No Nice Girl

by Perry Lindsay

  When, in the early evening, she opened her door to the sound of the doorbell, she was not surprised to find Terry there. He had been in her mind and in her heart so vividly that seeing him there was only to be expected.

  She did not know that she blushed or that her eyes sparkled as she said eagerly, “Why, Terry, how nice. Come in.”

  She went about the room switching on the shaded lamps, and Terry stood just inside the doorway watching her. When she turned to him, surprised that he had made no move, he said grimly, “Sitting in the dark, were you, eating your heart out? It’s about what I expected.”

  Phyllis’ eyes widened.

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  He held up a copy of an afternoon tabloid with the tall headline she had expected—and dreaded. The tab had made a Roman holiday of the marriage of the multi-millionaire to a lovely blonde in his own office, while his socially prominent fiancée had been forgotten.

  “I thought perhaps you’d be here by yourself, crying your eyes out,” he said, and flung the paper from him with fury. “So the little bitch put it over! I hand it to her—she’s good!”

  Phyllis laughed, but it was a rather unsteady laugh.

  “Of course, Terry—she’s good. She’s a very nice girl—remember? She told us so,” she reminded him.

  Terry studied her with a curious intensity.

  “Rough on Mrs. Lawrence,” he commented.

  “I suppose so,” admitted Phyllis slowly. “But she’s a very grand person, Terry. If Kenyon Rutledge could do a thing like this to her, then it’s better that she should know before they’re married.”

  Terry said shortly, “I hope she can realize that, and you, too.”

  Phyllis looked at him, wide-eyed.

  “What’s it got to do with me, except that I lost my job because of it?” she asked mildly.

  Terry’s eyebrows went up, and his eyes widened.

  “You mean you cared so much you can’t bear to go on working for the big lug?” he snapped sharply.

  “I mean Anice did such a perfectly swell job in selling herself to him that she sold me out!” she told him. “Kenyon fired me the moment he got to the office this morning.”

  “Why, the—” Terry’s profanity was rich, varied, picturesque and blistering. When he had subsided a little, he asked cautiously, “Well, of course, you can easily find something else, with your ability.”

  “I think I’ll go out to Hollywood and see if I can get a job working for one of the movie companies. It ought to be fun being a private secretary to a movie star,” she said slowly, considering it as she spoke.

  Terry looked alarmed.

  “You can’t go that far away. Good grief, just when I got a promotion and a raise in pay that makes me almost a substantial citizen, I couldn’t give it up to go traipsing after you, and maybe wind up a bum while you become rich and powerful.”

  Phyllis stared at him, wide-eyed, and felt as though her heart were being squeezed so tightly that the blood stood still throughout her body.

  “But why should you follow me? Oh, Terry, what arrant nonsense,” she protested when she could speak.

  “I always have—remember?” he said quietly.

  “I know,” said Phyllis as quietly, her hands tightly clenched. “But that was in the days B.E.”

  “B.E.?” Terry repeated, puzzled.

  “The days Before Eleanor,” Phyllis reminded him.

  There was a silence that seemed to stretch out endlessly, while a tiny frown drew Terry’s eyebrows together. After a little he said as though he had just remembered, “Oh, yes—before Eleanor.”

  Phyllis let out the tiny breath that she had held, and clutched for something casual and matter-of-fact to say. “Oh, well, I’m entitled to a bit of a holiday. I haven’t had a vacation this year. I think I’ll take one before I start looking around for another job.”

  “Good idea,” said Terry politely. “Shall you go away—mountains, I suppose, or the beach?”

  Phyllis looked about her at the apartment, which was cool and restful, and shook her head. “No, I think I’ll stay right here at home and get acquainted with my own place. I see it so seldom, rushing to and from my job. I think it would be fun just to sleep late, dawdle through breakfast, see a lot of movies.”

  There was something in the way Terry was looking at her that made her heart beat faster, and so she broke off and said gaily, “Oh, well, let’s have a bite to eat and discuss my vacation later. Have you had dinner?”

