Frozen Enchantment

by Jessica Steele

  She tore herself away from her beautiful memories to become aware that Cheyne would probably never realise she had even left his firm. He had his neatly typed reports—tomorrow Frank would return the portable typewriter to the company stores—and with everything in such apple-pie order, why should Cheyne Templeton remember her?

  Determined to shut him out of her mind, Jolene sent her thoughts along the path of using next week to find herself another job, and of embarking on a career that would take her to the top. Within two minutes, however, she was remembering how Cheyne had as good as offered her the job of his PA when Gillian Frampton left. Promotion did not come better than that, Jolene considered, and as his PA, how much higher was there?

  Realising that he was in her head again, she determinedly pushed him, and his offer of promotion, from her mind and went to telephone her parents to tell them she was home again.

  Monday dawned dull and dismal and just about summed up Jolene's mood. At first she kept eyeing the clock, knowing that there was still time for her to go to work. When nine o'clock came and went, she was overcome with such an inner restlessness that she grabbed a shopping basket and went up to the village's general store.

  She was back in her bungalow at a quarter to ten. Putting her fresh provisions away, she searched through the small toolkit she had inherited from her grandmother. Then, armed with the picture-hooks she had just purchased, and a hammer from the toolbox, she went to her sitting-room.

  By ten o'clock the hammer was back in the toolbox, and Jolene had just returned to her sitting-room and was standing solemn-faced looking at the newly hung picture which meant so much to her, when someone rang the doorbell.

  Leaving her contemplation of her picture for a while, she went to the front door and pulled it open—then very nearly fainted with shock. For, entirely unexpected, so that she had not so much as suspected that he might call, stood tall, dark-haired, dark grey-eyed and extremely grim-faced Cheyne Templeton!

  His tone, when he spoke, was equally grim—though harsh described it better when, as if intent on drawing her fire, he barked, 'What the devil's the matter with you?'

  Jolene opened her mouth, then closed it, then went swiftly from being totally stuck for words on seeing him standing there so unexpectedly, to being stung into retaliating hotly and sharply, 'Absolutely nothing!'

  'Then why the hell aren't you at work?' he snarled.

  CHAPTER NINE

  REELING with shock, Jolene somehow managed to remain vertical and to appear as if she saw nothing untoward in opening her' front door to find Cheyne Templeton standing there. She had some vague notion of hoping recently that he might dismiss her, but as his words 'Then why the hell aren't you at work?' played back in her mind, she realised that she still had a job— if she wanted it.

  They were still standing at the door, when quite plainly his temper was burning on a short fuse. Cheyne did not wait for her reply, but said toughly, 'I thought you were interested in a career!'

  'I am,' she again found her voice to reply, but, as the implication of what he was saying suddenly hit her, she grew hurt—and angry, and was all at once erupting, 'But, I'm not interested in career promotion through the bedroom, th...'

  'Who the hell offered you promotion that way?' he sliced through what she was saying to bark.

  'Aren't you?' she slammed back. She was well aware that just seeing him had scattered her brain power. But with what brain-power she had remaining she could not see—since he had made a deliberate mention of her 'career', and since all her typing was already in his possession—why else he had called at her home.

  'Hell's teeth!' he exploded angrily. 'You think the company got where it is today through promoting secretaries to executive status via my bed? What the hell sort of cheapjack outfit do you think I run?' he demanded harshly.

  Almost Jolene apologised. Shot down in flames, she knew, as she supposed she had always known, that Cheyne ran his company with more professionalism than that. But, feeling stung that he was letting go at her on her own doorstep, she knew something in her would not let her apologise. 'What about—er—Tony Welsh?' she pulled out of a weak nowhere. 'He was definitely...' she broke off. 'Though I forget,' she resumed, 'you never did believe I was speaking the truth when I told you I did nothing to encourage him. You never...'

  'Of course I believed you!' Cheyne chopped her off, and when she looked as though she was going to argue heatedly that this was news to her, 'Are you going to keep me standing out here all day?' he queried suddenly.

