Kitabı oku: «The Feisty Fiancee»

CHAPTER ONE

IT WAS the first job she’d ever had, and she loved it. Yancie steered the Mercedes onto the motorway and in next to no time was in the fast lane speeding to pick up her passenger.

Not that there should have been any need to pile on the speed. Had she in fact been where she was supposed to be she would not have needed to be driving anywhere at all.

That was the only snag with this job—there was a lot of waiting around. She wasn’t used to waiting around; she was used to be being busy. Truth to tell though, the hanging around hadn’t proved any great problem. Not after the first week anyhow. She had only been in the job for three weeks, but after the first week of dropping off some high-up executive or other in the Addison Kirk Group and being told she would be required again in two hours, or three hours’ time, whenever, Yancie had come to the conclusion she had better things to do than hang around cooling her heels.

Everything had worked out perfectly after that.

She visited museums, art galleries and cinemas, stopped by to call on friends if she happened to be anywhere within a twenty-mile radius. And even on one occasion she had been able to call in on her mother—taking care of course to first remove the identifying label complete with photograph—Yancie Dawkins—she was supposed to wear at all times on the jacket of her uniform. Bubbles to that!

Yancie was very much aware that her mother would not like it at all if she ever found out she had not only left her home, where she’d lived with her stepfather, but had actually found herself a job. She had once vaguely mooted that she wouldn’t mind a career in something; her mother had been scandalised.

It made for an easier life if she said nothing, Yancie mused, and smiled as she thought few people she knew would be brave enough to risk her mother’s wrath by enlightening her.

Yancie took a quick glance to the seat beside her where the identifying tag lay. She must remember to put it on again before she picked up today’s executive, Mr Clements.

She motored on at speed, reflecting on how the job had more found her than she had found it. Though in actual fact it was her cousin, Greville, to be more accurate, who had found it for her. And, if she was going to be even more precise, Greville, her half-cousin.

Though she loved him to bits, as her ‘full’ cousins also did. But Yancie was a good driver and was able to be totally aware of her surroundings, to anticipate any sudden moves other drivers might make, while at the same time reflecting on past events.

It had not been to her own mother she had gone when, pride ruling, she had left the comfortable home she shared with her stepfather and his daughter four weeks ago, but to Aunt Delia, Greville’s mother.

Of course, Yancie admitted, she should never have let Suzannah Lloyd borrow her car. She wouldn’t have had she known Sukey was going to turn it over and cause it to be a write-off. Having assured herself that Sukey was all right and that nobody else was hurt, Yancie had told her stepfather what had happened.

Ralph Proctor was a super stepfather, but, anticipating his concern, like hers, would initially be all for Sukey, to Yancie’s surprise, he’d instead grown quite cross and begun to give her a lecture about lending her car to all and sundry.

Yancie might well have taken this telling-off as her due. But, unfortunately, Ralph’s daughter, Estelle, had been there and she’d staggered Yancie completely by challenging that she hoped Yancie wouldn’t expect her father to pay for a new car for her.

Yancie wasn’t the only one who was surprised—her stepfather had looked startled too at the nastiness in his daughter’s tone. Though before he could find his voice Yancie was proudly asserting. ‘I wouldn’t dream of it! I’ve enough money from my allowance to…’

‘The allowance you take from my father!’ Estelle reminded her waspishly—and Yancie was left staring at her.

‘I never asked for an allowance!’ was the best defence Yancie could find.

‘You don’t mind taking it, though, do you?’ Estelle attacked—and that was when Yancie suddenly and abruptly realised that her stepfather’s house was not big enough for both her and her stepsister. She’d had no idea that Estelle resented her so much!

‘Not any more,’ Yancie said quietly, and was on her way, in no mind to stay and listen to her stepfather transferring his crossness onto his daughter.

‘Really, Estelle!’ she heard him say as she left the drawing room and turned to close the door behind her. ‘You know full well that Yancie more than earns her allowance with the work she does keeping this place running smoothly.’

‘Advertise for a housekeep—’

Yancie didn’t wait to hear any more. She couldn’t stay after this, she just couldn’t! She went, where she and her cousins Fennia and Astra went in bad times and good; she went to see her aunt, Delia.

‘I never did like Estelle Proctor,’ Delia Alford opined when Yancie relayed all that had taken place.

