“I need a—woman-friend for a few days.” About the Author Title Page CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER EIGHT Copyright

“I need a—woman-friend for a few days.”

Elyss knew that there was more behind it than he was stating. “What’s the matter, Pendleton, your charm failing?”

Totally serious, he went on. “In return for you giving me five days of your time, I am prepared to cancel all present and future debts in relation to repairs to your vehicle and mine.”

Elyss stared at him dumbstruck. There had to be a catch! “What’s the snag—accepting that I’d have to put up with you for five days?” she queried warily.

She saw his mouth move almost imperceptibly, as though she made him want to smile. He didn’t smile though. “I said I needed a ‘woman-friend,’ I didn’t mean enemy.”

“I can be a friend,” she said. “To be free of a debt that big, I can be a jolly good friend.”

Jessica Steele lives in a friendly English village with her super husband, Peter, and a boisterous, manic but adorable Staffordshire bull terrier dog called Florence. It was Peter who first prompted Jessica to try writing, and after the first rejection, encouraged her to keep on trying. Luckily—with the exception of Uruguay—she has so far managed to research inside all the countries in which she has set her books, traveling to places as far apart as Siberia and Egypt Her thanks go to Peter for his help and encouragement.

Temporary Girlfriend
Jessica Steele

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

ELYSS drove into the forecourt of the well maintained block of flats where she lived. A smile touched the corners of her lovely mouth as she parked in her usual place and thought of the contrast between where she had driven from and where she had arrived.

She let herself in through the main door of the building, musing: forget the quiet, forget the serenity of the weekend she had just spent with her parents in their Devon cottage; her forty-eight hours of peace and tranquillity were over.

Not that she minded—now. Up until five months ago, though, she had been living on the outskirts of London with her parents in a household where raised voices were seldom heard. Which was why, when she had started sharing the flat, she had at first been constantly startled by the top-of-the-range squeals that had assaulted her ears as an outraged Victoria would demand of Nikki, ‘Have you got my hairdryer?’ and Nikki would retaliate at high pitch, ‘Have you borrowed my black shoes again?’

Elyss had adjusted—now. But she guessed that her bewilderment, her fear that she might have made the wrong decision when she had answered the ‘Fourth wanted to share flat’ advertisement must have shown. Because Louise, the eldest of her flatmates and, Elyss was to discover, the more steady of the three, had told her not to worry and that the other two would calm down in a few minutes.

Which was true. In no time at all Victoria and Nikki would forget all hostility and, as suddenly as they had flared up, they were the best of friends again.

Elyss took the stairs to their second-floor flat feeling lucky to be part of the group. The flat was intended to be a three-bedroomed apartment, but when Nikki, who seemed to lurch from crisis to crisis, had lost her job over her poor time-keeping, she could not pay her share of the rent in full.

Louise, Victoria and Nikki had a conference where Victoria confessed that she was struggling financially, and Louise owned to being stretched money-wise on account of her twelve-year-old son. Her ex-husband paid Thomas’s boarding school fees, but it seemed that never a month went by when the growing boy wasn’t in urgent need of something. It was her ex-husband’s view that in paying his son’s school fees he was already doing far more than he should—anything extra was down to Louise.

The upshot of the conference was that having a fourth flatmate to pay a share of the rent and service bills would help them all out. What did they need with a separate dining room anyway? It would make an ideal fourth bedroom.

All this Elyss had learned later. At that time her family were having to make tough decisions as her father could ignore no longer that his failing business was past saving. It was time to stop throwing good money after bad.

But that was then, and Elyss did not want to dwell on a time that had been so heart-rending for her family.

She inserted her key into the door of the flat and wondered instead how her flatmates had fared that weekend. By now she was used to the weekly disasters that seemed to befall Nikki, and, though she had blonde hair herself, Elyss reflected that blondes didn’t come any dizzier than Nikki.

‘Anyone home?’ she called as she let herself in.

‘Hi!’ Louise, a pretty, brown-haired woman who, at thirty-two, was ten years older than Elyss, appeared from the kitchen. ‘Had a good weekend?’

‘It’s always good to see my parents.’ Elyss smiled, dropping her weekend bag down for a minute or two. ‘Anything happened here?’

‘Victoria’s out with some new man, and Nikki’s still being messed about by Dave.’

‘Oh, grief! She was supposed to be going out with him last night. Didn’t...?’

‘He didn’t show. She’s gone over to his place now. I know, I know. I’ve told her if you want a man to chase you, you have to run in the opposite direction—in my case I didn’t run fast enough and got caught,’ Louise inserted drily, ‘but she won’t listen. I think it’s the real thing this time—with Dave, I mean. I think she’s in love with him.’

They fell to commiserating about Nikki; for all that she was the youngest, Elyss, like Victoria and Louise, had soon fallen into feeling protective about her. ‘There’s nothing we can do to help, I suppose.’

‘Short of dropping something unpleasant on Dave’s head from a great height, not a thing,’ Louise answered. ‘Fancy a cup of tea?’

While Louise was making the tea Elyss rang her parents to let them know, as they’d requested, that she had made it to London without mishap. Then she took her weekend bag to her room. She emptied it, feeling for Nikki because she was going through such a bad time over the man she was in love with. Elyss had never been in love herself, or remotely anywhere near it, and with Dave giving Nikki the run-around, she didn’t know that she wanted to be.

She and Louise were finishing their tea when Nikki, fretful and unsmiling, arrived home.

‘He wasn’t in?’ Louise enquired gently.

Nikki shook her head. ‘I waited around for ages. In the end, what with neighbours’ curtains twitching and everything else, I expected the police to arrive any minute in answer to someone’s call reporting a stranger casing the area. I decided to catch a bus home—have you ever tried catching the bus you want on a Sunday?’

Elyss had forgotten—Nikki, after another financial crisis, had sold her car. ‘Would you like some tea?’ Elyss offered sympathetically.

‘Ooh, I’d love a cup,’ Nikki accepted gratefully, but seemed unable to settle, ‘I’ll—er—just take the phone to my room and make a call while you’re brewing up.’

Elyss went to make a fresh pot of tea, knowing, as did Louise, that by the look of her Nikki was going to try to reach her errant boyfriend by phone.

Elyss returned with three cups and saucers on a tray, noticing as she went into the sitting room that the phone was back on its station. One glance at Nikki’s face was sufficient to tell her that Dave must still be out.

‘I thought we’d join you,’ Elyss said brightly, explaining the extra cups and saucers.

‘What a good idea,’ Louise remarked cheerfully—but Nikki was not impressed by either girl’s brightness or cheerfulness.

‘It’s no good. I shall have to go over again. I...’

‘Nikki!’ Louise cried in alarm. ‘He’s not worth it.’

‘I know,’ Nikki answered. ‘He’s a snake, a slug, but I shan’t be at rest until I’ve had it out with him.’ And, tea forgotten in her haste to be away, she turned to Elyss, ‘I don’t suppose, buses being what they are on a Sunday, you’d lend me your car, would you?’

Elyss stared at her, uncertain how to reply. She was unsure if her car insurance allowed Nikki to drive her car—and immediately felt small-minded. Nikki had an unblemished driving licence, and Victoria was always letting her use her car. Victoria would have done so now, Elyss knew, so she guessed there must be some insurance clause that covered the situation.

‘Of course,’ she smiled, still wanting to help, though she was uncertain if Nikki going to confront her boyfriend would truly help.

Nikki didn’t waste any time once she had Elyss’s car keys and went hurrying from the flat. ‘Tea?’ Elyss offered Louise with a sigh, picking up the pot.

‘Why not?’ Louise grinned.

