Mission: Make-Over

by Penny Jordan

  Had she misread the situation before he’d gone away—the growing distance between them and John’s increasing tendency to treat her as though he was growing tired of her? Or was she being overly suspicious in thinking that there was more to his sudden interest in her than met the eye?

  And then, as she looked away from John, she suddenly froze as, totally unexpectedly, she saw Jake walking across the airport concourse. At her side John’s voice was a distant, monotonous blur—just like John himself—her whole attention, yes, her whole being focused on Jake through the waves of anguished longing and pain that rocked through her.

  How was it possible to love someone so much and yet at the same time almost hate them for the hurt they had caused you? Abruptly Jake stood still and Lucianna felt as though her heart had stopped beating as he turned his head slowly, searching the concourse for someone. She held her breath and then released it on a sharp, rattling sob as she saw him look directly at her.

  Across the distance that separated them she could still see his expression, and his eyes and mouth hardened as he looked at her.

  Desperate to salvage something of her pride and self-respect, Lucianna acted entirely on instinct, grabbing hold of John’s arm and snuggling up close to him as she smiled at him through her pain.

  It seemed almost grotesque now to think that once the immediacy and enthusiasm of John’s appreciative response to her gesture would have meant so much to her, whilst now it meant so little.

  ‘Let’s get out of here,’ she heard John muttering ardently, and through her tears she could just about see Jake turning on his heel and walking contemptuously away as John urged her towards the exit.

  ‘Look, Luce, if you want to give your business another go, Janey and I…’ David began awkwardly the day after John’s return, but Lucianna shook her head as she smiled wanly at him.

  ‘Thanks, David, but no…Anyway it’s too late,’ she told him quietly. ‘I’ve already put the ad in the paper—it comes out tomorrow.

  ‘Hopefully by the time you and Janey get back from holiday the barn will be empty. What’s happening about the stock whilst you’re away, by the way?’ she asked him incuriously.

  ‘There’s no need for you to worry about that,’ David assured her. ‘That’s all sorted out…You could do with a holiday yourself,’ he added. ‘Perhaps you and John…?’

  Lucianna shook her head. ‘John’s too busy at work to take any time off at the moment,’ she told her brother, not untruthfully, but what she didn’t add was that the last thing she wanted was to place herself in a position where she would have to spend time alone in John’s company.

  ‘Are you sure you don’t want me to drive you to the airport?’ she asked David.

  ‘No, it’s all right; Janey’s booked the taxi.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Just think, another twelve hours and we’ll be away from all this.’

  ‘Stop trying to make me jealous.’ Lucianna smiled, trying to enter into his playful mood and not wanting to spoil his anticipation of their holiday with her own unhappiness and despair. Tonight John was taking her out for a meal, not that she particularly wanted to go, not in fact that she wanted to see him at all really. Despite the fact that he was full of fulsome praise for the change in her outward appearance, Lucianna sensed that he was at heart no more emotionally involved with her than she was with him.

  ‘Right, that’s it,’ Janey announced as she came into the kitchen. ‘The cases are finally packed…Have you got the passports and our tickets ready, David? The taxi will be here soon…’

  ‘They’re safe in my jacket pocket,’ David assured her. ‘I’ll go and bring down the cases.’

  Half an hour after David and Janey had gone Lucianna went upstairs to get ready for her date with John.

  With a wry smile she removed her new trouser suit from her wardrobe. She had changed immeasurably in countless ways from the girl who had been dragged so reluctantly and defiantly on that shopping trip with Jake. Gently she touched the fabric of the suit. Like a faded rose packed carefully in tissue to protect it from the damaging light of the sun she had stored away her own precious memories, and one of those was the look on Jake’s face when he had seen her wearing the silk suit.

  As she showered and dressed and put on her make-up Lucianna acknowledged that she was not looking forward to the evening ahead at all.

