Celebrate the legend that is bestselling author

PENNY JORDAN

Phenomenally successful author of more than two hundred books with sales of over a hundred million copies!

Penny Jordan’s novels are loved by millions of readers all around the word in many different languages. Mills & Boon are proud to have published one hundred and eighty-seven novels and novellas written by Penny Jordan, who was a reader favourite right from her very first novel through to her last.

This beautiful digital collection offers a chance to recapture the pleasure of all of Penny Jordan’s fabulous, glamorous and romantic novels for Mills & Boon.

About the Author

PENNY JORDAN is one of Mills & Boon’s most popular authors. Sadly, Penny died from cancer on 31st December 2011, aged sixty-five. She leaves an outstanding legacy, having sold over a hundred million books around the world. She wrote a total of one hundred and eighty-seven novels for Mills & Boon, including the phenomenally successful A Perfect Family, To Love, Honour & Betray, The Perfect Sinner and Power Play, which hit the Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller lists. Loved for her distinctive voice, her success was in part because she continually broke boundaries and evolved her writing to keep up with readers’ changing tastes. Publishers Weekly said about Jordan ‘Women everywhere will find pieces of themselves in Jordan’s characters’ and this perhaps explains her enduring appeal.

Although Penny was born in Preston, Lancashire and spent her childhood there, she moved to Cheshire as a teenager and continued to live there for the rest of her life. Following the death of her husband, she moved to the small traditional Cheshire market town on which she based her much-loved Crighton books.

Penny was a member and supporter of the Romantic Novelists’ Association and the Romance Writers of America—two organisations dedicated to providing support for both published and yet-to-be-published authors. Her significant contribution to women’s fiction was recognised in 2011, when the Romantic Novelists’ Association presented Penny with a Lifetime Achievement Award.

Mission: Make-Over
Penny Jordan

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

‘NO LUCIANNA…? Where is she—trying to breathe life into some hopeless wreck of a car?’

Janey Stewart smiled at her husband’s best friend as the three of them shared the informal supper Janey had prepared.

‘No, not this evening, Jake,’ she informed him in response to his wry question about her sister-in-law and the youngest member of the family, the only girl. Lucianna had arrived after her mother had already produced four sons, and, as a consequence of that and, more tragically, of the fact that Susan Stewart had died after contracting a rare and particularly virulent form of viral pneumonia when Lucianna was only eighteen months old, had grown up treated by her brothers and father almost as if she were another boy.

‘She’s out,’ she added in further explanation as he raised a questioning eyebrow. ‘Saying goodbye to John.’

‘Saying goodbye… The big romance is over, then, is it?’

‘Not exactly. John’s going to work in Canada for three months. I suspect Lucianna was rather hoping that he might suggest putting their relationship on a bit of a permanent footing before he left.’

‘She hasn’t a hope in hell,’ said David, her husband and Lucianna’s eldest brother, who now ran the farm where he and Lucianna and the rest of the Stewart brothers had been brought up and where in fact Lucianna still lived.

‘She’s never going to get herself a man whilst she goes around dressed in a pair of baggy old dungarees and—’

‘It isn’t all her fault, David,’ Janey interrupted him gently. ‘You and the others have hardly encouraged her to be feminine, have you? And you’ve certainly done your share of helping to frighten away potential men-friends,’ she pointed out mildly.

‘If you mean I’ve made it clear that if a man wants Lucianna to share his roof and his bed with him then it has to be with the benefit of a wedding ring, then what’s wrong with that?’

‘Nothing,’ Janey allowed, adding dryly, ‘But I seem to remember you worked pretty hard to convince me that we ought to move in together before we were married…’

‘That was different,’ David told her firmly.

‘I hope this relationship with John does work out for Lucianna,’ Janey continued worriedly. ‘After all, she’s twenty-two now, not a teenager any more.’

‘No relationship is going to work for her until she stops acting like a tomboy…’ David told her decisively, adding, ‘Perhaps you could give her one or two hints, Janey, point her in the right direction.’

‘I’ve tried, but…’ Janey gave a small shrug. ‘I think she needs someone to show her, not to tell her, someone to build up her confidence in herself as a desirable woman and not—’ She broke off and smiled teasingly at her husband’s best friend. ‘Someone like you, Jake,’ she told him.

‘Jake?’ David hooted with laughter. ‘Jake would never look at anyone like Lucianna, not after the women he’s had running after him. Remember that Italian model you went out with, Jake, and that New York banker, and what happened—?’

‘Er…you’re married to me, thank you very much,’ Janey reminded her husband firmly. ‘Perhaps you aren’t the right person, Jake, but she does need help of some kind from someone, otherwise I’m very much afraid she’s going to lose John and she’ll take it very hard.’

‘He really means that much to her?’ Jake frowned, his dark eyebrows snapping together over eyes of a particularly clean and sharp blue-grey colour, all the more striking set against the warm olive of the skin tone he had inherited from his Italian grandmother and the thick dark hair that went with it.

His height and breadth of shoulder he had inherited from his paternal relatives; the great-uncle from whom he had inherited the farm and manor house whose lands bordered on the Stewarts’ farm had been of a similarly impressive build.

‘I rather fear so,’ Janey told him quietly. ‘She needs help, Jake,’ she added, ‘even if she herself would be the last person to admit it, especially…’

‘Especially to me,’ Jake concluded for her.

‘Well, you do rather have the knack of making her bristle,’ Janey smiled.

As the grandfather clock in the passageway struck the hour, Janey’s smile turned to a small frown.

‘John’s flight will be leaving in half an hour and then Lucianna will be back.’

‘Wanting a shoulder to cry on?’ Jake asked Janey perceptively.

‘Luce never cries,’ David informed him. ‘She’s not that type.’

Really there were times when her husband could be maddeningly dense, Janey reflected as she listened to David. One of the reasons Lucianna was such a tomboy, so uncomfortable about showing her emotions, was that as a child she had been taught by her older brothers not to do so.

It was a pity that Lucianna didn’t get on better with Jake because he would certainly have been the ideal person to help her to understand why her relationships with men never developed properly. And it wasn’t just that, as an extraordinarily charismatic and sensual man, he had the experience, the know-how, the awareness to help her, he also rather unexpectedly and, in Janey’s view, very charmingly for such an intensely male man, had a very compassionate and caring side to his nature as well, even though she knew that Lucianna would have begged to differ with her on that score.

‘I really ought to be leaving,’ Jake was saying now as he smiled across the table at her and thanked her for the meal. ‘I’m expecting a couple of faxes through and—’

‘Another multi-million-pound deal,’ David interrupted with a grin. ‘You’ll have to be careful, Jake,’ he warned him teasingly, ‘otherwise you’re going to be a multimillionaire by the time you’re forty and then you’ll have every fortune-hunter in the district after you…’

‘I’m never going to be a multimillionaire whilst I’ve got the estate to finance,’ Jake told him truthfully.

‘What would you have done if you’d inherited it without the back-up of the money you made during your days in the city trading in shares?’ David asked him.

