style="font-size:15px;"> All at once, it was as though all her senses came truly alive, and she was acutely aware of everything about him; from the hard tension of his body against hers, the muscle and bone so different from her own yielding softness; to the musky, male scent of him that somehow excited and yet frightened at the same time.
She must have made some small protest because, suddenly and totally unexpectedly, she was free and Jake was three feet away from her regarding her with a look of mingled contempt and anger. Fear and misery poured through her making her ache in every nerve ending. It was almost as though she had been anaesthetised against pain and feeling, and had suddenly come tinglingly and painfully to life. She wasn’t sure that she liked the sensation. Her self-confidence had been totally undermined, and she was aware, not for the first time, just how emotionally dependent she was on Jake. If he turned away from her…
‘Come on, I’d better take you home,’ Jake’s brusque words cut through her anguished thoughts.
‘Jake…’ she began hesitantly, but he cut through what she was about to say, silencing her with a curt, ‘Look, let’s not have an inquest right now. If you’re looking for an explanation, let’s just say it was an experiment that went wrong.’
Too numb and exhausted by the violence of her own emotions, Stephanie stayed silent as he drove her home. Normally, after a late night, she stayed at the apartment with him, but tonight he had made no such suggestion. Was he growing tired of her as Susy had predicted he would? All the old insecurities she had suffered after the attack resurfaced, and she was glad to escape Jake’s silent presence when he eventually left her at her flat door.
After a night of disturbed and uneasy rest, she finally fell properly asleep in the early hours and woke up heavy-eyed and headachey well after ten o’clock.
‘Well, well, that must have been some night last night,’ Annette commented when she finally got up. ‘It isn’t like you to sleep in.’
‘I was tired,’ Stephanie lied briefly. A glance in her mirror before she walked into the kitchen had shown her an unfamiliarly wan face and pain-haunted eyes.
Somehow she got through the weekend, busying herself with unnecessary chores, and surveying her previous winter’s wardrobe. Her job called for her to be smartly and well-dressed, but as she looked at the sensible suits and severely cut blouses she had bought the previous winter, she knew a vague but definite dissatisfaction. Annette, who had nothing on for the weekend, came into her room to watch.
‘Heavens,’ she exclaimed breezily, examining the growing pile of garments, ‘these are almost like a uniform. If I had a figure like yours you’d never catch me wearing anything so dull. Why don’t you go mad for once and get yourself something really sexy? I would if I had your figure.’
‘Such as?’ Stephanie enquired drily. Annette favoured flamboyant, sometimes frankly gaudy clothes that Stephanie simply could not see herself in at all. Perhaps her clothes were a little on the dull side, but at least when she was wearing them no one could accuse her of trying to attract male attention. Her appearance never presented a sexual come-on or challenge.
‘Like this, for instance,’ Annette pounced triumphantly, flourishing a magazine she had been reading. ‘We’ve still got a couple of hours before the shops close. All the new season’s stock should be in by now, and don’t tell me you can’t afford it… with the salary I suspect Jake pays you…’
Stephanie wasn’t listening. She was staring transfixed at the photograph Annette was holding out to her. Numbly, she read the caption, ‘Susy Waldron, modelling the new Galman autumn range at the home of wealthy Florida businessman, Dale Mather. Another house guest was Susy’s escort, Jake Lorrimer. When asked about their romance, Susy refused to comment, but the couple were seen strolling arm in arm through Dale Mather’s justifiably famous gardens almost every evening of their visit.’
‘Stephanie, what’s wrong with you?’ Annette demanded. ‘What do you think of the dress? I can just see you in it.’
The dress in question was in soft, black angora, cut on deceptively demure lines, but Stephanie paid it scant attention. Jake and Susy together. Was that why he had kissed her? Because he and Susy were apart… because he knew that Susy did not like her. Jake was a man in whom the sensual currents ran strong and deep, and if she hadn’t known it before, she knew it now. Deep enough for him to sacrifice their friendship to his desire for Susy? Had Susy perhaps demanded as the price of her love, Stephanie’s own eviction from Jake’s personal life?
They were questions that Stephanie could not answer. She felt as though life had suddenly cast her adrift on unfamiliar and treacherous waters with nothing to cling to for support.
More to keep her mind occupied with other thoughts than for any other reason, she allowed Annette to persuade her to go shopping. They visited the exclusive Knightsbridge store that stocked the clothes featured in the magazine and at Annette’s insistence Stephanie tried on the black angora dress.
‘Stunning,’ was her verdict once it was on. ‘It looks even better on you than it did on the model. The colour brings out the red lights in your hair,’ she said critically. ‘Black suits you. And what about this?’ she brandished a glove-soft leather skirt in a softly muted olive-cum-khaki colour with a toning mohair jumper.
Stephanie stared at her, aghast. ‘Annette, I never wear anything like that,’ she told her distastefully, ‘Leather…’
‘Leather skirts are “in” this year,’ Annette argued firmly. ‘Try it on, at least. This jumper is gorgeous. If we weren’t saving so hard to get married, I might indulge in one myself.’
The jumper was lovely, Stephanie admitted when she had it on. The soft mohair caressed her skin with a sensuous warmth that made her unexpectedly aware of her own body, and, for a few seconds, she wasn’t sure if she liked the sensation. Appreciation of her own sensuality wasn’t something she was familiar with—that side of her nature had been suppressed, partially during her teens when she had only had her grandmother as an example, and then completely following the attack, when she had developed a morbid fear of anyone reading any hint of sexual compliance in her attitude. The satin-winged dragon motif appliqued to the front of the sweater felt unfamiliar beneath her finger tips and she had a sudden and very disturbing notion that Jake’s skin would feel very much the same. Smooth, yet strong. She snatched her fingers away from the satin as though they had been stung, blushing in the privacy of her changing room at the intimacy of her thoughts. What was happening to her? She had never even thought about touching Jake before, even in the most casual of fashions, never mind imagining his nude body, and yet, now… It must be the small enclosed space she was in that was making her feel so hot, she decided, quickly unfastening the studded side fastening of the leather skirt.
Perhaps it was because she was trying to come to terms with her unfamiliar feelings that she allowed Annette to persuade her into buying not only the leather skirt and the sweater, but also a matching silk shirt and the black angora dress, plus an evening suit cut to reveal the soft curves of her body, with a tiny, nipped-in waist and a low, revealing back, although when she was going to wear such a potentially provocative garment she wasn’t quite sure. Even the colour—a rich sapphire blue—wasn’t one she would normally have chosen.
‘You’ll wear it when you go out on these business dinners with Jake, of course,’ Annette chastised her when she voiced her doubts as they headed for the escalator. ‘Come on,’ she added. ‘I’m really getting into the swing of this fairy godmother thing now. I’m not letting you go back to the flat until you’ve bought some new underwear and you’ll need new shoes…’
‘Underwear?
