by Penny Jordan
‘But in mine, Jodi, I can assure you that I consider it very much my responsibility. You aren’t the only one with a reputation to consider and protect, you know,’ he told her. His voice was suddenly so hurtfully curt that Jodi turned to look at him—and then wished that she hadn’t, as the mere sight of his profile caused a wave of helpless longing to pulse through her body, pushing every other emotion out of its way.
She must not feel like this about him, Jodi told herself in defensive panic. She must not want him, ache for him...love him...
A small sound somewhere between pain and despair constricted her throat.
‘How do you think it is going to reflect on me once it becomes public knowledge that you and I—?’
‘You mean, you’re doing this for yourself and not for me?’ Jodi challenged him.
This was more like it. Knowing that his behaviour was motivated by selfishness would surely help her to control and ultimately conquer her love for him?
‘I’m doing it because right now it is the only option we have,’ Leo told her firmly.
Jodi could feel herself weakening. It would be such a relief to simply let Leo take charge, to let him stand between her and the disapproval of public opinion.
To let the world at large believe that he loved her and that...
No. She could not do it. Because if she did she would be in grave danger of allowing herself to believe the same thing!
‘No!’ she told him fiercely, shaking her head in rejection. ‘I’m not going to hide behind you, Leo, or lie, or pretend... What I did might have been wrong. Immoral in some people’s eyes. But in my own eyes what would be even worse would be to lie about it. If people want to criticise or condemn me then I shall just have to accept that and be judged by them; accept the consequences of my behaviour.’
As he watched her and saw the fear fighting with the pride in her eyes Leo was filled with a mixture of admiration for her honesty and a helpless, aching tenderness for her vulnerability. She was so innocent, so naïve. He had to protect her from herself as much as from others.
As he swung his car into the drive to Ashton House he told her bluntly, ‘You’ll be crucified. Do you really want to throw away everything you’ve worked for, Jodi? The school, everything you’ve achieved there? Because I promise you that is what could happen.’
‘There are other schools,’ Jodi told him whilst she struggled to contain the pain his words were causing her.
He brought the car to a standstill and Jodi suddenly realised just where they were.
‘Why have you brought me here?’ she demanded indignantly. ‘I wanted to go home.’
‘You’re my fiancée,’ Leo told her silkily. ‘This is your home.’
‘No,’ Jodi protested furiously. ‘No... I...’ She stopped and shook her head. ‘We can’t be engaged,’ she told him helplessly. ‘It isn’t... We don’t...’
‘We have to be, Jodi,’ Leo responded, shattering what was left of her composure by telling her, ‘We can’t afford not to be.’
‘Take me home,’ Jodi demanded wretchedly. ‘To my home.’ She added insistently, ‘I’ve got a meeting tonight and if I don’t go Myra Fanshawe is going to have a field-day.’
* * *
Jodi sank down onto her small sofa. The meeting had been every bit as bad as she had dreaded, with Myra Fanshawe openly attempting to turn it into a debate on morality, plainly intent on embarrassing and humiliating Jodi just as much as she could.
Jodi had not been without her supporters, though; and several people had come up to her to congratulate her with genuine warmth on her engagement.
‘It must have been very hard for both of you,’ one of the parents had sympathised with her, ‘with your fiancé potentially planning to close down the factory and you being committed to keeping it open. However,’ she’d added with a smile, ‘love, as they say, conquers all.’
Love might very well do so, Jodi reflected miserably now, but she was never likely to find out, since Leo quite plainly did not love her.
Her telephone rang, and this time, expecting Nigel, she picked up the receiver.
‘You’re a dark horse, aren’t you?’ were his opening words.
Jodi’s heart sank.
‘You’ve heard,’ she guessed.
‘Of course I’ve heard,’ Nigel agreed wryly. ‘The whole damned town has heard. Oh, and by the way, the parents have been on to me, wanting to know when they’re going to get to meet your fiancé; I think my mother was on the phone to yours this afternoon.’
‘What?’ Jodi yelped in dismay. ‘But I didn’t want them to know...’
‘What?’ Nigel sounded confused.
‘I mean I didn’t want them to know yet,’ Jodi hastily corrected herself. ‘I mean I wanted to tell them myself and, what with everything happening so quickly...’
‘Very quickly,’ Nigel agreed with cousinly frankness as he told her, ‘I must say, I got a bit of a shock to learn that you’d spent the night with Leo at his hotel, especially in view of the fact that you treated him like public enemy number one at the dinner party.’
‘Oh, Nigel...’ Jodi began, and then stopped. How on earth could she explain to her cousin just what had happened? And how on earth could she explain to anyone else if she couldn’t explain to Nigel?
When she had told Leo that she didn’t want to involve herself in any kind of deceit or hide behind him she had meant what she had said, but now suddenly she realised that things were not quite so simple as that and that there were other people in her life whose views and feelings she had to take into account.
For several minutes after she had finished her call with Nigel she sat nibbling on her bottom lip before finally reaching for the phone.
She dialled Leo’s number while her fingers trembled betrayingly.
When he answered just the sound of his voice was enough to make her stomach quiver in helpless reaction.
