The Feisty Fiancée

by Jessica Steele

  'Anything,' she replied, and meant it.

  He gave her hand a faint squeeze. `Promise me, Yancie Dawkins, that you'll marry me?' he said.

  Yancie sat rooted, her mouth fallen open, and was still not believing what she thought she had heard when his fight against his medication failed, and his eyelids drooped once again, and he went to sleep.

  Feeling stunned, Yancie just sat there holding his hand. He had said it; he had. She knew he had. `Promise me, Yancie Dawkins, that you'll marry me', he had said. He'd proposed! Incredibly, Thomson had proposed! Yancie was still in stunned shock when-the nursing staff still keeping a strict eye on him, it seemed-a nurse came in and Yancie knew her visit with him was over.

  His proposal and the fact that he looked so much better stayed with Yancie for the rest of that day. Though when Fennia and Astra came to visit her that evening she found she couldn't tell them of it. Instead she asked them to bring her some clothes in.

  'You're thinking of going over the wall?' Astra queried, having taken home the clothes Yancie had been wearing.

  'They're letting me out the day after tomorrow. But I've had enough of nightwear,' Yancie answered.

  'I'll drop some stuff off on my way to work in the morning,' Fennia promised.

  Yancie couldn't sleep that night for thinking of what Thomson had asked. And, while part of her denied his proposal had any meaning, she just couldn't believe he would ever say something like that and not mean it. He was drowsy, remember. Yes, but he had known it was her he was speaking to. Must have done. Yancie Dawkins, he'd called her. `Promise me, Yancie Dawkins, that you'll marry me?' Excitement surged up in her. Did he love her; dared she hope? She couldn't wait to see him tomorrow.

  Fennia dropped by in the morning with some clothes for her, as she'd said she would.

  'Anything you need when I come in tonight?' she asked before she dashed off to her nursery work.

  'I have everything,' Yancie smiled, and as Fennia went on her way Yancie couldn't help but wonder, and hope, Had she? If it was true and Thomson did want to marry her, did love her, she would not want for anything else.

  Fennia had brought Yancie one of her very favourite dresses-a very fine wool affair in a most gorgeous shade of blue. Yancie showered and dressed and waited as long as she possibly could before she slipped along the corridors.

  She was nearing the side room where she had seen Thomson yesterday, when all her hopes were sent crashing. Mrs Wakefield was just coming out of his room. Yancie saw that Thomson's mother had recognised her and knew that she wasn't thrilled to see her when, coming only a little away from the door, she blocked her progress.

  'Haven't you done enough?' she challenged viperishly.

  'The accident wasn't my fault,' Yancie pointed out reasonably.

  'What are you doing here?'

  Honestly! `I've come to see Thomson' Yancie answered-grief, if all her dreams came true, this dragon was going to be her mother-in-law!

  'Thomson, is it?' Mrs Wakefield challenged, in Yancie's view clearly having been feasting on the churlish tart again. `Mr Wakefield,' the woman went on heavily, `has no wish whatsoever to see you.'

  'I think you'll find you're wrong there,' Yancie refused to give ground.

  Mrs Wakefield cared not. `The only persons my son wishes to see-' she ignored what Yancie had said `-are myself and his fiancee.'

  Yancie went cold. `H-his fiancee?' she questioned huskily, feeling staggered, and knowing it was showing. `I didn't know Thomson was engaged.'

  'I can't think why you should imagine you have any right to know!' Mrs Wakefield said arrogantly.

  Hope, stupid blind hope, began to surge upwards in Yancie again. Oh, heavens, could it be, dared she hope, that Thomson had just told his mother that he was getting married? True, he had fallen asleep yesterday before she'd had a chance to say yes, yes, a thousand times yes, but… `When did…?"

  'Not that it's any business of yours, but my son and Julia Herbert have been engaged for quite some months now.'

  'I…' Yancie gasped, reeling, her colour draining away. Then pride, wonderful, face saving pride, took a nip at her. `Of course. Julia. I'm sure they'll both be very happy.' With that, and it took all her strength to stay physically upright, Yancie turned about and went back the way she had come.

