Mission: Make-Over Page 9

  ‘Of course, you’ll probably need a small size,’ she added thoughtfully, subjecting Lucianna to a professional inspection. ‘And if you were thinking of buying a bra to go with them as well, then I’d definitely recommend that we measure you properly to make sure we get the right fit.’

  In the end it was a good two hours before Lucianna finally left the shop.

  In addition to the suspender belt and two pairs of stockings she had also bought the briefs and a pretty bra that matched the belt and briefs, although she had complained to the salesgirl that there was so little of it that she wasn’t sure how on earth it could be so expensive.

  ‘Wait until the man in your life sees you wearing it,’ the salesgirl had advised her with a grin. ‘Then you’ll know it was worth every penny! Trust me…I know!’

  She had also purchased two other bras in a shimmery and virtually transparent soft, coffee-coloured Lycra, and their matching strings, which the girl had assured her were just the thing to wear beneath white or any kind of transparent fabric, since, once on, their unusual colour meant that they could not be detected.

  Once outside again in the sunshine, Lucianna decided that the odd and unfamiliar sense of lightheartedness and recklessness that seemed to be propelling her across the piazza in the direction of a shoe shop the salesgirl had recommended to her must have something to do with the fact that she hadn’t eaten her breakfast—just like the disturbing mental images that kept on popping up out of nowhere, showing herself dressed in all her new finery—including the new underwear—whilst Jake gazed on in stunned awe!

  Why on earth it should be Jake rather than John who was stunned speechless by her transformation she had no clear idea…Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that it was Jake who had suggested she buy the stuff in the first place.

  The saleswoman in the shoe shop showed every sign of being equally helpful and knowledgeable about the goods she was selling as the girl in the underwear shop had been, but by now Lucianna was well into her own stride and, with an aplomb and sense of assurance which startled herself a little, she very quickly and calmly picked out a pair of lightweight shoes to wear with her new silk suit plus a pair of strappy sandals which, as yet, she had nothing in her wardrobe to wear with—unless, of course, you counted the stockings and suspenders!

  It was now definitely time for her to go home, Lucianna decided dizzily as she emerged from the shop clutching her parcels, but first she needed a cup of coffee. And it was whilst she was seated on the pavement under an umbrella to protect her from the heat of the sun that she noticed the banner hanging in the window of the chemist’s on the other side of the road, announcing that they were giving free make-up demonstrations and make-overs to anyone who wished to avail themselves of this treat.

  Without knowing quite how it had happened, Lucianna found herself inside the chemist’s enjoying the cool draught of their air-conditioning whilst she studied the vast array of cosmetics on sale.

  Her brothers had teased the life out of her when she had first started experimenting with make-up in her early teens, and David had even gone so far as to make her wash off the garish red lipstick and bright blue eyeshadow which she had secretly saved her pocket money for weeks to buy. But the kind of make-up on sale here was very different from the cheap, brightly coloured cosmetics she had bought as a young girl, she realised. Very different…

  ‘Would you like some help?’

  As she turned her head towards the smiling salesgirl approaching her, Lucianna bowed to the inevitable.

  Back at the farmhouse David glanced frowningly at his watch.

  ‘Luce can’t still be shopping,’ he told Janey. ‘She’s been gone for over four hours.’

  ‘Of course she can,’ Janey replied smugly, adding with a smile, ‘She’s a woman.’

  Thoroughly baffled, David retreated into the farming article he had been reading. He might not be an expert on the female sex like Jake was, but he knew when he was beaten!

  ‘It would be just your luck for this—’ Janey patted her small bump lovingly ‘—to turn out to be a girl,’ she told him, correctly guessing what he was thinking.