‘I don’t know; I’d probably have had to sell it. Hopefully one day it will become self-sufficient—the woodlands we’ve planted will bring in some income when they’re mature and with the farming income and subsidies…’

‘It would have been a shame if you’d had to sell it,’ Janey told him. ‘After all, the estate has been in your family for almost two hundred years…’

‘Yes, I know…’

‘Well, it’s high time you were thinking about providing the next generation of little Carlisles if you intend to keep it in the family,’ David teased him. ‘You’re not getting any younger, you know; you’ll be—what…thirty-four this time…?’

‘Thirty-two,’ Jake told him dryly. ‘I’m a year older than you are…which reminds me, wasn’t it Lucianna’s birthday last week?’

‘Yes,’ Janey agreed, adding, ‘I rather think she was hoping for an engagement ring from John before he went away to Canada.’

‘How’s her business doing?’ Jake asked Janey, making no response to her comment about Lucianna’s disappointed hopes of a birthday proposal.

‘Well, she’s slowly building up a loyal clientele,’ Janey told him cautiously. ‘Female drivers in the main, who appreciate having their car serviced by another woman—’

‘She’s still heavily in debt to the bank,’ David broke in forthrightly. ‘No man worth his salt would let a woman service his car; we tried to tell her that, but would she listen? No way. It’s just as well she’s still living here and didn’t take on the extra financial burden of renting her own place as she originally wanted to do…’

‘You really are a dreadful chauvinist, David,’ Janey criticised mildly. ‘And whilst we’re on the subject Lucianna is, after all, very much what your father and the rest of you have made her. Poor girl, she’s never been given much of a chance to develop her femininity, has she?’

CHAPTER TWO

‘JOHN got off safely, then?’ Janey asked Lucianna cautiously.

They were both in the kitchen, Janey baking and Lucianna poring over her business accounts.

‘Only we didn’t hear you come in last night,’ Janey persisted, waiting until Lucianna had finished adding up the column of figures she was working on before speaking again.

‘No…I…I was later than I expected,’ Lucianna agreed quietly without looking up, not wanting to admit to her sister-in-law that after John’s flight had taken off she had felt so low that instead of driving straight home she had simply wandered aimlessly around the terminal. The brief, almost brotherly kiss John had placed on her forehead before leaving her and the speed with which he had responded eagerly to the very first call for his flight had contrasted painfully with the appreciative and lingering look she had seen him give the attractively dressed woman who had evidently been joining his flight, leaving her painfully aware that despite the fact that they had been dating for several months John seemed more interested in another woman than he was in her.

‘Perhaps when John comes home he’ll realise how much he’s missed you,’ Janey began comfortingly, but suddenly Lucianna had had enough. What was the point in pretending to anyone else when she couldn’t even pretend to herself any longer? Dolefully, she shook her head, refusing to be comforted.

She and John had originally met six months earlier when John’s car had broken down, leaving him stranded a couple of miles from the farm where Lucianna had been brought up and where she now lived with her brother David and his wife Janey.

She had happened to drive past and, recognising John’s plight, she had stopped and offered to help, quickly tracking down the problem and cheerfully assuring John that she could soon fix it.

She had first developed her skill with engines as a young girl tinkering with the farm’s mechanical equipment—on a farm a piece of equipment that didn’t work cost money, and all of the Stewart family had a working knowledge of how to fix a broken-down tractor, but for some reason Lucianna had excelled at almost being able to sense what was wrong even before her older brothers.

This skill had proved to be an asset in her teens when her second eldest brother Lewis had become interested in stock-car racing. Lucianna had happily allowed both Lewis and his friends to make use of her skills in helping them to repair and, in some cases, rebuild their cars.

Because she was the youngest of the family, and had the added handicap of being a girl, she had grown up sensitively aware of the fact that she had to find some way of compensating for the fact that she wasn’t a boy and that because of that, in the eyes of her family, she was somehow less worthwhile as a human being.

Unsure of what she wanted to do when she left school, she had continued with her farm chores and increasingly become responsible for not just the maintenance of the farm’s machinery but also for the maintenance of several of her brothers’ friends’ cars, and it had seemed a natural step to move from working with cars as a hobby to working with them as a means of earning a living.

Initially her ambition had been to train and work with some of the top-of-the-range luxury models, but each distributor she had approached with a view to an apprenticeship had laughed at the very idea of a female mechanic and it had been her father who had ultimately suggested she could use one of the empty farm buildings and set up her own business from there.

John had, at first, been shocked and then, she suspected, a little ashamed by the way she earned her living, considering it ‘unfeminine’.

Femininity, as she had quickly discovered, was an asset both prized and praised by John and one she did not possess.

Unhappily, she bit her lip. One date with John had led to another and then a regular weekly meeting, but not as yet to the declaration of love and long-term commitment she had been hoping for.

‘If he really cared, he’d have…’ she began, speaking her painful thoughts out loud before shaking her head, unable to continue. Then she asked Janey tiredly in a low voice. ‘What’s wrong with me, Janey? Why can’t I make John see how good we’d be together?’

Lucianna was sitting with her back to the door, and whilst she had been speaking David and Jake had walked across the farmyard and entered the kitchen just in time to hear her low-voiced query.

It was left to Jake to fill the awkward silence left by her subdued question as he announced, ‘Perhaps because he isn’t a combustion engine and human relationships need a bit more know-how to make them work than anything you’re likely to learn on a basic mechanics course.’

The familiar razor-sharp voice had Lucianna spinning round, hot, angry colour mantling her cheeks, her green eyes flashing with temper, the off-the-face style in which she kept her long, naturally curly hair emphasising her high cheekbones and the stubborn firmness of her chin as she challenged bitterly, ‘Who asked you? This is a private conversation and if I’d wanted your opinion, Jake Carlisle…not that I ever would…I’d have asked for it.’

She and Jake had never really got on. Even as a little girl she had disliked and resented his presence in their lives and the influence he seemed to have, not just over her brothers but even over her father as well. Despite the fact that he was only a year older than her eldest brother, there had always been something about Jake that was different, that set him apart from the others—an awareness, a maturity…a certain something which as a child Lucianna had never been able to define but which she only knew made her feel angry…

It had been Jake who had persuaded her aunt to buy her that stupid dress for her thirteenth birthday, the one that had made the boys howl with laughter when they’d seen her in it, the one with the pink frills and sash—the sash which she had later used as binding to tie the wheels of the cart she was making to its chassis. She could still remember the tight-lipped look Jake had given her when he had recognised what it was and the thrill of angry pleasure and defiance it had given her to see that look. Not that he had said anything—but then Jake had never needed to say anything to get his message across.

‘But you just did,’ Jake reminded her, plainly unperturbed by her angry outburst.

‘I wasn’t talking to you, I was talking to Janey,’ Lucianna pointed out tersely.

‘But perhaps Janey is too kind-hearted to answer you honestly and tell you the truth…’

Lucianna glared at him.

‘What truth? What do you mean?’