  She left hospital the next day. She had discovered through the nursing network that Thomson was off the critical list, and was expected to make a full recovery. That news warmed her heart, but it was the only joy she found.

  Knowing that he was expected to make a full recovery did not stop her from worrying about him, however, and she picked up the phone several times in the following twenty four hours to ring the hospital before putting it down again. He didn't care about her, and she was being silly.

  Saturday afternoon had rolled around before, silly or not, she just had to give in to the compulsion to ring the hospital to find out how he was. `Mr Wakefield was well enough to be moved,' she was informed by an efficient sounding voice.

  'He's gone home!' Yancie exclaimed; he wasn't well enough yet! He couldn't be.

  'He won't be ready to go home for a week or two yet,' she was informed. `Although, once he's on his feet, he should from then on make a speedy recovery.'

  That was a relief. `He's gone to another hospital?' Yancie realised. `May I know which one?"

  'I'm afraid I'm not at liberty to say.'

  Yancie saw Mrs Wakefield's hand in that. She could almost hear her giving the instructions not to give out to anyone where he had transferred to-particularly not to any company driver.

  Yancie did find out where Thomson was, however. Greville told her. He kept in touch, wanting to know about her progress, and seemed to see it only as a normal reaction since she had been driving Thomson at the time of the accident-that she would want to know about him. It was a red-letter day when Greville told her Thomson had been discharged from hospital.

  As well as flowers from Kevin Veasey, Yancie had received a host of lovely get-well cards from Wilf Fisher and the other men in the transport department at work. But when her bruised shoulder was healed enough for her to go back to her driving duties Yancie had to give serious thought to her future-did she want to go back?

  She still needed paid employment; there was no doubt about that. But could she face seeing Thomson again? Face possibly driving him again? Well, you never knew; they might be desperately short-handed one day and Thomson would have to take the risk; though that accident had never been her fault anyhow.

  But, while aching to see him again, what good would it do? Could she bear to drive him knowing he was engaged and could be planning to marry Julia at any time? She might even be called upon on some occasion to drive both him and her.

  Knives seemed to stick in her heart. That, she knew, she couldn't take. Without giving herself time to think further, Yancie rang Kevin Veasey and resigned.

  'You're sure?' he asked, adding, obviously not holding the written-off Jaguar against her, `You don't want to think about it for a while?'

  And, clearly assuming she had lost her nerve after the accident, he assured her," I'm sure, given time, that once you get behind the wheel again…'

  'You're very kind, Kevin. But I've decided to train for a different career.'

  She would too, she vowed-only not just yet. Although her bruises had cleared up, she still felt mentally bruised, beaten-and needed some time.

  Which she had in plenty. Between them Fennia and Astra wouldn't allow her to do a thing domestically. And days stretched endlessly before her. Days when she had time to think. Too much time to think.

  She half regretted her decision to leave Addison Kirk when Greville told her a couple of weeks later that Thomson had returned to work. She had given up all chance of seeing him again. But she must be strong. To make a clean break of it was the only way.

  Yet that didn't stop her thinking about him. She went over and over again her every meeting with him. Recalled again that first meeting, remembered h
ow she had thought he didn't have a laugh in him, and then recalled seeing him laugh.

  Yancie knew she was spending too much time just dwelling on his every word, his every look, his every action, but she couldn't seem to stop. She didn't want to love him, but she couldn't stop that either.

  She recalled how passionately they had kissed. How it had seemed then that they would make complete and beautiful love with each other. And how he had been so wonderful at her first hint of hesitancy.

  He'd had too much common decency to attempt to persuade her after understanding her hint of uncertainty, even though he had probably known that her resistance would have been a weak thing had he renewed his onslaught to her senses.

  His innate decency, his integrity, was something else she loved about him. She'd heard him time enough on the car phone dealing with some business or other, or dictating some important correspondence to Veronica Taylor, and knew that his integrity was unshakeable.

