Jessica Steele - The Feisty Fiancée

Or so she thought. She heard him answer the phone-then nearly jumped in surprise when he said shortly, `For you.'

She half turned in her seat. `For me?' she asked half-wittedly, one hand leaving the steering wheel as if to take the phone from him.

'Pull over!' he ordered.

Yancie pulled over onto a grass verge, her mind going from stunned to racing. It had to be Kevin Veasey; he was working all day today. It had gone six, but he often worked late. Perhaps some urgent job for tomorrow had come up and he wanted her to go somewhere once she'd dropped off her present passenger.

With the car halted, she turned and took the phone from her employer. `Hello?' she said and just couldn't believe the voice she heard it was not Kevin Veasey.

'Who was that?' her mother demanded of the man who had answered the phone.

'What's wrong?' Yancie asked quickly, stunned but realising her mother would only have traced her to this number in an emergency.

She should, she almost at once acknowledged, have known her mother better than that. `Nothing's wrong!' her mother retorted tartly. `Everything couldn't be more right. Who was that who answered the phone?' she repeated.

'Er-nobody you know,' Yancie managed, getting herself a little together; though heartily glad she had her back to Thomson Wakefield, she had an idea she was a pretty shade of scarlet.

'Are you going steady with someone?' Ursula Proctor demanded. `Mother!'

'I don't know what's the matter with you! When I was your age I had men cutting a path to my door. You're pretty. If I do say it myself, you're quite beautiful sometimes. Why…'

'I' m-er-a little busy right now.'

'I've spent the best part of today trying to contact you-and now you haven't time to talk to me.' Her mother broke off to draw breath. 'You'd better come over and see me I'll expect you tonight at…'

'I can't come tonight.'

'Why ever not?'

Oh, grief, there seemed no way she was going to be able to get her mother off the line until she was ready to go-and Yancie was in agonies, knowing that Wakefield esquire was tuned in to every answer she made. `I'm not at home this weekend.'

'You've never gone away with some man?"

'I'll ring you later…' Yancie began.

'No, you won't. Ralph said you were out for the day, but when I rang Delia to tell her my news Greville answered the phone, so I told him-and mentioned at the same time the problem I was having getting hold of you.' Poor Greville! Her mother was still giving forth, taking her to task for giving her half cousin her car phone number and not her, when Yancie blanked off, her thoughts on her cousin. Poor Greville; the fact of her mother `mentioning' anything meant that her mother had gone on at him ad infinitum. Yancie then knew that Greville, probably meaning only to nip into Aunt Delia's to collect something or other she had prepared for his party that night, had been delayed by her mother bending his ear for half an hour. Yancie guessed he probably had a note of the firm's car phone numbers in his wallet, and must have given her mother this phone number from sheer, worndown desperation.

'What was your news?' Yancie questioned when her mother broke off to draw another breath, realising only too well that, short of unforgivably putting the phone down on her mother, she wasn't going to be able to end this conversation until she heard it.

'I'm getting married again!' her mother announced bluntly. `Naturally, I wanted you to be the first to know.'

'Oh, I'm sorry.' Yancie was instantly apologetic.

'I'd have preferred your congratulations!' her mother retorted acidly.

'Well, of course, I'm pleased for you. I…'

'Good, you can come and meet Henry tomorrow,' her mother snorted pithily-and hung up. And Yancie felt as if she'd just been pulled through the wringer.

Absently she handed the phone back to Thomson, and only realised that she had forgotten that he was breathing down her neck for all of two seconds when, mildly for him, he enquired, `Family problems?'

In an instant Yancie was back to realising she was in a car parked on a grass verge, not chauffeuring the man she was hoping to impress with her efficiency. `I'm sorry,' she apologised. `My mother's-er-um just got engaged.' Yancie started to feel hot all over. 'She-um-wanted me to be the first to know,' she explained, and set the car in motion, hoping with all she had that her employer would think the news qualified as sufficiently urgent for her mother to have contacted her through the garage, via Kevin Veasey, who had passed on the car's phone number to her.

Not another word was said, and by the time she had driven onto the forecourt of the hotel Yancie was giving serious thought to telling her mother when next she saw her-tomorrow or die, by the sound of it-that she was not only no longer living at Ralph's home, but that she had found herself a job. Well, to be more exact, Greville had found her a job.

Yancie took a swift glance at Thomson Wakefield as they got out of the car. If she still had a job, that was. His glance at her was brief, then he was striding towards the hotel entrance. She went hurrying with him and started to feel annoyed. She half expected when they reached the door of the hotel and he opened it that he would go through and leave it to swing back in her face. But no, he did have some manners, it seemed, in that he held it open for her to go through first.

They were at Reception waiting for their keys when he informed her that he would not be requiring her services that evening. `I'm dining with some people I'm doing some business with. I see no point in you waiting around or coming to collect me when I've no idea what time I shall need you.'

'You'd like the car keys?"

'I'll take a taxi.'

That probably meant he was celebrating some business deal with a glass or two of something! `If you're sure?' she checked-this to a man she was growing positive was sure in all he did.

He didn't deign to answer, and they were going up to their rooms in the lift when he told her, `Make certain you have something to eat yourself.' Yancie got out of the lift on her floor and she didn't deign to answer.

She was in her room when she began to wonder why the man had the power to-without effort-niggle her so. Probably, she pondered, because she had never met a man like him before. The man was an automaton. `Make certain you have something to eat yourself,' he'd said. Well, of course, she would.

Though, having eaten in the hotel's dining room by herself at lunchtime, she had little wish to dine by herself that night. But the only person she knew in this neck of the woods was Thomson Wakefield, and he was dining elsewhere, thank you very much.

She paused then and stood stock-still as the thought suddenly came to her-was that why she was feeling all niggled? Because he hadn't asked her to dine with him?

Oh, come on! As if she wanted to dine with him, for goodness' sake! To do so would mean she was keen for his company, that she liked him. Why, she couldn't even stand the man! Having indisputably established that fact, Yancie did a mental trawl of girls she'd been at boarding-school with, but, before she could come up with a name, she remembered Charlie Merrett. She reached for the phone.

'Fennia,' she said when her cousin answered, `have we got Charlie Merrett's phone number between us?'

Fennia had it in her address book, and not only gave it to her but said Greville had phoned to say if Yancie got in touch and said her mother had found her would she forgive him? `Apparently Aunt Ursula was particularly hell-bent on finding you,' Fennia added.

Yancie had a ten-minute conversation with her cousin and told her to tell their half-cousin that she understood perfectly; that she'd probably have done the same in similar circumstances, and that she forgave him completely.