by Penny Jordan
‘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 it 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 creditably 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?’
Jodi could feel the small, shocked silence her outburst had caused. Across the table, Nigel was giving her a warning look, whilst Graham Johnson was frowning slightly.
‘We all understand how you feel, Jodi.’ he told her calmly. ‘But I’m afraid that economics, profits, can’t just be ignored. Leo is competing in a worldwide market-place, and for his business to remain successful—’
‘There are far more important things in life than profits,’ Jodi interrupted him, unable to stop herself from stemming the intensity of her feelings now that she had started to speak.
‘Such as what?’ Leo checked her sharply. ‘Such as you keeping enough pupils in your school to impress the school inspectorate? Aren’t you just as keen to show a profit on your pupil numbers in return for Education Authority funding as I am on my financial investment in my business?’
‘How dare you say that?’ Jodi breathed furiously. ‘It is the children themselves, their educ
ation, their futures, their lives, that concern me. What you are doing—’
‘What I am doing is trying to run a profitable business.’ Leo silenced her acidly. ‘You, I’m afraid, are blinkered by your own parochial outlook. I have to see the bigger picture. If I was to keep all the factories operating inevitably none of them would be profitable and I would then be out of business, with the loss of far more jobs than there will be if I simply close down two of them.’
‘You just don’t care, do you?’ Jodi challenged him. ‘You don’t care about what you’re doing; about the misery you will be causing.’
She knew that she was going too far, and that both Nigel and the Johnsons were watching her with concern and dismay, but something was driving her on. The tension she had been feeling all evening had somehow overwhelmed the rational parts of her brain and she was in the hands of a self-destructive, unstoppable urge she couldn’t control.
‘What I care about is keeping my business at the top of its field,’ Leo told her grimly.
‘Precisely,’ Jodi threw at him, curling her lip in contempt as she tossed her head. ‘Profit... Don’t you care that what you are doing is totally immoral?’
Jodi tensed as she heard the sharp hiss of collective indrawn breath as she and Leo confronted one another in bitter hostility.
‘You dare to accuse me of immorality!’
Had the others heard, as she had, the way he had emphasised the word ‘you’? Jodi wondered in sick shock as she tried to withstand the icy contempt of the look he was giving her.
‘Jodi, my dear.’ Graham finally intervened a little uncomfortably. ‘I’m sure we all appreciate how strongly you feel about everything, but Leo does have a point. Naturally his business has to be competitive.’
‘Oh, naturally,’ Jodi agreed bitingly, throwing Leo a caustic look.
Nigel was standing up, saying that it was time that they left, but as Graham pulled out Jodi’s chair for her she still couldn’t resist turning to Leo to challenge, ‘In the end everything comes down to money, doesn’t it?’
As he, too, stood up he looked straight at her and told her softly, ‘As you should know.’
Jodi could feel her face burning.
‘Oh, and by the way,’ Leo added under cover of Mary going to fetch them all their coats, ‘you can tell your friend Driscoll—’
Jodi didn’t let him get any further.
‘Jeremy Driscoll is no friend of mine,’ she told him immediately. ‘In fact, if you want the truth, I loathe and detest him almost as much as I do you.’
She was shaking as she thanked Mary and slipped on her coat, hurrying out into the warmth of the summer night ahead of Nigel, who had turned back to say something to their host.
As she waited for him beside the car, her back towards the house, she was seething with anger. At the same time she began to feel the effects of the shock of seeing Leo Jefferson and the way she had argued with him so publicly.
As she heard Nigel come crunching over the gravel towards her, without turning to look at him, she begged fiercely, ‘Just take me out of here...’
‘Where exactly is it you want me to take you? Or can I guess?’
Whirling round, Jodi expelled her breath on a hissing gasp as she realised that it wasn’t Nigel who was standing next to her in the shadow of the trees but Leo Jefferson.
‘Keep away from me,’ she warned him furiously, inadvertently backing into the shadows as she strove to put more distance between them.
Her reaction, so totally overplayed and unwarranted, was the last straw so far as Leo was concerned.
‘Oh, come on,’ he snarled. ‘You haven’t got an audience now!’
‘You don’t know anything,’ Jodi spat back shakily.
‘That wasn’t what you were telling me last night,’ Leo couldn’t stop himself from reminding her savagely. ‘Last night—’
‘Last night I didn’t know what I was doing,’ Jodi retaliated bitterly. ‘If I had done I would never...’ She was so overwrought now that her voice and her body both trembled. ‘You are the last man I would have wanted to share what should have been one of the most special experiences of my life.’
Jodi was beyond thinking logically about what she was revealing; instead she was carried along, flung headlong into the powerful vortex of her own overwhelming emotions.