‘It is true, though.’ Yancie tried to be fair. ‘I have never minded taking an allowance from Ralph.’

‘You’ve worked for it!’ Delia exclaimed, knowing positively how, four years ago, when, at aged eighteen, Yancie and her two cousins had left boarding-school, while the other two had gone into higher business training, Ralph Proctor had almost begged Yancie to stay home and take over the running of his over-large house—her mother had sanctioned it, because it was what she termed ‘not a proper job’. ‘With that daughter of his picking fault all the time, you know as well as I that he couldn’t keep a housekeeper for five minutes. And Estelle won’t want to take over—the only comfort that jealous madam’s interested in, is her own.’

‘What shall I do?’

‘What do you want to do?’

Yancie thought about it. She loved her stepfather dearly, but… ‘I don’t want to go back,’ she realised. ‘Estelle has never been the easiest person to live with; after that…’

‘You don’t have to go back,’ Delia Alford assured her firmly, going on, everything cut and dried to her way of thinking, ‘You’re more than welcome to live here with me, you know that. Though Astra will want you to move in with her. She has more than enough room at her flat, and you know Fennia would be delighted for you to move in with them too.’

The flat her two cousins lived in belonged to Astra’s father in actual fact, but he preferred to live in Barbados rather than the elegant apartment which was in a smart part of London. Astra had welcomed Fennia living with her, since Christmas—only a few weeks ago—when Fennia’s mother had caught the older woman’s latest boyfriend with his arms around Fennia and had chosen to see it as her daughter leading him on. She had, not too politely, thrown Fennia out.

Yancie was in the middle of saying that she’d give Astra a ring, and also that since she just couldn’t possibly touch another penny of her stepfather’s money she would get a job, when her cousin Greville arrived on one of his unscheduled visits to see his mother.

‘Little Yancie Dawkins!’ he smiled, having greeted his mother, opening his arms wide for Yancie the way he had since the days when she was a toddler.

Yancie went over to her half-cousin, who was nearing forty and a most reliable figure in her somewhat trauma-ridden life. Greville gave her a hug and a kiss, and then asked what was this diabolical talk he’d overheard about her getting a job.

Over a cup of coffee Yancie and his mother filled him in on the happenings of that morning. ‘I should have done something about a job before this,’ Yancie realised.

‘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 board 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 firm 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 lane-swapping 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!

But she wasn’t used to being spoken to like that. ‘Me!’ she retaliated. ‘Why, you grumpy old devil,’ she charged of the mid-thirties-looking man who still breathed fire and brimstone. ‘If you weren’t so keen to be the centre of attention in your Aston Martin, you’d have been in the correct motorway lane, and not riding on my bumper…’

Oh, my word, he didn’t like being called a grumpy old devil, did he—or any of the rest of it! ‘I was in the correct lane!’ he snarled, his jaw jutting. ‘Not only did you not give the smallest indication of your intention to cross straight in front of me…’

‘I haven’t time to stand here all day bandying words with you!’ she cut in arrogantly—and saw his eyes narrow at her tone. Quite clearly, Mr-High-and-Mighty-Aston-Martin wasn’t used to being spoken to in such a way. She saw him take a sharp intake of controlling breath.

Then, his jaw jutting no less furiously, he gritted, ‘I’ll attend to you later,’ and turned sharply away and went striding back to the rather superb-looking Aston Martin.

There was nothing he could possibly do, Yancie told herself ten minutes later. His ‘I’ll attend to you later’ had no teeth. What could he do for goodness’ sake? It was a cold day, but, thanks to an efficient car heater, she had shed her uniform jacket. She’d removed that identifying tag when she’d left Mr Clements, and had pinned a rather attractive brooch over the Addison Kirk logo on her shirt, so sucks boo! The only way he might be able to trace her was if he’d thought to note her car registration number—but, even then, that near-ghastly accident was purely his word against hers—so he could take his ‘I’ll attend to you later’ and sling it. So why was she still trembling?

Yancie proceeded on her way with the utmost care after that. The incident had shaken her more than she would have liked to admit. She was, however, correctly uniformed, with her identifying appendage neatly in place, when, with five minutes to spare, she arrived to wait for Mr Clements.

Very occasionally, when she was working quite late, Yancie had permission—after first dropping off her passenger at his address—to take whichever motor she was driving on to her own home. She’d had to assure her immediate boss, Kevin Veasey, that she was able to garage the car, but even then this concession was only allowed on the understanding she would not avail herself of it for her personal use.

