LITMIR.BIZ

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of women had he got to come? He had a thing for busty blondes. Such a cliché but that was Jake. He was shallow. He lived life in the fast lane and didn’t stay in one place long enough to put down roots. He surrounded himself with showgirls and starlets who used him as much as he used them.

      It was nauseating.

      Jake was standing in the great hall surrounded by ten or so young women—all blonde—who were dressed in skimpy cocktail wear and vertiginous heels. Jaz leaned against the doorjamb with her arms folded, watching as each girl kissed him in greeting. One even ruffled his hair and another rubbed her breasts—which Jaz could tell were fake—against his upper arm.

      He caught Jaz’s eye and his mouth slanted in a mocking smile. ‘Ah, here’s the fun police. Ladies, this is the gardener’s daughter, Jasmine.’

      Jaz gave him an ‘I’ll get you for that later’ look before she addressed the young women. ‘Do your parents know where you all are?’ she said.

      Jake’s brows shot together in a brooding scowl. ‘Knock it off, Jasmine.’

      Jaz smiled at him with saccharine sweetness. ‘Just checking you haven’t sneaked in a minor or two.’

      Twin streaks of dull colour rode high along his aristocratic cheekbones and his mouth flattened until it was a bloodless line of white. A frisson of excitement coursed through her to have riled him enough to show a crack in his ‘too cool for school’ façade. Jaz was the only person who could do that to him. He sailed through life with that easy smile and that ‘anything goes’ attitude but pitted against her he rippled with latent anger. She wondered how far she could push him. Would he touch her? He hadn’t come anywhere near her for seven years. When the family got together for Christmas or birthdays, or whatever, he never greeted her. He never hugged or kissed her on the cheek as he did to Miranda or his mother. He avoided Jaz like she was carrying some deadly disease, which was fine by her. She didn’t want to touch him either.

      But, instead of responding, Jake moved past her as if she was invisible and directed the women to the formal sitting room. ‘In here, ladies,’ he said. ‘The party’s about to begin.’

      Jaz wanted to puke as the women followed him as though he were the Pied Piper. Couldn’t they see how they were being used to feed his ego? He would ply them with expensive champagne or mix them exotic cocktails and tell them amusing anecdotes about his famous parents and their Hollywood and London theatre friends. Those he wouldn’t bother sleeping with he would toss out by two or three in the morning. The one—or two or three, according to the tabloids—he slept with would be sent home once the deed was done. They would never get a follow-up call from him. It was a rare woman who got two nights with Jake Ravensdale. Jaz couldn’t remember the last one.

      The doorbell sounded behind her. She let out a weary sigh and turned to open it.

      ‘I’ll get that,’ Jake said, striding back into the great hall from the sitting room.

      Jaz stood to one side and curled her lip at him. ‘Ten women not enough for you, Jake?’

      He gave her a dismissive look and opened the door. But the smile of greeting dropped from his face as if he had been slapped. ‘Emma...’ His throat moved up and down. ‘What? Why? How did you find me?’ The words came spilling out in a way Jaz had never seen before. He looked agitated. Seriously agitated.

      ‘I had to see you,’ the girl said with big, lost waif, shimmering eyes and a trembling bottom lip. ‘I just had to.’

      And she was indeed a girl, Jaz noted. Not yet out of her teens. At that awkward age when one foot was in girlhood and the other in adulthood, a precarious position, and one when lots of silly mistakes that could last a lifetime could be made. Jaz knew it all too well. Hadn’t she tried to straddle that great big divide, with devastating consequences?

      ‘How’d you get here?’ Jake’s voice had switched from shocked to curt.

      ‘I caught a cab.’

      His brows locked together. ‘All the way from London?’

      ‘No,’ Emma said. ‘From the station in the village.’

      Poor little kid, Jaz thought. She remembered looking at Jake exactly like that, as if he was some demigod and she’d been sent to this earth solely to worship him. It was cruel to watch knowing all the thoughts that were going through that young head. Teenage love could be so intense, so consuming and incredibly irrational. The poor kid was in the throes of a heady infatuation, travelling all this way in the hope of a little bit of attention from a man who clearly didn’t want to give her the time of day. Jake was here partying with a bunch of women and Emma thought she could be one of them. What a little innocent.

      Jaz couldn’t stand by and watch history repeat itself. What if Emma was so upset she did something she would always regret, like she had done? There had to be a way to let the kid down in such a way that would ease the hurt of rejection. But brandishing a bunch of party girls in Emma’s face was not the way to do it.

      ‘Why don’t you come in and I’ll—?’ Jaz began.

      ‘Stay out of it, Jasmine,’ Jake snapped. ‘I’ll deal with this.’ He turned back to the girl. ‘You have to leave. Now. I’ll call you a cab but you have to go home. Understand?’

      Emma’s eyes watered some more. ‘But I can’t go home. My mother thinks I’m staying with a friend. I’ll get in heaps of trouble. I’ll be grounded for the rest of my life.’

      ‘And so you damn well should be,’ Jake growled.

      ‘Maybe I could help,’ Jaz said and held out her hand to the girl. ‘I’m Jaz. I’m Jake’s fiancée.’

      There was a stunned silence.

      Jake went statue-still beside Jaz. Emma looked at her with a blank stare. But then her cheeks pooled with crimson colour. ‘Oh... I—I didn’t realise,’ she stammered. ‘I thought Jake was still single otherwise I would never have—’

      ‘It’s fine, sweetie,’ Jaz said. ‘I totally understand and I’m not the least bit offended. We’ve been keeping our relationship a secret, haven’t we, darling?’ She gave Jake a bright smile while surreptitiously jabbing him in the ribs.

      He opened and closed his mouth like a fish that had suddenly found itself flapping on the carpet instead of swimming safely in its fishbowl. But then he seemed to come back into himself and stretched his lips into one of his charming smiles. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘That’s right. A secret. I only just asked her a couple of minutes ago. That’s why we’re...er...celebrating.’

      ‘Are you coming, Jakey?’ A clearly tipsy blonde came tottering out into the hall carrying a bottle of champagne in one hand and a glass in the other.

      Jaz took Emma by the arm and led her away to the kitchen, jerking her head towards Jake in a non-verbal signal to get control of his guest. ‘That’s one of the bridesmaids,’ she said. ‘Can’t handle her drink. I’m seriously thinking of dumping her for someone else. I don’t want her to spoil the wedding photos. Can you imagine?’

      Emma chewed at her bottom lip. ‘I guess it kind of makes sense...’

      ‘What does?’

      ‘You and Jake.’

      Jaz pulled out a kitchen stool and patted it. ‘Here,’ she said. ‘Have a seat while I make you a hot chocolate—or would you prefer tea or coffee?’

      ‘Um...hot chocolate would be lovely.’

      Jaz got the feeling Emma had been about to ask for coffee in order to appear more sophisticated. It reminded her of all the times when she’d drunk vile-tasting cocktails in order to fit in. She made the frothiest hot chocolate she could and handed it to the young girl. ‘Here you go.’

      Emma cupped her hands around the mug like a child. ‘Are you sure you’re not angry at me turning up like this? I had no idea Jake was serious about anyone. There’s been nothing

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