The Feisty Fiancée

by Jessica Steele

  'You're fog-bound?' Fennia guessed when Yancie told her she wouldn't be home that night so not to worry. `You stay where you are; with luck, it will be clear by the morning.'

  Yancie rang off, hoping Fennia was right. She didn't know how she was going to get through one night sharing a room with Thomson; to have to share the room with him for a second night was unthinkable.

  Where was he? It didn't take all that long to collect a car rug, did it? An abrupt and unwanted notion suddenly occurred to her. Oh, my giddy aunt, supposing, just supposing, he took it into his head to take a look around! Just supposing he took a look at the dining room. Oh, grief, he could, at this very moment, be having his dinner. In which case when he came back he might very well tell her she could keep her sandwiches; the deal was off, the bed his.

  Possession, she decided, was nine-tenths of the law. She glanced about, and realised she couldn't lock him out because he had the room key with him. It would be undignified, as well as unfair, to put a chair under the door. She went for possession.

  Hurriedly she cleaned her teeth again, took off her skirt and jacket and hung them up, briefly contemplated sleeping in her shirt, but decided against it, and hung that up too. She hadn't got a fresh shirt for tomorrow as it was-how much more rumpled her shirt was going to be if she slept in it. Besides, aggressive or kind, whatever Thomson's mood, she instinctively knew that it just wasn't in his nature to take advantage of her. She dispensed with her bra too, but because she drew the line at going to bed totally naked she opted to stay with her briefs. They were only bits of lace; she'd rinse them through in the morning; they'd soon dry.

  She heard the sound of the lift, and dived into bed and out again to put out the main light, and dived for the bed again. Then discovered she needn't have bothered for she realised it wasn't Thomson but, as voices neared and passed the door, a couple of other people staying in the hotel.

  Yancie tried to sleep but couldn't. She felt too on edge. And when, the time nearing midnight, Thomson did return, her heart started to pound so resoundingly she thought he might hear it.

  He didn't put on the light and Yancie, hearing him moving about, was suddenly conscience-stricken. He was so tall, and that chair was so small. Had she been in any way decently clad, she felt then that she would have got out of the bed and told him that he could have the bed. Modestly, however, and an unexpected feeling of shyness at the intimacy of the situation, kept her where she was.

  Eventually the only noise to be heard was the occasional creak of the chair as Thomson adjusted his position. Yancie studied the line of light coming under the door from the hall and, her eyes quite well accustomed to the darkness, the room consequently seemed to lighten.

  She grew sleepy and closed her eyes, and drifted into a light sleep somewhere around two in the morning. She was awake again at three, but it was not the creaking of the chair that awakened her, but the feel of Thomson, plainly having had enough of trying to get comfortable, coming to lie down on top of the bed beside her.

  She was not alarmed, but glad. It was an obvious solution. She felt like telling him so, but thought better of it. She had an idea he'd probably leave the bed early so that she would be none the wiser.

  It was strange, she mused, but she would have thought she would be furious to be sharing her bed with him-albeit she was the only one beneath the covers-but, in fact, she wasn't. Actually she felt more concerned for him than furious-concerned because the car rug wasn't making much of a job of covering him, and his bare feet were sticking out from under it.

  She was still worrying about his feet when she fell asleep again. She didn't wake up again until, ploughing through her stirring brain, she suddenly became aware of a bare leg against her own-a leg that wasn't hers!

  She jerked awake to find dawn was breaking and that the leg wasn't the only thing that was bare. She was sharing the bed with a man who had on about as much clothing as she had.

  From stirring to wakefulness, she flew straight to agitated panic. Thomson's naked chest was against her left breast, his face so close to hers she could have kissed it. Though her inclination just then was more to bite it than kiss it.

  She gave him a gigantic shove-and as she struggled to sit up, taking the duvet with her, he became awake on the instant, awake and alert. `How could you?' she shrieked.

  Thomson sat up too. She had the benefit of most of the duvet, and the sight of his naked broad shoulders and naked hair-roughened chest did nothing for her agitations. `I didn't know I had,' were his first words.

