The Friendship Barrier

Gradually she had recovered, or at least outwardly she had seemed to do so. Only she and Jake knew that, inwardly… inwardly she would never recover. When she dreamed, it was of hard male hands tearing at her clothes, her screams of panic suppressed until she felt she was suffocating on them. Only with Jake did she feel safe and that was because she knew he had no sexual interest in her whatsoever. Jake knew and understood about what had happened to her, but not even Jake knew about the guilt buried deep inside her soul; the hateful, destructive feeling that whispered treacherously that somehow she had been to blame; that somehow she had given them the impression that… that what? That she had wanted to be raped? She shuddered sickly. Ever since she had taken care that no one could ever accuse her of encouraging any man, however tenuously.

She knew that Annette was curious about her relationship with Jake, who she admitted she found sexually attractive. Stephanie also knew that Annette did not believe her when she said their relationship was strictly platonic, but she was immune to any sensation of physical attraction now. The thought of any man touching her made her feel acutely ill.

‘Now… just watch this scene…’

Stephanie came to at the sound of James Tavener’s voice to realise the film had progressed considerably. Her body froze as she realised that this was the ‘sex scene’ James had been discussing earlier. She didn’t want to watch, but her eyes seemed to be riveted to the screen against her will. Blaize Dartford was as dark as Jake and a similar age, his eyes blue where Jake’s were grey. Even his voice seemed to have the same husky timbre, and it seemed to Stephanie in her highly charged emotional state that it was Jake up there on the screen, that it was his hands, and mouth, his body that made slow and deliberately sensuous love to the girl on the bed with him. Stephanie wanted to deny the illusion, but it wouldn’t be denied, and her body burned hot and cold as she tried to shut out the images on the screen. Laura Howard had researched her part well, and no one watching could not be convinced of her anguish and uncertainty, although, unlike her, Laura wanted to make love, Stephanie thought. Laura wanted to overcome her fears, whereas she was revolted and terrified about the thought of physical intimacy with anyone. At last, she managed to close her eyes and blot out the final few moments of the film.

The Taveners insisted on them joining them for supper and, while they waited for their meal to be served, James turned to Jake and asked with a grin, ‘I’ll bet there wasn’t a woman in the cinema tonight who wasn’t mentally imagining herself in Laura’s place…’

‘Well, Stephanie,’ Jake challenged, ‘Do you agree with that statement?’

What could she say? To agree meant agreeing that she had wanted to be Laura; that she had wanted to be made love to… not by Blaize, but by Jake, because it was his face she had seen on the screen, his hands she had witnessed caressing the soft, female flesh of his partner…

‘Stephanie’s probably one of the few women at the première tonight who wasn’t bowled over by Blaize,’ Livy Tavener interrupted with a grin in Stephanie’s direction. ‘If anything, Jake’s even more attractive.’

‘Why, I thank you, ma’am…’ Jake drawled, not in the least embarrassed.

‘Jake and I are friends… nothing more,’ Stephanie put in hurriedly, her face scarlet with embarrassment as she read the speculation in James Tavener’s eyes. ‘Isn’t that so, Jake…?’

‘I never contradict a lady,’ Jake drawled. He was watching her with hard grey eyes, and it came to Stephanie with a shock that he had never looked at her like that before—almost as though he actively disliked her. A gulf seemed to yawn open at her feet, ground which she had thought of as safe and familiar suddenly very treacherous. What had happened between them? Why had Jake chosen tonight to bring up the past? Intuitively she knew it was not simply because of the similarity between her own attack and the film, and then she remembered Jake asking her if she had read the advance press releases. He must have known she had not because, if she had, she would never have agreed to attend, and yet he obviously had known what to expect and he had not warned her. What was she to read into that? Was he tired of their friendship? Tired of her emotional dependence on him, her need to use him as a barrier behind which she hid from all other men? Suddenly, she was desperately afraid; afraid of being alone… of losing Jake’s friendship, and most of all of the cold condemnation she had read in his eyes.

CHAPTER TWO

SUPPER seemed to drag on, with Stephanie feeling increasingly miserable. The Taveners were both in good spirits, and James Tavener beamed at her, telling her that he always enjoyed having supper at the Ritz. ‘Kind-a finishes the evening off properly,’ he told her, as he ordered a second bottle of champagne.

