Levelling the Score

by Penny Jordan

She went down to the car to fetch her overnight case, acknowledging the impossibility of using the two shaped seats as a makeshift bed. She was aching all over with tension and tiredness.

  She heard Simon moving about in the kitchen as she walked in.

  'Fancy a cup of cocoa? I've found some at the back of the cupboard, although heaven only knows what it will taste like with dried milk.'

  She was thirsty, and perhaps it would be as well if, for this one night at least, she put her resentment of him behind her.

  'Yes, please.'

  'OK. I'll bring it up when it's ready.'

  By the time she heard his footsteps on the stairs, she was undressed and tucked up inside her sleeping-bag. It occurred to her that in anyone other than Simon she could have taken his delay as a gentlemanly acknowledgement of her modesty, but since when had Simon ever bothered to take her feelings into account over anything?

  The cocoa was surprisingly good, warming her chilled hands as she cradled the mug.

  Simon disappeared into the bathroom, and was gone long enough for her to finish her drink and snuggle down into her sleeping-bag.

  She felt the bed dip and heard the rustle of the nylon fabric as he made himself comfortable, and then the room was plunged into darkness as he extinguished the light.

  Some time during the night she dreamed that she was freezing cold, ploughing through numbing wastes of snow, and then deliciously she was warm again. She smiled in her sleep, completely unaware of the fact that the reason she was now so warm was that Simon had unzipped their separate sleeping-bags and then zipped them together to provide extra warmth.

  It also brought Jenna into much closer contact with his warm body as he lay against her back!

  CHAPTER THREE

  « ^ »

  Jenna heard the noise distantly, as no more than an irritating intrusion into the pleasant rosiness of her dream. She wriggled comfortably and burrowed deeper into the sleeping-bag, relishing the solid wall of warmth at her back, and then when the noise grew more intrusive she opened her eyes, blinking reluctantly in the brilliance of the early morning sunshine.

  It took her several seconds to grasp what was going on. She remembered getting into bed all right, and she remembered the sleeping-bag as well, but she also distinctly recalled cocooning herself into it alone, and now for some reason it seemed to have stretched to include…

  She tensed and turned over.

  Simon!

  He was still asleep, looking absurdly young, even with a dark overnight growth of beard.

  'I don't know who it is in there, but you're on private property…'

  The bedroom door opened unceremoniously, and Mrs Magellan stood there, glaring belligerently at the bed.

  The way her expression changed as she recognised both its occupants could in other circumstances have been amusing, but right at this moment Jenna felt more like a naughty schoolgirl caught in an underhand activity.

  'Well, I never! Miss Jenna… And Master Simon… ' A disapproving frown pleated Mrs Magellan's forehead. 'Well, when I saw those two cars parked outside, I thought you must be some of those hippies… I never thought…'

  Her frown deepened, and Jenna wondered despairingly how on earth she was going to be able to explain the long and complicated story that was the truth.

  She kicked Simon ruthlessly and hard on the shin. He was the one who had got them into this mess, she fumed, and he could jolly well get them out of it! He was the one with the trained legal brain, after all—the brilliant barrister so fluently capable of putting forward a good defence.

  She kicked him again. He muttered something unintelligible and then opened his eyes.

  'My God, Mrs M!' He sat bolt upright, exposing a good deal of hair-darkened masculine torso.

  'Mrs Magellan wants to know what we're doing here, Simon,' Jenna told him.

  'Ah…'

  Jenna could have sworn that he was amused, though no sign of undesirable levity showed in his face.

  'Well…'

  'I'm sure it's not for me to question a fully grown man about his morals, Mr Simon, but I should think your mother would have something to say to this…and with Miss Jenna as well…'

  'Yes, well, you see, Mrs M, Jenna and I—we're going to get married… and Jenna being the sentimental sort wanted to come down here to the place where she first fell in love with me. You know what girls are… '

  At his side, Jenna seethed in bitter silence. How dared he do this to her! Why couldn't he simply have told Mrs Magellan the truth?