‘You asked what was wrong with you, and why John won’t make a commitment to you,’ Jake reminded her coolly. ‘Well, I’ll tell you, shall I? John is a man…not much of one, I’ll grant you, but still a man…and, like all heterosexual men, what he wants in his partner…his lover…is a woman. A woman, Lucianna—that’s spelt W for wantability, O for orgasmic appeal, M for man appeal, A for attraction—sexual attraction, that is—and, of course, finally, N for nuptials. And for your information a woman is someone who knows that the kind of words a man wants to hear whispered in his ear have nothing to do with the latest technical details of a new engine.

‘Give me your hand,’ he instructed, leaning forward and taking hold of Lucianna’s left hand before she could stop him and then studying her ring finger. His long, mobile mouth curled sardonically as he announced, ‘Hardly something a man might feel tempted to put his ring on, is it, never mind kiss?’

Mortified, Lucianna snatched her hand away and told him furiously, ‘A woman…well, I spell it W for wimp, O for obedient, M for moronic, A for artifice and N for nothing…’ she told him fiercely.

There was a long silence during which she was uncomfortably conscious of Jake studying her and during which she had to fight to resist the temptation to hide her hands behind her back. Only last weekend she had seen the look of distaste on John’s face when he’d complained that her nails weren’t long and varnished like those of his friends’ girlfriends.

‘If that’s really how you see yourself, then I feel sorry for you,’ Jake declared finally.

It took several seconds for the quiet words to sink in past her turbulent thoughts, but once they had Lucianna blinked and swallowed hard, trying not to cry as the angry, defensive words of denial fought to escape past the hard lump of anguish blocking her throat.

‘You aren’t a woman, Lucianna,’ she heard Jake attack tauntingly into the vulnerability of her silence.

‘Yes, I am,’ she argued furiously, ‘and—’

‘No, you’re not. Oh, you may look like one, and have all the physical bodily attributes of one—although I must say that given the clothes you choose to shroud yourself in it’s hard to know,’ he added, with a disparaging glance at the oversized dungarees she was wearing.

‘But it isn’t looks that make a woman—a real woman—and I’ll take a bet that the plainest member of your sex knows more about how to attract than you do…I know more…’

‘Perhaps you should give Luce a few pointers, then,’ David chipped in, laughing. ‘Give her a few lessons on how to catch her man…’

‘Perhaps I should,’ Lucianna heard Jake agreeing thoughtfully, for all the world as though he was seriously considering the matter as some kind of viable, acceptable proposition and not the most ridiculous and insulting thing she had ever heard of in her life!

Lucianna couldn’t restrain herself any longer.

‘There’s nothing you could teach me about being a woman…nothing,’ she told him defiantly.

‘Nothing? Want to bet?’ Jake returned smoothly and with dangerous speed. ‘You should know better than to challenge me, Lucianna. Much better…’

‘If I were you I’d take him up on it,’ she heard David advising her seriously. ‘After all, he is a man and—’

‘Is he really? Well, thanks for telling me something I didn’t know.’ Lucianna interrupted her brother with childish sarcasm.

‘But you don’t know, do you?’ Jake slipped in under her defences dulcetly. ‘Because you don’t have very much idea of what a real man actually is, do you, Lucianna?’

‘Stop teasing her, both of you,’ Janey intervened, adding gently to Lucianna before she could say anything, ‘Jake does have a point, though, Luce. And after all with John away for three months it gives you an ideal opportunity to—well, show him when he gets back just exactly what he’s been missing,’ she concluded lamely, avoiding looking directly at either Lucianna or the two men as she did so.

Lucianna moistened her lips before opening them to tell them in no uncertain terms that they must be mad if they thought she would ever entertain such a crazy idea, but no one seemed prepared to listen to her or even to let her speak because Jake was already saying, as though at some point she had actually given her verbal agreement to his taunting challenge, ‘There’ll have to be a few ground rules, of course.’

‘Ground rules…’ Lucianna glowered at him. ‘If by that you mean I’m going to have to take orders from you and…’ Then, inexplicably, she had a sudden and very hurtful mental image of that woman she had seen John studying as he’d walked away from her. Was it possible? Could Jake really show her, teach her…? She swallowed painfully, and to her own disbelief heard herself saying huskily, ‘Very well…I agree…’

‘My God, you must really want him…Why?’

Underneath the sardonic amusement in Jake’s voice ran a fine thread of something else, but Lucianna was too upset to hear it.

‘What do you think?’ she demanded sharply. ‘I love him…’

‘I seem to recall you once felt exactly the same about that wreck of a car you insisted on buying—what happened to it by the way?’

‘It’s still rusting away in the old barn,’ David informed him with a grin.

Lucianna gave them both a furious look.

‘Right, I want you at the Hall first thing in the morning,’ Jake told her. ‘Three months may sound a long time but given what we’ve got to get through…And the first thing you can do—’

‘At the Hall? No way. I’m far too busy,’ Lucianna told him defiantly.

‘Really? That’s not what these figures say,’ Jake countered, leaning over to study the accounts she had been working on before he’d walked in. ‘You’re not even breaking even,’ he told her.

Lucianna flushed defensively. There was no need for him to point out to her the shortcomings in the financial area of her business; she could see them easily enough for herself, and so too, she imagined, would the bank manager when she next went to see him.

‘Of course you’re not too busy,’ David told her. ‘She’ll be there, Jake,’ he assured his friend. ‘Don’t you worry.’

Tiredly Lucianna parked her car outside the farmhouse and climbed out. The house itself was in darkness—a sign that David and Janey were already in bed. Their bedroom was at the front of the house, which meant that, hopefully, they wouldn’t be disturbed by the security lights springing on at her arrival. She had designed and installed the security system herself, much to David’s amusement, and, although the days were gone when she might have expected to find either her father or one of her brothers waiting up to question her late arrival home, farmers and farmers’ wives needed their sleep.

She had spent the afternoon with her father. Following his retirement he had moved to a village twenty-odd miles away where he now lived with his widowed elder sister, and Lucianna had promised several days earlier that she would service their ancient Hillman for them. Her mind hadn’t really been on the Hillman, though; it had been on Jake Carlisle and his extraordinary challenge, his declaration that he could teach her how to be a woman, the kind of woman men like him—and, according to him, all men—really wanted.

Jake, as Lucianna already knew, could be a formidable adversary. It had been Jake, after all, who had persuaded her father to retire when David had given up on ever being allowed to take over and modernise the farm, and Jake who had added the weight of his confidence to her youngest brother Adam’s pleas to be allowed to spend time back-packing around the world instead of settling down in a job as her father had wished. Adam was presently working in Australia at a holiday resort on the Barrier Reef.

Dick, the brother between Lewis and Adam in age, was working abroad in China, supervising the building of a new dam, and Lewis was in New York.

What would they make of Jake’s plan to turn her into a proper woman, the kind of woman John simply couldn’t resist? Did she really need to ask herself? First they would roar with laughter and then they would no doubt point out that the task he had taken on was too formidable, too impossible even for his fabled talents.

