by Penny Jordan
If she could get Nigel’s boss on her side it was bound to help their case. Frowning slightly, she pushed her chair away from her computer. She ought to be used to fighting to keep the school going now. When she had first been appointed as its head teacher she had been told by the education authority that it would only be for an interim period, as, with the school’s numbers falling, it would ultimately have to be closed.
Even though she had known she would get better promotion and higher pay by transferring to a bigger school, as soon as Jodi had realised the effect that losing their school would have she had begun to canvass determinedly for new pupils, even to the extent of persuading parents who had previously been considering private education to give their local primary a chance.
Her efforts had paid off in more ways than one, and Jodi knew she would never forget the pride she had felt when their school had received an excellent report following an inspection visit.
Her pride wasn’t so much for herself, though, as for the efforts of the pupils and everyone else who had supported the school; to have to stand back and see all the ground they had gained lost, the sense of teamwork and community she had so determinedly fostered amongst the pupils destroyed, was more than she wanted to have to bear.
She had proved just how well the children thrived and learned in an atmosphere of security and love, in a school where they were known and valued as individuals, and Jodi was convinced that the self-confidence such a start gave them was something that would benefit them through their academic lives. But somehow, trying to explain all of this to Leo Jefferson was far harder than she had expected.
Perhaps it was because she suspected that he had already made up his mind, that, so far as he was concerned, the small community he would be destroying simply didn’t matter when compared with his profits. Or perhaps it was because all she could think about, all she could see, was last night and the way they had been together…
With every hour that distanced her from the intimacy they had shared it became harder for her to acknowledge what she had done. It just wasn’t like her to behave in such a way, and the proof of that, had she needed any, was the fact that he, Leo Jefferson, had been her first and only lover!
Too overwrought to concentrate, Jodi stood up and started to pace the floor of her small sitting room in emotional agitation.
Shocking though her behaviour had been, she knew and could not deny that she had enjoyed Leo Jefferson’s touch, his lovemaking, his possession.
But that was because she had been half-drunk and half-asleep, she tried to defend herself, before her strong sense of honesty ruthlessly reminded her of the way she had reacted to him when she had first seen him, when she had quite definitely been both sober and awake!
It was nearly six o’clock. Her letter wasn’t finished, but she would have to leave it now and go and get ready for the evening.
Nigel was going to a lot of trouble on her behalf and she ought to feel grateful to him. Instead, all she wanted was to stay at home and hide from the world until she had come to terms with what she had done.
CHAPTER THREE
LEO grimaced as he ran a hand over his newly shaven jaw. There was no way he felt like going out to dinner, but when Graham Johnson, the chief planning officer for the area, had rung to invite him to his home Leo had not felt he could refuse.
It made good business sense to establish an amicable arrangement with the local authority. Leo had already met Graham and liked him, and when Graham had explained that there was someone he would find it interesting to meet on an informal basis Leo had sensed that Graham would not be very impressed were he to turn him down. And besides, at least if he went out it would stop him from thinking about last night, and that wretched, unforgettably sexy woman who had got so dangerously under his skin.
As yet, Jeremy Driscoll had made no attempt to contact him, and Leo was hoping that he had the sense to recognise that Leo was not to be coerced—in any way—but somehow he doubted that Jeremy had actually given up. He wasn’t that type, and, since he had gone as far as paying his accomplice to play her part, Leo suspected that he was going to want value for his money.
Did Driscoll avail himself of Leo’s tousle-haired tormentor’s sexual skills? It shocked Leo to discover just how unpalatable he found that thought! Was he crazy, feeling possessive about a woman like that, a woman any man could have? Unwantedly Leo found himself remembering the way her body had claimed him, tightening around him almost as though it had known no other man. Now he was going crazy, he told himself angrily as he peered at the approaching signpost to check that he was driving in the right direction.
‘Jodi, you aren’t listening to me.’
Jodi gave her cousin an apologetic look as he brought his car to a halt outside his boss’s house.
‘Come to think of it, you’re not exactly looking your normal, chirpy self.’ He gave her a concerned look. ‘Worrying about that school of yours, I expect?’
Ignoring his question, Jodi drew a deep breath, determined to tackle him about an issue that had been weighing very heavily on her mind.
‘Nigel, what on earth possessed you to order that cocktail for me last night? You know I don’t drink, and because it never occurred to me that it was alcoholic…well, there was so much fruit in it…’
‘Hey, hang on a minute,’ Nigel protested in bewilderment. ‘I never ordered you anything alcoholic.’
‘Well, whatever the waiter brought to Leo Jefferson’s suite definitely was,’ Jodi informed him grittily.
‘They must have misunderstood me,’ Nigel told her. ‘I asked them to send you up a fruit cocktail. I thought it seemed expensive—what a waste; I bet you didn’t touch it after the first swallow, did you?’
Fortunately, before she was obliged to lie to him, he took hold of Jodi’s arm and walked her firmly towards the front door, which opened as they reached it to reveal their host, Graham Johnson, a tall grey-haired man with a warm smile.
‘You must be Jodi.’ He shook Jodi’s hand, and introduced himself. ‘I’ve heard an awful lot about you!’
