Mission: Make-Over

‘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?’