A Suitable Husband. Jessica Steele
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to tell us. Your mother said you’d spoken to Edwina, but I thought it was only today you’d spoken to her. Ash Tavinor told me you’ve known she was injured since Monday.’
Jermaine was not very happy at being taken to task by her father, and, had not Lukas Tavinor been listening to her every word, she wasn’t sure she wouldn’t have told her father that his dear Edwina was only pretending to have hurt her back for her own ends. He’d be furious with his younger daughter, of course, but, while he had never been able to see any wrong in Edwina, surely he couldn’t be so completely blinkered to some of his eldest daughter’s less loveable traits?
But Lukas Tavinor was listening and all Jermaine could think of to say to her father was, ‘I’m sorry.’
‘So you should be. Ash wants you to stay with Edwina—just mind that you do.’
Jermaine sighed. She was used to coming second where her father and Edwina were concerned. ‘I’ll get Edwina to ring you tomorrow,’ she promised.
‘Not if it’s going to cause her pain to come to the phone. You can ring me to tell me what sort of a night she’s had.’
‘Give my love to Mum,’ Jermaine said quietly and put the phone down ready to strangle her sister—and not feeling too well disposed to the man who strolled into her line of vision either. ‘I hate you,’ she snapped, tossing him a belligerent look.
‘That makes a change,’ he replied urbanely. ‘Women are usually falling at my feet.’ Jermaine added seething dislike to her look. He grinned. ‘Did your father give you hell?’
‘Thanks to you.’
‘You should have come when you were called,’ Lukas replied, totally unabashed.
‘I came, I saw,’ she answered shortly, ‘and I’m going home.’
‘Oh, your father wouldn’t like that,’ Lukas mocked.
‘You’d tell him?’ she questioned, staring at him in dis-belief.
‘You bet I would.’
What a swine the man was. ‘Why?’ she asked angrily.
‘Why?’ He shrugged. ‘Because Mrs Dobson, my treasure of a housekeeper, is getting on in years, that’s why. Because she gets upset at the thought of retiring and wants to keep on working, I wouldn’t dream of letting her go. That doesn’t mean I want her running upstairs ten times a day to attend to your sister when that job is so obviously yours—that’s why!’
Jermaine came close then to telling him that there was nothing wrong with her sister. But he wouldn’t believe her anyhow, would again think her hard and unfeeling and prepared to blacken her injured sister’s name rather than stay and do her sisterly duty. Jermaine felt then that she had taken enough. But, having come near to denouncing her sister and letting them all go to the devil, she discovered that family loyalty was still stronger than her own fed-up feelings. Because she couldn’t do it. Instead, her tone firm and unequivocal, she told him bluntly, ‘I’ll stay tonight. But I’m going to work—at my office—in the morning.’
Grey eyes stared hard into her wide violet eyes. Then he smiled, a gentle smile, and her insides acted most peculiarly. ‘Allow me to show you to your room,’ he suggested quietly.
That gentle smile, his quiet manner, seemed to have the strangest effect on her. Because, instead of mutinying some more that her plans appeared to be getting away from her, Jermaine found she was standing meekly by while he went out into the foulness of that stormy night and collected her overnight bag from her car.
Unprotesting, she went up the wide wooden staircase with him, turning right and going along the landing with him to a room at the far end. He opened the door to a beautifully furnished room with not a speck of dust to be seen, the double bed already made up. Jermaine did protest then.
‘I shouldn’t have come.’
‘I asked you to come. Pressed you to come,’ Lukas reminded her.
‘All I’ve done is given your Mrs Dobson more work.’
‘My Mrs Dobson has help during the week,’ he answered, a teasing kind of note in his voice, his grey eyes fixed on Jermaine’s regretful look. ‘Sharon probably “did and dusted”. Now, you get settled here and I’ll get you something to eat.’
That surprised her. ‘ You will?’
‘Knowing you were on your way to look after your sister, I have given Mrs Dobson the night off. What kept you, incidentally?’
‘I worked late,’ Jermaine replied—before it abruptly came to her that she was being far too friendly with someone who had more or less coerced her to come to his home that night—a man she had not so very long ago declared she hated. ‘And I’ve already eaten,’ she added snappily, ‘so you can leave your chef’s hat on its peg!’
His eyes narrowed at her tone, and he took a step towards the door. ‘And there was me trying to be pleasant,’ he commented, and she guessed he had more from instinct than desire accidentally fallen into the role of host—ensuring that his guest wanted for nothing.
‘You don’t have to bother on my account,’ she retorted. And just in case he thought she might be joining them downstairs once she had ‘settled’, ‘I’m going to bed!’ she announced firmly. ‘I need to be up early in the morning.’
‘Presumably you intend to help your sister comfortably into bed before you put your lights out. That, after all, is why you’re here.’
Jermaine glared at him. Ooh, how she hated him. She was here because she had no option. She did not thank him that he had just reminded her that, but for her being there to do her family duty, he wouldn’t have given her house room.
She sent him a seething look of dislike, which speared him not at all, and he favoured her with a steely grey-eyed look and went from her room.
Men! She hated the lot of them. Well, perhaps that was a bit sweeping. She liked the men she worked with, and her father most of the time. But the Tavinor brothers—pfff!
Because she knew she was going to go and have a few words with her sister at whatever time the ‘invalid’ decided she must return to her room, Jermaine unpacked her bag, showered and donned her nightdress and the lightweight robe she had thought to throw in. A very short while later she heard sounds that indicated that Edwina was being ‘assisted’ up the stairs.
Some minutes later Jermaine was wishing she had thought to ask Tavinor which room was her sister’s. She didn’t fancy going along the landing trying all doors until she came to the right one—though she wouldn’t mind waking up Tavinor if he was already fast asleep.
Then someone came and knocked at her door. She discounted that it might be Edwina—she’d be ‘struggling’ to walk at all. Jermaine went and opened her door, and as Lukas Tavinor stared down at her, his eyes going over her face, completely free of make-up, so she felt stumped to say a word.
He seemed pretty much the same, she thought, then immediately cancelled any such notion. Because, although that gentle look was there about him again, he wasn’t at all stuck for words. However, what he had to say was the last thing she would have expected him to say.
For softly it was that he murmured, ‘You know, Jermaine, you’re incredibly beautiful.’
Her heart gave a jerky beat and she wasn’t sure her mouth didn’t fall open. She firmed her lips anyway, when she saw his glance go to her mouth, and from somewhere she gained some strength to tell him acidly, ‘I’m still not falling at your feet!’
He was amused; she could see it in his eyes, in the pleasant curve of his mouth. He didn’t laugh, but stared at her for a moment longer before, ‘Damn!’ he mocked. ‘In that case—your sister’s in the room three doors down. The first one at the top of the landing.’
Which, Jermaine realised as he turned and went back the way he had