Levelling the Score Read online

  For some reason, the look he was giving her made Jenna blush a vivid pink.

  'He doesn't mean anything to me, Craig,' she said crossly. 'He's just the brother of an old friend… '

  'Hence the small by-play in the restaurant? Come on, Jen, I know you better than that…'

  'All right, so I once had a king-size crush on him, but that was years ago… '

  Why on earth was she telling Craig all this? Angrily she dismissed Simon from her thoughts.

  'I recognised the woman with him, of course,' Craig continued.

  He mentioned the name of the woman Susie said that her brother was involved with, and Jenna shrugged her shoulders and said dismissively, 'I really don't know anything about his private life, Craig. As I said, he's just the brother of an old friend.'

  They parted outside the door to Jenna's flat. The events of the previous evening had caught up with her and she was achingly tired.

  By twelve o'clock she was in bed and deeply asleep.

  The telephone woke her, its shrill, insistent ring penetrating through the mists of sleep. She reached for the receiver and mumbled into it.

  'Jenna, my dear! At last… I can't tell you how excited and delighted we all are.'

  The bubbling voice of Susie's mother on the other end of the telephone line made Jenna sit up.

  'Of course, it was very wicked of you and Simon to keep it to yourselves. Mrs M was quite put out when she rang me up about it. I rather think she disapproved of the two of you spending the weekend alone together at the cottage. I hope you don't mind, but I've already spoken to your grandmother. I just couldn't wait… It's what I've always longed for, to have you as a second daughter… I can admit now how much I was dreading Simon bringing home entirely the wrong sort of person. Of course, the gossip columns do tend to exaggerate these things, but I really had no idea that you and he… But that doesn't matter now. I just want you to know how thrilled we are about it. I told Simon as much when I rang him earlier. When will the wedding be? Of course, you'll be having it here at home… Oh, heavens! I am running on, aren't I? But I just can't tell you how pleased we are, Jenna… '

  Appalled, Jenna stared blankly at the receiver. What on earth was going on? Slowly her numb brain accepted the fact that Simon's mother appeared to think that she and Simon were engaged.

  Why on earth hadn't Simon told her the truth? How could he let his mother go on thinking that there was something between them?

  She opened her own mouth to tell her and then closed it firmly again. Why should she do his dirty work? He could do it himself. After all, he was the one who had got them into this mess in the first place… telling Mrs M all those lies. He might have known that the first thing she would do would be to ring his parents.

  These and other thoughts rioted through her brain in a confused mingling of shock and anger.

  She must have said something to Ellen Townsend, but, for the life of her, when she eventually replaced the receiver she had no idea what it was.

  She wasn't exactly at her best first thing on a Monday morning in any case. Her alarm hadn't even gone off yet… her alarm! Too late,' she remembered that she had forgotten to set it the night before. A glance at her watch confirmed her fear that she was about to be late for work.

  She got up and raced round, showering, dressing, putting on her make-up, wondering what on earth had happened to her normal, well organised and calm, ordered life.

  It was Simon's fault. Until he had appeared in it, her life had run on smooth, well-functioning lines, and now suddenly it was racketing out of control and heading for what promised to be a spectacular crash.

  She was late for work, arriving flustered and breathless to find her boss pacing her office, his forehead carved into a heavy frown.

  Luckily it didn't take her long to appease him, but they had a heavy workload on, and she had to forgo her lunch hour to get her desk clear.

  By mid-afternoon she had managed to persuade herself that she must have imagined this morning's telephone call from Susie's mother, but as the day wore on, her persuasion became less convincing.

  What on earth was she going to do? And it wasn't just Susie's parents who would have to be told the truth, there was her grandmother as well. Her heart gave an unpleasant lurch as she digested this thought.