Leo could hear what she was saying, but, like her, his emotions were too savagely aroused for him to take on board the meaning of her words. Instead he held out to her the handbag she had unknowingly left behind in the house, telling her coldly, ‘You forgot this. Your cousin is still talking with Graham and Mary and he asked me to bring it to you. I think he probably wanted to give you the opportunity to apologise to me in private for your appalling rudeness over dinner...’
‘My rudeness.’ Jodi reached angrily for her handbag and then froze as her fingertips brushed against Leo’s outstretched hand.
Just the feel of his skin against her own sent a shower of sharp electric shocks, of unwanted sensation, slicing through her body.
‘Don’t touch me,’ she protested, and then moaned a soft, tormented sound of helpless need, dropping her handbag and swaying towards him in exactly the same breath as he reached for her. He dragged her against his body and the feel of him was so savagely, shockingly familiar that her body reacted instantly. She looked up into his face, her lips parting. His mouth burned against hers like a brand, punishing, taking, possessing. She felt him shudder as his fingers bit into the tender flesh of her upper arms. But then as his tongue-tip probed her lips he seemed to change his mind. He released her abruptly and, turning on his heel, walked away.
It was several seconds before she could stop shaking enough to bend down and pick up her bag. Whilst she was doing so she heard Nigel saying her name.
‘Sorry about the delay,’ he apologised as she stood up and he unlocked the car. ‘Feeling better now that you’ve got all that off your chest?’ he asked her wryly.
‘Better?’ Jodi demanded sharply as they both got into his car. ‘How could I possibly be feeling better after having to spend an evening with that...that...?’
‘OK, OK, I get the picture,’ Nigel told her, adding, ‘In fact, I think we all did. I do understand how you feel, Jodi, but ripping up at Leo Jefferson isn’t going to help. He’s a businessman and you’ve got to try to see things from his point of view.’
‘Why should I see things from his point of view? He doesn’t seem to be prepared to see them from mine,’ Jodi challenged her cousin.
Nigel gave her a wry look.
‘There is a very apt saying about catching more flies with honey than vinegar,’ he reminded her, ‘although something tells me you aren’t in the mood to hear that.’
Jodi could feel her face starting to burn.
‘No, I’m not,’ she said tersely.
‘Why couldn’t things have just stayed the way they were?’ she moaned to Nigel as he drove her home. ‘Everything was all right when the Driscolls owned the factory.’
‘Not totally,’ Nigel told her quietly, but shook his head when Jodi looked at him. He had already said too much, and he wasn’t yet free to tell her about the fraudulent practices that Jeremy Driscoll was suspected of having operated within the business.
Jodi didn’t push him further on that point; instead she burst out, ‘Leo Jefferson is the most hateful, horrid, arrogant, impossible man I have ever met and I wish...I wish...’
Unable to specify just exactly what she wished, and why, Jodi bit her lip and looked out of the car window, glad to see that they were already in the village and that she would soon be home.
* * *
Leo grimaced as he paced the sitting-room floor of his suite. He had a good mind to ring down to Reception and ask them to transfer him to a different set of rooms; these reminded him too
much of last night and her—Jodi Marsh!
That infuriating woman who had by some alchemic means turned herself from the wanton, sensual creature who had shared his bed last night into the furious, spiky opponent who had had the gall tonight to sit there and accuse him of immoral behaviour! How he had stopped himself from challenging her there and then to justify herself Leo really didn’t know. And she was a schoolteacher! Perhaps he was being unduly naïve, but he just couldn’t get his head around it at all.
And as for her comments about his plans for the factory and the effect it would have on other people’s lives if he was to close it down...!
Leo frowned. Did she think he enjoyed having to put people out of work? Of course he didn’t, but economic factors were economic factors and could not simply be ignored.
Well, he just hoped that she didn’t get it into her head to come back tonight and pay him a second visit, because if she did she would find there was no way he was going to be as idiotically vulnerable to her as he had been last night. No way at all!
CHAPTER FOUR
‘YOU PUSHED ME.’
‘No, I didn’t.’
With gentle firmness Jodi sorted out the dispute caused by one of her most problematic pupils on her way across the school yard.
Left to his own devices, she suspected, seven-year-old Ben Fanshawe might have been a happy, sociable child, but, thanks to the efforts of his social-climbing mother, Ben was a little boy with an attitude that was driving the other children away.
Jodi had tried tactfully to discuss the situation with his mother, but Ben’s problems were compounded by the fact that Myra Fanshawe was not just a parent, but also on the school’s board of governors. It was a position she had single-mindedly set her sights on from the minute she and her husband had moved into the village.
A close friend of Jeremy Driscoll and his wife, Myra had made it plain to Jodi that she would have preferred to send her son to an exclusive prep school. It was only because her in-laws were refusing to pay their grandson’s school fees until he was old enough to attend the same school as the previous six generations of male Fanshawes that Ben was having to attend the village primary school.