When Jodi gave Nigel a wry look their host shook his head and laughed.
‘No, not from Nigel, although he has mentioned you. I was referring to our grandson, Henry. He’s one of your pupils and an ardent admirer. With just reason, too, according to his parents. Our daughter, Charlotte, is most impressed with the dramatic improvement the school has achieved in Henry’s reading skills.’
Jodi smiled her appreciation of his compliments and a little of the tension started to leave her body as they followed Graham into the house.
Mary Johnson was as welcoming as her husband, informing Jodi that she had trained as a teacher herself, although it had been many years since she had last taught.
‘My daughter was a little concerned at first when she heard that you were an advocate of a mixture of traditional teaching methods and educational play, but she’s a total convert now. She can’t stop telling us how much Henry’s spatial skills have improved along with his reading ability.’
‘We like to encourage the children to become good all-rounders,’ Jodi acknowledged, explaining, ‘We feel that it helps overall morale if we can encourage every child to discover a field in which they can do well.’
‘I understand from our daughter that you’ve actually got parents putting their children’s names down for the school almost as soon as they are born.’
‘Well, perhaps not quite that,’ Jodi laughed, ‘but certainly we are finding that our reputation has been spread by word of mouth. We’re above the safety limit we need to satisfy the education authority as regards pupil numbers and likely to stay that way, unless, of course, the factory is closed down.’
Jodi gave Graham Johnson an uncertain look as she saw his expression.
‘The final decision with regard to that rests with Leo Jefferson,’ he told her gently, ‘which is why I’ve invited him to join us for dinner tonight. It was Nigel’s idea, and a good one. It might help m
atters if the two of you were to meet in an informal setting. I suspect that from a businessman’s point of view Leo Jefferson hasn’t really considered the effect a closure of the factory would have on the village school. And, of course, it isn’t inevitable that he will close down our factory. As I understand it, of the four he has taken over he only intends to close two.’
Jodi wasn’t really listening to him. She had stopped listening properly the moment he had said those dreadful words, ‘I’ve invited him to join us for dinner tonight’.
Leo Jefferson was coming here. For dinner. She was going to be forced to sit in the same room with him, perhaps even across the table from him.
She felt sick, faint, paralysed with fear, she recognised as the doorbell rang and Graham went to answer it.
Frantically she looked at the French windows, aching to make her escape through them, but it was already too late, Graham was walking back into the room accompanied by Leo Jefferson. The man she had spent the night with…Her lover!
Leo had been listening politely to his host as Graham showed him the way to the sitting room, opened the door and ushered Leo inside. He proceeded to introduce Leo to the other occupants of the room, but the moment he had stepped through the door Leo stopped hearing a single word that Graham was saying as he stared in furious disbelief at Jodi.
She was standing by the French windows, looking for all the world like some martyr about to be taken away for beheading, her eyes huge with anguish and fear as she stared mutely at him.
What was going on? What was she doing here? And then Leo realised that Graham was introducing her to him as the local school’s head teacher.
He felt as though he had somehow strayed into some kind of farce. He accepted that things were different in the country, but surely not so damned different that a village headmistress moonlighted as a professional harlot!
The surge of furious jealousy that burst over the banks of his normal self-control bewildered him, as did the immediate antipathy he felt towards the man standing at her side.
‘And this is Nigel Marsh, my assistant and Jodi’s cousin,’ Graham Johnson was explaining.
Her cousin. To his own relief Leo felt himself easing back on his ridiculous emotions.
‘A little surprise for you!’ Nigel whispered to Jodi whilst Mary was talking to Leo.
Jodi gave him a wan smile.
‘Jodi, can I get you a drink?’ Graham was asking jovially.
‘I don’t usually drink, thank you,’ Jodi responded automatically, and then flushed a deep, rich pink as she saw the look that Leo Jefferson was giving her.
‘She’s always been strait-laced, even before she qualified as a teacher,’ Nigel informed Graham humorously. ‘Can’t think how we came to share the same gene pool. I’m always telling her that she ought to loosen up a little, enjoy life, let herself go.’
Jodi didn’t want to look at Leo Jefferson again, but somehow she couldn’t stop herself from doing so. To her shock he had moved closer to her, and whilst Nigel responded to something Mary was saying he leaned forward and whispered cynically to Jodi, ‘That’s quite a personality change you’ve managed to accomplish in less than twenty-four hours.’
‘Please,’ Jodi implored him, desperately afraid that he might be overheard, but to her relief the others had moved out of earshot.
‘Please…I seem to remember you said something like that to me last night,’ Leo reminded her silkily.
‘Stop it,’ Jodi begged in torment. ‘You don’t understand.’
‘You’re damned right I don’t!’ Leo agreed acerbically, adding, ‘Tell me something; do your school governors know that you’re moonlighting as a hooker? I accept that schoolteachers may not be overly well-paid, but somehow I’ve never imagined them supplementing their income with those sort of private lessons.’
