CHAPTER FIVE
HALFWAY through cross-questioning her on how much time and attention she had given the books she had bought, Jake had had to excuse himself to take a business call in the library. From the way he had been speaking to her since her arrival at the Hall she might have been a schoolgirl, Lucianna decided wrathfully, absently glancing at the TV screen she had just switched on, her eyes widening as she saw the couple on the screen start to kiss one another with passionate intensity. As the camera closed up on their faces Lucianna tensed and watched closely.
When she and John kissed she felt none of the intense passion this couple were so enviably sharing. No, John had certainly never kissed her the way the man on the screen was kissing the woman, holding her face in his hands as he pressed hungry, biting kisses onto her mouth and she responded, twisting and turning in his arms as though she couldn't get close enough to him.
Lucianna felt her heart start to beat faster, oblivious to Jake's return as she stared in fascination at the screen. The couple were kissing differently now, their mouths fused together, their breathing laboured.
'What's wrong, Lucianna? Hasn't John ever kissed you like that?'
At the sound of Jake's voice Lucianna spun round, her face burning hotly, embarrassed at being caught studying the screen as though she had actually been guilty of voyeurism.
'Y-yes, of course he has,* she told Jake fiercely, starting to stammer slightly and somehow unable to meet his eyes.
'I don't believe you,' she heard him challenge her suavely. 'In fact I don't believe you even know how to kiss like that...'
'Of course I do,' Lucianna asserted quickly.
'Yes? Then prove it,' Jake demanded softly. 'Come over here now and prove it to me, Lucianna... Kiss me...'
At first Lucianna thought that Jake couldn't possibly mean what he had said—either that or she must have misheard him—but when she searched his face for confirmation she realised with a fierce, sharp thrill of fear that he had meant it.
'You can't, can you?' she heard him saying softly to her. 'You can't and you don't—'
'I can,' Lucianna lied immediately.
'Prove it, then...'
How had Jake managed to move so quickly that he was now standing right next to her, one hand already cupping the back of her head, constraining her, preventing her from moving? His mouth was only centimetres away from hers. Nervously she licked her lips and heard him say, 'Well, that's an interesting start, but you're supposed to be the one kissing me, not enticing me into kissing you...'
Enticing him! Fear and anger, always a dangerously volatile cocktail of emotions, exploded inside her and before she could lose her courage Lucianna closed the distance between them, her lips firmly pressed together as she brushed them against Jake's mouth.
His lips felt cool and smooth and nothing whatsoever like John's, which if she was honest always felt just a little too wet and soft and—
'Call that a kiss? If that's the best you can do then no wonder you're having so much trouble with your love life... The wonder is that you've got one at all,' Jake told her succinctly.
Furious now, Lucianna opened her mouth to retaliate and then discovered that it was impossible for her to speak for the very good reason that, despite the fact that she was sure she had removed her lips from his, Jake's mouth was now covering hers, covering it and...
Involuntarily Lucianna's eyes widened, her gaze focusing helplessly on Jake's as she recognised that the movement of his mouth against her own felt nothing like John's and, moreover, that her response to it, to him, was nothing like anything she had ever experienced in her life before.
Why was her pulse hammering, over-revving so much that her heart felt as though it was going to jump into her throat? Why were her own lips trembling so much? Why did she feel this sudden strange, strong need to get even closer to Jake, so much so that she was, she recognised dizzily, actually pressing her body against his?
Why did she have this urge to make those soft keening, whimpering little sounds she could feel bubbling desperately in her throat?
'Jake...'
To try to protest had been a mistake, she realised seconds later as her lips parted but no sound emerged, for instead of being free to speak, it was Jake who had the freedom to cover her now open mouth with his and to keep it open by pressing his thumb against her chin whilst he slowly stroked the tip of his tongue back and forth against her parted lips.
It must be that the deliberately slow-building rhythm of what he was doing was having some sort of mesmeric effect on her, she decided in shocked bemusement, because instead of trying to stop him she was actually, she was actually...
A vision flashed behind her closed eyelids, a mental image of the couple she had been watching on the television screen and the way they had been kissing.
To her shock, almost as though he had been reading her mind, Jake started to kiss her in the same way— quick, biting kisses interspersed with softer, longer ones that for some reason compelled her mouth to cling helplessly to his.
