Levelling The Score

Jenna could have hit him. All those years when she thought she had successfully hidden that embarrassing teenage crush from him, and now he casually let her know that she hadn’t! What was more, he actually dared to taunt her with the fact, and to add insult to injury.

‘Don’t worry, Simon,’ she told him with acid sweetness. ‘I’m rather fussy about whom I sleep with—one has to be these days. You’ll be quite safe … I’ll sleep downstairs.’

‘Oh, well, at least you won’t be alone,’ he responded comfortingly. ‘From the signs I saw in the kitchen, it looks like a whole colony of mice have taken up residence. I suppose they must have come in from the fields.’

All her life Jenna had had an irrational fear of the small, furry creatures and now immediately she tensed, visions of an entire army of them frolicking over her recumbent form as she slept tormenting her. She shuddered.

‘You’re lying to me.’

Simon’s eyebrows rose.

‘Why on earth should I? You don’t actually think I have evil designs upon you, do you?’

Put like that it sounded ridiculous. Of course he didn’t want her, she knew that, but she also knew that for some reason he seemed to delight in tormenting her. Tormenting her? How could lying on the same mattress while securely wrapped up in her own sleeping-bag possibly torment her?

‘Look, I’m shattered. You make whatever arrangements you choose, Jenna, but if you’ll excuse me I want to get some sleep.’

‘Do you want to take the lamp or …’

Reluctantly she picked up her sleeping-bag and walked over to the bed.

Behind her she heard the bedroom door swing shut and for some ridiculous reason she felt as though she had walked into a well-sprung trap.

‘I’ll let you have first go at the bathroom,’ Simon offered magnanimously, ‘but I warn you, the water is like ice.’

It came from an underground well and Jenna shivered in remembered dread of its icy sting.

She went down to the car to fetch her overnight case, acknowledging the impossibility of using the two shaped seats as a makeshift bed. She was aching all over with tension and tiredness.

She heard Simon moving about in the kitchen as she walked in.

‘Fancy a cup of cocoa? I’ve found some at the back of the cupboard, although heaven only knows what it will taste like with dried milk.’

She was thirsty, and perhaps it would be as well if, for this one night at least, she put her resentment of him behind her.

‘Yes, please.’

‘OK. I’ll bring it up when it’s ready.’

By the time she heard his footsteps on the stairs, she was undressed and tucked up inside her sleeping-bag. It occurred to her that in anyone other than Simon she could have taken his delay as a gentlemanly acknowledgement of her modesty, but since when had Simon ever bothered to take her feelings into account over anything?

The cocoa was surprisingly good, warming her chilled hands as she cradled the mug.

Simon disappeared into the bathroom, and was gone long enough for her to finish her drink and snuggle down into her sleeping bag.

She felt the bed dip and heard the rustle of the nylon fabric as he made himself comfortable, and then the room was plunged into darkness as he extinguished the light.

Some time during the night she dreamed that she was freezing cold, ploughing through numbing wastes of snow, and then deliciously she was warm again. She smiled in her sleep, completely unaware of the fact that the reason she was now so warm was that Simon had unzipped their separate sleeping-bags and then zipped them together to provide extra warmth.

It also brought Jenna into much closer contact with his warm body as he lay against her back!

CHAPTER THREE

JENNA heard the noise distantly, as no more than an irritating intrusion into the pleasant rosiness of her dream. She wriggled comfortably and burrowed deeper into the sleeping-bag, relishing the solid wall of warmth at her back, and then when the noise grew more intrusive she opened her eyes, blinking reluctantly in the brilliance of the early morning sunshine.

It took her several seconds to grasp what was going on. She remembered getting into bed all right, and she remembered the sleeping-bag as well, but she also distinctly recalled cocooning herself into it alone, and now for some reason it seemed to have stretched to include …

She tensed and turned over.

Simon!

He was still asleep, looking absurdly young, even with a dark overnight growth of beard.

‘I don’t know who it is in there, but you’re on private property …’

The bedroom door opened unceremoniously, and Mrs Magellan stood there, glaring belligerently at the bed.

The way her expression changed as she recognised both its occupants could in other circumstances have been amusing, but right at this moment Jenna felt more like a naughty schoolgirl caught in an underhand activity.

‘Well, I never! Miss Jenna … And Master Simon …’ A disapproving frown pleated Mrs Magellan’s forehead. ‘Well, when I saw those two cars parked outside, I thought you must be some of those hippies … I never thought …’

Her frown deepened, and Jenna wondered despairingly how on earth she was going to be able to explain the long and complicated story that was the truth.

She kicked Simon ruthlessly and hard on the shin. He was the one who had got them into this mess, she fumed, and he could jolly well get them out of it! He was the one with the trained legal brain, after all—the brilliant barrister so fluently capable of putting forward a good defence.

She kicked him again. He muttered something unintelligible and then opened his eyes.

‘My God, Mrs M!’ He sat bolt upright, exposing a good deal of hair-darkened masculine torso.

‘Mrs Magellan wants to know what we’re doing here, Simon,’ Jenna told him.

‘Ah …’

Jenna could have sworn that he was amused, though no sign of undesirable levity showed in his face.

‘Well …’

‘I’m sure it’s not for me to question a fully grown man about his morals, Mr Simon, but I should think your mother would have something to say to this … and with Miss Jenna as well …’

‘Yes, well, you see, Mrs M, Jenna and I—we’re going to get married … and Jenna being the sentimental sort wanted to come down here to the place where she first fell in love with me. You know what girls are …’

At his side, Jenna seethed in bitter silence. How dared he do this to her! Why couldn’t he simply have told Mrs Magellan the truth?

‘Of course, we had intended to have separate rooms, but we didn’t realise there’d been so much rain damage …’

‘Oh, well, since the pair of you are getting married, I suppose it’s all right … but it’s not what I would have expected of you, Miss Jenna … I’ll go downstairs now and let you both get up. I dare say you’ll be wanting to get back to London once you’ve had a bite of breakfast.’

The moment the older woman had closed the door behind her, Jenna rounded on Simon.