The Friendship Barrier

by Penny Jordan

  From wanting to keep his friendship at all costs, she had switched to almost resenting him. Today, when he had questioned her about Keith, watching her with a look in his eyes that told her he knew she was not attracted to the other man, she had felt a deep sense of anger, mingled with a strange primeval fear.

  Thoroughly confused, she picked up a paperback book she had bought recently, but, despite its bestseller status, she found she could not get engrossed in it, and she was almost glad when it was eventually time for her to go to bed.

  * * *

  Whether because Jake had elected to take a couple of days off or whether because of a natural increase in work-flow, Stephanie didn’t know, but the week following Jessie’s luncheon party was so busy that she wasn’t able to join her friend for lunch until the Thursday.

  ‘Where on earth have you been all week?’ Jessie complained when they were seated opposite one another in their favourite lunchtime haunt. ‘It’s as though your office has been under siege.’

  ‘We have been busy,’ Stephanie admitted. ‘I haven’t been able to leave before seven most evenings.’

  ‘Mmmm…’ Jessie glanced speculatively at her, ‘and I hear on the grapevine that Jake himself has been running you home.’

  Stephanie hid her surprise as well as she could, but obviously not well enough because Jessie grinned.

  ‘Oh, believe me, you two are a prime item of gossip in the staff-room. They all think it’s very romantic—boss falls for secretary.’

  ‘They’re letting their imaginations run away with them,’ Stephanie said as lightly as she could, ‘and they seem to be forgetting Susy Waldron.’

  ‘Not really. It’s just that none of us ever get taken home by our bosses when we work late, but then, none of us seem to have the sort of special relationship with them that you have with Jake.’

  It was plain to Stephanie that Jessie would have liked to know more, but she fobbed her off by changing the subject. On the way back to the office she was very thoughtful. Had there always been gossip in the office about her and Jake? After all, he had always taken her home when she worked late, primarily because he knew of her fear of travelling alone, especially during the dark evenings, but because she had never had a close friend among the other girls before she had never dreamed that she and Jake might be the object of speculative gossip.

  ‘Fancy coming round for lunch on Sunday?’ Jessie asked her as they entered the office building. ‘Mum says you’re more than welcome and Keith’s pretty keen for you to come as well.’

  ‘No, I’m afraid I…’ on the point of telling her that she would be spending a working weekend with Jake, Stephanie checked, ‘I can’t…’ she finished hesitantly, ‘I’m going away for the weekend.’

  ‘Oh. Somewhere nice?’

  ‘Er… yes… an old schoolfriend,’ Stephanie improvised wildly, wishing now when it was too late that she had simply told Jessie the truth.

  They parted outside Stephanie’s office door, and just as Stephanie was about to open it, Jake strode past her frowning darkly.

  ‘What’s got into him?’ Jessie enquired once he had gone. ‘Whatever he had for lunch obviously didn’t agree with him.’

  Smiling faintly, Stephanie excused herself. She knew that Jake had been lunching with Susy, and he was back earlier than she had expected.

  They were so busy during the afternoon that there was no opportunity for Stephanie to ask Jake about the arrangements for the weekend. At six o’clock when he had finished signing the last letter, he came out and dumped the correspondence on her desk.

  ‘How long will it take you to finish up here?’ he asked glancing at his gold watch. The shiny metal glinted under the fluorescent light, fine dark hairs shadowing his sinewy wrist. Jake’s hands were lean and long-fingered, the nails clean and well-kept and, to her absolute horror, Stephanie experienced a momentary urge to know their touch against her skin.

  ‘Stephanie?’

  The crisp sound of her name jolted her back to normality. ‘Er. Half an hour,’ she murmured huskily, trying to regain control of her disturbed senses. Jake touching her? Why on earth had that happened?

  ‘I’ll drop you off at your flat and then pick you up in the morning at seven sharp,’ Jake continued. ‘We should make Mile End easily by late morning that way. Do you want to take this machine?’ He tapped her electronic typewriter lightly, raising his eyebrows.

  ‘Yes, I think I will. I’ll just get a couple of extra ribbon cartridges for it, and plenty of paper.’