She felt as though she was lost, adrift, drowning in the unfamiliar torrent of sensation that engulfed her. Beneath her clothes her body was behaving, reacting to Jake in a way it had never reacted to John, nor to anyone else. Jake was caressing the nape of her neck as he kissed her now and his tongue was beginning to make slow, sensual forays into her mouth. His tongue!
Dizzily Lucianna dug her fingernails into Jake's arms, somehow managing to find the strength to tear her mouth away from his.
'You shouldn't have done that,' she told him stormily, all too conscious of her heightened colour and ragged breathing.
'No,' Jake conceded grimly. 'I shouldn't.'
Jake admitting that he was in the wrong? Lucianna could hardly believe it, and neither could she believe the extraordinary way in which she had responded to
his kiss. In fact she wasn't going to believe it, she told herself hastily. She was going to forget that the whole incident had ever happened.
She darted a wary look at Jake who had gone to stand in front of the window. He had his back to her.
'Tomorrow afternoon we're going shopping,' he announced abruptly, startling her. 'And this time...' He paused and then told her, 'If you want to be treated like a woman, Lucianna, then you're going to have to learn to dress like one.'
Lucianna was far too relieved that he hadn't made any reference to what had just happened between them to object to his plans for a shopping trip, or to the comment which had accompanied his announcement of them.
And besides, one totally unexpected offshoot from the hours she had stubbornly forced herself to spend people-watching had been a tentative awareness that there were other modes of dress for her sex apart from the two completely opposing sides she had previously believed existed.
There had been that woman she had noticed the other day, for instance, wearing neatly pressed, well-fitting jeans, an immaculate white shirt and a caramelly-coloured blazer which Lucianna had just known would feel wondrously soft to the touch, and to her own astonishment, as she'd studied her, Lucianna had experienced a wistful curiosity to know what it would be like to wear such clothes herself and with such confidence.
She had seen other women, of course, wearing garments she would never wear in a million years—tight, short Lycra skirts and equally tight, close-fitting leggings—but they too had exhibited the same careless confidence, a sort of insouciant ease which Lucianna was becoming increasingly aware that she did not possess.
She wore the clothes she did not just for practicality, as she had always insisted, she had been forced to recognise, but as a means of concealing herself, protecting herself. Almost as though if she was going to be accused of being unfeminine, unwomanly, then she might as well dress as though she wanted to be judged in that way.
She still wasn't sure where it had come from—this unfamiliar shy yearning for something different, to be someone different—and she was still very nervous and wary of it. But for the first time since she had started to grow up she was aware of a need within her to reach out towards the femininity she had previously fought so hard to deny.
Two hours later, with Jake still questioning her on her reading of the books she had bought, she had all but forgotten the turbulent and passionate moments she had spent in his arms.
Relaying the information she had gathered from the books back to Jake, she'd been surprised to discover just how much she had learnt, but if Jake was equally impressed he was concealing it well, his expression impassive, his profile turned slightly away from her, his whole manner towards her rather remote and withdrawn.
Only when she had impishly given him a demon stration of the 'mirroring' technique she had just been reading about did he actually seem to focus on her,
but if the brief flash of anger she saw in his eyes was anything to go by he wasn't as surprised by her progress as she had expected.
'Jake...' Instinctively she reached out to touch his arm, unaware herself of just how much her quick mind had picked up from her reading or just how much her new knowledge was already reflected in the way she moved, talked and smiled. Ten days ago she would never have dreamed of touching Jake or any other man—but more especially Jake—to get his attention, and yet now she was doing it as naturally as though it were something she had always done.
She smiled teasingly at him as she said, 'I think perhaps you ought to read the books as well. You're supposed to respond to this...' she touched him lightly again and moved slightly closer to him, giving him another teasing smile '...by looking properly at me and moving closer to me.'
'It's John you need to practise your flirting techniques on, not me,' Jake told her harshly, moving away from her, 'I think we'd better call it a night...'
Half an hour later, as she drove home, Lucianna felt an odd sense of let-down and disappointment. What had she been expecting? she derided herself. Not praise from Jake, surely? She knew him far too well for that. For as long as she could remember and certainly since she had been a teenager, he had done nothing but criticise her.
