A Suitable Husband. Jessica Steele

sought to be scrupulously fair to both her children. Though, thinking back, Jermaine realised her pain over the Pip Robinson business had caused her mother pain too. Even then, though, when annoyed at her twenty-year-old daughter’s heartlessness, she had not remonstrated with her beautiful blonde off-spring but had striven instead to bolster up the shattered confidence of her younger platinum-haired daughter.

      ‘She doesn’t want him!’ Jermaine recalled complaining, vulnerable, shaken by Pip’s behaviour and hardly able to believe her sister could have acted in the way she had. ‘Just because she’s beautiful…’

      ‘You’re beautiful too,’ he mother had cut in gently, much to Jermaine’s astoundment.

      ‘Me?’ she’d gasped, conscious only that she was thin and seemed to be all arms and legs.

      Grace Hargreaves had given her sixteen-year-old a hug. ‘You,’ she’d smiled, and, at Jermaine’s look of surprise, ‘You’re losing that gangly look, filling out in all the right places. Give yourself another year and you’ll see.’ And when Jermaine hadn’t looked convinced she’d added, ‘Your complexion is flawless, match that with your lovely violet eyes and you’re going to be outstanding.’

      Jermaine had never known her mother tell her a lie, but wasn’t very sure about ‘outstanding’. ‘You don’t think the colour of my hair’s a little bit weird?’

      ‘Not in the slightest. Learn to love it,’ her mother had urged. ‘You really are a sight for sore eyes, sweetheart.’

      Over the next couple of years, when her burgeoning curves had fulfilled their promise, Jermaine had come to accept and quite like her white-blonde hair. By that time, however, Edwina had used her wiles on any male friend her sister brought home, and it had soon become clear to Jermaine that, while there might be only four years’ difference between their ages, there was a vast difference between their natures. She would never, and could not ever, behave in the way Edwina did.

      Edwina had not been at all happy when her father’s finances suffered a reversal—though not unhappy so much for him as for herself. Jermaine had been sixteen then, and had left school at once and got herself a job, but Edwina had no intention of working for a living. Her father had indulged her—she regarded it as her right.

      Edwina was greedy but, when in sight of men, could be most generous if, by being so, it would get her what she wanted.

      After another couple of boyfriends had succumbed to Edwina’s charms, Jermaine had known that she was never going to commit herself to any man unless she was certain that he wanted her and nobody else. There was no way she was going to give herself or go to bed with any man until she was two hundred per cent positive that it was her, and her alone, that he wanted. She was just not interested in any fickle affair where her sister could waltz in, bat her big blue eyes, smile that particular smile kept for such occasions—and take over. Good grief! Jermaine came to with a start, realised she had finished her light meal without being conscious of having eaten—and wondered what on earth had sent her off into reflective mode of things past.

      Ash and the commitment he wanted from her, very probably, she realised. But Ash was different. True, her own tastes had changed. She had moved on from the lightweight males she had been drawn to up until a couple of years ago.

      She supposed it was all part and parcel of growing up. Two years ago the company she worked for had invited her to transfer from their Oxford branch to their head office in London. It had been a very flattering offer. To go had not been a difficult decision to make. Edwina, while returning home when it suited her, had already moved out several times. She had then, however, been back again, and was lazy, untidy and given to treating Jermaine’s wardrobe as her own. Edwina was, in fact, generally a pain to live with, and at that time had shown no sign of moving out again.

      ‘Will you mind very much if I go?’ Jermaine had asked her mother—her one regret about leaving.

      ‘It’s not as if you’re going to Timbuktu,’ her mother had smiled—and with her blessing Jermaine had left Oxfordshire for London, and had taken residence in the small flat that Masters and Company had found for her.

      Two years on, Jermaine was an established member of the sales support team. She worked with, and liaised with, the best field people in the business. Hard-working family men in the main. Sophisticated executives who had come to rely on her input, trusting her to follow up anything they initiated. She was good at her job, and loved it, and enjoyed the maturity of the men she worked with.

      Three months ago she had been at a party with Stuart Evans—a man she shared an office with—when she had met Ash Tavinor. They had immediately got on well, and Jermaine hadn’t been totally surprised when a few days later Ash had phoned her at her office and enquired would he be stepping on anybody’s toes if he asked her out?

      She’d liked him, and dined with him the very next evening. In no time she’d learned that he had just sold his apartment, more quickly than he had anticipated, and had not as yet found anything that had everything he wanted. He was still looking. In the meantime his brother had said he could move into his place and was welcome to stay as long as he liked.

      ‘That’s very good of him and his wife,’ Jermaine had remarked, only to learn that Ash’s brother, Lukas, was not married.

      ‘Lukas is away more often than he’s at home so we’re unlikely to see each other all that often,’ Ash had smiled.

      A month later Ash had met her parents and—her sister. He had been totally impervious to Edwina’s charms, and from then on Jermaine had allowed herself to grow fond of Ash.

      But now Ash had grown weary of her backing off every time the amorous side of his nature reared its head. He wanted that commitment from her. And she—wasn’t she being just a tiny bit stubborn? Hadn’t Ash proved himself? He was sincere. It was her and her alone that he wanted. Wasn’t she, as he’d said, being just a little bit old-fashioned? Wasn’t it time she…? The phone rang. Ash!

      It must be him. He had been away two whole weeks now and she had thought every day that he might think to give her a call, but he hadn’t. True, he had told her he was going to be extremely busy…

      She hurried to answer it. ‘Hello?’ she enquired brightly. It was Ash.

      ‘Jermaine—um…’ he began, though not cheerfully, not in his usual sunny tone. She was eager to talk to him, to ask how he’d been, how was work—she thought they knew each other well enough by now for her to ask when was she going to see him again. But—something wasn’t right! Instead of sounding eager to talk to her, Ash was sounding reluctant to talk to her at all and had said nothing after that ‘Jermaine—um…’

      ‘What’s wrong?’ she enquired, ready to help, wanting to help if he had a problem—or so she thought then!

      ‘I’ve—er—I’ve been putting off making this call,’ he confessed, and sounded so much as if he would by far prefer to be talking to anybody else but her that, as shaken as she was suddenly feeling, Jermaine felt her mammoth pride spring urgently into life.

      She and Ash had spent some very good times together, but if his silence this past fortnight—no matter how busy he had been—meant he had gone off the idea of her and commitment, then she wasn’t about to let him think she’d be broken-hearted if he’d rung to say that this was ‘byebye’ time.

      ‘Let me make it easy for you,’ she answered lightly. ‘While I’ve truly enjoyed the good times we’ve shared, your absence this—er—past couple of weeks has shown me that, well, to be blunt, I’m not ready to make the commitment you spoke of. In actual fact,’ she hurried on, pride to the fore, ‘I’ve come to the conclusion that it would be better if we didn’t see each other again.’

      ‘Um…’ Ash still seemed stuck for words. ‘Actually, Jermaine, I wasn’t calling to—er—um…’ She waited. She still liked Ash, was still fond of him, but if he wasn’t phoning to say ‘It’s been nice knowing you’, then she hadn’t the first idea what his fourteen days of silence,