Mission: Make-Over

‘So you expect John to enjoy the sight and act of watching you strip down to the utilitarian and functional underwear you no doubt favour, do you? Tell me something, Lucianna,’ Jake challenged her. ‘Do you permit him to be equally uncompromising with you? Do you enjoy the sight of him wearing a pair of well-washed baggy boxer shorts, or perhaps the gimmicky jockstrap his pals gave him as a joke for his birthday?’

Lucianna’s face had gone scarlet, as much with embarrassment as with anger.

‘John and I don’t have that kind of relationship, and I don’t…’

When she stopped Jake demanded with dangerous softness, ‘Yes, do go on; you don’t what?’

Stubbornly Lucianna pursed her lips and looked away, refusing to speak. She wasn’t going to tell Jake that she had no idea what kind of underwear John favoured any more than she was going to admit that the mental images he had just drawn for her, especially the one of John, had somehow or other rung unpalatably true. His pals were the type who would give him jokey and embarrassing underwear as a present.

Jake, on the other hand, would not doubt—Her thoughts careened to an unsteady halt as she abruptly realised that the mental image she had conjured up of Jake’s body, superimposed over the image of an unknown model posing in a pair of immaculate pristine white and very close-fitting undershorts that she had glimpsed in an advertisement in one of her sister-in-law’s magazines, was one she most certainly should not be entertaining. One she most certainly should not be entertaining at all, and she had no idea exactly why she was—or, even more importantly, how she was.

After all, the last time she had seen Jake without…wearing very little, she amended to herself hastily, had been the last time they had all gone swimming together before Jake had gone to university. And that had been years ago. She had been a child and Jake had been a young man…a boy…whereas the body she had been mentally visualising had most definitely been that of a man…very definitely that of a man.

‘Lucianna!’

Self-consciously Lucianna avoided Jake’s eyes as she heard the questioning note in his voice.

‘Right,’ Jake announced, lifting his wrist to glance at his watch. ‘That’s enough shopping for today. It’s time we were making our way back, I think. I’ve got some work to do and whilst I’m doing it you can make a start with your homework,’ he informed her dryly, nodding in the direction of the books she was carrying.

‘I can do that by myself at home,’ Lucianna told him spiritedly, not in the least relishing the idea of having to sit reading dutifully beneath Jake’s eagle eye like a schoolgirl. ‘John might ring,’ she added.

‘So much the better,’ Jake retorted firmly. ‘It will do him good to wonder where you are. No more excuses, Lucianna,’ he advised her. ‘Don’t forget you wanted to do this…’

Reluctantly Lucianna had to concede that he had a point. There had been moments during the morning, far too many of them in fact, when she had been in danger of forgetting just why she was putting herself through such a painful process.

As they turned into the car park they were greeted by the shrill sound of a car alarm ringing. To Lucianna’s surprise, Jake halted abruptly and cursed under his breath, muttering feelingly, ‘If that’s what I think it is, that damn garage…’

Lucianna’s eyes widened as she stared across the car park and saw that it was indeed Jake’s car alarm that was ringing, the car’s indicator lights flashing on and off as though someone had tried to break into the vehicle, and she couldn’t resist saying dulcetly, ‘Oh, dear, Jake, it looks like something has gone wrong with your car’s electronics.’

The look Jake gave her told her that he wasn’t in the least deceived by her mock-innocent concern.

‘I don’t have a problem,’ he told her forcefully, ‘but the garage is certainly going to have one. They assured me that they’d found the fault and solved the problem.’

‘The electronics systems in these expensive status cars are very complicated and sensitive,’ Lucianna told him sweetly, with triumph in her voice.

Only six months earlier, when Jake had first taken delivery of his new car, she had begged to be allowed to familiarise herself with its mechanical and electronics systems, but Jake had sternly refused, telling her in what she had considered at the time to be an extremely bossy manner that the car wasn’t a toy and that furthermore it would negate its warranty if he allowed anyone who wasn’t an approved mechanic to tamper with its inner workings.

‘I don’t want to tamper with them,’ she had told him through gritted teeth. ‘I simply want to look at them…’

‘I know your looking,’ Jake had reminded her grittily. ‘I haven’t forgotten what happened when you looked at the engine of my TR7.’

Lucianna had grimaced. The TR7 had been Jake’s pride and joy, a racy little sports car he had worked hard to buy, and just as soon as his back was turned she had ignored his veto on her touching it. He had returned earlier than expected one afternoon when he had been supposed to be away all day to discover her sitting on the floor of his garage, surrounded by the parts she had painstakingly removed from his car.

It hadn’t been her fault that he had flustered her so much with his ire that she had muddled up two very similar pieces when she had rushed to reassemble everything. Just as soon as she had realised what she had done and why it wouldn’t start, why the heating system was throwing out freezing-cold air instead of hot, she had quickly put matters right—but not, as it turned out, quickly enough to repair the damage the shock of icy cold air blasting over Jake’s girlfriend’s body had done to Jake’s budding romance with her.

It wasn’t her fault that his girlfriend had chosen to wear such a stupidly short skirt, Lucianna had defended herself, her already hot face growing even hotter when her amused elder brother had hooted with laughter and told Jake teasingly that it was probably the first time his passionate advances had been frozen off by a faulty car heater.

‘The first time and the last,’ Jake had replied grimly, then had advised Lucianna tersely, ‘Don’t you ever, ever tamper with my car again, otherwise you’ll be the one in need of a blast of cold air—on your backside, which will be smarting very hotly indeed…’

Lucianna had just been at an age when any reference to almost any part of her anatomy had had the power to raise a deeply mortifying crimson flood of colour through her body—and on that occasion, if she remembered aright, her self-consciousness had outdone itself.

Now she watched in secret glee as Jake tried to silence the car’s shrilling alarm, first by using the automatic door key and then, once he had got the car unlocked, by deactivating the alarm itself.

‘I thought these things were supposed to stop automatically after twenty minutes,’ Jake gritted through grated teeth as all his attempts to stop the alarm met with no response.

‘That’s house alarms,’ Lucianna informed him sunnily, her glee growing as she saw the faint tinge of colour beginning to burn his skin. For the first time in the whole of the time she had known him, Jake was actually beginning to exhibit the tell-tale signs of becoming harassed. His hair was rumpled where he had pushed his hand through it and she could see from his expression that he wasn’t enjoying the attention and pity they were attracting from other motorists.

‘It could be worse,’ she comforted him with pseudo concern. ‘I believe the latest model of this car has an optional new alarm system that actually cries, “Help, I’m being stolen”…’