Once Lucianna had gone, Jake poured himself a large glass of whisky. He wasn't normally a drinker, but right now...
Just what the hell had he got himself into? And why? He shook his head in self-resignation. He didn't really need to ask himself that question, did he? But
until tonight he had managed to convince himself that his motives were, if not a hundred percent altruistic, then at least ninety-nine percent so.
Of course, what had happened tonight had blown that self-delusion totally apart. It had all been very well reminding himself at the start of how, as he had watched Lucianna growing up, he had often had to bite hard on his tongue to stop himself from quarrelling with her brothers, his friends, about the way they were treating their younger sister. Not that any of them had meant to hurt or harm her—it was just that because of their own upbringing they were unaware of how they were inhibiting her development as a woman, confident and happy in her femininity and her sexuality. He had seen...known, but then for him it was different. For a start, he wasn't Lucianna's brother.
Swearing under his breath, he poured himself another drink, going to sit down in one of the chairs drawn up close to the fire, resting his head back and closing his eyes.
He could still vividly remember the day, the hour, the moment he had recognised just how he really felt about his friends' baby sister, just why, when he was out on a date, instead of enjoying his date's company, he was constantly comparing her with Lucianna, knowing that he would rather be with her, enjoying her wickedly sharp sense of humour and its contrast with her still very naive emotions. He had gone round to the farm to see David, the kitchen door had been open and he had walked in. The telephone, which was located in the kitchen, had started to ring. Upstairs he had heard a door open and then Lucianna had come running downstairs and into the kitchen, hastily wrapping a thin towelling robe around her wet and totally naked body as she did so.
As soon as she had seen him she had crimsoned with embarrassment, a floodtide of colour which had run up her body, scorching her tender, pale skin, filling her nipples with hot colour which had made them look...
Jake swallowed hard. There were some memories that haunted a man for all his life, some sins. She had been all of sixteen and he... He swallowed again. He doubted he would ever get over the sense of shock and self-disgust he had felt at the urge to take hold of her, to wrap her in his arms and plunder the tight virginity of those thrusting, colour-flushed nipples with the hot suckle of his mouth, until she twisted and arched against him, returning the white heat of passion that was coursing through him, scorching him, torturing him, possessing him with the same overwhelming fury with which he wanted to possess her.
Of course he had done no such thing. Of course he had forced himself to turn away whilst she turned and ran back upstairs, and of course neither of them had ever referred to the incident again. But from then on he had taken good care to distance himself from her both physically and emotionally...especially emotionally.
But, of course, it had been too little and far too late. He had been a man then, more than old enough to recognise what he was experiencing, even if that recognition had been coloured by his own distaste, his disgust with himself for falling in love with someone who was still only a girl...a child.
He had tried to cut himself off from what he was feeling, calling himself a pervert and worse, but none of it had done any good. He had, however, comforted himself that he was at least in control of his feelings, totally and absolutely... Until tonight...
And he still wasn't sure just what it had been about seeing her this evening that had destroyed the barriers he had painstakingly built to protect her. Certainly he hadn't enjoyed hearing her talking about John, and certainly the mental image he had had of her kissing him had stretched his self-control to its limits. But it had been more than that, he recognised. There had also been that new air she had about her, that subtle but oh, so alluring sudden awareness of herself as a woman, which he had returned to find her wearing like a little girl pirouetting proudly in her new dress.
How long would it be before she became even more self-aware, before she realised just why he was so determined to hold her at arm's length? And when she did—what then?
He glanced at the telephone. The temptation to ring the farm and say that their arrangement was off was almost overwhelming. It would be easy enough to invent some business trip that would keep him out of the way for a few weeks, but he already knew that he wouldn't do it, that he couldn't do it.
If he loved her as much as he claimed, then surely he loved her enough to help her get what she wanted, the man she wanted. And perhaps once she was safely engaged to him, married to him, he would finally be able to get on with his life.
Lucianna might not be a child any longer, but her feelings for him were still those she had had as a child. She still disliked and distrusted him and there was no way now that he could tell her just why he had had to make her feel like that towards him—no way, no point.
