“I don’t remember having an appointment with you!”

He barked the words curtly, rapidly recovering from having appeared momentarily rocked.

Appointment! Yancie fumed; she was angry, not to mention a bundle of nerves into the bargain. Perhaps that was why, when she had half decided not to mention his proposal if he didn’t remember it, that she’d snapped back bluntly, “That’s no way to speak to your fiancée!”

Thomson stared back at her, his expression positively staggered.

Yancie didn’t know which of them was the more shocked. What she did know, though, was that this was the first he’d heard of it—or wanted to hear of it.

For three cousins it has to be marriage—pure and simple!

Yancie, Fennia and Astra are cousins—exceedingly close cousins, who’ve grown up together and shared the same experiences. For all of them, one thing is certain: they’ll never be like their mothers, having serial, meaningless affairs. They’ve pledged that, for them, it has to be marriage—or nothing!

Meet Yancie

in

THE FEISTY FIANCÉE

The Feisty Fiancée
Jessica Steele

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER ONE

IT WAS the first job she’d ever had, and she loved it. Yancie steered the Mercedes onto the motorway and in next to no time was in the fast lane speeding to pick up her passenger.

Not that there should have been any need to pile on the speed. Had she in fact been where she was supposed to be she would not have needed to be driving anywhere at all.

That was the only snag with this job—there was a lot of waiting around. She wasn’t used to waiting around; she was used to be being busy. Truth to tell though, the hanging around hadn’t proved any great problem. Not after the first week anyhow. She had only been in the job for three weeks, but after the first week of dropping off some high-up executive or other in the Addison Kirk Group and being told she would be required again in two hours, or three hours’ time, whenever, Yancie had come to the conclusion she had better things to do than hang around cooling her heels.

Everything had worked out perfectly after that.

She visited museums, art galleries and cinemas, stopped by to call on friends if she happened to be anywhere within a twenty-mile radius. And even on one occasion she had been able to call in on her mother—taking care of course to first remove the identifying label complete with photograph—Yancie Dawkins—she was supposed to wear at all times on the jacket of her uniform. Bubbles to that!

Yancie was very much aware that her mother would not like it at all if she ever found out she had not only left her home, where she’d lived with her stepfather, but had actually found herself a job. She had once vaguely mooted that she wouldn’t mind a career in something; her mother had been scandalised.

It made for an easier life if she said nothing, Yancie mused, and smiled as she thought few people she knew would be brave enough to risk her mother’s wrath by enlightening her.

Yancie took a quick glance to the seat beside her where the identifying tag lay. She must remember to put it on again before she picked up today’s executive, Mr Clements.

She motored on at speed, reflecting on how the job had more found her than she had found it. Though in actual fact it was her cousin, Greville, to be more accurate, who had found it for her. And, if she was going to be even more precise, Greville, her half-cousin.

Though she loved him to bits, as her ‘full’ cousins also did. But Yancie was a good driver and was able to be totally aware of her surroundings, to anticipate any sudden moves other drivers might make, while at the same time reflecting on past events.

It had not been to her own mother she had gone when, pride ruling, she had left the comfortable home she shared with her stepfather and his daughter four weeks ago, but to Aunt Delia, Greville’s mother.

Of course, Yancie admitted, she should never have let Suzannah Lloyd borrow her car. She wouldn’t have had she known Sukey was going to turn it over and cause it to be a write-off. Having assured herself that Sukey was all right and that nobody else was hurt, Yancie had told her stepfather what had happened.

Ralph Proctor was a super stepfather, but, anticipating his concern, like hers, would initially be all for Sukey, to Yancie’s surprise, he’d instead grown quite cross and begun to give her a lecture about lending her car to all and sundry.

Yancie might well have taken this telling-off as her due. But, unfortunately, Ralph’s daughter, Estelle, had been there and she’d staggered Yancie completely by challenging that she hoped Yancie wouldn’t expect her father to pay for a new car for her.

Yancie wasn’t the only one who was surprised—her stepfather had looked startled too at the nastiness in his daughter’s tone. Though before he could find his voice Yancie was proudly asserting. ‘I wouldn’t dream of it! I’ve enough money from my allowance to…’

‘The allowance you take from my father!’ Estelle reminded her waspishly—and Yancie was left staring at her.

‘I never asked for an allowance!’ was the best defence Yancie could find.

‘You don’t mind taking it, though, do you?’ Estelle attacked—and that was when Yancie suddenly and abruptly realised that her stepfather’s house was not big enough for both her and her stepsister. She’d had no idea that Estelle resented her so much!

‘Not any more,’ Yancie said quietly, and was on her way, in no mind to stay and listen to her stepfather transferring his crossness onto his daughter.

‘Really, Estelle!’ she heard him say as she left the drawing room and turned to close the door behind her. ‘You know full well that Yancie more than earns her allowance with the work she does keeping this place running smoothly.’

‘Advertise for a housekeep—’

Yancie didn’t wait to hear any more. She couldn’t stay after this, she just couldn’t! She went, where she and her cousins Fennia and Astra went in bad times and good; she went to see her aunt, Delia.

‘I never did like Estelle Proctor,’ Delia Alford opined when Yancie relayed all that had taken place.

‘It is true, though.’ Yancie tried to be fair. ‘I have never minded taking an allowance from Ralph.’

‘You’ve worked for it!’ Delia exclaimed, knowing positively how, four years ago, when, at aged eighteen, Yancie and her two cousins had left boarding-school, while the other two had gone into higher business training, Ralph Proctor had almost begged Yancie to stay home and take over the running of his over-large house—her mother had sanctioned it, because it was what she termed ‘not a proper job’. ‘With that daughter of his picking fault all the time, you know as well as I that he couldn’t keep a housekeeper for five minutes. And Estelle won’t want to take over—the only comfort that jealous madam’s interested in, is her own.’

‘What shall I do?’

‘What do you want to do?’

Yancie thought about it. She loved her stepfather dearly, but… ‘I don’t want to go back,’ she realised. ‘Estelle has never been the easiest person to live with; after that…’

‘You don’t have to go back,’ Delia Alford assured her firmly, going on, everything cut and dried to her way of thinking, ‘You’re more than welcome to live here with me, you know that. Though Astra will want you to move in with her. She has more than enough room at her flat, and you know Fennia would be delighted for you to move in with them too.’

The flat her two cousins lived in belonged to Astra’s father in actual fact, but he preferred to live in Barbados rather than the elegant apartment which was in a smart part of London. Astra had welcomed Fennia living with her, since Christmas—only a few weeks ago—when Fennia’s mother had caught the older woman’s latest boyfriend with his arms around Fennia and had chosen to see it as her daughter leading him on. She had, not too politely, thrown Fennia out.

Yancie was in the middle of saying that she’d give Astra a ring, and also that since she just couldn’t possibly touch another penny of her stepfather’s money she would get a job, when her cousin Greville arrived on one of his unscheduled visits to see his mother.

‘Little Yancie Dawkins!’ he smiled, having greeted his mother, opening his arms wide for Yancie the way he had since the days when she was a toddler.

Yancie went over to her half-cousin, who was nearing forty and a most reliable figure in her somewhat trauma-ridden life. Greville gave her a hug and a kiss, and then asked what was this diabolical talk he’d overheard about her getting a job.

Over a cup of coffee Yancie and his mother filled him in on the happenings of that morning. ‘I should have done something about a job before this,’ Yancie realised.