  “I don’t think so. The paper knocked me for a loop and I couldn’t get here fast enough. I was afraid you’d—er—do something silly like…like an overdose of sleeping pills or something,” he admitted frankly.

  Phyllis gasped, and her eyes were wide.

  “But, for goodness’ sake, Terry, what a perfectly crazy idea!” she said in honest amazement. “Why on earth should I do such a fool thing—just because my poisonous little cousin has copped herself a millionaire?”

  Terry moved unexpectedly, caught her by the shoulders and shook her hard. His face was set and his eyes were angry.

  “Cut out the damn foolishness,” he snapped at her roughly. “I don’t deserve that you should put up a front with me. I’m Terry, remember me? I know you better than anyone else on earth, and I know how crazy-mad you were about Kenyon Rutledge.”

  “Were is right, Terry,” she told him levelly.

  He studied her, his hands still on her shoulders, and there was in his eyes an almost desperate need to believe her, and yet a fear that he dared not.

  “Are you trying to tell me that you stopped being in love with him just because he gave you the grand bounce? Oh, no, Phyl—that won’t wash! Maybe you’re sore as a pup at him now—that’s the shock. But it will wear off, and by morning, you’ll be grieving—” He broke off as she laughed in his face.

  It was a small but quite honest laugh of genuine amusement.

  “Terry, my pet, I stopped being in love with Kenyon ever so long ago,” she told him in a tone that forced him to believe her. “I was never really in love with him. It was—well, just an hallucination. I think the night we worked late—” She broke off and the hot color flowed into her face, and her eyes fell before his.

  “The night you planned to sleep with him and Mrs. Lawrence intruded,” he finished for her almost contemptuously.

  Her face burning, she met his eyes bravely.

  “Yes, Terry, that night,” she told him simply. “I knew that I’d made a terrific mistake and I’ve realized it more every day.”

  Terry said swiftly, “Then you were not sitting here moping because he had married somebody else?”

  “Of course not.” And there was conviction in the very simplicity of her words.

  For a long, long moment, Terry held her, his hands gripping her shoulders so tightly that she winced a little. And then he said, in a tone of awe and wonder, “Then—thank the good Lord!”

  She was in his arms then, held so closely that he could feel the exciting pressure of her firm, pointed breasts through the thin silk of her housecoat. For a moment she rested in the utter heaven of his arms, joying in the perfection of it—until he lifted her face, one hand cupping her chin, and set his mouth on hers in a kiss that seemed to rock the very floor beneath their feet.

  She clung to him in wordless ecstasy and gave him back his kiss with an ardor that was beyond belief. And then, tears in her eyes, reluctant, her heart crying out, she drew herself away from him and said unsteadily, trying to smile, “Careful, Terry—I doubt if Miss Adams would approve.”

  Terry’s arms would not let her go, and there was an impish twinkle in his eyes as he asked, “Miss Adams? Who is she?”

  “The girl you’re going to marry—” Phyllis broke off and stared at him.

  “Miss Adams?” Terry repeated the name as though he had never heard it before in his life, and then he shook his head and said firmly, “Never heard of her.”

  Phyllis was staring up at him, her
face white, her eyes enormous.

  “Terry McLean!” she gasped at last, in a tone of accusation. “Are you mad? You said you met her upstate and were going to marry her.”

  “I was lying through my pearly teeth,” said Terry and grinned.

  A wave of such exquisite delight as to make her a little dizzy flowed over Phyllis, and her heart was beating so fast and so loud that she felt sure he must hear it.

  “Terry!” she gasped at last, when she could manage her voice. “Terry, are you trying to tell me that you just…just made up a fiancée—But, Terry, why?”

  Terry held her a little away from him and looked down at her sternly.

