Jessica Steele - The Feisty Fiancée

After her phone call to Fennia, Yancie rang Charles Merrett's number. 'Yancie!' he exclaimed when he heard her. 'How're things going? Lovely to hear from you. Still in London?"

'At this moment, I'm nearer to you than I am to London. You're not free to have dinner, are you?"

'Am I not!' he answered eagerly. `Just give me a minute to cancel my arrangements for tonight, and I'll be with you.'

'Oh, I wouldn't want you to cancel…'

'I would! I can see my male friends any old time,' he said warmly.

'You're sure?"

'Where are you?'

Because it seemed she was staying in a hotel in an opposite direction from where Charlie lived, Yancie said she'd make her own way to the restaurant he'd suggested.

'I couldn't let you,' he argued.

'Yes, you could,' she laughed, and had only one other question to ask before she agreed to meet him at the appointed place at eight-thirty. `Does this restaurant have a car park?'

'That's a small part of the reason why it's so popular,' he answered.

Yancie took a shower feeling pleased, since it sounded as if the restaurant they were going to was very up-market, that she had brought the dress with her that she had. After her shower, she dressed her white-blonde hair in a knot on top of her head, applied the small amount of make-up she normally wore, and slipped into the long-sleeved ankle-length black lace dress with its black silk petticoat lining.

She left her room knowing that she looked good and, strangely, half wishing that Thomson Wakefield could see her. Well, she defended, when trying to work out why she should think anything so ridiculous, she wouldn't have said her brown uniform was the most flattering garment she had ever ownedbut it was the only thing he had ever seen her in or was likely to, for that matter.

Yancie had a small, but only a very small, tussle with her conscience on whether she, like her employer, should take a taxi. But why, for goodness' sake? She had a perfectly good car out there doing nothing, and she knew that she wouldn't have any trouble parking it. It wasn't as if she was likely to bump into Thomson Wakefield or anything like that, was she? Nor, since he'd taken a taxi, which indicated he intended to do a little celebrating, was it likely that he'd be back before she was.

Charlie Merrett was just as she remembered him from the last time she'd seen him-about a year ago. Tall, handsome and around the same age as Yancie, she found him as willing and eager to please as ever he had been.

'You're gorgeous, Yancie. Absolutely gorgeous,' he said enthusiastically as they entered the restaurant.

Who wouldn't be fond of him? `And so are you,' she teased him, and they both laughed. Then, as the head waiter came up to them, so Yancie looked about-and nearly went into heart failure. There, across the room, wining and dining at a table with several other people, sat Thomson Wakefield. And, while he was looking straight at her, at the same time he managed to look straight through her.

Oh, crumbs. While he wasn't acknowledging her, Yancie knew he had registered her. Too late now to wish she'd taken a taxi-oh, help-she had the firm's car out there. A car, she swiftly realised, which, since Thomson Wakefield had already started on his meal, he was bound to see when, as was likely, he left the restaurant before she did!

It fleetingly crossed her mind to pop outside and park the car somewhere else. But that was just a thought in the panic of the moment. For heaven's sake, hadn't he said-no, ordered her to have something to eat? Well, that was exactly what she was doing-obeying orders. He hadn't specified where she should eat, had he?

Yancie was profoundly thankful just the same that the waiter led her and Charlie to a table in a small alcove. At least she was spared having to look at the boss man while she ate. Though that too bothered her because, being unable to see him, she started to feel all on edge that any moment she would feel a hand on her shoulder and hear a cold voice request that she hand over the car keys.

She pushed Thomson Wakefield out of her head and made herself concentrate on Charlie Merrett. She had asked him out to dinner, so the least she could do was to play the game. Though in truth Charlie seemed happy enough just to be there.

'So what have you been doing?' she asked, and the next hour went by with the two of them catching up on the happenings of the last twelve months.

Yancie discovered that, while finding it impossible to lie to a friend, she was avoiding telling Charlie that she had left home and had a job-even though it was highly unlikely that he would bump into her mother and comment on it.

They were tucking into a fine pudding when Charlie looked across the table and suddenly recalled, `You never said what you were doing in my part of the world.'

Yancie took a spoonful of the fruit and meringue concoction while she thought how best to answer. `Someone I know was giving a speech at a conference centre up this way,' she smiled. `It was quite something.'

'That sort of thing-making a speech would terrify me,' he said. `Is your pudding all right?' No wonder they were all so fond of Charlie.

It was about half past ten, when they had drunk the last of their coffee, that Yancie told Charlie how super it was to see him again but that she'd been up early that morning and thought she'd go back to her hotel and her bed.

'You'll give my love to Fennia and Astra,' he beamed, and as Yancie promised she would she was bracing herself to walk through the restaurant where he was dining. Should she give him a smile or, following his example, do a bit of looking straight through him?

It irritated her that this man should do this to her confidence and make her so that she had to think how to act rather than follow her natural instincts. However, the situation of whether to smile or whether to look straight through Thomson Wakefield didn't arrive because, when she took a glance over to where he had been sitting, she saw that he wasn't there. His party had gone.

She and Charlie hugged and kissed farewell in a friendly fashion, knowing, without pain, that it could be another twelve months before they saw each other again, and Yancie began her journey back to the hotel.

She'd had an extremely pleasant evening with Charlie Merrett, but it was not thoughts of Charlie that occupied her on that drive-but Thomson Wakefield. Had he gone back to the hotel-had he gone on somewhere?

Gone on somewhere, she decided. Grief, it was only a little after half past ten. On a Saturday night, too! Of course, his dinner had been of the business variety, but corporate entertaining-she was sure she'd heard that phrase somewhere didn't end when the clock struck ten; she, without the smallest experience of `corporate entertaining', felt she could be positive about that. But, in any case, she suddenly felt she could be equally positive that if Thomson Wakefield had decided to return to the hotel and, on his way out, had spotted the company Jaguar, then she wouldn't at all have put it past him to have come back in and ordered her to drive him back to the hotel. And she, eager as she was to keep this job, would have had to comply.

By the time Yancie was parking at the hotel she had drummed up a fine head of hate against the brute. She was, though, by then, fully confident that he had moved on to continue his evening's entertainment elsewhere. Of a certainty, since she was going straight up to her bed, she ran not the smallest risk of seeing him again that night. The next time she saw him would be tomorrow morning-or so she thought.

It was a cold night and once she had locked up the Jaguar Yancie didn't hang about but hotfooted it into the hotel. Hurrying in, passing a lounge area on her way to Reception, she saw Thomson Wakefield, and stopped dead in her tracks. Their eyes locked full-on. He didn't smile-when did he ever?