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That was an avenue down which her thoughts must not be allowed to go.
She had just slipped on her suit when she heard a car drive into the farmyard. Frowning, she went downstairs to open the door.
John was half an hour too early for their date, but fortunately she was virtually ready. However, as she opened the back door into the yard she realised that it wasn’t John who had just driven in but Jake.
‘You’re too late,’ she told him abruptly as he strode towards her. ‘David and Janey have already left.’
‘It’s you I’ve come to see, not them,’ Jake replied bitingly, walking into the kitchen and closing the door behind him, whilst Lucianna retreated to the other side of the kitchen table, watching warily as he reached into his jacket pocket and produced a familiar envelope.
‘I found this waiting amongst my post,’ he told her tersely. ‘Would you like to explain to me, Lucianna, what’s going on?’ he demanded as he tipped the pieces of the contract onto the table in front of her.
‘I should have thought it was self-explanatory,’ Lucianna told him proudly, her eyes flashing, emotion giving her voice a mature huskiness as she added, ‘I know what you were trying to do, Jake, but it won’t work—you can’t buy me or…I’m not for sale,’ she told him fiercely.
‘But your business is,’ Jake retorted curtly.
‘I’ve decided to re-train…do something else,’ Lucianna informed him.
‘You’ve decided?’ Jake challenged her. ‘Or did someone else make the decision for you, Lucianna…? John perhaps? You really must love him one hell of a lot,’ he said savagely, and then added with what to Lucianna felt like unbelievable cruelty, ‘Certainly one hell of a lot more than he does you.’
‘You have no right to say that,’ she responded fiercely. How dared he question John’s feelings for her when his own…when he…?
‘No right?’ she heard him mutter fiercely, and he strode round the table and totally unexpectedly grabbed hold of her, his fingers biting painfully into the tender flesh of her upper arms as he gave her a small shake. ‘Lucianna…I…’
‘Don’t touch me.’ Lucianna panicked, almost screaming the words at him, her body reacting with helpless intensity to his touch and his proximity, her aching need for him filling her with a heat, a hunger that caused her to tremble violently and visibly. Half of her ached to close the distance between them and to feel the longed-for sensation of his body close to her own, against her own, within her own, whilst the other half…the other half was gripped by a terrified headlong flight into total panic as she tried to pull away from him and put a safer distance between them.
‘Don’t touch you?’ she heard Jake repeating harshly through gritted teeth. ‘I’ve heard you singing a very different song…’
Instantly Lucianna went completely rigid, her face paper-white, her eyes huge, bruised pools of feminine pride and pain as she asked him piteously, ‘How could you? How dare you bring that up now?’
‘Oh, I can and I dare,’ Jake assured her. ‘I can and I dare because…’
He was mesmerising her with his voice and his eyes, Lucianna decided dizzily; he must be, otherwise she would have been fighting to pull free of him instead of simply standing there, mute and bemused, as his hands travelled up over her arms to cup her f
ace and hold it still. He bent over her, his body blocking out the light as he lowered his head towards hers, his mouth unerringly finding hers…His mouth…
Too late Lucianna tried to move, to avoid the descent of his head and the hot, savage pressure of his kiss, because her lips were already clinging helplessly to his, remembering, returning their passionate caresses, trembling, parting, her whole body shuddering in despairing pleasure as she felt the first swift thrust of his tongue inside her mouth.
She wanted him so much. Loved him so badly. She wanted him to pick her up right now and carry her upstairs, lay her on her bed and tell her he loved her whilst he…
Tell her he loved her? But he didn’t love her…and he had already made that more than plain to her…
Abruptly Lucianna came to her senses, pushing Jake away as she struggled to suppress the small sob of desolation rising in her throat.
‘Just in time,’ Jake told her cynically as they both heard the sound of a car pulling into the yard. ‘But I can tell you this, Lucianna…’
‘No,’ Lucianna denied, covering her ears with her hands in a gesture that was almost childish, her voice distraught with pain as she told him, ‘I don’t want to hear anything you have to say, Jake…anything…’ And then, before he could reply, she opened the kitchen door and hurried into the yard towards John’s car.
‘What’s he doing here?’ John asked her as he opened the car door for her, frowning in Jake’s direction as he saw Jake standing in the doorway.
‘Oh, he came over to see David,’ Lucianna fibbed. She had no qualms about leaving Jake in the farmhouse. She knew he had his own key, an arrangement David had made with him years ago, and she knew that despite their own quarrel and the enmity which now existed between them he would be scrupulous about locking the farm door behind him when he left. Fortunately she had instinctively reached for her bag as she’d left the kitchen, so at least she would be able to get back in again.
‘I’m really looking forward to this evening,’ John told her as he drove out of the yard, turning his head to give her a meaningful glance that made her heart sink. ‘You mean a lot to me, Luce,’ he said warmly, reaching out to take hold of her hand before she could stop him and giving it a damp squeeze. ‘An awful lot,’ he emphasised in a voice she assumed was meant to sound sincere and sexy but which in fact to her sounded almost exactly the opposite.
As she firmly extracted her hand from his and looked away, she couldn’t help wondering how he would react if she reminded him that for someone who claimed to think an awful lot of her he had found it remarkably easy to walk away from her. And she hadn’t forgotten all those hurtful criticisms he had made before he had left for Canada, but since she had no wish to provoke a quarrel with him she kept her thoughts to herself, merely saying quietly and with a certain cynicism in her voice, ‘I take it, then, that there were no particularly attractive girls at the Canadian office?’
John certainly was out to impress her, Lucianna admitted half an hour later as he pulled into the car park of a particularly prestigious and expensive local restaurant. However, once they were inside she discovered that his actions were not quite as generous as she had initially assumed. She had learned quite early on in their relationship that John had a thrifty streak, and that, it seemed, was something about him which had not changed.
John was not taking her out for a meal à deux as she had initially believed; instead they were joining a party of his colleagues who were celebrating the fiftieth birthday of the senior partner.