‘You know your mother’s not going to like it, don’t you?’ Greville commented. ‘She’ll give both you and Ralph hell!’

‘Oh, heck, I never thought about my mother,’ Yancie answered, feeling suddenly wretched. It was significant, she supposed, that Aunt Delia had not suggested she might make her home with her mother. The novelty of having a little girl, a white-haired child, had soon worn off. Yancie and her two cousins, who had been similar hindrances to the respective mothers, were, at the age of seven, sent off to boarding-school.

Yancie drove automatically as she recalled how her father had died in a skiing accident and how, although he had left her mother well provided for, it hadn’t taken her mother long to run through his fortune. To find herself a job had simply never entered Ursula Dawkins’ head. She had instead, after having affairs with several possibles, elected to marry money in the person of Ralph Proctor.

Yancie, on her holiday visits home, had learned to greatly care for Ralph Proctor, and he in turn had grown very fond of her. Too fond, anyhow, to consider allowing Yancie to live anywhere but in his home after the inevitable happened and his marriage broke down. Which was quite all right by Ursula Proctor, who walked off with a very handsome divorce settlement without the encumbrance of a too beautiful ash-blonde daughter to cramp her style.

That wouldn’t stop her mother, Yancie fretted, from attempting to make her life, and Ralph’s life, a misery should she learn that not only was her daughter no longer under Ralph Proctor’s roof, but was actually working.

Although on that fateful day she had left her stepfather’s home, Yancie had had no idea what work she could do. ‘The thing is, I’m not properly trained for anything in particular,’ she explained to her aunt and half-cousin. ‘I can housekeep, I suppose, but…’

‘You can’t do that!’ Delia Alford stated categorically.

‘It’s all I know,’ Yancie confessed.

‘Nonsense!’ her aunt declared stoutly. ‘You can drive, and you can…’

‘There’s a driving job vacant at Addison Kirk,’ Greville chipped in, and halted when both his mother and cousin looked at him. ‘But you wouldn’t want to do that…’

‘Oh, yes, I would!’ Yancie jumped at the chance.

‘Hey! I wasn’t serious!’ Greville protested.

‘I am,’ Yancie answered.

‘I’m not sure they want a woman driver…’ he began to prevaricate. Though when his two female relatives looked at him askance he had the grace to grin as he conceded, ‘But, perhaps, in these times of equal opportunities, it’s time they had one.’

Greville then went on to outline how one of the senior drivers had retired at the end of December and how his replacement hadn’t stayed in the job longer than a week, and Aunt Delia beamed. She was very proud of her son; he, as his father had been before him, was on the board of Addison Kirk.

‘That’s settled, then,’ she stated, and, smiling at her son, she added, ‘What’s the point of you being on the board if you can’t give your little cousin a helping hand?’

His ‘little cousin’ was five feet eight, but as she looked uncertainly at him so he too smiled. ‘Indeed,’ he agreed, ‘what point?’

And so, after the formality of an interview—the outcome of which she knew in advance—Yancie had got the job. As to the politics of the matter, Greville had instructed the head of personnel to make no written mention of his interest, and Greville—while certain his cousin would fare well with her fellow workers—had suggested to her that it might be an idea not to mention that she had obtained the job through him.

‘In fact,’ he’d smiled, ‘it might be an idea if you didn’t mention the family connection at all.’

So she hadn’t, and inside a few weeks she had gone from not having a car to drive to having a Mercedes, a Jaguar and any number of other cars in which to visit her friends.

As far as Yancie’s mother was concerned, having learned that Sukey Lloyd had written off Yancie’s car, to Yancie’s astonishment, had naturally assumed that the Jaguar Yancie had driven the day she’d called was a replacement.

Yancie’s immediate superior had given her a very intensive driving test before stating that her driving was up to his high standard. She had then been measured for a hurriedly tailored uniform—two jackets, two skirts in brown and several shirts in beige, bearing the brown embroidered Addison Kirk logo of a bridge spanning the world. Yancie supposed the logo to be something to do with the manufacture of industrial material which the company seemed mainly concerned with. But so long as she could hide the logo underneath a brooch of some sort when she was visiting friends she didn’t much mind what the firm did. She didn’t want to risk anyone she knew bumping into her mother and giving a hint that her daughter was now earning a wage.

Yancie executed a neat piece of lane-swapping and went back to reflecting how, as her aunt had said, her cousins had wanted her to move in with them.

‘Don’t you dare think of living anywhere but with us,’ red-haired Astra had declared warmly.

‘I second the motion,’ grinned black-haired Fennia—and it was just like being at boarding-school again, only better. The three cousins had been born within a month of each other and were as close as sisters. Closer, in fact, than were the three sisters who had borne them.

But, love her mother, her aunt Portia and her aunt Imogen though she did, Yancie didn’t want to think of them in any depth. Between them these three ladies had managed to give them enough hang-ups to dwell on.

Thankfully, just at that moment Yancie spotted that the petrol gauge on the dashboard was pointing to empty. Oh, crumbs—she’d never make it back to London. It was doubtful she’d have enough juice to make it back to pick up Mr Clements!

Yancie at that moment immediately recognised that she was about to drive past a service station. Lord knew when she might come across another one! There was no time to think, only to act. Quickly she spun the wheel and was already crossing into the next lane when a violently blasted car horn alerted her to the fact that she had very nearly rammed an Aston Martin.

Oh, grief. She’d noticed it earlier but, since the driver—with all that power under the bonnet—hadn’t wanted to overtake, she’d stayed in the fast lane and had paid little more attention. But now she’d not time to apologize, only time to get out of trouble, and swiftly!

Fortunately, the driver of the Aston Martin reacted quickly and moved out of harm’s way—and Yancie made it safely to the forecourt of the self-service petrol station.

She would have liked to blame her inattentive driving not only on the sudden realisation that she was driving on empty, but also on the fact that thinking of her mother and her two aunts was invariably upsetting. But she knew she had only herself to blame—she and she alone was at fault.

Yancie stepped out of the Mercedes, but had barely got the driver’s door closed when the Aston Martin pulled in behind her and, breathing fire from every pore—if his expression was anything to go by—a tall, dark-haired man began heading her way. By the look of it, she was going to have to apologise!

And she might have done but—hold on a minute—her livelihood—not to mention this lovely job—was at stake here. She had no idea how these things worked, but if this immaculately suited man bearing down on her made a note of her registration number and reported her she could, ultimately, lose her job! In the wrong though she was, she just couldn’t afford to admit it—to apologise.

‘What the hell do you think you’re playing at?’ the man challenged aggressively the moment he was next to her, hard, unimpressed grey eyes flicking over her slender shape, taking in the brooch she wore—thank goodness she had covered up the firm’s logo—you never knew who might recognise it!

But she wasn’t used to being spoken to like that. ‘Me!’ she retaliated. ‘Why, you grumpy old devil,’ she charged of the mid-thirties-looking man who still breathed fire and brimstone. ‘If you weren’t so keen to be the centre of attention in your Aston Martin, you’d have been in the correct motorway lane, and not riding on my bumper…’

Oh, my word, he didn’t like being called a grumpy old devil, did he—or any of the rest of it! ‘I was in the correct lane!’ he snarled, his jaw jutting. ‘Not only did you not give the smallest indication of your intention to cross straight in front of me…’

‘I haven’t time to stand here all day bandying words with you!’ she cut in arrogantly—and saw his eyes narrow at her tone. Quite clearly, Mr-High-and-Mighty-Aston-Martin wasn’t used to being spoken to in such a way. She saw him take a sharp intake of controlling breath.

