by Penny Jordan
He and the accountant parted company at the factory gate. It was almost lunchtime, and Leo recalled that there was a pub in the village where he could no doubt get something to eat.
If he was to change his plans and retain the Frampton factory it would mean spending a good deal of time in the area; several months at least. He would have to rent somewhere to live.
Perhaps predictably the pub was almost opposite the church, and separated from the church by the graveyard and a small paddock was the school.
Her school!
Since it was lunchtime, the school yard was filled with children.
Turning into the pub car park, Leo parked and then got out to walk round to the main entrance to the dining room.
As he did so his attention was caught by a small group of children clustering around a familiar figure.
Jodi’s curls were burnished a deep, rich colour by the sunlight. She was wearing a cotton skirt and a toning blouse, her legs bare beneath the hem of her skirt.
She hadn’t seen him, Leo acknowledged, and she was laughing at something one of her pupils had said, her head thrown back to reveal the taut line of her throat, with its creamy smooth skin, the same skin he had caressed and kissed.
Leo could feel the sensual reaction filling his body. He still wanted her!
She looked completely at home in her chosen role and Leo could see that the children were equally relaxed with her. And then, as though somehow she had sensed his presence, she looked towards him, her whole body freezing and the joy dying abruptly from her face as their gazes battled silently across the distance that separated them.
As though they sensed her hostility the children too had become still and silent, and as he watched Leo saw her ushering them away from the school boundary out of sight.
The pub dining room was surprisingly busy, but Leo barely paid any attention to his fellow diners. His thoughts were taken up with Jodi, a fact which caused him to wonder grimly yet again just what the hell was happening to him.
He ate his meal quickly without really being aware of it. In his mind’s eye he could still see Jodi surrounded by her pupils. She had looked…
He shook his head, trying to dismiss her image from his thoughts, and caused the waitress who had served him to give a tiny little shiver and reflect on how dangerous and exciting he looked—and how very different from her boyfriend!
Having finished his meal and refused a second cup of coffee, much to the waitress’s secret disappointment, Leo got up, oblivious to her interest in him.
On his way back to the car he noticed that the school playground was now empty, the children no doubt back at their desks.
For God’s sake, he derided himself as he drove back towards the town, didn’t he have enough to think about at the moment without being obsessed by a schoolteacher?
‘Well, we don’t normally have many rental properties,’ the agent in the local town was informing Leo. ‘But it just so happens that we’ve been asked to find a tenant for a thoroughly charming Georgian house, just outside Frampton. I don’t know if you know the village.’
‘Yes, I know it,’ Leo confirmed a little grimly.
‘I live there myself.’ The agent smiled. ‘I don’t know if you have children, but if you do I can thoroughly recommend the village school. Jodi Marsh, the head teacher, is wonderful—’
‘I know Jodi,’ Leo interrupted him brusquely.
‘You do?’ The agent gave him a discreetly speculative look. ‘Well, if you’re a friend of Jodi’s you’ll find you get a very warm welcome in the village. She’s as popular with the parents as she is with the children, and deservedly so.
‘My wife dreads the thought of her leaving; she says the school just wouldn’t be the same without her. We all admire the way she campaigned so tirelessly to keep the school open and to raise enough money to buy the playing field adjacent to it to stop Jeremy Driscoll from acquiring it as building land. That didn’t make her popular with Jeremy at all, but Jodi has never been a fan of his, as you’ll probably know…’
Again he gave Leo a speculative look, but Leo discovered that he was strangely reluctant to correct the other man’s misconceptions. For one thing he was too busy analysing the agent’s surprising comments about Jodi’s antipathy towards Jeremy Driscoll to notice.
‘If you’d like to view Ashton House?’ the agent continued questioningly.
Leo told himself that he should refuse, that deliberately choosing to live anywhere within a hundred-mile radius of Jodi Marsh was complete madness, but for some reason he heard himself agreeing to see the house, and accepting the agent’s suggestion that they should drive over to view it immediately.
‘I rather get the impression that Jeremy Driscoll isn’t the most popular of people around here?’ Leo commented to the agent half an hour later as they stood together in front of the pretty Georgian property.
‘Well, no, he isn’t,’ the agent agreed. ‘And, despite the fact that he’s married, Jeremy fancies himself as something of a ladies’ man. Of course Jodi, in particular, is well known for her strict moral code, so I suppose it was almost inevitable that she should make it very plain to him that his advances were unwelcome.’
Leo struggled to absorb this new information as the agent changed tack to tell him about the house. ‘It was built originally for the younger son of a local landowner; it’s listed, of course, and with all its original internal decorative features—a real gem. If I had the money I would be very tempted to put in an offer for it. The elderly lady who owned it died a few weeks ago, and the beneficiaries under her will ultimately want to sell it, but until the estate is sorted out they need to find a tenant for it so that it doesn’t fall into disrepair. Shall we go inside?’
The house was undoubtedly, as the agent had said, a ‘gem’, and had he been looking for a permanent home Leo knew that he too would have been tempted to acquire it. As it was, he was more than happy to meet the relatively modest rent the owners were requesting.