‘No?’ he exclaimed, lifting his eyebrows when she refused a second glass. ‘Jake, why don’t you two go and dance?’

Jake had been engaged in conversation with Livy Tavener, but he glanced across at Stephanie with a querying lift of his eyebrows.

‘No, really, I’d rather not,’ she started to protest, shivering as she saw the chill contempt invade Jake’s eyes. What had she done to merit that look? He knew how much she abhorred physical contact, and indeed, one of the things she most appreciated in his treatment of her was the fact that he was always so meticulously careful about avoiding touching her.

It seemed to Stephanie that it was hours before the others were ready to leave. She did not have to work in the morning and there was no reason why she should not have a late night. She wasn’t sleepy, if anything, she was too keyed up and awake, but she was longing for the privacy of her flat, to the extent that she desperately wished that Annette wasn’t going to be there.

At last, they were saying their goodbyes. She walked with Jake to where he had left the car in total silence. There had been silences between them before—comfortable, comforting silences when the depth of their friendship had made social chit-chat unnecessary, but this was a different silence, as deep and cold as a Siberian winter, and Stephanie quailed inwardly. What was happening between them? There had been no indication of what was to come when Jake returned from the States earlier in the week. He had been gone for ten days; this time, she had not accompanied him because she had picked up a tummy bug which had kept her off work, and he had seemed all right when she had met him at the airport. But there had been that incident when she had moved forward to help him with his hand luggage, and their fingers had brushed accidentally. Jake had recoiled as though he had been stung, she remembered. At the time, she had simply thought he had been withdrawing out of concern for her, but his withdrawal had been sharper than one that sprang from mere concern. He had looked… yes, almost pale, she remembered now, his eyes unusually bleak, and he had been curt and off-hand with her in the car, but, because she had been concentrating on driving the large XJ6, she had not paid too much attention, simply thinking that he was suffering from jet lag. Gnawing her lip, Stephanie suddenly remembered the venomous comments one of his ex-girlfriends had made to her last Christmas. Susy Waldron had been dating Jake for about six weeks at the time, and Stephanie had never expected the confrontation that came late one afternoon when Jake had cancelled a date with Susy because he had to go out of town on business.

She had arrived in the office, slightly tipsy, demanding to see him, and when Stephanie calmly explained that he wasn’t available, Susy had refused to leave. ‘I know all about you, you know,’ she had commented tipsily, making Stephanie almost faint with shock, ‘all about your “friendship” with Jake… but it won’t last for ever,’ she hissed viciously, ‘Jake isn’t the sort of man who could ever be content with a platonic relationship with a woman—even a woman as dull as you. For some reason you now interest him—but one day he’ll grow bored with you. Like I just said, Jake is a very sexy man, even if you don’t have enough feminine hormones in your body to recognise it.’

Eventually, Stephanie had persuaded her to leave. At the time, she hadn’t paid much attention to her comments. How could a woman like her understand the very special relationship she had with Jake? She had been almost contemptuous of the other woman, she realised now… just as she had tended to be slightly contemptuous of all Jake’s womanfriends; glamorous, greedy predators, without a single thought in their heads that did not concern the appeasement of their appetites, but what she had never done before was question why Jake always chose women of that type. From the little he had told her about his dead fiancée, Stephanie had gained the impression that she had been both attractive and intelligent, but, like her, Jake had been hurt too much to commit himself to any permanent relationship since. He had lost the woman he loved; she had lost her trust in his sex and her ability to respond to it sexually, and she had thought that their friendship had been built on rock so steady that nothing could ever shake its foundations. Had she been wrong? In the darkness of the car, she darted a glance at his impassive profile, noticing, with something approaching shock, the deeply bitter lines grooving alongside his mouth. How long had those been there? And that cold withdrawal she sensed increasingly tonight, when had that been born? Icy fingers of alarm touched her spine. Had Jake perhaps at last found someone who could be both lover and friend…? Was that why…? What if he had, she asked herself, appalled by the intensity of feeling her own thoughts stirred up. Surely she wasn’t so criminally possessive and insecure that she didn’t want Jake to find happiness with another woman? She was his friend, for Heaven’s sake, and, as his friend… as his friend… She dragged her thoughts away from the tortuous paths they were treading as she realised that they were not heading for her flat but for Jake’s apartment.