  'Of course, we had intended to have separate rooms, but we didn't realise there'd been so much rain damage…'

  'Oh, well, since the pair of you are getting married, I suppose it's all right… but it's not what I would have expected from you, Miss Jenna… I'll go downstairs now and let you both get up. I dare say you'll be wanting to get back to London once you've had a bite of breakfast.'

  The moment the older woman had closed the door behind her, Jenna rounded on Simon.

  'What on earth made you tell her we were getting married?' she demanded furiously. 'Why didn't you tell her the truth?'

  'I didn't think she'd believe it. I thought I did quite well on the spur of the moment,' he added thoughtfully. 'Very well, in fact…'

  Jenna wasn't to be mollified.

  'You know what a gossip she is! It will be all round the village by tonight… '

  'So what? Come on, Jenna,' he drawled, looking into her shuttered, angry face. 'It could be worse. I could have let her go on thinking that the pair of us had sneaked down here for a spot of illicit sex, instead of which I did the gentlemanly thing and…'

  'Lied to her! Gave her a totally false impression of our relationship!' Jenna fumed.

  'What's wrong? It will never get any further than the village. Your boyfriend isn't likely to find out, if that's what's bothering you.'

  'It isn't,' Jenna announced shortly. 'I just don't like being involved in any sort of deceitfulness,' she told him virtuously.

  His eyebrows lifted.

  'And of course, lying to me about Susie's whereabouts in no way constituted any form of deceit?' he suggested softly.

  Jenna wanted to hit him. In fact she was reaching out to do so, when he moved away from her and she became aware that all he was wearing appeared to be a minute pair of briefs.

  'And that's another thing,' she told him bitterly. 'When I went to bed last night, I was lying alone, in my own sleeping-bag.'

  'Mm… You woke me up during the night complaining that you were cold, clinging on to me for dear life. The only way I could shut you up was to zip both bags together.'

  Jenna was about to make a heated retort when she had a sudden and extremely disturbing memory of dreaming about snow. She bit down hard on her bottom lip, cursing the tricks that the subconscious mind could play.

  'Look, there's nothing to get so worked up about. To listen to you anyone would think this is the first time you've been to bed with a man.'

  He said it so casually that Jenna was stricken into silence. Although he didn't know it, it was, but there was something so shaming about still being a virgin at twenty-four years of age that she kept it a deep and dark secret.

  And the problem was that the longer her virginal state continued, the harder it was going to be to get rid of it.

  'Do you want first go at the bathroom, or shall I go down first and appease Mrs M?'

  'With what?' Jenna snapped. 'More lies?'

  Even so, she made no objection when he got out of bed, other than to quickly turn her head, averting her eyes from his nearly nude body.

  The last time she had seen him wearing so little had been the summer of her adolescent crush, but toe had filled out since then, the youth's body becoming that of a man. Her stomach lurched protestingly as her senses logged the flat hardness of his belly and the tensile, muscular strength of his thighs. He leaned over her, picking up his clothes and she tensed, wishing that he wouldn't come so close to her. Such man-to-woman inti
macy was quite obviously as familiar to him as breathing, while she… while she was rendered as gauche and nervous as a schoolgirl, she mocked herself acidly.

  As he moved away from her, she heard him saying laconically, 'It's all right, Jenna. I don't think looking at another man constitutes an act of unfaithfulness.'

  Thank God Simon thought she was involved in a sexual relationship with Craig. Otherwise… Otherwise what? Otherwise nothing, she told herself firmly, waiting until she heard him going downstairs before snatching up her own clothes and heading for the bathroom.

  It was over an hour before they could escape Mrs Magellan's determination to provide them with a fitting breakfast, and her questions about the latest news on their families, but at last they were free to go.

  Jenna hated the way Simon insisted on accompanying her out to Craig's car. Quite what Mrs M made of a pair of lovers who arrived at their destination in separate vehicles she had no idea, but no doubt were she to ask, Simon would have a response suitably lacking in truth and reality for her.