  ‘Does your “friend” know where you’re spending the weekend?’ For a moment, Stephanie thought he meant Jessie, and said awkwardly, ‘No… no, I told her I was staying with friends… She seems to think… that is…’ she bit her lip and then realised that Jake was frowning. ‘Go on,’ he instructed sharply, ‘we seem to be at cross purposes, but I suspect what you were about to say might prove extremely enlightening. I was referring to your male friend—the one you kiss so gratefully when he takes you home. You, I take it, were referring to Jessie Hargreaves? Now why, I wonder, should you find it necessary to lie to her?’

  ‘I did it without thinking,’ Stephanie admitted. ‘You see, she was teasing me about… about the gossip about you and me—apparently the whole office knows that you take me home when we work late and…’

  ‘And she jumped to the wrong conclusion, and to prevent her carrying the tale home to her brother, you decided it might not be a good idea for her to know you were spending the next four days with me.’

  Flushing with temper at his sardonic tone and expression, Stephanie said curtly, ‘It wasn’t like that at all. It never even occurred to me that she might tell Keith… I just thought you wouldn’t like to think the whole office was gossiping about us.’

  ‘Oh, so it was my reputation that was worrying you?’ he drawled cynically. ‘Then we’ll just have to hope you aren’t caught out in your lie, won’t we?’

  Something about his relaxed manner jarred on Stephanie.

  ‘Did you know that… that people gossiped about us?’ she asked, watching him.

  He shrugged powerful shoulders. ‘Of course.’

  ‘And it doesn’t bother you?’

  His laughter angered her. ‘What man is ever “bothered” by people thinking he’s involved in a sexual relationship with an attractive female, just as long as he’s free to be involved in it? How little you know about the male ego, Stephanie.’

  Her face flaming, she bent her head to attend to the mail. She had never dreamed that the other members of the staff had gossiped about her relationship with Jake, and she had expected him to be as shocked and surprised as she was herself. Instead, he seemed far from surprised and yes… almost amused by her shock.

  ‘Seven o’clock, sharp,’ he reminded her briskly as he walked back into his own office, pausing on the threshold to add softly, ‘Why didn’t you tell this Keith you were spending the weekend with me? Afraid he might object?’

  ‘Keith is a friend and nothing more,’ Stephanie retaliated. ‘I’m well aware that you think it’s high time I had some sort of sexual involvement with a man, Jake, but I refuse to be pushed into a relationship with Keith or any other man that I don’t want simply because you think it’s what I need. Have you told Susy that you’re spending the weekend with me?’ she added questioningly.

  ‘She’s gone back to the States, today,’ he drawled tauntingly, ‘but had she been here I would have told her.’

  ‘Because she knows quite well that she has no need to be jealous of me,’ Stephanie concluded for him, in a voice that even struck her as oddly bitter.

  ‘Meaning that you’re jealous of her? Why, Stephanie? Because she shares my bed?’

  ‘Jake, stop this. I don’t know what you’re trying to do, but I can’t continue to work for you if you keep needling me like this,’ Stephanie protested thickly, ‘You’re my boss and my friend…’

  ‘So you keep reminding me,’ Jake agreed, turning away from her so that she co
uldn’t read his expression, ‘but it isn’t exactly unknown for friends also to be lovers.’ He swung round to watch her betraying reaction portrayed by the rigid tension of her body and he laughed sardonically. ‘Come on, Stephanie, it’s high time we left.’

  As she finished making up the mail, he picked up her typewriter and shouldered open the door. Watching the muscles in his back and shoulders take the strain of the heavy piece of equipment, Stephanie repressed a sharp sensation of pain. It was no use longing for the past. It was over. She had to accept that Jake had changed and that so had their relationship, and she had to learn to live in the present.

  She spent the evening preparing for the weekend. She washed her hair and dried it carefully, and then packed her clothes. She had decided on some impulse she couldn’t name to take the new separates she had recently bought.