Elyss spent the evening doing some laundry, watching a half-hour of television and generally chatting to Louise. Victoria came home around eleven, but there was no sign of Nikki when they decided, tomorrow being a work day, it was time for bed.

Somehow, as Elyss saw in her mind’s eye Nikki sitting in the car outside Dave’s flat waiting for him to come home, she found sleep elusive. Oh, she did so hope Dave returned alone.

Elyss adjusted her position in her comfortable bed. She fleetingly recalled it was her bed from her old home, an elegant Georgian house that was gone now, like her father’s business.

She had worked in the company, had done so ever since she had left school. Her father had trained her in administration, and the more she had learned the more she had enjoyed the work she did. Being the boss’s daughter, however, had allowed her to be privy to the most confidential matters. Which was all to the good while the wholesale fruit importing business was doing well—but exceedingly worrying when it started to fail.

Elyss had seen the crash coming, and had tentatively broached the subject to her hard-working father. But he had only teased her for being a worrier over nothing. ‘It’s not unnatural for a company as large as ours to experience the occasional hiccup,’ he’d smiled. ‘Things will work themselves out, you’ll see. Er—meantime, not a word to your mother.’

Her father’s obvious confidence had quietened her worries. He had been in this business all his life, for goodness’ sake. What did she know!

So she waited, and waited for ‘things to work themselves out’, only they didn’t. And loath though she was to bring the subject up again, after a year had gone by and not only was business not picking up, but they were getting deeper and deeper into debt with the bank, she plucked up courage to question her father if there was anything they could do about it.

‘We’ll have to try and ride it out,’ her father had replied—only there was no confident smile this time.

They had not been able to ride it out. Month after month had gone by as the company had limped along. Their bank manager had tried to help all he could, but it seemed there were limits to his powers.

Elyss would never forget the afternoon when, his face grey, her father had returned from a meeting with the bank manager, and told her that the company was folding.

‘Folding!’ she’d echoed, leading him to a chair and sitting him down. He’d looked on the point of collapse when for the next half-hour they discussed the ending of what had been life’s blood to him.

They’d said nothing to the workforce. Shaken herself, but seeing that her father still didn’t look any better, Elyss had insisted on driving him home.

Because he was essentially a very private man, she made herself scarce while he went and revealed the truth to her mother. Elyss knew it would be a most humbling experience for him.

Her mother, though, like the wonderful person she was, was marvellous. Elyss, fretful in her room, was relieved no end to hear her father leave the drawing room and come out into the hall and call, his tone sounding much firmer than it had: ‘Come down, Elyss. Your mother—er—and I, want a family conference.’

Her mother had apparently sensed for some while that something was wrong. But when all her approaches to her husband to find out what had been brushed aside as pure imagination, she had started to consider all sorts of possibilities.

Although the news that the business had gone under was a fairly devastating shock, it was a tremendous relief that her husband had neither a mistress, nor some dreadful terminal illness he was trying to hide from her.

‘Well, the first essential is to try to see to it that we come out of this with as much honour as we can salvage,’ she stated proudly, and they were all agreed on that.

As they agreed about almost everything else to do with winding up the company. The only point on which they had a disagreement was when—their creditors by now baying to be paid—Elyss determined that the money settled on her by her parents on her eighteenth birthday should go into the family kitty.

‘Oh, no, I’m not taking that. It’s yours, its—’

‘It’s ours, Dad,’ Elyss interrupted him gently. ‘The house is going, and anything else of value. I’m part of this family. I shall take it as a personal insult if you don’t allow me to contribute.’

He huffed, he puffed, but the pride of not owing his creditors anything finally won. ‘You wretched child,’ he called her lovingly, ‘Come and give your old Dad a kiss.’

So they had settled all their accounts, and were left with nothing over; their only assets were three cars, not new but purchased in better times, and a small amount of jewellery, the value of which was mainly sentimental.

With the house sold and the purchasers wanting completion within six weeks’, all that remained was for Elyss and her father to find jobs and somewhere for them all to live.

It was then, after having had so much go wrong in their lives, that their luck began to turn. Quite out of the blue her mother had a letter from a firm of solicitors informing her of an inheritance from a distant relative.

With great excitement they had contacted the legal firm and the next day were in Devon inspecting the two-bedroomed cottage, sorely in need of modernising.

Anne Harvey finished her inspection of her dilapidated inheritance and took a deep breath. Then, as they stood in the wilderness of the large garden looking at the whitewashed walls of the rickety cottage, she calmly announced, ‘I should be quite happy to live here.’

Husband and daughter stared at her. But it was her husband who, clearly adoring his wife, commented quietly, ‘You always were an optimist, old love.’

Conversation on the drive home consisted almost entirely of the three of them moving to Devon, and of how much the modernisation of the cottage they could carry out themselves. Also, what sort of job prospects did father and daughter have in the Devonshire village, which was miles from anywhere?

They had left their Georgian home very early that morning. They returned to find that the postman had delivered a letter bearing another piece of good news. One of Elyss’s father’s few remaining premium bonds, which he had held for years and forgotten about, had come up.

The money which the premium bond had yielded was not a vast amount, but enough to ease the strain of these last few months. Although once the general euphoria they had all felt at this piece of good luck had worn off, Elyss’s father was all for giving the money to her, to go towards replacing the amount which she had insisted on putting into the kitty.

‘No way,’ she’d declared firmly. ‘You’ll need all of that to put the cottage back into—’ She broke off, a sudden thought coming to her. The idea of her father going to work for someone else after all his years of being his own boss had seriously worried her. ‘Unless... You know, if you were really, really careful, I reckon you could eke that money out and live on it until you’re old enough to start drawing your pension. You wouldn’t have to get a job and...’

‘Elyss is right!’ her mother took her up straight away. Clearly she had been experiencing the same worries as her daughter about her husband working for someone else. ‘I’ve got all the clothes I shall ever need, and provided we don’t hold any outrageous parties...’ she tossed in to lighten the atmosphere. They had never gone in for wild parties, and more than a half dozen people in the cottage would make it overcrowded.

Her husband smiled, and Elyss could see that her father was taken with the idea. He had a good year’s work in front of him licking the cottage into shape. ‘That would give me a chance to look at the wiring. And the plumbing—and that ceiling that looks as though it might fall down at any time.’

‘It would be nice to have you home all day,’ Anne Harvey smiled. And, least her husband thought her soft, she added, ‘If you were very good, I’d even let you help me with that jungle of a garden!’

It seemed settled, but the next day, while her parents were discussing where Elyss was going to sleep until the ceiling in the bedroom she was to have was fixed, Elyss saw the advert for a fourth person to share a flat.

At first she paid only scant attention to it. But when she began to wonder about her chances of finding a job in Devon—she had very good experience in administration and in assisting in the running of a company, but not a single solitary paper qualification to prove it—she started to realise that she might do better looking for work in London. It would be a wrench leaving her parents, of course. But... It was then that she started to believe in the saying, ‘Everything comes in threes’.

For it was luck, pure and simple—the third piece of luck for them as a family—that within the next hour Howard Butler telephoned. He was a fruit and vegetable wholesaler who had dealt with her father for as long as she could remember.

‘Good morning, Mr Butler. Did you want to speak with my father?’ Elyss enquired.

‘Not this time. It’s you I want to talk to,’ he stated, and went on to tell her how he was having a few office problems and needed somebody who knew what they were doing to come and sort things out. ‘I was about to advertise, while at the same time wondering who in the trade I might be able to poach.’ Plainly he had no compunction about head-hunting. ‘When it suddenly struck me that you—who must know the business inside out—might not yet have started looking for a new job.’

‘Um, I haven’t, actually,’ Elyss said, starting to feel quite excited.

‘I couldn’t pay as much as your father paid you, but if you’d like to come and...’

