by Penny Jordan
She knew the layout of the house from previous visits with Susie. Upstairs there were two bedrooms, each with its own bathroom, and she headed automatically for the one she knew to be spare.
It had obviously been redecorated since her last visit. The pretty, feminine wallpaper was gone, and in its place was a distinctly masculine décor of rich maroon and French blue.
She stripped off her damp dress, grimacing slightly at the chilly stickiness of her skin.
She had no idea what Simon wanted to talk to her about but, having practically abducted her and brought her here, he would just have to wait while she washed the smell of wine off her skin.
The guest bathroom, too, had been altered. Now it had a large deep tub, practically big enough to fit two.
Jenna stepped out of her tights and washed the sticky residue of the wine from her legs. She had no idea what Simon was going to give her to wear. Clad only in her thin silk bra and panties, she walked into the bedroom, intending to call down to him.
As she did so, the door opened, and he walked in, coming to an abrupt halt when he saw her.
Her attempts to conceal her nearly nude body from him were pathetically juvenile, she told herself afterwards, and it was obvious that he thought so too, because once he recovered from his shock a rather odd smile lightened the darkness of his eyes.
'It's normally considered good manners to knock before walking into someone's bedroom,' Jenna told him pettishly.
'Not when the bedroom is one's own,' Simon countered.
Jenna wasn't going to stand for that. 'You knew I was in your guest-room. You told me to come up here… You knew…'
'This isn't the guest-room,' Simon told her, calmly interrupting her tirade.
'Of course it is. I remember when Susie and I…'
Jenna looked round uncertainly, remembering now how much the décor of the room had changed.
'It used to be the guest-room,' Simon agreed patiently, 'but I found the noise from the traffic disturbed my sleep, so I changed them round.'
'You might have told me!'
'And miss the sight of you standing there in all your glory?'
He was teasing her, and it infuriated her. She could feel the hot colour stinging her skin as her rage flooded through her.
'You know, you haven't changed much at all,' Simon mused leaning against the closed door and watching her in amusement. 'I remember the first time we all went on holiday together. You must have been about twelve. We were all getting changed on the beach…'
Jenna remembered it, too. She had been so embarrassed, because she had been the only one not to have her swimsuit on under her jeans and top. Mrs Townsend had briskly produced a towelling tent for her to slip on and change under, but she had still felt awkward and embarrassed. Susie had laughed at her embarrassment, greatly amused to realise that it was caused by Simon.
'I thought you were going to give me something to wear,' she reminded him, checking her thoughts.
'Yes, so I was.' He walked past her and opened a cupboard, removing one of his shirts.
'Here, this should do the trick. Where's your dress? I'll hang it in the airing cupboard. That should dry it quickly.'
'It's over there, but I haven't sponged it yet.'
She wished he would go away. The shirt he had given her had been laundered and was buttoned all down the front. He might have done the gentlemanly thing and unbuttoned it for her, instead of lolling against the door, watching her as though for all the world they were, in reality, lovers.
She wanted to demand that he went away, and yet somehow the words wouldn't come. She was frightened of looking even more of an idiot than she already did, she realised bitterly. Simon always made her feel acutely aware of her own lack of sexual experience in comparison to his abundance of it, and she was terrified of somehow betraying that lack of it to him.
Why on earth it should matter if she did, she had no idea, but it did.
She had turned her back to him while she unfastened the shirt, all too uncomfortably aware of the fact that her silk panties and bra did almost nothing to conceal her body.
As she slid the shirt on, her fingers shook. She turned round and for a moment was transfixed. That couldn't be Simon staring at her like a man thirsting after water in the dryness of the desert; like a man tormented by a hunger he knew he could never appease.
She blinked and the moment was gone—like a mirage—and a mirage was most definitely what it had been, she told herself scathingly.
What was she thinking about? That would be the day, when Simon looked at her with desire. To him she was still a lanky, awkward teenager—a subject of amusement rather than love…
She quenched the small, sharp pain so quickly that she was able to reassure herself that she had not even felt it. That sort of pain had left her years ago, when she had faced up to the fact that to Simon she would always be his kid sister's playmate.
'Oh, for God's sake!'
The roughness in his voice jerked her out of her reverie, the rough brush of his fingertips against her skin as he turned her round and skilfully started to fasten the buttons, making her skin flutter with tension.
'I can do it myself!' In vain, she tried to push him away.
He was standing so close to her that she could see the pores in his skin, the dark pinpricks where his beard grew, the iris of his eyes.
She could almost feel the rise and fall of his chest as he breathed, smell the warm, musky male scent of his skin as it mingled with the freshness of his aftershave.
It was a disconcerting sensation—far too heady for ageing virgins, she mocked herself, trying to achieve a plateau of normality among the unfamiliar sensations storming her.
He reached the button that lodged against the swell of her breasts and she found she was holding her breath.