  ‘Girl or boy, I don’t honestly mind,’ David told her truthfully, putting down his magazine and walking round the table to take her in his arms and hold her, hold them both, tenderly. ‘In fact, so far as I’m concerned you can go ahead and produce a whole tribe of girls…’

  ‘I can produce?’ Janey scoffed. ‘You’re the one who decides what sex our offspring are going to be, and as for us having a tribe…’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  LUCIANNA frowned critically as she studied her reflection in her bedroom mirror. With David and Janey out of the way on a rare night out together, she had taken the opportunity to experiment with her new make-up purchases, and not just her make-up, she acknowledged as she stared intently into her mirror, trying to gauge if she had followed the salesgirl’s advice, or if she ought to add just a touch more depth to the eyeshadow she had so carefully and nervously applied.

  ‘With your colouring, taupes and muted colours will suit your eyes best,’ the girl had told her, laughing sympathetically when Lucianna had relaxed enough to tell her ruefully about her unhappy experiments with bright blue eyeshadow.

  Now, with the taupe eyeshadow highlighting the size and colour of her eyes, Lucianna was slightly startled to see how both that and the softly pretty coral lipstick she was wearing brought out and emphasised the femininity of her facial features in a way which made her look and feel very different from her normal workaday self.

  Would John be similarly surprised?

  He had rung her earlier in the day, but she had had a customer waiting to collect her car and so their conversation had been rushed and not very satisfactory. John had sounded distant and on edge, more concerned with telling her all about the way he was being fêted by his colleagues in the Canadian office than interested in talking to her about their own relationship.

  Their relationship.

  Rather nervously Lucianna stepped back from the mirror and studied her reflection full-length, forcing herself not to look away from what she saw but to examine herself. It was just as well she wasn’t wearing any blusher—the rosy glow colouring her skin was more than colour enough—and even though she knew it was ridiculous to feel embarrassed by her own reflection, and in the privacy of her own bedroom, Lucianna couldn’t help it. The reflection in front of her was just so very different from the one she was used to seeing.

  After she had finished work she had showered and washed her hair, which was still hanging loosely around her shoulders in a thick, silky cloak which she privately deemed rather untidy but which for some reason seemed to highlight the delicacy of her facial bones and the softness of her skin. But it wasn’t her face or her hair which was causing her to feel abashed. No, it was the fact that she had taken advantage of David and Janey’s absence not just to try out her new make-up but to try on her new undies as well.

  What would John think if…when he saw her like this…? Would he notice, as she had done herself, how delicate and slender her legs looked clad in such sheer stockings? Would he…? What would he think…say…Lucianna took a deep gulp of air…when he saw the frivolous lacy affair that was holding them up? What would his reaction be to her new bra—a bra which was nothing like any she had ever worn and which it had taken all the salesgirl’s earnest professionalism and sincerity to assure her was perfectly respectable and one of their customers’ firm favourites?

  And, as if all that weren’t enough, there was, of course, the string. Lucianna took another gulp of air…From the front it looked if not exactly as sturdy as her normal knickers then certainly not more revealing than a rather high-cut bikini, but from the back…! As yet she hadn’t managed to pluck up the courage to study her back view, and the mirror in her room wasn’t exactly ideal for doing so.

  In Janey and David’s room there was a much better full-length mirror which could be angled. Lucianna glanced
doubtfully at the high-heeled sandals she was wearing. So far she had only walked across her own bedroom floor in them—and had felt as vulnerable and awkward as a newborn colt.

  Taking a deep breath, she reminded herself that sooner or later she was going to have to appear in them in public, so the sooner she learned to walk properly in them the better, and since she could hardly service her customers’ cars wearing them she had better make use of every chance she got to practise.

  After all, there was no one around to witness her ineptitude, nor her shy awareness of how very different she looked and felt, nor how very much more aware of herself, her body, her womanliness, she suddenly was.

  She started to walk tentatively towards the bedroom door.

