The Friendship Barrier - PENNY JORDAN

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it had been paternal, she told herself, because she had been so distraught that she had needed the comfort of physical contact more than she feared it.

      Gradually she had recovered, or at least outwardly she had seemed to do so. Only she and Jake knew that, inwardly… inwardly she would never recover. When she dreamed, it was of hard male hands tearing at her clothes, her screams of panic suppressed until she felt she was suffocating on them. Only with Jake did she feel safe and that was because she knew he had no sexual interest in her whatsoever. Jake knew and understood about what had happened to her, but not even Jake knew about the guilt buried deep inside her soul; the hateful, destructive feeling that whispered treacherously that somehow she had been to blame; that somehow she had given them the impression that… that what? That she had wanted to be raped? She shuddered sickly. Ever since she had taken care that no one could ever accuse her of encouraging any man, however tenuously.

      She knew that Annette was curious about her relationship with Jake, who she admitted she found sexually attractive. Stephanie also knew that Annette did not believe her when she said their relationship was strictly platonic, but she was immune to any sensation of physical attraction now. The thought of any man touching her made her feel acutely ill.

      ‘Now… just watch this scene…’

      Stephanie came to at the sound of James Tavener’s voice to realise the film had progressed considerably. Her body froze as she realised that this was the ‘sex scene’ James had been discussing earlier. She didn’t want to watch, but her eyes seemed to be riveted to the screen against her will. Blaize Dartford was as dark as Jake and a similar age, his eyes blue where Jake’s were grey. Even his voice seemed to have the same husky timbre, and it seemed to Stephanie in her highly charged emotional state that it was Jake up there on the screen, that it was his hands, and mouth, his body that made slow and deliberately sensuous love to the girl on the bed with him. Stephanie wanted to deny the illusion, but it wouldn’t be denied, and her body burned hot and cold as she tried to shut out the images on the screen. Laura Howard had researched her part well, and no one watching could not be convinced of her anguish and uncertainty, although, unlike her, Laura wanted to make love, Stephanie thought. Laura wanted to overcome her fears, whereas she was revolted and terrified about the thought of physical intimacy with anyone. At last, she managed to close her eyes and blot out the final few moments of the film.

      The Taveners insisted on them joining them for supper and, while they waited for their meal to be served, James turned to Jake and asked with a grin, ‘I’ll bet there wasn’t a woman in the cinema tonight who wasn’t mentally imagining herself in Laura’s place…’

      ‘Well, Stephanie,’ Jake challenged, ‘Do you agree with that statement?’

      What could she say? To agree meant agreeing that she had wanted to be Laura; that she had wanted to be made love to… not by Blaize, but by Jake, because it was his face she had seen on the screen, his hands she had witnessed caressing the soft, female flesh of his partner…

      ‘Stephanie’s probably one of the few women at the première tonight who wasn’t bowled over by Blaize,’ Livy Tavener interrupted with a grin in Stephanie’s direction. ‘If anything, Jake’s even more attractive.’

      ‘Why, I thank you, ma’am…’ Jake drawled, not in the least embarrassed.

      ‘Jake and I are friends… nothing more,’ Stephanie put in hurriedly, her face scarlet with embarrassment as she read the speculation in James Tavener’s eyes. ‘Isn’t that so, Jake…?’

      ‘I never contradict a lady,’ Jake drawled. He was watching her with hard grey eyes, and it came to Stephanie with a shock that he had never looked at her like that before—almost as though he actively disliked her. A gulf seemed to yawn open at her feet, ground which she had thought of as safe and familiar suddenly very treacherous. What had happened between them? Why had Jake chosen tonight to bring up the past? Intuitively she knew it was not simply because of the similarity between her own attack and the film, and then she remembered Jake asking her if she had read the advance press releases. He must have known she had not because, if she had, she would never have agreed to attend, and yet he obviously had known what to expect and he had not warned her. What was she to read into that? Was he tired of their friendship? Tired of her emotional dependence on him, her need to use him as a barrier behind which she hid from all other men? Suddenly, she was desperately afraid; afraid of being alone… of losing Jake’s friendship, and most of all of the cold condemnation she had read in his eyes.

      SUPPER seemed to drag on, with Stephanie feeling increasingly miserable. The Taveners were both in good spirits, and James Tavener beamed at her, telling her that he always enjoyed having supper at the Ritz. ‘Kind-a finishes the evening off properly,’ he told her, as he ordered a second bottle of champagne.

      ‘No?’ he exclaimed, lifting his eyebrows when she refused a second glass. ‘Jake, why don’t you two go and dance?’

      Jake had been engaged in conversation with Livy Tavener, but he glanced across at Stephanie with a querying lift of his eyebrows.

      ‘No, really, I’d rather not,’ she started to protest, shivering as she saw the chill contempt invade Jake’s eyes. What had she done to merit that look? He knew how much she abhorred physical contact, and indeed, one of the things she most appreciated in his treatment of her was the fact that he was always so meticulously careful about avoiding touching her.

      It seemed to Stephanie that it was hours before the others were ready to leave. She did not have to work in the morning and there was no reason why she should not have a late night. She wasn’t sleepy, if anything, she was too keyed up and awake, but she was longing for the privacy of her flat, to the extent that she desperately wished that Annette wasn’t going to be there.

      At last, they were saying their goodbyes. She walked with Jake to where he had left the car in total silence. There had been silences between them before—comfortable, comforting silences when the depth of their friendship had made social chit-chat unnecessary, but this was a different silence, as deep and cold as a Siberian winter, and Stephanie quailed inwardly. What was happening between them? There had been no indication of what was to come when Jake returned from the States earlier in the week. He had been gone for ten days; this time, she had not accompanied him because she had picked up a tummy bug which had kept her off work, and he had seemed all right when she had met him at the airport. But there had been that incident when she had moved forward to help him with his hand luggage, and their fingers had brushed accidentally. Jake had recoiled as though he had been stung, she remembered. At the time, she had simply thought he had been withdrawing out of concern for her, but his withdrawal had been sharper than one that sprang from mere concern. He had looked… yes, almost pale, she remembered now, his eyes unusually bleak, and he had been curt and off-hand with her in the car, but, because she had been concentrating on driving the large XJ6, she had not paid too much attention, simply thinking that he was suffering from jet lag. Gnawing her lip, Stephanie suddenly remembered the venomous comments one of his ex-girlfriends had made to her last Christmas. Susy Waldron had been dating Jake for about six weeks at the time, and Stephanie had never expected the confrontation that came late one afternoon when Jake had cancelled a date with Susy because he had to go out of town on business.

      She had arrived in the office, slightly tipsy, demanding to see him, and when Stephanie calmly explained that he wasn’t available, Susy had refused to leave. ‘I know all about you, you know,’ she had commented tipsily, making Stephanie almost faint with shock, ‘all about your “friendship” with Jake… but it won’t last for ever,’ she hissed viciously, ‘Jake isn’t the sort of man who could ever be content with a platonic relationship with a woman—even a woman as dull as you. For some reason you now interest him—but one day he’ll grow bored with you. Like I just said, Jake is a very sexy man, even if you don’t have enough feminine hormones in your body to recognise it.’

      Eventually, Stephanie had persuaded her to leave. At the time, she hadn’t paid much attention to her comments.

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