  What amazed her almost more than anything else was what she could possibly have seen in John in the first place. He was, she realised, everything she most disliked in a man—immature, self-centred, wholly lacking in sensitivity or any genuine warmth; nothing whatsoever like…

  Shakily she put down the brush she had just picked up to apply her lipstick.

  That was an avenue down which her thoughts must not be allowed to go.

  She had just slipped on her suit when she heard a car drive into the farmyard. Frowning, she went downstairs to open the door.

  John was half an hour too early for their date, but fortunately she was virtually ready. However, as she opened the back door into the yard she realised that it wasn’t John who had just driven in but Jake.

  ‘You’re too late,’ she told him abruptly as he strode towards her. ‘David and Janey have already left.’

  ‘It’s you I’ve come to see, not them,’ Jake replied bitingly, walking into the kitchen and closing the door behind him, whilst Lucianna retreated to the other side of the kitchen table, watching warily as he reached into his jacket pocket and produced a familiar envelope.

  ‘I found this waiting amongst my post,’ he told her tersely. ‘Would you like to explain to me, Lucianna, what’s going on?’ he demanded as he tipped the pieces of the contract onto the table in front of her.

  ‘I should have thought it was self-explanatory,’ Lucianna told him proudly, her eyes flashing, emotion giving her voice a mature huskiness as she added, ‘I know what you were trying to do, Jake, but it won’t work—you can’t buy me or…I’m not for sale,’ she told him fiercely.

  ‘But your business is,’ Jake retorted curtly.

  ‘I’ve decided to re-train…do something else,’ Lucianna informed him.

  ‘You’ve decided?’ Jake challenged her. ‘Or did someone else make the decision for you, Lucianna…? John perhaps? You really must love him one hell of a lot,’ he said savagely, and then added with what to Lucianna felt like unbelievable cruelty, ‘Certainly one hell of a lot more than he does you.’

  ‘You have no right to say that,’ she responded fiercely. How dared he question John’s feelings for her when his own…when he…?

  ‘No right?’ she heard him mutter fiercely, and he strode round the table and totally unexpectedly grabbed hold of her, his fingers biting painfully into the tender flesh of her upper arms as he gave her a small shake. ‘Lucianna…I…’

  ‘Don’t touch me.’ Lucianna panicked, almost screaming the words at him, her body reacting with helpless intensity to his touch and his proximity, her aching need for him filling her with a heat, a hunger that caused her to tremble violently and visibly. Half of her ached to close the distance between them and to feel the longed-for sensation of his body close to her own, against her own, within her own, whilst the other half…the other half was gripped by a terrified headlong flight into total panic as she tried to pull away from him and put a safer distance between them.

  ‘Don’t touch you?’ she heard Jake repeating harshly through gritted teeth. ‘I’ve heard you singing a very different song…’

  Instantly Lucianna went completely rigid, her face paper-white, her eyes huge, bruised pools of feminine pride and pain as she asked him piteously, ‘How could you? How dare you bring that up now?’

  ‘Oh, I can and I dare,’ Jake assured her. ‘I can and I dare because…’

  He was mesmerising her with his voice and his eyes, Lucianna decided dizzily; he must be, otherwise she would have been fighting to pull free of him instead of simply standing there, mute and bemused, as his hands travelled up over her arms to cup her f
ace and hold it still. He bent over her, his body blocking out the light as he lowered his head towards hers, his mouth unerringly finding hers…His mouth…

  Too late Lucianna tried to move, to avoid the descent of his head and the hot, savage pressure of his kiss, because her lips were already clinging helplessly to his, remembering, returning their passionate caresses, trembling, parting, her whole body shuddering in despairing pleasure as she felt the first swift thrust of his tongue inside her mouth.

  She wanted him so much. Loved him so badly. She wanted him to pick her up right now and carry her upstairs, lay her on her bed and tell her he loved her whilst he…

  Tell her he loved her? But he didn’t love her…and he had already made that more than plain to her…

  Abruptly Lucianna came to her senses, pushing Jake away as she struggled to suppress the small sob of desolation rising in her throat.