Then, his jaw jutting no less furiously, he gritted, ‘I’ll attend to you later,’ and turned sharply away and went striding back to the rather superb-looking Aston Martin.

There was nothing he could possibly do, Yancie told herself ten minutes later. His ‘I’ll attend to you later’ had no teeth. What could he do for goodness’ sake? It was a cold day, but, thanks to an efficient car heater, she had shed her uniform jacket. She’d removed that identifying tag when she’d left Mr Clements, and had pinned a rather attractive brooch over the Addison Kirk logo on her shirt, so sucks boo! The only way he might be able to trace her was if he’d thought to note her car registration number—but, even then, that near-ghastly accident was purely his word against hers—so he could take his ‘I’ll attend to you later’ and sling it. So why was she still trembling?

Yancie proceeded on her way with the utmost care after that. The incident had shaken her more than she would have liked to admit. She was, however, correctly uniformed, with her identifying appendage neatly in place, when, with five minutes to spare, she arrived to wait for Mr Clements.

Very occasionally, when she was working quite late, Yancie had permission—after first dropping off her passenger at his address—to take whichever motor she was driving on to her own home. She’d had to assure her immediate boss, Kevin Veasey, that she was able to garage the car, but even then this concession was only allowed on the understanding she would not avail herself of it for her personal use.

She was late that night, so took the Mercedes home. As late as it was, her cousin Astra was still out working. ‘Astra works too hard,’ she remarked to her other lovely cousin, Fennia.

‘She loves it,’ Fennia answered. ‘Had a good day?’

‘Given I nearly wrote off an Aston Martin with a Mercedes, can’t complain,’ she smiled, and shared the experience with her cousin over a sumptuous casserole Fennia had made while waiting for her two cousins to come home.

‘Men!’ Fennia opined.

‘I was in the wrong,’ Yancie pointed out.

‘I know! But—men!’

They laughed. They’d roomed together, the three cousins, at boarding-school. They’d shared each other’s secrets, mopped up—in the early days—each other’s tears when their mothers had hopped from relationship to relationship. Stable backgrounds—forget it! They’d had so many ‘uncles’, it had needed a young mind to keep up with it.

They’d tried hard not to be judgmental, but it had been just a touch embarrassing not knowing which ‘uncle’ had been coming with their mothers to pick them up at each term-end.

Aunt Delia was the rock they’d each leaned towards. Aunt Delia had been ten years old when her widowed mother had remarried, and in three years had produced three daughters. It was the younger girls’ dreadfully strict upbringing, Aunt Delia had explained, by a father who seemed to have few sensitivities, that was responsible for the way each of her half-sisters, in turn, had rebelled. Yancie’s mother apparently had been well ‘off the rails’ before Yancie’s father had been killed. Fennia’s mother was twice married—and on the lookout for husband number three. And Astra’s mother had twice divorced and was at present living with someone.

With that kind of a background, the three cousins had been sixteen when, fearing they might have inherited some wayward gene from their mothers, they had vowed that they were going to guard with everything they had against turning out like their mothers. They wanted nothing of their mothers’ explosive and sometimes quite awful relationships which—in the main—brought nothing but disaster.

To date, six years on, it hadn’t been a problem. In general the cousins had nothing against men. And so far, thank goodness, none of them had felt the smallest inclination to be wayward where men were concerned. Though it was true that if they ever went out on a date and did dip their toes in unchartered, experimental waters it was mainly with someone fairly safe whom they’d known for ages—usually the brother or relation of someone with whom they’d been at boarding-school.

Yancie drove to work the following morning growing more and more comfortable with her lot. She was still in frequent telephone contact with her stepfather—who now employed a housekeeper—but she still had no wish to return to live in the same house as Estelle. Yancie enjoyed living again with her cousins. Fennia, despite her business training, thoroughly enjoyed the job she had found working with toddlers in a day nursery, and Astra, the most academic of the three of them, was working all hours as a financial adviser, and loving it.

Yancie drove into the vast garages of the Addison Kirk Group and exchanged her uniform jacket and neat shoes for a pair of Wellingtons and an over-large overall.

The men she worked with were getting more and more used to seeing her about the place. But even though—as she unreeled the water hose prior to tackling the wheel arches on yesterday’s Mercedes—she knew she must look a sketch in her present outfit it still didn’t prevent one courageous colleague from commenting, ‘You still look terrific even in that get-up!’

She had no wish to be thought stand-offish. ‘You reckon?’ she answered.

‘There’s no substitute for style—and you’ve got it, plus,’ he stated, and looked so serious, she had to laugh—which caused him to ask her for a date.

Her laugh faded. ‘I never mix business with pleasure,’ she replied, and turned away to concentrate on turning the water on.

She was happily absorbed in her task when Wilf Fisher, one of the mechanics and a family man, came over to thank her for going out of her way to drop a spare electric kettle off to his mother yesterday.

‘It was a pleasure,’ she assured him, though it had been a fifty-mile round trip on which she headed as soon as she’d seen Mr Clements safely to his destination.

‘I couldn’t have got it to her before tomorrow otherwise,’ he explained again. ‘And, well, quite honestly, the wife does get a little bit fed up with me having to drive up there to sort the old dear out all the time.’

Yancie sympathised; she knew all about mothers and their urgent summonses. ‘Think nothing of it,’ she smiled. ‘Any time.’

Wilf went on his way, clearly feeling better for her offer of ‘Any time’, and Yancie, her smile fading, fell to thinking how, if she hadn’t been where she shouldn’t yesterday, then she wouldn’t have had that run-in—very nearly literally—with Mr Aston Martin.

She owned that the near calamity had truly unnerved her. For all she had made light of it to Fennia, and to Astra too when she had come home, Yancie had not been able to get to sleep last night for thinking about it. She had so nearly caused a very serious accident. And, to make matters worse, when the driver of the other car had followed her to remonstrate with her, what had she done but called him a grumpy old devil and accused him, totally falsely, of being in the wrong lane?

She had been in the wrong, Yancie knew that. Apart from the fact the ‘grumpy old devil’ wasn’t old at all—why couldn’t she get the memory of his face out of her head? She knew she’d know him again anywhere—not that she would see him again. She must have been in a panic yesterday when she had thought that he’d find out more about her from the car registration number. Records of that nature were difficult to access, weren’t they? And, in any case, everything about him had spoken of him being some kind of executive. This morning she doubted he’d have time to bother contacting the police about an accident that had never happened.

Yancie usually had quite a few driving jobs on a Friday. But this Friday, although she caught Kevin Veasey looking over to her several times, he didn’t have even one task for her.

She kept busy, however, washing cars, going for sandwiches or running any other errand anyone wanted doing. Then at three o’clock, to her delight, she got the plummiest job of them all. Word had come down, from the head of the whole outfit, no less, that her presence was requested on the top floor at four o’clock.

She had never driven Thomson Wakefield before. Indeed, she had never so much as clapped eyes on him. In fact, having worked for Addison’s for three weeks now, she had been beginning to suspect—to the blazes with any sex discrimination law—that old Mr Wakefield would die rather than let some female drive him.

But, not so! Why she thought Thomson Wakefield must be old, she couldn’t have said. Probably because it didn’t seem likely that someone still wet behind the ears would have the honour of holding his exalted position.