  All day! By the sound of it, Jolene thought a trifle sourly, he had not called simply because he was passing. 'Come in,' she invited, before she had time to consider that maybe it would be better for him to say why he had called from where he was. With him on the outside of her home, she felt better able to cope—having invited him in, she belatedly realised that she had to afford him some sort of courtesy.

  'Take a seat,' she offered as he followed her into her sitting-room. She determined, though, that her courtesy need not extend so far as to offer him a cup of coffee.

  Having invited him in at all, however, even if that invitation had been forced from her, Jolene became aware, too late, just how little brain-power seeing Cheyne had left her with. For had she been thinking more clearly, and having invited him in at all, she would then have taken him to the dining-room or even the kitchen, to have him say what he had called for. Because suddenly she became aware of how still he was all at once and as she flicked a glance around her neat and tidy sitting-room, her eyes came to an abrupt stop at precisely the same spot as his.

  'So that's the "Rubens" you toted all the way from Leningrad,' Cheyne commented quietly, eyeing her newly hung picture on the wall.

  'As Rubens go, it's not one of his best,' she attempted to comment lightly.

  'But one which obviously means something to you,' he replied, bringing his eyes away from the picture.

  As Jolene saw it, since Cheyne was not going to know in a million years just how much the picture meant to her, there was nothing for it but to get him off the subject. 'Do take a seat, Cheyne,' she said, and could have bitten off her tongue for using his first name, which had just slipped out. To her relief, however, he moved to one of the easy chairs in the room. But as she fought to look quite relaxed and went and sat in an easy chair too, she saw that his eyes had gone again to the picture. 'So how was it you decided all at once that I hadn't been leading Tony Welsh on?' she asked quickly.

  She felt relieved again when Cheyne took his eyes from the painting. Though she was not at all sure how she felt when he replied, 'With women like you, Jolene, men don't look for encouragement.'

  'Thanks!' she said shortly, just to be on the safe side.

  'Don't be offended,' he said evenly. 'I merely meant that men are attracted to you without encouragement.'

  'Is that a fact?' she queried offhandedly, not sure that she believed that was any better.

  She was somewhat shaken, however, when Cheyne, after looking steadily at her for a few moments, in a very deliberate kind of way said quietly, 'If you want a case in point—look at me.'

  'You?' she questioned warily.

  'Me,' he confirmed, and went on to stun her totally when he added, 'I've been very much aware of you, from the moment I saw you fending off Welsh's advances in the corridor that day.'

  'You—have?' she choked with what breath she could find.

  Cheyne nodded as he told her, 'Without any encouragement from you, I grew even more aware of you during the two subsequent interviews I had with you in my office. Never had I seen such angry green eyes,' he murmured.

  'I...' Jolene tried, failed miserably, but really thought she ought to be doing something to get herself together. 'You'll forgive me if I didn't notice quite how "aware" of me you were,' she found some strength to say waspishly. 'From where I was sitting it looked very much as though you were more interested in calling me a liar than...'

  'When did I ever call you a liar?' Cheyne interr
upted, his tone changing abruptly to be sharp and challenging.

  'You checked me out—you told me you had!' she reminded him heatedly.

  'I also told you that there was a lot riding on the Russian trip. See it from my side,' he asked of her. 'You'd told me that none of what I'd seen was your fault, but from where I saw it you could well be some man-mad nymphomaniac. With the Russian expedition being so important, I couldn't afford to give you the benefit of the doubt without first making a few enquiries about you.'

  'You heard about Tony Welsh's wife coming to the building before I told you,' Jolene stated, in fairness, having to go along with him when she looked at the situation from his point of view.

  'From what 1 heard, she didn't bother to keep her voice down,' Cheyne replied.

  'But, having heard that I might be a marriage breaker, you still gave me the benefit of the doubt.'

  'When you explained how it was, I found I wanted to believe you,' he admitted, and for a brief few seconds Jolene floated on air.