He closed his eyes again. Had she any idea just how close he had come this evening to totally losing control? Just how much he had wanted, ached for her?
'I thought Jake wasn't picking you up until two,' Janey commented with a smile as she caught Lucianna glancing through the kitchen window.
'He's not,' Lucianna agreed, flushing slightly.
'You know, if I didn't know better,' her sister-in-law teased, I'd think you were actually looking forward to this shopping trip.'
'Which just goes to show the sacrifices a woman is prepared to make to get her man,' David interjected, saving Lucianna from the need to defend herself and deny Janey's allegations.
They had told her this morning that, just as she had suspected, Janey was pregnant, and she had felt quite pleased to be able to say truthfully to them that she had half suspected as much.
"That sounds like Jake now,' Janey warned her as a car pulled into the yard. 'Looks like he's as eager for this shopping expedition as you are...!'
'Eager to get it over with,' David muttered. 'I hate shopping...'
'If that's the opening shot in a campaign of getting out of going to choose the nursery equipment, then it's one you're not going to win,' Janey told him cheerfully, laughing at his expression. 'And, unlike you, Jake enjoys shopping, and he's got excellent taste, unlike some men I could name.'
To Lucianna's surprise, once they were in the car Jake announced that he wasn't taking her into the local town but to a new shopping complex which had recently been opened several miles closer to the city.
Lucianna had heard about the complex via one of her customers, who had visited it to buy her outfit for her daughter's wedding. And, whereas the old Lucianna would immediately have objected that there was no point in him taking her there, since she had no intention of listening to his dictatorial views on what she should and shouldn't wear, this new Lucianna found that she was actually having to suppress a small bubble of female excitement as well as the sudden rush of apprehension and familiar dread that the thought of having to go into the—to her— unfamiliar and alien world of clothes normally gave her.
From her books she now understood that how a woman chose to present herself visually carried a very strong non-verbal message, and that the male sex was highly receptive and indeed vulnerable to visual messages.
And as for the impulse which had led her the other day to buy a couple of unbelievably expensive and glossy fashion magazines along with her newspaper and the new car magazine she had originally intended to buy, well, she'd told herself that if she had to endure the self-inflicted torture of having Jake boss her around and tell her what to do she might as well grab what extra help she could to make sure she kept her ordeal as short-lived as possible.
Once she had got over the shock at their cost and past her initial reluctance to turn the first page, she had discovered the cut and line of expensive clothes was, in many ways, as interesting to study as the design of a new car, and she had quickly found that, as with cars, her taste ran to the clean and simple, which would endure, rather than the fussy and over-ornamented—styles which were gimmicky. And already, although Lucianna herself wasn't aware of it, what she had seen not just in the magazines but also through her people-watching exercises had begun subtly to exert an influence over her.
Jake, though, had noticed that the jeans she was wearing were a slightly better fit than the oversized ones she normally favoured, and the crisp white shirt, although still a man's and, he suspected, one she had purloined from her brother's wardrobe, was much more flattering than the heavy checked work shirts she normally wore.
Lucianna was forced to admit to herself that she was impressed by the shopping complex as she and Jake walked across the thankfully not too busy paved piazza area. Sapling trees, shrubs and attractive planters 'interspersed with seats, along with a good mixture of restaurants, bars and coffee shops, all of which had pleasant outdoor seating areas, all helped to lend a relaxing and almost continental atmosphere to the place, and Lucianna was also impressed by the absence of litter and general air of cleanliness.
'Where do you want to start?' Jake asked her. 'Or would you prefer to have a cup of coffee first?'
The thought of a cup of coffee was tempting, and not just as a means of a delaying tactic, Lucianna acknowledged, but she still shook her head determinedly. Now that they were here she wanted to get the whole thing over and done with as quickly as possible.
'What's wrong?' Jake taunted her softly. 'Afraid you might lose your nerve?'
Lucianna flashed him a disdainful look and tossed her head, denying fiercely, 'Certainly not.'
Hiding his smile at her predictable reaction, Jake indicated a shop on the other side of the square. Lucianna started to walk towards it and then stopped, frowning slightly and hesitating.
The understated elegance of the window display seemed to indicate that it would be one of those shops with the kind of assistants who would look down their elegant noses at her and make her wish she were a million miles away, but Jake was walking determinedly towards it and she wasn't going to have him thinking that she was nervous or, even worse, afraid.