‘No, you…’
Jodi meant to continue and tell Leo he had it all wrong, but her vehement tone caused Nigel to break off his conversation with Mary Johnson and give her a concerned look. He knew how passionate she was about her school, but he hadn’t expected to hear her arguing with Leo Jefferson so early in the evening. It did not augur well. However, before Nigel could step in with some diplomatic calming measures Mary was announcing that she was ready for them to sit down for dinner.
‘That was absolutely delicious.’ Nigel sighed appreciatively as he ate the last morsel of his pudding. ‘Living on your own is all very well, but microwave meals can’t take the place of home cooking. I keep saying as much to Jodi,’ he continued plaintively to Mary, giving Jodi a teasing glance. ‘But she doesn’t seem to take the hint.’
‘If you want home cooking you should learn to cook yourself,’ Jodi returned firmly. ‘I insist that all the children at school, boys and girls, learn the basics.’
‘And I think it’s wonderful that they do,’ Mary supported her, turning to Leo to tell him, ‘Jodi has done wonders for her school. When she first took over they had so few pupils that it was about to be closed down, but now parents are putting down their children’s names at birth to ensure that they get a place.’
Jodi could feel herself starting to colour up as Leo turned to look at her.
The whole evening had been a nightmare, and so far as she was concerned it couldn’t come to an end fast enough.
‘Oh, yes, Jodi is passionate about her school,’ Nigel chimed in supportively.
‘Passionate?’
Jodi could feel the anxiety tensing her already overstretched nervous system as Leo drawled the word with an undertone of cynical dislike that she hoped only she could hear. Was he going to give her away?
To her relief, Leo went on, ‘Oh, yes, I’m sure she is.’
‘I think,’ Graham began to say calmly, with a kind smile in Jodi’s direction, ‘that she is also concerned about the potential effect if would have on the school if you were to close down the Frampton factory.’
When Leo gave him a sharp look Graham gave a small shrug and told him, ‘It’s no secret that you intend to close one and possibly two of the factories—the financial Press have quoted you on it.’
‘It’s a decision I haven’t made as yet,’ Leo responded tersely.
‘So are you considering closing down our factory?’ Jodi couldn’t resist demanding.
Leo frowned as he listened to her. She had hardly spoken directly to him all night. In fact, she had barely even looked at him, but he could feel both her tension and her hostility as keenly as he could feel his own reaction to her.
It infuriated him, in a way that was a whole new experience for him, that she should be able to play so well and so deceitfully the role of a dedicated schoolteacher when he knew what she really was.
She must be completely without conscience! And she was in charge of the growth and development of burgeoning young minds and emotions. How clever she must be to be able to dupe everyone around her so successfully; to be able to win their trust and merit their admiration and respect.
Leo told himself that the intensity of his own emotions was a completely natural reaction to the discovery of her duplicity. If he was to reveal the truth about her—but, of course, he couldn’t, after all he wasn’t exactly proud of his own behaviour.
But why had she done it? For money, as he had originally assumed? Because she enjoyed flirting with danger? Because she wanted to help Driscoll? For some reason, it was this last option that he found the least palatable.
Jodi could feel Leo’s bitterly contemptuous gaze burning the distance between them. If he should mention last night…! If Nigel had given her the slightest indication that Leo was going to be a fellow guest no power on earth would have been able to get her within a mile of Mary and Graham’s.
She had cringed inwardly, listening to the others singing her praises, hardly daring to breathe in case Leo said anything. But of course last night’s events did not reflect much more credibly on him than they did on her. Although he, as a man, at least had the age-old excuse of claiming, as so many of
his sex had done throughout history, that the woman had tempted him.
Soon their current school term would be over. Normally she experienced a certain sadness when this happened, especially at the end of the summer term, since their eldest pupils would be moving on to ‘big’ school. Right now she felt she couldn’t wait for the freedom to quietly disappear out of public view.
A couple of friends from university had invited her to join them on a walking holiday in the Andes and she wished that she had agreed to go with them. Instead, she had said she wanted to spend some time decorating her small house and working on her garden, as well as planning ways to make the school even better than it already was—something which in Jodi’s eyes was more of a pleasure than a chore.
Now, thanks to Leo Jefferson, all the small pleasures she had been looking forward to had been obscured by the dark cloud of her own guilt.
‘Well, we shall certainly be very disappointed if you choose to close down our factory,’ she could hear Graham saying to Leo. ‘We’re a small country area and replacing so many lost jobs isn’t going to be easy. Although logically I can understand that the Newham factory does have the advantage of being much closer to the motorway network.’
‘Unfortunately, it is all a question of economics,’ Leo was replying. ‘The market simply isn’t big enough to support so many different factories all producing the same thing…’
Suddenly Jodi had heard enough. Her passionate desire to protect her school overwhelmed the fear and shame that had kept her silent throughout the evening and, turning towards Leo, she told him angrily, ‘It managed to support them well enough before your takeover, and it seems to me that it would be more truthful to say that the economics in question are those that affect your profits—not to mention the tax advantages you will no doubt stand to gain. Have you no idea of the hardship it’s going to cause? The people it will put out of work, the lives and families it will destroy? I’ve got children at school whose whole family are dependent on that factory—fathers, mothers, grandparents, aunts, uncles. Don’t you care about anything except making money?’