  Her grandmother had always had a soft spot for Simon—more than merely a soft spot if the truth were known—and now she would be thinking that she was shortly to get him as her grandson-in-law. Jenna stared at the telephone on her desk, itching to pick it up and put a call through to her, but her grandmother didn't hear very well these days, and besides, wasn't it something that it would be easier to explain in person?

  Coward, she scorned herself. You know you just don't want to tell her, to disappoint her…

  But she would have to be told some time. This weekend, Jenna promised herself, she would go down and see her this weekend, and explain everything… Her mind made up, she felt a little less guilty, although she was still furious with Simon.

  By the time she got home she was hot and tired, longing only for a cool shower and an early night. Craig had gone up to the Lakes for several days on a shoot, and so she had the house to herself.

  She had her shower first, briskly towelling herself dry, and leaving her hair loose and damp.

  A huge rugby shirt she had filched from Craig was her favourite relaxing at home wear, but it was too hot for the jeans she normally wore with it.

  The flat was stuffy after being closed up all day, and she had opened all the windows and propped open the back door to get as much through draught as possible. Summer in the city was impossible, especially when the weather was like this—hot and sticky. She thought yearningly of home, and even more yearningly of Cornwall. She was due to take a month's holiday shortly, but she had no idea what she was going to do with it. She had half hoped to persuade Susie to go away with her, but she had had tentative thoughts of spending a week at home with Gran… She shrugged as she went into the kitchen to prepare her supper.

  She would eat it outside tonight. She was having tuna fish salad. She had just finished pouring out a mug of coffee and was about to pick up her tray when a shadow fell across the open kitchen door.

  'Eating alone? Where's lover-boy tonight?'

  'Simon!'

  She almost dropped the tray. She had been so engrossed in her thoughts that she hadn't heard him walk through the small backyard.

  'What are you doing here?' she demanded crossly. 'Why didn't you ring the front doorbell? And for your information Craig is not my lover—we're just friends, that's all.'

  Heaven alone knew what had made her add that last comment—possibly the cynicism carved deep into the lines round his mouth when he drawled it, she didn't know.

  His eyebrows rose slightly.

  'That's just as well, since you and I are now virtually engaged.'

  Something in his voice made her stiffen and look at him.

  'That's hardly my fault,' she reminded him bitterly. 'You were the one who spun Mrs M that ridiculous fairytale. You should have known that she'd ring your mother!'

  'Ah, so she has spoken to you?'

  'To me, to my grandmother, to half the village by now, I expect,' Jenna said bitterly. 'It obviously hasn't occurred to you, Simon, that I might not relish the idea of being married off to you, without… '

  He interrupted her calmly, 'Since it's unlikely to happen, may I suggest that you're rather overreacting.'

  Jenna exploded.

  'I'm over-reacting? You spoke to your mother! Why didn't you tell her that it was a mistake?'

  'Why didn't you?'

  Jenna stared at him, perplexed.

  'Look, I'll be honest with you. At the moment it would suit me very nicely to have a fictitious fiancée, and that's one of the reasons why I didn't tell Ma the truth straight away.' He looked directly at her, a rather odd gleam in his eyes, as he added softly, 'The other one was that she was so damned thrilled with the idea that
I simply didn't have the heart.'

  There was something about the way he was looking at her that was having a distinctly odd effect on her heartbeat. Try as she might, she couldn't seem to disentangle herself from the dangerously exciting sensation racing through her veins. She couldn't even manage to look away from him, she realised on a breathless start of surprise.

  'That's a very fetching outfit you're wearing, by the way,' Simon commented softly. 'Just the sort of thing to make a fiancé very eager to become a bridegroom.'

  It was impossible to stop the wild sweep of colour running up over her skin as she looked down and realised what he meant.

  The oversized shirt stopped midway down her thighs, revealing the long, slim length of her legs. All she was wearing underneath it was a brief pair of panties, and somehow, although that fact wasn't immediately obvious, she suspected that Simon knew. She lifted a hand defensively to the tumbled heaviness of her hair, and then checked herself, sanity returning.