'This shop is part of a European chain that specialises in providing a specific look which continues from season to season,' Jake explained.
'Really? How interesting,' Lucianna replied, covering her growing feeling of insecurity and panic with the sarcastic retort, adding, 'Well, that must make things easy for you, I suppose. If you bring all your girlfriends here for their clothes, then at least you won't miss recognising the latest one in the street.'
'And just what the hell is that supposed to mean?'
Lucianna was shocked into instant immobility as, instead of treating her comment with the contemptuous amusement she was used to, Jake suddenly wheeled round to confront her, his mouth a dangerously thin line and his eyes cold with anger.
'It...it wasn't meant to mean anything,' Lucianna denied. 'It...it was just supposed to be a...joke...'
'A joke?' Jake's eyebrows rose. 'Really? Well, I don't find it particularly funny to be accused of being the kind of man who has a chain of interchangeable bimbos dragging through his life, and for your information I have never suggested nor would I ever insult anyone by doing so, that a woman is some kind of doll, a toy, to be dressed up or undressed at my or any other man's whim. And furthermore I find it extremely unamusing, not to say offensive, that you should 'suggest I might,' Jake informed her acerbically.
Despite the fact that his obvious anger had shocked her, Lucianna fought back valiantly, determined not to be left wrong-footed, as she pointed out, 'Well, I'm sorry if I've got the wrong impression, but you're the one who's always changed his girlfriends more frequently than most men change their...their socks...' ! 'Really?' Jake challenged her. 'Do go on... It seems to me that you know more about my private life than I do myself.
'What a wonderfully insightful person you must be, Lucianna,' he marvelled sarcastically. 'And there I was thinking you never noticed anything that didn't come with wheels and an engine, and yet here you are, completely au fait with the most personal details of my life...more au fait than I am myself, as it happens, since the last time I had anything even approaching a relationship was—' He stopped speaking as Lucianna, unable to control herself any longer, interrupted him hotly to say, 'I don't know why you're so angry, or pretending to be so...so... I heard the way David used to boast about the number of girls you and he took out,' she reminded him. Both her eyes and her voice mirrored her feelings, revealing to him far more than she knew as she added defensively, 'I thought it...you were...disgusting... boasting and bragging like that and—'
'Not me,' Jake interrupted her cuttingly. 'I don't recall ever having discussed such a subject in your hearing, and in fact...'
Forced by the sheer grim sternness of his voice to reconsider her own hotly, hastily spoken words, Lucianna was obliged to concede reluctantly, 'All right...I might never have heard you say it, but you were part of it.. .part of what David was talking about. You and he—'
'He and I might once have behaved with all the boorish stupidity that teenage boys are capable of displaying at times,' Jake interrupted her to agree, 'but the wholesale seduction and abandonment of a series of defenceless, vulnerable teenage girls in the style you were implying was totally and completely fictitious.
'For one thing, you underrate the intelligence and sense of self-preservation of your own sex if you think otherwise, Lucianna...and, for another, teenage boys have a capacity for self-aggrandisement and exaggeration that knows no limits. It's a fault that most of us grew out of very quickly indeed, and the kind of boastful comments teenage boys make shouldn't be taken too seriously, you know...'
Lucianna shivered slightly as she turned away from him, her voice low and slightly shaky as she told him passionately, 'I hated hearing the way you talked about...about girls...and...'
'Sex?' Jake supplied softly for her.
Lucianna could feel her face starting to burn. Why, oh, why had she ever brought up this subject? It was something she found it hard enough to think about herself even in the privacy of her own thoughts, never mind discuss with anyone else—and most especially with Jake.
'Yes, I can understand how some of the things you overheard must have made you feel.' Pensively Jake watched her. Suddenly an awful lot of things were beginning to fall into place.
'No, you can't,' Lucianna contradicted him wildly, the panic starting to flood through her as she mentally relived the emotions and fears she had suffered through inadvertently listening in on her brothers' macho conversations coupled with the well-intentioned but clumsy lectures they had given her on the wisdom of the way she should behave with boys and the pitfalls that lay in wait for her if she didn't take heed of their advice.