  The business meeting he had been called to in Paris so unexpectedly to attend had proved rather more fraught than Jake had anticipated but, in the end, he had had his way—but not before he had had to argue his point with some force. Along with the estate, he had inherited a considerable portfolio of stocks and shares to which he had, over the years, added other investments of his own, latterly moving into the area of helping others to set up their own small businesses and taking not just a financial but also a managerial interest in those businesses.

  It was a high-risk enterprise and one which required steady nerves as well as a good deal of patience and faith in one’s own judgement, and Jake’s trust in his own judgement had been sorely tested of late.

  There had been a delay at Charles de Gaulle and it had been a hot day; he was glad to be free of the stale, fume-filled air of the motorway but the drive home was not giving him its usual sense of release and pleasure. He turned off the main road and into the lane that led both to the farm and then on to his own home; he automatically checked his speed as he drove past the turn-off for the farm and then, instead of accelerating, for some reason he wasn’t prepared to analyse, he braked instead.

  Braked, stopped, reversed, and then finally took the side turning for the farm.

  A little uncertainly at first, then with increasing confidence as she got used to the height of them, Lucianna walked up and down the landing in her new, delicate, high-heeled sandals. It certainly felt most peculiar, but not in the least unpleasantly so.

  She frowned a little critically as she caught sight of her unvarnished toenails. The stockings she was wearing were completely sheer, designed to be worn, if necessary, with open-toed shoes, and it seemed now to Lucianna that a pretty but discreet application of a soft shiny colour to her toenails would complement both her shoes and the sheer delicacy of her stockings, rather in the same way that she would have advised a customer that those all-important touches such as keeping the bodywork of their cars clean and polished were also part and parcel of keeping their vehicles in good working order.

  Now that she had mastered the art of walking in her new shoes—well, sort of—it was time to venture into David and Janey’s room and study her reflection in their mirror.

  Once she was inside their room, though, Lucianna found she was having great difficulty in bringing herself to look at what she was wearing. Her heart had started to beat very fast and she was conscious of a mixture of apprehension and nervous excitement churning in her stomach.

  Unsteadily, she turned her head in the direction of the mirror and then tensed in shock. Was that really her? That unexpectedly tall, long-legged creature—long-legged woman? she corrected herself shakily. And those curves…that tiny waist, those softly rounded breasts; where had they come from? She didn’t normally make a habit of studying her own naked body but surely she would have known, noticed, if her body was really as sensual, as womanly as its mirror image now reflected? Was it the soft light of David and Janey’s bedroom that gave her skin its satiny sheen?

  Hesitantly, Lucianna touched the smooth swell of her breast above the dainty cup of her bra and then flushed. She looked so different, so…Peeping over her shoulder, she glanced uncertainly at her neatly curved and very provocatively rounded rear.

  Totally absorbed in what she was seeing, she didn’t hear Jake drive into the yard and stop the engine of his car.

  The lights were on in the farmhouse kitchen and upstairs as well and, out of habit, Jake merely knocked briefly on the unlocked kitchen door before pushing it open and walking in. After all, he had been a regular visitor here at the farmhouse from boyhood and had long ago been instructed by David and Janey that he was not to stand on ceremony, that so far as they were concerned he was virtually an adopted member of the family.

  The fact that there wasn’t anyone in the kitchen wasn’t particularly unusual; it was too early in the evening for David and Janey to have gone to bed, and since he had noticed as he’d driven up that their bedroom lights were on he opened the kitchen door and stepped into the hall, intending to call up to warn them of his arrival, but, before he could do so, their bedroom door opened.

  The uncertainty in Lucianna’s movements as she opened David and Janey’s bedroom door and stepped out onto the landing wasn’t due as much to her unfamiliar footwear as to her unfamiliar self.

  If the reflection of herself she had seen in the dress shop earlier in the week had surprised and pleased her that was nothing to the emotions she had experienced just now. Her reflection might have unnerved her somewhat but there was no doubting its femininity…its sexuality…her femininity and sexuality. She paused in the open doorway, arching her neck, standing proudly, a small, secret smile curling her mouth.

