she paused in the automatic act of getting undressed and walked hesitantly across the room to stand in front of her bedroom mirror.
Only this afternoon her aunt had commented on how like her mother she looked. Her mother had been considered something of a beauty, but wasn’t beauty supposed to be in the eyes of the beholder? And she had seen the way John had winced when he had called round unexpectedly earlier in the week, a look of distaste crossing his face as he’d looked at her oil-stained hands and short nails. But John had thought her attractive enough when they had first met and he had been glad enough of her mechanical expertise then too, even proud of it, boasting to his friends about her skill.
It had been later that he had stopped telling others how she earned her living and then, latterly, cautioned her against doing so herself, growing both uncomfortable and irritated with her when she had asked him why.
She knew she was different from the girlfriends and wives of John’s friends, and on the thankfully rare occasions when she had been alone with them she had discovered that they very quickly ran out of things to talk about. But what had been even worse, even more humiliating than their silence, had been the laughter she had heard and which had been quickly stifled as she’d walked back into the room after leaving it for a few minutes. She had been in no doubt that they had been talking about her, laughing about her, and that knowledge had hurt even though she had vowed not to let them know it.
At school she had been popular enough and had had plenty of friends, although it was true that once she had reached her teens she had tended to disdain the giggly, boy-focused discussions of her fellow females and spent more time instead with the boys, preferring tomboyish pursuits to long discussions about the latest pop groups or clothes fad.
She had tried, though, with John, really tried. At his suggestion she had bought a new dress for his firm’s annual do and she had even gone along with his insistence that she take one of his female colleagues from work along with her to choose it.
And, although she had felt too upset at the time to tell him so, the dress she had so unhappily and unsuccessfully worn had not been her choice but Felicity’s. And she still couldn’t understand why Felicity had so determinedly and blatantly lied about that fact, insisting in the face of John’s disapproval that she, Lucianna, had overridden her advice and chosen her dress herself.
Her eyes filled with fresh tears now—widely spaced, thick-lashed, pretty silvery green eyes which recently had held a far more sombre expression than suited them. It hurt more than she felt able to say to anyone that even her family seemed to think she was somehow lacking in female allure.
Outwardly she might wear jeans and do what appeared to be an unfeminine job, but inwardly…Inwardly, she was every bit as much a woman as the Felicitys of this world, every bit as worthy of being loved and wanted—and she was going to prove it!
CHAPTER THREE
‘YOU’RE up early this morning…Not had a change of heart, have you, and planning to do a disappearing act?’
Lucianna shook her head as she listened to her brother’s teasing comments.
‘Certainly not,’ she told him firmly, but he was closer to the truth than he knew. She had woken up this morning with a very heavy heart indeed and a deep and gloomy sense of foreboding and dismay at what she had let herself in for.
‘Pull the other one,’ her brother advised her, showing that he knew her rather better than she liked and informing Janey as she walked into the kitchen, ‘I told you she wouldn’t go through with it; she’s—’
‘I am going through with it,’ Lucianna interrupted him indignantly. ‘I just got up earlier than normal because I want to finish a job off before…before I drive over to…’
To prove a point she gulped down her coffee and started to hurry towards the back door before David could make any further teasing remarks. With her back to him she didn’t see the look of compassionate sympathy he gave her before exchanging a rueful glance with his wife.
She was his kid sister, damn it, and he loved her, and he could wring that idiot John’s neck for the misery he was causing her.
The job Lucianna had pretended was so urgent was simply a matter of changing an oil filter, and she was on her way back to the house when Jake drove into the farmyard.
‘What are you doing here?’ she challenged him aggressively as he got out of his car. Like her he was casually dressed in jeans, but unlike hers his were immaculately clean and they fitted him properly.
‘What do you think?’ he retorted calmly.
Lucianna gave him a stubborn look.
‘There’s no need for you to come and collect me as if I were a…a prisoner. I was going to drive myself over…’
‘But now I’ve saved you the trouble,’ Jake told her suavely, ‘and that’s one of the first lessons you have to learn.’
‘What?’ Lucianna asked.
‘How to accept a man’s naturally chivalrous instinct to look after and protect a woman—and,’ he added more dryly, ‘how not to dent his ego by pointing out that you don’t need or want his protection.’
‘How? By simpering stupidly and throwing myself at your feet in gratitude?’ Lucianna demanded acidly.
‘A simple “thank you” and a warm smile would be perfectly adequate. You want to thank the guy, not make him think you’re desperate,’ Jake told her.
Lucianna glowered at him whilst she felt her face grow hot with indignation.
‘I am not desperate—’ she began, but Jake was already shaking his head, telling her directly,
‘Don’t give me that, Luce…I know you, remember, and for you to go to such lengths…’
‘I love him,’ she told him, tilting her chin determinedly at him as though daring him to argue with her.
‘You might think you do but, believe me, you don’t even begin to know what love is yet.’
Her brother’s emergence into the yard prevented Lucianna from making the kind of retort she wanted to make but she was still seething with resentment and indignation ten minutes later as she sat next to Jake whilst he reversed his car back out of the yard.
‘Your timing’s out,’ she told him critically as she listened to the sound of the engine.
‘You’re going to have to know me a lot better before you can come out with a comment like that,’ he told her in an unfamiliar soft and meaningful voice that made her turn her head and look open-mouthed at him as her senses, more acute and finely tuned than her brain, recognised a message in the dulcet, husky sound of his voice that her brain could not quite pick up on.
‘My timing is never out,’ he added even more softly, and then reverted to his normal tone of voice, before she could say anything, to tell her briskly, ‘But yes, the car’s timing is slightly out, Lucianna…
‘Tell me something,’ he went on conversationally. ‘When you and John are alone what do you talk about?’
‘Talk about?’ Lucianna stared at
