Читать книгу Mission: Make-Over - Пенни Джордан, Penny Jordan - Страница 7

‘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!