  ‘Just in time,’ Jake told her cynically as they both heard the sound of a car pulling into the yard. ‘But I can tell you this, Lucianna…’

  ‘No,’ Lucianna denied, covering her ears with her hands in a gesture that was almost childish, her voice distraught with pain as she told him, ‘I don’t want to hear anything you have to say, Jake…anything…’ And then, before he could reply, she opened the kitchen door and hurried into the yard towards John’s car.

  ‘What’s he doing here?’ John asked her as he opened the car door for her, frowning in Jake’s direction as he saw Jake standing in the doorway.

  ‘Oh, he came over to see David,’ Lucianna fibbed. She had no qualms about leaving Jake in the farmhouse. She knew he had his own key, an arrangement David had made with him years ago, and she knew that despite their own quarrel and the enmity which now existed between them he would be scrupulous about locking the farm door behind him when he left. Fortunately she had instinctively reached for her bag as she’d left the kitchen, so at least she would be able to get back in again.

  ‘I’m really looking forward to this evening,’ John told her as he drove out of the yard, turning his head to give her a meaningful glance that made her heart sink. ‘You mean a lot to me, Luce,’ he said warmly, reaching out to take hold of her hand before she could stop him and giving it a damp squeeze. ‘An awful lot,’ he emphasised in a voice she assumed was meant to sound sincere and sexy but which in fact to her sounded almost exactly the opposite.

  As she firmly extracted her hand from his and looked away, she couldn’t help wondering how he would react if she reminded him that for someone who claimed to think an awful lot of her he had found it remarkably easy to walk away from her. And she hadn’t forgotten all those hurtful criticisms he had made before he had left for Canada, but since she had no wish to provoke a quarrel with him she kept her thoughts to herself, merely saying quietly and with a certain cynicism in her voice, ‘I take it, then, that there were no particularly attractive girls at the Canadian office?’

  John certainly was out to impress her, Lucianna admitted half an hour later as he pulled into the car park of a particularly prestigious and expensive local restaurant. However, once they were inside she discovered that his actions were not quite as generous as she had initially assumed. She had learned quite early on in their relationship that John had a thrifty streak, and that, it seemed, was something about him which had not changed.

  John was not taking her out for a meal à deux as she had initially believed; instead they were joining a party of his colleagues who were celebrating the fiftieth birthday of the senior partner.

  ‘J.J. is paying for everything,’ John whispered to her enthusiastically as he slipped his arm around her waist in a proprietorial fashion and urged her forward.

  It was odd to think that once—and not so very long ago at that—the looks of disbelief on the faces of John’s work colleagues as they stared at her would have filled her with joy that at last she had proved herself worthy of being with John. Now it meant nothing—just as John himself meant nothing.

  She saw the look of hostility that Felicity gave her as she clung to the arm of a much older, overweight, balding man, teetering slightly in her too high heels. Quickly Lucianna looked away.

  J.J., whom she had only met previously at the firm’s Christmas dinner dance, smiled benevolently at her as John propelled her forward and re-introduced her.

  ‘So you’re John’s girlfriend. Excellent, excellent,’ he commented, giving her a warm smile and John an oddly probing, hard-eyed look. ‘John tells us that it will soon be wedding bells,’ he added jovially.

  Lucianna tried not to let her shock show. ‘Wedding bells?’ she questioned John abruptly as a waiter ushered them to their places. ‘What was he—?’

  ‘Not now,’ John told her curtly. ‘Hello, Basil,’ he greeted the man standing listening to them.

  ‘So how does it feel to be back? Rather a shorter stay in Canada than was originally planned. Still, if I had a fiancée as pretty as yours waiting at home for me I expect I’d have been eager to get back too…’

  ‘Fiancée?’ Lucianna expostulated as soon as he was out of earshot. ‘John, what’s going on? You and I aren’t engaged, and—’

  ‘We’ll talk about it later,’ John interrupted her. ‘Just don’t say anything, there’s a good girl, and I’ll explain everything later.’

