A sudden mental image of Jethro’s hard, very male naked body beneath her own equally naked, much softer one sent a violent rush of blood to her face, staining her ivory cheeks a vivid scarlet. But at least she now had her mother on the defensive instead of the attack, because no one could accuse Laura Brannan of snobbishness and hope to get away with it.
‘Of course not! I never despise an honest day’s work, whatever it is—I would have thought you knew me better than
that! And you can tell just by looking at him that he’s more determined than most. He’ll probably end up with his own window-cleaning empire.’
‘And he’s very sexy with it!’ Allie put in, and wondered where those words had come from. And why. But her subconscious mind must have told her they were necessary, because for the first time since she’d dropped her bombshell Laura’s eyes were twinking.
‘So you noticed?’ she commented drily. ‘The way you always looked through him, I assumed you hadn’t. I knew he was smitten, the way he called round on any pretext—or no pretext at all—the way he couldn’t take his eyes off you. But you always froze him off. The last time I saw him I took pity on him and told him he was wasting his time because you weren’t interested in men.’
So that was why he’d wondered if she was gay! Not, as she’d thought, because of his monumental male conceit. A lilt of pleasure she didn’t bother to question stole into her heart, and she let it stay there because it made her feel good. He hadn’t been speaking out of the kind of crass male vanity that made a man call a woman gay just because she didn’t want to go to bed with him. She had maligned his character when she’d thought it.
‘So?’ Laura prodded. ‘What made you change your mind so suddenly?’
‘I thawed! We met up this morning and we went for coffee, and—’ Oh, Lordy, Laura was never going to buy it. Falling in love, supposedly, and deciding to marry after knowing the man for only a week and giving him the cold shoulder for all of that time. Then, on a sudden burst of inspiration, she continued, ‘I don’t know if you’re going to believe this, but it was like a bolt of lightning. I just knew he was the only man in the world who could matter to me.’
It wasn’t an out-and-out falsehood, not really. He had become the man most important to her by virtue of her not knowing another who would be willing to let her buy a year of his life! But she seemed, as she had hoped, to have punched the right button. Her mother, the perennial romantic, hugged her, all smiles now.
‘Why wouldn’t I believe you? It happened just like that for your father and me!’
‘Did you find the glasses?’ Allie asked her mother several hours later. ‘Jethro should be here any time now.’
‘They’re in the kitchen and the champagne’s in the fridge. Should I pop out to the corner shop and get some nuts for nibbles?’
Excitement made Laura look like a young girl again. Her daughter had fallen head over heels in love at last and was marrying a man she herself thoroughly liked. And as a bonus she would be able to live at Studley, again, put all those dreams of a nursery garden into practice.
‘No,’ Allie said firmly. ‘No nibbles. Just a glass of champagne, then Jethro and I will be off—we do need to spend the evening on our own.’ She pressed her fingertips to her aching forehead as Fran, sitting on the chair near the window and apparently absorbed in the evening newspaper, snorted derisively.
She had to get Jethro out of here and become herself again. Cool, in control, distant. She didn’t need to play-act for him, thank heaven.
She was pleased, of course she was, with the way she’d handled this very tricky situation. Laura now believed that she and Jethro, whom she had liked on sight, ever since he’d picked her up off the pavement, were besottedly in love, and was happy. And this afternoon they’d gone to the shops, because that was what Allie had believed was expected of her, and chosen something to wear for the ceremony, because Allie had said she had nothing suitable with her and Laura had commented that she had nothing suitable full stop.
Watching her mother come really alive as they had tried on hats, Allie had known that she’d got everything right. It had been hard to pretend an interest, discuss the comparative merits of a classic little suit in deep blue silk and a simple shift dress in bronze-coloured linen topped by matching straight-line jacket when she’d known all the time that the blue silk would do, that anything, provided it wasn’t a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, would do.
But the hardest part was still to come: acting the part of a woman who was besottedly in love in front of the scornful Fran and the doting Laura. Already the palms of her hands felt damp with perspiration and her heart was racing.
Fran put her newspaper aside and made a big production of looking at her watch.
‘He’s late.’
‘Only by ten minutes,’ Laura responded tartly. She still hadn’t forgiven her sister for her reaction to the news.
‘God save us, Allie,’ she had snorted. ‘Have you gone mad? You hardly know the man. He’s probably heard of your earning power. He’ll stick around for a couple of years, grab all the goodies he can, and then dump you. He’s got a fantastic body, I’ll give you that, and if you want to go to bed with him, go ahead. You don’t have to marry him, for pity’s sake!’
Ten more minutes ticked by with excruciating slowness, and Allie knew that if Fran didn’t stop looking at her watch every few seconds, if her mother plumped the cushions or tweaked the curtains one more time, she would scream!
Suddenly her mood changed from taut annoyance to dragging, draining defeat. He wasn’t going to come. He’d chickened out. All her plans were going pear-shaped.
So when he did walk in off the street, looking too handsome for his own good, her relief was so great she didn’t have to tell herself to give him a smile of welcome, it just came.
He looked so good. The fresh white T-shirt he was wearing emphasised the taut lines of his upper body and deepened the tanned, olive tones of his skin, and his legs looked even longer and leaner in semi-respectable black denim jeans that fitted his narrow hips and excessively masculine backside like a second skin.
If he was aware of Fran’s frosty expression he didn’t show it. He accepted Laura’s hug and bubbly congratulations with the laid-back grace and charm he seemed able to produce at will, and then advanced on Allie, whose heart was beating so fiercely she was sure everyone in the room would be able to hear it.
‘Miss me, sweetheart?’ The smooth, dark-honey tones oozed confidence, a supreme self-assuredness that made an apology for his lateness unthinkable. A lean, long-fingered hand was clamped against her narrow waist as he tugged her into the heat of his body and her heart began a fluttery dance of panic.
There was no escaping the intimacy he was forcing on her. Not while they were in the same room as her mother and her aunt. She would just have to grin and bear it and remind herself that he, too, was acting a part, that the wicked gleam in his eyes was nothing to do with the way their bodies were glued together and everything to do with the fat cheque he was well on his way to earning.
After they’d taken a sip of the champagne Laura had decided was obligatory they’d be out of here at the speed of light—she’d make sure of that—and in the meantime she’d simply imagine she was being hugged by the big brother she’d never had.