  She was just finishing her cup of coffee on Friday morning when she heard Jake’s footsteps on the stairs. When she let him in, his eyes raked her sharply, missing nothing of the way her sweater clung to the curves of her breasts, before he completed his leisurely inspection of her. He had never looked at her quite like that before that Stephanie was aware of, and she fought down an immediate panicky response as she turned away to get her case.

  ‘I could use a cup of coffee if there’s any going spare,’ Jake drawled behind her, as he followed her into her bedroom. ‘I overslept and didn’t have time for any breakfast. Where’s your flatmate?’ he added, as he ignored Stephanie’s attempts to pick up her case and took it from her.

  ‘Her fiancé’s got a week’s leave and they’re on holiday together.’

  ‘Umm… make me that cup of coffee, there’s a good girl; it might help me to wake up. I’ll take this down to the car.’

  When he came back, Stephanie was just pouring the coffee. Jake seemed to fill her tiny kitchen, and instinctively she stepped back from him, wondering as she did so at the curious fluttering sensation in the pit of her stomach.

  ‘Something wrong?’

  Stephanie hadn’t realised he was studying her so acutely, and she jumped nervously, spilling hot coffee on to her wrist. As she turned to the sink to run cold water over her stinging skin, she was acutely conscious of Jake right behind her. She could smell the faint scent of his soap, and even with her back to him, her mind retained a mental image of him, tall and dark, in the close-fitting black cords he was wearing, the sweater he had on over his shirt adding to the breadth of his shoulders.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Just a slight scald. I’m always slightly uncoordinated first thing in the morning.’

  The grey glance sweeping her slender body had the most odd effect on her nervous system and Stephanie shifted uncomfortably beneath it.

  ‘Did you pack your riding gear?’

  Taken slightly aback by the question, Stephanie frowned, ‘I thought this was going to be a working weekend?’

  ‘Man cannot live by work alone,’ Jake drawled in response.

  Often in the past, when she had spent the weekend with him, Stephanie had accompanied. Jake to the local riding stables. Riding was a sport they both enjoyed, but for some reason on this occasion Stephanie hadn’t thought to add her riding clothes to those she had already packed.

  ‘And you’ll need some sort of evening outfit,’ Jake added.

  ‘You might have told me that last night,’ Stephanie threw the objection at him over her shoulder as she headed for her room. Jake was normally meticulous about warning her what to expect. It wasn’t unusual for her to accompany him on business dinners in the evening, but he normally tried to avoid these when he visited his home.

  ‘I forgot.’

  Conscious of Jake prowling impatiently round her small sitting room, Stephanie hurriedly reached for a second case, flinging her riding boots and a pair of old cord jeans into the bottom of it before turning to search her wardrobe for a thick jumper. Hastily packing it, she rifled feverishly through the wardrobe for the simple black dress she normally wore for business dinners, and then suddenly remembered that she had taken it to be cleaned. The new suit Annette had coaxed her into buying still hung in its protective plastic wrapper and she was just fingering it absently when Jake strode in.

  It wasn’t the first time he had been in her room, but today, for some reason, his presence disturbed her. She was conscious of an almost claustrophobic desire to escape and, without pausing to think, she grabbed the plastic wrapper and almost flung the dress into her case. She was on the point of closing it when she remembered the camiknickers she needed to wear under it. Keeping her back to Jake, she pulled open the drawer she had put them in, hastily extracting the pale grey silk satin garment. She was just on the point of putting it in her case when Jake reached out and took it from her suddenly nerveless fingers.

  Holding it by the dainty straps, he studied first the grey silk satin and then Stephanie, with a slow intensity that brought a dull surge of colour to her skin.

  ‘I need it to wear under my new evening suit,’ Stephanie heard herself saying in a thickly unfamiliar voice. ‘Please give it back to me, Jake.’

  He was still watching her and continued to do so as he handed the fragile garment over, but the sardonic comment she had been expecting never came, and Jake took the closed case from her without a single word. It wasn’t until he had gone out to the car that Stephanie felt able to relax. Released from the tension that had held her in rigid control, her body felt as weak as jelly.

  ‘Ready?’

  She had been so wrapped up in her thoughts that she hadn’t heard Jake return, and she jumped nervously at the sound of his voice.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And Jessie Hargreaves still thinks you’re holidaying with friends?’