  'Don't get clever with me!' she charged; if he was trying to be amusing she just wasn't in the mood for it. `You know what I meanhow dare you get under the bedcovers with me?"

  'Ah!' he drawled, and then she realised he was too sharp for her. `You knew I'd had enough of the chair and had to stretch out? You knew I'd joined you on the bed?'

  She wasn't sure there wasn't a hint of kindness there-she was in no mood for that either. `You didn't have to get into it!' she raged, wanting to push him furiously out of it, but not totally certain that he was wearing anything.

  'Oh, put your chaste outrage away!' Thomson ordered bluntly. `The central heating went off. I was half asleep, half frozen.' There was not a scrap of kindness in his tone when he went on to say, `Do you honestly think that after our last amorous excursion I'd choose to repeat that non-event?'

  Non-event! Her awakening! How she stopped herself from thumping him then she didn't know. Toad? He was worse than that! `Fog or no fog,' she snapped, 'I'm going back the minute I'm dressed.' If he was about to say that went double for him, Yancie wasn't waiting to hear.

  Wrenching the duvet the rest of the way off him, she made a cape of it and, turning all at the same time, she left the bed and went storming to the bathroom. Tears sprang to her eyes; she swallowed them back. She never used to be so emotional. She didn't want to be emotional. She didn't want to be in love. Being in love hurt. And making love to her was a nonevent! Those intimate moments when she'd shared more of herself with him than any man had been a non-event! That awakening to how she felt, how she could feel, how she was her and not her mother-had been a non-event!

  Yancie sat down on a bathroom stool with the duvet wrapped around her and hoped he froze. Though knowing him, without a cover to bless himself with, he was probably getting dressed and going to look for a cup of coffee. She could murder a cup herself.

  It seriously crossed her mind to get dressed and get to the Jaguar and take off and leave Thomson stranded. Heaven alone knew where they were-she didn't. There was only one thing wrong with that-well, two, actually. One, Mr-non-event-never-again-Wakefield out there had the wretched car key. Two, if she did leave him stranded, it was a foregone conclusion she would lose her job. And, even though she was not thinking very kindly of him just then, she still wanted to keep her job. It was rare that she saw him, but she did sometimes, and she just couldn't face risking never seeing him again.

  She got up and angrily shot the stiff bolt home on the bathroom door. Car key he might have, but he wasn't having the bathroom. The problem was, it was a bit boring sitting here doing nothing.

  Yancie rinsed through her briefs, got most of the excess moisture out with a towel, and finished the drying process by use of the hairdryer attached to the bathroom wall. She felt like being perverse, and purely because she was positive, weather permitting or not, that Thomson would want to be on the road as soon as possible she decided she was no longer in a hurry.

  She heard a sound like a door slamming to, and felt fairly confident that was the door to the room. She felt confident enough anyhow, though still with the security of the duvet around her, to unbolt the bathroom door and peer out. Good. T. Wakefield esquire had gone to breakfast.

  Yancie went back inside the bathroom again, bolted the door and ran a bath. She had time, she decided, for a good long wallow. And, even if she hadn't, even if sir had merely gone to check road conditions and wasn't going to bother with breakfast, she was still going to e
njoy her bath.

  Yancie had her wallow, and found when she got out of the tub and patted herself dry that her long soak had calmed her. She was even slightly amazed that she could have been so mutinous. Hurt had done that to her. Since falling in love, she'd experienced so many differing emotions.

  Never had she used to tell such whoppers either. Love had made a liar of her. Not that she would ever lie to Thomson over any large issue, so perhaps her small fibs weren't so bad. Perhaps as long as they didn't hurt him they didn't count.

  Yancie knew for certain that she never wanted to hurt him, and was just resolving that she'd be good fromm now on when-shocking her so much she was like a startled rabbit, incapable of movement-the bathroom door suddenly opened, and Thomson stood there. He was bare-chested, but trouser-clad, and had obviously come in to take a shower.

  'I locked the door!' she shrieked. Where was the towel?

