The Friendship Barrier

The Friendship Barrier
PENNY JORDAN

Penny Jordan needs no introduction as arguably the most recognisable name writing for Mills & Boon. We have celebrated her wonderful writing with a special collection, many of which for the first time in eBook format and all available right now.Could they ever be more than friends?Jake was Stephanie's employer…her best friend…and if he hadn't had to rescue her from a gang of youths two years ago, he could have been so much more…Now there was an invisible barrier between them, which - until recently - Jake had patiently respected. He alone knew why Stephanie shied away from men, understood why she had to confront her fear before putting the past behind them both.But Stephanie couldn't cross the line separating friend from lover without first facing a greater fear - the fear of losing the man who meant everything to her.

The Friendship Barrier

Penny Jordan

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

Table of Contents

Cover (#uc9f53809-d03f-579f-91f7-4c5749486f57)

Title Page (#u06fb7bbc-dde7-5cfa-8a5d-39d82c38a936)

CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_6ac3da75-d43f-5803-b1a7-05d2bea9da85)

CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_3de2eca2-7ac1-5b77-81cf-e811b68f4570)

CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_ca4b39d2-6e8f-546b-9c5a-4f30dba06928)

CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_39417322-9d34-5f0f-b73e-c96edbfdce93)

‘STEPH, you’re late. It’s gone seven. You’re normally back by six. What happened?’ Annette asked roguishly. ‘Did that gorgeous boss of yours want you to work late?’

‘Can’t stop to chat now,’ Stephanie apologised to her flatmate as she hurried through the small sitting room. ‘Jake’s picking me up in half an hour.’

‘Jake?’ Annette’s eyebrows lifted. ‘Do you call him that at work? Catch me daring to call my boss anything other than Mr James.’

Stephanie was too used to Annette’s curiosity about her relationship with Jake to make any comment. Initially, when she arrived in London, she had lived alone, but after… but Jake had suggested when she started appearing heavy-eyed and exhausted in the office after her nightmare broken nights that she get a flatmate.

Annette was pleasant enough in her way; a secretary like herself, working for the chairman of a large insurance company. She had a fiancé who was in the army and whom she saw at irregular intervals. Yes, Annette would have been the ideal flatmate if it wasn’t for her constant curiosity about Jake.

‘Where’s he taking you tonight, then?’

Sighing, as she stripped off her neat office suit and blouse, Stephanie responded through her half-closed bedroom door, ‘The première of the new Blaize Dartford film.’

‘Wow! That should be really something. The love scenes are supposed to be…’

Almost automatically, Stephanie shut her ears against the end of Annette’s comment, dismayed but not surprised to see that her hands were shaking as she finished undressing.

In their small bathroom she showered quickly, automatically avoiding any confrontation with her own naked reflection. Back in her room, she opened her wardrobe and selected the cocktail suit she planned to wear for the evening. The matt black fabric with the velvet detailed embroidery on it was the perfect foil for her pale skin. Her hair cascaded past her shoulders in deep rich chestnut waves. For work she always wore it in a neat coil. Her wardrobe held few clothes but what there was was good. Working as Jake’s secretary-cum-personal assistant, she felt she owed it to him to dress the part. As the senior partner in a very prestigious London firm of estate agents, he came in daily contact with the wealthy, and, as Stephanie had soon learned, looks and appearance did count. During the two years she had worked for him she had cultivated an air of cool remoteness which put off those male clients who were, initially, too familiar. She was well aware of the nickname they had given her in the outer office. The ‘Ice Maiden’ they called her, but she didn’t care. They were not to know that she had deliberately chosen to encase herself in an unthawable protective shell. Only Jake knew that, and why. Jake… She glanced at her watch. Twenty-past seven, and Jake was always on time.

Her suit looked dressy, and yet formal, her long slim legs encased in pale tights, the delicacy of her ankle bones enhanced by the slender-heeled shoes she was wearing.

Deftly applying her make-up, she stood back critically to study her handiwork. Her eyes were a deep rich hazel that sometimes turned emerald, her face a delicate oval with high cheek bones and a small straight nose.

It was too late to do anything with her hair other than let it curl loosely on to her shoulders. Perfume was something Stephanie never wore, just as she never applied more than a bare trace of soft, pink lipstick to the ripely full curves of her mouth.

‘Umm. I wish I was tall and leggy,’ Annette complained when Stephanie emerged into their sitting room. ‘What is it with you and Jake?’ she enquired curiously. ‘You work for him, he takes you out, you seem very close, and yet he dates other women… glamorous ones, too.’