But what was she bothering her head with such thoughts for? He wanted her to drive him—her! Inwardly beaming, Yancie, after her car-washing activities, would have loved to have taken a shower before she presented herself on the top floor.

Not to worry, though; she had a fresh shirt in her locker, and a quick freshen-up of her make-up and a comb run through her shoulder-length ash-blonde hair, and she’d be as good as new.

It puzzled her when, at half past three, hair combed, fresh lipstick applied, she went and asked Kevin what car she would be driving and he replied he’d had no instructions yet about where she was going. His instructions were that she present herself at four.

‘I’ll sort a vehicle out when I come back,’ she decided. Given the choice, she fancied the Jaguar, but, of course, Mr Wakefield might have his own preference.

Yancie made her way to the top floor with her head filled with speculations on how far afield the chief man might want to be driven. Working overtime never bothered her, so if he had it in mind to be driven up to Scotland that was all right by her—though she’d have to ring either Astra or Fennia to tell them not to expect her home.

All of which was just so much flight of fancy, she smiled to herself as, finding the door she was looking for, she knocked lightly and went in.

‘Yancie Dawkins?’ enquired the woman in her mid-forties Kevin had told her was Thomas Wakefield’s PA.

‘That’s right,’ Yancie answered easily, her upbringing and education making her feel perfectly at ease in any company. ‘Mr Wakefield is expecting me.’

‘If you’d like to take a seat,’ Veronica Taylor suggested pleasantly.

Yancie took the seat indicated, and waited. And waited. Four-fifteen came and went—and still she waited. ‘Does Mr Wakefield know I’m here?’ she asked his PA.

‘Oh, yes,’ his PA answered, her tone as pleasant as ever.

Four-thirty came—and went. Wishing she’d brought a book to read, Yancie wondered if perhaps the great man had been held up on a phone call. For thirty minutes!

Another ten minutes passed, by which time Yancie had gone from feeling completely at ease to feeling just a shade uncomfortable. Okay, so he was a busy man, but…Be patient, he’s paying you, and you need this job. Hang it all, she loved her job. It wasn’t taxing on the brain—but who needed taxing? The freedom the job allowed was limitless. Indeed, it didn’t seem like a job of work at all.

Even so, having cautioned herself to be patient, when another few minutes of her having absolutely nothing to do went by, Yancie was considering telling Veronica Taylor to ring down to the garage and let her know when the old man surfaced. Then Yancie heard sounds on the other side of the door she’d assumed connected the two offices—and that reassured her that the old boy hadn’t expired while she waited.

She pinned a ‘Yes, sir’ look on her face—it cost nothing—and the door opened. So too did her mouth. More—her jaw dropped. Oh, no! It couldn’t be! She didn’t believe it! She just didn’t believe it.

Horrified, Yancie saw at once that ‘old’ Mr Thomson Wakefield, for this surely must be he, was not old at all! He was tall, dark-haired, had hard grey eyes—and was somewhere in his mid-thirties. She had thought she had never clapped eyes on him before—but she had! Even minus his Aston Martin—she recognised him.

Oh, mother! Yancie stared, wanting to die, at the grim, unsmiling countenance of the man standing there coldly surveying her—a man who clearly had no intention of making things easy for her. She tried hard to sort her brain patterns out, to think up some kind of defence. But what defence was there?

So much for her hiding the firm’s logo on her shirt yesterday—a fact he hadn’t missed, she was suddenly positive. This man—this man, who’d made it to the top of his tree—was, she all at once knew, a man from which little escaped. What he didn’t know, she just knew, he troubled to find out.

This man knew, as he’d known yesterday, exactly what her brooch had concealed. Though he hadn’t needed to see the Addison Kirk logo; he’d probably recognised the car she had been driving. In all probability he had only very recently—perhaps even the day before—been a passenger in it!

‘Mr Wakefield?’ she enquired, hoping there was some wonderful mistake and that this man—this man who yesterday, by his swift and skilful reactions, had managed to avoid what would have been an almighty collision—and earned a load of lip from her for his trouble—was not, by some miracle, the head of the Addison Kirk Group.

He didn’t bother to confirm but, ignoring her completely, instructed his PA, ‘Hold my calls for five minutes, please.’ She had called him a grumpy old devil—it was going to take that long?

He held his office door open for her to go through. Yancie stood up, uncertain whether or not to walk to the other door, and keep on walking. ‘I’ll attend to you later’, this man had yesterday threatened—he must have pegged her as employed by the company before he’d even said it. ‘Later’, Yancie knew, had just arrived—but she wasn’t the sort to run away.

CHAPTER TWO

YANCIE crossed into Thomson Wakefield’s office. It was large and, as well as having the usual office furnishings, also housed a comfortable-looking sofa, and a couple of easy chairs grouped around a low coffee table.

She had thought his dismissal of her from the company he headed would take seconds; she would have preferred it. But, no. Not the most talkative of men she had ever known, he pointed to a chair on the other side of his large desk.

She took the seat and while he sat facing her so she began to gather her scattered wits. Without question she was to be well and truly carpeted—she guessed few had called the head man a grumpy old devil—apart from all the rest that had gone with it—and got away with it. It surprised her that he hadn’t just instructed Kevin Veasey to sack her and be done with it.

That he hadn’t instructed Kevin gave her a ray of hope. She hung onto it. She loved her job. ‘I suppose you aren’t very interested in an apology,’ she opened politely when Thomson Wakefield, saying not one word, continued to study her as if she were some strange object on the end of a pin.

‘Are you sorry?’ he asked crisply.

Yesterday—forget it. Today—abjectly. To keep this job, she could be grovellingly sorry. Well, perhaps that was going a bit far—but she was prepared to go as far as pride would allow.

‘I don’t normally behave like that,’ she said prettily.

‘You mean you don’t normally very nearly cause a disaster, then refuse to accept blame?’

Yancie knew there and then that this man gave no quarter. A hint of a smile would do wonders for that unsmiling, sombre, see-nothing-to-laugh-at, though in actual fact quite good-looking face.

‘I was in the wrong—on both counts.’ She did a swift about-turn from her attitude of yesterday.

‘Your driving was appalling!’ Thomson Wakefield agreed stonily.

‘Not all the time!’ she dared to argue, saw that hadn’t gone down well, and added swiftly, ‘Up until that point, when I suddenly realised I was driving on an empty fuel tank, my driving was first-class.’ She’d be modest tomorrow—today her job was on the line—not to say by a gossamer thread.

He nodded as if conceding her point. ‘I’d been tracking you for some miles,’ he openly let her know.

That jolted her. Oh, why hadn’t somebody told her that the boss man had an Aston Martin? It might have clicked when she’d first become aware of the car yesterday, might have given her a chance to think she should take some kind of action. Well, possibly not. ‘You pegged me as one of yours miles before our—er—introduction?’ she enquired.

Thomson Wakefield studied her for some seconds without speaking, his glance taking in her almost white ash-blonde hair, her bluest of blue eyes, her dainty features and perfect skin.

‘You’re different from the rest of our drivers, I’ll give you that,’ he pronounced curtly, leaving her to guess whether he meant that she had started to ask questions in what was his interview, or if he meant her feminine features.

She opted for the latter. ‘I’m the only female driver this particular part of the group has,’ she commented. ‘Ah!’ she exclaimed as light dawned. ‘But you already knew that.’

‘It took but a few moments for my PA to discover which female driver in our livery was on that stretch of the motorway yesterday,’ he conceded coolly.

