The Feisty Fiancee. Jessica Steele

of the apartment when it had dawned on her that for someone desperate to be reinstated she was risking it.

      So now, duly labelled, she sat in Veronica Taylor’s office while the PA rang through to the next-door office to inform her boss—their boss, with any luck—that Yancie Dawkins was there.

      Anticipating that the great man would squeeze her into his busy schedule about two minutes before he went for his lunch around one, Yancie had barely read five pages of her book before he buzzed through to say he would see her now.

      Yancie, wishing she’d spent her waiting time re-rehearsing the tale she was about to tell, quickly put her paperback in her shoulder bag and, feeling oddly nervous—which was totally absurd, she told herself—she went to the other door in the room, knocked briefly, and went in.

      Thomson Wakefield was just as she remembered him. Today he wore a dark suit, striped shirt and, as he rose from his chair to indicate she should take the seat she had used a week ago, she saw he was as tall, and as nearly good-looking, as ever.

      ‘Good morning,’ she broke the silence that emanated from the non-talkative brute. ‘Er, afternoon,’ she corrected, crossing to the chair—not a glimmer of a smile! Here we go—it was like treading through sticky treacle. ‘Thank you for seeing me at such short notice,’ she heard herself say—creepy or what?

      Yancie clamped her lips shut, and took the seat he offered; only the ever present knowledge of how much she wanted this job—nay, needed this job—prevented her from getting up and marching out again.

      She looked at him. His glance flicked over her. If he observed her name tag neatly in place—and from the little she knew of him she suspected he missed little—he did not comment. In fact he said nothing at all for a good few seconds, but unsmilingly took in her neatly brushed shoulder-length ash-blonde hair and complexion—once rated by some male as exquisite. Wakefield was totally unaffected.

      When he did speak, it was to remind her, ‘You wished to see me?’

      So he was throwing the ball into her court. She took a deep breath—bother the man for making her nervous. ‘I want my job back,’ she said bluntly—oh, grief, she hadn’t rehearsed it this way. She saw a trace of ice chill his eyes, and guessed she wasn’t going the right way to get it. ‘Please,’ she added, as an afterthought.

      Last Friday, in this room, she had thought—very briefly—that the man opposite had marginally cracked his face a touch, as if she’d amused him. His mouth tweaked again, but it was so fleeting, she was again certain she was mistaken. In any case, she didn’t care to be laughed at.

      ‘So?’ he enquired curtly.

      So? She stared at him from puzzled and deeply blue eyes. ‘Oh!’ It suddenly clicked.

      Though before she could get her wits together and rush into her story Thomson Wakefield, as if thinking her particularly dense, enlightened her. ‘So why should I give you your job back?’

      Yancie didn’t care to be thought dense either. ‘Because I need it,’ she answered, which she realised was not the answer he wanted. Therefore, before she started to lie her head off, she managed to find a smile, which had much the same effect on him as any of her other smiles—precisely none—and bucked her ideas up. ‘Obviously you want to know what I was doing driving where I shouldn’t have been a week ago last Thursday,’ she said prettily.

      He was unimpressed, but his glance to his watch, as if to say if she didn’t soon spit it out he’d be making that suspension permanent, prodded her to get on with it. ‘It might be an idea,’ he suggested, and Yancie was certain she heard sarcasm there.

      It was the annoyance she felt with him, his sarcasm, and his barely concealed impatience that he could look at his watch, which gave her the kick start she needed. ‘I really can’t think why I didn’t tell you the truth before,’ she lied. ‘Other than, of course, I knew I was in the wrong, and…’ she tried another smile—zilch! ‘…nobody likes to be in the wrong.’ Silence. ‘But, the plain truth of the matter is, I went to see my sister.’

      ‘Your sister?’

      She might well have said ‘cousin’ since she did have those, but had no sister. But Yancie was ever conscious of her connection with her board member half-cousin, Greville, and, fearing she might trip herself up if she started talking ‘cousins’, she’d thought it better to invent a sister. In her view if she was going to have to tell a lie anyway she might as well make it a good one.

      ‘My sister had been to stay with me for a few days, with her toddler daughter—er—Miranda. Anyhow,’ Yancie rushed on, suddenly starting to feel extremely uncomfortable at lying—though still feeling unable to tell the truth and bring Wilf into it. ‘Anyhow, my n-niece has this soft toy, a lion, called Leo. She’s devoted to Leo, but no sooner had they arrived back at their home, early, very early on Thursday morning, than my sister was ringing me to say they’d just discovered Miranda had left Leo behind, and was inconsolable without him.’ Yancie, most of her lying out of the way, looked directly at Thomson Wakefield. She smiled; he didn’t. ‘You know how children are.’

      He surveyed her coolly. ‘I don’t have any.’

      ‘Well—er—I’m sure your wife would know…’