Pride & Consequence Omnibus (21 page)

She was a schoolteacher, for heaven’s sake. She was supposed to behave responsibly!

If she had been a virgin it put a completely different complexion on the whole situation. He was perhaps more Italian than he had ever previously realised, Leo recognised wryly as he felt an atavistic sense of male protectiveness engulf him, and with it an even more unexpected sense of pride. Because he had been her first lover? Because she might have accidentally conceived his child? Just how chauvinistic was he?

His mother, of course, would be overjoyed. A grandchild, and the kind of daughter-in-law she would wholly approve of and love showing off to her Italian relatives.

Whoa...Leo cautioned himself. These were very dangerous and foolish thoughts that had no business whatsoever clogging up his head.

For one insane moment he actually wondered if his mother might have gone ahead and got her village wise woman to put some kind of a love spell on him. Then reality resurfaced.

There was only one person to blame for the situation he was in and that one person was himself. He could, after all, have resisted Jodi. She was a woman, small and slender, weighing, he guessed, something around a hundred and twenty pounds, whilst he was a man, taller, heavier, and perfectly capable of having stopped her had he so wanted to.

Only he hadn’t...

Have a heart, he protested to himself; she was there, warm, wanton, beddable, and totally and completely irresistible. It made him ache right through to the soles of his feet right now just to think about it.

Leo grimaced as he felt his body’s unmistakable reaction to his thoughts.

He wanted her in a way that was totally alien to anything he had ever experienced before.

He wanted her. He wanted her. Oh, heavens, how he wanted her!

* * *

Jodi gave a tiny moan in her sleep, her lips forming Leo’s name, and then abruptly she was awake, the reality of her situation blotting out the delicious pleasure of her lost dream.

She had felt so much safer when Leo Jefferson had not known who she was, when he had for some incomprehensible reason believed she was in cahoots with Jeremy Driscoll. Jeremy Driscoll! Jodi gave a brief shudder. Loathsome man!

One of the women who was going to be demonstrating had said at their committee meeting that she had seen Jeremy at the factory, coming out of a disused storeroom. He hadn’t seen her and she had said that he had been behaving very furtively.

None of the workers liked Jeremy, and Jodi had wondered just exactly what he had been doing at the factory when it now belonged to Leo. Not that it was any concern of hers. No, her concern was much closer to home.

She had come so close to betraying herself this evening when Leo had been questioning her. The last thing she wanted was for him to realise that, far from being the experienced sensualist he obviously thought she was, she had, in fact, been a virgin before she had taken it into her idiotic head to go to bed with him.

And the reason she didn’t want him to know the truth was because she was terrified that if he did he might start questioning just why she had been so compulsively attracted to him, so totally unable to resist the temptation he had represented.

She could, of course, always claim that, as a woman in her twenties, she had begun to see her virginity as a burden she wanted to free herself from, but somehow she doubted that he would believe her. He was too shrewd, too perceptive for that.

If he should ever find out just how she had felt about him when she had seen him in the hotel foyer Jodi knew that she would just die of embarrassment and humiliation.

But of course it was totally impossible that he should find out, wasn’t it? Because only she knew.

And only she was going to know.

And only she knew that until she had met him she had been a virgin, and this evening she had as good as told him. That had been a mistake, yes, she allowed judiciously, but it was a mistake she had learned from. A mistake she most certainly was not going to be repeating.

She pulled the covers up more closely around herself. In the dream she had just woken from Leo had been wrapping her in his arms whilst he tenderly stroked her skin and even more tenderly kissed her lips...

What on earth was she? A born-again teenager indulging in a fantasy? She was not going to dream about him again, she told herself sternly. She was not!

* * *

The first Leo knew about the demonstration was when he received a phone call from a local radio station asking if he would like to comment on the situation.

Several other calls later he had elicited the information that the demonstration was non-violent, protesting against the factory being closed down.

Meetings he had already arranged with a large haulage group who were interested in potentially acquiring the site of the motorway-based factory meant that Leo was unable to go to Frampton himself until later on in the day, but he did speak with the leader of the group to set up a meeting with them to discuss the situation.