  'You're supposed to be madly in love with me darling—remember,' he taunted her as she tried to pull away from his constraining hand.

  'Perhaps my lack of conviction springs from the fact that it's a role I find it quite impossible to visualise myself in,' Jenna told him tartly.

  'Really! You do surprise me. Can this be the same Jenna who used to follow my every movement with yearning, lovelorn glances?'

  Jenna stopped abruptly.

  'Why you… ' She swung around, furious that he should be callous enough to refer to her youthful crush. Her heel caught in a tussock of grass as she moved, and she felt it give way beneath her.

  As she fought to regain her balance she saw Simon reaching out towards her. For some reason, she thought that he was going to kiss her, and she was instantly filled with a sense of blind panic, pushing him away.

  'Don't be such an idiot!' His arms restrained her. 'Or do you want to end up in the ditch?'

  To her fury and embarrassment, as Jenna looked behind her she saw how close she had come to overbalancing into the overgrown ditch that ran alongside the road. She bit her lip as a flood of mortified colour stung her skin.

  'Poor Jenna, it isn't your weekend, is it? Never mind. I'm sure you'll find that lover-boy is waiting to welcome you home with open arms. Known him long, have you?'

  'I don't see that it's any business of yours,' Jenna snapped back at him. 'I don't question you about your love life, do I?'

  One dark eyebrow rose lazily.

  'Do you want to? What would you like to know?'

  Oh, he really was the most exasperating man, Jenna fumed as she climbed into the Porsche and tried to analyse exactly what it was about him that drove her into such a fury of temper. She was normally such a calm, controlled person, but Simon simply had to look at her to make every slur on the temperamental nature of redheads immediately come true.

  It was just as well she had been so angry, she decided half an hour later as she tried to concentrate on her driving. Otherwise there was no saying what she might have betrayed when he had revealed the fact that he had known all along about that embarrassing crush she had had on him…

  Of course, it was typical of him to have said nothing all these years and then to casually drop it into the conversation like that.

  She remembered one afternoon when she had inadvertently come across him and Elena lying in a secluded patch of sunwarmed grass on the cliffs.

  They had been wrapped in each other's arms, Simon's long legs pressing Elena into the grass, their mouths locked into an intensely passionate kiss.

  Later that night in bed, she had tried to imagine what it would be like to be kissed by Simon like that. She had never found out… And she certainly never wanted to, she told herself acidly.

  He had tried to kiss her once: on her eighteenth birthday, at the party her grandmother had given for her, but she had been very much on her dignity, painfully aware of the huge gulf that yawned between them, her newly emerging woman's pride stung by the knowledge that, to him, kissing her was rather like kissing another sister.

  She had averted her face at the last moment and his kiss had landed on her cheek.

  Even then, he had had to have the last word, she remembered now, whispering tauntingly in her ear, 'No? You don't know what you're missing!'

  At least having that ridiculous teenage crush on him had inured her for life against men like him. If she ever did fall in love, it would be with a far different kind of man: someone who treated her with respect and consideration, someone who did not have a long line of girlfriends marching through his past.

  Her ire at Simon's high-handed and totally unnecessary behaviour lasted almost the entire length of her drive back to London.

  It was late afternoon before she parked Craig's Porsche and let herself into her own flat.

  As soon as she had freshened up she went up to take him his keys and found him busy in his darkroom, developing the work he had brought back with him.

  'Pity you don't fancy modelling,' he told her, not for the first time. 'With your bone structure and colouring… Everything go all right?'

  She made a non-committal response and thanked him for the use of his car.

  'Tell you what, you can thank me properly over dinner tonight.'

  Jenna stared at him. It was unlike Craig to ask her out formally. Ever since she had known him, he had used a succession of elegant models as a cloak for his love for Emma Parker. Despite his tan he was looking very gaunt, she noticed suddenly.

  'Craig, is something wrong?'