Uh-oh. If he knew that much, it was pretty certain he also knew that she shouldn’t have been anywhere near that section of the motorway yesterday! Yancie sensed even more trouble. Although, fingers crossed, he still hadn’t said those diabolical words she didn’t want to hear—You’re out. Though it could be, of course, that, after giving her a tongue-lashing—let him try—he had plans for Kevin Veasey to tell her she had washed her last car at Addison Kirk. Somebody had almost certainly instructed Kevin not to let her take any of the vehicles out that day; of that Yancie all at once realised she could be certain. Silence, just then, however, seemed the better part of discretion.

‘So,’ Thomson Wakefield went on, ‘perhaps, Miss Dawkins, you would care to tell me your version of the events yesterday. The events that led up to you almost demolishing not one motor vehicle, but two—leaving aside the perilous way you very nearly dispatched the two of us into the next world.’

Well, no, actually, I wouldn’t. But he was waiting. ‘It’s very kind of you to give me a fair hearing—er—in the circumstances,’ she smiled; he had no charm, so she tried him with some of hers.

Water off a duck’s back! Those grey eyes were staying on her, and were noting her smile, her lovely even teeth—her boarding-school had been most particular about teeth—but Yancie soon saw that not by so much as a flicker of an eyelash was he to be charmed.

‘So?’ He was waiting.

‘Well, as I mentioned, I suddenly saw that I was driving with a nearly empty tank.’ Silence, he was still waiting; it forced her to go on. ‘It was then that, simultaneously, I realised several things.’ Silence. Oh, bubbles to it! If she’d known for certain that she was going to be out of a job after all this, Yancie was sure she would have packed it in right then. But hope sprang eternal—so she ploughed on. ‘At the same time as realising I was driving on a nearly empty tank, I realised I wouldn’t have enough juice to get me back to London, let alone to pick up Mr C—’ Yancie broke off abruptly. Oh, grief, she shouldn’t have been driving to pick up Mr Clements, she should have been there, waiting. ‘S-so…’ Damn that stutter, this man was making her nervous—it had never happened before—and she didn’t like it. ‘And—er—and then, coincidentally, I saw the “services” sign and there just wasn’t time to think…’

‘Merely to act!’ Thomson Wakefield butted in sharply.

Who was telling this, her or him? With a start of surprise, Yancie realised that she was beginning to get angry. She seldom, if ever, got angry. Though, having been left cooling her heels for near enough forty-five minutes while waiting for this man to deign to see her, perhaps, she considered, getting a little angry was justified.

Though hang on a minute. Didn’t she truly want this job? Yes, she did. ‘You’re right, of course.’ She tried another charm-filled smile—that had absolutely, one hundred per cent not the slightest effect on the stern-faced individual opposite. ‘I was wrong, wrong, totally wrong to cross over into your lane the way I did,’ she added hurriedly. ‘It was a momentary lapse of attention. And I promise you I have never, ever, driven so carelessly before. Nor will I ever again,’ she further promised, having in fact learned a very salutary lesson yesterday, but hoping he didn’t think she was laying it on with a trowel.

Thomson Wakefield had nothing to say for many stretched, long seconds, and rather than let him gain the impression she was desperately toadying up to him Yancie said nothing more.

‘So you concede,’ he said at length, ‘that the error was yours yesterday, and not my keenness to “be the centre of attention” in my Aston Martin?’

Did he have to bring that up? That niggle of anger flickered again—and she realised, much though she wanted to hang onto her job, that she had grovelled all that she was going to. ‘I’ve admitted I was totally in the wrong,’ she answered, unsmiling. To blazes with trying to charm him—she guessed he lived on a diet of lemons and vinegar.

He was as unimpressed by her unsmiling look as he had been by her smiling one. ‘I see you’re wearing some identification today.’

Which meant, she was positive, that he’d taken note yesterday that she’d covered the firm’s logo on her shirt with a brooch. ‘My name tag was on my jacket yesterday,’ she replied pleasantly. Well, it had been—when she’d been driving Mr Clements. ‘My jacket was on the passenger seat,’ she explained.

She had thought he might keep on that theme, reprimand her for pinning the mother-of-pearl brooch over the Addison Kirk logo on her shirt. But, to her surprise, he left that particularly issue there, and commented instead, ‘You’ve been with us a very short while,’ and with a straight, cold, no-nonsense kind of look asked, ‘Do you enjoy your work, Miss Dawkins?’

It came as something of a relief not to have to lie or prevaricate—she had an idea that she wasn’t very good at either. ‘I love it,’ she smiled.

She saw his glance flick from her eyes to her curving mouth, but he was as unreceptive to her charm as ever. ‘Presumably you wish to keep your job?’

Yancie at once saw another glimmer of hope. By the sound of it he was more interested in giving her a grilling than dismissing her. ‘I do,’ she assured him sincerely.

‘Why?’ Just the one word.

Grilling? He was giving her a roasting! ‘I’ve never done anything but housekeeping before,’ she began to explain, by then certain that this very thorough man who knew she had been with the firm a very short while also knew that the previous occupation she’d listed on her application form was that of housekeeper. ‘I thought I’d like a change. And I really love my work,’ she smiled. She loved the freedom, the use of a car. ‘I am a good driver,’ she thought to mention. Though at his steady, grey-eyed stare she felt obliged to add, ‘Normally.’

‘You do appreciate that while you’re wearing the company’s uniform, and driving one of the company vehicles, that you are an ambassador for Addison Kirk?’

‘Oh, yes,’ she agreed, ready to agree to anything as the feeling started to grow that, by the skin of her teeth, it looked as if she might be able to hang onto her job.

‘You also appreciate that any bad driving and subsequent insolence to another road user reflects extremely badly on the company?’

Oh, for Pete’s sake! Yancie could feel herself getting annoyed again—what was it with this man? Quickly, she lowered her eyes. She couldn’t afford to be annoyed. She couldn’t afford that this shrewd man opposite should read in her eyes that she’d by far prefer to tell him to go take a running jump than answer him. She swallowed hard on her annoyance.

‘Yes, I do appreciate that,’ she replied as evenly as she could—and raised her eyes to see, astonishingly, the merest twitch at the right-hand corner of his mouth—for all the world as though she amused him!

In the next moment, however, his expression was as stern and as uncompromising as it had been throughout the interview. ‘Good,’ he said, and a wave of relief started to wash over Yancie. Surely that ‘Good’ must mean ‘Right, you’ve had a wigging, now clear off and don’t do it again’. She consequently got something of a shock when, his expression lightening very slightly, he stared fully and totally imperviously into her lovely blue eyes, and enquired, ‘What were you doing on that stretch of the motorway yesterday?’

Crunch! With no little sense of disquiet, Yancie saw she had lost the tenuous hold she had on her job, as it suddenly went shooting from her grasp. And, because of it, her brain, usually lively and active, seemed to seize up. She should have been ready for this; but wasn’t.

‘I—er—I—er—paid for the petrol I used myself,’ she heard herself say idiotically. ‘I have authority to book petrol and oil to the company, but wh-when I stopped at that service station I paid…’ Her voice trailed off at the realisation that—oh, you fool—she had just, by her statement, confirmed that she hadn’t been on that stretch of the road on the firm’s business.

Thomson Wakefield looked over to her, but if he was waiting to hear more he wasn’t getting it. Her tongue, like her brain, had gone into reverse.