‘You’re suggesting I come for an interview?’ She couldn’t believe it!

‘I shouldn’t think there’s any need for that. I observed you at work when I visited your father’s office. The job’s yours if you want it—starting the first of next month.’

Heavens! Elyss did some rapid thinking. It was certain she was going to have to get a job. There was absolutely no way she was going to live off her parents in Devon while she looked around for work. ‘Er—may I think about it?’ she enquired, feeling she should say yes straight away, but also feeling sensitive as to how her parents were going to take the news that she might not be going to Devon with them.

‘Let me know tomorrow,’ Howard Butler agreed, and, experiencing a mixture of emotions, Elyss put the phone down and turned round to find both her parents watching her.

‘What was that about?’ her mother asked promptly.

Elyss looked from one to the other—it still seemed incredible that something like this should just fall into her lap. ‘I—er—think I’ve just been—er—to coin a phrase—head-hunted.’ She laughed. It was ridiculous. ‘That was Howard Butler. He’s just offered me a job!’

Ridiculous or not, everything moved quickly after that. Her parents did not want her to stay behind when they left, but neither did they want to stand in her way. However, they wanted to know where she would live. And it was then that Elyss remembered the advert for a fourth person to share.

‘Ring now,’ her father suggested.

‘The tenants will be out at their places of work,’ her mother stated.

But, on the off chance that one of them might work unsociable hours, Elyss rang. Nikki was home and sounded so sweet and friendly that Elyss instantly warmed to her. Elyss arranged to go and look at the flat that evening, when the two other residents would be there.

‘How did you get on?’ her mother asked the moment she returned.

‘You know you were sending to auction the furniture you won’t be taking to Devon? Well, can I have some of it?’

That had been over five months ago. She had started work at Howard Butler and Company—and had been quietly appalled at the state of his accounting system. How on earth had he ever been able to muddle through? It was a challenge.

A challenge that kept her very busy as she sorted out accounts unpaid and politely chased up the money, and also paid accounts that Howard Butler’s company owed. She was currently employed on setting up a more efficient system and ensuring it was working smoothly.

As Howard Butler had said, he couldn’t pay her as much as her father had paid her. And what with paying rent, her share of the flat’s outgoings, and running her car, Elyss found it a struggle to last from pay-day to pay-day. It was a comfort to know that Louise, Victoria and Nikki had the same problem.

Where was Nikki? Concern over Nikki’s present unhappiness had been niggling away in the background the whole while. Elyss turned over in her bed to check the time on her bedside digital clock. Grief, it was ten past one! Where was Nikki?

Elyss tried again to sleep, but found her concern for Nikki getting to her. She wondered if Louise and Victoria were awake too and if, like her, they had started to grow anxious about Nikki—the sometimes timid, sometimes funny, scatterbrained, occasionally downright annoying, bag-of-nerves, childlike but most often extremely likeable Nikki.

With sleep nowhere near, Elyss switched on her bedside light and sat up. She wondered about getting up and going to make a warm drink. She could make one for Louise and Victoria too.

Grief! She was getting as dizzy-headed as Nikki. Victoria and Louise were probably fast asleep in dreamland. She stood to risk waking the pair of them if she went clattering around in the kitchen.

She was just about to try again to sleep, when, at last she heard Nikki’s key in the door. Thank goodness for that. She hoped Dave had been kind to her and that there was some good reason for him standing her up. Nikki just didn’t deserve that sort of treatment.

Elyss’s hand went to the lamp—but she did not switch it off. For just then, and in a flurry of agitation—clearly she was too agitated to knock first on Elyss’s door, which was one of the few ‘house’ rules—Nikki hurried in.

‘I saw a line of light under your door. This won’t wait until m-morning!’ Nikki blurted out in a rush, tears streaming from her deeply unhappy pale blue eyes.

‘Oh, Nikki. Nikki, love,’ Elyss cried, hating Dave for doing this to her. ‘Come and sit down.’ She waited until the broken-hearted Nikki had seated herself on the edge of her bed, and then gently probed. ‘What happened? Was Dave...?’

‘I d-didn’t see Dave,’ Nikki wailed. ‘I waited and waited and waited, rang his bell, went and tried to phone him, and then went back and rang his bell again, and waited again. And h-he didn’t come home!’

‘Oh, Nikki, I’m so sorry,’ Elyss tried to soothe.

‘S-so am I,’ Nikki sobbed. ‘I w-was so upset when I drove away from D-Dave’s place. I just wasn’t thinking and—’ She broke off to catch her breath, and with fresh tears spurting, she ended, ‘And, oh, I’m s-so sorry—I cr-crashed your car.’

‘You cr—?’ Elyss didn’t take it in for a second. ‘You crashed my car?’ she checked, somehow unable to believe what she was hearing.

‘I’m sorry,’ Nikki wept. ‘I didn’t mean to. It just...’

‘I should...’ Elyss bit down sharp words. ‘Of course you didn’t,’ she said firmly, swiftly getting herself together. ‘You’re not hurt?’ she checked; first things first! ‘You haven’t been to hospital or...?’

‘No. No. Not a scratch. H-he put me in a taxi and told the taxi driver to bring me here.’

‘He?’ Elyss questioned, taking it slowly—Nikki could get her wires crossed at the best of times. Now, if Elyss was any judge, Nikki was in shock. She would be as brief as possible and see her into bed.

‘The m-man I crashed into,’ Nikki answered.

Oh, my... ‘You crashed into a man?’ she asked faintly, pinning her hopes on the fact that if he’d been able to organise a taxi for Nikki then he must still be in one piece.

‘Yes. Well, not him particularly. ‘I smacked into the s-side of his car.’

‘But he—this man—he, and any of his passengers, he—they—they’re all right?’

Nikki nodded on a shuddering sob. ‘He was by himself—he didn’t seem hurt. He was a bit short with me to start with actually—called me feather-brained—but then, when he could see I was in a bit of a state, he muttered something that didn’t sound very complimentary about my driving. He looked at your c-car and said s-something to the effect that I wouldn’t be driving that heap again in a hurry, and sent me home.’

Oh, heck—by the sound of it, her car was a write-off. Elyss looked at Nikki, half a dozen questions rushing to be asked. But then she took in how beat, defeated, Nikki looked. Added to that, Nikki was ashen and shaking. So Elyss reckoned that any further questioning could wait until morning.

She took Nikki to her room and advised, ‘Get into bed,’ and, unsure what the treatment was for shock, she added gently, ‘I’ll go and get you a couple of aspirins and a cup of sweet tea.’

‘No thanks. I don’t want anything. I j-just want to die.’

‘Oh, come on, love. It isn’t as bad as that,’ Elyss said bracingly. ‘I’ll go and get you a hot water bottle.’

Nikki was in bed when she got back. Elyss handed her the bottle, told her that she mustn’t worry about a thing—and left her to go and do some worrying of her own.

Her first concern was Nikki, who she could see was extremely troubled. From what Elyss had just observed, Nikki just wasn’t up to anything else going wrong with her world. Another disaster, and it seemed to her that her hare-brained flatmate would be even more emotionally distressed.

Well, Nikki would get no pressure from her. Okay, so Nikki had written off her car. Written off—oh, grief! How was she going to get to work in the morning?

Perhaps Nikki hadn’t exactly wrecked it. Perhaps it just looked that way. And why worry about work in the morning? By the sound of it, she was going to have to spend her morning in arranging to get her vehicle towed away from where Nikki had abandoned it, and in making contact with her insurance company.