  While at the same time, his eyes staring as if hypnotised by her slender but curvaceous, long-legged body, Thomson hurriedly started, `You weren't around-I thought you'd gone to breakfast.'

  Panicking wildly, the towel back on the rail two yards away, Yancie vaguely registered Thomson knew that the hotel hadn't run out of food, and equally vaguely supposed that she had appropriated the bathroom long enough to have bathed ten times over, so he could be forgiven for supposing she had now vacated it.

  But, suddenly and speedily, she was on the move, too late now to fret that the door bolt couldn't have been so far rammed home as it should have been. Yancie went to dash past him, found the duvet had slipped off the bathroom stool, and all at once, while trying to avoid coming into contact with Thomson, she found she was treading duvet.

  'Ooh!' she cried, and `Oh,' she wailed as the duvet suddenly turned into an octopus that refused to let her go-and the next she knew she was falling.

  She never got to hit the floor, though, because Thomson's arms shot out and he caught her, holding her while she tried desperately to get her balance. She clung onto him, her arms clutching at his arms, his shoulders-then, startled, she stopped treading the duvet and became aware of nothing except that he had one arm around her holding her upright, while his other hand was near enough holding her naked left buttock.

  'Thomson!' she gasped, and realised from the shaken kind of look of him that he had just become aware of the same thing.

  'Yancie,' he said in a strangled kind of way, and as if he could do nothing about it, and Yancie knew that she certainly couldn't as his head came down, so she turned her face up to meet him. And, as their lips met, nothing else seemed to matter.

  It was a beautiful kiss, and Yancie wanted more. But Thomson was attempting to put some daylight between their two bodies. Yancie did her best to back away from himbut she felt hungry for his kisses.

  'This is a nightmare,' he said, his voice hoarse, not like his usual tone at all.

  She wanted to help, but how? `I don't know what to do,' she mourned huskily.

  She saw him swallow, saw him try for a light note as he replied, `I trust you aren't inviting me to show you.'

  'I didn't mean that!' she strove to find the same light note-but missed by a mile.

  'I know,' he said gently, and sent her such a wonderful smile, her legs almost buckled. He looked down into her upturned face. `I should let you go,' he seemed to be talking more to himself than her. `But…'

  'But`?' Yancie asked, her eyes on him, his mouth, the mouth she wanted to feel again. And, as his head came down again, so she did, and it was so heavenly she could have wept.

  She wanted to cry his name from the pure ecstasy of it. But he was kissing her again, one hand caressing over her naked behind, and she was going light-headed from the pleasure of it.

  He kissed her throat, and she placed her arms around him, holding him to her, her naked breasts against his bare chest. 'Thomson!' she cried, his name refusing to stay down.

  'Dear Yancie,' he breathed, and she thrilled anew. Was she his dear? She kissed him, felt his caressing hands on her back, felt them caress round to her ribcage, then, with whispering tenderness, he captured her breasts. A sigh escaped her. The pink peaks of her breasts hardened incredibly under his touch, and as he brushed his palms lightly over the tips a fire went wild inside her.

  She clutched onto him, unthinking, feeling only. She wanted him, oh, so much. Again he kissed her. Then he was capturing her breasts, moulding them, tenderly fondling, and Yancie was burning out of control.

  When he bent his head and gently kissed the tip of first one breast and then the other, she soared to even higher heights of wanting. His mouth captured one breast, tormenting its wanting hardness with his tongue, while his other hand caressed and moulded over her other breast, over her body and down one thigh.

  And Yancie didn't know quite where she was when, holding her a little way away from him, Thomson trailed kisses down her throat, over her breast.

  'Oh, Thomson' she murmured shakily when he held her to him again.

  'I want you,' he told her, his voice thick in his throat.

  'I-w-want you too,' she answered shakily-and guessed her nervousness must be showing, for suddenly he was gripping her arms tightly, and was deliberately putting an inch of daylight between their two bodies.

  'This-er-' he broke off, then appeared to have got himself a little more together. `This won't do, Yancie Dawkins,' he told her quietly, and Yancie, never wanting to leave his arms, just knew that their time of loving was over.

