Mission: Make-Over

‘Stop it,’ she hissed breathlessly. ‘Stop it at once…’

‘Stop what?’ Jake responded mock innocently.

‘You know perfectly well what. Stop looking at my…at me like…like you were doing,’ she finished lamely, her colour high as she thankfully felt him respond to her agitation and lift his head to meet her eyes at the same time as he removed his hands from her waist.

‘You’re looking very hot and bothered; what’s wrong?’ he asked her, outwardly solicitously, but she could see the laughter gleaming in his eyes.

‘You know perfectly well what’s wrong,’ she told him forthrightly. ‘It’s you…the way you…the way you looked at me.’

‘You mean the way a man looks at a woman he wants,’ Jake told her calmly. ‘It’s called body language,’ he continued, before Lucianna could take issue with him on the first part of his statement. ‘The way a man looks at a woman he wants’—indeed! Well, she knew one thing and that was that he certainly didn’t want her—and she would never want him to want her, she added hastily. It was John she wanted to want her, to desire her, to love her.

‘Body language,’ Jake repeated instructively as he reached up and removed a couple of books from higher up the shelves and handed them to her. He explained, ‘It’s a fact that all of us both consciously and subconsciously send out messages to others with every movement we make, every expression we show, and the first step to getting others to be responsive is for you to show them that you are open to that responsiveness.

‘For example, just now when I looked at your mouth, you touched your lips with your tongue, which means—’

‘Which means that you were making me nervous and angry.’

‘Nervous?’ Jake queried with a small half-smile that made her look warily away from him.

‘Nervous and angry,’ she insisted, but she knew that her voice didn’t sound quite as convincing and determined as she would have liked.

‘Mmm…I see. So when John looks at your mouth like that what kind of response do you give him?’ he asked her placatingly, but Lucianna was too on edge to be placated.

‘John never looks at me like that,’ she answered quickly.

She only realised her mistake when Jake said softly, ‘Oh, dear. Well, I’m sure there’ll be some advice inside these—’ he tapped the books. ‘—to indicate how you can rectify that situation, and if there isn’t—well, I can always…’

But Lucianna wasn’t listening. Snatching the books from his hand, she headed determinedly towards the till, head held high as the salesgirl gave the titles a quick, curious glance before taking Lucianna’s money and putting them into a bag for her.

‘I know her—I serviced her mother’s car,’ Lucianna hissed angrily to Jake once they were outside the shop. ‘I suppose you think all this is very funny,’ she added crossly as she fished the books out of the carrier bag, and she read the titles to him in scornful disgust. ‘The Science of Body Language and How to Use it Effectively, and The Art of Flirtation.’

‘Funny?’ Jake repeated. ‘No, Lucianna,’ he told her curtly. ‘I don’t think any of this is remotely funny.’

He looked so grim and unapproachable that the demand to know just what he did think of it and her, which she had been about to voice, died unvoiced.

‘This way,’ he told her, touching her, indicating the pretty town square which lay ahead of them. Set out with trees and benches and with the sun shining warmly, it was obviously a popular spot with office workers for eating their sandwiches.

One couple were vacating one of the benches as they approached and Jake quickly appropriated the spare seats.

‘What now?’ Lucianna asked wearily as he indicated that he wanted to sit down.

‘Now we’re going to do a bit of people-watching,’ Jake told her. ‘Let’s see just how sharp and accurate your instincts actually are and at the same time let’s see how much visual experience of the art of body language you can actually recognise.’

‘It wasn’t called that. It was called The Art of Flirtation,’ Lucianna snapped back at him.

‘Same thing,’ Jake told her dryly. ‘Now,’ he commanded sternly once Lucianna had reluctantly seated herself beside him, ‘take a good look around and tell me what you can see.’

Lucianna took a deep breath and mentally counted to ten before telling him irritably, ‘I can see the town square and part of the high street and I can see—’

‘That wasn’t what I meant, Lucianna,’ Jake interrupted her crisply, the look in his eyes as he turned to study her the same one he had used to reinforce his older and male status during the years when she had been growing up.