She wasn’t the complete fool her family seemed to think she was, Lucianna assured herself irritably. She knew perfectly well that other young women of her age appeared to have an almost magical ability when it came to attracting the opposite sex that she simply didn’t possess, but she refused to believe it was simply a matter of wearing different clothes and adopting the kind of simpering, idiotic manner she suspected that Jake was going to advise her to attempt.

There had been other boys, young men she had dated before she met John, brief friendships which had petered out amicably on both sides, but with John it was different; with John she’d found herself thinking for the first time about a shared future, marriage…children…But, although John always seemed to enjoy her company, so far their relationship had not progressed beyond the odd relatively chaste kiss or affectionate hug.

She had tried to tell herself that John was a gentleman and that he simply didn’t want to rush her and she had staunchly held onto that belief until last weekend.

Quietly she let herself into the house and made her way upstairs, pausing on the landing as she heard voices from her brother and sister-in-law’s room and then tensing when she realised that she was the subject of their conversation.

She hadn’t intended to eavesdrop, she told herself as she recognised that they were discussing the conversation which had taken place in the farmhouse kitchen earlier in the day, but for some reason it was impossible for her to walk away.

‘Do you really think Jake’s going to be able to teach Lucianna to be more feminine?’ she heard Janey asking her husband.

‘Not a hope in hell,’ she heard David responding cheerfully whilst she held her breath. ‘Luce is my sister but, much as I love her, I have to admit that when it comes to sex appeal the poor kid just doesn’t have what it takes…’

‘Oh, David, that’s a bit unkind and unfair,’ Janey protested. ‘She’s got a lovely figure, even if she does hide it behind those dreadful dungarees, and if she paid a little more attention to herself she could be quite stunning. It’s not her fault, you know, if all of you treated her like another brother when she was growing up—’

‘It doesn’t matter what she does,’ David interrupted her disparagingly, ‘Luce just isn’t a man’s woman, and not even Jake, despite his experience with the female sex, is going to be able to change that. We might as well face up to the fact that we’ve got her here on our hands for life…’

Hot tears filled Lucianna’s eyes as she crept silently past their bedroom door. Even her own brother thought she was unappealing as a woman. Well, she would show him, she decided angrily. She would show them all, and if that meant eating humble pie and taking orders from someone as tirelessly autocratic and bossy as Jake, then despite all the run-ins she had had with him in the past, all the times she had objected to him taking a far too older-brotherly and interfering interest in her life, so be it.

And, loath though she was to admit it, even in the privacy of her own thoughts, she could certainly have no better tutor. She had, after all, had ample opportunity over the years to witness for herself just exactly what effect Jake had on the susceptible and, it had to be admitted, not so susceptible members of her own sex, and, puzzlingly, so far as she could discern, without him apparently having to make any obvious attempts to engage their besotted adoration.

Personally, she couldn’t fathom just what it was they saw in him that reduced normally intelligent, witty, independent women to drooling, speechless wrecks; she had never found anything remotely attractive in his black-browed, autocratic and, in her eyes, often censorious maleness. She preferred men like John—fair-haired, kind-eyed men who looked more like cuddly teddy bears than something reminiscent of an adman’s image of a truly awesomely male hunk.

She was under no illusions about how unpleasant and unpalatable she was likely to find the entire exercise, nor how much amusement Jake was all too likely to derive from it—at her expense. But enough was enough, and she had had enough and more. Determinedly she brushed away her tears and told herself a second time that it would all be worth it to have John standing lovingly at her side, his ring on her finger.

Five minutes later, in her own room, she paused in the automatic act of getting undressed and walked hesitantly across the room to stand in front of her bedroom mirror.

Only this afternoon her aunt had commented on how like her mother she looked. Her mother had been considered something of a beauty, but wasn’t beauty supposed to be in the eyes of the beholder? And she had seen the way John had winced when he had called round unexpectedly earlier in the week, a look of distaste crossing his face as he’d looked at her oil-stained hands and short nails. But John had thought her attractive enough when they had first met and he had been glad enough of her mechanical expertise then too, even proud of it, boasting to his friends about her skill.

It had been later that he had stopped telling others how she earned her living and then, latterly, cautioned her against doing so herself, growing both uncomfortable and irritated with her when she had asked him why.

She knew she was different from the girlfriends and wives of John’s friends, and on the thankfully rare occasions when she had been alone with them she had discovered that they very quickly ran out of things to talk about. But what had been even worse, even more humiliating than their silence, had been the laughter she had heard and which had been quickly stifled as she’d walked back into the room after leaving it for a few minutes. She had been in no doubt that they had been talking about her, laughing about her, and that knowledge had hurt even though she had vowed not to let them know it.

At school she had been popular enough and had had plenty of friends, although it was true that once she had reached her teens she had tended to disdain the giggly, boy-focused discussions of her fellow females and spent more time instead with the boys, preferring tomboyish pursuits to long discussions about the latest pop groups or clothes fad.

She had tried, though, with John, really tried. At his suggestion she had bought a new dress for his firm’s annual do and she had even gone along with his insistence that she take one of his female colleagues from work along with her to choose it.

And, although she had felt too upset at the time to tell him so, the dress she had so unhappily and unsuccessfully worn had not been her choice but Felicity’s. And she still couldn’t understand why Felicity had so determinedly and blatantly lied about that fact, insisting in the face of John’s disapproval that she, Lucianna, had overridden her advice and chosen her dress herself.

Her eyes filled with fresh tears now—widely spaced, thick-lashed, pretty silvery green eyes which recently had held a far more sombre expression than suited them. It hurt more than she felt able to say to anyone that even her family seemed to think she was somehow lacking in female allure.

Outwardly she might wear jeans and do what appeared to be an unfeminine job, but inwardly…Inwardly, she was every bit as much a woman as the Felicitys of this world, every bit as worthy of being loved and wanted—and she was going to prove it!

CHAPTER THREE

‘YOU’RE up early this morning…Not had a change of heart, have you, and planning to do a disappearing act?’

Lucianna shook her head as she listened to her brother’s teasing comments.

‘Certainly not,’ she told him firmly, but he was closer to the truth than he knew. She had woken up this morning with a very heavy heart indeed and a deep and gloomy sense of foreboding and dismay at what she had let herself in for.

‘Pull the other one,’ her brother advised her, showing that he knew her rather better than she liked and informing Janey as she walked into the kitchen, ‘I told you she wouldn’t go through with it; she’s—’

‘I am going through with it,’ Lucianna interrupted him indignantly. ‘I just got up earlier than normal because I want to finish a job off before…before I drive over to…’

To prove a point she gulped down her coffee and started to hurry towards the back door before David could make any further teasing remarks. With her back to him she didn’t see the look of compassionate sympathy he gave her before exchanging a rueful glance with his wife.

She was his kid sister, damn it, and he loved her, and he could wring that idiot John’s neck for the misery he was causing her.

The job Lucianna had pretended was so urgent was simply a matter of changing an oil filter, and she was on her way back to the house when Jake drove into the farmyard.