  She was behaving like an adolescent idiot. Simon wanted something from her and he was trying to bemuse her into a state where she would willingly go along with whatever it was he was planning. Well, it wasn't going to work!

  'We're in the nineteen-eighties, Simon,' she told him grittily. 'Celibacy is out—remember? Engaged couples are as free to make love as married ones. And I don't care what would suit you—I want this whole thing sorted out and our families told the truth.'

  She waited for him to try and persuade her to change her mind, tensing as she felt him move behind her. She could feel the heat coming off his body and waited in dreadful anticipation of his touch against her skin.

  She felt his breath against her shoulder, even through the thickness of her shirt, one of his hands lightly cupping the ball of her shoulder joint as he leaned forward. He was going to kiss her, to try and persuade her…

  'Mm… raw carrot… lovely!'

  He reached past her, helping himself to some of the carrot sticks off her plate. Jenna couldn't believe it. Her body sagged with relieved outrage.

  'Well, if you won't help me then you won't,' he said good-temperedly. 'I'll leave it to you to tell the folks and your grandmother, shall I? After all, you know me—I might get it all wrong!'

  He was blackmailing her, that was what he was doing, and he knew it, damn him! He was standing there in her kitchen, filching her supper, looking at her with that bland, amused expression in his eyes, registering every furious, defensive movement of her body… knowing that he had her trapped.

  Call it weakness, call it stupidity, call it what you liked, she knew there was no way she could destroy the pleasure she had heard in his mother's voice by telling her that she had got it all wrong and that they weren't about to get engaged. No way at all!

  She could feel herself weakening.

  'We'll have to tell them some time.'

  'Of course! But we'll let them down lightly, shall we? I'll tell you what, how about letting them see us together at close quarters, so that they can realise for themselves how unsuited we are?'

  It sounded like a good idea, but it rolled off his tongue too patly, and she was immediately suspicious.

  'What do you mean? How can we do that, when we're both here in London and our families live sixty miles away?'

  'Quite easily. My parents have rented a house in the Dordogne for the summer. I promised them that I'd join them for a couple of weeks or so. I know from Susie that you've got some holidays due…'

  'You mean, you want us to spend a holiday in France with your parents?'

  'My parents and your grandmother. I'm sure two weeks or so of observing us at close quarters will convince all three of them exactly how unsuited we are.'

  'What about your latest lady?' Jenna asked suspiciously. 'What's she going to say about you spending a fortnight or more posing as someone else's fiancé, or won't you tell her?'

  'Oh, I shall tell her,' Simon said silkily, and Jenna knew instantly from his expression that there was more to this whole charade than a simple desire to please his parents.

  'You want her to think you're involved with someone else, don't you?'

  He smiled sardonically at her.

  'Full marks—go to the top of the class.'

  'I've thought a lot of things about you, Simon, but I never thought you lacked the honesty to tell a woman that you no longer wanted her,' she told him acidly.

  What was the matter with her? She should be delighted by this evidence of his duplicity and lack of character, but instead she felt a small stab of very real pain.

  'I have told her,' he contradicted flatly. 'But with some women actions speak louder than words.'

  A look crossed his face that Jenna couldn't wholly interpret, and she suffered a sensation almost as though the earth beneath her feet shifted a little. There had been such a bleak emptiness in Simon's eyes for a moment, such an aura of pain about the tightness of his mouth that she almost reached out to comfort him. That look had not been the look of a man bored with a woman he no longer wanted, but that of a man who had suffered and still suffered the anguish of loving a woman who did not love him in return.

  The thought of that happening to Simon of all men was so startling that she forgot to question him further, simply turning away from him so that he wouldn't see the compassion in her eyes.

  'All right, I'll go along with you…but we'll have to tell them before the holiday's over, Simon.'

  'Don't worry. I'm sure by that time they'll be under no illusions as to how we feel about one another. That salad doesn't look very inviting. How about letting me take you out for a meal so that we can celebrate?'