Then it had quelled her and even sometimes made her feel warily apprehensive and, as she now discovered to her chagrin, things hadn’t changed all that much. The only difference was that now she felt seriously tempted to ignore his visual warning and see what just might happen. After all, what could he really do if she simply got up and walked away?

As though he had read her mind he advised her sharply, ‘I wouldn’t if I were you. You agreed to this, remember. You’re the one who’s desperate to prove—’

‘I’m not desperate to prove anything,’ Lucianna argued hotly.

‘Do you know something, Lucianna?’ Jake said wryly. ‘Your determination to win John rather reminds me of the same blind stubbornness that a child exhibits in demanding a sweet or a toy simply because it’s out of reach and being denied them, and I can’t help wondering if it’s the fact that he seems out of reach that makes him seem so desirable. There certainly doesn’t seem—’

‘I’m not a child,’ Lucianna began, then realised how neatly and easily she had fallen into the trap Jake had dug for her as he told her sharply,

‘No? Well, then, I suggest you cease behaving like one. Now, look around again and tell me what you see, and this time study the people—carefully. Look at that group over there just coming out of the chemist’s, for instance, and tell me what you see.’

Heaving a deep sigh, Lucianna painstakingly and dutifully stared in the direction he had indicated.

A man and a woman and two small children were standing on the pavement just outside the chemist’s. The woman was leaning towards the man and smiling up at him. The two children were dancing up and down beside them, obviously excited, whilst the man started to remove some papers from his pocket.

At the same time the woman instinctively reached out to draw the children closer to her as a car drove past and the man put out a hand to steady her as another shopper looked as though she might barge into them.

They were obviously a family, Lucianna could see that, and a happy one, she acknowledged as she saw their smiles and heard their laughter as they all looked at the strips of photographs the man was holding, the two children barely able to contain their excitement.

But stubbornly she omitted to mention anything of this as she responded to Jake’s instruction by simply saying, ‘I see a man, a woman and two children.’

‘You’re beginning to try my patience, Lucianna,’ Jake warned her. ‘Look again. Look at the way the man is behaving towards the three of them—protectively, lovingly—and the way the woman is responding to him, the way she obviously feels that he’s done something special; and the two children—look at their excitement.

‘At a guess I would say that they are a young couple who are just planning their first continental holiday with their children and that they have just been to obtain their family passport photographs. This holiday is probably something they’ve planned for and saved for for a very long time, something they’ve had to make sacrifices to afford, especially the man who’s probably had to work extra hours to pay for it…’

‘That’s sexist,’ Lucianna objected. ‘It might be the woman who’s had to do the extra work.’

‘It’s not sexist at all,’ Jake denied. ‘I’m simply interpreting their body language. Look at the way the man’s almost preening himself. Look at the way the woman’s looking at him, the pride and love in her expression, the way she keeps looking at him and touching his arm, and look at the way he’s responding. An animal psychologist would probably say they’re simply copying an ancient grooming ritual from the animal kingdom and that the one lower down the pecking order is grooming the ones higher up it, so that in this particular instance I would guess that it is the man who’s earned the extra money.

‘But he’s obviously a modern father; look at the way he’s bending down now to fasten the elder child’s shoes and the way she’s leaning against him. It’s obvious that fastening her shoes is a task he’s comfortably familiar with, just as she’s obviously comfortably familiar with him—’

‘Very interesting, but I can’t really see its relevance for me,’ Lucianna interrupted him crossly. Suddenly, for some reason, the sight of the small, happy family was making her feel acutely aware of her own aloneness. ‘After all, I’m not likely to want to start fastening John’s shoes or grooming him,’ she added sarcastically.

‘You might not want to fasten his shoes,’ Jake agreed, ‘but as for grooming…It’s normally considered to be an important and enjoyable part of the human courting ritual—to touch and be touched, to exchange those but oh, so meaningful caresses…Or am I being old-fashioned? Sex has been stripped of so much of its allure and sensuality these days.

‘It’s almost as though the race towards orgasm has become a fast-paced motorway requiring intense concentration and a total focus on reaching one’s goal, with no opportunity or desire to enjoy the pleasure of a more leisurely meander that allows one to pause and enjoy the moment, the caress.

