Jessica Steele: The Feisty Fiancée

'You know your mother's not going to like it, don't you?' Greville commented. 'She'll give both you and Ralph hell!'

'Oh, heck, I never thought about my mother,' Yancie answered, feeling suddenly wretched. It was significant, she supposed, that Aunt Delia had not suggested she might make her home with her mother. The novelty of having a little girl, a white-haired child, had soon worn off. Yancie and her two cousins, who had been similar hindrances to the respective mothers, were, at the age of seven, sent off to boarding-school.

Yancie drove automatically as she recalled how her father had died in a skiing accident and how, although he had left her mother well provided for, it hadn't taken her mother long to run through his fortune. To find herself a job had simply never entered Ursula Dawkins' head. She had instead, after having affairs with several possibles, elected to marry money in the person of Ralph Proctor.

Yancie, on her holiday visits home, had learned to greatly care for Ralph Proctor, and he in turn had grown very fond of her. Too fond, anyhow, to consider allowing Yancie to live anywhere but in his home after the inevitable happened and his marriage broke down. Which was quite all right by Ursula Proctor, who walked off with a very handsome divorce settlement without the encumbrance of a too beautiful ash-blonde daughter to cramp her style.

That wouldn't stop her mother, Yancie fretted, from attempting to make her life, and Ralph's life, a misery should she learn that not only was her daughter no longer under Ralph Proctor's roof, but was actually working.

Although on that fateful day she had left her stepfather's home, Yancie had had no idea what work she could do. `The thing is, I'm not properly trained for anything in particular,' she explained to her aunt and half-cousin. `I can housekeep, I suppose, but…'

'You can't do that!' Delia Alford stated categorically.

'It's all I know,' Yancie confessed.

'Nonsense!' her aunt declared stoutly. `You can drive, and you can…'

'There's a driving job vacant at Addison Kirk,' Greville chipped in, and halted when both his mother and cousin looked at him. `But you wouldn't want to do that…'

'Oh, yes, I would!' Yancie jumped at the chance.

'Hey! I wasn't serious!' Greville protested.

'I am,' Yancie answered.

'I'm not sure they want a woman driver…' he began to prevaricate. Though when his two female relatives looked at him askance he had the grace to grin as he conceded, `But, perhaps, in these times of equal opportunities, it's time they had one.'

Greville then went on to outline how one of the senior drivers had retired at the end of December and how his replacement hadn't stayed in the job longer than a week, and Aunt Delia beamed. She was very proud of her son; he, as his father had been before him, was on the hoard of Addison Kirk.

'That's settled, then,' she stated, and, smiling at her son, she added, `What's the point of you being on the board if you can't give your little cousin a helping hand?'

His `little cousin' was five feet eight, but as she looked uncertainly at him so he too smiled. `Indeed,' he agreed, `what point?'

And so, after the formality of an interview the outcome of which she knew in advance Yancie had got the job. As to the politics of the matter, Greville had instructed the head of personnel to make no written mention of his interest, and Greville-while certain his cousin would fare well with her fellow workers-had suggested to her that it might be an idea not to mention that she had obtained the job through him.

'In fact,' he'd smiled, `it might be an idea if you didn't mention the family connection at all.'

So she hadn't, and inside a few weeks she had gone from not having a car to drive to having a Mercedes, a Jaguar and any number of other cars in which to visit her friends.

As far as Yancie's mother was concerned, having learned that Sukey Lloyd had written off Yancie's car, to Yancie's astonishment, had naturally assumed that the Jaguar Yancie had driven the day she'd called was a replacement.

Yancie's immediate superior had given her a very intensive driving test before stating that her driving was up to his high standard. She had then been measured for a hurriedly tailored uniform-two jackets, two skirts in brown and several shirts in beige, bearing the brown embroidered Addison Kirk logo of a bridge spanning the world. Yancie supposed the logo to be something to do with the manufacture of industrial material which the company seemed mainly concerned with. But so long as she could hide the logo underneath a brooch of some sort when she was visiting friends she didn't much mind what the firmm did. She didn't want to risk anyone she knew bumping into her mother and giving a hint that her daughter was now earning a wage.

Yancie executed a neat piece of laneswapping and went back to reflecting how, as her aunt had said, her cousins had wanted her to move in with them.

'Don't you dare think of living anywhere but with us,' red-haired Astra had declared warmly.

'I second the motion,' grinned black-haired Fennia-and it was just like being at boarding school again, only better. The three cousins had been born within a month of each other and were as close as sisters. Closer, in fact, than were the three sisters who had borne them.

But, love her mother, her aunt Portia and her aunt Imogen though she did, Yancie didn't want to think of them in any depth. Between them these three ladies had managed to give them enough hang-ups to dwell on.

Thankfully, just at that moment Yancie spotted that the petrol gauge on the dashboard was pointing to empty. Oh, crumbs-she'd never make it back to London. It was doubtful she'd have enough juice to make it back to pick up Mr Clements!

Yancie at that moment immediately recognised that she was about to drive past a service station. Lord knew when she might come across another one! There was no time to think, only to act. Quickly she spun the wheel and was already crossing into the next lane when a violently blasted car horn alerted her to the fact that she had very nearly rammed an Aston Martin.

Oh, grief. She'd noticed it earlier but, since the driver-with all that power under the bonnet-hadn't wanted to overtake, she'd stayed in the fast lane and had paid little more attention. But now she'd not time to apologize, only time to get out of trouble, and swiftly!

Fortunately, the driver of the Aston Martin reacted quickly and moved out of harm's way-and Yancie made it safely to the forecourt of the self-service petrol station.

She would have liked to blame her inattentive driving not only on the sudden realisation that she was driving on empty, but also on the fact that thinking of her mother and her two aunts was invariably upsetting. But she knew she had only herself to blame-she and she alone was at fault.

Yancie stepped out of the Mercedes, but had barely got the driver's door closed when the Aston Martin pulled in behind her and, breathing fire from every pore-if his expression was anything to go by-a tall, dark-haired man began heading her way. By the look of it, she was going to have to apologise!

And she might have done but-hold on a minute-her livelihood-not to mention this lovely job-was at stake here. She had no idea how these things worked, but if this immaculately suited man bearing down on her made a note of her registration number and reported her she could, ultimately, lose her job! In the wrong though she was, she just couldn't afford to admit it-to apologise.

'What the hell do you think you're playing at?' the man challenged aggressively the moment he was next to her, hard, unimpressed grey eyes flicking over her slender shape, taking in the brooch she wore-thank goodness she had covered up the firm's logo-you never knew who might recognise it!