Читать книгу The Feisty Fiancee - Jessica Steele - Страница 7

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…’