The Friendship Barrier

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 (#ulink_f6975a08-8098-557c-8235-1a97be50ff00)

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.’