Although he was not prepared to say so at this stage, Leo had virtually made up his mind that he would keep the Frampton factory open. This decision had nothing whatsoever to do with Jodi Marsh, of course.

Later in the day, when the police rang him to inform him that they intended to monitor the situation at the demonstration, Leo told them that he had every confidence that things would be resolved peacefully.

It was four o’clock, and there was no way he could leave London until at least five. His mind started to wander. What was Jodi doing now? He really did need to talk to her; if there was the remotest chance that she might have conceived his child then he needed to know about it.

* * *

Jodi glanced a little anxiously over her shoulder. She had joined the demo an hour ago, straight from school. At first things had been quiet and peaceful, and the leader had told her that Leo Jefferson had been in touch with him to organise a meeting for the following day. But then to everyone’s surprise, half an hour ago Jeremy Driscoll had arrived. At first he had demanded that they open the factory gates to allow him access and when they had refused Jeremy had got out of the car. A small scuffle had ensued, but ultimately Jeremy had been allowed to walk into the office block.

He was still inside it, but ten minutes ago a police car had drawn up several yards away from the demonstrators, quickly followed by a reporter and a photographer from the local paper.

Now the original peaceful mood of the picketers had changed to one of hostile aggression as Jeremy emerged from the building, and one of the demonstrators to whom Jeremy had been particularly verbally abusive on his way into the factory caught sight of him.

‘You don’t really think that this is going to make any difference to Jefferson’s decision to close this place down, do you?’ Jodi could hear Driscoll challenging her fellow demonstrator contemptuously.

‘He’s agreed to meet with us in the morning,’ the other man was retaliating.

‘And you think that means he’s going to listen to what you have to say! More fool you. He’s already decided that this place isn’t viable and who can blame him, with a lazy, good-for-nothing workforce like you lot? It’s because of you that we’ve had to sell the place. Everyone knows that...’

Jodi gave a small indignant gasp as she heard him.

‘That’s not true,’ she interjected firmly, causing Jeremy to turn to look at her.

‘My God, you!’ he breathed. ‘I suppose I should have guessed,’ he sneered as he gave Jodi’s jeans and T-shirt-clad body a deliberately lascivious stare. ‘This isn’t going to do you any favours with the school board, is it? But then, of course, your precious school will end up being closed down along with the factory, won’t it? Looks as if I shall be getting my building land after all.’ He smirked as he started to walk purposefully towards Jodi. People tried to stop him, but he was too quick for them.

As he moved towards Jodi one of the men started to step protectively between them. He was only a young man, nowhere near as heavily built as Jeremy, and Jodi winced as she saw the force with which Jeremy thrust him to one side.

The young man retaliated, and suddenly it seemed to Jodi as though all hell had broken loose; people were shouting, shoving, the police car doors were opening, and then before she could move, to her shock, Jeremy had suddenly taken hold of her and was dragging her across the factory forecourt.

Instinctively she tried to resist him, hitting out at him as he deliberately manhandled her; her panic was that of any woman fearing a man she knew to be her enemy, and had nothing whatsoever to do with her role in the demonstration. Jeremy dragged her towards one of the advancing police officers, claiming to them that she had deliberately assaulted him.

‘I insist that you arrest her, Officer,’ Jodi could hear him saying as he gave her a nastily victorious look. ‘I shall probably press charges for assault.’

Jodi tried to protest her innocence, but she was already being bundled towards the police van that had screamed to a halt alongside the car.

Jodi blinked in the light from the flashbulb as the hovering photographer took their picture.

* * *

The police station was busy. Jodi couldn’t believe what was happening to her. A stern-looking sergeant she didn’t recognise was beginning to charge them all. Jodi was feeling sick. Her head ached; she felt grubby and frightened. There was a bruise on her arm where Jeremy Driscoll had manhandled her.

‘Name...’

Jodi flinched as she realised that the sergeant was speaking to her.