‘That was very fair of you, Miss Dawkins—to pay for the petrol,’ he commented silkily—but she suspected that sort of tone. And a second later knew she was right to suspect it when he continued, ‘And the milometer? How did you square that?’

Like she was going to tell him! Like she was going to tell him any of the ‘wrinkles’ that went on down in the transport section! How, when Wilf Fisher had asked her to make that fifty-mile round trip on unofficial business, he’d said to give the correct mileage but, if asked why the extra mileage covered, to state that her passenger had asked her to do an errand. Either that, or the said passenger had asked her to take him to see a friend or family member. Since their passengers were almost exclusively board members or someone very high up in the executive tree, nobody, according to Wilf, would dream of questioning why the top brass had needed to do the extra mileage. Certainly, no one in the transport section.

‘I’m waiting!’

Oh, crumbs! Dumbly Yancie stared at him. If he’d only smile—he had rather an attractive mouth. She blinked. For goodness’ sake pull yourself together—had this man totally scrambled her brain?

‘I—er—can’t tell you,’ she managed falteringly.

‘What—the mileage scam or what you were doing being where you shouldn’t have been?’

Neither, actually. ‘There’s no great scam,’ she replied—well, you could hardly call fifty tiddly miles a scam.

‘So, what business did you have—other than the company’s business?’

Oh, honestly! Why didn’t he back off? Because he was it, that was why. He was the numero uno, the big cheese, and, having her on the end of his pin, he was enjoying making her squirm—and she didn’t like it. Had her errand been for herself, then, she conceded, she might very well have told him what she was about. But there wasn’t only herself to think about here—there was Wilf. Wilf had a wife and four young children. And, while Yancie was having to face that there was a very real danger here that she might be looking for alternative employment at any moment now, she just couldn’t wish the same fate on Wilf. She wouldn’t be able to live with herself if, through her, Wilf too was dismissed.

‘You’re not going to say?’

‘I—No,’ she mumbled.

Thomson Wakefield didn’t seem to have expected any other answer, but leaned back in his chair and, looking sternly at her, he questioned, ‘Just how badly do you want to keep your job?’

Yancie felt sick in the pit of her stomach. She was about to be dismissed, she knew it. ‘Very badly,’ she answered. ‘I really, really need it,’ she emphasised, in a last-ditch hope.

Thomson Wakefield’s look sharpened. ‘You have a family to keep—a child?’

‘I’m not married.’

He leaned back in his chair again, his look speculative. ‘You are acquainted with the facts of life?’ he queried.

Sarcastic pig; she didn’t need him to tell her that you could have a child without necessarily being married. ‘I know the theory,’ she replied, putting in more effort to stay calm. Though, at another of his long, steady stares, she felt herself go a bit pink—and saw him take in her blush, too. Well, it wasn’t every day, or ever for that matter, that she told a complete stranger that she was a virgin.

However, if her blush just now confirmed her statement for him, her ultimate employer did not comment on it either, but, with a quick glance to his watch, as if believing he had wasted more than enough of his precious time on her, Thomson Wakefield got to his feet. Yancie, too, was on her feet when at last he gave her the benefit of his deliberations.

‘You may keep your job, Miss Dawkins,’ he told her coldly.

‘Oh, thank—’

‘But…’

She might have known there’d be a ‘But’. ‘But?’ she stayed to enquire.

‘But you’re suspended—without pay—until you give me an answer to my question of what you were doing on that part of the motorway.’

Thanks for nothing! Yancie came close then and there to telling him what he could do with his job. Why she didn’t she couldn’t have said. Her glance, however, was as cold as his when, just before she walked to the door, she told him coolly, ‘I’ll see myself out.’

It was Saturday morning before she had got herself of sufficient mind to begin thinking of something other than that cold and unfeeling brute Thomson Wakefield. Suspended! He might just as well have sacked her. No way could she bring Wilf into this. No point in both of them looking for a new job.

And that, she knew, had to be her first priority. She was still adamant that she wasn’t going to touch a penny of the allowance which her stepfather paid into her bank account. But she had to face the fact that, even with Astra refusing to allow her to pay rent, having been absolutely astounded at Yancie’s suggestion that she should, just day-to-day living was costly.

By Monday Yancie had double-read every likely job in the situations vacant columns—there were not, she had to face, very many for women without experience in the workplace.

Though she knew in her heart of hearts that although, as Thomson Wakefield had pointed out, she had been in the job only a short while—and freedom aside—she felt she really didn’t want to work anywhere else but at the Addison Kirk Group.

She supposed it must have something to do with the people she worked with. Oh, not Thomson Wakefield; she didn’t care for him one tiny bit. If he was not exactly the grumpy old devil she had told him he was, then it couldn’t be said either that he was full of the joys of spring.

But the other people she worked with—other drivers, Wilf, the executives she chauffeured around—to a man they were all unfailingly pleasant. She thought of Thomson Wakefield—she did quite often. And why shouldn’t she? She wouldn’t have said he’d been unfailingly pleasant when he’d had the nerve to suspend her. She had never driven him—the possibility that she one day might didn’t enter any equation. She’d better carry on looking for another job.

It had been embarrassing returning to the transport section after that loathsome interview with him. Had she not left her shoulder bag in her locker Yancie felt she might have made a hasty exit without anyone being any the wiser.

Though, on reflection, she’d owed Kevin Veasey the courtesy of telling him he was going to be a driver short, if he didn’t already know. Fortunately it had been after five when she’d made it back down to the transport section and most of the staff had left for the weekend.

‘All right?’ Kevin smiled as she approached, and Yancie knew then, from his manner, that apart from being extremely curious that she had been called to the top floor he had no earthly idea of why.

‘Not exactly,’ she replied, and, a little shamefaced, was obliged to admit, ‘I’ve been suspended.’

‘You’ve been…’ Kevin stared at her in total surprise. ‘Suspended!’ he exclaimed. ‘What for?’

‘You don’t know?’ Clearly he didn’t—Thomas Wakefield had not reported her to her department head, it seemed. But then, he didn’t have to; he was handling it himself in his own beastly authoritarian way.

‘I’ve no idea,’ Kevin replied. ‘I was instructed not to allow you to drive any of the vehicles today and for you to report to Mr Wakefield at four, but…’

‘It’s a long story,’ Yancie said quietly.

‘You don’t want to tell me about it?’

Yancie shook her head. ‘I’d better go home.’

‘Keep in touch.’

She said she would, but couldn’t see that she would. It was highly unlikely that Thomson Wakefield would relent and see Kevin was informed that her suspension was over.

Tuesday dawned cold and bleak and Yancie, who normally had a very sunny temperament, owned to feeling a bit out of sorts. She made a meal of duck with a cherry sauce for herself and her cousins, and hid her low spirits as, being excellent friends as well as cousins, they chatted about all and everything until Astra, the career-minded one of the three, said she was off to her study.

‘And I’m off to try and make my peace with my mother,’ Fennia sighed.

‘That leaves me with the washing-up,’ Yancie remarked—and they all laughed.

‘Best of luck with your mother,’ Yancie and Astra said in unison.

‘I’ll need it!’

Yancie was in the kitchen when, ten minutes later, the telephone rang. So as not to have Astra disturbed if she was in the middle of something deeply technical on her computer, Yancie went quickly to answer it. Should the call be for either her or Fennia, then there’d be no need for Astra to be interrupted.

‘Hello, Yancie Dawkins,’ said her cousin Greville cheerfully, instantly recognising her voice. ‘How’s the job going?’

