Mission: Make-Over

She had spent the afternoon with her father. Following his retirement he had moved to a village twenty-odd miles away where he now lived with his widowed elder sister, and Lucianna had promised several days earlier that she would service their ancient Hillman for them. Her mind hadn’t really been on the Hillman, though; it had been on Jake Carlisle and his extraordinary challenge, his declaration that he could teach her how to be a woman, the kind of woman men like him—and, according to him, all men—really wanted.

Jake, as Lucianna already knew, could be a formidable adversary. It had been Jake, after all, who had persuaded her father to retire when David had given up on ever being allowed to take over and modernise the farm, and Jake who had added the weight of his confidence to her youngest brother Adam’s pleas to be allowed to spend time back-packing around the world instead of settling down in a job as her father had wished. Adam was presently working in Australia at a holiday resort on the Barrier Reef.

Dick, the brother between Lewis and Adam in age, was working abroad in China, supervising the building of a new dam, and Lewis was in New York.

What would they make of Jake’s plan to turn her into a proper woman, the kind of woman John simply couldn’t resist? Did she really need to ask herself? First they would roar with laughter and then they would no doubt point out that the task he had taken on was too formidable, too impossible even for his fabled talents.

She wasn’t the complete fool her family seemed to think she was, Lucianna assured herself irritably. She knew perfectly well that other young women of her age appeared to have an almost magical ability when it came to attracting the opposite sex that she simply didn’t possess, but she refused to believe it was simply a matter of wearing different clothes and adopting the kind of simpering, idiotic manner she suspected that Jake was going to advise her to attempt.

There had been other boys, young men she had dated before she met John, brief friendships which had petered out amicably on both sides, but with John it was different; with John she’d found herself thinking for the first time about a shared future, marriage…children…But, although John always seemed to enjoy her company, so far their relationship had not progressed beyond the odd relatively chaste kiss or affectionate hug.

She had tried to tell herself that John was a gentleman and that he simply didn’t want to rush her and she had staunchly held onto that belief until last weekend.

Quietly she let herself into the house and made her way upstairs, pausing on the landing as she heard voices from her brother and sister-in-law’s room and then tensing when she realised that she was the subject of their conversation.

She hadn’t intended to eavesdrop, she told herself as she recognised that they were discussing the conversation which had taken place in the farmhouse kitchen earlier in the day, but for some reason it was impossible for her to walk away.

‘Do you really think Jake’s going to be able to teach Lucianna to be more feminine?’ she heard Janey asking her husband.

‘Not a hope in hell,’ she heard David responding cheerfully whilst she held her breath. ‘Luce is my sister but, much as I love her, I have to admit that when it comes to sex appeal the poor kid just doesn’t have what it takes…’

‘Oh, David, that’s a bit unkind and unfair,’ Janey protested. ‘She’s got a lovely figure, even if she does hide it behind those dreadful dungarees, and if she paid a little more attention to herself she could be quite stunning. It’s not her fault, you know, if all of you treated her like another brother when she was growing up—’

‘It doesn’t matter what she does,’ David interrupted her disparagingly, ‘Luce just isn’t a man’s woman, and not even Jake, despite his experience with the female sex, is going to be able to change that. We might as well face up to the fact that we’ve got her here on our hands for life…’

Hot tears filled Lucianna’s eyes as she crept silently past their bedroom door. Even her own brother thought she was unappealing as a woman. Well, she would show him, she decided angrily. She would show them all, and if that meant eating humble pie and taking orders from someone as tirelessly autocratic and bossy as Jake, then despite all the run-ins she had had with him in the past, all the times she had objected to him taking a far too older-brotherly and interfering interest in her life, so be it.

And, loath though she was to admit it, even in the privacy of her own thoughts, she could certainly have no better tutor. She had, after all, had ample opportunity over the years to witness for herself just exactly what effect Jake had on the susceptible and, it had to be admitted, not so susceptible members of her own sex, and, puzzlingly, so far as she could discern, without him apparently having to make any obvious attempts to engage their besotted adoration.

