Janey. Even though she might not realise it, she was being used by Jake just as mercilessly as Lucianna herself had been, albeit in a very different way…

  Janey’s eyes widened in confusion as she listened to Lucianna’s angry tirade.

  ‘Luce, I was talking about John,’ she managed to intervene gently, ‘not Jake.’

  Too late Lucianna realised her own mistake and just what she might have betrayed.

  ‘Have you and Jake quarrelled?’ Janey questioned her softly.

  Lucianna shook her head, unable to give her any answer, and wisely Janey did not pursue the subject.

  CHAPTER NINE

  ‘I APPRECIATE your advice, Jake.’ David thanked his friend gratefully as he stood up. He had spent the morning over at Jake’s house discussing with him the pros and cons of a new pension plan he was considering taking out.

  ‘The farm provides us with a reasonably good income, but you never know what the future is going to bring.’ David shook his head. ‘And with the baby to consider…’

  ‘You and Janey must be looking forward to your holiday,’ Jake commented. ‘Not long to go now before you’re off.’

  ‘Yes, we can’t wait. Thanks for agreeing to move into the farmhouse to keep an eye on things whilst we’re gone. Luce is capable enough, but neither of us likes the idea of leaving her there on her own. In fact…’

  He frowned and paused before saying self-consciously, ‘Janey’s a bit worried about her at the moment. She seems to think the two of you might have quarrelled and…well, Luce certainly does seem to have been unusually subdued. I know, of course, that she’s worrying about this business of having to see Rory Simons from the bank—she took out an overdraft when she first set up to equip her workshop and, well, to be quite frank…’ David shook his head. ‘It’s like I keep telling her: it’s not that she isn’t a first-rate mechanic—she is—but men just don’t like the idea of a woman tampering with their c
ars…’

  ‘You mean men don’t like the idea of a woman knowing a good deal more about what goes on inside the engine of their cars than they do themselves,’ Jake corrected him dryly.

  David gave him a wry look and advised him, ‘You try telling that to Luce. You know what she’s like…it’s like a red rag to a bull, and she’s off like a firecracker…Or at least normally she would be. As I said, she’s been very subdued recently. How are the lessons going, by the way?’

  ‘They aren’t,’ Jake told him grimly, and then added, ‘A mutual decision…’

  ‘So Luce said,’ David said.

  He and Jake had virtually grown up together but, close though they had always been, there were times when Jake made it uncompromisingly clear that certain areas of his life, certain things, certain subjects were not open for discussion. And, whatever had transpired between him and Luce to provoke their mutual silence, this was obviously one such subject. David knew better than to pursue a lost cause or provoke Jake’s ire by continuing to press him.

  ‘Janey said to remind you that you’re always welcome to join us for supper,’ was what he said instead as Jake accompanied him to the door.

  ‘Thanks,’ Jake returned, frowning before he asked abruptly, ‘David, Lucianna’s business…just how bad are things?’

  ‘Pretty bad,’ David told him. ‘She’s just about managing to keep her head above water but only because she lives rent-free with us. I’ve offered to help her out but you know what she’s like, how stiff-necked and proud she can be…It’s like watching a kid trying to cross a flooding river swimming doggy-paddle,’ he told Jake feelingly. ‘You just ache to jump in and give them a hand, but Luce…

  ‘She lost another customer this week…a woman whose car she’s been servicing…Apparently her husband is buying her a new model and the distributors have told her that it will have to be serviced by a nominated garage. It’s the same when someone brings a car to her that’s been involved in an accident. She can do the work easily enough, and at a highly competitive price, but because she isn’t on any of the insurers’ lists of accredited garages she doesn’t get the work.

  ‘Janey says Luce has reapplied to a couple of the big dealers in the city for an apprenticeship and she’s even been talking about looking further afield, moving away.’

  ‘Moving away?’ Jake questioned sharply. ‘Why would she want to do that? John’s due back at the end of this week, isn’t he?’

  ‘Yes, he is,’ David agreed. ‘And to judge from the number of phone calls Luce’s received from him these last few days it seems as though we were wrong in thinking that he didn’t want her.’

  Luckily David was looking away from Jake as he spoke and so didn’t notice the spasm of pain that crossed his friend’s face.

  What the hell was he doing punishing himself like this? Jake asked himself savagely once David had gone. Why didn’t he just sell up and move somewhere else—somewhere as far from Lucianna as it was possible for him to get? But you couldn’t simply turn your back on two centuries of family history and family tradition just because you couldn’t bear the thought of seeing the woman you loved with another man…At least, you didn’t if you were a Carlisle, and his great-uncle had passed the house on to Jake because he had trusted Jake to take care of it.

  But a house, no matter how beautiful, couldn’t compensate for not having the woman you loved, had loved, did love, would love.

  Would Lucianna remember him when she lay in John’s arms? Would she think about how it had felt to be with him, in his bed, her body possessed by his, her womanhood totally responsive to his manhood? Would she?

  What was the point in torturing himself with such thoughts? Jake asked himself bitterly. Torturing himself wasn’t going to change things…How could it?