'You're a man and you don't...you can't—' Abruptly Lucianna stopped, conscious that she had been on the verge of saying too much.
Jake, though, was refusing to let the subject drop, prompting gently, 'I can't what?'
Tight-lipped, Lucianna shook her head and looked longingly towards the interior of the shop. What ten minutes ago had seemed an inhospitable, unfriendly, alien place now seemed like a welcome haven when placed alongside Jake's unwanted probings into her most closely guarded thoughts and feelings.
'I can't what, Lucianna?' Jake persisted. 'I can understand how destructive, how emotionally and physically blighting it must be for a young girl on the brink of exploring her own sexuality and emotions to overhear a group of young men discussing such subjects without the guards they would normally put on their tongues in the presence of her sex.'
'It didn't do me any harm.' Lucianna immediately defended her brothers. 'In fact, it did me a favour. At least I knew what boys thought...'
'You knew what boys thought, yes,' Jake agreed quietly, 'but what about men, Lucianna? Did you...do you know how they think and feel, or did the lessons you inadvertently learned from your brothers go so deep that they instilled in you a fear and dread of being talked about as your brothers talked about their first sexual experiences? Did their conversations inspire in you such a dread of having all your dreams violated by the crassness of some boy who might later boast about his sexual conquest of you to his friends that sex is still something you view with distaste and embarrassment?'
'Of course not,' Lucianna denied quickly. 'In fact...' she tilted her chin towards him bravely as she lied '...I don't think anything of the kind... I—actually, I like sex; I like it a lot...'
'I see. So if I were to suggest that instead of continuing with our shopping trip you and I go back to the Hall and spend the afternoon in bed mutually enjoying sex you'd be perfectly happy to agree?'
Lucianna was almost unable to believe her ears, her shock showing in her eyes, her voice quavering betrayingly as she responded, 'No... No, I wouldn't.'
'But you just said you like sex,' Jake pointed out reasonably, 'and since I haven't had a relationship with anyone for quite some considerable time, and of course being a man...'
'I can't go to bed with you,' Lucianna protested squeakily.
'Why not? I'm no different from any other man,' Jake told her, adding silkily, with a deliberately sexual downward glance at her body, 'I don't intend to boast, but I think you'll find I'm equally satisfactory as any of the other men you've had.'
'Other men!' Lucianna's eyes rounded. 'I don't... there haven't... I think you're forgetting about John,' she managed to say.
'Ah, yes, John,' Jake agreed, but then added swiftly, 'But he isn't here, is he, and you and I...?'
Lucianna had had enough. Now that she was over the initial shock of Jake's astounding proposition, common sense was pointing out several salient facts to her. Tossing her head, she told Jake forthrightly, 'You're just trying to make fun of me. I know perfectly well you don't want to go to bed with me, you don't want to have sex with me...'
'You're right, I don't,' Jake agreed, but as he watched the emotions chase one another across her face he added mentally to himself, But I sure as hell want to make love to you, again and again and again, and if I had your precious brothers here with me now, friendship or not, I'd wring their wretched necks.
To Lucianna's relief he started to walk towards the shop, but as she made to follow him he stopped and turned back to her, catching her totally off guard as he asked her almost absently, 'Presumably there aren't any problems with the sexual side of your relationship with John...?'
Immediately Lucianna bristled.
'Of course there aren't,' she denied, thankful that Jake wasn't standing close enough to hear the way her heart was hammering. The last thing she wanted was for Jake of all people to discover her most closely guarded and shameful secret...which was that she was still a virgin.
Technically she knew what sex was all about, of course. How could she not do so with her outspoken elder brothers? Elder brothers who had not been merely outspoken in their frank teenage discussions about their own sex lives, when they thought she wouldn't understand or hear what they were saying, but who had been equally outspoken and frank in their fraternal advice to her about the way in which she should respond to any sexual approaches to herself.
'Say no and make sure you keep on saying no,' had been David's stern advice. "That way they'll know they can't take advantage of you and they'll respect you.'
'Yes, and if they don't they'll have us to answer to,' Lewis had added fiercely.
What they hadn't told her, though, Lucianna recognised, was when and how a girl changed her no to a yes and, even more importantly, as she was discovering via her relationship with John, how she should let a man know that she was ready to be given the option to do so.
