Jessica Steele - The Feisty Fiancée

Her hint fell on stony ground. `I've just made an exception.'

'Too kind!' Oh, don't be snappy-you may never see him again. That thought was so unbearable, Yancie burst into speech. `You're thinner!' she said hurriedly, feeling more agitated than ever suddenly.

She wished at once she hadn't said it, because her remark brought his eyes from her face to skim over her shape, a much too speculative look in his grey eyes as he fixed them on her blue eyes once more, and quietly remarked, `You don't appear to have put on a whole lot of weight, either.' And, acute as sessment not in it, he said, `Why is that, I wonder?"

'We've both b-been-er-unwell,' she supplied in an endeavour to put him off the scent-love had walked in; her appetite had walked out.

'How are you feeling now?' he enquired pleasantly.

Pretty desperate, actually. But his pleasant tone, plus the fact that he had accepted her answer without further question, caused her to drop her guard in her relief, and it was chattily that she answered, You mean how long have I been having these hallucinations?' The moment the question was out, she wanted it back. She had now gone from merely nervous and agitated to panic-stricken. She had been hoping that Thomson had forgotten her claim to be his fiancee but, with those words `That's no way to speak to your fiancee!' clanging stridently away in her head all the while, she had just reminded him.

In all probability he had never forgotten it, she realised, but-was it too much to hope that those words were not clanging so loudly in his head; that he might not have a clue what she was meaning with her talk of hallucinations?

It was too much to hope for, she was very soon made aware. Because, whatever trauma Thomson had suffered from the accident, it had not impaired the quickness of his thinking, Yancie found. And he was right there with her when he questioned, `To claim to be engaged to me, do I take it that I proposed?' He paused, and then very quickly added, `And that you accepted?'

For all he seemed tense as he waited for her answer. Yancie knew that he was playing with her-and she didn't thank him for it. `Oh, you proposed all right-but you're not engaged to me!' she answered snappily.

His eyes narrowed slightly. `I make it my life's work to go around proposing to women?"

'According to your mother, you've been engaged to Julia Herbert for months!'

'Julia H…' Thomson stared at her disbelievingly. `My mother told you I was engaged to Julia Herbert?' he questioned, seeming stunned. But, collecting himself, he caught a hold of Yancie's arm. `I should have known that nothing is ever straightforward when it involves you, Yancie Dawkins,' he said at length. `Come and take a seat, and you can tell me all about it.'

'You're busy,' she tried, but it seemed he'd got his determined hat on.

'Business can wait!' he said firmly. `Things have been going on here of which I know nothing!' And with that he led her over to the comfortable-looking sofa.

Yancie, by this time, was a trembling wreck. She had a feeling that what Thomson didn't know which he felt he should he resolutely found out. She wanted to flee, wanted to stay, wanted more time with him, even if it was just a mutual `It's been nice working with you' kind of time. But he was urging her to be seated, and, truth to tell, she was feeling rather feeble in the leg department.

She saw a hint of a smile cross his features when she gave in and took a seat on the sofa, but noticed that he didn't turn his back on her, didn't take his eyes off her or give her a chance to dash for the door when he went to the intercom and told his PA, `I'm with someone, Veronica. See to it I'm not disturbed, will you?'

Yancie stared at him. He needn't worry; she didn't feel capable just then of getting up and making a dive for the door. More so when Thomson came over and drew one of the easy chairs close up to her-and looked steadily into her nervous blue eyes.

'I didn't know you were so friendly with my mother,' he commented.

'I'm not!'

'And yet you say you know her well enough for her to impart details of my personal life.'

'I don't know her at all,' Yancie insisted. `She was just there one of the times I came to see you in the hospital.'

'You came more than once?' he questioned sharply, that alert look in his eyes again.

Had he remembered her coming to see him that day? She couldn't ask. Yancie was all at once feeling on very shaky ground. She needed to get out of there, and with her pride intact. And yet she couldn't go. And, she discovered, when she had been able to lie to him in the past, now, with his eyes steady on hers, to lie to him was totally beyond her.

'I came several times,' she confessed, and felt her heart go a touch crazy that his breath seemed to catch and a warm kind of look came to his eyes. But she was fearful she was reading more into his every word, his every look than there actually was, so went on hurriedly, 'Well-we were both in the same hospital though I doubt you'd have come to see me had you been the one who was mobile,' she added hurriedly. And was pleasantly contradicted for her trouble.

'Don't doubt it for a moment,' Thomson assured her. `My first thought when I regained consciousness was you and how you'd fared.' Well, don't read anything into that, Yancie. You were his employee, remember; naturally he'd… `I was still wired up to various contraptions when I knew I had to see for myself how you were.'

'You weren't well enough,' Yancie said softly, knowing she was in a meltdown situation again, even as she tried to rise above it.

'I threatened to come and find you, just the same,' he replied, shaking Yancie rigid.

'But-but you were all tubed up!' she exclaimed.

'Which is probably why, a short while before you escaped your warders, they zapped me with something guaranteed to keep me quiet,' he transfixed her by saying.

'You-you remember my visiting you that day?' The question wouldn't stay down this time as she clearly recalled how he'd teasingly spoken then of her warders.

'You were wearing a pink silk robe,' he answered, and Yancie swallowed on a suddenly dry throat.

'Do you-remember anything-else?' she asked jerkily, excusing, `You had just been heavily sedated so I don't suppose…'

'I was fighting that sedation all the way,' he cut in, but he paused and, holding her eyes with his own, he said clearly, `I can quite well remember that I asked you to marry me.'

Her heart wasn't merely pounding, it was thundering. She swallowed hard, and managed to find an uncaring smile as she replied, `Well, in those circumstances, I'll do the honourable thing and not hold you to it.'

Thomson drew a long breath, and, leaning forward in his chair, he looked at her for long moments, and then plainly stated, `I would regard that as a very great pity, Yancie.'

'Y-you-would?' Her voice had come out sounding all weak and feeble. Yancie took rapid steps to alter that. `Just how many fiancees do you want, Mr Wakefield?' she asked a touch sharply.

'Only one. I'll have a word with my mother on the subject of her powers of invention.'

'Don't bother on my account.' Invention?

Thomson looked at her levelly. `While I'm willing to concede there's a vast amount I don't know about you, I think I've learned enough to know that you wouldn't have come here to see me today without some good reason. And while, I might add, you took your time in getting here I'll tell you now that all Julia Herbert has ever been to me is a friend.'

'Your mother made the fiancee bit up?"

'She did,' he answered. And, just as though he could see that her head was having a hard time coping, he urged, `Just take on board, Yancie, that I have never proposed marriage to anyone but you.'

Oh, my-her legs had gone weak again. `Did you mean it?' She found enough nerve to ask, knowing she was just about going to die if he laughed his socks off.