‘Is that what you prefer, Lucianna—a sensible, no-nonsense approach to sex that reduces it simply to a biological urge which needs to be satisfied in the most efficient and least time-consuming manner?’

‘How I think and feel about sex has nothing to do with this nor with you,’ Lucianna told him fiercely.

‘No? Well, if that’s what you think no wonder you’re having so much trouble. On the contrary, sex has everything to do with it—or it should do. When you look at John, if you don’t want him to reach out and touch you and if you don’t want to reach out and touch him, then—’

‘John never touches me in public,’ Lucianna interrupted him, her colour rising as she told him angrily, ‘And nor would I want him to.’

‘Well, you certainly should,’ Jake told her, as calm as she herself was becoming flustered as he suddenly turned towards her and before she could stop him reached out and curled his fingers around her bare wrist.

His grip, although light, disturbed her. She could feel her heart start to beat faster with what she told herself was anger at his high-handed manner and her pulse was certainly racing because Jake himself was now placing his thumb over it, as though aware of her tension, his thumb beginning a slow, rhythmic stroking of the inside of her wrist which she assumed must be intended to calm and relax her but which, instead, was sending her heartbeat into a crazy, irregular volley of frantic thuds which were matched by the dizzying acceleration of her pulse. No wonder she was finding it difficult to breathe, she told herself hazily.

Through the ragged sound of her own breathing she could hear Jake telling her softly, ‘I’m touching you now, Lucianna; I’m touching you the way a man, a lover, the way John should want to touch you in public as an indication of his desire to touch you more intimately in private.’

Through the confused jumble of messages assaulting her sensory system Lucianna’s brain managed to isolate and hold onto one of them.

‘But you aren’t John,’ she reminded Jake breathlessly.

‘No,’ he agreed, his stroking thumb suddenly ceasing its inflammatory circular movement against her skin and his voice hardening slightly. ‘And I promise you that if I were you would be in no doubt as to my feelings for you, Lucianna…’

‘I’m not,’ she managed to find the robustness to say. ‘I do know exactly how you feel about me, Jake,’ she told him, and then added succinctly, ‘And I promise you I feel exactly the same way about you, only more so.’

Some feminine instinct made her tilt her head determinedly as she threw the words at him, but the look of blazing heat in his eyes as he gazed back at her made her look away again hastily.

She had never seen him look so…so…passionate…so…intense. Normally he was such a calm, controlled man. Too calm and controlled—aggravatingly so at times.

‘Luc.’

She turned her head, frowning slightly as she recognised the voice of John’s colleague, Felicity. She didn’t particularly like Felicity especially since the shopping debacle. She was a tall, leggy brunette with a faintly supercilious manner and a habit of shortening Lucianna’s name and pronouncing it as though indeed she had been christened as a boy in the same slightly patronising, sneering manner she was using now.

‘Have you heard anything from John yet?’ she asked Lucianna, speaking to her but plainly far more visually interested in concentrating on Jake, at whom she was smiling.

Somehow or other she’d managed to stand so that she was facing Jake, keeping her body half turned away from Lucianna, effectively excluding her, and had placed herself closer to Jake than Lucianna herself was. She added, ‘We had a fax from him this morning saying that he’s settled in safely but that he’s missing us.’

‘Yes, he faxed me as well,’ Lucianna heard herself fibbing, much to her own surprise and shock.

It must be something to do with the lecture Jake had just been giving her about observing other people’s body language that was making her so crossly aware of the unsubtle manoeuvres Felicity was using to attempt to create an aura of intimacy between herself and Jake which totally excluded Lucianna.

Well, let her. Let them, she decided angrily. She didn’t care and it was typical of Jake that he should have attracted Felicity’s attention. He was that kind of man.

‘Are you one of Luc’s customers?’ she heard Felicity questioning Jake, her voice low and musical, her laughter a soft feminine gurgle as she added depreciatingly, ‘I think she’s wonderful doing what she does. To my shame I have to admit I don’t even know how to change a tyre…’

‘It isn’t the tyre you change, it’s the wheel,’ Lucianna informed her shortly. She stood up and said pointedly to Jake, ‘I thought you said we were going shopping…’

‘Shopping? Now that is something I do know about,’ Felicity enthused.