  Lucianna stared at him. Be a good girl…? How dared he adopt that kind of tone, that kind of manner with her…?

  ‘John…’ she began warningly, but he was shaking his head, and since the other guests at either side of them were taking their seats Lucianna acknowledged that she had no option but to wait until they had more privacy to both demand an explanation and to tell him that, far from being his fiancée, as of this evening their relationship was well and truly over!

  The meal dragged on interminably. A small frown creased Lucianna’s forehead as she saw how much John was drinking. Sweat beaded his upper lip and his fair complexion looked unhealthily flushed. Suddenly Lucianna could see how he would be in twenty years’ time. How on earth had she ever thought him attractive?

  Automatically she stood up.

  ‘Where are you going?’ John demanded.

  ‘To the ladies,’ Lucianna informed him quietly.

  There was only one other girl in the ladies’ cloakroom when Lucianna pushed open the door and her heart sank as she saw who it was.

  Felicity and her ‘boyfriend’ were seated almost opposite Lucianna and John and Lucianna had noticed that she too was drinking heavily.

  ‘You think you’ve got it made, don’t you?’ she sneered to Lucianna. ‘You really think that the reason John’s come back ahead of time is because of you. Well, you couldn’t be more wrong…’ She gave Lucianna a pleased smirk before toying with her already thick lipgloss.

  ‘The real reason he’s come back…sorry, been sent back…ahead of time is because our John…your John…has been having an affair with the wife of one of the Canadian partners. And he found out about it and John’s been sent home in disgrace, although of course it’s all been played down. The wife is insisting it was all a mistake and that her husband’s got it wrong, and as for John—well, John’s claiming that far from getting himself involved with another man’s wife he’s actually been counting the days until he got home to his own little wife-to-be.

  ‘He doesn’t really want to marry you at all…but he knows that unless he toes the line and produces a wife p.d.q. he’s going to be out of a job.

  ‘Nothing to say?’ she challenged Lucianna dulcetly. ‘Well, if you don’t believe me why don’t you ask John? Not that he’ll tell you the truth. John’s got quite an eye for our sex on the quiet, you know. The Canadian partner’s wife wasn’t his first indiscretion. He likes them older and married…it makes them so much more grateful and so much easier to get rid of when the affair has lost its lustre…

  ‘Oh, dear, have I shocked you?’ she cooed with patent insincerity when Lucianna made a small shocked sound. ‘But surely you must have been suspicious? After all, before
he went away he’d made it pretty obvious that he’d lost interest in you, hadn’t he? So you must have wondered what was going on when he came back very much the adoring lover…Not, of course, that the two of you have been lovers, have you? He told me that the night he and I…Whoops! I don’t suppose you know about that either, do you?’

  Lucianna waited until she had gone before going to the foyer to use the payphone to ring for a taxi, and to ask the receptionist for a small piece of paper so that she could write John a note. She kept it short and succinct, telling him that their relationship, such as it was, was over and adding that she would prefer it if he did not make any attempt to get in touch with her.

  Strangely, as she climbed into the taxi and gave the driver the address of the farm, her strongest feeling was one of intense relief, a sense of having escaped—John’s affair or affairs meant nothing whatsoever to her, and she was simply quietly thankful that the fact that they had never had an intimate physical relationship meant that she need have no fears for her own health and well-being.

  As the taxi turned into the farm lane, she instructed the driver to drop her at the normally seldom used front door instead of driving round into the yard.

  John was a part of her life that was now—thankfully—over. She only wished she could say the same about the pain that loving Jake was causing her, but instinct told her that Jake and her love for him were things that she would never be able to forget or ignore.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  JAKE had just stepped out of the shower when he heard the taxi draw up outside the front of the farmhouse. Grabbing a towel, he hurried downstairs, reaching the hallway just as Lucianna was pushing open the front door.