Free Unexpected Pleasures by Penny Jordan Page A

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Jake’s head turn in her direction as though he had seen that small physical betrayal.
    His terse, ‘Almost there,’ might almost have indicated concern coming from any other man.
    But he had already shown her how little concern he had for her, how little respect for her reputation. To have kissed her like that where anyone could have seen them, to have verbally implied that they were lovers.
    These might be the 1990s, couples might live together openly and easily without feeling it necessary to marry, believing that their emotional commitment to one another was the only bond they needed. But this was a very small market town where, while mothers and grandmothers might say bravely to their friends that of course they would never dream of pressuring their child to marry simply for the sake of convention and that children were far better off being brought up by two adults who loved them rather than by a married couple who stayed together out of duty, they still admitted privately to their closest friends that, old-fashioned though it made them, they would dearly love to have seen their son or daughter married, preferably before they presented them with their much-loved grandchildren. Rosie knew that, while her parents would never question the way she chose to live her life, they would still, deep in their hearts, be hurt by any gossip linking her name with Jake’s in a way that suggested they were lovers with a physically intimate relationship that they had no plans to make permanent.
    And then of course there were her clients. Many of them were her own age and some even younger, and she knew they would not be in the least concerned about what she did in her private life. But when she had taken over from her father she had taken on his clients, many of whom had expressed doubts as to her ability to fill her father’s shoes, and their attitude, she suspected, would be confirmed once any gossip reached their ears. In their eyes a woman involved in a sexual relationship with a man outside marriage was not his equal, involved in a mutual partnership, but something very different. She would lose status and respect in their eyes... And their business as well?
    Wearily she closed her eyes, a feeling of helpless despair and resentment washing over her.
    Glancing across at her, Jake frowned. Even now, in the intimacy of his car, she still had this ability to withdraw from him, to distance herself from him.
    Pain twisted unsparingly inside him. Fifteen— sixteen years and nothing had changed. She still had the ability to get under his skin, to touch emotions and needs that no one else had ever come even close to touching.
    She hated him, of course. He had always known that. He had seen it in her eyes the night he found her in bed with Ritchie and he had seen it in them on every occasion they had met since.
    Until this afternoon.
    This afternoon she hadn’t looked at him with hatred.
    She hadn’t looked at him with love, either, he reminded himself.
    * * *
    H E HAD BEEN twenty-three, almost twenty-four, when he’d first realised he loved her, and he had been revolted by that knowledge. She had been just sixteen, still a schoolgirl, a child, and with none of the precocious sexuality of some other girls of her age.
    She had been innocent, unknowing...uncaring of the effect she was having on him.
    He had fought against what he felt with all the power of his intellect and intelligence. He was a man, she was a child; his feelings were a malicious joke played on him by capricious fate, a form of sickness, madness...a danger both to him and to her.
    They would pass. They had to pass. He could not
really be in love with a sixteen-year-old child who barely knew he existed, who was closer to his irresponsible cousin in age than himself. All he had to do was to ignore them, to ignore her, and eventually they would go away without harming either of them.
    And then he had found her in bed with Ritchie. It