After she had finished work she had showered and washed her hair, which was still hanging loosely around her shoulders in a thick, silky cloak which she privately deemed rather untidy but which for some reason seemed to highlight the delicacy of her facial bones and the softness of her skin. But it wasn’t her face or her hair which was causing her to feel abashed. No, it was the fact that she had taken advantage of David and Janey’s absence not just to try out her new make-up but to try on her new undies as well.
What would John think if…when he saw her like this…? Would he notice, as she had done herself, how delicate and slender her legs looked clad in such sheer stockings? Would he…? What would he think…say…Lucianna took a deep gulp of air…when he saw the frivolous lacy affair that was holding them up? What would his reaction be to her new bra—a bra which was nothing like any she had ever worn and which it had taken all the salesgirl’s earnest professionalism and sincerity to assure her was perfectly respectable and one of their customers’ firm favourites?
And, as if all that weren’t enough, there was, of course, the string. Lucianna took another gulp of air…From the front it looked if not exactly as sturdy as her normal knickers then certainly not more revealing than a rather high-cut bikini, but from the back…! As yet she hadn’t managed to pluck up the courage to study her back view, and the mirror in her room wasn’t exactly ideal for doing so.
In Janey and David’s room there was a much better full-length mirror which could be angled. Lucianna glanced
doubtfully at the high-heeled sandals she was wearing. So far she had only walked across her own bedroom floor in them—and had felt as vulnerable and awkward as a newborn colt.
Taking a deep breath, she reminded herself that sooner or later she was going to have to appear in them in public, so the sooner she learned to walk properly in them the better, and since she could hardly service her customers’ cars wearing them she had better make use of every chance she got to practise.
After all, there was no one around to witness her ineptitude, nor her shy awareness of how very different she looked and felt, nor how very much more aware of herself, her body, her womanliness, she suddenly was.
She started to walk tentatively towards the bedroom door.
The business meeting he had been called to in Paris so unexpectedly to attend had proved rather more fraught than Jake had anticipated but, in the end, he had had his way—but not before he had had to argue his point with some force. Along with the estate, he had inherited a considerable portfolio of stocks and shares to which he had, over the years, added other investments of his own, latterly moving into the area of helping others to set up their own small businesses and taking not just a financial but also a managerial interest in those businesses.
It was a high-risk enterprise and one which required steady nerves as well as a good deal of patience and faith in one’s own judgement, and Jake’s trust in his own judgement had been sorely tested of late.
There had been a delay at Charles de Gaulle and it had been a hot day; he was glad to be free of the stale, fume-filled air of the motorway but the drive home was not giving him its usual sense of release and pleasure. He turned off the main road and into the lane that led both to the farm and then on to his own home; he automatically checked his speed as he drove past the turn-off for the farm and then, instead of accelerating, for some reason he wasn’t prepared to analyse, he braked instead.
Braked, stopped, reversed, and then finally took the side turning for the farm.
A little uncertainly at first, then with increasing confidence as she got used to the height of them, Lucianna walked up and down the landing in her new, delicate, high-heeled sandals. It certainly felt most peculiar, but not in the least unpleasantly so.
She frowned a little critically as she caught sight of her unvarnished toenails. The stockings she was wearing were completely sheer, designed to be worn, if necessary, with open-toed shoes, and it seemed now to Lucianna that a pretty but discreet application of a soft shiny colour to her toenails would complement both her shoes and the sheer delicacy of her stockings, rather in the same way that she would have advised a customer that those all-important touches such as keeping the bodywork of their cars clean and polished were also part and parcel of keeping their vehicles in good working order.
Now that she had mastered the art of walking in her new shoes—well, sort of—it was time to venture into David and Janey’s room and study her reflection in their mirror.
Once she was inside their room, though, Lucianna found she was having great difficulty in bringing herself to look at what she was wearing. Her heart had started to beat very fast and she was conscious of a mixture of apprehension and nervous excitement churning in her stomach.
Unsteadily, she turned her head in the direction of the mirror and then tensed in shock. Was that really her? That unexpectedly tall, long-legged creature—long-legged woman? she corrected herself shakily. And those curves…that tiny waist, those softly rounded breasts; where had they come from? She didn’t normally make a habit of studying her own naked body but surely she would have known, noticed, if her body was really as sensual, as womanly as its mirror image now reflected? Was it the soft light of David and Janey’s bedroom that gave her skin its satiny sheen?
Hesitantly, Lucianna touched the smooth swell of her breast above the dainty cup of her bra and then flushed. She looked so different, so…Peeping over her shoulder, she glanced uncertainly at her neatly curved and very provocatively rounded rear.
Totally absorbed in what she was seeing, she didn’t hear Jake drive into the yard and stop the engine of his car.
The lights were on in the farmhouse kitchen and upstairs as well and, out of habit, Jake merely knocked briefly on the unlocked kitchen door before pushing it open and walking in. After all, he had been a regular visitor here at the farmhouse from boyhood and had long ago been instructed by David and Janey that he was not to stand on ceremony, that so far as they were concerned he was virtually an adopted member of the family.
The fact that there wasn’t anyone in the kitchen wasn’t particularly unusual; it was too early in the evening for David and Janey to have gone to bed, and since he had noticed as he’d driven up that their bedroom lights were on he opened the kitchen door and stepped into the hall, intending to call up to warn them of his arrival, but, before he could do so, their bedroom door opened.
The uncertainty in Lucianna’s movements as she opened David and Janey’s bedroom door and stepped out onto the landing wasn’t due as much to her unfamiliar footwear as to her unfamiliar self.
If the reflection of herself she had seen in the dress shop earlier in the week had surprised and pleased her that was nothing to the emotions she had experienced just now. Her reflection might have unnerved her somewhat but there was no doubting its femininity…its sexuality…her femininity and sexuality. She paused in the open doorway, arching her neck, standing proudly, a small, secret smile curling her mouth.
Let Jake try telling her now that she needed to look to others to learn how to be a woman; that she needed to adopt their body language in order to make John appreciate her.
Suddenly, and for the first time in her life, Lucianna knew how it felt to be proud of her womanhood, of her body, and it showed in the way she held herself and moved as she started to walk towards her own room.
And how it showed!
Initially, standing in the hallway below her, Jake simply couldn’t believe his eyes—or rather his brain was having difficulty in accepting that what he saw, who he saw, was Lucianna. His body was experiencing no such problems. It had recognised her straight away, recognised her, known her, reacted to her and was still reacting to her, and suddenly all the emotions he had been fighting to control for what, right now, felt like more than half his lifetime, exploded in a self-igniting flash of feral anger that caused him to take the stairs two at a time, blocking off Lucianna’s access to her bedroom with his body as he demanded furiously, ‘Lucianna…what the hell do you think you’re playing at?’
To say she was shocked didn’t begin to go anywhere near describing Lucianna’s feelings.
The totally unexpected sight of Jake coupled with the intensity of his anger would have been enough to put her on the defensive at the best of times, but to be confronted by it and by him in her present state of undress…It would have been bad enough to have been surprised by anyone, even to be faced by Janey, just at the moment. The only reason she had found the courage to do what she had just done, to try on her new underwear and…Well, the only reason she had done what she had was that she had been secure in the knowledge that she had the house completely to herself.
And if anyone had asked her who the last person, the very last person was whom she would have wanted to see her like this she would immediately have said Jake. And yet here he was, looking at her with such savagery, such fury that…