The Friendship Barrier. PENNY JORDAN
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The Friendship Barrier
Penny Jordan
Table of Contents
‘STEPH, you’re late. It’s gone seven. You’re normally back by six. What happened?’ Annette asked roguishly. ‘Did that gorgeous boss of yours want you to work late?’
‘Can’t stop to chat now,’ Stephanie apologised to her flatmate as she hurried through the small sitting room. ‘Jake’s picking me up in half an hour.’
‘Jake?’ Annette’s eyebrows lifted. ‘Do you call him that at work? Catch me daring to call my boss anything other than Mr James.’
Stephanie was too used to Annette’s curiosity about her relationship with Jake to make any comment. Initially, when she arrived in London, she had lived alone, but after… but Jake had suggested when she started appearing heavy-eyed and exhausted in the office after her nightmare broken nights that she get a flatmate.
Annette was pleasant enough in her way; a secretary like herself, working for the chairman of a large insurance company. She had a fiancé who was in the army and whom she saw at irregular intervals. Yes, Annette would have been the ideal flatmate if it wasn’t for her constant curiosity about Jake.
‘Where’s he taking you tonight, then?’
Sighing, as she stripped off her neat office suit and blouse, Stephanie responded through her half-closed bedroom door, ‘The première of the new Blaize Dartford film.’
‘Wow! That should be really something. The love scenes are supposed to be…’
Almost automatically, Stephanie shut her ears against the end of Annette’s comment, dismayed but not surprised to see that her hands were shaking as she finished undressing.
In their small bathroom she showered quickly, automatically avoiding any confrontation with her own naked reflection. Back in her room, she opened her wardrobe and selected the cocktail suit she planned to wear for the evening. The matt black fabric with the velvet detailed embroidery on it was the perfect foil for her pale skin. Her hair cascaded past her shoulders in deep rich chestnut waves. For work she always wore it in a neat coil. Her wardrobe held few clothes but what there was was good. Working as Jake’s secretary-cum-personal assistant, she felt she owed it to him to dress the part. As the senior partner in a very prestigious London firm of estate agents, he came in daily contact with the wealthy, and, as Stephanie had soon learned, looks and appearance did count. During the two years she had worked for him she had cultivated an air of cool remoteness which put off those male clients who were, initially, too familiar. She was well aware of the nickname they had given her in the outer office. The ‘Ice Maiden’ they called her, but she didn’t care. They were not to know that she had deliberately chosen to encase herself in an unthawable protective shell. Only Jake knew that, and why. Jake… She glanced at her watch. Twenty-past seven, and Jake was always on time.
Her suit looked dressy, and yet formal, her long slim legs encased in pale tights, the delicacy of her ankle bones enhanced by the slender-heeled shoes she was wearing.
Deftly applying her make-up, she stood back critically to study her handiwork. Her eyes were a deep rich hazel that sometimes turned emerald, her face a delicate oval with high cheek bones and a small straight nose.
It was too late to do anything with her hair other than let it curl loosely on to her shoulders. Perfume was something Stephanie never wore, just as she never applied more than a bare trace of soft, pink lipstick to the ripely full curves of her mouth.
‘Umm. I wish I was tall and leggy,’ Annette complained when Stephanie emerged into their sitting room. ‘What is it with you and Jake?’ she enquired curiously. ‘You work for him, he takes you out, you seem very close, and yet he dates other women… glamorous ones, too.’
‘Jake is my friend and my employer,’ Stephanie cut in sharply. As always, when Annette questioned her like this, she could feel the self-defensive antennae prickling warningly. It was true though. Jake was her friend, and her employer… and so much more that could never be said… she was tied to him with bonds that no one who had not shared her experience could understand. Jake knew more about her than another living soul. He had been there when… He had been the one who had helped her to build up her life again. He knew and understood…
‘And not your lover…?’ the disbelieving comment penetrated Stephanie’s thoughts.
‘No… not my lover.’ She made the denial instinctively, her whole body registering a cold shudder she couldn’t hide.
Annette frowned. ‘Steph, what’s the matter? You obviously like him, you must do, and he’s one hell of an attractive man. You wouldn’t see me turning him down, and yet when I suggest there might be something physical about your relationship, you look as sick as though I’d suggested something obscene.’
The abrupt buzz of the door bell saved her from the need to respond. Even though she knew it would be Jake, Stephanie kept the chain hooked on the door as she eased it open until she could see his tall, dinner-suited figure.
‘Ready?’
As she opened the door, Jake stepped to one side to let her precede him. He was the only man of her acquaintance who understood her need to keep a physical distance between them, but then of course Jake knew the reason why. Was it really only two years since they had first met?
She had gone to his office to be interviewed for the position of his secretary and they had hit it off straight away. She had been quite new to London then. An orphan who had been brought up by elderly grandparents, she had been on her own since she was seventeen, and, because of that, at twenty-one she had developed a poise and self-confidence that made her seem older.
Jake had been thirty then, a tall, dark man, who was pleasant on the surface but to whom she suspected there were uncharted and potentially dangerous depths, a man who always kept