‘What are you doing here?’ she challenged him aggressively as he got out of his car. Like her he was casually dressed in jeans, but unlike hers his were immaculately clean and they fitted him properly.

‘What do you think?’ he retorted calmly.

Lucianna gave him a stubborn look.

‘There’s no need for you to come and collect me as if I were a…a prisoner. I was going to drive myself over…’

‘But now I’ve saved you the trouble,’ Jake told her suavely, ‘and that’s one of the first lessons you have to learn.’

‘What?’ Lucianna asked.

‘How to accept a man’s naturally chivalrous instinct to look after and protect a woman—and,’ he added more dryly, ‘how not to dent his ego by pointing out that you don’t need or want his protection.’

‘How? By simpering stupidly and throwing myself at your feet in gratitude?’ Lucianna demanded acidly.

‘A simple “thank you” and a warm smile would be perfectly adequate. You want to thank the guy, not make him think you’re desperate,’ Jake told her.

Lucianna glowered at him whilst she felt her face grow hot with indignation.

‘I am not desperate—’ she began, but Jake was already shaking his head, telling her directly,

‘Don’t give me that, Luce…I know you, remember, and for you to go to such lengths…’

‘I love him,’ she told him, tilting her chin determinedly at him as though daring him to argue with her.

‘You might think you do but, believe me, you don’t even begin to know what love is yet.’

Her brother’s emergence into the yard prevented Lucianna from making the kind of retort she wanted to make but she was still seething with resentment and indignation ten minutes later as she sat next to Jake whilst he reversed his car back out of the yard.

‘Your timing’s out,’ she told him critically as she listened to the sound of the engine.

‘You’re going to have to know me a lot better before you can come out with a comment like that,’ he told her in an unfamiliar soft and meaningful voice that made her turn her head and look open-mouthed at him as her senses, more acute and finely tuned than her brain, recognised a message in the dulcet, husky sound of his voice that her brain could not quite pick up on.

‘My timing is never out,’ he added even more softly, and then reverted to his normal tone of voice, before she could say anything, to tell her briskly, ‘But yes, the car’s timing is slightly out, Lucianna…

‘Tell me something,’ he went on conversationally. ‘When you and John are alone what do you talk about?’

‘Talk about?’ Lucianna stared at him.

‘You do talk, I take it?’ Jake questioned dryly. ‘Or is your main form of communication on a, shall we say, more basic level?’

It took several seconds for what he meant to sink in, but once it had done Lucianna could feel her face beginning to burn with a mixture of fury and embarrassment.

‘Of course we talk,’ she snapped. ‘We talk about all kinds of things…’

‘Such as?’ Jake demanded, one dark eyebrow raised interrogatively, the profile he was angling slightly towards her uncomfortably reminiscent of the stern demeanour with which he had lectured her on some of her youthful follies.

‘Er…lots of things,’ Lucianna told him, desperately hunting through her memory for suitably impressive examples of the breadth and erudition of their shared conversations.

‘Really? So you’d agree with those who claim that verbal foreplay can be just as erotic and arousing as its physical equivalent, then, would you?’ Jake asked her.

‘Verbal foreplay!’ Lucianna’s colour deepened. ‘John and I have far better things to talk about than sex,’ she snapped bitingly.

‘And better things to do?’

The soft question slipped very subtly and, yes, sneakily beneath her guard, leaving her totally unable to come up with any safe response other than a taut, ‘I don’t discuss such personal things with anyone!’

But even that defence could not protect her, as she quickly discovered when Jake unkindly suggested, ‘Not even John? You might be able to strip down an engine very effectively and efficiently, Lucianna, but somehow or other I doubt that you have the same skill when it comes to stripping down a man—or for a man,’ he added with dangerous softness.

Struggling to overcome her mortification, Lucianna stared fixedly ahead through the car windscreen. Little did Jake know it but his scathing remark had echoed an unkind conversation she had recently overheard between two of John’s friends—girlfriends.

‘Can you imagine it?’ one had said to the other, unaware that Lucianna could hear them. ‘She’ll be saying to John, “Now this bit goes here and then this bit goes there and then you have to do this.” Poor John, I feel so sorry for him. I can’t understand what he sees in her, can you?’

Perhaps her sexual experience wasn’t all that extensive—at least not in the practical sense—and perhaps, yes, she did rather quail at the thought of having to take the sexual initiative with a man—certainly she had never or would never have attempted to undress one. But she could read, and if John had been rather slow to pick up on her hesitant signals that she was ready to take their relationship a few steps further than the kisses and caresses they had so far shared then she had at least, until recently, put it down to the fact that he valued and respected her and their relationship enough to let the sexual side of things develop slowly and naturally. After all, the last thing she wanted was to be wanted merely for sex.

She frowned, suddenly realising that whilst she had been deep in thought Jake had been driving them not towards his home but along the road that led into town instead.

‘Where are we going?’ she demanded sharply. ‘I thought—’

‘I’m taking you shopping,’ Jake informed her calmly.

‘Shopping?’ Lucianna tensed, warily remembering all the occasions on which her family had attempted to persuade her to change her style of dress. She knew they thought she was being stubborn and difficult in refusing to listen to what they had to say, but how could she tell them that her refusal to abandon her dungarees and jeans had its roots a long way back in her early teenage years?

Then, as a young schoolgirl, she had desperately wanted to look like her female peers and not like the tomboy she had heard others disparagingly call her.

The gift of some birthday money had given her the opportunity to turn her wishes into reality and she could still remember the excitement with which she had gone shopping with another girl from school, a girl who, in her then youthful and untutored eyes, had seemed to have all the feminine attributes she herself so longed for.

She still shuddered to recall what had followed when, dressed up in her new purchases—the uncomfortable suspender belt and stockings, the tight short skirt and the high heels that had made her wobble perilously as she’d walked nervously at her friend’s side—they had encountered a group of boys from school.

The crude remarks which had followed her transformation from tomboy into a girl who they had plainly believed was making herself sexually available had made her ears and her face burn for weeks and months afterwards, her embarrassment and sense of shame so great that she had actually refused to go to school the following week until her father had announced that he was sending for the doctor.

The incident, coupled with her own brothers’ derogatory comments about a certain type of girl, had so shocked and shamed her that she had never worn the clothes again, and in the years since, although in her wardrobe there were several rather more formal outfits than her preferred dress of dungarees and jeans, she had steadfastly refused to give in to her family’s exhortations to buy or wear ‘something feminine’. She had experienced already what happened when she did that, how the male sex reacted, knew that for some reason which was not really clear to herself there was something about her that made it impossible for her to wear the kind of clothes other women wore with such ease and confidence without cheapening herself and making herself an object of sexual contempt and ridicule.

‘I’m not going,’ Lucianna suddenly announced tersely. ‘Stop the car.’

Calmly Jake did so, but the atmosphere inside the car felt anything but calm as he turned to her and asked her critically, ‘What is it you’re so afraid of, Lucianna? And don’t try to deny that you are; I know you—remember? Are you frightened of failure—failing to be enough woman to—?’

