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And already, although Lucianna herself wasn’t aware of it, what she had seen not just in the magazines but also through her people-watching exercises had begun subtly to exert an influence over her.
Jake, though, had noticed that the jeans she was wearing were a slightly better fit than the oversized ones she normally favoured, and the crisp white shirt, although still a man’s and, he suspected, one she had purloined from her brother’s wardrobe, was much more flattering than the heavy checked work shirts she normally wore.
Lucianna was forced to admit to herself that she was impressed by the shopping complex as she and Jake walked across the thankfully not too busy paved piazza area. Sapling trees, shrubs and attractive planters interspersed with seats, along with a good mixture of restaurants, bars and coffee shops, all of which had pleasant outdoor seating areas, all helped to lend a relaxing and almost continental atmosphere to the place, and Lucianna was also impressed by the absence of litter and general air of cleanliness.
‘Where do you want to start?’ Jake ask
ed her. ‘Or would you prefer to have a cup of coffee first?’
The thought of a cup of coffee was tempting, and not just as a means of a delaying tactic, Lucianna acknowledged, but she still shook her head determinedly.
Now that they were here she wanted to get the whole thing over and done with as quickly as possible.
‘What’s wrong?’ Jake taunted her softly. ‘Afraid you might lose your nerve?’
Lucianna flashed him a disdainful look and tossed her head, denying fiercely, ‘Certainly not.’
Hiding his smile at her predictable reaction, Jake indicated a shop on the other side of the square.
Lucianna started to walk towards it and then stopped, frowning slightly and hesitating.
The understated elegance of the window display seemed to indicate that it would be one of those shops with the kind of assistants who would look down their elegant noses at her and make her wish she were a million miles away, but Jake was walking determinedly towards it and she wasn’t going to have him thinking that she was nervous or, even worse, afraid.
‘This shop is part of a European chain that specialises in providing a specific look which continues from season to season,’ Jake explained.
‘Really? How interesting,’ Lucianna replied, covering her growing feeling of insecurity and panic with the sarcastic retort, adding, ‘Well, that must make things easy for you, I suppose. If you bring all your girlfriends here for their clothes, then at least you won’t miss recognising the latest one in the street.’
‘And just what the hell is that supposed to mean?’
Lucianna was shocked into instant immobility as, instead of treating her comment with the contemptuous amusement she was used to, Jake suddenly wheeled round to confront her, his mouth a dangerously thin line and his eyes cold with anger.
‘It…it wasn’t meant to mean anything,’ Lucianna denied. ‘It…it was just supposed to be a…joke…’
‘A joke?’ Jake’s eyebrows rose. ‘Really? Well, I don’t find it particularly funny to be accused of being the kind of man who has a chain of interchangeable bimbos dragging through his life, and for your information I have never suggested nor would I ever insult anyone by doing so, that a woman is some kind of doll, a toy, to be dressed up or undressed at my or any other man’s whim. And furthermore I find it extremely unamusing, not to say offensive, that you should suggest I might,’ Jake informed her acerbically.
Despite the fact that his obvious anger had shocked her, Lucianna fought back valiantly, determined not to be left wrong-footed, as she pointed out, ‘Well, I’m sorry if I’ve got the wrong impression, but you’re the one who’s always changed his girlfriends more frequently than most men change their…their socks…’
‘Really?’ Jake challenged her. ‘Do go on…It seems to me that you know more about my private life than I do myself.
‘What a wonderfully insightful person you must be, Lucianna,’ he marvelled sarcastically. ‘And there I was thinking you never noticed anything that didn’t come with wheels and an engine, and yet here you are, completely au fait with the most personal details of my life…more au fait than I am myself, as it happens, since the last time I had anything even approaching a relationship was—’
He stopped speaking as Lucianna, unable to control herself any longer, interrupted him hotly to say, ‘I don’t know why you’re so angry, or pretending to be so…so…I heard the way David used to boast about the number of girls you and he took out,’ she reminded him. Both her eyes and her voice mirrored her feelings, revealing to him far more than she knew as she added defensively, ‘I thought it…you were…disgusting…boasting and bragging like that and—’
‘Not me,’ Jake interrupted her cuttingly. ‘I don’t recall ever having discussed such a subject in your hearing, and in fact…’
Forced by the sheer grim sternness of his voice to reconsider her own hotly, hastily spoken words, Lucianna was obliged to concede reluctantly, ‘All right…I might never have heard you say it, but you were part of it…part of what David was talking about. You and he—’
‘He and I might once have behaved with all the boorish stupidity that teenage boys are capable of displaying at times,’ Jake interrupted her to agree, ‘but the wholesale seduction and abandonment of a series of defenceless, vulnerable teenage girls in the style you were implying was totally and completely fictitious.
‘For one thing, you underrate the intelligence and sense of self-preservation of your own sex if you think otherwise, Lucianna…and, for another, teenage boys have a capacity for self-aggrandisement and exaggeration that knows no limits. It’s a fault that most of us grew out of very quickly indeed, and the kind of boastful comments teenage boys make shouldn’t be taken too seriously, you know…’
Lucianna shivered slightly as she turned away from him, her voice low and slightly shaky as she told him passionately, ‘I hated hearing the way you talked about…about girls…and…’
‘Sex?’ Jake supplied softly for her.
Lucianna could feel her face starting to burn. Why, oh, why had she ever brought up this subject? It was something she found it hard enough to think about herself even in the privacy of her own thoughts, never mind discuss with anyone else—and most especially with Jake.
‘Yes, I can understand how some of the things you overheard must have made you feel.’