  ‘Yes,’ Stephanie admitted huskily.

  ‘Umm. Well, I hope for the sake of the budding romance between you and her brother that she doesn’t put two and two together and make four when she discovers that I’m on holiday too.’

  ‘I didn’t lie to her because I didn’t want Keith to know,’ Stephanie protested as she followed Jake out to his car. ‘It was a simple, reflex action…’

  ‘Was it, Stephanie? I wonder.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  AS Jake had predicted, they arrived at Mile End just after eleven o’clock. The house was staffed by a semi-retired married couple, who had originally been with Jake’s parents, and who greeted his arrival warmly.

  ‘I’ve made a light lunch, just as you asked,’ Mrs Kettering announced once they were inside, ‘and Harry’s lit the fire in the library—you said you would be working in there and, although the heating is on, I always think a fire adds real life to a room somehow.’ She smiled at Stephanie and added warmly, ‘I’ve put you in your usual room, Miss. Harry will take your cases up for you.’

  After lunch when Stephanie followed Jake to his study she could see why he had decided it was necessary to take a couple of days off out of the office to deal with the accumulation of estate work. They worked steadily and harmoniously together until Mrs Kettering brought in a tray of tea at five o’clock, and, as she lifted her head from her dictation pad, Stephanie realised that, for the first time in weeks, they had spent several hours together without coming close to quarrelling, and yet Jake wasn’t totally relaxed. She frowned as she noticed the tension of his body as he strode up and down the room, dictating to her.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he drawled, breaking off his dictation to return her scrutiny with interest, ‘Have I suddenly sprouted another head?’

  ‘No, only a sour tongue,’ Stephanie retaliated. ‘I don’t know what’s got into you lately, Jake; you’re like a bear with a sore head… you’re so antagonistic and quarrelsome.’

  ‘Frustration is generally held to have that effect,’ he agreed in a laconic drawl that did nothing to lessen the effect of the cool way he studied her body and the way it reacted to his mocking comment, ‘which, if you were human enough to suffer from it, you’d know.’

  ‘
I hardly think that’s a viable explanation,’ Stephanie countered, the words out of her mouth before she could stop them, ‘to judge by the number of dates you’ve had with Susy lately, lack of sleep’s more likely to be the cause.’

  ‘Just because I’ve dated Susy doesn’t necessarily mean I’ve made love to her,’ Jake returned, his eyes narrowing thoughtfully as he studied her, ‘and talking of inexplicable behaviour, what’s come over you? You always used to throw up barriers and hide behind them whenever my sex life came under discussion. Now it seems you can’t wait to bring it up—and throw it in my face.’

  ‘Perhaps I’m trying to reform you,’ Stephanie said it lightly, hoping to deflect him. It didn’t work.

  ‘To what purpose? Not jealous of Susy are you, Stephanie?’

  ‘Of course.’

  For a moment, her admission threw him. His eyes narrowed again, and he watched her. ‘Well, I’m always willing to consider taking you to bed. In fact I’m beginning to think it’s something I should have done months ago,’ he added outrageously.

  Somehow Stephanie managed to control the wave of hot embarrassment she could feel burning over her skin. She had to pinch herself to remind herself that this was Jake speaking to her; Jake, who had always taken such pains not to embarrass or hurt her in any way; who had always so carefully edited his conversation in the past, knowing how acutely sensitive she was about anything concerning sex.

  ‘When I admitted I was jealous of her, I was referring to her self-possession, her sureness of herself as a woman, and her role in life, not her role in your life,’ Stephanie told him.

  ‘You mean you’re jealous of her sexuality,’ Jake said softly.

  Her mouth open to deny his comment, Stephanie closed it again, admitting on a sharp pang of surprise that he was right; although she hadn’t known it at the time, that was what she had meant.

  ‘Is it so very surprising?’ she asked unsteadily instead. ‘I don’t exactly enjoy being the way I am, Jake—afraid of all physical and emotional contact with your sex because… because of what happened, and you haven’t exactly been making it easy for me recently.’