‘No…’

‘No?’ One dark eyebrow rose in the interrogative and superior manner she was so familiar with and which so irritated her. ‘Then prove it,’ Jake suggested quietly.

‘I don’t need to prove anything to you,’ Lucianna told him angrily.

‘Not to me, no,’ Jake agreed, overriding her angry words, ‘but you certainly seem to have something to prove to John—and to yourself.’

Lucianna looked away from him, unable to meet his eyes and unable to refute his statement.

‘It’s your choice,’ he told her evenly, ‘your decision, but I must say you’ve surprised me…’

‘Surprised you!’

Lucianna gave him a wary look. In her experience surprising Jake took an awful lot of doing.

‘Mmm…’ he agreed, nodding. ‘I thought you had more courage, more guts…more self-respect than to give up without at least making some attempt to fight for what you want.’

‘I do have,’ Lucianna retorted indignantly, and then added truculently, ‘Oh, very well, then, but if you think I’m going to let you bully me into wasting money on some stupid, silly outfit that you think a woman should wear—’

‘Excuse me, but whilst I may have been guilty of many sins in my time, Lucianna, wanting to see a woman dressed in frills isn’t one of them. And besides, you’re a long, long way yet from being ready to change your outer image…It’s your inner image we’re going to be working on today and for many days to come.

‘Femininity, womanliness, is something that comes from within. It means being proud of yourself as a woman, being confident about your femaleness and your sexuality; it’s showing the world that you value yourself as a woman…When a person has that, how they choose to clothe their body is really immaterial apart from the fact that what they choose to wear acts like a shorthand message to those who see her.’

Whilst he’d been talking he had restarted the car, and this time Lucianna made no objection as he continued to drive towards the town.

Something about the calm way he had delivered those few unexpected words had for some odd reason or other brought a huge uncomfortable lump of emotion to her throat, an indefinable sense of loss and sorrow, as though he had highlighted something within her which she had secretly felt had never been allowed to flourish and had even more secretly hidden away in shame even from herself.

Yet as she sat silently at his side her thoughts, unexpectedly, were not of herself or even of John but, surprisingly, of her mother.

Might not things have been different if she had not died when Lucianna was so young…? Might not she have been different?

‘But this is a book shop,’ Lucianna protested as Jake determinedly ushered her through the plate-glass doors.

They had arrived in the town five minutes earlier and, having parked the car, Jake had directed her towards the town’s main shopping street.

‘That’s right,’ Jake agreed, touching her lightly on the arm as he pointed to a labelled section of books on the far side of the shop. ‘I think we’ll find what we need over there,’ he told her.

Lucianna frowned; the shelves seemed to be filled with diet and self-improvement books so far as she could see. Warily she allowed Jake to propel her in their direction.

‘I don’t think these will be of much benefit to me,’ she told him as she studied the title of the diet book which was prominently displayed.

‘I doubt it,’ he agreed. ‘If anything you need to put weight on.’

‘To make me more feminine?’ Lucianna suggested, her hackles starting to rise at his implied criticism of her.

‘To make you more healthy,’ Jake corrected her. ‘You’re naturally fine-boned and delicate—anyone can see that,’ he added, startling her as he totally unexpectedly ran his index finger along the curve of her cheekbone, producing an aftershock of sensation on her skin in the wake of his touch something like the kind of feeling she associated with an unexpected rash of goosebumps but with an extra indefinable and unfamiliar something which made her feel peculiarly light-headed and breathless.

‘And it naturally follows that your body will be similarly delicately made, long-legged and high-breasted with a narrow waist,’ he told her, emphasising his point by reaching out and placing his hands at either side of her body.

Her indignant verbal objection was never uttered as she looked down at where his thumbs met and felt the hard, warm male pressure of his grip through the thickness of her clothes. A suffocating tightness had invaded her chest, far, far tighter and more constricting, more dangerous than Jake’s firm grip on her body.

‘I can’t breathe,’ she protested angrily and huskily, reaching out to take hold of his arms as she instinctively tried to force him to release her.

‘Can’t you?’

The most peculiar and disturbing sensation she had ever experienced in her life seized her as she heard the deeper note in Jake’s voice and felt her whole body trembling uncontrollably in response to it in some secret inner vibration. When she looked at him she discovered that his gaze seemed to be focused on her mouth. Probably because he was waiting for her angry objection to his behaviour, she told herself protectively as she fought to control a sudden compulsive need to wet her almost painfully dry lips with the tip of her tongue—and lost.

‘Stop it,’ she hissed breathlessly. ‘Stop it at once…’

‘Stop what?’ Jake responded mock innocently.

‘You know perfectly well what. Stop looking at my…at me like…like you were doing,’ she finished lamely, her colour high as she thankfully felt him respond to her agitation and lift his head to meet her eyes at the same time as he removed his hands from her waist.

‘You’re looking very hot and bothered; what’s wrong?’ he asked her, outwardly solicitously, but she could see the laughter gleaming in his eyes.

‘You know perfectly well what’s wrong,’ she told him forthrightly. ‘It’s you…the way you…the way you looked at me.’

‘You mean the way a man looks at a woman he wants,’ Jake told her calmly. ‘It’s called body language,’ he continued, before Lucianna could take issue with him on the first part of his statement. ‘The way a man looks at a woman he wants’—indeed! Well, she knew one thing and that was that he certainly didn’t want her—and she would never want him to want her, she added hastily. It was John she wanted to want her, to desire her, to love her.

‘Body language,’ Jake repeated instructively as he reached up and removed a couple of books from higher up the shelves and handed them to her. He explained, ‘It’s a fact that all of us both consciously and subconsciously send out messages to others with every movement we make, every expression we show, and the first step to getting others to be responsive is for you to show them that you are open to that responsiveness.

‘For example, just now when I looked at your mouth, you touched your lips with your tongue, which means—’

‘Which means that you were making me nervous and angry.’

‘Nervous?’ Jake queried with a small half-smile that made her look warily away from him.

‘Nervous and angry,’ she insisted, but she knew that her voice didn’t sound quite as convincing and determined as she would have liked.

‘Mmm…I see. So when John looks at your mouth like that what kind of response do you give him?’ he asked her placatingly, but Lucianna was too on edge to be placated.

‘John never looks at me like that,’ she answered quickly.

She only realised her mistake when Jake said softly, ‘Oh, dear. Well, I’m sure there’ll be some advice inside these—’ he tapped the books. ‘—to indicate how you can rectify that situation, and if there isn’t—well, I can always…’

But Lucianna wasn’t listening. Snatching the books from his hand, she headed determinedly towards the till, head held high as the salesgirl gave the titles a quick, curious glance before taking Lucianna’s money and putting them into a bag for her.

‘I know her—I serviced her mother’s car,’ Lucianna hissed angrily to Jake once they were outside the shop. ‘I suppose you think all this is very funny,’ she added crossly as she fished the books out of the carrier bag, and she read the titles to him in scornful disgust. ‘The Science of Body Language and How to Use it Effectively, and The Art of Flirtation.’