Was that why her skin seemed to flutter, or had Simon's fingers really trembled as he touched her? It was over and he was stepping back from her. A kind of madness overcame her, a backlash from all the years he had treated her as a naive child, and to her horror she heard herself saying tauntingly, 'Thanks, Simon, but if this is supposed to be a substitute for making love with Grant…'
She broke off as she realised what she was saying, too shocked to even think of registering Simon's reaction.
'Are you asking me to make love to you?'
There was no expression in his voice at all. No sign whatsoever of any desire for her, of any emotion at all, she realised, as she felt the hot wave of embarrassed colour flood her face.
'No, of course not!' her voice was thick with indignation and shame.
'Then cut out the provocative remarks, or you might find you've got more on your hands than you bargained for.'
All of a sudden her embarrassment gave way to anger. She hadn't asked him to get engaged to her; she wasn't the one who had got them into this mess; she hadn't invited him to break up her dinner date and bring her back here.
'I want to go home,' she said flatly, without expression.
'Switching roles again, Jenna? One minute the sophisticated woman of the world, the next the sulky little girl… One day you're going to have to make up your mind exactly what role you really want to play.'
His accusation stung, the more so because it had an undertone of truth to it, but he couldn't know how necessary it was for her to do so much role-playing—how desperate she was to conceal the truth from him.
'You're not going anywhere until you and I have sorted a few things out. That guy tonight—how long have you known him?'
'You know he's one of our clients. We were having a business dinner,' Jenna told him defensively.
'Yes, it looked like it! If I hadn't appeared on the scene, right now you'd have been conducting your "business meeting" on his bed, most probably in the mission—'
'How dare you!' Jenna interrupted him furiously. 'What right have you got to interfere in my private life? It's no business of yours what I do or with whom!'
'Oh no? You're my
fiancée, Jenna.'
'But that isn't real.'
'It's real so far as our families are concerned. The other man at my table tonight knows my father. He could quite easily have said something to him. Like I just said, our families think we are engaged, and when we join them in France they're not going to expect us to behave like a pair of strangers.'
'Exactly how are we supposed to behave, then?' Jenna demanded. Why on earth was it that when she argued with Simon she always lost? Because he makes you lose your temper, a small voice told her, but she brushed it aside, too intent on venting her wrath to listen to it. 'Your mother told me this morning that she was giving us separate rooms. Do you know how that made me feel?'
Simon looked blankly at her. The fact that she was pretty sure he was doing it deliberately only added fuel to the flames of her wrath.
'She obviously thinks we're already sleeping together,' she told him acidly. 'Your mother believes that you and I are lovers…'
'So?' His eyebrows rose. 'What are you trying to tell me, Jenna? That you're adult enough to go to bed with a complete stranger, but you're not adult enough to accept the fact that my parents and your grandmother tacitly accept the fact that this is the nineteen-eighties and, while it may not be the way they did things, you and I as an established couple on the verge of marriage will be lovers? Rather an odd double standard to have, I would have thought.'
Jenna ground her teeth impotently, knowing she had laid her own trap.
'Look, Jenna, we're engaged. Of course people will think we're lovers… You must surely realise that?'
'We are not engaged!' she practically screamed the words at him. 'Oh, damn it all to hell!' She took in a deep, shaky breath of air that pressed her breasts against the cotton of his shirt. It smelted faintly of him, she realised in frustrated rage. Was there no way she could escape from him? He was like some sort of insidious poison, spreading through every part of her life.
'I thought the whole idea of our going on holiday together was to show our families how unsuited we are, so that they would accept the breaking off of this ridiculous pseudo-engagement… not to play the happy, delirious lovers.'
Her dress was still in Simon's hand, and no doubt still soaking wet, but she had had enough. She wasn't staying here any longer to argue with him. His conniving lawyer's mind would soon outmanoeuvre any arguments she flung at him.
She stepped forward, intent on retrieving her dress, and caught her toe on a ruck in the carpet.
As she pitched forward she gave a small cry of fright, and landed solidly against Simon's chest.
'You really must stop throwing yourself at me like this,' she heard him saying. His voice was muffled by her hair, and by the oxygen loss to his lungs as she had landed on him. One arm supported her back, the other her head. It made her feel oddly vulnerable and weak. Her father had died when she was a small child and she wasn't used to the comforting warmth of a masculine embrace. It made her feel weepy, for some unknown reason.
'If this is your way of convincing our folks that we aren't suited, I have to tell you that it isn't going to work… Look in the mirror.'
She could hear the laughter muffled in his voice, and reluctantly she turned her head and looked at their reflection in the full-length glass.
It would have been impossible to get so much as a feather between their bodies, she realised disgustedly, and she was clinging to Simon like a fainting heroine, her arms locked around him. How fragilely slender her arms and legs looked where they protruded from the depths of his shirt. How tall he was… she didn't have her shoes on… how broad, and somehow comfortable to lean on. How well his hand fitted into the small of her back.
She wriggled protestingly, disturbed by her thoughts, and to her horror she felt her nipples suddenly tighten in sexual arousal. She dared not move away from him. If she did, he would be bound to see. Panic flared inside her. It was just a physical reaction to the close proximity of a male, she knew that, but she couldn't bear the thought of Simon seeing, and perhaps…
'What's wrong? No fierce backchat? That's not like you.'
