Mission: Make-Over

Lucianna looked away from him, unable to meet his eyes and unable to refute his statement.

‘It’s your choice,’ he told her evenly, ‘your decision, but I must say you’ve surprised me…’

‘Surprised you!’

Lucianna gave him a wary look. In her experience surprising Jake took an awful lot of doing.

‘Mmm…’ he agreed, nodding. ‘I thought you had more courage, more guts…more self-respect than to give up without at least making some attempt to fight for what you want.’

‘I do have,’ Lucianna retorted indignantly, and then added truculently, ‘Oh, very well, then, but if you think I’m going to let you bully me into wasting money on some stupid, silly outfit that you think a woman should wear—’

‘Excuse me, but whilst I may have been guilty of many sins in my time, Lucianna, wanting to see a woman dressed in frills isn’t one of them. And besides, you’re a long, long way yet from being ready to change your outer image…It’s your inner image we’re going to be working on today and for many days to come.

‘Femininity, womanliness, is something that comes from within. It means being proud of yourself as a woman, being confident about your femaleness and your sexuality; it’s showing the world that you value yourself as a woman…When a person has that, how they choose to clothe their body is really immaterial apart from the fact that what they choose to wear acts like a shorthand message to those who see her.’

Whilst he’d been talking he had restarted the car, and this time Lucianna made no objection as he continued to drive towards the town.

Something about the calm way he had delivered those few unexpected words had for some odd reason or other brought a huge uncomfortable lump of emotion to her throat, an indefinable sense of loss and sorrow, as though he had highlighted something within her which she had secretly felt had never been allowed to flourish and had even more secretly hidden away in shame even from herself.

Yet as she sat silently at his side her thoughts, unexpectedly, were not of herself or even of John but, surprisingly, of her mother.

Might not things have been different if she had not died when Lucianna was so young…? Might not she have been different?

‘But this is a book shop,’ Lucianna protested as Jake determinedly ushered her through the plate-glass doors.

They had arrived in the town five minutes earlier and, having parked the car, Jake had directed her towards the town’s main shopping street.

‘That’s right,’ Jake agreed, touching her lightly on the arm as he pointed to a labelled section of books on the far side of the shop. ‘I think we’ll find what we need over there,’ he told her.

Lucianna frowned; the shelves seemed to be filled with diet and self-improvement books so far as she could see. Warily she allowed Jake to propel her in their direction.

‘I don’t think these will be of much benefit to me,’ she told him as she studied the title of the diet book which was prominently displayed.

‘I doubt it,’ he agreed. ‘If anything you need to put weight on.’

‘To make me more feminine?’ Lucianna suggested, her hackles starting to rise at his implied criticism of her.

‘To make you more healthy,’ Jake corrected her. ‘You’re naturally fine-boned and delicate—anyone can see that,’ he added, startling her as he totally unexpectedly ran his index finger along the curve of her cheekbone, producing an aftershock of sensation on her skin in the wake of his touch something like the kind of feeling she associated with an unexpected rash of goosebumps but with an extra indefinable and unfamiliar something which made her feel peculiarly light-headed and breathless.

‘And it naturally follows that your body will be similarly delicately made, long-legged and high-breasted with a narrow waist,’ he told her, emphasising his point by reaching out and placing his hands at either side of her body.

Her indignant verbal objection was never uttered as she looked down at where his thumbs met and felt the hard, warm male pressure of his grip through the thickness of her clothes. A suffocating tightness had invaded her chest, far, far tighter and more constricting, more dangerous than Jake’s firm grip on her body.

‘I can’t breathe,’ she protested angrily and huskily, reaching out to take hold of his arms as she instinctively tried to force him to release her.

‘Can’t you?’

The most peculiar and disturbing sensation she had ever experienced in her life seized her as she heard the deeper note in Jake’s voice and felt her whole body trembling uncontrollably in response to it in some secret inner vibration. When she looked at him she discovered that his gaze seemed to be focused on her mouth. Probably because he was waiting for her angry objection to his behaviour, she told herself protectively as she fought to control a sudden compulsive need to wet her almost painfully dry lips with the tip of her tongue—and lost.