  'You could say that. Emma's been told that Paul only has a few months to live. I don't understand her, Jenna. All along she's insisted that she loves me, that it's only loyalty that keeps her with Paul, but now from the way she's acting, you'd think she was fathoms deep in love with the guy. She won't speak to me, she won't answer my letters or phone calls. When I went round to see her, she told her housekeeper not to let me in. Why? I just don't understand it.'

  'She's bound to be confused at the moment, Craig. Why don't you just give her a breathing space?'

  She didn't want to say to him that Emma might possibly be suffering from a feeling of guilt, and that the imminence of her husband's death could have temporarily overwhelmed her love for Craig.

  She left him looking morose and very unhappy, having accepted his invitation to dinner.

  She didn't particularly want to go. For one thing she was still suffering from the traumatic effects of her journey to Cornwall, and for another she had been half hoping that Susie might ring.

  Where on earth had her friend gone? Had Susie actually known that Simon would come round to her flat? She knew she ought to be annoyed with her, but somehow she lacked the energy.

  The restaurant Craig took her to had only recently opened. Its financial backer was a well-known script-writer, and so it attracted a good many well-known faces from TV and stage shows.

  Privately Jenna considered both the décor and the manner of many of the other diners to be slightly overdone, although she could not fault the service not the appetising selection of dishes on the menu.

  'The chef trained with the Roux brothers,' Craig told her, 'and I've been told that the food is excellent,'

  Excellent it indeed was, but that did not stop Craig from merely toying with what he had ordered.

  He had lost weight, Jenna noticed, studying him with faint alarm, suddenly very concerned for him.

  What would happen if Emma's guilt over Paul's death led to her rejecting Craig permanently? He had loved her for so long… Since before she and Paul had married, he had once told her. All three of them had been at university together. He and Emma had been on the point of becoming engaged when they had had a quarrel, over his desire to travel and work abroad.

  He had left for France without her, and when he came back she had married Paul.

  Jenna watched as he pushed his food around his plate, wishing there was some way she could
help him, but knowing that there was not.

  Love could be such a hurting, bitter thing… She frowned, trying to shake off the mood of depression threatening to swamp her.

  She had never been in love. She had been spared its agonies and ecstasies, apart from that brief teenage crush on Simon, and that had not really been love.

  She frowned again, annoyed with herself for allowing him to take up so much space in her thoughts. Seeing him again so unexpectedly had unsettled her. The wide chasm that had yawned between them when she was fifteen and he was in his early twenties seemed disconcertingly to have disappeared, and she recognised that she had been all too conscious of him as a very male man. It was an awareness she didn't want, and consequently she found that she had as little appetite for her meal as Craig had for his.

  She wasn't sorry when he pushed his plate away abruptly and said, 'This isn't a success… Let's go home, shall we?'

  Most of the early diners had left and the restaurant was just beginning to fill up again with the post-theatre crowd.

  As they reached the exit, Craig stood back to allow two people to pass them.

  Jenna stiffened as she recognised Simon.

  'Leaving already?' he questioned, eyeing her mockingly.

  Perhaps it was something to do with the taunting smile he gave her, or perhaps it was the condescending, dismissive look in the eyes of his elegant female companion, Jenna didn't know, but she heard herself saying softly, 'Yes, we both wanted an early night, didn't we, darling?' She reached for Craig's hand, while gazing up into his eyes with a look of simpering adoration.

  A raised eyebrow, another cool smile and they were gone, leaving her feeling as limp as a week-old lettuce.

  'Well, now, what was all that about?' Craig asked as they walked out into the summer night.

  'It would take far too long to explain,' Jenna told him.

  'Do you realise that that's the first time that you've ever displayed any signs that you're as human as the rest of us, Jenna? I'd begun to get a little worried about you. Who is he?'

  'The brother of a friend of mine.'

  'Umm… I wonder where he's going to pop up again. These things always go in threes… First the flat, now the restaurant… '