  She came down to earth all too soon, however, when, prodded by her memory, she quickly reminded him, 'You may have given me the benefit of the doubt, but that didn't prevent you from warning me off Alec and Keith when, at Heathrow, you made a point of letting me know that they were both married.'

  '1 can't deny it,' he owned, but a warm look had come into his dark grey eyes when he in turn remembered, 'That was when, if I hadn't realised it before, you showed me that you weren't going to be sat on by anyone. I knew I was going to have trouble with you from the moment you impudently told me that some woman had had a lucky escape in relation to my being a bachelor.'

  'I was talking more to myself than to you.' Jolene thought she should mention, the warm look in his eyes causing her heart to give a small energetic burst. Then the other thing he had just said suddenly clicked, and she exclaimed, 'Trouble? Wh...'

  'It was touch and go that I didn't tell you there and then that I could manage without you,' Cheyne cut in to inform her.

  'At that late stage?'

  'I didn't know then,' he said slowly, 'just how much I would come to need you.'

  Feeling weak from this, the one and only intimation that she had done a good job for him, Jolene realised that she had better do something to counteract that weakness, and to get herself together. 'I slaved for you!' She saw no reason, in this moment of opposing weakening forces, to hide her light under a bushel.

  '1 know you did,' he said gently. 'But that wasn't what I meant.'

  What he had meant, Jolene was very interested to know. But suddenly she was beset by nerves, and starting to be afraid. It had been madness to invite him in. She was already beginning to feel weak where he was concerned, and he had not been in her home ten minutes! Having been made to discount her original thought that he had come to boost her career, she as yet had no idea of the purpose of his call. But if ten minutes of his company could bring about such weakness in her, she felt she had real cause to panic should he, with his suddenly gentle tone, be minded to stay anywhere near the 'all day' he had intimated on her doorstep. The time had come, she decided, to find out what he was doing in Priors Aston and to edge him nearer to the door.

  'Well—er—I wasn't working hard all the time,' she said as, trying to look casual, she got to her feet and inspected a potted plant her neighbour had given her yesterday.

  'But even so, you felt too tired to come into the office this morning?' Cheyne, ever the gentleman as she'd hoped, got to his feet too.

  'It wasn't that,' she said, feeling relieved as she took a step nearer to the door. 'It was just that—well...' she paused, and had a beautiful lie, that was not a lie, drop on to her tongue, 'just that I've no office to go to.'

  'Ah,' said Cheyne, and when she looked at him, suddenly, he smiled.

  'What does that "Ah" mean?' she questioned stiltedly, and felt she wanted to run when, before she could get the door open, he had taken a couple of long strides over to where she stood.

  'From where I'm viewing thing's,' he replied, looking down into her eyes, 'I'd say that either you're nervous about—something—or you've given up all thoughts of a career.'

  'Nervous?' she scoffed. 'Good grief!' she scorned, and was glad he could not see the mass of agitation she was inside when he moved that half-pace required which successfully prevented her from opening the door. 'And of course I haven't given up my thoughts of a career,' she said stoutly.

  'Then why, if you're so career-minded—when, apart from me personally telling you to apply for Gillian's job when it comes up, you must know that the excellent work you did while we were away could only enhance your chances of promotion—did you not come in to work this morning?'

  About to reiterate that she had no office to go to, Jolene saw then that her bluff had been called. But, with her way of escape barred, she had to think fast. 'I didn't know then that... Well, that is to say,' she floundered, 'that—well, I didn't know then... we—er—hadn't established then that…'

  'I think what you're trying to say,' Cheyne cut in mildly, 'is that we've only just now agreed that my firm doesn't do business via the bedroom.'

  'Yes, that's—about it,' Jolene accepted his helping her out gratefully.

  'Which means,' he smiled pleasantly, 'that you must be quite ready to put your coat on and come to the office with me now.'

  Heartily Jolene wished he would move away from the door—from her. She just could not think clearly with him standing so close. 'I don't think so,' she said stiffly.