For the man Nikki had crashed into to be able to tell the taxi driver where to take her meant that Nikki had obviously exchanged names and addresses. Elyss remembered how, only a couple of months ago, she had written a cheque when her car insurance had become due. Nikki would have been able to tell the other driver the name of her insurance company too, Elyss reflected, looking for good points in the whole of this mess. Because by sheer chance Nikki had had a job interview near to the insurance company. ‘Save yourself a stamp,’ she had chirruped in that sweet way of hers. ‘My interview’s tomorrow; I’ll drop your cheque in as I’m passing.’ Nikki had not got the job.

Elyss’s thoughts stayed with insurance companies, hoping that she hadn’t given herself a problem with hers by allowing Nikki to drive her car. She must check that with Victoria in the morning.

Elyss adjusted her alarm to go off a half-hour earlier in the morning. Perhaps with an early start she might not have to take the whole of the morning off work. She fell asleep pondering. If no one was hurt, was one obliged to report an accident to the police?

Having had less than four hours’ sleep, Elyss did not want to get up when her alarm wakened her. She opened her eyes, remembered—and stifled a groan. Shrugging into her robe, she pattered into the kitchen to find that Nikki was already up.

‘Oh, Elyss, I’m so sorry,’ she apologised fretfully once more, before Elyss could so much as wish her, Good morning.

Nikki had a little more colour in her face now, Elyss was glad to note, but she still had that anxious, haunted look about her. ‘Try not to worry,’ Elyss smiled, while trying hard to keep her own worries down. ‘The insurance companies will settle both claims, and I can travel by bus until—’ She broke off. Nikki had gone ashen again. ‘Wh—?’

‘Oh, Elyss. I really am so sorry,’ Nikki apologised yet again, only this time she put her hand in her dressing gown pocket and handed her an envelope—and started to cry.

‘Don’t cry...’ was as far as Elyss got before glancing down at the envelope; she recognised her own writing. It was the envelope she had addressed to her insurance company a couple of months ago!

A feeling of dread shot through her. Even while part of her brain was denying what Nikki’s tears and the sealed envelope might possibly mean, Elyss began to experience panic.

Quickly she slit open the envelope. At speed she took out its contents. Oh, no! It couldn’t be! But—it was. There, in her hand, along with her letter and details, was the cheque she had written to the insurance company. ‘You didn’t...’ she choked hoarsely.

‘I forgot,’ Nikki agonised, her distress quite desperate.

‘It was only when—in between worrying about Dave and your poor car, but thinking how your c-car insurance would pay for everything—I suddenly realised that I’d never handed the cheque in. I know it’s no excuse, but I put that envelope in a separate compartment in my bag so it wouldn’t get all crumpled. Only, as the hours and minutes ticked by and that job interview got nearer and nearer, I got so jittery—that everything else went out of my head.’

‘And you didn’t think about it afterwards!’ Elyss gasped, belatedly realising she had been remiss herself in not following up when no certificate of motor insurance had come through the post. When it hadn’t arrived she had just assumed it had gone to her old address by mistake and would catch up with her. She supposed she should blame pressure of work, staying late reorganising, for making her forget all about it. But, oh, grief, she had been happily driving around these past two months without motor insurance. Oh, heavens, she was uninsured!

So much for thinking that there must be some clause in her insurance that allowed Nikki to drive her car. Neither of them was insured. Oh, my sainted aunt, to have moved that car so much as an inch on the highway had been a criminal act!

‘Oh, don’t be cross with me! Please don’t be cross with me, Elyss,’ Nikki begged, fresh tears falling. ‘Everything’s going so terribly wrong for me just now.’

‘Oh, Nikki!’ Elyss answered helplessly, again aware of how very distracted Nikki was. She was starting to feel much the same way herself as it very quickly dawned on her that there would be no money forthcoming to replace her written-off car. But, worse than that, there would be no money from her insurance company to pay for the repairs to the car which Nikki had crashed into either! Criminal! If she couldn’t find the money out of her own pocket, she could be sued in the courts for it!

She pulled herself away from her own worries as she became aware that Nikki was getting herself into something of a state again. ‘It’s all right!’ she tried to soothe. All right? Thanks to Nikki she could end up with a criminal record! Ye gods! It didn’t bear thinking about. Yet she just couldn’t ignore it and hope that it would go away. ‘Sit down, Nikki,’ she instructed, and as Nikki complied, dabbing at her eyes, Elyss found it impossible to sit down herself. ‘I’ll make a pot of tea,’ she said as kindly as she was able—and got busy, her mind shooting off at a tangent.

She didn’t have any money to pay for repairs! She could end up with a criminal record! Calm down. So, okay, she had been in complete ignorance about the fact that she wasn’t insured. She had given her cheque to someone else to pay the insurance for her—oh, that was certain to go down well in court! Heavens—her parents! They’d be thunderstruck that, within months of leaving them, she had landed herself in this mess.

But it wasn’t her mess, it was Nikki’s. Oh, Lord. Elyss could just imagine Nikki’s reaction if she so much as mentioned court. She sighed, realising full well just then that it might be Nikki’s mess, but she was the one who was going to have to clear it up.

She poured some tea and felt wretched when, as she handed Nikki a cup, she saw that Nikki’s hands were shaking so much she could barely hold it.

‘Come on, Nikki,’ she said bracingly, sounding far more confident than she felt, though her initial shock was starting to wear off. ‘Nothing’s as bad as that.’

‘You reckon!’ Plainly Nikki didn’t believe it, and Elyss wasn’t convinced herself, but nothing was going to be achieved by both of them breaking down in floods of tears.

She tried hard to be objective. Perhaps, as she’d told Nikki, nothing was so bad. Perhaps, if the damage to the other car was only slight, she might be able to settle. If she asked Howard Butler for an advance on her salary—though that would mean letting him know she lived from pay-day to pay-day, of course, and it would bruise her pride. Oh, grief, she couldn’t do that! He’d wonder why she couldn’t ask her parents for help—and no way was he, or anyone else, going to know that her parents were as hard put to stretch their resources as she was.

‘Er—was there very much damage to the other car?’ she asked Nikki with seeming casualness, glad to see that, for all her eyes were red and puffy, Nikki had stopped crying.

‘I s-sort of caught him semi-sideways on. I think he’ll need a new door—at least,’ Nikki answered.

Elyss inwardly paled. A new door—that would cost hundreds. ‘What sort of car was it?’ she followed on, praying for something small: a mini would suit, but even that wouldn’t come cheap.

Nikki swallowed. ‘A Ferrari, I think.’

A Ferrari! Elyss’s legs went weak—forget hundreds, she needed to think thousands. Great! The way her luck was going Nikki had most likely crashed into some judge, or, at the very least, some chief constable. ‘You exchanged names?’ She sat down—this was a nightmare!

Nikki put her hand into her other dressing gown pocket and withdrew a small card which she passed over. Elyss took it. It was a business card. Saul Pendleton was neither a judge nor a top policeman, Elyss saw. She registered the fact that Saul Pendleton worked for a firm called Oak International. His card gave both his home and office address, and he had a flat in a very plush area of London. Suddenly she became aware that Nikki was looking at her as if she had something on her mind.

‘What is it?’ Elyss asked quietly, having heard enough to be going on with, and not certain that she wanted to hear any more.

‘I was a bit—er—shaken up last night,’ Nikki confessed.

‘Yes?’ Elyss encouraged.

‘I wasn’t thinking clearly.’

Elyss didn’t like the sound of this. ‘I—don’t suppose you were,’ she answered apprehensively.

‘He—Mr Pendleton, he was a bit—blunt.’ Well, she had banged into his Ferrari! ‘He—um—asked my name, and...’

‘And?’

‘And...’ Nikki swallowed, and then whispered, ‘I—er—gave him y-your name.’

Elyss’s jaw dropped. ‘As well as your own, you mean?’