‘Funny?’ Jake repeated. ‘No, Lucianna,’ he told her curtly. ‘I don’t think any of this is remotely funny.’

He looked so grim and unapproachable that the demand to know just what he did think of it and her, which she had been about to voice, died unvoiced.

‘This way,’ he told her, touching her, indicating the pretty town square which lay ahead of them. Set out with trees and benches and with the sun shining warmly, it was obviously a popular spot with office workers for eating their sandwiches.

One couple were vacating one of the benches as they approached and Jake quickly appropriated the spare seats.

‘What now?’ Lucianna asked wearily as he indicated that he wanted to sit down.

‘Now we’re going to do a bit of people-watching,’ Jake told her. ‘Let’s see just how sharp and accurate your instincts actually are and at the same time let’s see how much visual experience of the art of body language you can actually recognise.’

‘It wasn’t called that. It was called The Art of Flirtation,’ Lucianna snapped back at him.

‘Same thing,’ Jake told her dryly. ‘Now,’ he commanded sternly once Lucianna had reluctantly seated herself beside him, ‘take a good look around and tell me what you can see.’

Lucianna took a deep breath and mentally counted to ten before telling him irritably, ‘I can see the town square and part of the high street and I can see—’

‘That wasn’t what I meant, Lucianna,’ Jake interrupted her crisply, the look in his eyes as he turned to study her the same one he had used to reinforce his older and male status during the years when she had been growing up.

Then it had quelled her and even sometimes made her feel warily apprehensive and, as she now discovered to her chagrin, things hadn’t changed all that much. The only difference was that now she felt seriously tempted to ignore his visual warning and see what just might happen. After all, what could he really do if she simply got up and walked away?

As though he had read her mind he advised her sharply, ‘I wouldn’t if I were you. You agreed to this, remember. You’re the one who’s desperate to prove—’

‘I’m not desperate to prove anything,’ Lucianna argued hotly.

‘Do you know something, Lucianna?’ Jake said wryly. ‘Your determination to win John rather reminds me of the same blind stubbornness that a child exhibits in demanding a sweet or a toy simply because it’s out of reach and being denied them, and I can’t help wondering if it’s the fact that he seems out of reach that makes him seem so desirable. There certainly doesn’t seem—’

‘I’m not a child,’ Lucianna began, then realised how neatly and easily she had fallen into the trap Jake had dug for her as he told her sharply,

‘No? Well, then, I suggest you cease behaving like one. Now, look around again and tell me what you see, and this time study the people—carefully. Look at that group over there just coming out of the chemist’s, for instance, and tell me what you see.’

Heaving a deep sigh, Lucianna painstakingly and dutifully stared in the direction he had indicated.

A man and a woman and two small children were standing on the pavement just outside the chemist’s. The woman was leaning towards the man and smiling up at him. The two children were dancing up and down beside them, obviously excited, whilst the man started to remove some papers from his pocket.

At the same time the woman instinctively reached out to draw the children closer to her as a car drove past and the man put out a hand to steady her as another shopper looked as though she might barge into them.

They were obviously a family, Lucianna could see that, and a happy one, she acknowledged as she saw their smiles and heard their laughter as they all looked at the strips of photographs the man was holding, the two children barely able to contain their excitement.

But stubbornly she omitted to mention anything of this as she responded to Jake’s instruction by simply saying, ‘I see a man, a woman and two children.’

‘You’re beginning to try my patience, Lucianna,’ Jake warned her. ‘Look again. Look at the way the man is behaving towards the three of them—protectively, lovingly—and the way the woman is responding to him, the way she obviously feels that he’s done something special; and the two children—look at their excitement.

‘At a guess I would say that they are a young couple who are just planning their first continental holiday with their children and that they have just been to obtain their family passport photographs. This holiday is probably something they’ve planned for and saved for for a very long time, something they’ve had to make sacrifices to afford, especially the man who’s probably had to work extra hours to pay for it…’

‘That’s sexist,’ Lucianna objected. ‘It might be the woman who’s had to do the extra work.’

‘It’s not sexist at all,’ Jake denied. ‘I’m simply interpreting their body language. Look at the way the man’s almost preening himself. Look at the way the woman’s looking at him, the pride and love in her expression, the way she keeps looking at him and touching his arm, and look at the way he’s responding. An animal psychologist would probably say they’re simply copying an ancient grooming ritual from the animal kingdom and that the one lower down the pecking order is grooming the ones higher up it, so that in this particular instance I would guess that it is the man who’s earned the extra money.

‘But he’s obviously a modern father; look at the way he’s bending down now to fasten the elder child’s shoes and the way she’s leaning against him. It’s obvious that fastening her shoes is a task he’s comfortably familiar with, just as she’s obviously comfortably familiar with him—’

‘Very interesting, but I can’t really see its relevance for me,’ Lucianna interrupted him crossly. Suddenly, for some reason, the sight of the small, happy family was making her feel acutely aware of her own aloneness. ‘After all, I’m not likely to want to start fastening John’s shoes or grooming him,’ she added sarcastically.

‘You might not want to fasten his shoes,’ Jake agreed, ‘but as for grooming…It’s normally considered to be an important and enjoyable part of the human courting ritual—to touch and be touched, to exchange those but oh, so meaningful caresses…Or am I being old-fashioned? Sex has been stripped of so much of its allure and sensuality these days.

‘It’s almost as though the race towards orgasm has become a fast-paced motorway requiring intense concentration and a total focus on reaching one’s goal, with no opportunity or desire to enjoy the pleasure of a more leisurely meander that allows one to pause and enjoy the moment, the caress.

‘Is that what you prefer, Lucianna—a sensible, no-nonsense approach to sex that reduces it simply to a biological urge which needs to be satisfied in the most efficient and least time-consuming manner?’

‘How I think and feel about sex has nothing to do with this nor with you,’ Lucianna told him fiercely.

‘No? Well, if that’s what you think no wonder you’re having so much trouble. On the contrary, sex has everything to do with it—or it should do. When you look at John, if you don’t want him to reach out and touch you and if you don’t want to reach out and touch him, then—’

‘John never touches me in public,’ Lucianna interrupted him, her colour rising as she told him angrily, ‘And nor would I want him to.’

‘Well, you certainly should,’ Jake told her, as calm as she herself was becoming flustered as he suddenly turned towards her and before she could stop him reached out and curled his fingers around her bare wrist.

His grip, although light, disturbed her. She could feel her heart start to beat faster with what she told herself was anger at his high-handed manner and her pulse was certainly racing because Jake himself was now placing his thumb over it, as though aware of her tension, his thumb beginning a slow, rhythmic stroking of the inside of her wrist which she assumed must be intended to calm and relax her but which, instead, was sending her heartbeat into a crazy, irregular volley of frantic thuds which were matched by the dizzying acceleration of her pulse. No wonder she was finding it difficult to breathe, she told herself hazily.

