The Friendship Barrier Read online

  ‘Jake, please, I can’t sit here and watch this…’ she pleaded in anguish. ‘Please…’

  ‘Stephanie, it’s been close on two years,’ he said quietly, ‘and it’s not getting any better If anything, it’s getting worse.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘No? Then tell me how many men you’ve dated in the last two years, and how many of them have you allowed to kiss or touch you? I can tell you how many,’ he said quietly when she sat frozen, unable to respond, ‘None. Don’t you think I know, Steph? I’ve only got to watch the way you recoil from me if I so much as brush against you accidentally. I practically have to chart a course across my office so that I keep out of your prescribed boundaries. Look, I know what happened to you…’

  ‘Nothing happened to me,’ she bit out the words sharply. On her lap her hands were folded into small fists, her nails biting into her palms. That Jake of all people should turn on her like this, and so unexpectedly. She couldn’t believe it. She couldn’t endure the pain ripping through her, pain like none she had ever known.

  ‘You were almost raped,’ Jake reminded her, ‘violated in the most brutal and unforgivable way by a gang of youths who had deliberately lain in wait for you, and attacked you and you would have been raped if I hadn’t happened to hear you scream.’ He broke off when she covered her ears, her voice strained and almost unrecognisable as her tortured throat managed to admit a husky, ‘No… no, you promised we would never have to talk about it… Jake…’

  ‘Hey you two, aren’t you interested in the film?’ James Tavener’s voice interrupted them, and Stephanie sank back into her seat, refusing to turn her face in Jake’s direction, her whole body trembling with reaction. Even now, she couldn’t believe what had happened. That Jake… She tried to keep her attention on the screen, but in her emotional state that was even worse. With morbid fascination, she watched Laura Howard enact what was almost a replay of what had happened to her, only her attackers had been a group of youths who caught the same bus home as her at night. Most evenings, they made comments as they waited for the bus, called out remarks, and generally tormented Stephanie with their presence, which was always faintly sexually threatening. And then, one night, she had worked late, and when she had emerged into the alleyway at the back of the office, they had been waiting for her. It had been December, and bitterly cold. She had been wearing boots and a thick coat which, she thought later, had helped to save her. How they had found out where she worked, she had never discovered, although Jake suspected that they must have followed her.

  She had barely had time to do anything more than scream once before they attacked her. Even now, she had nightmares about those moments before Jake had arrived, alerted by her single scream. If he hadn’t been on the way downstairs… if she hadn’t screamed right at that moment… Their hands had seemed to be everywhere, tearing at her clothes, their obscene words and laughter almost as bad as their physical violation.

  Jake’s unexpected appearance had given him an advantage over them, and he had soon dispersed them, but not before Stephanie had been almost stunned by a vicious slap across her face, her blouse and bra ripped in huge rents which revealed her breasts, long vicious weals along her arm where she had fought to prevent them pulling off her coat. But the worst of it had been her own memories vividly replayed over and over again as Jake bundled her into his car and drove her to his apartment. She had been almost incoherent with shock and fright, retreating like a terrified animal when he tried to come near her. In the end she had fainted through sheer terror, unable to recognise friend from foe, only knowing that the hands that touched her were male and that the scent reaching her nostrils was masculine and therefore to be feared.

  When she came round, she was in Jake’s bathroom. She had never been in his apartment before and was in no condition to appreciate the masculine decor of marble and gold, and she had shuddered convulsively away from the touch of Jake’s fingers, only to discover that he had removed her torn clothes and she was wearing only her bra and panties.

  ‘Stephanie, you’re quite safe. I just want to clean those cuts. Then I’m going to give you a glass of brandy, and put you to bed in my spare bedroom. If you like, I’ll call a doctor for you… and tomorrow we can call the police.’

  ‘No… No police,’ she had made the plea in abject terror. There had been so much adverse publicity about the police’s handling of rape cases that she felt she couldn’t endure the humiliation she had read of other women’s suffering.