For one appalling moment Lucianna thought that she was going to have to suffer the additional humiliation of hearing Jake invite Felicity to join them, but to her relief he simply smiled at her instead and then turned towards Lucianna, placing his hand beneath her elbow as he rose, and standing firmly close to her.

If someone had told her ten minutes ago that she would actually be grateful to have Jake display such old-fashioned male courtesy and protectiveness towards her she would have denied it with scorn, so it was just as well someone hadn’t, because if they had right now she would have been eating her own words, she admitted uncomfortably.

Jake waited until they were out of Felicity’s earshot before saying smoothly, ‘You never said anything about John getting in touch with you.’

‘I don’t tell you everything,’ Lucianna returned. Jake was still lightly holding her arm, but when she tried to pull away from him she discovered that his hold on her was much firmer than she had imagined and rather than subject herself to an undignified tussle of physical strength which she knew he would win she had to satisfy herself with glowering at him and a brief and, although she didn’t know it, betrayingly feminine toss of her head that made Jake fight to hide a rueful smile.

He pointed out dryly, ‘Evidently not. Like you didn’t tell me you’d acquired a fax machine.’

‘Oh!’ Lucianna couldn’t manage to control the stricken look that crossed her face as he reminded her of the lie she had told Felicity. ‘Well, I couldn’t let her think that John had got in touch with his office and not me,’ she defended herself.

‘The office or her?’ Jake questioned cynically, and then, to Lucianna’s astonishment, he raised his free hand and touched her cheekbone lightly with his thumb as though he were brushing away some dirt or a tear, before saying softly, ‘Well, your feminine instincts are there all right. Now let’s see if we can unearth a few more of them. When did you last wear something that wasn’t a pair of jeans or dungarees, Lucianna?’

‘Last night,’ she told him smartly as she fought to get back the breath that had suddenly deserted her when he’d touched her face with such mock tenderness. As his eyebrows rose she added sweetly, ‘I don’t sleep in my work clothes, Jake.’

‘No, you sleep in a cotton nightdress,’ he agreed sardonically. ‘The same one you’ve been wearing since you were fifteen years old, I imagine.’

‘It’s still cold at night,’ she protested, feeling her face starting to heat up at the taunting note in his voice. ‘I like to curl my feet up into it…’

‘A woman in love…a woman with a lover…wouldn’t need a nightdress to keep her warm,’ Jake told her mockingly, adding hurtfully, ‘But then you aren’t a woman, are you, Lucianna? Not yet…’

‘Not according to you,’ she agreed, driven recklessly to answer him back to make him stop taunting her, and she added, ‘What’s wrong, Jake? Are you having second thoughts, beginning to feel that you’ve taken on too much, that you can’t transform me after all…make me a woman…?’

The look that crossed his face, the utter stillness of his body whilst his eyes turned dark and hot with an emotion she couldn’t recognise made her tense warily, not sure what it was she had said or done to unleash the fury she could sense he was trying to control, only knowing that she had suddenly and frighteningly strayed into an area of his personality she wasn’t familiar with.

‘Don’t tempt me,’ she heard him saying softly to her. ‘Just don’t tempt me, Lucianna.’

Don’t tempt him to what? she wondered shakily as his hand dropped from her arm as though her skin had burned him. Don’t tempt him to wring her neck, probably, she decided unhappily, forced to increase her stride to try to keep up with him as he strode down the street.

Scowling darkly, she flirted momentarily with the idea of telling him that she had changed her mind and that she didn’t want or need his help after all, but then she remembered the triumphant mockery she had heard in Felicity’s voice when she had told her about John’s fax and the slanting-eyed come-hither look she had given Jake, the same look Lucianna had seen her giving John on several previous occasions, and her head lifted and her spine straightened.

Jake, who had turned to wait for her to catch up with him, watched her discreetly.

She looked for all the world like a youthful teenager, her slender body encased in oversized clothes, but she wasn’t a child, she was an adult, a woman. A woman whose most basic instincts had been aroused by the threat of losing her man.

Her man. Jake’s frown returned as he turned abruptly away from Lucianna. The task he had taken on was fraught with innumerable perils, not the least of which was the fact that he might succeed and that Lucianna would get her way—and her man.

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