Mission: Make-Over

‘Well, it’s high time you were thinking about providing the next generation of little Carlisles if you intend to keep it in the family,’ David teased him. ‘You’re not getting any younger, you know; you’ll be—what…thirty-four this time…?’

‘Thirty-two,’ Jake told him dryly. ‘I’m a year older than you are…which reminds me, wasn’t it Lucianna’s birthday last week?’

‘Yes,’ Janey agreed, adding, ‘I rather think she was hoping for an engagement ring from John before he went away to Canada.’

‘How’s her business doing?’ Jake asked Janey, making no response to her comment about Lucianna’s disappointed hopes of a birthday proposal.

‘Well, she’s slowly building up a loyal clientele,’ Janey told him cautiously. ‘Female drivers in the main, who appreciate having their car serviced by another woman—’

‘She’s still heavily in debt to the bank,’ David broke in forthrightly. ‘No man worth his salt would let a woman service his car; we tried to tell her that, but would she listen? No way. It’s just as well she’s still living here and didn’t take on the extra financial burden of renting her own place as she originally wanted to do…’

‘You really are a dreadful chauvinist, David,’ Janey criticised mildly. ‘And whilst we’re on the subject Lucianna is, after all, very much what your father and the rest of you have made her. Poor girl, she’s never been given much of a chance to develop her femininity, has she?’

CHAPTER TWO

‘JOHN got off safely, then?’ Janey asked Lucianna cautiously.

They were both in the kitchen, Janey baking and Lucianna poring over her business accounts.

‘Only we didn’t hear you come in last night,’ Janey persisted, waiting until Lucianna had finished adding up the column of figures she was working on before speaking again.

‘No…I…I was later than I expected,’ Lucianna agreed quietly without looking up, not wanting to admit to her sister-in-law that after John’s flight had taken off she had felt so low that instead of driving straight home she had simply wandered aimlessly around the terminal. The brief, almost brotherly kiss John had placed on her forehead before leaving her and the speed with which he had responded eagerly to the very first call for his flight had contrasted painfully with the appreciative and lingering look she had seen him give the attractively dressed woman who had evidently been joining his flight, leaving her painfully aware that despite the fact that they had been dating for several months John seemed more interested in another woman than he was in her.

‘Perhaps when John comes home he’ll realise how much he’s missed you,’ Janey began comfortingly, but suddenly Lucianna had had enough. What was the point in pretending to anyone else when she couldn’t even pretend to herself any longer? Dolefully, she shook her head, refusing to be comforted.

She and John had originally met six months earlier when John’s car had broken down, leaving him stranded a couple of miles from the farm where Lucianna had been brought up and where she now lived with her brother David and his wife Janey.

She had happened to drive past and, recognising John’s plight, she had stopped and offered to help, quickly tracking down the problem and cheerfully assuring John that she could soon fix it.

She had first developed her skill with engines as a young girl tinkering with the farm’s mechanical equipment—on a farm a piece of equipment that didn’t work cost money, and all of the Stewart family had a working knowledge of how to fix a broken-down tractor, but for some reason Lucianna had excelled at almost being able to sense what was wrong even before her older brothers.

This skill had proved to be an asset in her teens when her second eldest brother Lewis had become interested in stock-car racing. Lucianna had happily allowed both Lewis and his friends to make use of her skills in helping them to repair and, in some cases, rebuild their cars.

Because she was the youngest of the family, and had the added handicap of being a girl, she had grown up sensitively aware of the fact that she had to find some way of compensating for the fact that she wasn’t a boy and that because of that, in the eyes of her family, she was somehow less worthwhile as a human being.

Unsure of what she wanted to do when she left school, she had continued with her farm chores and increasingly become responsible for not just the maintenance of the farm’s machinery but also for the maintenance of several of her brothers’ friends’ cars, and it had seemed a natural step to move from working with cars as a hobby to working with them as a means of earning a living.

Initially her ambition had been to train and work with some of the top-of-the-range luxury models, but each distributor she had approached with a view to an apprenticeship had laughed at the very idea of a female mechanic and it had been her father who had ultimately suggested she could use one of the empty farm buildings and set up her own business from there.

John had, at first, been shocked and then, she suspected, a little ashamed by the way she earned her living, considering it ‘unfeminine’.

Femininity, as she had quickly discovered, was an asset both prized and praised by John and one she did not possess.

Unhappily, she bit her lip. One date with John had led to another and then a regular weekly meeting, but not as yet to the declaration of love and long-term commitment she had been hoping for.

‘If he really cared, he’d have…’ she began, speaking her painful thoughts out loud before shaking her head, unable to continue. Then she asked Janey tiredly in a low voice. ‘What’s wrong with me, Janey? Why can’t I make John see how good we’d be together?’