Oh, heck, she had pondered long and hard on whether or not to tell her super half-cousin that she’d been suspended, but was still undecided. But now—it was decision time!

‘Great!’ she answered enthusiastically. How could she possibly confess that she had so dreadfully let him down? ‘How are things with you? Still loving and leaving them?’ Greville had been divorced for a number of years and, having been badly hurt, now, while having women friends, was careful to steer clear of emotional entanglements.

‘Saucy monkey!’

She laughed. ‘Did you want Astra? Fennia’s out.’

‘Any one of you,’ he answered. ‘I’m having a party on Saturday if all or any of you want to come.’

‘We’d love to!’ Yancie answered for the three of them. Greville threw wonderful parties.

They chatted for a few minutes more, and Yancie, having managed to stay cheerful enough while talking to him, felt immediately guilt-ridden once she had put the phone down. She didn’t like the feeling.

Fennia came home in low spirits too—her mother hadn’t wanted to know. Yancie did her best to cheer her, telling her of Greville’s phone call and party invite. ‘Did you tell him?’

‘That I’m suspended? I couldn’t.’

Astra came out of her study and, when Fennia volunteered to make some coffee, it was Astra who insisted on making it.

All three of them went into the kitchen.

‘Greville’s having a party on Saturday—we’re invited,’ Yancie told her.

‘Just what I could do with,’ Astra declared. ‘Thanks for taking the call—I was up to my ears in complicated calculations. Did you tell him?’

Yancie knew her cousin didn’t mean had she accepted for the three of them. ‘I couldn’t,’ she admitted, and was plagued all night when her guilty conscience kept her awake. Greville had always been there for all three of them—she owed it to him, after all he had done, to keep her job.

Fennia’s duty in going to try to put things right with her mother reminded Yancie the next day—not that she needed any reminding—that she had certain duties too. And, though she didn’t think of her stepfather as a duty, she went, by public transport, to see him.

Her journey was extremely bothersome in that it involved a tube, a train and a bus. Though when her very pleased-to-see-her stepfather said he wanted her to come home and to forget about the car ‘trouble’, that he’d buy her another one, Yancie found she could not accept.

‘You’re a darling,’ she smiled, giving him a hug, ‘but I couldn’t.’

‘Not even to make me happy?’

‘Oh, don’t!’ she begged.

‘I’m sorry,’ he apologised at once. ‘I never thought I’d resort to emotional blackmail. Come and tell me how your job’s going. Your mother rang wanting to speak to you, by the way.’

‘You didn’t tell her I was working!’

‘What—and get my ears chewed off for my trouble?’ He chuckled. ‘Coward though I am, I let her think you were still living here.’ He thought for a moment, and then added, ‘Have you seen her lately?’

‘Not for a week or so,’ Yancie replied.

But Ralph was patently anxious. ‘What shall I say if she comes here looking for you?’

Yancie full well knew, her mother being a law unto herself, that she would turn up at her ex-husband’s home if the idea occurred to her. ‘I’ll go and see her,’ Yancie decided.

‘Since you’ve obviously got the day off, you could go today,’ Ralph Proctor hinted. ‘You could take my car.’

Yancie looked at him and grinned. ‘You’re scared,’ she teased. ‘Scared she’ll call.’

‘Heaven alone knows where I got the nerve to ask her to marry me. Nor, when our marriage ended, found the nerve to insist you live with me.’

‘You’ve got it when it counts,’ Yancie told him softly.

She stayed and had lunch with him, his housekeeper seeming a very pleasant woman. And after lunch, his suggestion that Yancie borrow his car seeming a good one, she drove to her mother’s imposing house some ten miles away to visit.

‘You didn’t ring to say you were coming!’ Ursula Proctor greeted her a shade peevishly. Yancie’s mother was fifty-two but could easily have passed for ten years younger. She was beautiful still, so long as everything went her way. Today, on seeing her daughter unexpectedly, her mouth tightened expressively. ‘I shall be able to spend fifteen minutes with you—I’ve an appointment with Henry. You should have phoned. I’m not here just waiting on the remote off-chance that you might drop by when the whim takes you, you know. And what are you doing with Ralph Proctor’s car?’

Yancie guessed that Henry was probably her mother’s hairdresser. After ten minutes with her, however, Yancie knew exactly why neither she nor her stepfather had mentioned to her parent that not only was she living elsewhere, but that for a few weeks she’d had a job. It was not so much cowardly as making for easier living. Her mother had the ability to carp endlessly about matters which other people took in their stride.

After returning her stepfather’s car Yancie made her way back to Astra’s apartment partly wishing that she hadn’t left it that day. While her mother hadn’t seemed particularly pleased to see her, her stepfather had. He wanted her to go back to live with him and for her to use the allowance he was still insisting on paying into her bank. But she couldn’t. How could she possibly—how could she possibly return? It was just beyond her to touch a penny of his money after what Estelle had said.

Pride demanded she earn her own money from now on. The only problem with that was that she didn’t have a job—and nothing she had seen in the situations vacant column which she was capable of doing was work that she wanted. Added to that, for all her stepfather had apologised for attempting emotional blackmail, Yancie was awash with guilt because she felt she couldn’t go back to living in her old home with him. When she added all that guilt to how she had let Greville down after he had obtained that driver’s job for her, Yancie’s spirits sank even lower.

She owed it to Greville to try to hang onto her job. After his efforts on her behalf he didn’t deserve that she should tell him—and soon knew she must—that she had been suspended. Suspended, too, not by her immediate boss but by none other than the top man himself!

She wanted that job, she truly did. Because the hours could be somewhat erratic, the job paid well. Oh, if only she wasn’t’ suspended! Oh, if only she had some other reason she could give other than she had gone fifty miles out of her way—leaving aside her cutting up the top of the top brass in the process—to deliver a spare kettle to Wilf Fisher’s mother.

At dinner that night Fennia and Astra were interested in hearing about her day. Yancie told them of her visit to her stepfather, and, because Fennia was having difficulties with her mother, made light of the not very good reception she’d had from her own. And swiftly changed the conversation.

‘How about your day?’ she asked her cousin. ‘Did all go well at the nursery?’

Fennia’s reply was that they’d had a near disaster when one of the toddlers, who was inseparable from her fluffy elephant called Fanta, had mislaid it. ‘Poor mite, she was inconsolable—she’d never have gone to sleep tonight without it.’

‘But you did find it?’

Fennia’s smile said it all. ‘I was nearly in tears myself when Kate decided to inspect the backpack of one of our little trouble-makers.’

‘And all was revealed?’

‘He’d got his own soft toy—but he wanted Fanta.’

Yancie got up the following morning, said goodbye to her two cousins when they went off to work, and tried not to think of the notion which had come to her and which returned to pick at her again and again. It was unthinkable, she told herself—frequently.

And yet time, which had never previously hung heavily on her hands, was doing so now. Between them the cousins kept the apartment immaculate, so, having done what few chores there were, Yancie had plenty of time in which to wonder, Would it be so very wrong? And, for goodness’ sake, who was she hurting?

No one, came the answer. The moment was born out of nowhere and before she knew it she was picking up the phone and dialling the Addison Kirk number.

‘Veronica Taylor, please,’ she requested firmly, when the phone was answered, and in next to no time she had Thomson Wakefield’s PA on the line asking if she might help her. ‘Oh, hello,’ Yancie said cheerfully, while quite well aware that Veronica Taylor must know she’d been suspended, not prepared to flounder before she got started. ‘My name’s Yancie Dawkins; you may remember I saw Mr Wakefield last Friday—I wonder if I could have a word with him?’

