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‘Would you like some help?’ she asked Lucianna. ‘Or would you prefer to be left alone to browse?’
‘We need—’
‘I prefer to browse.’
Lucianna overrode Jake firmly, and just as firmly ignored his sardonic comment, meant for her ears only. ‘This isn’t a jeans shop, you know,’ he said as the girl retreated, returning to the pile of jumpers she had been folding when they’d walked in, leaving Lucianna and Jake on their own.
‘I do know that,’ Lucianna returned with pointed emphasis, before turning on her heel and, ignoring Jake, walking over to study a selection of colour coordinated clothes which had caught her eye.
At first sight, the plain, caramelly-coloured coordinates for which she was heading might have seemed dull in comparison to the much brighter range of clothes the shop also carried, but Lucianna had remembered seeing similarly coloured clothes being modelled by a girl with her colouring in one of her fashion magazines.
She reached out and touched the fabric of a pair of trousers uncertainly. It felt cool and silky soft. She frowned as she studied the swing ticket. ‘Tencel’, it said, which left her none the wiser apart from her instinctive awareness that Tencel, whatever it was, made the fabric feel good and hang well.
There was a brochure on a coffee table beside her turned open at a page depicting the trousers she was currently examining. In the photograph they were teamed with a neatly fitting short jacket casually unbuttoned over what looked like a plain cream silk top.
‘This is our newest range,’ the salesgirl announced helpfully, suddenly materialising at Lucianna’s side. ‘It’s my favourite and I’ve really fallen for the shell,’ she added enthusiastically, whilst Lucianna looked blank and wondered frantically what on earth ‘the shell’ was until she saw that Jake had removed a hanger with the cream silk top on it and was holding it out to her.
He said quietly, ‘Yes, it would suit you, Luce.’
The top, of course; she remembered now seeing it described as a ‘shell’ in her magazine. For once she was too grateful for Jake’s intervention to object to his interference, but that still didn’t quite explain, as she told herself later, quite just how she came to be standing in front of him half an hour later, self-consciously wearing not just the shell but the trousers and the jacket that went with it as well, along with the toning scarf, whilst the salesgirl enthused about the practicality of adding the sleeveless dress that was also part of the collection to the trousers, since the same jacket could be worn over it.
‘I don’t want…’ Lucianna began, and then stopped, a fiery blush staining her skin as she saw the way Jake was looking at her.
‘What is it? What’s wrong? Why are you looking at me like that?’ she hissed defensively at him whilst the salesgirl went to find the dress.
Jake shook his head.
‘Nothing’s wrong,’ he responded shortly, but he was frowning, Lucianna noticed, and suddenly the burning feeling of self-confidence and heady, unfamiliar pleasure in her own appearance that she had experienced when she had studied her reflection in the changing-room mirrors evaporated, bringing her abruptly back down to earth, making her feel awkward and uncomfortable and longing for the protection of her heavy denims to replace the silk trousers she was wearing.
As he turned his back on her Jake questioned with quiet inner savagery if he was totally sane. Knowing what he did about his feelings for her, it had surely been total madness to bring Lucianna somewhere where he was forced to watch her outer transformation from chrysalis to butterfly. He knew just what effect she was going to have on the rest of his sex when they saw her lovely lissom body dressed in that outfit, was aware that, whilst outwardly perfectly respectable, she seemed to hint with every movement she made at the delicate femininity of the body the suit was supposed to cover and shield.
‘You really do have the most wonderful figure,’ the salesgirl enthused, coming back with the dress over her arm and pausing to admire the effect of her coaxing and tweaking as Lucianna paused, reluctant to respond, to listen to her.
‘And that colour is definitely you as well,’ she added truthfully. ‘There’s something about clothes like these that makes you feel and look so feminine, isn’t there?’ she said warmly, and Lucianna, who, after witnessing Jake’s reaction, had been on the point of rejecting the outfit, hesitated and then frowned as she glanced into a mirror set at an angle to the shop floor several feet away.
In it she could just glimpse the back view of a woman wearing the same outfit as she was herself but on this woman it looked truly elegant, truly feminine. Lucianna lifted her hand to remove the scarf and then stood staring at the woman in the mirror, immobilised by the shock of realising that the reflection she could see was her own, that she was the woman who looked truly elegant, that the unfamiliar back view she had been admiring was, in actual fact, her own.
‘I’ll take it,’ she told the girl positively, before she could allow herself to change her mind. ‘All of it…and the dress as well,’ she added.
The girl’s smile widened.
Ten minutes later, as she paid for her purchases, Lucianna shot Jake a triumphant look.
He might not think she had what it took to be able to wear such feminine clothes but the salesgirl had thought differently and so had she, Lucianna decided firmly. She couldn’t wait to see John’s face when he saw her wearing her new things.
‘I hope you don’t mind my saying so,’ the salesgirl commented to Lucianna as she handed her a huge carrier bag containing her new clothes, ‘but I love the highlights you’ve had woven into your hair. Would you mind telling me where you had them done…?’
Highlights! Lucianna gave her a puzzled look, whilst Jake, who had overheard their conversation, duly explained for her, ‘I’m afraid they’re the
work of the sun.’
‘You mean they’re natural? Lucky you,’ the girl told her enviously. ‘I have to pay a fortune for mine and they don’t look anything like as good.’
Lucianna was still frowning as they left the shop. Highlights…Did the salesgirl mean those odd little goldy bits that had always lightened her hair in the summer?
‘Coffee?’ Jake suggested as he and Lucianna left the shop, but Lucianna shook her head and demanded instead,
‘You didn’t like it, did you? The outfit I just bought—you didn’t like it. I could see it in your face…’