‘Er—Jodi Marsh,’ she began. Supporting the workforce by taking part in a peaceful demonstration was one thing. Ending up being charged and possibly thrown into a police cell was quite definitely another. She couldn’t bear to think about what the more conservative parents of her pupils were going to say, never mind the school governors or the education authority.

‘Excuse me, Officer.’

She was quite definitely going to faint, Jodi decided as she heard the unmistakable sound of Leo Jefferson’s voice coming from immediately behind her.

Something about Leo’s calm manner captured the sergeant’s attention. Putting down his pen, he looked at him.

* * *

Leo had arrived at the factory gates just in time to hear from those who were still there what had happened.

‘Yes, and they even took the schoolteacher away,’ one of the onlookers had informed Leo with relish, wondering why on earth his comment should have caused his listener to turn round and head straight back to his car with such a grim look on his face.

‘I’m Leo Jefferson,’ Leo introduced himself to the sergeant. ‘I own the factory.’

‘You own it.’ The sergeant was frowning now. ‘According to our records, it was a Mr Jeremy Driscoll who reported that there was a problem.’

‘Maybe he did, but I am quite definitely the owner of the factory,’ Leo reiterated firmly. ‘Can you tell me exactly what’s happened, Officer. Only, as I understand it, the demonstrators were peaceful and I had in fact arranged to meet with them in the morning.’

‘Well, that’s as maybe, sir, but we were telephoned from the factory by Mr Driscoll who said that he was not being allowed to leave and that both he and the property had been threatened with violence. Once we got there a bit of a scuffle broke out and this young lady here...’ he indicated Jodi ‘...actually attempted to assault Mr Driscoll.’

Jodi could feel her face crimsoning with mortification as she leapt immediately to her own defence, denying it. ‘I did no such thing. He was the one who attacked me...’ To her horror, she could actually feel her eyes filling with childish tears.

‘I think there must have been a mistake,’ Leo Jefferson was saying. Although she couldn’t bring herself to turn round and look at him, Jodi could feel him moving closer to her, and for some insane reason she felt that instinctively her body sought the warmth and protection of his.

‘I happen to know Miss Marsh very well indeed. In fact she was at the factory on my behalf, as my representative,’ Leo lied coolly. ‘I cannot imagine for a second that she would have assaulted Mr Driscoll.’

The sergeant was frowning.

‘Well, my officers have informed me that he was most insistent she be arrested,’ he told Leo. ‘He said that he intended to press charges against her for assault.’

Jodi gave a small, stifled sob.

‘Indeed. Well, in that case I shall have to press charges against him for trespass,’ Leo informed the sergeant. ‘He quite definitely did not have my permission to enter the factory, and I rather imagine that the revenue authorities will be very interested to know what he was doing there. There are some account books missing that they are very anxious to see.’

Jodi gave a small start as she listened to him, impulsively turning round to tell Leo quickly, ‘The mother of one of my pupils mentioned that she saw him coming out of one of the unused storerooms.’ Her voice started to fade away as she saw the way Leo was looking at her arm.

‘Is Driscoll responsible for that?’ he demanded dangerously.

Without waiting for her to reply he turned to the desk sergeant and said with determined authority, ‘I understand that you may have to charge Miss Marsh, but in the meantime, Officer, I wonder if you would be prepared to release her into my care. I promise that I won’t let her out of my sight.’

The desk sergeant studied them both. He had a full custody suite and no spare cells, and he could see no real reason why Jodi shouldn’t be allowed to leave if Leo Jefferson was prepared to vouch for her.

‘Very well,’ he acknowledged. ‘But you will have to take full responsibility for her, and for ensuring that she returns here in the morning to be formally charged if Mr Driscoll insists on going ahead.’

‘You have my word on it,’ Leo responded promptly, and then before Jodi could say anything he had turned her round and was gently ushering her out into the summer night.

To her own chagrin, Jodi discovered that she was actually crying.

‘It’s the shock,’ she heard Leo saying to her as he guided her towards his car. ‘Don’t worry, you’ll be OK once we get you home.’