  God knew, he had had time enough over the years—and to spare—to grow accustomed to the fact that Lucianna didn’t love him. But just why in hell did she have to go and give her love, herself, to a man like John who quite plainly neither appreciated nor valued her? And why the hell had he, Jake, ever been moronic enough to agree to help her reveal herself to him as the precious, sensual, loving woman Jake had always known she could be?

  Well, he might not have been totally successful in getting her to value herself, or to realise how unworthy of her her vain and weak boyfriend actually was, but there were still other ways in which he could help her, protect her…

  He went back to the library and quickly dialled the number of the farm manager he employed, tersely giving him some instructions before hanging up and then dialling the number of his solicitor.

  What he was doing could never save Lucianna from suffering any emotional loss but it would certainly help to prevent her from enduring a financial one, even if he had been able to tell from the tone of their voices that both his farm manager and his solicitor quite plainly thought he was crazy.

  Tiredly Lucianna pushed her fingers into her hair—hair which increasingly these days she wore soft and loose around her face whenever she was not actually working. And just as automatically and instinctively she found she was wearing make-up and more neatly fitting clothes, but the reasons why she looked so different whenever she caught sight of her own reflection had nothing really to do with her new clothes or even her new awareness of her femininity. No, the soft blue shadows that gave her eyes their haunting vulnerability owed their existence not to Jake’s teachings but to Jake himself.

  Hard enough to bear were the daylight hours when she fought valiantly to suppress every thought of him, but even harder were the nights and the longings, the emotions, the love that surfaced through her subconscious in her dreams to bring her wide awake with tears pouring down her face. She dreamed of not having Jake’s love or, even worse, of being back in his arms, once again experiencing the ecstatic pleasure of his lovemaking, only this time believing that he actually loved her.

  Those were the most cruel dreams of all—more cruel even than the realisation that her hopes of running her own small business successfully and proving to her doubters and detractors that a woman could be just as good a mechanic as a man—indeed better—were never going to become a reality. No longer a dream—it was in truth more of a nightmare, she acknowledged as she stared dispiritedly at the figures in front of her.

  In three hours’ time her bank manager would be arriving to remind her that it was time for her to start repaying the overdraft facility he had granted her, and he would, of course, want to look at her books and check on the progress of her small business.

  What progress? Lucianna swallowed grimly. There was no progress. And it wasn’t as though she hadn’t tried and tried desperately hard to build up her client base. She had, but to no avail. The figures in front of her said it all and she knew already what the bank manager was going to tell her. Her business simply wasn’t viable, even with the benefit of rent-free premises and the fact that she made no drawings from the business at all, relying increasingly on her savings and the interest on an inheritance she had shared with her brothers to fund her day-to-day living.

  Janey, who had been watching her sympathetically, tried to console her by saying, ‘Try not to worry; I’m sure Rory will understand. After all, you couldn’t have done any more than you have done to get more business in…’

  ‘Maybe, but it hasn’t been enough. Perhaps Dad’s right after all; perhaps I should never…’ Lucianna stopped and bit her lip and then shook her head. ‘I’d probably have been better off going to university and then getting a more orthodox job…a more feminine job,’ she declared bitterly.

  ‘Oh, Luce,’ Janey protested gently, but Lucianna wasn’t in any mood to be comforted.

  ‘It’s no good. Rory Simons is going to tell me that I’ve wasted my own money and that now I’m wasting the bank’s and he’s quite right.’

  Janey’s heart went out to her.

  ‘Perhaps David…’ she began.

  But Lucianna shook her head immediately and told her fiercely, ‘No. If I
can’t make the business pay by myself—for myself—then I don’t want…I don’t deserve…It isn’t money, a loan, that I need, Janey,’ she told her sister-in-law dispiritedly. ‘It’s work. David was right. Men don’t trust a female mechanic.’

  ‘But there are lots of women drivers,’ Janey said, but Lucianna shook her head again.

  ‘Women drivers, yes,’ she agreed, ‘but not women car owners. Not when it comes down to it…Not where it counts.’

  ‘Well, at least John will be home soon,’ Janey reminded her warmly, ‘and to judge from the number of times he’s telephoned recently he’s obviously missed you.’

  ‘A case of absence making the heart grow fonder,’ Lucianna quipped wryly. If only she could say the same about her own emotions, that it was Jake’s absence that made her heart ache, Jake’s missing presence that was causing her sleepless nights and an aching heart and body, not John’s.

  Lucianna glanced at her watch as the bank manager drove into the yard right on time.

  David had offered to cancel a meeting of his own to give her the support of his presence, but she had shaken her head, for once not taking umbrage, but instead telling him gratefully, ‘It’s kind of you, but no, this is something I have to do myself.’

  As David had later remarked to Janey when they were alone, Lucianna had changed dramatically over the last few weeks, and not just in the way she looked and dressed. She had matured.

  ‘Turned from a girl to a woman,’ Janey had supplied gently for him.

  ‘Yes,’ David had agreed ruefully. ‘Very much a woman.’

  When Rory Simons stepped out of his car he too was surprised by the physical change in her. Gone were the shabby, oversized dungarees and in their place Lucianna was wearing an immaculately clean, neat-fitting pair of tailored trousers and a soft knitted top—an impulse buy if he had but known. It had been chosen to bolster her confidence and caused her to spend virtually the last of the birthday money she had received from her father and her aunt.