  'It certainly won't,' she whispered, and, though she wanted to stay exactly where she was, from some unknown somewhere she actually found the strength to take a small step. Though, as Thomson started to take a pace back from her too, so she took a hasty grab at him, and when he looked at her she swallowed and, her colour high, began, `I know, given that I haven't a stitch on, that I'm giving off all the signals that I haven't a shy bone in my body-but would you mind closing your eyes while I get out of here?'

  That reluctant but wonderful smile of his came out and Yancie didn't want to go anywhere but back into his arms. But as he stood with his grey eyes gently holding hers, so he stretched out a hand and took a bath towel from the rail, shook it out and, with his eyes still on hers, wrapped the towel around her. Then he closed his eyes. `Go, Yancie,' he said. `While I can still let you.'

  She wanted to stay. Wanted to kiss him surely he would feel her touch and kiss her again? But, `See you on the ice,' she gasped and, belatedly spying her briefs and hurriedly snatching them up as she went, she went quickly.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  IT WAS Astra asking that afternoon if she was all right that warned Yancie she had better get her act together. Fennia had asked what was the matter just over a week ago.

  'Yes, of c…' she began, and looked up to see that both her cousin Astra and cousin Fennia were observing her with a good deal of concern. And suddenly she couldn't bluff it out. `Well, no, actually, I'm not,' she admitted, and her cousins urgently wanted to know what was wrong so that they could help. `You can't help,' she told them, and confessed. `I've done the stupidest thing-I've fallen for this man and he's so constantly in my head, there just isn't any room for anything else.'

  'Oh, Yancie!' Fennia gasped.

  'How does he feel?' Astra, the more practical one of the three, asked.

  'Like-he doesn't want to know,' Yancie replied.

  'I don't believe it!' Fennia exclaimed. `To know you is to love you,' she added stoutly. And all three of them laughed.

  'Tell him that,' Yancie said.

  'Thomson Wakefield?' Astra asked.

  'How did you work that out?' Yancie asked in amazement.

  'There's something different about you when you come home after driving him,' Astra replied.

  'Really? Well, I doubt I shall ever be driving him again,' Yancie said. He had driven as far as his home today. Then, as if their mindblowing, intimate embrace had never happened, he'd bluntly instructed her to see to it that the Jaguar was returned to the firm's garage.

>   'Do you want to talk about it?' Fennia asked. Yancie shook her head, and loved her cousins the more that they didn't pry, but let her know that they were there for her at any time and in any place, Astra stating she was taking them out that evening. No man was worth staying in for on a Saturday night.

  In actuality, Yancie would have preferred to stay home. She felt a need to be by herself, but Astra was right; she ought to be going out and setting about putting Thomson out of her head. But, how could she?

  After her speedy exit from the bathroom she had hurriedly donned some clothes, attended to her light make-up and her hair. A hasty look out of the window had shown that, while weather conditions could have been better, they weren't as bad as they had been. Yancie had opted to wait for Thomson down in the hotel lounge.

  She hadn't had to wait very long. But when she had been feeling all shy at the thought of seeing him again after their heated lovemaking it had been at once obvious from his cool expression that he was regretting what had happened.

  'I'll drive,' he'd said, his tone even, but a hint of iron there that said, Don't argue.

  Suit yourself, she'd fumed, hating him that he could put her on this emotional treadmill. There she had been, sitting there weaving cosy dreams where Thomson, when he joined her, he might suggest they met outside of work so that they might get to know each other a little better. But, forget it! He was physically attracted to her; she knew that much. But did he have to make it so painfully obvious that that was all it was-physical? That his emotions were not otherwise affected? That, in fact, he didn't want to know her any better?

  So why couldn't she stop thinking about the wretched man? It was for certain he wasn't wasting any time thinking about her.

  In that, however, Yancie found she was wrong. It was around five, late that day, when she was drumming into her head how she was going to go out with Fennia and Astra that night, and how they were going to have a whale of a time, when the phone rang.