‘Jake is my friend and my employer,’ Stephanie cut in sharply. As always, when Annette questioned her like this, she could feel the self-defensive antennae prickling warningly. It was true though. Jake was her friend, and her employer… and so much more that could never be said… she was tied to him with bonds that no one who had not shared her experience could understand. Jake knew more about her than another living soul. He had been there when… He had been the one who had helped her to build up her life again. He knew and understood…

‘And not your lover…?’ the disbelieving comment penetrated Stephanie’s thoughts.

‘No… not my lover.’ She made the denial instinctively, her whole body registering a cold shudder she couldn’t hide.

Annette frowned. ‘Steph, what’s the matter? You obviously like him, you must do, and he’s one hell of an attractive man. You wouldn’t see me turning him down, and yet when I suggest there might be something physical about your relationship, you look as sick as though I’d suggested something obscene.’

The abrupt buzz of the door bell saved her from the need to respond. Even though she knew it would be Jake, Stephanie kept the chain hooked on the door as she eased it open until she could see his tall, dinner-suited figure.

‘Ready?’

As she opened the door, Jake stepped to one side to let her precede him. He was the only man of her acquaintance who understood her need to keep a physical distance between them, but then of course Jake knew the reason why. Was it really only two years since they had first met?

She had gone to his office to be interviewed for the position of his secretary and they had hit it off straight away. She had been quite new to London then. An orphan who had been brought up by elderly grandparents, she had been on her own since she was seventeen, and, because of that, at twenty-one she had developed a poise and self-confidence that made her seem older.

Jake had been thirty then, a tall, dark man, who was pleasant on the surface but to whom she suspected there were uncharted and potentially dangerous depths, a man who always kept something of himself back, and she had liked that reticence, just as she had liked the way his cool, grey eyes had acknowledged her physical attractiveness and then dismissed it as he interviewed and assessed her on her qualifications and mental qualities alone.

They had worked well together that first month, each allowing the other to preserve a certain distance. Stephanie had learned quite early in life that she was attractive to the male sex, and she had also learned the price she was supposed to pay for being attractive. She had lost count of the number of men who had propositioned her and been in turn angry and contemptuous when she had turned them down. They seemed to expect, because she was a reasonably pretty girl, that she would gladly pay for their compliments and admiration by sharing their beds. Perhaps, because of the slightly old-fashioned atmosphere in which she had been brought up, Stephanie had a different set of values. Marriage, or even finding the right man wasn’t particularly to the forefront of her mind. She had a good job which she enjoyed and Jake had told her that it would involve a certain amount of foreign travel, especially to Florida where his firm was involved in certain timesharing holiday schemes, and she was quite happy where she was. Although she got on well enough with the other girls in the office, she didn’t have any intimate female friends. Her position as Jake’s secretary and PA meant that she was much higher up in the office hierarchy than the other secretaries, who tended to treat her rather cautiously. This she didn’t mind. She had learned to cope with loneliness as a child, and had grown to almost prefer a certain amount of solitude. For instance, then she would never have dreamed of sharing her flat with anyone… but all that had changed, and now there were nights when she woke up in fevered sweats, longing to scream out but knowing she could not. Nights when the knowledge that Annette was only on the other side of a thin partition wall was the only thing that kept her sane.

Sane… As Jake opened the passenger door of his XJ6, she repressed a bitter grimace. At first, she had pleaded with Jake to set her free from their contract. She couldn’t work for him any more, she had told him, but he had refused. He had endured her tears and her depressions… almost her hatred at times, and they had both emerged with a different view of one another. Their friendship was perhaps the most important single thing in her life, Stephanie admitted. She loved her job, but she could always find another one, she could never find another friend like Jake.

And yet there were areas of Jake’s life that were closed to her. Closed to her because that was the way she wanted it. She knew he had other women friends… women who, unlike her, did share his bed. Jake had never made any secret of the fact that he was a fully functioning sexual being—unlike her.

She knew that he had once been engaged. He had told her that during one of her bad times, sharing with her the grief he had felt when his fiancée had been killed in a car accident. He had been very young at the time, barely twenty-three, and, as far as she knew, he now had no plans to marry. Why should he? He owned a lovely old Manor House in the Cotswolds; a superb London flat; and was a frequent visitor at the best hotels in Florida. He enjoyed the freedom of his bachelor life. But, if he did marry… She shuddered, not wanting to think about such a possibility.

‘Something wrong?’

As always, he was acutely perceptive to her mood. At work they never touched on personal subjects, but now they weren’t at the office.

‘Nothing.’