She was late that night, so took the Mercedes home. As late as it was, her cousin Astra was still out working. ‘Astra works too hard,’ she remarked to her other lovely cousin, Fennia.

‘She loves it,’ Fennia answered. ‘Had a good day?’

‘Given I nearly wrote off an Aston Martin with a Mercedes, can’t complain,’ she smiled, and shared the experience with her cousin over a sumptuous casserole Fennia had made while waiting for her two cousins to come home.

‘Men!’ Fennia opined.

‘I was in the wrong,’ Yancie pointed out.

‘I know! But—men!’

They laughed. They’d roomed together, the three cousins, at boarding-school. They’d shared each other’s secrets, mopped up—in the early days—each other’s tears when their mothers had hopped from relationship to relationship. Stable backgrounds—forget it! They’d had so many ‘uncles’, it had needed a young mind to keep up with it.

They’d tried hard not to be judgmental, but it had been just a touch embarrassing not knowing which ‘uncle’ had been coming with their mothers to pick them up at each term-end.

Aunt Delia was the rock they’d each leaned towards. Aunt Delia had been ten years old when her widowed mother had remarried, and in three years had produced three daughters. It was the younger girls’ dreadfully strict upbringing, Aunt Delia had explained, by a father who seemed to have few sensitivities, that was responsible for the way each of her half-sisters, in turn, had rebelled. Yancie’s mother apparently had been well ‘off the rails’ before Yancie’s father had been killed. Fennia’s mother was twice married—and on the lookout for husband number three. And Astra’s mother had twice divorced and was at present living with someone.

With that kind of a background, the three cousins had been sixteen when, fearing they might have inherited some wayward gene from their mothers, they had vowed that they were going to guard with everything they had against turning out like their mothers. They wanted nothing of their mothers’ explosive and sometimes quite awful relationships which—in the main—brought nothing but disaster.

To date, six years on, it hadn’t been a problem. In general the cousins had nothing against men. And so far, thank goodness, none of them had felt the smallest inclination to be wayward where men were concerned. Though it was true that if they ever went out on a date and did dip their toes in unchartered, experimental waters it was mainly with someone fairly safe whom they’d known for ages—usually the brother or relation of someone with whom they’d been at boarding-school.

Yancie drove to work the following morning growing more and more comfortable with her lot. She was still in frequent telephone contact with her stepfather—who now employed a housekeeper—but she still had no wish to return to live in the same house as Estelle. Yancie enjoyed living again with her cousins. Fennia, despite her business training, thoroughly enjoyed the job she had found working with toddlers in a day nursery, and Astra, the most academic of the three of them, was working all hours as a financial adviser, and loving it.

Yancie drove into the vast garages of the Addison Kirk Group and exchanged her uniform jacket and neat shoes for a pair of Wellingtons and an over-large overall.

The men she worked with were getting more and more used to seeing her about the place. But even though—as she unreeled the water hose prior to tackling the wheel arches on yesterday’s Mercedes—she knew she must look a sketch in her present outfit it still didn’t prevent one courageous colleague from commenting, ‘You still look terrific even in that get-up!’

She had no wish to be thought stand-offish. ‘You reckon?’ she answered.

‘There’s no substitute for style—and you’ve got it, plus,’ he stated, and looked so serious, she had to laugh—which caused him to ask her for a date.

Her laugh faded. ‘I never mix business with pleasure,’ she replied, and turned away to concentrate on turning the water on.

She was happily absorbed in her task when Wilf Fisher, one of the mechanics and a family man, came over to thank her for going out of her way to drop a spare electric kettle off to his mother yesterday.

‘It was a pleasure,’ she assured him, though it had been a fifty-mile round trip on which she headed as soon as she’d seen Mr Clements safely to his destination.

‘I couldn’t have got it to her before tomorrow otherwise,’ he explained again. ‘And, well, quite honestly, the wife does get a little bit fed up with me having to drive up there to sort the old dear out all the time.’

Yancie sympathised; she knew all about mothers and their urgent summonses. ‘Think nothing of it,’ she smiled. ‘Any time.’

Wilf went on his way, clearly feeling better for her offer of ‘Any time’, and Yancie, her smile fading, fell to thinking how, if she hadn’t been where she shouldn’t yesterday, then she wouldn’t have had that run-in—very nearly literally—with Mr Aston Martin.

