Mission: Make-Over

‘But you don’t know, do you?’ Jake slipped in under her defences dulcetly. ‘Because you don’t have very much idea of what a real man actually is, do you, Lucianna?’

‘Stop teasing her, both of you,’ Janey intervened, adding gently to Lucianna before she could say anything, ‘Jake does have a point, though, Luce. And after all with John away for three months it gives you an ideal opportunity to—well, show him when he gets back just exactly what he’s been missing,’ she concluded lamely, avoiding looking directly at either Lucianna or the two men as she did so.

Lucianna moistened her lips before opening them to tell them in no uncertain terms that they must be mad if they thought she would ever entertain such a crazy idea, but no one seemed prepared to listen to her or even to let her speak because Jake was already saying, as though at some point she had actually given her verbal agreement to his taunting challenge, ‘There’ll have to be a few ground rules, of course.’

‘Ground rules…’ Lucianna glowered at him. ‘If by that you mean I’m going to have to take orders from you and…’ Then, inexplicably, she had a sudden and very hurtful mental image of that woman she had seen John studying as he’d walked away from her. Was it possible? Could Jake really show her, teach her…? She swallowed painfully, and to her own disbelief heard herself saying huskily, ‘Very well…I agree…’

‘My God, you must really want him…Why?’

Underneath the sardonic amusement in Jake’s voice ran a fine thread of something else, but Lucianna was too upset to hear it.

‘What do you think?’ she demanded sharply. ‘I love him…’

‘I seem to recall you once felt exactly the same about that wreck of a car you insisted on buying—what happened to it by the way?’

‘It’s still rusting away in the old barn,’ David informed him with a grin.

Lucianna gave them both a furious look.

‘Right, I want you at the Hall first thing in the morning,’ Jake told her. ‘Three months may sound a long time but given what we’ve got to get through…And the first thing you can do—’

‘At the Hall? No way. I’m far too busy,’ Lucianna told him defiantly.

‘Really? That’s not what these figures say,’ Jake countered, leaning over to study the accounts she had been working on before he’d walked in. ‘You’re not even breaking even,’ he told her.

Lucianna flushed defensively. There was no need for him to point out to her the shortcomings in the financial area of her business; she could see them easily enough for herself, and so too, she imagined, would the bank manager when she next went to see him.

‘Of course you’re not too busy,’ David told her. ‘She’ll be there, Jake,’ he assured his friend. ‘Don’t you worry.’

Tiredly Lucianna parked her car outside the farmhouse and climbed out. The house itself was in darkness—a sign that David and Janey were already in bed. Their bedroom was at the front of the house, which meant that, hopefully, they wouldn’t be disturbed by the security lights springing on at her arrival. She had designed and installed the security system herself, much to David’s amusement, and, although the days were gone when she might have expected to find either her father or one of her brothers waiting up to question her late arrival home, farmers and farmers’ wives needed their sleep.

She had spent the afternoon with her father. Following his retirement he had moved to a village twenty-odd miles away where he now lived with his widowed elder sister, and Lucianna had promised several days earlier that she would service their ancient Hillman for them. Her mind hadn’t really been on the Hillman, though; it had been on Jake Carlisle and his extraordinary challenge, his declaration that he could teach her how to be a woman, the kind of woman men like him—and, according to him, all men—really wanted.

Jake, as Lucianna already knew, could be a formidable adversary. It had been Jake, after all, who had persuaded her father to retire when David had given up on ever being allowed to take over and modernise the farm, and Jake who had added the weight of his confidence to her youngest brother Adam’s pleas to be allowed to spend time back-packing around the world instead of settling down in a job as her father had wished. Adam was presently working in Australia at a holiday resort on the Barrier Reef.

Dick, the brother between Lewis and Adam in age, was working abroad in China, supervising the building of a new dam, and Lewis was in New York.

What would they make of Jake’s plan to turn her into a proper woman, the kind of woman John simply couldn’t resist? Did she really need to ask herself? First they would roar with laughter and then they would no doubt point out that the task he had taken on was too formidable, too impossible even for his fabled talents.

She wasn’t the complete fool her family seemed to think she was, Lucianna assured herself irritably. She knew perfectly well that other young women of her age appeared to have an almost magical ability when it came to attracting the opposite sex that she simply didn’t possess, but she refused to believe it was simply a matter of wearing different clothes and adopting the kind of simpering, idiotic manner she suspected that Jake was going to advise her to attempt.

There had been other boys, young men she had dated before she met John, brief friendships which had petered out amicably on both sides, but with John it was different; with John she’d found herself thinking for the first time about a shared future, marriage…children…But, although John always seemed to enjoy her company, so far their relationship had not progressed beyond the odd relatively chaste kiss or affectionate hug.

She had tried to tell herself that John was a gentleman and that he simply didn’t want to rush her and she had staunchly held onto that belief until last weekend.

>

Quietly she let herself into the house and made her way upstairs, pausing on the landing as she heard voices from her brother and sister-in-law’s room and then tensing when she realised that she was the subject of their conversation.

She hadn’t intended to eavesdrop, she told herself as she recognised that they were discussing the conversation which had taken place in the farmhouse kitchen earlier in the day, but for some reason it was impossible for her to walk away.

‘Do you really think Jake’s going to be able to teach Lucianna to be more feminine?’ she heard Janey asking her husband.

‘Not a hope in hell,’ she heard David responding cheerfully whilst she held her breath. ‘Luce is my sister but, much as I love her, I have to admit that when it comes to sex appeal the poor kid just doesn’t have what it takes…’

‘Oh, David, that’s a bit unkind and unfair,’ Janey protested. ‘She’s got a lovely figure, even if she does hide it behind those dreadful dungarees, and if she paid a little more attention to herself she could be quite stunning. It’s not her fault, you know, if all of you treated her like another brother when she was growing up—’

‘It doesn’t matter what she does,’ David interrupted her disparagingly, ‘Luce just isn’t a man’s woman, and not even Jake, despite his experience with the female sex, is going to be able to change that. We might as well face up to the fact that we’ve got her here on our hands for life…’