‘Not more work tonight, surely?’ she mock groaned. It wasn’t unknown for Jake to ask her to work late, or even to telephone her at home during the weekend to ask her to come over to help him out with something he was working on. These impromptu work sessions normally ended with a comfortable meal à deux in his apartment and a quiet evening spent together listening to his record collection. She treasured them as tranquilly enjoyable oases of peace and pleasure in the anguished pain that she sometimes felt her life had become.

Jake didn’t answer, and Stephanie felt her earlier anxiety return as he turned his car into the underground car park to his block of flats. A highly efficient lift, activated by Jake’s personal key, bore them upwards to his apartment.

Whenever she visited it, Stephanie was always reminded of her first visit, of coming round to find herself in Jake’s bathroom, his hands clinically sexless as they removed her clothes and dealt with her lacerated arms.

A pleasant foyer gave way to the generously proportioned living room with its comfortably upholstered furniture and rich Persian rugs. Stephanie loved the ambience of Jake’s apartment. Despite the fact that he lived here alone, apart from the visits of his daily cleaner, it had a ‘lived in’ quality of which she was always acutely conscious.

‘Drink?’

When she shook her head, she saw Jake walk across to the cocktail cabinet set into the bank of rosewood cabinets, and she was surprised to see him pour a large measure of spirits for himself. He rarely drank, and tonight there had been wine with their supper, plus champagne, as well as liqueurs after the meal.

‘There’s no need to look at me like that,’ he told her curtly, ‘I’m not about to rape you.’

As always, she flinched away from the word, immeasurably hurt and shocked that he should use it when he knew how much it distressed her.

‘Why wouldn’t you dance with me?’ he demanded abruptly, walking towards her, almost spilling his drink as he put his glass down forcefully on a gleaming table. ‘Why, Stephanie’ Just what is it you think my touch will do to you, contaminate you?’

Contaminate her? Inwardly, she shivered. If anyone was doing any contaminating it would surely be her… she was the one whose body had been violated; she was the one who would never be able to cleanse her mind of the scars it bore.

‘Two damned years, and you’re as terrified of being touched now as you were that night when I brought you back here.’

‘That’s not true,’ somehow she managed to force out the hurt denial, turning away so that he wouldn’t see the betraying shimmer of tears in her eyes.

‘Isn’t it?’ His fingers tightening round her wrist wrenched her round to face him. Why had she never noticed before how intensely masculine he was… how dangerously sexual as he towered over her, his eyes a hard, cold grey.

‘Oh, you may not scream with terror whenever I come near you, but inwardly you’re still screaming, Stephanie. Inwardly, I hear you screaming whenever I get that little bit too close.’

‘No… no. You’re wrong.’ He wasn’t, but somehow she felt impelled to deny his accusations.

‘Am I?’

His other hand caught her free wrist, holding it behind her back as he used his superior strength to propel her towards him. Centimetres from his body, Stephanie tensed her muscles, inwardly shrinking back, but the hard pressure of his arm against her waist and lower back forced her forward, until there was only the minutest gap between them.

She wanted to beg him to release her, to scream and cry for freedom, but something stronger than these instincts forced her to remain still.

‘Oh, you’re putting up a very good impression of not loathing touching me, but we both know the truth, don’t we?’

Stephanie had to lift her head to look at him. His eyes were as cold as slate, his mouth twisting in a bitter grimace she had never seen before.

‘Jake… please, why are you doing this?’ she whispered from a painfully constricted throat. ‘What have I done…?’

‘Nothing, Stephanie,’ he said sardonically, ‘nothing at all. That’s just it,’ he added under his breath, ‘you haven’t done a damn thing to try to rejoin the human race. What would I need to threaten to get you to touch me of your own free will, I wonder?’ he asked bitterly.

He saw the response in her eyes without her needing to voice it. ‘Two years we’ve known one another… two years, when I haven’t so much as laid a finger on you, and yet, even now, you shrink from me, as though I were some damned rapist.’