Personally, she couldn’t fathom just what it was they saw in him that reduced normally intelligent, witty, independent women to drooling, speechless wrecks; she had never found anything remotely attractive in his black-browed, autocratic and, in her eyes, often censorious maleness. She preferred men like John—fair-haired, kind-eyed men who looked more like cuddly teddy bears than something reminiscent of an adman’s image of a truly awesomely male hunk.

She was under no illusions about how unpleasant and unpalatable she was likely to find the entire exercise, nor how much amusement Jake was all too likely to derive from it—at her expense. But enough was enough, and she had had enough and more. Determinedly she brushed away her tears and told herself a second time that it would all be worth it to have John standing lovingly at her side, his ring on her finger.

Five minutes later, in her own room, she paused in the automatic act of getting undressed and walked hesitantly across the room to stand in front of her bedroom mirror.

Only this afternoon her aunt had commented on how like her mother she looked. Her mother had been considered something of a beauty, but wasn’t beauty supposed to be in the eyes of the beholder? And she had seen the way John had winced when he had called round unexpectedly earlier in the week, a look of distaste crossing his face as he’d looked at her oil-stained hands and short nails. But John had thought her attractive enough when they had first met and he had been glad enough of her mechanical expertise then too, even proud of it, boasting to his friends about her skill.

It had been later that he had stopped telling others how she earned her living and then, latterly, cautioned her against doing so herself, growing both uncomfortable and irritated with her when she had asked him why.

She knew she was different from the girlfriends and wives of John’s friends, and on the thankfully rare occasions when she had been alone with them she had discovered that they very quickly ran out of things to talk about. But what had been even worse, even more humiliating than their silence, had been the laughter she had heard and which had been quickly stifled as she’d walked back into the room after leaving it for a few minutes. She had been in no doubt that they had been talking about her, laughing about her, and that knowledge had hurt even though she had vowed not to let them know it.

At school she had been popular enough and had had plenty of friends, although it was true that once she had reached her teens she had tended to disdain the giggly, boy-focused discussions of her fellow females and spent more time instead with the boys, preferring tomboyish pursuits to long discussions about the latest pop groups or clothes fad.

She had tried, though, with John, really tried. At his suggestion she had bought a new dress for his firm’s annual do and she had even gone along with his insistence that she take one of his female colleagues from work along with her to choose it.

And, although she had felt too upset at the time to tell him so, the dress she had so unhappily and unsuccessfully worn had not been her choice but Felicity’s. And she still couldn’t understand why Felicity had so determinedly and blatantly lied about that fact, insisting in the face of John’s disapproval that she, Lucianna, had overridden her advice and chosen her dress herself.

Her eyes filled with fresh tears now—widely spaced, thick-lashed, pretty silvery green eyes which recently had held a far more sombre expression than suited them. It hurt more than she felt able to say to anyone that even her family seemed to think she was somehow lacking in female allure.

Outwardly she might wear jeans and do what appeared to be an unfeminine job, but inwardly…Inwardly, she was every bit as much a woman as the Felicitys of this world, every bit as worthy of being loved and wanted—and she was going to prove it!

CHAPTER THREE

‘YOU’RE up early this morning…Not had a change of heart, have you, and planning to do a disappearing act?’

Lucianna shook her head as she listened to her brother’s teasing comments.

‘Certainly not,’ she told him firmly, but he was closer to the truth than he knew. She had woken up this morning with a very heavy heart indeed and a deep and gloomy sense of foreboding and dismay at what she had let herself in for.

‘Pull the other one,’ her brother advised her, showing that he knew her rather better than she liked and informing Janey as she walked into the kitchen, ‘I told you she wouldn’t go through with it; she’s—’

‘I am going through with it,’ Lucianna interrupted him indignantly. ‘I just got up earlier than normal because I want to finish a job off before…before I drive over to…’

To prove a point she gulped down her coffee and started to hurry towards the back door before David could make any further teasing remarks. With her back to him she didn’t see the look of compassionate sympathy he gave her before exchanging a rueful glance with his wife.

