A Vow of Obligation. Lynne Graham

a time her mother, Susan, had been equally keen to impress a rich man. In Susan’s case the man had been her boss and their subsequent secret affair had continued on and off for years before finally running aground over the pregnancy that produced Tawny and her mother’s lowering discovery that she was far from being her lover’s only extra-marital interest.

      ‘Ask him to delete the photographs,’ Tawny suggested stiffly, feeling more than a little out of her depth with the subject but naturally sympathetic towards her friend’s disillusionment. She knew how deeply hurt her mother had been to ultimately discover that her long-term lover didn’t consider her worthy of a more permanent or public relationship. But after only one night of intimacy, she felt that Julie would recover rather more easily from the betrayal than Tawny’s mother had.

      ‘I asked him to delete them soon after he arrived yesterday. He flatly refused.’

      Tawny was stumped by that frank admission. ‘Well er …’

      ‘But all I would need is five minutes with his laptop to take care of it for myself,’ Julie told her in an urgent undertone.

      Tawny was unsurprised by the claim for she had heard that Julie was skilled in IT and often the first port of call when the office staff got into a snit with a computer. ‘He’s hardly going to give you access to his laptop,’ she pointed out wryly.

      ‘No, but if I could get hold of his laptop, what harm would it do for me to deal with the problem right there and then?’

      Tawny studied the other woman fixedly. ‘Are you seriously planning to try and steal the guy’s laptop?’

      ‘I just want to borrow it for five minutes and, as I don’t have access to his suite and you do, I was hoping that you would do it for me.’

      Tawny fell back in her seat, pale blue eyes wide with disbelief as she stared back at the other woman in dismay. ‘You’ve got to be joking …’

      ‘There would be no risk. I’d tell you when he was out, you could go in and I could rush upstairs and wait next door in the storage room for you to bring the laptop out to me. Five minutes, that’s all it would take for me to delete those photos. You’ll replace it in his room and he’ll never know what happened to them!’ Julie argued forcefully. ‘Please, Tawny … it would mean so much to me. Haven’t you ever done something you regret?’

      ‘I’d like to help you but I can’t do something illegal,’ Tawny protested, pulling a face in the tense silence. ‘That laptop is his personal property and interfering with it would be a criminal offence—’

      ‘He’s never going to know that anyone’s even touched it! That possibility won’t even occur to him,’ Julie argued vehemently. ‘Please, Tawny. You’re the only person who can help me.’

      ‘I couldn’t—There’s just no way I could do something like that,’ Tawny muttered uneasily. ‘I’m sorry.’

      Julie touched her hand to regain her attention. ‘We haven’t got much time—he’ll be checking out again the day after tomorrow. I’ll talk to you again at lunch time before you finish your shift.’

      ‘I won’t change my mind,’ Tawny warned, compressing her soft full mouth in discomfiture.

      ‘Think it over—it’s a foolproof plan,’ Julie insisted as she stood up, lowering her voice even more to add huskily, ‘And if it would make a difference, I’m willing to pay you to take that risk for me—’

      ‘Pay me?’ Tawny was very much taken aback by that offer.

      ‘What else can I do? You’re my only hope in this situation,’ Julie reasoned plaintively. ‘If a bit of money would make you feel better about doing this, of course I’m going to suggest it. I know how desperate you are to help your grandmother out.’

      ‘Look, money’s got nothing to do with the way I feel. Just leave it out of this,’ Tawny urged in considerable embarrassment. ‘If I was in a position to help out, it wouldn’t cost you a penny.’

      Tawny returned to work with her thoughts in turmoil. Navarre Cazier, handsome, rich and privileged though he was, had cruelly used and abused Julie’s trust. Another rich four-letter word of a man was grinding an ordinary woman down. But that unfortunately was life, wasn’t it? The rich lived by different rules and enjoyed enormous power and influence. Hadn’t her own father taught her that? He had dumped her mother when she refused to have a termination and had paid her a legal pittance to raise his unwanted child to adulthood. There had been no extras in Tawny’s childhood and not much love on offer either from a mother who had bitterly regretted her decision to have her baby and a father who did not even pretend an interest in his illegitimate daughter. To be fair, her mother had paid a high price for choosing to bring her child into the world. Not only had her lover ditched her, but she had also found it impossible to continue her career.

      Tawny suppressed those unproductive reflections and thought worriedly about Julie instead. She felt really bad about having refused to help her friend. Julie had been very good to her and had never asked her for anything in return. But why the heck had Julie offered her a financial bribe to get hold of that laptop? She was deeply embarrassed that Julie should be so aware of her financial constraints and regretted her honesty on that topic.

      In truth, Tawny only worked at the hotel to earn enough money to ensure that her grandmother could continue to pay the rent on her tiny apartment in a private retirement village. Celestine, devastated by the combined death of her beloved husband and, with him, the loss of her marital home, had, against all the odds, contrived to make a happy new life and friends in the village, and there was little that Tawny would not do to safeguard the old lady’s tenure there. Unfortunately rising costs had quickly outstripped her grandmother’s ability to pay her bills. Tawny, having taken charge of Celestine’s financial affairs, had chosen to quietly supplement her grandmother’s income without her knowledge, which was why she was currently working as a chambermaid. Prior to the crisis in the old lady’s finances, Tawny had made her living by illustrating children’s books and designing greeting cards, but sadly there was insufficient work in that field during an economic crisis to stretch to shoring up Celestine’s income as well as covering Tawny’s own living costs. Now Tawny’s artistic projects took up evenings and weekends instead.

      But, regardless of that situation, wasn’t it rather insulting that a friend should offer to pay you to do something for them? Tawny reasoned uneasily. On the other hand, wasn’t that inappropriate suggestion merely proof of Julie’s desperate need for her assistance?

      Would it be so very bad of her to do what she could to help Julie delete those distasteful photos? While Tawny could not even imagine trusting a man enough to take pictures of her naked body, she could understand Julie’s cringing reluctance to continue featuring in some sort of X-rated scalp gallery on the guy’s laptop. That was a downright demeaning and extremely offensive prospect to have to live with. Would he let other men access those pictures? Tawny grimaced in disgust, incensed that a guy she had believed was attractive could turn out to be such a creep.

      ‘All right, I’ll have a go at getting hold of it for you,’ she told Julie at lunchtime.

      Her friend’s face lit up immediately and a wide smile of satisfaction formed on her lips. ‘I’ll make sure you don’t regret it!’

      Tawny was unconvinced by that assurance but concealed her fear of the consequences, feeling that she ought to be more courageous. She wore colourful vintage clothing, held strong opinions and her ultimate ambition was to become a cartoonist with a strip of her own in a magazine or newspaper. In short she liked to think of herself as an individual rather than a follower. But sometimes, she suspected that deep down inside she was more of a conventional person than she liked to admit because she longed for a supportive family and had never broken the law by even the smallest margin.

      ‘We’ll do it this afternoon. As soon as his room is empty, if there’s no sign of him having the laptop with him I’ll ring up and you can go straight in and get it. Just leave it in the storage room. I’ll be there