Nikki shook her head. ‘I was too terrified to give him my name. He was—er—sort of—overpowering. I couldn’t think straight. I just told him I was—Elyss Harvey.’

Elyss was staring at her in stunned silence when Louise came into the kitchen. She looked from one to the other, observing one totally astounded expression and the puffy red eyes on the other occupant. ‘What goes on?’ she asked.

‘I hardly know where to begin,’ Elyss answered—and Nikki burst into tears. Ten minutes later, and Louise knew all that there was to know. Elyss concluded by passing her the card which Nikki had given her. ‘Mr Pendleton works at Oak International. I...’

‘Saul Pendleton is Oak International—or will be at the end of this year when the present chairman retires and he takes over,’ Louise interrupted quietly.

‘You know him?’ Elyss asked.

‘Not personally,’ she denied. ‘But we’re in fibre optics too—we’re not a multi-million concern like Oak, of course, but we have small dealings with them from time to time.’

Louise worked as a PA in a forward-looking group and, Elyss had already gathered, knew quite a few people of note in the business world. ‘You know of him, though?’ she pressed. Louise nodded. ‘And?’

Louise gave a hasty glance to Nikki. ‘He’s—er—got a reputation for being a tough operator. Straight, resolute; try to put one over on him at your peril.’

‘Oooh!’ Nikki squealed, and at her fresh outbreak of tears, Louise took a firm hand.

‘You haven’t had much sleep, have you?’ she sympathised with Nikki. ‘Come on, back to bed.’

Between them they got Nikki into bed. ‘Don’t worry about a thing,’ Elyss heard herself say—when she was a seething mass of worry herself. ‘Just try and get some rest.’

‘Logic tells me we should be tougher with her,’ Louise opined when they got back to the kitchen. ‘But she sort of gets to you.’

‘I know,’ Elyss agreed. ‘She’s in a shocking state.’

‘I thought the same myself. I don’t think Victoria’s going to work today—something to do with a day she’s owed, she was saying on Saturday. We’ll get her to keep an eye on Nikki. Now, what are you going to do about...?’

‘I’ll have to get in touch with Mr Pendleton, I suppose,’ Elyss answered; like her, Louise appeared to think that Nikki wasn’t up to dealing with it. ‘Is he really as tough as you say?’

‘Believe it!’

Oh, heck—‘try to put one over on him at your peril,’ Louise had said, and what had Nikki done but given him a false name? ‘What else do you know about him?’ Elyss asked. Perhaps he was good to his mother and stray animals. Perhaps he hadn’t got a mother. ‘How old is he?’ she asked, following that train of thought.

‘Young to be in the position he’s in. Still in his thirties, I think—and a bachelor with it.’

‘He doesn’t like women?’ Elyss questioned, seeing any chance of appealing to his chivalrous side going up in smoke.

‘On the contrary. While it’s said he keeps his work and his private. life in two very separate compartments, it seems he’s not lacking for female company.’

‘Trust him to have a Ferrari,’ Elyss commented, knowing she was being unfairly sour, but getting stabbed by darts of panic from time to time.

‘He’ll be as mad as hell when he knows he’ll probably have to pay for the repairs himself,’ Louise volunteered.

Elyss wished she hadn’t. ‘Insult added to injury,’ she sighed. ‘I’d better phone him.’

‘Do it now—it might not be as bad as you anticipate,’ Louise advised.

Elyss was reluctant. ‘It’s too early. He might not be up yet.’

‘You think he’s got where he is by being a lie-a-bed?’

‘Point taken. I’ll—er—ring him from my room,’ Elyss decided. If she was to be verbally slapped down, she’d rather it was private—even if what Saul Pendleton had to say could not be overheard.

‘I’d better go and shower, or I’ll be late,’ Louise commented and went off to the bathroom, while Elyss went to the sitting room to collect the phone.

‘Pendleton,’ a clear concise voice answered.

‘Oh, good morning. I’m sorry to contact you so early, but I thought you might have a busy day ahead.’

‘Did you, now?’ Cool, polite, waiting.

‘My name’s Elyss Harvey.’ She quickly got herself together. The pause that followed was almost tangible. He was still waiting. If he was clever enough to be in line for the chairmanship of Oak International, then he was clever enough to remember the name Nikki had given him last night, Elyss thought sniffily. ‘My car was in collision with yours last night,’ she felt obliged to remind him when he still hadn’t said anything.

That did bring forth some response, and his reply sounded every bit as tough as Louise had promised, albeit delivered in silky tones. ‘I trust you’re not ringing to suggest the mess your vehicle made of mine was my fault.’

‘I—er—my vehicle wasn’t looking too clever either,’ she stated stiffly, something in Saul Pendleton’s tone needling her.

‘True,’ he agreed. ‘According to the mechanic who came out, it could be a few days before it’s drivable again.’

Her heart leapt. Her car wasn’t the write-off Nikki had said it was! Elyss busily tried to estimate the cost of repairs while at the same time frantically searching for some tactful way to let him know that she had neither insurance nor money for her own car repairs—let alone his.

Then she found that her tact, for the moment at any rate, would not be needed. Because clearly Saul Pendleton was not a man with a lot of time to spare to be cluttered up with incidentals. ‘I’ve an appointment shortly,’ he stated. ‘You’d better come and see me tonight.’ He was also a man to whom nobody said ‘no’, apparently. ‘I’ll see you at eight.’

With that the line went dead and Elyss was left staring at the phone—stunned! It wasn’t eight o’clock in the morning yet—and he had an appointment! Whew—that was life in the fast lane, if you pleased!

She didn’t know how she felt about having to meet him that night, at his home presumably, but didn’t see that she had very much choice. It would be pointless asking Nikki to go with her. Nikki was in pieces now; she’d fold completely if she had to stand in front of that tough-sounding man and, on top of everything else, had to confess that last night she had lied to him when she had given her name as Elyss Harvey.

Elyss sat on her bed deep in thought for some minutes. It would be wrong to go and meet Saul Pendleton and to pretend that she was the one who had crashed into him last night. She knew that. But it seemed to her that whichever one of them had been driving, the outcome was going to be the same. Elyss had never done anything dishonest in her life, but with Nikki feeling so low and, Elyss judged, unable to take much more pressure—might it not be such a bad idea to keep her out of it completely?

CHAPTER TWO

LOUISE was ready to go to her office by the time Elyss had got herself a little together and emerged from her room. ‘How did it go?’ Louise asked.

‘I’m to go to his home tonight,’ Elyss answered.

‘He didn’t wish to discuss it over the phone?’

‘He’s busy—unfortunately I’m not in a position to say no.’

‘I’m afraid so,’ Louise commiserated. ‘I’m sorry I can’t offer to go with you, but...’

‘That’s all right,’ Elyss smiled, aware that Louise was seeing her ex-husband that evening about a financial matter. She realised, too, that Louise seemed, like her, to know that it was out of the question for Nikki to go. ‘I’d better get the Yellow Pages out and start ringing round the all-night recovery services. Apparently my vehicle isn’t the write-off Nikki thought. Saul Pendleton called a mechanic out.’

‘You could ring and ask him which garage,’ Louise suggested.

Elyss recalled the no-nonsense tones of Saul Pendleton. Somehow, given that the Ferrari’s owner was somewhere fulfilling his appointment, she felt she would much prefer to hunt through the business section of the telephone directory.

First, however, she went and got ready for her day. That done, she again picked up the phone and found, in actual fact, that it took less time than she would have thought to track down the correct garage. Prompt Motor Services sounded a very efficient company—and expensive. She asked for a rough estimate of how much it would cost to repair her car—and was quoted a figure that made her eyes water.

‘Er—could you give me an estimate for just making it mechanically sound, without dealing with the—er—dents.’