She was his kid sister, damn it, and he loved her, and he could wring that idiot John’s neck for the misery he was causing her.

The job Lucianna had pretended was so urgent was simply a matter of changing an oil filter, and she was on her way back to the house when Jake drove into the farmyard.

‘What are you doing here?’ she challenged him aggressively as he got out of his car. Like her he was casually dressed in jeans, but unlike hers his were immaculately clean and they fitted him properly.

‘What do you think?’ he retorted calmly.

Lucianna gave him a stubborn look.

‘There’s no need for you to come and collect me as if I were a…a prisoner. I was going to drive myself over…’

‘But now I’ve saved you the trouble,’ Jake told her suavely, ‘and that’s one of the first lessons you have to learn.’

‘What?’ Lucianna asked.

‘How to accept a man’s naturally chivalrous instinct to look after and protect a woman—and,’ he added more dryly, ‘how not to dent his ego by pointing out that you don’t need or want his protection.’

‘How? By simpering stupidly and throwing myself at your feet in gratitude?’ Lucianna demanded acidly.

‘A simple “thank you” and a warm smile would be perfectly adequate. You want to thank the guy, not make him think you’re desperate,’ Jake told her.

Lucianna glowered at him whilst she felt her face grow hot with indignation.

‘I am not desperate—’ she began, but Jake was already shaking his head, telling her directly,

‘Don’t give me that, Luce…I know you, remember, and for you to go to such lengths…’

‘I love him,’ she told him, tilting her chin determinedly at him as though daring him to argue with her.

‘You might think you do but, believe me, you don’t even begin to know what love is yet.’

Her brother’s emergence into the yard prevented Lucianna from making the kind of retort she wanted to make but she was still seething with resentment and indignation ten minutes later as she sat next to Jake whilst he reversed his car back out of the yard.

‘Your timing’s out,’ she told him critically as she listened to the sound of the engine.

‘You’re going to have to know me a lot better before you can come out with a comment like that,’ he told her in an unfamiliar soft and meaningful voice that made her turn her head and look open-mouthed at him as her senses, more acute and finely tuned than her brain, recognised a message in the dulcet, husky sound of his voice that her brain could not quite pick up on.

‘My timing is never out,’ he added even more softly, and then reverted to his normal tone of voice, before she could say anything, to tell her briskly, ‘But yes, the car’s timing is slightly out, Lucianna…

‘Tell me something,’ he went on conversationally. ‘When you and John are alone what do you talk about?’

‘Talk about?’ Lucianna stared at him.

‘You do talk, I take it?’ Jake questioned dryly. ‘Or is your main form of communication on a, shall we say, more basic level?’

It took several seconds for what he meant to sink in, but once it had done Lucianna could feel her face beginning to burn with a mixture of fury and embarrassment.

‘Of course we talk,’ she snapped. ‘We talk about all kinds of things…’

‘Such as?’ Jake demanded, one dark eyebrow raised interrogatively, the profile he was angling slightly towards her uncomfortably reminiscent of the stern demeanour with which he had lectured her on some of her youthful follies.

‘Er…lots of things,’ Lucianna told him, desperately hunting through her memory for suitably impressive examples of the breadth and erudition of their shared conversations.

‘Really? So you’d agree with those who claim that verbal foreplay can be just as erotic and arousing as its physical equivalent, then, would you?’ Jake asked her.

‘Verbal foreplay!’ Lucianna’s colour deepened. ‘John and I have far better things to talk about than sex,’ she snapped bitingly.

‘And better things to do?’

The soft question slipped very subtly and, yes, sneakily beneath her guard, leaving her totally unable to come up with any safe response other than a taut, ‘I don’t discuss such personal things with anyone!’

But even that defence could not protect her, as she quickly discovered when Jake unkindly suggested, ‘Not even John? You might be able to strip down an engine very effectively and efficiently, Lucianna, but somehow or other I doubt that you have the same skill when it comes to stripping down a man—or for a man,’ he added with dangerous softness.