  “Now that’s a damned fool question if ever I heard one, and I’ve heard plenty,” he told her sternly. “Why would I invent an almost-fiancée, except to try to make you realize what a darned good matrimonial bet you were passing up in one Terence O’Malley McLean, who had asked you to marry him so many times he’d lost count, and who was ready to try any desperate measures to see if he couldn’t make you notice him?”

  “But—but—oh, Terry—”

  He nodded, his expression grim.

  “It’s a corny old dodge, of course,” he admitted without shame. “But after all, what makes a dodge old and corny? The fact that it almost always succeeds! You were making a fool of yourself about Rutledge. I knew it wasn’t his money—I knew you believed you were in love with him. But, well, Phyllis, a girl can’t be as sweet to a man as you have been to me, unless she cares for him a little—even though she may be too blind to realize it. I took a chance. After all, a man’s got a little pride. You hadn’t left me much, I admit. I knew that you never came into my arms without thinking of Rutledge. There were times when I could have left you and not looked back—but I guess I’m too much of a dope to walk away from you. So that left me my only hope—making you believe that you were about to lose me in order to make you realize that maybe you liked having me around more than you know.”

  Phyllis nodded soberly, and there was a bright mist of tears in her eyes, despite the slightly tremulous smile on her lips.

  “You—you’re terribly sweet, Terry,” she whispered huskily.

  Terry asked anxiously, “Does that mean that we can abandon Miss Adams?”

  “Of course, you blessed idiot!” she told him unsteadily.

  His arms caught her close, and he kissed her hard. But there was still the shadow of a frown, a tiny trace of lingering doubt in his mind, and after a moment it came into words.

  “Look here, pretty thing, we might as well get all of this cleared up once and for all,” he said sternly. “This…this sudden aversion for the Rutledge lug—it didn’t just spring into being today when you knew he’d married the little blond bitch?”

  She shook her head soberly.

  “It began that night, when Mrs. Lawrence walked in,” she admitted frankly. “But it didn’t entirely disappear until you began telling me about Miss Adams. That night when we had dinner and you began raving about her—well, I lay awake all night, facing facts. The fact that all along I’d been an utter fool, and that I wasn’t in love with Kenyon after all, but that I was crazy about you. And that I’d fooled around and lost you to somebody else.”

  Terry kissed her and asked one last assurance.

  “Will I have to go around inventing any more Miss Adamses in order to keep you conscious that you’re in love with me?” he wondered worriedly.

  She laughed richly, and framed his face between her two palms, and kissed him.

  “All you have to do is to go on loving me, and reminding me, and staying pretty close at hand,” she told him with a soft gaiety that belied her tears.

  Terry held her close, and for a long moment they were silent. And then Terry said huskily, “We’ve lost such a lot of time, Phyllis, fooling around.”

  “And that’s my fault, Terry, because I was such a dope,” she confessed humbly.

  Terry said suddenly, “Hey, why don’t we get married tonight?”

  Phyllis gasped, but her eyes were eager.

  “Well, not tonight, Terry. We can’t—there are laws and things. We have to wait three days for a license,” she pointed out reluctantly.

  “Not in Elkton, we don’t,” he reminded her. He kicked the newspaper that lay at his feet and said proudly, “What’s good enough for a multi-millionaire is good enough—but only just!—for us! My car’s downstairs; it will hold together for a drive that far—and who the blazes cares whether it holds together for the return? You’re not working, and I’m due for a vacation. We’ll just go from Elkton for a honeymoon.”

  Phyllis said radiantly, “Give me twenty minutes to get dressed and pack a bag!”

  “I’ll give you fifteen,” he bargained.

  Phyllis laughed joyously.

  “Make it ten,” she promised recklessly, and spent several of them giving and receiving a kiss.

  ISBN: 978 1 472 05189 9

  NO NICE GIRL

  © 2009 Perry Lindsay

  Published in Great Britain 2009

  by Mills & Boon, an imprint of Harlequin (UK) Limited

  Eton House, 18-24 Paradise Road, Richmond, Surrey TW9 1SR

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