‘Dents! You’ll need a whole new wing—plus. Aren’t you claiming on your insurance?’

‘I—er—haven’t decided yet,’ Elyss replied—and felt just as winded by the lesser and very approximate estimate the garage man gave her. Even that figure seemed impossible to find!

But she would have to accept. To have a car was essential, if she was to get to the area where she worked. Also she had promised her father she would go down to Devon in five weeks’ time for his birthday. Her father would meet her at the station, if need be, but train fares were not cheap.

‘Would you go ahead with just the essential repairs, please?’ she requested, and ended the call. Then she rang Howard Butler to tell him that she would be very late in.

Her next assignment was to present herself at an insurance company where she personally saw to it that her vehicle was insured. Of necessity, she took out the cheaper third party insurance in preference to her normal fully comprehensive cover. But at least she was legally insured to drive. It was a pity that for the moment she did not have a vehicle to drive. Then she visited Prompt Motor Services—and was horrified at the damage to her car! No wonder Nikki had been in shock. It was a miracle she had got out of it alive!

Elyss was still feeling shaken herself when, by a most circuitous route, involving changing transport several times, she made her way to her place of employment. At the end of her working day, she took a similarly tortuous route back home again.

She was late getting in, but was pleased to see that Nikki, though still puffy-eyed, seemed a lot calmer. Elyss saw no point in causing her to get into a state again by revealing that she was shortly going to see Mr Saul Pendleton.

Truth to tell, Elyss was feeling in something of a state herself as she hurriedly showered and changed into an elegant dress of deep blue. As rain was pouring down outside, she topped it with her full-length raincoat.

She was certain it must be the wettest May on record, and it was cold with it. She did not want to arrive at Saul Pendleton’s house looking like a drowned rat, and left her room seriously considering the expense of a taxi when Victoria chirruped that she was going out herself. ‘Want a lift?’ she volunteered.

Louise had already told Victoria about her appointment with Saul Pendleton, Elyss discovered, and they discussed the accident and the state Nikki was in on the way.

‘If it goes on like this much longer, we’re going to have to persuade her to see Dr. Lowe. Perhaps he’ll prescribe something to calm her down,’ Victoria said. ‘I’d like to get my hands on that Dave!’ She pulled up at the smart address Elyss had given her. ‘How the other half live!’ she exclaimed admiringly as Elyss got out. ‘Best of luck!’

‘Thanks. And thanks, too, for the lift.’

Elyss squared her shoulders and pushed a smart, glass-panelled door open—and discovered she was going nowhere until she had given the uniformed security man behind a desk in the foyer her name and that of the person she was there to see.

She told him she was Elyss Harvey, and she had come to see Mr Saul Pendleton, and waited while he went to the phone and relayed the information. Then he put the phone down to tell her pleasantly, ‘Mr Pendleton is expecting you, Miss Harvey. If you’d like to...’

He saw her over to the lift and was already on the way back to his post as the lift doors closed. Saul Pendleton knew she had arrived!

Elyss had eaten very little that day, a fact she was now glad of as her insides churned, and she wished the next fifteen minutes over. The lift stopped. She got out and at once found the door she was looking for.

She swallowed hard, squared her shoulders again and rang the bell. After a short while the door opened and a dark-haired, grey-eyed bachelor in his mid-thirties stood there.

Elyss was blonde-haired and blue-eyed, like Nikki, and it had been dark when that crash had happened. They were about the same height, and both slender. So why, as the grey-eyed man silently studied her, did it not now seem so simple to make it appear that she and Nikki were one and the same person?

‘Good evening, Mr Pendleton.’ Elyss did her best, realising that she was supposed to know him, while she kept her fingers crossed that he was Saul Pendleton—if he wasn’t, she had fallen at the first hurdle.

‘Miss Harvey,’ he replied, with a look of toughness there in his eyes that suggested ‘Don’t tangle with me unless you’re up to it’. ‘Come in,’ he invited.

She crossed over his threshold and he closed the door. She waited and then followed him from a most elegant hall into his drawing room, which was the last word in elegance—and she’d thought the apartment she shared was smart!

‘Do you want to take your raincoat off?’ he enquired. She didn’t want to stay that long—but suddenly she was feeling hot.

‘Thank you,’ she said, and shrugged out of her coat, handing it to him. He draped it over a nearby chair.

‘Take a seat,’ he suggested when she stood in the middle of his plush carpet wishing she could remember just one sentence from any of the dozen or so she had been rehearsing for most of the day.

‘Thank you,’ she murmured again.

‘How did you get here—by taxi?’ he enquired as she settled herself on one sofa and he did likewise on one opposite.

‘A friend gave me a lift.’

‘Boyfriend?’ he enquired, but she could tell from the stern look of him that he wasn’t particularly interested in her answer.

‘No,’ she replied, and left it at that. She could see no reason to waste further time. ‘I’m very sorry about the accident,’ she began for starters.

He observed her silently for a few moments. Then coolly remarked, ‘It’s something that you admit liability, I suppose.’

Oh, heck—was she not supposed to do that? Not that it mattered; Nikki had said that it was all her fault. Elyss hesitated. The state Nikki was in, perhaps she’d got it a little wrong.

‘Are you saying that you’re a little to blame?’ Elyss enquired hopefully. Even if she had to pay only half it would be a tremendous relief.

‘I’m not saying anything of the sort!’ Saul Pendleton replied sharply. ‘As well you know—if you remember that right turn I endeavoured to make at the traffic lights last night.’

So much for tremendous relief, Elyss mused unhappily, not liking to have her head bitten off for her trouble. Though she took heart that, by the sound of it, he believed that she was the blonde who had crashed into him.

‘Who could forget a thing like that?’ she murmured. For some unknown reason she was feeling in need of an excuse. ‘You know how it is; when the lights changed to green, all I could think of was getting over them before they went to red again. Er—you weren’t hurt?’ she thought to enquire of this man who was fully in charge and didn’t appear to have a thing wrong with him.

‘I fared better than my car,’ he answered drily.

‘I’m sorry about that,’ Elyss said. ‘About your car, I mean.’ And, getting a bit fed up with having to continually apologise—especially for something which she had not done—she enquired politely, ‘Have you been able to get an estimate for repairs?’ At last they were getting down to the nub of the whole issue.

‘Not yet,’ he replied, his eyes on her richly blue ones. ‘Though, as you’d expect, it will be in the region of at least two thousand pounds.’

Oh, no! Elyss wasn’t sure that she didn’t lose some of her colour. ‘As much as two?’ she asked faintly.

‘A minimum of two thousand, I’d say,’ he replied confidently.

The words trembled on her lips to ask him to get it done somewhere cheaper, but she realised from his clothes, his home, the very manner of him, that he never had anything done on the cheap. ‘When is it likely to be finished—repaired?’ she made herself enquire. With luck it would take all of a year to get the spare parts.

‘The car has been transferred to a specialised garage today. But it will depend on whether parts are available here or whether the garage will have to send to Italy for them. Then they’ll be fitting, painting—sorting out the electronics...’

Oh, heck, it was, she saw, going to cost all of two thousand pounds. By the sound of it, though, it could take quite a while—but nowhere near long enough for her to be able to scrape the money together.

‘Meanwhile, I’ve been able to hire a car until—’

‘You’ve hired a car?’ she cut in in a rush, a note of strain in her voice. This was something she just hadn’t thought of. Oh, her stars! The cost of hiring a car would be down to her—she just knew it! She prayed he had hired a small, everyday run-about. But, even as she asked, ‘Er—a Ferrari, I suppose?’ she knew the answer.

‘You suppose correctly, Miss Harvey.’

She started to feel light-headed. Her mind just would not cope with how much it must cost to hire a Ferrari—and the length of time Saul Pendleton was going to need to keep it.