  'Why not?' he questioned, just the way she knew too late that he would, his eyes alert, watchful, never leaving her face.

  'Because...' she tried, and, floundering again, and not liking the sensation, she was glad to feel rebellion surging to life in her. This was her home, for goodness' sake! Who in blazes did he think he was, to calmly force her to invite him in and then, for no good reason that she could see, proceed to make her squirm? 'It's not important, surely!' she broke out of her retreating mould to challenge sharply. And, as a big hint that she had had more than enough of his company, she stretched out a hand to the door-handle, and told him with some asperity, 'I'm sure you've far more important matters awaiting you at your desk.'

  Suddenly, though, the whole of her being started to tingle, for Cheyne's right hand had unexpectedly stretched out, and all at once the hand she held over the doorknob was covered by his larger one. And, if that was not enough, she was abruptly feeling too electrified to move when, after a moment's pause during which he took a long-drawn breath, Cheyne was shattering her when he said, oh, so quietly, 'Believe me, Joley, there's nothing more important, nor that matters more to me, than being here with you, to...' He broke off and seemed to be searching for the right words.

  But, shaken to her foundations at his tone, and at the beautiful way he had shortened her name, as he had done once before, she recalled without effort, all Jolene could do was to stare at him. Strangely, then, she had the most peculiar sensation that he seemed to be experiencing some of the same nervousness that she was feeling. But she discounted that Cheyne could be nervous of anything when, for all she sensed that she was not going to do herself any good, she just had to question, 'Why?'

  For long, long moments he stared deep into her eyes, then he took another long-drawn breath, and was saying, 'Perhaps, considering what an uncommunicative swine I've been to you, I should first explain..

  He had again broken off but, never having expected to hear him admit that he had been an uncommunicative swine, or even that he had been aware of how he had been, much less that he would deign to explain anything to her, Jolene continued to stare at him. It was only afterwards, however, that she realised just how his words had shaken her. Because all at once she found that with his hand on her arm he had led her to her settee and had sat down with her—all with her barely being aware that she had moved.

  Then, turning to her, he looked seriously, solemnly down into her wide green eyes and said, 'I've told you how aware I've been of you from
the beginning. I've told you how I knew at Heathrow that I was going to have trouble with you. What I didn't know, however— and didn't have so much as an inkling of at the time— was the full extent of the trouble you were going to cause me when I made that decision not to leave you behind.'

  'How, for goodness' sake?' asked Jolene with some heat. 'I don't recall doing anything to...'

  'That's just it, my dear,' he cut her off gently, that 'my dear', not to mention his gentle tone, causing the heat of anger to depart immediately, 'you didn't have to do anything but be yourself to cause me trouble.'

  'Compliments yet!' she tried to jibe, but her voice came out more husky than jibing.

  'I haven't complimented you half enough,' Cheyne said softly, which did absolutely nothing to help her get the stiffening she needed.

  'You told me I was beautiful—er—inside and out,' she attempted to drawl loftily.

  'And so you are,' he promptly weakened her again by saying. 'All too soon,' he went on, 'I was seeing a very different Miss Jolene Draper from the one I'd initially decided you must be.'

  'You realised that I wasn't some man-mad, marriage-wrecking hussy?' she queried as sourly as she could manage.

  'Oh, yes,' he confirmed, but added wryly, 'Though that didn't stop me being bloody-minded each time I heard a whisper that you were going off somewhere with one of the others.'

  'I...' Jolene began, faltered, then asked, 'When?'

  'The list was ever growing,' he told her. 'It began that very first evening. No sooner had we landed, it seemed, than Shaw was making plans to take you to have a look around Red Square.'

  'But Alec Edwards was going too!' she recalled, and did not have to dig much further into her memory to recall also 'But anyhow, I couldn't have gone with them because you said you wanted to brief me on...' her voice faded, and quickly she looked into the dark grey eyes that were still alert, and still watching her.

  'All along it had been my intention to brief you at breakfast the following morning,' he told her, to her astonishment.