‘It’s Jodi,’ she told him huskily. ‘I’ve been thinking about what you said about our...about us being engaged and I...I agree...’
When Leo made no response her mouth went dry. What if he had changed his mind? What if he no longer cared about his own reputation or felt it was his responsibility, as he had put it, to protect hers?
And then she heard the click as the receiver was suddenly replaced and her heart lurched sickeningly. He had changed his mind!
Now what was she going to do?
Ten minutes later she curled herself up into her sofa in a forlorn little ball and then frowned as her front doorbell suddenly rang.
It would be Nigel again, no doubt, she decided wearily, getting up and padding barefoot to the door.
Only it wasn’t Nigel, it was Leo, and as she stepped into her hallway she realised that he was carrying a bottle of champagne and two glasses.
‘There’s only one real way in my book an engaged couple should celebrate their commitment to one another,’ Leo told her in a laconic drawl as she stared at him, ‘and it involves privacy and a bed. Preferably a very large bed, and a very long period of privacy, but, since our engagement is not of the committed-for-life variety, this will have to be the alternative...’
As he finished speaking Leo looked at her, and Jodi knew that her face was burning—not with embarrassment or anger, she realised guiltily, but with the heat of the sheer longing his words had conjured up inside her.
‘Of course,’ Leo was suggesting softly, ‘if you would prefer the first option...’
Jodi gave him an indignant look.
‘What I’d prefer,’ she told him, ‘is not to be in this wretched situation at all.’
As she turned away from him Leo wondered what she would say if he told her just how dangerously close he was to picking her up in his arms and taking her somewhere very private and keeping her there until she was so full
of the love he wanted to give her that...
That what? he asked himself in mental derision. That she would tell him that she loved him?
‘How did the parents’ meeting go?’ he asked her gently as he opened the champagne and poured them both a glass.
‘Our engagement opened to mixed reviews,’ Jodi told him wryly.
She wasn’t going to tell him that Myra had informed her before she had left that she had decided it was her moral duty to inform the education authority of the situation.
‘It’s only a storm in a teacup.’ Leo told her gently. ‘Six months from now all this will be forgotten.’
That wasn’t what he’d said earlier, Jodi thought, when he’d insisted that the only way to protect her job was for them to be engaged. Jodi bit her lip. Still, in six months’ time Leo might have forgotten her but she would never be able to forget him.
Leo handed Jodi one of the glasses of champagne. Shaking her head, she refused to take it.
‘No, I can’t,’ she told Leo bleakly.
To her relief he didn’t press her, simply putting the glass down before asking her quietly, ‘Because of the effect the cocktail at the hotel had on you? Jodi, from the smell of the jug, it contained the most lethal mixture of alcohol...’
Before he could finish Jodi was shaking her head. Oddly perhaps, in the circumstances, that had not been her reason for refusing the champagne.
‘It isn’t that,’ she told him hollowly. ‘It’s that I hate having to pretend like this,’ she told him simply. ‘I abhor the deceit, and it just seems wrong somehow to celebrate in such a traditional and romantic way what is, after all, just a pretence...a fiction—’
‘Jodi!’
Her honesty, so direct and unexpected, had brought a dangerous lump of emotion to Leo’s throat. She looked so sad, so grave-eyed, so infinitely lovable that he wanted to take hold of her and...
‘It doesn’t...’
‘Please, I don’t want to discuss it any more.’ Jodi told him, getting up and moving restlessly around the room.
She knew what he had been going to say. He had been going to say that under the circumstances their dishonesty didn’t matter, and perhaps it didn’t—to him, but it mattered to her. Most of all because there was something unbearably hurtful...something that was almost a desecration, about them cynically using a custom that should be so special and meaningful, and reserved only for those who truly loved each other and believed in that love, for their own practical ends.
‘I...I’d like you to go now,’ she told him chokily.
For a moment Leo hesitated. She looked so vulnerable, so fragile that he wanted to stay with her, to be with her, and she looked pale and tired as well...
Frowningly Leo checked and studied her again.
‘Jodi. I know we’ve already been through this, but...if there is any chance that you could be wrong and you are pregnant, then I—’
‘I am not pregnant,’ Jodi interrupted him sharply.
If she had been wondering if perhaps she had misjudged him, her defences weakened by his unexpected sensitivity towards her and the situation she was in, then he had just given her the proof that she had not, she recognised bitterly.
If, too, she had been foolishly reading some kind of selfless and caring emotion into his arrival at her house tonight, and the things he had said to her, then she was certainly being made sharply aware of her error.
Of course there was only one reason he was here, only one reason he was concerned, and only one person he was concerned for! And that person certainly wasn’t her, or the child he quite obviously did not want her to have.
‘I’m tired,’ she told him flatly. ‘And I want you to go...’
As she spoke she was already heading for the front door.
Leo followed her.
As he got back in his car, he wondered what he had hoped to gain by his actions. Had he really thought that the simple act of calling to see her, bringing her champagne so that they could celebrate their fictitious engagement together, was in any way going to change her lack of love for him? How could it?