  She remembered the…

  Yancie's thoughts suddenly ceased midflow. That word `integrity' began to pound in her head. They just didn't come any more ethical than Thomson; she just knew it. Suddenly her heart, which had been a plodding muscle of late, started to race. Was she supposed to believe that once he left his office, once he put his business dealings aside, Thomson put his in-built integrity aside also?

  She couldn't believe it, she realised. She could not. And yet that was what she had been believing. All these weeks she had trusted, believed what his mother had told her-that he was engaged to Julia Herbert and had been for some months now.

  But, leaving alone that the men in the transport section were the biggest gossips she'd ever met, not one word had she heard about him being attached to anyone. Could she believe Thomson would forget totally and utterly that he had a fiancee when some other woman more or less invited him to kiss her?

  Loud and strong the answer hammered back-no, he would not. Yancie pulled at the question every way she could. She had to work it out squarely and not arrive at the conclusions she wanted to arrive at purely because she could not take much more of this living in limbo.

  He'd kissed her, she'd responded-oh, my, how she'd responded. But-he hadn't pushed her away, as a man engaged to someone else, a man with his integrity, would have. Thomson had instead kissed her again, many times. And, Yancie felt, would have made her his. Yet would he completely ignore the fact that some other woman was wearing his ring?

  Had Julia been wearing his ring? Yancie couldn't remember seeing a ring on her finger; but then she couldn't remember not seeing one, either.

  Yancie's stomach tied up in knots at the magnitude of her thoughts. If Thomson wasn't engaged to someone else, then he had every right to kiss where he pleased. Every right to ask someone else to marry him.

  Yancie knew that she was not very good company for Astra and Fennia that night, and she went to bed early, to plough through the same thoughts over and over again.

  But it was the not knowing that moved her to do something about it the next morning.

  Yancie was up early, checking through her wardrobe. She knew what she had to do. She felt nervous, shy, all churned up in her stomach-but she couldn't take another day of going around in the same not-knowing circles. She was going to have to go and see Thomson.

  Of course he might have absolutely no recollection of asking her to marry him. He had been critically ill, remember. Well, she might not even mention that-but at least, if he had some memory of asking her to marry him, he was entitled to an answer. And what Yancie did remember was that she hadn't given him one.

  Fortunately both her cousins went to work early-Yancie felt much too uptight to want to talk about this obsession that had taken her over with anyone but him.

  She was wearing an elegant suit that had once fitted snugly but which, although still looking smart, now hung on her thinner frame as she made her way inside the Addison Kirk building.

  She chose not to go to the reception deskshe was not in any mood to have her progress stopped before she'd made it as far as the lifts.

  But, having made it to the lifts, having got in and started to ascend, Yancie's insides started acting up with a vengeance.

  Doubts, great clawing, scratching, spiteful doubts, started to go for her the moment she stepped out onto the floor where Thomson had his office. Don't be ridiculous, scorned the gremlin that had just jumped on her shoulder. Just because Thomson was totally honourable in his workplace, it didn't necessarily mean that he was the same in his relationships. Why, the world was littered with two-timing men who…

  She reached his door and found she was half hoping he wasn't in. Didn't she know from personal experience that some days he didn't come into the office at all, but had a driver pick him up from his home and take him wherever his business happened to be?

  Oh, please, let him be in! She felt a total mass of contradiction as, having no intention of calling first at his PA's office only to have Veronica Taylor tell her he was too busy to see her, Yancie reached for the handle of Thomson's office door.

  She swallowed, gripping it hard, some part of her wanting to flee, her life seeming to depend on her staying and going in. Her last memory before the accident had been of Thomson getting into the Jaguar after he'd seen Julia Herbert to her door. He hadn't wasted any time about seeing her to that door, either, but was soon back, Yancie made herself remember. What sort of behaviour was that for a supposedly engaged man?

