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He went back to the library and quickly dialled the number of the farm manager he employed, tersely giving him some instructions before hanging up and then dialling the number of his solicitor.
What he was doing could never save Lucianna from suffering any emotional loss but it would certainly help to prevent her from enduring a financial one, even if he had been able to tell from the tone of their voices that both his farm manager and his solicitor quite plainly thought he was crazy.
Tiredly Lucianna pushed her fingers into her hair—hair which increasingly these days she wore soft and loose around her face whenever she was not actually working. And just as automatically and instinctively she found she was wearing make-up and more neatly fitting clothes, but the reasons why she looked so different whenever she caught sight of her own reflection had nothing really to do with her new clothes or even her new awareness of her femininity. No, the soft blue shadows that gave her eyes their haunting vulnerability owed their existence not to Jake’s teachings but to Jake himself.
Hard enough to bear were the daylight hours when she fought valiantly to suppress every thought of him, but even harder were the nights and the longings, the emotions, the love that surfaced through her subconscious in her dreams to bring her wide awake with tears pouring down her face. She dreamed of not having Jake’s love or, even worse, of being back in his arms, once again experiencing the ecstatic pleasure of his lovemaking, only this time believing that he actually loved her.
Those were the most cruel dreams of all—more cruel even than the realisation that her hopes of running her own small business successfully and proving to her doubters and detractors that a woman could be just as good a mechanic as a man—indeed better—were never going to become a reality. No longer a dream—it was in truth more of a nightmare, she acknowledged as she stared dispiritedly at the figures in front of her.
In three hours’ time her bank manager would be arriving to remind her that it was time for her to start repaying the overdraft facility he had granted her, and he would, of course, want to look at her books and check on the progress of her small business.
What progress? Lucianna swallowed grimly. There was no progress. And it wasn’t as though she hadn’t tried and tried desperately hard to build up her client base. She had, but to no avail. The figures in front of her said it all and she knew already what the bank manager was going to tell her. Her business simply wasn’t viable, even with the benefit of rent-free premises and the fact that she made no drawings from the business at all, relying increasingly on her savings and the interest on an inheritance she had shared with her brothers to fund her day-to-day living.
Janey, who had been watching her sympathetically, tried to console her by saying, ‘Try not to worry; I’m sure Rory will understand. After all, you couldn’t have done any more than you have done to get more business in…’
‘Maybe, but it hasn’t been enough. Perhaps Dad’s right after all; perhaps I should never…’ Lucianna stopped and bit her lip and then shook her head. ‘I’d probably have been better off going to university and then getting a more orthodox job…a more feminine job,’ she declared bitterly.
‘Oh, Luce,’ Janey protested gently, but Lucianna wasn’t in any mood to be comforted.
‘It’s no good. Rory Simons is going to tell me that I’ve wasted my own money and that now I’m wasting the bank’s and he’s quite right.’
Janey’s heart went out to her.
‘Perhaps David…’ she began.
But Lucianna shook her head immediately and told her fiercely, ‘No. If I
can’t make the business pay by myself—for myself—then I don’t want…I don’t deserve…It isn’t money, a loan, that I need, Janey,’ she told her sister-in-law dispiritedly. ‘It’s work. David was right. Men don’t trust a female mechanic.’
‘But there are lots of women drivers,’ Janey said, but Lucianna shook her head again.
‘Women drivers, yes,’ she agreed, ‘but not women car owners. Not when it comes down to it…Not where it counts.’
‘Well, at least John will be home soon,’ Janey reminded her warmly, ‘and to judge from the number of times he’s telephoned recently he’s obviously missed you.’
‘A case of absence making the heart grow fonder,’ Lucianna quipped wryly. If only she could say the same about her own emotions, that it was Jake’s absence that made her heart ache, Jake’s missing presence that was causing her sleepless nights and an aching heart and body, not John’s.
Lucianna glanced at her watch as the bank manager drove into the yard right on time.
David had offered to cancel a meeting of his own to give her the support of his presence, but she had shaken her head, for once not taking umbrage, but instead telling him gratefully, ‘It’s kind of you, but no, this is something I have to do myself.’
As David had later remarked to Janey when they were alone, Lucianna had changed dramatically over the last few weeks, and not just in the way she looked and dressed. She had matured.
‘Turned from a girl to a woman,’ Janey had supplied gently for him.
‘Yes,’ David had agreed ruefully. ‘Very much a woman.’
When Rory Simons stepped out of his car he too was surprised by the physical change in her. Gone were the shabby, oversized dungarees and in their place Lucianna was wearing an immaculately clean, neat-fitting pair of tailored trousers and a soft knitted top—an impulse buy if he had but known. It had been chosen to bolster her confidence and caused her to spend virtually the last of the birthday money she had received from her father and her aunt.
‘Lucianna,’ he greeted her with a fatherly smile. ‘You look well.’
It was a lie, he recognised as he saw her face for the first time. She looked different, unfamiliarly well turned out and certainly unfamiliarly femininely appealing, causing him to realise what an extraordinarily beautiful young woman she actually was—but she most certainly did not look well. In fact…
As he studied her more closely he started to frown. Her face bore all the signs of someone undergoing the kind of crisis he, as a bank manager, was becoming increasingly familiar with. His heart sank. He had come here hoping against hope that her small business had started to turn the corner and might yet prove to be a viable proposition, as much for her sake as the bank’s. After all, he had known her and her family for a good many years, but he suspected that his worst fears were about to be realised.
Half an hour later his suspicions were a certainty. Closing the books she had shown him, he sighed.
‘Lucianna,’ he began, ‘I’m very much afraid—’ And then he stopped as a car being driven into the yard distracted Lucianna’s attention, causing her to stare hungrily through the window, a fixed expression on her face, her body tense.
