AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘So,’ Jude murmured softly. ‘You agreed to tell me why…’
‘Is that why you’re hugging me for the first time ever?’ Tansy demanded with sudden anger. ‘You want me to bare my soul, so you come over all manipulative and finally hug me?’
A frown line drawing his ebony brows together, Jude studied her in apparent wonderment. ‘You will be “baring your soul”?’ he queried.
Tansy went red. ‘Well, that was a bit of an exaggeration,’ she conceded, marvelling and mortified that that angry outburst had emerged from her without her volition.
‘But the use of that word, “finally”, suggests that I’m a major fail in the hug department?’ Jude pressed. ‘Well, that’s not surprising. I didn’t get hugged as a child very often—’
‘But surely your mother—’
‘No, when she visited me after losing custody of me to my father, she wasn’t allowed to touch me. Isidore and my father hated her and considered her a malign influence and restricted her access to me as much as they could,’ he took her aback by revealing. ‘A nanny with strict instructions always acted as a chaperone.’
‘But why on earth did they hate her so much?’ Tansy exclaimed, wide-eyed.
‘I think because she fought back and wouldn’t lie down to be walked over. All their lives Isidore and my father were all-powerful in almost every sphere and virtually everyone set out to please them. To be fair to them, though, Clio can be very difficult to deal with. In the end they dealt with her by almost destroying her,’ he breathed tautly. ‘But we’re not going to get distracted by my background just when you were about to spill the beans about why you were still a virgin when we met.’
Tansy gritted her teeth at the reminder and lay as still as a statue beside him. Her mind was still clinging to what he had told her about his background though. Growing up in such a difficult family situation had damaged Jude too. She was trying to imagine his childhood without hugs and winced in sympathy. The adults around him had been at daggers drawn and he had suffered accordingly. Distrust and intolerance had deprived Jude of the loving care he should have enjoyed.
Certainly, Tansy had had a better experience as a young child, but her face shadowed when she recalled her teenaged years when her peers had been dating and getting sexual experience. By that stage, the lack of understanding and shared interests between Tansy and her mother had become more obvious. She admitted to Jude that she had never had time at that age to get out and about. Either she had been swotting for exams, off on a beauty training course or working in her mother’s salon.
‘There wasn’t room for anything else in my life.’ She sighed. ‘And in any case, nobody was interested in me that way.’
‘I don’t believe that.’
Tansy rolled her eyes, unimpressed, thinking back to her almost prepubescent lack of curves in her teens. ‘When I started university I was sharing a flat with five girls. For the first time I was having a social life. The others were much more comfortable with boys than I was, and they all had active sex lives. I didn’t realise it at the time but afterwards, after what happened, I think a few of those girls disliked me just for being different. Early on I admitted I was a virgin but that I was hoping to meet someone special. I was teased a lot, but I didn’t let it bother me.’
‘Why should you have?’ Jude breathed above her head.
‘One of my flatmates became my best friend, a girl called Emma. I fell madly in love with Ben, who was on Emma’s course, and we started dating. I was quite frank with him about not being willing to jump into bed with him straight away. I wanted to see if we could go anywhere first,’ Tansy admitted ruefully. ‘I suppose that was pretty naive…me expecting him to wait.’
‘No. It was his choice, whether he did or not,’ Jude chipped in, being more supportive than she had expected.
‘We were dating a few months and I was so happy,’ Tansy recited with a groan of embarrassment. ‘He was my first boyfriend and we were holding hands! And then one weekend, when I was supposed to be going home, I accidentally found out the real truth of what was going on behind my back. Mum cancelled my visit at the last minute because she and Calvin had been invited away by friends. I returned to the flat unexpectedly and found Emma and Ben in bed together and heard them laughing about me.’
Jude turned her face towards him as she fell silent. ‘What did you do?’
‘I confronted them. Emma admitted they’d been together from the start and that she and her friends and his had bet Ben that he couldn’t collect my V-card,’ Tansy confessed stiltedly. ‘They’d all set me up for a joke. I was horrified, humiliated, awfully hurt because, not only did I love Ben, I believed Emma was my best friend.’
‘I bet Ben tried to get you back afterwards,’ Jude surprised her by remarking.
Tansy frowned. ‘He acted like a freaking stalker… I couldn’t believe that after what he’d done he could even think I’d have anything more to do with him! How did you know that he did that?’
‘Because I’m a man and I would assume he was simply using Emma for sex until he got you. He wouldn’t have wasted all that time on you if he hadn’t been keen. I would also suggest that she was in love with Ben too and jealous of his attraction to you,’ Jude summed up with confidence.
‘And what made you the teenage love guru?’ Tansy whispered, turning over to look at him, her heart tightening. ‘A very misspent youth?’
‘I was with Althea. There was nothing misspent about my youth,’ Jude reminded her wryly. ‘That’s why I went off the rails after her. I felt like an idiot for looking for “for ever” when everyone around me the same age was settling for a “just for now” option.’
Tansy smoothed a possessive hand down over his well-defined abs, honed to perfection as she knew by daily early morning gym sessions, which she often shared although her passion was running. ‘I think that’s admirable, that you rejected the life your father and grandfather had led and set your heart on something more lasting.’
‘No, it was naive, stupid,’ Jude argued. ‘I was too young to know what I was doing—’
‘No,’ Tansy continued to disagree. ‘You just picked the wrong girl.’
An involuntary laugh escaped Jude. ‘You make it sound so simple.’
‘Sometimes it is. Someone like me would have appreciated your values,’ Tansy muttered, engaged in kissing a haphazard line down over his rippling stomach, one small hand tracing a long muscular thigh.