Through the ragged sound of her own breathing she could hear Jake telling her softly, ‘I’m touching you now, Lucianna; I’m touching you the way a man, a lover, the way John should want to touch you in public as an indication of his desire to touch you more intimately in private.’

Through the confused jumble of messages assaulting her sensory system Lucianna’s brain managed to isolate and hold onto one of them.

‘But you aren’t John,’ she reminded Jake breathlessly.

‘No,’ he agreed, his stroking thumb suddenly ceasing its inflammatory circular movement against her skin and his voice hardening slightly. ‘And I promise you that if I were you would be in no doubt as to my feelings for you, Lucianna…’

‘I’m not,’ she managed to find the robustness to say. ‘I do know exactly how you feel about me, Jake,’ she told him, and then added succinctly, ‘And I promise you I feel exactly the same way about you, only more so.’

Some feminine instinct made her tilt her head determinedly as she threw the words at him, but the look of blazing heat in his eyes as he gazed back at her made her look away again hastily.

She had never seen him look so…so…passionate…so…intense. Normally he was such a calm, controlled man. Too calm and controlled—aggravatingly so at times.

‘Luc.’

She turned her head, frowning slightly as she recognised the voice of John’s colleague, Felicity. She didn’t particularly like Felicity especially since the shopping debacle. She was a tall, leggy brunette with a faintly supercilious manner and a habit of shortening Lucianna’s name and pronouncing it as though indeed she had been christened as a boy in the same slightly patronising, sneering manner she was using now.

‘Have you heard anything from John yet?’ she asked Lucianna, speaking to her but plainly far more visually interested in concentrating on Jake, at whom she was smiling.

Somehow or other she’d managed to stand so that she was facing Jake, keeping her body half turned away from Lucianna, effectively excluding her, and had placed herself closer to Jake than Lucianna herself was. She added, ‘We had a fax from him this morning saying that he’s settled in safely but that he’s missing us.’

‘Yes, he faxed me as well,’ Lucianna heard herself fibbing, much to her own surprise and shock.

It must be something to do with the lecture Jake had just been giving her about observing other people’s body language that was making her so crossly aware of the unsubtle manoeuvres Felicity was using to attempt to create an aura of intimacy between herself and Jake which totally excluded Lucianna.

Well, let her. Let them, she decided angrily. She didn’t care and it was typical of Jake that he should have attracted Felicity’s attention. He was that kind of man.

‘Are you one of Luc’s customers?’ she heard Felicity questioning Jake, her voice low and musical, her laughter a soft feminine gurgle as she added depreciatingly, ‘I think she’s wonderful doing what she does. To my shame I have to admit I don’t even know how to change a tyre…’

‘It isn’t the tyre you change, it’s the wheel,’ Lucianna informed her shortly. She stood up and said pointedly to Jake, ‘I thought you said we were going shopping…’

‘Shopping? Now that is something I do know about,’ Felicity enthused.

For one appalling moment Lucianna thought that she was going to have to suffer the additional humiliation of hearing Jake invite Felicity to join them, but to her relief he simply smiled at her instead and then turned towards Lucianna, placing his hand beneath her elbow as he rose, and standing firmly close to her.

If someone had told her ten minutes ago that she would actually be grateful to have Jake display such old-fashioned male courtesy and protectiveness towards her she would have denied it with scorn, so it was just as well someone hadn’t, because if they had right now she would have been eating her own words, she admitted uncomfortably.

Jake waited until they were out of Felicity’s earshot before saying smoothly, ‘You never said anything about John getting in touch with you.’

‘I don’t tell you everything,’ Lucianna returned. Jake was still lightly holding her arm, but when she tried to pull away from him she discovered that his hold on her was much firmer than she had imagined and rather than subject herself to an undignified tussle of physical strength which she knew he would win she had to satisfy herself with glowering at him and a brief and, although she didn’t know it, betrayingly feminine toss of her head that made Jake fight to hide a rueful smile.

He pointed out dryly, ‘Evidently not. Like you didn’t tell me you’d acquired a fax machine.’

‘Oh!’ Lucianna couldn’t manage to control the stricken look that crossed her face as he reminded her of the lie she had told Felicity. ‘Well, I couldn’t let her think that John had got in touch with his office and not me,’ she defended herself.

‘The office or her?’ Jake questioned cynically, and then, to Lucianna’s astonishment, he raised his free hand and touched her cheekbone lightly with his thumb as though he were brushing away some dirt or a tear, before saying softly, ‘Well, your feminine instincts are there all right. Now let’s see if we can unearth a few more of them. When did you last wear something that wasn’t a pair of jeans or dungarees, Lucianna?’

‘Last night,’ she told him smartly as she fought to get back the breath that had suddenly deserted her when he’d touched her face with such mock tenderness. As his eyebrows rose she added sweetly, ‘I don’t sleep in my work clothes, Jake.’

‘No, you sleep in a cotton nightdress,’ he agreed sardonically. ‘The same one you’ve been wearing since you were fifteen years old, I imagine.’

‘It’s still cold at night,’ she protested, feeling her face starting to heat up at the taunting note in his voice. ‘I like to curl my feet up into it…’

‘A woman in love…a woman with a lover…wouldn’t need a nightdress to keep her warm,’ Jake told her mockingly, adding hurtfully, ‘But then you aren’t a woman, are you, Lucianna? Not yet…’

‘Not according to you,’ she agreed, driven recklessly to answer him back to make him stop taunting her, and she added, ‘What’s wrong, Jake? Are you having second thoughts, beginning to feel that you’ve taken on too much, that you can’t transform me after all…make me a woman…?’

The look that crossed his face, the utter stillness of his body whilst his eyes turned dark and hot with an emotion she couldn’t recognise made her tense warily, not sure what it was she had said or done to unleash the fury she could sense he was trying to control, only knowing that she had suddenly and frighteningly strayed into an area of his personality she wasn’t familiar with.

‘Don’t tempt me,’ she heard him saying softly to her. ‘Just don’t tempt me, Lucianna.’

Don’t tempt him to what? she wondered shakily as his hand dropped from her arm as though her skin had burned him. Don’t tempt him to wring her neck, probably, she decided unhappily, forced to increase her stride to try to keep up with him as he strode down the street.

Scowling darkly, she flirted momentarily with the idea of telling him that she had changed her mind and that she didn’t want or need his help after all, but then she remembered the triumphant mockery she had heard in Felicity’s voice when she had told her about John’s fax and the slanting-eyed come-hither look she had given Jake, the same look Lucianna had seen her giving John on several previous occasions, and her head lifted and her spine straightened.

Jake, who had turned to wait for her to catch up with him, watched her discreetly.

She looked for all the world like a youthful teenager, her slender body encased in oversized clothes, but she wasn’t a child, she was an adult, a woman. A woman whose most basic instincts had been aroused by the threat of losing her man.

Her man. Jake’s frown returned as he turned abruptly away from Lucianna. The task he had taken on was fraught with innumerable perils, not the least of which was the fact that he might succeed and that Lucianna would get her way—and her man.

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