In the early days of their relationship John had certainly been keen enough to try and coax her into bed, and she, faithful to her brothers' stem lectures, had very firmly said no, but in the weeks before his departure he had seemed quite happy with the tepid kisses and caresses they had exchanged and Lucianna had been at a loss to know how to generate a little more passion between them.
When she had tried tentatively to snuggle up a little closer to him he had simply asked her if she was cold; when she had tried to deepen the kisses they had shared he had seemed oblivious to the hints she was trying to give him.
Hopefully, though, the tips she had picked up via the books she had bought should help her to make things clear to bom, but it was a subject she certainly wasn't about to discuss with Jake. Jake, who, despite his surprising announcement earlier about the lack of any current relationship in his life, certainly had far more experience of her sex than she was ever likely to have of his.
Caught up in her thoughts, Lucianna suddenly realised that she had actually entered the shop and that the girl approaching her, far from being the haughty, disdainful type of person she had been dreading, was actually smiling at her with genuine warmth.
'Would you like some help?' she asked Lucianna. 'Or would you prefer to be left alone to browse?'
'We need—'
'I prefer to browse.'
Lucianna overrode Jake firmly, and just as firmly ignored his sardonic comment, meant for her ears only. "This isn't a jeans shop, you know,' he said as the girl retreated, returning to the pile of jumpers she had been folding when they'd walked in, leaving Lucianna and Jake on their own.
'I do know that,' Lucianna returned with pointed emphasis, before turning on her heel and, ignoring Jake, walking over to study a selection of colour coordinated clothes which had caught her eye.
At first sight, the plain, caramelly-coloured coordinates for which she was heading might have seemed dull in comparison to the much brighter range of clothes the shop also carried, but Lucianna had remembered seeing similarly coloured clothes being modelled by a girl with her colouring in one of her fashion magazines.
She reached out and touched the fabric of a pair of trousers uncertainly. It felt cool and silky soft. She frowned as she studied the swing ticket. Tencel', it said, which left her none the wiser apart from her instinctive awareness that Tencel, whatever it was, made the fabric feel good and hang well.
There was a brochure on a coffee table beside her turned open at a page depicting the trousers she was currently examining. In the photograph they were teamed with a neatly fitting short jacket casually unbuttoned over what looked like a plain cream silk top.
"This is our newest range,' the salesgirl announced helpfully, suddenly materialising at Lucianna's side. 'It's my favourite and I've really fallen for the shell,' she added enthusiastically, whilst Lucianna looked blank and wondered frantically what on earth 'the shell' was until she saw that Jake had removed a hanger with the cream silk top on it and was holding it out to her.
He said quietly, 'Yes, it would suit you, Luce.'
The top, of course; she remembered now seeing it described as a 'shell' in her magazine. For once she was too grateful for Jake's intervention to object to his interference, but that still didn't quite explain, as she told herself later, quite just how she came to be standing in front of him half an hour later, selfconsciously wearing not just the shell but the trousers and the jacket that went with it as well, along with the toning scarf, whilst the salesgirl enthused about the practicality of adding the sleeveless dress that was also part of the collection to the trousers, since the same jacket could be worn over it.
'I don't want...' Lucianna began, and then stopped,
a fiery blush staining her skin as she saw the way Jake was looking at her.
'What is it? What's wrong? Why are you looking at me like that?' she hissed defensively at him whilst the salesgirl went to find the dress.
Jake shook his head.
'Nothing's wrong,' he responded shortly, but he was frowning, Lucianna noticed, and suddenly the burning feeling of self-confidence and heady, unfamiliar pleasure in her own appearance that she had experienced when she had studied her reflection in the changing-room mirrors evaporated, bringing her abruptly back down to earth, making her feel awkward and uncomfortable and longing for the protection of her heavy denims to replace the silk trousers she was wearing.
As he turned his back on her Jake questioned with quiet inner savagery if he was totally sane. Knowing what he did about his feelings for her, it had surely been total madness to bring Lucianna somewhere where he was forced to watch her outer transformation from chrysalis to butterfly. He knew just what effect she was going to have on the rest of his sex when they saw her lovely lissom body dressed in that outfit, was aware that, whilst outwardly perfectly respectable, she seemed to hint with every movement she made at the delicate femininity of the body the suit was supposed to cover and shield.
