The Feisty Fiancée

by Jessica Steele

  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 motherof-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 oddly 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?'

  " 1'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 hi
s 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.