Struggling to overcome her mortification, Lucianna stared fixedly ahead through the car windscreen. Little did Jake know it but his scathing remark had echoed an unkind conversation she had recently overheard between two of John’s friends—girlfriends.

‘Can you imagine it?’ one had said to the other, unaware that Lucianna could hear them. ‘She’ll be saying to John, “Now this bit goes here and then this bit goes there and then you have to do this.” Poor John, I feel so sorry for him. I can’t understand what he sees in her, can you?’

Perhaps her sexual experience wasn’t all that extensive—at least not in the practical sense—and perhaps, yes, she did rather quail at the thought of having to take the sexual initiative with a man—certainly she had never or would never have attempted to undress one. But she could read, and if John had been rather slow to pick up on her hesitant signals that she was ready to take their relationship a few steps further than the kisses and caresses they had so far shared then she had at least, until recently, put it down to the fact that he valued and respected her and their relationship enough to let the sexual side of things develop slowly and naturally. After all, the last thing she wanted was to be wanted merely for sex.

She frowned, suddenly realising that whilst she had been deep in thought Jake had been driving them not towards his home but along the road that led into town instead.

‘Where are we going?’ she demanded sharply. ‘I thought—’

‘I’m taking you shopping,’ Jake informed her calmly.

‘Shopping?’ Lucianna tensed, warily remembering all the occasions on which her family had attempted to persuade her to change her style of dress. She knew they thought she was being stubborn and difficult in refusing to listen to what they had to say, but how could she tell them that her refusal to abandon her dungarees and jeans had its roots a long way back in her early teenage years?

Then, as a young schoolgirl, she had desperately wanted to look like her female peers and not like the tomboy she had heard others disparagingly call her.

The gift of some birthday money had given her the opportunity to turn her wishes into reality and she could still remember the excitement with which she had gone shopping with another girl from school, a girl who, in her then youthful and untutored eyes, had seemed to have all the feminine attributes she herself so longed for.

She still shuddered to recall what had followed when, dressed up in her new purchases—the uncomfortable suspender belt and stockings, the tight short skirt and the high heels that had made her wobble perilously as she’d walked nervously at her friend’s side—they had encountered a group of boys from school.

The crude remarks which had followed her transformation from tomboy into a girl who they had plainly believed was making herself sexually available had made her ears and her face burn for weeks and months afterwards, her embarrassment and sense of shame so great that she had actually refused to go to school the following week until her father had announced that he was sending for the doctor.

The incident, coupled with her own brothers’ derogatory comments about a certain type of girl, had so shocked and shamed her that she had never worn the clothes again, and in the years since, although in her wardrobe there were several rather more formal outfits than her preferred dress of dungarees and jeans, she had steadfastly refused to give in to her family’s exhortations to buy or wear ‘something feminine’. She had experienced already what happened when she did that, how the male sex reacted, knew that for some reason which was not really clear to herself there was something about her that made it impossible for her to wear the kind of clothes other women wore with such ease and confidence without cheapening herself and making herself an object of sexual contempt and ridicule.

‘I’m not going,’ Lucianna suddenly announced tersely. ‘Stop the car.’

Calmly Jake did so, but the atmosphere inside the car felt anything but calm as he turned to her and asked her critically, ‘What is it you’re so afraid of, Lucianna? And don’t try to deny that you are; I know you—remember? Are you frightened of failure—failing to be enough woman to—?’

‘No…’

‘No?’ One dark eyebrow rose in the interrogative and superior manner she was so familiar with and which so irritated her. ‘Then prove it,’ Jake suggested quietly.

‘I don’t need to prove anything to you,’ Lucianna told him angrily.

‘Not to me, no,’ Jake agreed, overriding her angry words, ‘but you certainly seem to have something to prove to John—and to yourself.’

Lucianna looked away from him, unable to meet his eyes and unable to refute his statement.