She fought to pull herself together and to hide that she was in panic mode. ‘The th-thing is,’ she began stiltedly. She was here now; there was no point in going away and worrying herself silly. She must try to get something said, sorted out, and settled here and now.

‘Yes?’ he enquired politely when she had got no further.

At that point Elyss started to actively dislike this man. She had a feeling that he knew she was in one very big mess—but was he saying one word to try and help? Was he, blazes!

She swallowed hard. Be fair. He had been driving along minding his business before her car had sideswiped him. ‘The thing is,’ she got started again. ‘I was—er—wondering if you would—um—consider—’ She broke off. He must have the central heating on—she was all of a lather. ‘Consider giving me time to pay.’ Hells bells, at thirty pounds a month—the very maximum she could scrape together—it would take seven years plus to reimburse him.

He smiled. She liked his smile. It made her feel better. It seemed he might be prepared to consider her request anyhow. She smiled back. His dark eyes went from her blue eyes down to her gently curving mouth.

Then his eyes were back to holding hers, when he remarked pleasantly, ‘Oh, there’s no need for that, Miss Harvey.’ Her smile widened—he must have come up with some answer. She was still smiling when, smoothly, he added, ‘Your insurance company will settle everything, I’m sure.’ Abruptly her smile faded, and she started to dislike him again. ‘You are insured?’ he enquired silkily.

Elyss knew then that he knew that she was not insured. She didn’t know how he knew, she just instinctively felt it. The knowledge that he was just playing with her rattled her. ‘You know damn well I’m not!’ she flew. She instantly wanted those words back. Oh, grief, this man missed not a thing. His eyes were on her, taking in, reading. She lowered her gaze to her lap. ‘I thought I was,’ she felt compelled to confess, her tone quieter, not angry. ‘I gave—’ She broke off, took a shaky breath and raised her head to look at him once more. She found his eyes were still steady on her. He was waiting. From where she was sitting Elyss realised that she couldn’t get into any more trouble, having owned up to not being insured. ‘A friend was going to drop my cheque into my insurance company a couple of months ago—only she— forgot.’ Oh, dammit, that sounded so unlikely she was sure he wouldn’t believe her.

‘You should have checked!’ Saul Pendleton stated curtly—and that annoyed her. She knew she should have checked! She didn’t need him to remind her.

‘You obviously did!’ she snapped—and got a very grim, unsmiling look for her trouble.

‘You think I shouldn’t have? After your phone call this morning...’ He let that go to change tack, to abruptly question, ‘This friend—the one who forgot to drop your cheque off—is she the same friend who was driving your car last night?’

It was unexpected. ‘You know?’ she gasped. ‘You know it wasn’t me?’

‘Of course I know!’ he rapped. ‘The woman I spoke with on the phone this morning sounded nothing like the hysterical female I had to deal with last night.’

‘She could have calmed down by this morning,’ Elyss argued, even though she realised she might fare better if she were placatory rather than argumentative. Yet she didn’t seem able to act in a way in which she did not feel. This man, she realised, effortlessly rattled her normally even temperament.

‘Not to that extent, she couldn’t,’ Saul Pendleton gritted concisely. He was right, of course. Nikki had still been in a state this morning. ‘Though she might well have remembered that neither car was anywhere near a set of traffic lights when she attempted to demolish my car.’

Elyss gasped in astonishment. Talk about ‘Walk into my parlour’! Not minutes ago she had agreed their vehicles had been in collision at some traffic lights!

‘You tricked me!” she exploded angrily.

‘Don’t get on your high horse that I tricked you!’ he rapped. ‘No one does me down, Miss Harvey! From the way I was hearing it, you were out to have a damned good try.’

She hadn’t a leg to stand on. It hurt to back down, but... She drew a shaky breath. ‘It wasn’t like...’ she halted. To tell him how it really was she would have to tell him all about Nikki, and she wasn’t ready to do that. ‘So—er—after my phone call, you checked with the insurance company. Nikki—’ She broke off. She hadn’t been going to mention Nikki’s name! ‘And they told you I wasn’t insured.’

‘Not with them you weren’t. Nor did they know you at the address I was given. You do live there?’ he demanded.

‘I moved in five months ago—I forgot to give the insurers my change of address.’

She received a grunt for her oversight. There was no point in her explaining that she’d been so busy at work she hadn’t had time to think much about anything else—much less to remember to tell people she dealt with only once a year that she had moved.

‘You forgot a lot of things by the sound of it.’ I wish I could forget you! she thought. The gloves, it seemed, were off. ‘You are Elyss Harvey?’ he questioned toughly. ‘Should I decide to sue, will I be confronted by yet another blonde-haired, blue-eyed Elyss Harvey in court?’

Court! Oh, heavens, her parents would be most perturbed. Why couldn’t he drive a Metro? ‘My name is Elyss Harvey,’ she confirmed unhappily.

‘And your friend?’

‘Her name isn’t important,’ Elyss told him quickly.

‘Not important!’ He seemed astounded. ‘Driving without due care and attention, giving a false name, to itemise but two misdemeanours. We haven’t come yet to the criminal act of driving while not insured. Add—’

‘She’s not well,’ Elyss interrupted quickly, having heard quite enough to be going on with. ‘She’s having boyfriend trouble. She’s...’

‘She’s in a whole heap of trouble!’ Saul pronounced curtly. ‘And so, if you’ll forgive me for saying so, are you.’

Elyss stared at him. This interview wasn’t going anywhere near as well as she had hoped. ‘Will you not give me time to pay what I’ll owe you?’ She repeated the question she had asked earlier. The impossible question.

‘You work?’ he asked bluntly.

‘Yes.’

‘What do you do?’

‘I work, mainly in administration, in a wholesalers.’

‘Who?’

She did not like his questions. She did not want to tell him who she worked for. But, she realised, she didn’t have a choice. ‘Howard Butler and Company,’ she reluctantly answered.

‘How much do you make?’ Cheeky devil! It was none of his business! Though... She stopped short. Of course it was his business. If he was considering allowing her to settle her debt by instalments—which meant he would have to pay the garage bill out of his own pocket—then she supposed he had every right to assess whether she was likely to default on those payments. She told him how much she earned. She hadn’t expected him to be impressed. He wasn’t.

‘I’ve only been there a short while,’ she defended.

‘And Mr Butler was so kind in offering me the job, I don’t like to ask for more.’

His look said, More fool you, but he refrained from making such a comment. He enquired instead, ‘Is that your sole income?’

She felt embarrassed. Saul Pendleton was quick. He’d have worked out by now that she’d still be in his debt years from now. ‘Yes,’ she mumbled.

‘You live in a smart area,’ he stated. ‘Pay rent?’

Heavens above! Louise hadn’t been joking when she’d said he was a tough operator. Straight, resolute—and you did try to put one over on him at your peril! Elyss gave a shaky sigh. ‘Yes,’ she replied. She should never have come. Though what other way was there open to her? ‘But there are four of us,’ she added. ‘We each contribute a—’

‘All women?’ he cut in abruptly. What had that got to do with anything?

‘Of course!’ Elyss answered, a shade primly she had to own—but his tone nettled her.

‘And how long, even assuming I’m prepared to condone your criminal act,’ he inserted, ‘do you think you’ll be in my debt?’

He knew the answer to that as well as she. She gave him a defeated look. ‘What are you going to do?’ she asked.

‘What do you think I should do?’ he tossed back, but did not wait for her to reply. He concisely stripped the whole issue down to one sentence. ‘You’re criminally uninsured and are ultimately responsible for damage to my vehicle to the tune of at least two thousand pounds. You’re not seriously suggesting, the criminal aspect apart, that I do nothing?’