However, as Leo followed the agent back to his office, so that they could complete the paperwork for the rental, it wasn’t so much the new temporary home he had acquired that was occupying his thoughts as the agent’s revelations about Jodi.
Just why was it that everyone seemed to think that Jodi was a paragon of all the virtues? There was no way that he could be wrong about her, was there?
But later on in the day as he drove back to his hotel he was aware of a small and very unwanted niggling doubt that somehow just would not be silenced. Was it realistic for him to believe that so many other people were wrong and that he was right? Common sense told him that it wasn’t!
But nothing changed the fact that Jodi had still, most definitely, been in his bed!
Jodi forced herself to smile at the group of fathers gathered in a huddle outside the school gates, talking to one another whilst they kept a protective eye on their children.
The factory operated a shift system, which meant that quite a large proportion of the families where both parents worked split the task of delivering and collecting their offspring from school. Fathers for some reason seemed to favour afternoon school runs, and if Jodi hadn’t still been preoccupied with her thoughts of Leo Jefferson she would have stopped for a chat.
As it was, whilst walking past she registered the fact that the men were discussing the possible closure of the factory, and how they intended to make their objections known.
‘We should do something to stop the closure!’ someone protested angrily. ‘We can’t just stand by and lose our jobs, our livelihood.’
‘What we need to do is to stage a demonstration,’ another man was insisting.
A demonstration! Well, Jodi couldn’t blame them for wanting to make their feelings public; she would be tempted to do exactly the same thing if anyone was to threaten to close her beloved school.
A tiny frown creased her forehead. These parents were the very ones who had supported her unstintingly in her determination to keep the sch
ool open, and in her fundraising to make sure that the school retained its adjacent playing field. The very least she could do, surely, was to support them in turn now. And her feelings about Leo Jefferson had nothing to do with it…
Retracing her footsteps, she walked back towards the small group.
‘I couldn’t help overhearing what you were just saying about demonstrating against the closure of the factory,’ she began. ‘If you do—’ she took a deep breath ‘—you can certainly count on my support.’
‘What, publicly?’ one of them challenged her.
‘Publicly!’ Jodi confirmed firmly. As she spoke she had the clearest mental image of Leo Jefferson, watching her with icy-eyed contempt across Mary and Graham’s dinner-table…
‘Leo…Have you got a moment?’
Halfway across the hotel foyer, Leo stopped as Nigel Marsh came hurrying towards him.
‘Look, I was wondering if we might have a word?’
Leo frowned as he looked at Jodi’s cousin. The younger man looked both slightly uncomfortable and at the same time very determined.
Shooting back the cuff of his jacket, Leo glanced at his watch before telling him crisply, ‘I can give you ten minutes.’
Nigel looked relieved.
‘Thanks. I just wanted to have a word with you about Jodi…my cousin…you met her the other evening.’
He was speaking as though Leo might have forgotten just who Jodi was, Leo recognised, wondering just what Nigel Marsh would say if Leo was to tell him that Jodi was someone he would never be able to forget.
However, Leo had no intention of revealing any such thing. Instead he replied with dry irony, ‘You mean the schoolteacher.’
Nigel gave him a relieved look.
‘Yes. Look, I know she must have come across to you as…as having a bit of a bee in her bonnet about your takeover—’
‘She certainly has plenty of attitude,’ Leo cut in coolly, causing Nigel to check himself. ‘And a very hostile attitude where I’m concerned,’ Leo continued crisply.
‘It isn’t anything personal,’ Nigel denied immediately. ‘It’s just that the school means so much to her. She’s worked damned hard to make it successful, and she’s always been the kind of person who is attracted to lame dogs, lost causes…I remember when we were kids, she was always mothering something or someone. I know she went a little bit over-the-top the other night. But she wasn’t expecting to see you there, and I suppose having hyped herself up to put her case to you at the hotel the night before and then having chickened out…’
He stopped suddenly, looking uncomfortably self-conscious, realising that he had said more than he should, but it was too late; Leo was already demanding sharply, ‘Would you mind explaining that last comment, please?’
Even more uncomfortably Nigel did as he had been requested.
Leo waited until he had finished before asking him incredulously, ‘You’re saying that Jodi, your cousin, planned to approach me in person in my suite so that she could put the school’s position to me and ask me to reconsider closing down the factory?’
‘I know that technically I shouldn’t have encouraged or helped her,’ Nigel acknowledged, ‘and Graham will probably read me the Riot Act if he finds out, but I just couldn’t not do something. If you really knew her you’d understand that.’
Leo did, and he understood a hell of a lot more now too. Like just why Jodi had been in his room. His room, but not his bed! Had she ordered that nauseating alcoholic concoction to give herself some false courage? And then perhaps over-indulged in it? If so…
Nigel was still speaking and he forced himself to listen to what he was saying.
‘Jodi deserves a break. She’s battled so hard for the school. First to improve the teaching standards enough to get in more pupils, and then more recently against Jeremy Driscoll, to prevent him from acquiring the school’s playing field.’
‘I’d heard something about that,’ Leo acknowledged.