Lucianna was sitting with her back to the door, and whilst she had been speaking David and Jake had walked across the farmyard and entered the kitchen just in time to hear her low-voiced query.

It was left to Jake to fill the awkward silence left by her subdued question as he announced, ‘Perhaps because he isn’t a combustion engine and human relationships need a bit more know-how to make them work than anything you’re likely to learn on a basic mechanics course.’

The familiar razor-sharp voice had Lucianna spinning round, hot, angry colour mantling her cheeks, her green eyes flashing with temper, the off-the-face style in which she kept her long, naturally curly hair emphasising her high cheekbones and the stubborn firmness of her chin as she challenged bitterly, ‘Who asked you? This is a private conversation and if I’d wanted your opinion, Jake Carlisle…not that I ever would…I’d have asked for it.’

She and Jake had never really got on. Even as a little girl she had disliked and resented his presence in their lives and the influence he seemed to have, not just over her brothers but even over her father as well. Despite the fact that he was only a year older than her eldest brother, there had always been something about Jake that was different, that set him apart from the others—an awareness, a maturity…a certain something which as a child Lucianna had never been able to define but which she only knew made her feel angry…

It had been Jake who had persuaded her aunt to buy her that stupid dress for her thirteenth birthday, the one that had made the boys howl with laughter when they’d seen her in it, the one with the pink frills and sash—the sash which she had later used as binding to tie the wheels of the cart she was making to its chassis. She could still remember the tight-lipped look Jake had given her when he had recognised what it was and the thrill of angry pleasure and defiance it had given her to see that look. Not that he had said anything—but then Jake had never needed to say anything to get his message across.

‘But you just did,’ Jake reminded her, plainly unperturbed by her angry outburst.

‘I wasn’t talking to you, I was talking to Janey,’ Lucianna pointed out tersely.

‘But perhaps Janey is too kind-hearted to answer you honestly and tell you the truth…’

Lucianna glared at him.

‘What truth? What do you mean?’

‘You asked what was wrong with you, and why John won’t make a commitment to you,’ Jake reminded her coolly. ‘Well, I’ll tell you, shall I? John is a man…not much of one, I’ll grant you, but still a man…and, like all heterosexual men, what he wants in his partner…his lover…is a woman. A woman, Lucianna—that’s spelt W for wantability, O for orgasmic appeal, M for man appeal, A for attraction—sexual attraction, that is—and, of course, finally, N for nuptials. And for your information a woman is someone who knows that the kind of words a man wants to hear whispered in his ear have nothing to do with the latest technical details of a new engine.

‘Give me your hand,’ he instructed, leaning forward and taking hold of Lucianna’s left hand before she could stop him and then studying her ring finger. His long, mobile mouth curled sardonically as he announced, ‘Hardly something a man might feel tempted to put his ring on, is it, never mind kiss?’

Mortified, Lucianna snatched her hand away and told him furiously, ‘A woman…well, I spell it W for wimp, O for obedient, M for moronic, A for artifice and N for nothing…’ she told him fiercely.

There was a long silence during which she was uncomfortably conscious of Jake studying her and during which she had to fight to resist the temptation to hide her hands behind her back. Only last weekend she had seen the look of distaste on John’s face when he’d complained that her nails weren’t long and varnished like those of his friends’ girlfriends.

‘If that’s really how you see yourself, then I feel sorry for you,’ Jake declared finally.

It took several seconds for the quiet words to sink in past her turbulent thoughts, but once they had Lucianna blinked and swallowed hard, trying not to cry as the angry, defensive words of denial fought to escape past the hard lump of anguish blocking her throat.

‘You aren’t a woman, Lucianna,’ she heard Jake attack tauntingly into the vulnerability of her silence.

‘Yes, I am,’ she argued furiously, ‘and—’

‘No, you’re not. Oh, you may look like one, and have all the physical bodily attributes of one—although I must say that given the clothes you choose to shroud yourself in it’s hard to know,’ he added, with a disparaging glance at the oversized dungarees she was wearing.

‘But it isn’t looks that make a woman—a real woman—and I’ll take a bet that the plainest member of your sex knows more about how to attract than you do…I know more…’

‘Perhaps you should give Luce a few pointers, then,’ David chipped in, laughing. ‘Give her a few lessons on how to catch her man…’

‘Perhaps I should,’ Lucianna heard Jake agreeing thoughtfully, for all the world as though he was seriously considering the matter as some kind of viable, acceptable proposition and not the most ridiculous and insulting thing she had ever heard of in her life!

Lucianna couldn’t restrain herself any longer.

‘There’s nothing you could teach me about being a woman…nothing,’ she told him defiantly.

‘Nothing? Want to bet?’ Jake returned smoothly and with dangerous speed. ‘You should know better than to challenge me, Lucianna. Much better…’

‘If I were you I’d take him up on it,’ she heard David advising her seriously. ‘After all, he is a man and—’