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.