‘It’s your choice,’ he told her evenly, ‘your decision, but I must say you’ve surprised me…’

‘Surprised you!’

Lucianna gave him a wary look. In her experience surprising Jake took an awful lot of doing.

‘Mmm…’ he agreed, nodding. ‘I thought you had more courage, more guts…more self-respect than to give up without at least making some attempt to fight for what you want.’

‘I do have,’ Lucianna retorted indignantly, and then added truculently, ‘Oh, very well, then, but if you think I’m going to let you bully me into wasting money on some stupid, silly outfit that you think a woman should wear—’

‘Excuse me, but whilst I may have been guilty of many sins in my time, Lucianna, wanting to see a woman dressed in frills isn’t one of them. And besides, you’re a long, long way yet from being ready to change your outer image…It’s your inner image we’re going to be working on today and for many days to come.

‘Femininity, womanliness, is something that comes from within. It means being proud of yourself as a woman, being confident about your femaleness and your sexuality; it’s showing the world that you value yourself as a woman…When a person has that, how they choose to clothe their body is really immaterial apart from the fact that what they choose to wear acts like a shorthand message to those who see her.’

Whilst he’d been talking he had restarted the car, and this time Lucianna made no objection as he continued to drive towards the town.

Something about the calm way he had delivered those few unexpected words had for some odd reason or other brought a huge uncomfortable lump of emotion to her throat, an indefinable sense of loss and sorrow, as though he had highlighted something within her which she had secretly felt had never been allowed to flourish and had even more secretly hidden away in shame even from herself.

Yet as she sat silently at his side her thoughts, unexpectedly, were not of herself or even of John but, surprisingly, of her mother.

Might not things have been different if she had not died when Lucianna was so young…? Might not she have been different?

‘But this is a book shop,’ Lucianna protested as Jake determinedly ushered her through the plate-glass doors.

They had arrived in the town five minutes earlier and, having parked the car, Jake had directed her towards the town’s main shopping street.

‘That’s right,’ Jake agreed, touching her lightly on the arm as he pointed to a labelled section of books on the far side of the shop. ‘I think we’ll find what we need over there,’ he told her.

Lucianna frowned; the shelves seemed to be filled with diet and self-improvement books so far as she could see. Warily she allowed Jake to propel her in their direction.

‘I don’t think these will be of much benefit to me,’ she told him as she studied the title of the diet book which was prominently displayed.

‘I doubt it,’ he agreed. ‘If anything you need to put weight on.’

‘To make me more feminine?’ Lucianna suggested, her hackles starting to rise at his implied criticism of her.

‘To make you more healthy,’ Jake corrected her. ‘You’re naturally fine-boned and delicate—anyone can see that,’ he added, startling her as he totally unexpectedly ran his index finger along the curve of her cheekbone, producing an aftershock of sensation on her skin in the wake of his touch something like the kind of feeling she associated with an unexpected rash of goosebumps but with an extra indefinable and unfamiliar something which made her feel peculiarly light-headed and breathless.

‘And it naturally follows that your body will be similarly delicately made, long-legged and high-breasted with a narrow waist,’ he told her, emphasising his point by reaching out and placing his hands at either side of her body.

Her indignant verbal objection was never uttered as she looked down at where his thumbs met and felt the hard, warm male pressure of his grip through the thickness of her clothes. A suffocating tightness had invaded her chest, far, far tighter and more constricting, more dangerous than Jake’s firm grip on her body.

‘I can’t breathe,’ she protested angrily and huskily, reaching out to take hold of his arms as she instinctively tried to force him to release her.

‘Can’t you?’

The most peculiar and disturbing sensation she had ever experienced in her life seized her as she heard the deeper note in Jake’s voice and felt her whole body trembling uncontrollably in response to it in some secret inner vibration. When she looked at him she discovered that his gaze seemed to be focused on her mouth. Probably because he was waiting for her angry objection to his behaviour, she told herself protectively as she fought to control a sudden compulsive need to wet her almost painfully dry lips with the tip of her tongue—and lost.