  'Celebrate what?'

  'Why, our engagement, of course! What else?'

  It took her several seconds to recover from the faint tingle of delight she felt inside.

  Ruthlessly suppressing it, she said severely, 'Certainly not! I'm tired, and I want an early night.'

  She wondered if he would make some joking remark about their supposed engaged state and perhaps kiss her, but he didn't and she wasn't prepared to admit after he had gone that the feeling she was experiencing was one of disappointment.

  CHAPTER FOUR

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  Jenna knew that something had changed the moment she woke up, but she couldn't remember what it was. She struggled for several seconds to recall the cause of the odd feeling of anger and exhilaration that coursed through her veins, and then when she did she sat bolt upright in bed. She was engaged to Simon!

  Disgusted with herself, she flopped back against the pillows, pushing her hair back with an impatiently graceful gesture. Why on earth should that make her feel exhilarated? She disliked Simon and she always had!

  But she also enjoyed their little spats; he challenged her, deliberately so, she thought at times, and every time she rose to that challenge she felt the adrenalin surge through her veins.

  Telling herself that it was far too early in the morning for this unwanted mood of introspection, she slid slim legs from beneath the quilt and hurried into her bathroom.

  Half-way there she stopped dead. She was engaged… engaged to Simon! Impossible! But true, none the less, and what was worse, what she had momentarily lost sight of in her inner struggle to deny the complexity of her feelings towards him, was the fact that she had recklessly committed herself to spending almost the entire month of July with him.

  She was cravenly wondering how she could back out of going when the phone rang. She put down the piece of toast she was nibbling and picked up the receiver.

  'Jenna, my dear! I'm sorry to bother you at this time in the morning, but Simon rang me last night to tell me that both of you will be joining us in the Dordogne. He thought it might be a good idea if I rang and gave you a few details. Luckily the cottage will be large enough for all of us… when we booked it we were anticipating both Susie and a friend of Simon's, John Cameron, would be coming.' There was a small pause and Jenna, still blurry with sleep, yawned, shock jolting through her body as
Ellen Townsend said delicately and rather uncomfortably, 'I'm not an old-fashioned mother, Jenna, but I do hope you'll understand when I say that I'll be giving you and Simon separate rooms.'

  Jenna nearly dropped the receiver. Of course she'd be giving them separate rooms! And then the penny dropped and she gulped nervously.

  'Of course, I've already told Simon this, and he quite understands, but when I said that I'd leave it to him to tell you, he said that he would prefer me to discuss it with you… '

  No wonder Mrs Townsend sounded both uncertain and embarrassed, Jenna thought gritting her teeth. She'd like to ring Simon's neck… no, worse than that… she'd like him to suffer a slow and preferably horrible death! How dared he intimate to his mother that she might not be willing to accept the latter's embargo on their sleeping together! She could hear a strange sound and it was several seconds before she realised it was the noise she was making grinding her teeth.

  'Jenna, are you still there my dear?'

  «Yes… Yes…'

  'And you—you do understand? I realise how much in love you and Simon are, and of course…but you see your grandmother will be with us and—'

  Damn Simon! Damn him to hell for putting her in this horrendous position. There was nothing she wanted more than to tell Ellen Townsend just how little desire she had for her precious son, but she and Simon had made a bargain, and she was not going to be the one to go back on her word.

  'Of course I do,' she agreed, forcing a smile into her voice. 'And after all, it isn't as though it will be very long before we're married. Simon wants us to have a very short engagement…'

  There, let him wriggle out of that one, Jenna thought acidly as she let his mother digest her comment.

  A little to her surprise, Mrs Townsend seemed to accept it very well.

  'Some time in September,' she suggested enthusiastically. 'The church always looks so lovely at Harvest Festival time…'

  'I really must run,' Jenna interjected hastily. 'I don't want to be late for work.'