He might be a fool, he decided determinedly as he drove back to Ashton House, but he was still an honourable man and he damned well intended to make sure that both Jodi and her reputation were protected for just so long as they needed to be, whether she wanted it or not. As of now they were an engaged couple in the eyes of the outside world. And soon she would be wearing his ring to prove it!
CHAPTER NINE
UNABLE TO STOP herself, Jodi stared at the discreet, but flawlessly brilliant solitaire diamond engagement ring she was wearing.
She had protested long and loud against Leo’s decision to buy her a ring, but he had refused to give in. In the end she had been the one to do that, partially out of sheer weariness and partially out of a cowardice she was loath to admit to.
Her aunt and uncle, Nigel’s parents, had invited her and Leo to have dinner with them, and Jodi had known, as indeed Leo had warned her, that, being of an older generation, they would expect to see a newly engaged woman wearing a ring.
And it had been because of that and only because of that that she had allowed Leo to drive her to the city and buy her the diamond she was now wearing on her left hand.
At first she had tried to insist that she should wear something inexpensive and fake, but Leo had been so angered by her suggestion that she had been shocked into giving in.
She hadn’t been allowed to know the price of the ring Leo had finally chosen for her. She had tried to opt for the smallest diamond the jeweller in the exclusive shop had shown her but Leo had simply insisted that she try on several rings before announcing that the one he liked best was the solitaire she was now wearing.
His choice had been another shock to Jodi, because it was in fact the very ring she would have chosen herself—under different circumstances. Now, as she sat next to him in his car, she couldn’t help touching it a little self-consciously as the diamond caught the light and threw out a dazzling sparkle.
She wasn’t exactly looking forward to this evening’s dinner, much as she loved her aunt and uncle. They were a very traditional couple, especially her aunt, who was bound to ask all manner of difficult questions.
‘You didn’t have to do this,’ she told Leo awkwardly as she gave him directions to their home. ‘I could have come up with an excuse. After all, with the takeover...’
It was all over the village now that Jeremy Driscoll was being investigated by the revenue authorities, but even that gossip had not been enough to silence Myra Fanshawe’s repeated references to her concern over Jodi’s behaviour.
* * *
‘You want to speak to Mr Jefferson?’ Leo’s new secretary at the factory asked the woman caller who had asked to speak to Leo. The woman had explained that she hadn’t been able to get through to him on his mobile and that she hadn’t heard from him in several days.
‘Oh, I’m sorry, but he isn’t here at the moment. And I expect he’s switched off his mobile, because he’s gone to meet his fiancée.’
On the other end of the line, Leo’s mother, Luisa Jefferson, almost dropped her receiver.
‘His fiancée,’ she repeated. ‘Oh, well, yes...of course.’
‘Shall I tell him you called?’ Leo’s secretary asked her helpfully.
‘Er—no...that won’t be necessary,’ Luisa informed her.
Replacing the receiver, she went in search of her husband, whom she found seated on a sun lounger beside their pool.
‘I have to go to England to see Leonardo,’ she informed him.
* * *
The evening had gone surprisingly well. Leo had laughed obligingly at her uncle’s jokes and praised her aunt’s cooking with such a genuineness that it was plain that they were both already ready to welcome him w
ith open arms into the family.
Jodi, with the benefit of far more objectivity at her disposal, watched the proceedings with pardonable cynicism.
‘So,’ Jodi heard her aunt asking archly, once they were in her sitting room with their after-dinner coffee. ‘what about the wedding? Have you made any plans as yet?’
‘No—’
‘Yes—’
As they both spoke at once her aunt looked from Leo’s smiling face to Jodi’s set one with an understandably baffled expression.
‘We’ve only just got engaged,’ Jodi defended her denial.
‘I’d marry Jodi tomorrow if she’d agree,’ Leo told her aunt with a wicked, glinting smile in Jodi’s direction that made her want to scream. He was enjoying this. She could tell.
‘Well, of course Jodi will want to wait until her parents return,’ her aunt said lovingly, before asking, ‘And what about your parents, Leo?’
‘I want to take Jodi out to Italy to meet them just as soon as I can,’ Leo responded truthfully, ‘but I already know that they will love her as much as I do.’ And then, before Jodi could guess what he intended to do, he leaned towards her, taking one of her hands and enfolding it tenderly between both of his before bending his head to brush his mouth against hers.
Jodi could feel the quivering, out-of-control wanting begin deep down inside her the moment he touched her; it shocked and frightened her, and it made her feel very angry as well. She felt angry with Leo for making her love him, and angry with herself too, and yet she still couldn’t stop herself from closing her eyes and wishing that all of this was real; that he did love her; that their futures really lay together.
Jodi’s aunt and uncle said goodbye to them at their front door. Leo had placed his arm around Jodi as they walked to the door, and he kept it there whilst they walked to the car, even though it was parked out of direct sight of the house.
‘You can let go of me now,’ Jodi told him as they reached the car. ‘No one can see us.’
‘What if I don’t want to let go of you?’ Leo demanded softly.
There was just enough moonlight for Jodi to be able to see the hot glint of desire that glittered in his eyes as he looked down at her.