LITMIR.BIZ

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thought she was being stubborn and difficult in refusing to listen to what they had to say, but how could she tell them that her refusal to abandon her dungarees and jeans had its roots a long way back in her early teenage years?

      Then, as a young schoolgirl, she had desperately wanted to look like her female peers and not like the tomboy she had heard others disparagingly call her.

      The gift of some birthday money had given her the opportunity to turn her wishes into reality and she could still remember the excitement with which she had gone shopping with another girl from school, a girl who, in her then youthful and untutored eyes, had seemed to have all the feminine attributes she herself so longed for.

      She still shuddered to recall what had followed when, dressed up in her new purchases—the uncomfortable suspender belt and stockings, the tight short skirt and the high heels that had made her wobble perilously as she’d walked nervously at her friend’s side—they had encountered a group of boys from school.

      The crude remarks which had followed her transformation from tomboy into a girl who they had plainly believed was making herself sexually available had made her ears and her face burn for weeks and months afterwards, her embarrassment and sense of shame so great that she had actually refused to go to school the following week until her father had announced that he was sending for the doctor.

      The incident, coupled with her own brothers’ derogatory comments about a certain type of girl, had so shocked and shamed her that she had never worn the clothes again, and in the years since, although in her wardrobe there were several rather more formal outfits than her preferred dress of dungarees and jeans, she had steadfastly refused to give in to her family’s exhortations to buy or wear ‘something feminine’. She had experienced already what happened when she did that, how the male sex reacted, knew that for some reason which was not really clear to herself there was something about her that made it impossible for her to wear the kind of clothes other women wore with such ease and confidence without cheapening herself and making herself an object of sexual contempt and ridicule.

      ‘I’m not going,’ Lucianna suddenly announced tersely. ‘Stop the car.’

      Calmly Jake did so, but the atmosphere inside the car felt anything but calm as he turned to her and asked her critically, ‘What is it you’re so afraid of, Lucianna? And don’t try to deny that you are; I know you—remember? Are you frightened of failure—failing to be enough woman to—?’

      ‘No…’

      ‘No?’ One dark eyebrow rose in the interrogative and superior manner she was so familiar with and which so irritated her. ‘Then prove it,’ Jake suggested quietly.

      ‘I don’t need to prove anything to you,’ Lucianna told him angrily.

      ‘Not to me, no,’ Jake agreed, overriding her angry words, ‘but you certainly seem to have something to prove to John—and to yourself.’

      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

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