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Curiously he too looked towards the window, and immediately recognised Jake as he emerged from the driver’s seat of his car.
He knew, of course, that Jake and David were old and close friends, but Jake wasn’t heading for the farmhouse; instead he was walking towards Lucianna’s workshop.
As he pushed open the door Lucianna retreated to the other side of the workbench, hoping that the shadows would mask the hot colour burning up painfully over her skin. Just seeing him made her whole body ache with a feverish need so intense that she could feel herself actually starting to shake.
‘Sorry I’m late,’ Jake began incomprehensibly as he nodded acknowledgement in Rory Simons’ direction before unzipping the leather document case he was carrying and removing from it a thick wad of papers. ‘I got held up in town by the traffic. I’ve got all the service contracts here now, Lucianna.
‘I’m glad you’re here, Rory,’ he commented to the bank manager. ‘Perhaps you wouldn’t mind witnessing Lucianna’s signature for us…?’
The service contracts? What service contracts? Lucianna had been about to demand, but her voice deserted her as Jake took half a dozen steps towards her and the ache in her body became a tormented flood of agonising longing. He was dressed formally today in a dark suit, the jacket open over an immaculately white shirt, the tie he was wearing as dark as his suit but with a small design on it that almost exactly matched the colour of his eyes—a tie bought for him, bought for him by a woman, Lucianna guessed jealously—and, as it happened, incorrectly.
‘The contract cover for all the estate’s farm vehicles, plus Henry Peters’ car, and, as we agreed, it runs for five years. During that time, you will be responsible for servicing and maintaining all the estate’s machinery and equipment,’ Jake continued formally, ignoring both Lucianna’s shocked expression and the bank manager’s look of pleased relief as though he were totally unaware of the full import of what he had said.
‘My own car, of course, will be subject to a separate contract,’ he went on. He glanced at his watch. ‘I don’t want to rush you, but I’ve got a directors’ meeting this afternoon, so if we could get these agreements signed…’
Lucianna couldn’t take her eyes off him. What on earth was Jake doing…saying…? He had never discussed with her giving her a service contract to maintain the estate’s vehicles, never mind indicated that he intended to have her service the estate manager’s and his own car…She shook her head, convinced that she must be dreaming, imagining things, half expecting—and then she closed her eyes totally, convinced that when she opened them again he would have disappeared. Only when she did he hadn’t.
‘Jake—’ she began in a wobbly voice, but before she could ask him what on earth was going on Rory Simons overrode her, demanding eagerly.
‘Jake, am I to understand that you’re giving Lucianna an exclusive service and maintenance contract for all your estate machinery?’ he asked.
‘She submitted the best tender,’ Jake told him offhandedly, shrugging as he did so. ‘And certainly so far as I’m concerned I couldn’t find a better mechanic…
‘Oh, by the way,’ he added casually, ‘Lucianna mentioned to me that she’s having a bit of a cash-flow problem at the moment. I’ve suggested that one way around the problem could be for me to inject some capital into the business and to guarantee the current bank borrowing.’
From the look on Rory Simons’ face Jake might have just offered him the winning numbers on a lottery ticket, Lucianna decided, still in too much of a state of shock herself even to begin to query what Jake was saying.
‘Right, Lucianna,’ Jake was instructing her now. ‘If you could just sign here and then Rory could witness your signature. I might still be able to make it to my meeting on time…just…’
In a complete daze Lucianna found herself taking the pen Jake was holding out to her, weak tears starting to burn behind her eyes as her fingers reacted sensitively to the fact that the pen still held the warmth of Jake’s touch, a touch that, almost in another life now, or so it seemed, she had actually felt against her own body, her own flesh, her own most intimate…
Quickly she bent her head so that neither of the two watching men could see the hot flush that burned her skin, but she knew that Jake must have witnessed the way her hand trembled as she signed her name where he had indicated.
She had no idea what was going on, nor why Jake had chosen to pretend to her bank manager that he was giving her what she knew to be a completely fictitious contract, and if she’d had anything about her she would have challenged him right there and then, she told herself. But somehow she simply couldn’t find the strength of will to do so…Not because of her business…No, not because of that. It was because of her emotions, her need…her love…that she was afraid to confront him, because she was mortally afraid that simply to stand there and look at him would cause her to break down and tell him how she felt, to beg him.
Rory Simons was signing the papers now, smiling happily as he did so, but Lucianna couldn’t share his happiness. Stiffly she stood apart from the two men, watching as Jake gathered up the signed papers and then, with a brief look in her direction, started to stride towards the door.
‘Why didn’t you tell me that Jake Carlisle was giving you his business?’ the bank manager mock scolded her after Jake had gone. Lucianna couldn’t say anything. All she could do was shake her head and try to blink away her weak, foolish, yearning tears.
It was only later, as Lucianna turned the whole incident over in her mind and tried despairingly not to linger longingly on her mental image of Jake in his expensive suit, looking very, so very disturbingly male and so hopelessly out of reach, that one possible and very unpalatable explanation for Jake’s extraordinary behaviour struck her. Far from being some altruistic and even chivalrous attempt to come to her rescue and save her failing business, as it had originally seemed, could Jake perhaps be thinking that in guaranteeing her debts he was also guaranteeing her silence on the subject of the night of their secret intimacy? He had, after all, made it very plain to her that he wanted it to be kept a secret.
The thought that he might actually feel he could buy her off, pay her off like some…like a…made Lucianna feel physically ill. And not just ill but bitterly hurt and bitterly angry as well. Well, she would show him—and she would show him what he could do with his precious contracts as well, she decided.
She would rather starve in a gutter, sacrifice her precious business, and her independence with it, than accept his help and allow him to think…Oh, how could he? How dared he? Did he really find the thought, the memory of what had happened between them so obnoxious that he felt he had to expunge it, destroy it and her by reducing her precious memories to the status of some kind of…? Lucianna swallowed painfully.
S
he had worked hard to establish her small business and she was loath to lose it, but she couldn’t allow Jake to think…to believe what she was now convinced he did think and believe.
Purposefully Lucianna removed the list of her current clients from the file she had prepared for the bank manager’s visit but as she dialled the first number on the list her hand was shaking very badly.
Two hours later it was done; every single one of her clients had been advised that she was no longer in business. Now all she had left to do was to arrange to withdraw what was left of her savings and cash in on her investments in order that she could repay the bank all that she owed them. After that…
Proudly Lucianna squared her shoulders. She would have to find herself a temporary job and then, at the end of the summer, she could re-start her studies, go to university perhaps as a mature student, find herself something to do that was more ‘suitable’ for a woman.
The view beyond her workshop window blurred and swam as she blinked fiercely to disperse the tears.
She had equipped this workshop with such high hopes, such faith and belief not just in herself but also in others, in the surety that they would ultimately accept that she was every bit as good a mechanic as any male. And she was as good. Nothing could change that, just as nothing, apparently, could change the male pride that meant that they could not and would not accept her.