  On that thought, Yancie gathered together all of her courage, opened the door and went in. Thomson was there. He looked up from his desk, plainly not expecting anyone. He was thinner too, she saw straight away, and her heart started to ache for all his suffering. But he was staring at her as if astounded by her nerve in barging into his office unannounced as if she was the last person he expected to see. She wanted to speak, but her throat felt parched. `H-how are you?' was what she managed for openers.

  'I don't recall having an appointment with you!' he barked curtly, rapidly recovering from having appeared momentarily rocked.

  Appointment! He really could be a swine when he wanted, she fumed; she was angry, not to mention a bundle of nerves into the bargain. Perhaps that was why, when she had half decided not to mention his proposal if he didn't remember it, she forgot totally what she had or had not decided, and snapped back bluntly, `That's no way to speak to your fiancee!'

  Her mouth fell open from the shock of the unintended words she had just hurled at him. But as Thomson, rising from his desk, stared back at her, his expression positively staggered, Yancie didn't know which of them was the more shocked. What she did know, though, was that this was the first he'd heard of it or wanted to hear of it.

  It was time, she realised, for her to get out of there!

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  IT was obvious to Yancie from Thomson's absolutely thunderstruck look that he had not the smallest recollection of ever having proposed to her. And, bearing in mind the strong medication he must have been receiving, she realised, belatedly, that she should never have mentioned it to him.

  'I'm-sorry!' she gasped before he had uttered a word-and was on her way.

  Unbelievably, however, Thomson had moved, and moved fast, and was at the door before her, his hand down by the door handle, preventing her from reaching for it.

  There was a sharp look in his eyes she felt suddenly wary of. `Tell me more,' he commanded.

  No way! But he seemed pale. Had he just lost his colour from the shock of her claiming to be his future wife-as if that thought would make any man go pale-or had he been pale to start with?

  'You haven't been well!' she exclaimed, fearful for his health.

  'I was given a clean bill of health only yesterday.'

  Yet, typically, he'd been at work before he'd been given the all-clear-probably been working from home before that. `I shouldn't trouble you,' she said jerkily.

  'You've been trouble from the day I met you,' he replied, his eyes on hers, searching, reading.

&nbs
p; 'Well, you would say that!' she attempted an offhand note that didn't quite come offshe didn't like the shrewd, alert look of him; he was clever, discerning; she knew that much about him. `W-well, I'll be off; I just thought I'd pop in to see how you are.'

  She didn't like at all, either, the speculative look that had come to his eyes. `My drivers are doing it all the time,' he answered dryly, his eyes never leaving her face.

  Pig! `Well, you look all right to me!' she snapped, glad of a spurt of anger, but wishing he would come away fromm the door so she could go through it. `Well, I'll love you and leave you,' she hinted, and could have groaned aloud that she had trotted out that trite little saying. She wanted to keep a mile away from that word 'love'. She shouldn't have come; she shouldn't, she shouldn't.

  'No need to rush off,' Thomson stated calmly, at ease when she was feeling hot all over. 'Stay-have a cup of coffee,' he invited.

  Coffee! `This isn't a social call,' she blurted out in a rush. She needed to get out of thereand now.

  'It isn't?"

  'W-we were in an accident together,' she reminded him, even though she full well knew he needed no reminding.

  He stood straight before her and while he continued to stare silently at her she would have given anything to know just what he was thinking, just what was going through his brain. Because she knew, too, that his waking brain was never dormant. His eyes fixed on hers, he seemed to draw a long breath, and then quietly, watchfully, he declared, `I think there's more than an accident between us, Yancie.'

  Oh, grief! Did he mean he knew that she loved him? She couldn't bear it if he did. `If you'll g-get out of the way,' she endeavoured again to get out of there.

  But, again, he wasn't moving. `It's not like you to be nervous,' he observed, still in that same quiet tone.

  'N-nervous? Me! Pfff!' she denied swiftly, and made another attempt to get out of there before this all too perceptive man sifted out what she was nervous about. `I must go-I'm sure you never have a minute to spare for unexpected callers.'

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