‘I’m afraid that’s impossible.’

Drat! Yancie dug her heels in. Suddenly it was of paramount importance that she speak with the man that day. ‘If he’s in a meeting, perhaps you’d ask him to call me back,’ she requested. Silence at the other end, and somehow Yancie gained the impression that men as busy as the boss of Addison Kirk were not noted for ringing the hoi polloi from the lowly transport section. That thought annoyed her—who the dickens did he think he was? She wasn’t used to such treatment! ‘Or, failing that, I’m free this afternoon; I could come in to see him,’ she offered magnanimously. Since Yancie knew she was going to lie her head off, she would by far prefer to do it over the phone—if he was so busy, why waste his time seeing her personally?

‘I’m afraid Mr Wakefield’s time is fully booked today. If you’d like to hold on for a moment.’ Yancie held on and a minute or so later the PA was back, and it soon transpired she had been to see the man himself when she said, ‘If you’d care to look in tomorrow, say around midday, Mr Wakefield will try and slot you into his busy schedule.’

‘I should be prepared to wait?’ Should I bring sandwiches?

‘Mr Wakefield is an exceptionally busy man,’ Veronica Taylor answered pleasantly.

So why didn’t he just pick up his phone now? It was ridiculous that she should have to go and sit there and, remembering the last time, wait and wait. He was in his office so why didn’t he just pick up his perishing phone and let her get her lies said, done and over with now? But, Yancie reminded herself, she wanted her job back; she truly, truly did. And if this was what she had to do to get it, so be it. ‘I’ll be in tomorrow—around midday, as you suggest,’ she said nicely, adding a polite goodbye—and realised that yet again, without even having spoken with him, Thomson Wakefield had managed to disturb her equilibrium.

When she had calmed down from her niggle of annoyance, Yancie started to feel quite excited about her interview tomorrow. So much depended on its outcome. And truly she was a good driver. She’d made a mistake, but she’d learned from it, and if only Thomson Wakefield would give her another chance…Now, what should she wear?

She had a wardrobe or two full of really wonderful clothes. Somehow, when she had never felt the need of a confidence boost before, Yancie now experienced the oddest desire to want to look her very, very best when she saw Thomson Wakefield tomorrow.

Which, she scoffed a minute or so later, was just so much nonsense—no man had the right to tilt her confidence a little, or even the merest fraction. She went and checked out a fresh uniform.

At eleven fifty-five the following morning Yancie, suited in her newly dry-cleaned uniform and crisp beige shirt, presented herself at Veronica Taylor’s office. Yancie had debated whether or not to wear her name tag, but thought, since Thomson Wakefield knew perfectly well who she was, that she wouldn’t bother. She had, in fact, been halfway out the door of the apartment when it had dawned on her that for someone desperate to be reinstated she was risking it.

So now, duly labelled, she sat in Veronica Taylor’s office while the PA rang through to the next-door office to inform her boss—their boss, with any luck—that Yancie Dawkins was there.

Anticipating that the great man would squeeze her into his busy schedule about two minutes before he went for his lunch around one, Yancie had barely read five pages of her book before he buzzed through to say he would see her now.

Yancie, wishing she’d spent her waiting time re-rehearsing the tale she was about to tell, quickly put her paperback in her shoulder bag and, feeling oddly nervous—which was totally absurd, she told herself—she went to the other door in the room, knocked briefly, and went in.

Thomson Wakefield was just as she remembered him. Today he wore a dark suit, striped shirt and, as he rose from his chair to indicate she should take the seat she had used a week ago, she saw he was as tall, and as nearly good-looking, as ever.

‘Good morning,’ she broke the silence that emanated from the non-talkative brute. ‘Er, afternoon,’ she corrected, crossing to the chair—not a glimmer of a smile! Here we go—it was like treading through sticky treacle. ‘Thank you for seeing me at such short notice,’ she heard herself say—creepy or what?

Yancie clamped her lips shut, and took the seat he offered; only the ever present knowledge of how much she wanted this job—nay, needed this job—prevented her from getting up and marching out again.

She looked at him. His glance flicked over her. If he observed her name tag neatly in place—and from the little she knew of him she suspected he missed little—he did not comment. In fact he said nothing at all for a good few seconds, but unsmilingly took in her neatly brushed shoulder-length ash-blonde hair and complexion—once rated by some male as exquisite. Wakefield was totally unaffected.

When he did speak, it was to remind her, ‘You wished to see me?’

So he was throwing the ball into her court. She took a deep breath—bother the man for making her nervous. ‘I want my job back,’ she said bluntly—oh, grief, she hadn’t rehearsed it this way. She saw a trace of ice chill his eyes, and guessed she wasn’t going the right way to get it. ‘Please,’ she added, as an afterthought.

Last Friday, in this room, she had thought—very briefly—that the man opposite had marginally cracked his face a touch, as if she’d amused him. His mouth tweaked again, but it was so fleeting, she was again certain she was mistaken. In any case, she didn’t care to be laughed at.

‘So?’ he enquired curtly.

So? She stared at him from puzzled and deeply blue eyes. ‘Oh!’ It suddenly clicked.

Though before she could get her wits together and rush into her story Thomson Wakefield, as if thinking her particularly dense, enlightened her. ‘So why should I give you your job back?’

Yancie didn’t care to be thought dense either. ‘Because I need it,’ she answered, which she realised was not the answer he wanted. Therefore, before she started to lie her head off, she managed to find a smile, which had much the same effect on him as any of her other smiles—precisely none—and bucked her ideas up. ‘Obviously you want to know what I was doing driving where I shouldn’t have been a week ago last Thursday,’ she said prettily.

He was unimpressed, but his glance to his watch, as if to say if she didn’t soon spit it out he’d be making that suspension permanent, prodded her to get on with it. ‘It might be an idea,’ he suggested, and Yancie was certain she heard sarcasm there.

It was the annoyance she felt with him, his sarcasm, and his barely concealed impatience that he could look at his watch, which gave her the kick start she needed. ‘I really can’t think why I didn’t tell you the truth before,’ she lied. ‘Other than, of course, I knew I was in the wrong, and…’ she tried another smile—zilch! ‘…nobody likes to be in the wrong.’ Silence. ‘But, the plain truth of the matter is, I went to see my sister.’

‘Your sister?’

She might well have said ‘cousin’ since she did have those, but had no sister. But Yancie was ever conscious of her connection with her board member half-cousin, Greville, and, fearing she might trip herself up if she started talking ‘cousins’, she’d thought it better to invent a sister. In her view if she was going to have to tell a lie anyway she might as well make it a good one.

‘My sister had been to stay with me for a few days, with her toddler daughter—er—Miranda. Anyhow,’ Yancie rushed on, suddenly starting to feel extremely uncomfortable at lying—though still feeling unable to tell the truth and bring Wilf into it. ‘Anyhow, my n-niece has this soft toy, a lion, called Leo. She’s devoted to Leo, but no sooner had they arrived back at their home, early, very early on Thursday morning, than my sister was ringing me to say they’d just discovered Miranda had left Leo behind, and was inconsolable without him.’ Yancie, most of her lying out of the way, looked directly at Thomson Wakefield. She smiled; he didn’t. ‘You know how children are.’

He surveyed her coolly. ‘I don’t have any.’

‘Well—er—I’m sure your wife would know…’

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