She owned that the near calamity had truly unnerved her. For all she had made light of it to Fennia, and to Astra too when she had come home, Yancie had not been able to get to sleep last night for thinking about it. She had so nearly caused a very serious accident. And, to make matters worse, when the driver of the other car had followed her to remonstrate with her, what had she done but called him a grumpy old devil and accused him, totally falsely, of being in the wrong lane?

She had been in the wrong, Yancie knew that. Apart from the fact the ‘grumpy old devil’ wasn’t old at all—why couldn’t she get the memory of his face out of her head? She knew she’d know him again anywhere—not that she would see him again. She must have been in a panic yesterday when she had thought that he’d find out more about her from the car registration number. Records of that nature were difficult to access, weren’t they? And, in any case, everything about him had spoken of him being some kind of executive. This morning she doubted he’d have time to bother contacting the police about an accident that had never happened.

Yancie usually had quite a few driving jobs on a Friday. But this Friday, although she caught Kevin Veasey looking over to her several times, he didn’t have even one task for her.

She kept busy, however, washing cars, going for sandwiches or running any other errand anyone wanted doing. Then at three o’clock, to her delight, she got the plummiest job of them all. Word had come down, from the head of the whole outfit, no less, that her presence was requested on the top floor at four o’clock.

She had never driven Thomson Wakefield before. Indeed, she had never so much as clapped eyes on him. In fact, having worked for Addison’s for three weeks now, she had been beginning to suspect—to the blazes with any sex discrimination law—that old Mr Wakefield would die rather than let some female drive him.

But, not so! Why she thought Thomson Wakefield must be old, she couldn’t have said. Probably because it didn’t seem likely that someone still wet behind the ears would have the honour of holding his exalted position.

But what was she bothering her head with such thoughts for? He wanted her to drive him—her! Inwardly beaming, Yancie, after her car-washing activities, would have loved to have taken a shower before she presented herself on the top floor.

Not to worry, though; she had a fresh shirt in her locker, and a quick freshen-up of her make-up and a comb run through her shoulder-length ash-blonde hair, and she’d be as good as new.

It puzzled her when, at half past three, hair combed, fresh lipstick applied, she went and asked Kevin what car she would be driving and he replied he’d had no instructions yet about where she was going. His instructions were that she present herself at four.

‘I’ll sort a vehicle out when I come back,’ she decided. Given the choice, she fancied the Jaguar, but, of course, Mr Wakefield might have his own preference.

Yancie made her way to the top floor with her head filled with speculations on how far afield the chief man might want to be driven. Working overtime never bothered her, so if he had it in mind to be driven up to Scotland that was all right by her—though she’d have to ring either Astra or Fennia to tell them not to expect her home.

All of which was just so much flight of fancy, she smiled to herself as, finding the door she was looking for, she knocked lightly and went in.

‘Yancie Dawkins?’ enquired the woman in her mid-forties Kevin had told her was Thomas Wakefield’s PA.

‘That’s right,’ Yancie answered easily, her upbringing and education making her feel perfectly at ease in any company. ‘Mr Wakefield is expecting me.’

‘If you’d like to take a seat,’ Veronica Taylor suggested pleasantly.

Yancie took the seat indicated, and waited. And waited. Four-fifteen came and went—and still she waited. ‘Does Mr Wakefield know I’m here?’ she asked his PA.

‘Oh, yes,’ his PA answered, her tone as pleasant as ever.

Four-thirty came—and went. Wishing she’d brought a book to read, Yancie wondered if perhaps the great man had been held up on a phone call. For thirty minutes!

Another ten minutes passed, by which time Yancie had gone from feeling completely at ease to feeling just a shade uncomfortable. Okay, so he was a busy man, but…Be patient, he’s paying you, and you need this job. Hang it all, she loved her job. It wasn’t taxing on the brain—but who needed taxing? The freedom the job allowed was limitless. Indeed, it didn’t seem like a job of work at all.

Even so, having cautioned herself to be patient, when another few minutes of her having absolutely nothing to do went by, Yancie was considering telling Veronica Taylor to ring down to the garage and let her know when the old man surfaced. Then Yancie heard sounds on the other side of the door she’d assumed connected the two offices—and that reassured her that the old boy hadn’t expired while she waited.