‘Stop it,’ she hissed breathlessly. ‘Stop it at once…’

‘Stop what?’ Jake responded mock innocently.

‘You know perfectly well what. Stop looking at my…at me like…like you were doing,’ she finished lamely, her colour high as she thankfully felt him respond to her agitation and lift his head to meet her eyes at the same time as he removed his hands from her waist.

‘You’re looking very hot and bothered; what’s wrong?’ he asked her, outwardly solicitously, but she could see the laughter gleaming in his eyes.

‘You know perfectly well what’s wrong,’ she told him forthrightly. ‘It’s you…the way you…the way you looked at me.’

‘You mean the way a man looks at a woman he wants,’ Jake told her calmly. ‘It’s called body language,’ he continued, before Lucianna could take issue with him on the first part of his statement. ‘The way a man looks at a woman he wants’—indeed! Well, she knew one thing and that was that he certainly didn’t want her—and she would never want him to want her, she added hastily. It was John she wanted to want her, to desire her, to love her.

‘Body language,’ Jake repeated instructively as he reached up and removed a couple of books from higher up the shelves and handed them to her. He explained, ‘It’s a fact that all of us both consciously and subconsciously send out messages to others with every movement we make, every expression we show, and the first step to getting others to be responsive is for you to show them that you are open to that responsiveness.

‘For example, just now when I looked at your mouth, you touched your lips with your tongue, which means—’

‘Which means that you were making me nervous and angry.’

‘Nervous?’ Jake queried with a small half-smile that made her look warily away from him.

‘Nervous and angry,’ she insisted, but she knew that her voice didn’t sound quite as convincing and determined as she would have liked.

‘Mmm…I see. So when John looks at your mouth like that what kind of response do you give him?’ he asked her placatingly, but Lucianna was too on edge to be placated.

‘John never looks at me like that,’ she answered quickly.

She only realised her mistake when Jake said softly, ‘Oh, dear. Well, I’m sure there’ll be some advice inside these—’ he tapped the books. ‘—to indicate how you can rectify that situation, and if there isn’t—well, I can always…’

But Lucianna wasn’t listening. Snatching the books from his hand, she headed determinedly towards the till, head held high as the salesgirl gave the titles a quick, curious glance before taking Lucianna’s money and putting them into a bag for her.

‘I know her—I serviced her mother’s car,’ Lucianna hissed angrily to Jake once they were outside the shop. ‘I suppose you think all this is very funny,’ she added crossly as she fished the books out of the carrier bag, and she read the titles to him in scornful disgust. ‘The Science of Body Language and How to Use it Effectively, and The Art of Flirtation.’

‘Funny?’ Jake repeated. ‘No, Lucianna,’ he told her curtly. ‘I don’t think any of this is remotely funny.’

He looked so grim and unapproachable that the demand to know just what he did think of it and her, which she had been about to voice, died unvoiced.

‘This way,’ he told her, touching her, indicating the pretty town square which lay ahead of them. Set out with trees and benches and with the sun shining warmly, it was obviously a popular spot with office workers for eating their sandwiches.

One couple were vacating one of the benches as they approached and Jake quickly appropriated the spare seats.

‘What now?’ Lucianna asked wearily as he indicated that he wanted to sit down.

‘Now we’re going to do a bit of people-watching,’ Jake told her. ‘Let’s see just how sharp and accurate your instincts actually are and at the same time let’s see how much visual experience of the art of body language you can actually recognise.’

‘It wasn’t called that. It was called The Art of Flirtation,’ Lucianna snapped back at him.

‘Same thing,’ Jake told her dryly. ‘Now,’ he commanded sternly once Lucianna had reluctantly seated herself beside him, ‘take a good look around and tell me what you can see.’

Lucianna took a deep breath and mentally counted to ten before telling him irritably, ‘I can see the town square and part of the high street and I can see—’