‘Jeremy wasn’t at all pleased about the fact that he lost that piece of land. And, as I’ve already warned Jodi, she’s made a dangerous enemy in him. It’s no secret that he isn’t at all well-liked locally.’ Nigel gave a small grimace of distaste. ‘Jodi can’t stand him and I don’t blame her.’
Leo started to frown, silently digesting what he was hearing. Nigel Marsh was the second person to tell him that Jodi didn’t like Jeremy Driscoll.
Which meant…which meant that he had—perhaps—misjudged her on two counts. Yes, but that didn’t explain away her extraordinary sensuality towards him in bed.
If he was to accept everyone else’s opinion, such behaviour was totally out of character. As was his own, Leo was forced to acknowledge.
‘I know that Jodi went a bit too far the other night,’ Nigel was continuing, ‘But in her defence I feel I have to say that she does have a point; without the factory—’
‘Her precious school would be in danger of being closed down,’ Leo interjected for him.
‘We’re a rural area, and it would be very hard to replace so many lost jobs,’ Nigel said. ‘That would mean that for people to find work they would have to move away, and so yes, ultimately the school could potentially be reduced to the position it was in when Jodi took over. But she’s the kind of person who has always been sensitive to the feelings of others, and it is her concern for them that is motivating her far more than any concern she might have for her own career.’
He gave Leo a wry look.
‘As a matter of fact, I happen to know that she’s already been approached by a private school who are willing to pay her very well to go to them, and to include a package of perks that would include free education for her children were she to have any.’
‘She isn’t involved in a relationship with anyone, though, is she?’ Leo couldn’t stop himself from asking.
Fortunately Nigel did not seem to find anything odd in Leo’s sudden question, shaking his head and informing him openly, ‘Oh, no. She’s one very picky lady, is my cousin. Casual relationships are just not her style, and as yet she hasn’t met anyone she wants to become seriously involved with.’
‘A career woman?’ Leo hazarded.
‘Well, she certainly loves her work,’ Nigel conceded, then changed the subject to tell Leo apologetically, ‘Look, I’ve taken up enough of your time. I hope you don’t mind me bending your ear on Jodi’s behalf.’
‘I’m half-Italian,’ Leo responded with a brief shrug. ‘Family loyalty is part of my heritage.’
It was the truth, and if he was honest Leo knew he would have to admit that he admired Nigel Marsh for his spirited defence of his cousin. But their conversation had left Leo with some questions only one person could answer—Jodi herself. But would she answer them? And would it really be wise of him to ask them and to risk becoming more involved with her?
More involved? Just how much more involved was it possible for two people to actually be? Leo wondered ironically.
Jodi closed her eyes and took a deep breath, filling her lungs with the soft, warm evening air. It was three days since she had last seen Leo Jefferson but he had never been far from her thoughts, even when she should, by rights, have been concentrating on other things. The committee meeting for the school’s sports day, which she had attended two nights ago, for instance, and the impromptu and far less organised meeting she had attended last night to discuss the proposed demonstration outside the factory.
Feelings were running very high indeed with regard to the possible closure and, although Jodi had spoken to Nigel about it, he had not been able to tell her anything.
‘Leo Jefferson has been in London, tied up in various meetings,’ he had explained to her.
What he couldn’t tell her, for professional reasons, was that they had been informed there was a very real possibility that Jeremy Driscoll was going to be investigated with regard to anomalies in the stock records and accounts. It seemed there were considerable discrepancies involved for which no rational explanat
ion had as yet been forthcoming.
Nigel had heard on the grapevine that Jeremy Driscoll was claiming the discrepancies had been caused by employee theft, and it was true that he had made insurance claims for such losses. However, the authorities were by no means convinced by his explanation, and it seemed that Leo Jefferson too was now questioning the validity of the accounts he had been provided with prior to buying the business.
Overhead, as Jodi climbed the narrow footpath that led to one of her favourite places, Ashton House—the beautiful Georgian manor house set in its own grounds outside the village—she could hear a blackbird trilling.
It had been agreed at last night’s meeting that the workforce would start the demonstration tomorrow morning. Jodi was planning to join the demonstrators after school had finished for the day. As a student she had done her fair share of demonstrating, for both human- and animal-rights groups, and then, as now, as she had firmly explained to the committee, she was vehemently opposed to any kind of violence being used.
‘I think we’re all agreed on that point,’ one of the mothers of Jodi’s pupils had confirmed. ‘I just wish it didn’t have to come to this. We’ve tried to initiate talks with this Leo Jefferson, but he says that he doesn’t consider it appropriate to meet with us at the moment.’
Leo!
Jodi closed her eyes and released her breath on a sigh.
She might not have seen him for three days, but that did not mean…Hastily she opened her eyes. She wasn’t going to think about those dreams she kept on having night after night, or what they might mean. Dreams in which she was back in his hotel suite…his bed…his arms. They were just dreams, that was all. They didn’t mean that she wanted a repetition of what had happened between them. The fact that she had woken up last night just in time to hear herself moaning his name meant nothing at all…and neither did the shockingly physical ache that seemed to be constantly tormenting her body whenever she forgot to control it.
And as for those shockingly savage kisses she kept dreaming about…Well, those just had to be a product of her own fevered imagination, didn’t they?