‘Jake, please…’

‘Jake, please…’ he mimicked savagely back. ‘Please what? Please don’t touch me? Please don’t let your body come anywhere near mine?’

‘Jake, why are you like this?’

‘Why don’t you ask yourself instead why you are the way you are?’ he said softly. ‘Why, you recoil from me if I so much as do this.’ His free hand stroked lightly down her spine, but the effect on Stephanie was electrifying. She tried to move away from the light caress, her frantic attempts to escape bringing her up against the hard leanness of Jake’s body. Beneath the palm she had thrust out to push him away, she could feel the heavy beat of his heart. The sensation was so unexpected and strange that, for a moment, she simply stood there, too confused even to think.

‘What’s the matter, Steph?’ Jake goaded. ‘Surprised to find out that, unlike you, I’m not made of stone?’

‘Jake, why are you being like this? I thought we were friends.’

‘Friends…’ he released her and raked angry fingers through his dark hair. ‘Yes, but only on your terms, isn’t that it? Tell me this, Stephanie, what kind of friendship is it that exists without trust?’

‘I do trust you!’

‘Do you?’ He gave her a hard, enigmatic stare. ‘Then prove it to me,’ he said softly. ‘Come over here, and kiss me.’

‘I can’t.’

‘Then I’ll just have to kiss you, won’t I?’ he said calmly, coming towards her. ‘Remember, Stephanie,’ he said as his fingers gripped her shoulders, ‘you said you trusted me.’

Stephanie made a sound deep in her throat, barely aware of the animal terror in it, as Jake slid his hands over her back, drawing her body against his. She could have broken away; some part of her was aware of that, just as it was aware that Jake wasn’t using any physical pressure to bring her body close to his, but his eyes seemed to hypnotise her, draining her of the will to resist. She stood within the circle of his arms like a plastic doll, rigid and tense with the enormity of what was happening. Never once, in the two years since her attack, had Jake behaved like this, and part of her couldn’t believe what he was doing now. The glitter in his eyes was that of a man starved too long of something he hungered desperately for—dimly she recognised that fact and then repudiated it, Jake was no sex-starved adolescent. So why was he doing this to her?

His hand spread out against her spine, anchoring her against his lean frame, making it impossible for her to recoil from the intimate contact he was forcing upon her. She could smell the sharp tangy scent of his aftershave, her flesh acutely conscious of the warmth of his beneath the formality of his evening clothes. Without wanting to, she became aware of him in a way she never had before, her heart thudding in a mixture of apprehension and shock. His free hand slid up her spine to tangle in the chestnut thickness of her hair. Her eyes, shocked and hurt, widened as Jake forced her to meet his.

‘Your eyes are the colour of emeralds,’ he murmured, ‘they always go green when you’re emotionally aroused.’

Stephanie jerked against the constraining pressure of his hand in her hair in objection to his choice of words, and then closed her eyes, tensing her whole body, willing him to kiss her if that was what he intended, and end her torment. Unwittingly, she had tensed her hands into small fists, and dark colour surged up under her pale skin as Jake whispered sardonically against her ear, ‘You’re supposed to reciprocate, not clench your fingers in anticipation of some dreadful ordeal. Relax. All I’m going to do is kiss you, Stephanie…’

‘I can’t.’

The husky admission was torn from her aching throat. She badly wanted to cry, not so much from terror now, but from shock and hurt. Why was Jake, the only person she had thought understood and appreciated how she felt, behaving like this? She could hardly equate the cold, mocking stranger he had turned into with the man she had called her friend.

‘Then I’ll just have to help you, won’t I?’ His dark head bent towards her and Stephanie closed her eyes, tensing herself to receive his kiss, her lips dry and stiff… She could feel the heat of Jake’s hand spread against the back of her skull and she jumped nervously when his thumb brushed softly against the delicate area behind her ear. Shivers of reaction spread through her body from that brief point of contact, detonating a trembling response she couldn’t conceal.

‘Jake, please don’t do this…’ The request was stammered and hoarse, her lips almost too stiff to form the words.