  Let Jake try telling her now that she needed to look to others to learn how to be a woman; that she needed to adopt their body language in order to make John appreciate her.

  Suddenly, and for the first time in her life, Lucianna knew how it felt to be proud of her womanhood, of her body, and it showed in the way she held herself and moved as she started to walk towards her own room.

  And how it showed!

  Initially, standing in the hallway below her, Jake simply couldn’t believe his eyes—or rather his brain was having difficulty in accepting that what he saw, who he saw, was Lucianna. His body was experiencing no such problems. It had recognised her straight away, recognised her, known her, reacted to her and was still reacting to her, and suddenly all the emotions he had been fighting to control for what, right now, felt like more than half his lifetime, exploded in a self-igniting flash of feral anger that caused him to take the stairs two at a time, blocking off Lucianna’s access to her bedroom with his body as he demanded furiously, ‘Lucianna…what the hell do you think you’re playing at?’

  To say she was shocked didn’t begin to go anywhere near describing Lucianna’s feelings.

  The totally unexpected sight of Jake coupled with the intensity of his anger would have been enough to put her on the defensive at the best of times, but to be confronted by it and by him in her present state of undress…It would have been bad enough to have been surprised by anyone, even to be faced by Janey, just at the moment. The only reason she had found the courage to do what she had just done, to try on her new underwear and…Well, the only reason she had done what she had was that she had been secure in the knowledge that she had the house completely to herself.

  And if anyone had asked her who the last person, the very last person was whom she would have wanted to see her like this she would immediately have said Jake. And yet here he was, looking at her with such savagery, such fury that…

  ‘Where is he?’ she heard Jake demanding furiously as he reached out to constrain her, to grab hold of her wrist, preventing her from fleeing, retreating back into David and Janey’s bedroom.

  ‘He…? What he?’ Lucianna queried in bewilderment as she tried to prise his fingers free of her wrist.

  ‘What he? The one you’ve dressed yourself up like that for of course,’ Jake told her bitingly. ‘And don’t tell me there is no “he”, Lucianna, because I won’t believe you.’ His eyes scanned her body, causing her face to burn a hot, embarrassed dark pink and then her whole body to become scorched with the same colo
ur. She suddenly realised that for some totally unfathomable reason her nipples beneath the delicate fabric of her new bra had hardened and were now quite clearly visible in all their pouting provocation, and Jake had seen them; that much was clear from the way he turned his head and looked so intently at her body.

  Instinctively, she placed her free arm across her breasts, her eyes flashing daggers of embarrassed fury at him.

  ‘It’s a bit late for that,’ Jake told her scathingly. ‘You might as well be stark naked—you damn well nearly are.’

  ‘I am not,’ Lucianna denied. ‘I’m wearing the new underwear you told me to buy,’ she defended herself bravely.

  ‘I told you to buy?’ Jake checked himself and frowned. ‘Don’t try to tell me you bought this stuff you’re wearing—this…these—because of me,’ he told her bitingly.

  ‘Why not?’ Lucianna challenged him recklessly. ‘It’s the truth; you were the one—’

  Abruptly she stopped speaking, her face going bright scarlet as she realised what she had been about to say, what she couldn’t possibly say, and that was that five minutes ago, standing in front of her brother and sister-in-law’s bedroom mirror, although it might have been John’s reaction to her transformation and her shy realisation of her own sexuality she had first of all been thinking about, to her chagrin, it had been Jake’s voice, Jake’s face, Jake’s reaction she had instinctively pictured.

  Just for those few heart-stopping and instantly rejected heartbeats of time it had been Jake’s hands, Jake’s mouth, Jake’s touch she had emotionally imagined caressing her near-naked body. To her horror, even as she fought back the treacherous memory of those few fatal seconds, her body was already wilfully reacting to it, her nipples flouting her fervent plea to them not to betray her, whilst deep down inside her body…