  ‘Stephanie…’

  ‘No… please…’

  In the end, he had given way, and she had remained in his flat not for one night but for three, terrified by every single alien sound, her nervous system totally destroyed. Jake stayed with her, and on the third day he had made her talk; had made her re-live the trauma of her attack. She had cried and protested, hating him for what he was doing to her, and he had held her in his arms, soothing her, stroking her like a child… Stephanie frowned. This was the first time she had allowed herself to think back to the time of her attack, and she had forgotten that Jake had held her and touched her, and that she had welcomed his touch. Because 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 want
ed 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.

  CHAPTER TWO

  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. How could a woman like her understand the very special relationship she had with Jake? She had been almost contemptuous of the other woman, she realised now… just as she had tended to be slightly contemptuous of all Jake’s womanfriends; glamorous, greedy predators, without a single thought in their heads that did not concern the appeasement of their appetites, but what she had never done before was question why Jake always chose women of that type. From the little he had told her about his dead fiancée, Stephanie had gained the impression that she had been both attractive and intelligent, but, like her, Jake had been hurt too much to commit himself to any permanent relationship since. He had lost the woman he loved; she had lost her trust in his sex and her ability to respond to it sexually, and she had thought that their friendship had been built on rock so steady that nothing could ever shake its foundations. Had she been wrong? In the darkness of the car, she darted a glance at his impassive profile, noticing, with something approaching shock, the deeply bitter lines grooving alongside his mouth. How long had those been there? And that cold withdrawal she sensed increasingly tonight, when had that been born? Icy fingers of alarm touched her spine. Had Jake perhaps at last found someone who could be both lover and friend…? Was that why…? What if he had, she asked herself, appalled by the intensity of feeling her own thoughts stirred up. Surely she wasn’t so criminally possessive and insecure that she didn’t want Jake to find happiness with another woman? She was his friend, for Heaven’s sake, and, as his friend… as his friend… She dragged her thoughts away from the tortuous paths they were treading as she realised that they were not heading for her flat but for Jake’s apartment.

  ‘Not more work tonight, surely?’ she mock groaned. It wasn’t unknown for Jake to ask her to work late, or even to telephone her at home during the weekend to ask her to come over to help him out with something he was working on. These impromptu work sessions normally ended with a comfortable meal à deux in his apartment and a quiet evening spent together listening to his record collection. She treasured them as tranquilly enjoyable oases of peace and pleasure in the anguished pain that she sometimes felt her life had become.

  Jake didn’t answer, and Stephanie felt her earlier anxiety return as he turned his car into the underground car park to his block of flats. A highly efficient lift, activated by Jake’s personal key, bore them upwards to his apartment.

  Whenever she visited it, Stephanie was always reminded of her first visit, of coming round to find herself in Jake’s bathroom, his hands clinically sexless as they removed her clothes and dealt with her lacerated arms.

  A pleasant foyer gave way to the generously proportioned living room with its comfortably upholstered furniture and rich Persian rugs. Stephanie loved the ambience of Jake’s
apartment. Despite the fact that he lived here alone, apart from the visits of his daily cleaner, it had a ‘lived in’ quality of which she was always acutely conscious.

  ‘Drink?’

  When she shook her head, she saw Jake walk across to the cocktail cabinet set into the bank of rosewood cabinets, and she was surprised to see him pour a large measure of spirits for himself. He rarely drank, and tonight there had been wine with their supper, plus champagne, as well as liqueurs after the meal.

  ‘There’s no need to look at me like that,’ he told her curtly, ‘I’m not about to rape you.’

  As always, she flinched away from the word, immeasurably hurt and shocked that he should use it when he knew how much it distressed her.

  ‘Why wouldn’t you dance with me?’ he demanded abruptly, walking towards her, almost spilling his drink as he put his glass down forcefully on a gleaming table. ‘Why, Stephanie’ Just what is it you think my touch will do to you, contaminate you?’

  Contaminate her? Inwardly, she shivered. If anyone was doing any contaminating it would surely be her… she was the one whose body had been violated; she was the one who would never be able to cleanse her mind of the scars it bore.

  ‘Two damned years, and you’re as terrified of being touched now as you were that night when I brought you back here.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ somehow she managed to force out the hurt denial, turning away so that he wouldn’t see the betraying shimmer of tears in her eyes.