He was starting to release her. She shivered slightly.
'It's just the shock.'
Instantly he frowned, his hand withdrawing from 'her hair to cup her chin and tilt her face.
'Are you sure you're all right?'
His concern was completely genuine, and because of that it caught her off guard. She stared up at him through eyes which for no reason at all had decided to film with tears…
'Oh Jen, I'm sorry. I'm the one who got us both in this mess, but I… '
'Love to torment me,' Jenna supplied shakily for him. 'Sometimes I think you forget that I'm not fifteen any more.'
He gave her an odd look and seemed about to say something, and then, as though he had thought better of it, he said matter-of-factly, 'Are you OK now?'
'Yes, I'm fine.'
Well, it wasn't entirely a lie. At least she had her rebellious body back under control again.
As she started to step back from him, he lifted his hand to push her hair out of her eyes. She looked at him, offering a tentative smile.
'Friends?'
There was an unfamiliar huskiness to his voice; her own throat felt thick with tears, and so she nodded in response.
'Good.'
He tilted her chin, and before she realised what was happening his mouth touched hers.
It was only the merest brush of mouth against mouth, over almost before she had time to realise what was happening, but it left her prey to the most startling sensations. For a minute there she had not wanted him to let her go. She had wanted… She took a deep, shuddering breath to relieve her tension, deliberately avoiding meeting his eyes.
She had endured far too much emotion for one night, she told herself hardily. That was all that was wrong with her—an excess of emotion…
'Come on, I'll drive you home.'
'But my dress…'
'I'll drop it off tomorrow.'
She didn't argue with him. She was as anxious to get rid of him as he patently was of her, she told herself acidly as she followed him downstairs.
'Have you heard from Susie yet?'
He threw the question at her over his shoulder as they went downstairs, but Jenna immediately stiffened.
'No, I haven't, and even if I had—'
'You wouldn't tell me. OK, I'm not asking you to betray your "best friend",' he mocked her. 'But if she does get in touch, you might tell her that I've taken her point, and that if she's had enough of her fortune hunter, she's perfectly free to come home.'
'Do you really think that's why he wants to marry her?'
'I'm sure of it, but I'm also sure that my baby sister, despite her idiotic need to fling herself headlong into one dangerous situation after another, has the brains to realise for herself what the situation is… She won't marry him. I'm sure of that.'
He sounded so positive that Jenna didn't argue with him. She still felt hurt that Susie hadn't confided in her, that she had used her… How well did she know the girl she had always thought of as being so close to her, as though they were sisters? But then, did sisters always tell each other everything?
She was really too tired to dwell on the matter tonight… Tomorrow would be time enough.
Simon dropped her off outside her flat, and waited until she was safely inside before driving off. She heard the comforting roar of the Aston's engine as he drove away.
All in all it had been a distinctly odd kind of evening, especially for someone who was more used to spending her free time either alone in her flat pursuing one or other of her hobbies, or dining out with old friends like Craig and Susie.
Overnight her life had taken a dramatic turn in a fresh direction, and all because of Simon Townsend, or so it seemed.
CHAPTER FIVE
« ^ »
A week before they were due to leave for the Dordogne, Jenna discovered that she was out of work.
Right from the start R
ick had been opposed to her taking all her holiday allowance at the one time but, after the night she had had dinner with Grant Freeman, he became even more peevishly opposed to her holiday.
Not one single day passed without him making some comment or another about the inconvenience her holiday was going to cause him. Rick could be extremely virulent when the mood took him, and although Jenna knew that more than half of his acid remarks sprang from the fact that he was going though a bad patch businesswise, she was still beginning to resent the almost constant digs at her lack of loyalty and selfishness in wanting to take her holidays at what could be one of their busiest times.
She knew that it hadn't helped that she had practically walked out on Grant Freeman, although nothing had been said about that directly—until yesterday.
She had been ten minutes late back from her lunch—mainly because Rick had asked her to buy some special folders from their stationers, and she had had to wait almost half an hour for them to find them.
She wasn't in the best of moods herself; she had intended to spend her lunch hour shopping for holiday clothes, so she wasn't exactly pleased to be hauled over the coals by an infuriated Rick, in front of several other members of the staff.
'You realise that because of you we could lose the Freeman contract?' he had bawled at her, red-faced and furious.
In that moment Jenna's own temper had ignited and she had said angrily, 'If you lose that contract it will be nothing to do with me!'
'Don't be such a little fool… All you had to do was to be nice to him, butter him up a bit. And instead, what do you do, but produce some damn fiancé!' Rick had said in bitter disgust.
Initially Jenna had been too taken aback to say anything, and then, as the full import of his scathing remark hit her, she had started to tremble, so fierce was the surge of rage that swept her.
In front of almost half the office she retorted bitingly, 'I thought my job here was to work as your assistant, Rick, not to pander to the sexual needs of your clients.'
And with that she had picked up the coat she had just been in the act of putting down, gathered up her handbag and walked out.