She must have been in cloud-cuckoo-land to have ever accepted his invitation to come here tonight, Elyss realised. ‘I suppose not,’ she mumbled unhappily, aware that she had achieved nothing other than to discover that she was, financially, in far deeper trouble than she had estimated. That thought panicked her again. ‘I don’t suppose you could claim off your insurance company, could you?’ she asked in a rush.

Saul Pendleton studied her eager expression silently for a moment. Hope grew—and was knocked flat again when he replied, ‘I could. But, since I’d have to give them full details of the accident, I’m fairly certain they’d take you to court for the recovery of their money.’ Oh, Lord. She was in a mess whatever he chose to do. If he didn’t prosecute her then his insurance company would. He stood up, reaching for her raincoat. The interview, it was plain—with no conclusion reached—was over. ‘Leave it with me,’ Saul Pendleton decreed, holding her raincoat out for her to put it on. ‘I’ll think about it, and be in touch.’

Her spirits lifted. She turned, buttoning her coat, looking at him. Was there a chance? ‘Thank you,’ she said quietly, afraid to say more, afraid that he might change his mind, and that any small hope that they could come to some sort of an agreement would be gone. She turned towards the door, and he went with her into the hall. ‘You have my address?’ she thought to enquire, and wished she hadn’t. He’d think her stupid. Of course he had her address—he had commented on it being in a smart area. ‘Oh!’ she suddenly exclaimed as they reached the hall door.

‘Oh?’ he queried as she stopped dead and looked up at him.

‘C-could I ask you not to call at the flat?’ she asked anxiously, in no position to ask favours but...

‘I doubt I was proposing to do that,’ Saul Pendleton drawled. How was it that she could feel ready to beg while, at the same time, she also felt sorely inclined to stamp her foot down hard on his? He confused her; there was just something about him that affected her oddly. ‘But,’ he resumed, ‘if you’d rather I didn’t.’

Sarcastic swine. ‘Nikki.’ She didn’t want to explain—but who held all the aces? Certainly not her. ‘She’s—er—not coping very well at the moment,’ she elaborated. ‘She’s a bundle of nerves. It would take little more to...’

‘Hmm,’ he butted in, and did nothing to raise himself in Elyss’ popularity stakes when he grunted, ‘In which case you should never have let her have your car!’ This was a lecture she didn’t need! He opened the door and walked her to the lift. ‘I’ll contact you when I’ve given your problem some thought,’ he pronounced. And that was that.

Elyss made her way back to the flat in a disconsolate frame of mind. Saul Pendleton was treating the matter as her problem rather than his. Which, since he wasn’t the one with the threat of court action hanging over him, it was, she supposed dejectedly. But, given that he’d said he would give her problem some thought, the nearer she got to her flat, the more she realised that, as clever as he was, he would not be able to come up with any solution. Nikki might have been the one who crashed into him, but it was her car, and it was she, Elyss Harvey, who hadn’t had that car covered by insurance.

The rest of the week dragged by, with Elyss camped near the telephone every evening, ready to snatch it up should it ring. It rang on Tuesday for Victoria, on Wednesday for Louise and on Thursday Elyss’s mother telephoned for a chat.

‘Everything all right?’ her mother asked.

‘Couldn’t be better,’ Elyss replied—there were just some things you didn’t worry your parents with.

On Friday evening she and Louise went with Nikki who had a doctor’s appointment. Dr Lowe had been her GP for years, and Nikki was in his surgery for some while. She seemed a little better for having a chat with him, and was keen to start taking the medication he had prescribed.

The weekend dragged by, with Victoria out most of the time and either Elyss and Nikki, or Louise and Nikki, or sometimes all three of them, walking and talking together.

Elyss rang her parents on Sunday, but that was the only time she touched the telephone that weekend. It rang, but the calls were never for her.

She went to work on Monday morning realising that she was going to have to get an additional job. She couldn’t do evening work because she never knew how late she was going to have to work at the office. But, except once every five or six weeks, when she travelled down to Devon, her weekends were free.

She had been at her desk for an hour, getting deep into some work and putting to the back of her mind her plans to hopefully find work as a barmaid, a cleaner, a chauffeuse—she was ready to do anything—when the phone on her desk rang.

‘You’re through,’ she heard Peggy the switchboard operator say—then there was silence.

‘Hello?’ Elyss enquired.

‘Pendleton,’ replied the voice she had been hearing in her sleep.

She was shaken. She had been waiting for his call. For a week she had been waiting for his call. But not for a moment had she thought he would ring her at her place of work! It threw her. ‘What are you ringing me here for?’ she asked without thinking.

‘You’d prefer that I didn’t?’ he enquired silkily.

She took a steadying breath. Circumstances decreed that she swallowed her ire. ‘No, no,’ she denied. ‘It’s just that I rather supposed you’d ring me at home when you’d—er—er—come to...’ Her voice petered out as her throat went dry. He must have decided what he was going to do!

‘I had an idea your flat was out of bounds,’ he drawled.

‘You’ve—um—got a point there,’ she agreed evenly, though he wasn’t to know that if Nikki was about, then, the moment Elyss knew it was Saul Pendleton calling, she had planned to take the phone to her room and have her conversation with him in private. Louise and Victoria, however, were acquainted with the fact that she was awaiting this particular phone call. ‘You’ve-er...’ Oh, what on earth was she hesitating about? There could be only one reason why he had phoned. ‘You’ve reached a decision?’ she asked, and clutched hard onto the phone receiver as she waited to hear what was to be her fate.

She was no further forward after—being nowhere near as shy as she was when it came to blunt talking—he abruptly told her, ‘I don’t intend to discuss it over the phone. We’ll have dinner tonight.’

Oh, will we? Oh, what a man he was for rattling her! Just like that: ‘We’ll have dinner’, and he expected her to jump at the chance! She was about to tell him that she was very fussy about whom she deigned to dine with—why should he think he’d cornered the market on blunt talking?—when it very quickly dawned on her that he was right. If he said jump, then she jolly well had to jump.

‘Very well,’ she accepted politely, as any well brought up young lady might.

‘I gather you’d rather I didn’t come to your flat to collect you?’ Clearly he had never doubted but that she would accept.

‘You gather correctly,’ she replied evenly.

‘I’ll send a taxi. Be ready at eight.’

He was gone. End of conversation. ‘Be ready’—end of story, no debate. What was it about this man that made her go from controlled to confused, from hot and anxious to cross and ready to stamp on his foot? Never had she met a man who could so easily raise her hackles. But then, she wasn’t used to being bossed around—it was hard to take. However, she faced it: she was just not in any position to do anything about it.

Elyss made a point of leaving work on time that night. All three of her flatmates were home when she arrived. Nikki was looking a little better than she had last Monday, Elyss was glad to note.

‘Do you want to share in the Spanish omelette and salad I’m conjuring up?’ Victoria asked cheerfully.

Her Spanish omelettes were most adventurous, Elyss had discovered, consisting mainly of anything left over and cooked inside beaten eggs. ‘Thanks, but no. I’m—er—having dinner out tonight,’ Elyss declined, and knew she had gone red when three pairs of eyes stared at her.

‘You’re blushing!’ Victoria teased. ‘You’ve got a date! You’ve actually accepted...’

‘Leave her alone, Victoria, there’s a love.’ This came quietly from Louise.

Elyss looked over to her. Louise was clearer thinking than either Victoria or Nikki. Elyss was fairly certain that Louise had twigged that for ‘date’ she should read ‘second interview with Saul Pendleton’.

‘Anyone want a cup of tea?’ Elyss asked, her ‘date’ not up for discussion.

‘I’ll make it,’ Victoria volunteered sunnily. ‘You go and shower and make yourself stunning for Mr Mystery.’

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