‘Open your mouth, Steph, so I can kiss you properly.’ That was his only response, and one that Stephanie knew nothing could make her obey. Strangely enough, her fear that being in Jake’s arms would bring back all her nightmare memories of her attack was unfounded. She was frightened, almost terrified out of her wits, but her fear had more to do with the fact that she found the sudden change in Jake totally incomprehensible than any confusion of his embrace with those she had endured at the hands of her attackers, and her biggest fear of all was that, once Jake kissed her, she would lose him as her friend. Why on earth should he want to kiss her in the first place? Even before her attack, she had been rather withdrawn with men, and never in a million years could she hope to compete with the sexual experience of the women Jake normally dated.

Her lips pressed tightly together to stop them trembling she almost gasped out loud as Jake’s tongue tip brushed seductively over their tense outlines. Quivers of sensation like light, electric shocks rippled through her sensitive skin. Like an arid desert, bursting into full bloom after an unexpected shower of rain, she could feel the tension retreating and her lips softening into compliance beneath the warmth of Jake’s tongue as it stroked them into bemused acceptance of his unspoken commands. Without her even giving it conscious thought, her lips parted, her dark lashes fluttered upwards for a stunned, disbelieving second as she looked into the molten greyness of Jake’s eyes and knew that this was actually happening; that her body was actually quivering heatedly in response to the light play of Jake’s thumb against the tender flesh of her nape; that her mouth was actually moist and warm against his, allowing him to kiss her with an intimacy she couldn’t remember sharing with anyone before.

All at once, it was as though all her senses came truly alive, and she was acutely aware of everything about him; from the hard tension of his body against hers, the muscle and bone so different from her own yielding softness; to the musky, male scent of him that somehow excited and yet frightened at the same time.

She must have made some small protest because, suddenly and totally unexpectedly, she was free and Jake was three feet away from her regarding her with a look of mingled contempt and anger. Fear and misery poured through her making her ache in every nerve ending. It was almost as though she had been anaesthetised against pain and feeling, and had suddenly come tinglingly and painfully to life. She wasn’t sure that she liked the sensation. Her self-confidence had been totally undermined, and she was aware, not for the first time, just how emotionally dependent she was on Jake. If he turned away from her…

‘Come on, I’d better take you home,’ Jake’s brusque words cut through her anguished thoughts.

‘Jake…’ she began hesitantly, but he cut through what she was about to say, silencing her with a curt, ‘Look, let’s not have an inquest right now. If you’re looking for an explanation, let’s just say it was an experiment that went wrong.’

Too numb and exhausted by the violence of her own emotions, Stephanie stayed silent as he drove her home. Normally, after a late night, she stayed at the apartment with him, but tonight he had made no such suggestion. Was he growing tired of her as Susy had predicted he would? All the old insecurities she had suffered after the attack resurfaced, and she was glad to escape Jake’s silent presence when he eventually left her at her flat door.

After a night of disturbed and uneasy rest, she finally fell properly asleep in the early hours and woke up heavy-eyed and headachey well after ten o’clock.

‘Well, well, that must have been some night last night,’ Annette commented when she finally got up. ‘It isn’t like you to sleep in.’

‘I was tired,’ Stephanie lied briefly. A glance in her mirror before she walked into the kitchen had shown her an unfamiliarly wan face and pain-haunted eyes.

Somehow she got through the weekend, busying herself with unnecessary chores, and surveying her previous winter’s wardrobe. Her job called for her to be smartly and well-dressed, but as she looked at the sensible suits and severely cut blouses she had bought the previous winter, she knew a vague but definite dissatisfaction. Annette, who had nothing on for the weekend, came into her room to watch.

‘Heavens,’ she exclaimed breezily, examining the growing pile of garments, ‘these are almost like a uniform. If I had a figure like yours you’d never catch me wearing anything so dull. Why don’t you go mad for once and get yourself something really sexy? I would if I had your figure.’

‘Such as?’ Stephanie enquired drily. Annette favoured flamboyant, sometimes frankly gaudy clothes that Stephanie simply could not see herself in at all. Perhaps her clothes were a little on the dull side, but at least when she was wearing them no one could accuse her of trying to attract male attention. Her appearance never presented a sexual come-on or challenge.