'You really do have the most wonderful figure,' the salesgirl enthused, coming back with the dress over her arm and pausing to admire the effect of her coaxing and tweaking as Lucianna paused, reluctant to respond, to listen to her.
'And that colour is definitely you as well,' she added truthfully. 'There's something about clothes like these that makes you feel and look so feminine, isn't there?' she said warmly, and Lucianna, who, after witnessing Jake's reaction, had been on the point of rejecting the outfit, hesitated and then frowned as she glanced into a mirror set at an angle to the shop floor several feet away.
In it she could just glimpse the back view of a woman wearing the same outfit as she was herself but on this woman it looked truly elegant, truly feminine. Lucianna lifted her hand to remove the scarf and then stood staring at the woman in the mirror, immobilised by the shock of realising that the reflection she could see was her own, that she was the woman who looked truly elegant, that the unfamiliar back view she had been admiring was, in actual fact, her own.
'I'll take it,' she told the girl positively, before she could allow herself to change her mind. 'All of it...and the dress as well,' she added.
The girl's smile widened.
Ten minutes later, as she paid for her purchases, Lucianna shot Jake a triumphant look. . He might not think she had what it took to be able to wear such feminine clothes,but the salesgirl had thought differently and so had she, Lucianna decided firmly. She couldn't wait to see John's face when he saw her wearing her new things.
'I hope you don't mind my saying so,' the salesgirl commented to Lucianna as she handed her a huge carrier bag containing her new clothes, 'but I love the highlights you've had woven into your hair. Would you mind telling me where you had them done...?'
Highlights! Lucianna gave her a puzzled look, whilst Jake, who had overheard their conversation, duly explained for her, I'm afraid they're the work of the sun.'
'You mean they're natural? Lucky you, the girl told her enviously. 'I have to pay a fortune for mine and they don't look anything like as good.'
Lucianna was still frowning as they left the shop. Highlights... Did the salesgirl mean those odd little goldy bits that had always lightened her hair in the summer?
'Coffee?' Jake suggested as he and Lucianna left the shop, but Lucianna shook her head and demanded instead,
'You didn't like it, did you? The outfit I just bought—you didn't like it. I could see it in your face...'
'On the contrary,' Jake assured her truthfully, 'I like it very much.' Where did it come from, he wondered ruefully, this female ability to sense and home in on any unwary male reaction with all the deadly accuracy of a heat-seeking missile?
'But you didn't like it on me,' Lucianna persisted. 'I suppose you think I'm not feminine enough, not womanly enough to wear it...'
Jake was frowning again now, she observed, his mouth hardening in that dangerous way that always made her heart start to beat just a little bit too quickly. Not that she was afraid of Jake's disapproval—no way...no way at all, she assured herself hastily.
'Anyway, I don't care what you think; it doesn't matter,' Lucianna informed him with a shake of her head before he could reply. 'It's what John thinks that matters...'
'What he thinks or what he does?' Jake demanded harshly, his own emotions overwhelming the need for caution and 'good sense. 'What kind of reaction is it you're expecting from him, Luce? What is it you want him to do? Take one look at you and want you so much that he can't wait to start ripping the things off you? Do you expect him to take one look at you and immediately declare his undying love? Because if you do...'
'Because if I do, what?' Lucianna challenged him angrily, her fingers curling tightly over the handle of the carrier bag as her face flushed with mortification. 'Just because you don't think I'm...that John loves me. Well, he does love me,' she told him proudly, 'and when he comes back...'
She paused, and Jake could see the tears she was fighting to blink away glittering in her eyes as he cursed himself inwardly for his stupidity. The last thing he'd wanted to do was to hurt her and he ached to be able to make her understand that loving someone, really loving them, had nothing to do with what they wore or how the rest of the world perceived them, and everything to do with what they were, and that a man who could only love a woman he could display on his arm like a pretty trinket wasn't, in his opinion, much of a man at all. But how could he
13-11-07, 11:27 PM
CHAPTER FOUR
جديد مواضيع قسم الارشيف
العرض العادي
