hate having small chance of staying around for long when she loved him so much.
She went and listened at the door; all seemed silent in the next room. She opened the door and went in. Thomson wasn't there. No doubt he'd gone to get the car rug, and possibly to drown his sorrows with the rest of the herd at the bar.
Yancie took the sandwiches from her bag, opened one packet and ate a sandwich, leaving a packet and a half for him. She looked at her watch, and could hardly believe that it was half past nine already. She'd better ring home.
'You're fog-bound?' Fennia guessed when Yancie told her she wouldn't be home that night so not to worry. `You stay where you are; with luck, it will be clear by the morning.'
Yancie rang off, hoping Fennia was right. She didn't know how she was going to get through one night sharing a room with Thomson; to have to share the room with him for a second night was unthinkable.
Where was he? It didn't take all that long to collect a car rug, did it? An abrupt and unwanted notion suddenly occurred to her. Oh, my giddy aunt, supposing, just supposing, he took it into his head to take a look around! Just supposing he took a look at the dining room. Oh, grief, he could, at this very moment, be having his dinner. In which case when he came back he might very well tell her she could keep her sandwiches; the deal was off, the bed his.
Possession, she decided, was nine-tenths of the law. She glanced about, and realised she couldn't lock him out because he had the room key with him. It would be undignified, as well as unfair, to put a chair under the door. She went for possession.
Hurriedly she cleaned her teeth again, took off her skirt and jacket and hung them up, briefly contemplated sleeping in her shirt, but decided against it, and hung that up too. She hadn't got a fresh shirt for tomorrow as it was-how much more rumpled her shirt was going to be if she slept in it. Besides, aggressive or kind, whatever Thomson's mood, she instinctively knew that it just wasn't in his nature to take advantage of her. She dispensed with her bra too, but because she drew the line at going to bed totally naked she opted to stay with her briefs. They were only bits of lace; she'd rinse them through in the morning; they'd soon dry.
She heard the sound of the lift, and dived into bed and out again to put out the main light, and dived for the bed again. Then discovered she needn't have bothered for she realised it wasn't Thomson but, as voices neared and passed the door, a couple of other people staying in the hotel.
Yancie tried to sleep but couldn't. She felt too on edge. And when, the time nearing midnight, Thomson did return, her heart started to pound so resoundingly she thought he might hear it.
He didn't put on the light and Yancie, hearing him moving about, was suddenly conscience-stricken. He was so tall, and that chair was so small. Had she been in any way decently clad, she felt then that she would have got out of the bed and told him that he could have the bed. Modestly, however, and an unexpected feeling of shyness at the intimacy of the situation, kept her where she was.
Eventually the only noise to be heard was the occasional creak of the chair as Thomson adjusted his position. Yancie studied the line of light coming under the door from the hall and, her eyes quite well accustomed to the darkness, the room consequently seemed to lighten.
She grew sleepy and closed her eyes, and drifted into a light sleep somewhere around two in the morning. She was awake again at three, but it was not the creaking of the chair that awakened her, but the feel of Thomson, plainly having had enough of trying to get comfortable, coming to lie down on top of the bed beside her.
She was not alarmed, but glad. It was an obvious solution. She felt like telling him so, but thought better of it. She had an idea he'd probably leave the bed early so that she would be none the wiser.
It was strange, she mused, but she would have thought she would be furious to be sharing her bed with him- albeit she was the only one beneath the covers-but, in fact, she wasn't. Actually she felt more concerned for him than furious-concerned because the car rug wasn't making much of a job of covering him, and his bare feet were sticking out from under it.
She was still worrying about his feet when she fell asleep again. She didn't wake up again until, ploughing through her stirring brain, she suddenly became aware of a bare leg against her own-a leg that wasn't hers!
She jerked awake to find dawn was breaking and that the leg wasn't the only thing that was bare. She was sharing the bed with a man who had on about as much clothing as she had.
From stirring to wakefulness, she flew straight to agitated panic. Thomson's naked chest was against her left breast, his face so close to hers she could have kissed it. Though her inclination just then was more to bite it than kiss it.
She gave him a gigantic shove-and as she struggled to sit up, taking the duvet with her, he became awake on the instant, awake and alert. `How could you?' she shrieked.
Thomson sat up too. She had the benefit of most of the duvet, and the sight of his naked broad shoulders and naked hair-roughened chest did nothing for her agitations. `I didn't know I had,' were his first words.
'Don't get clever with me!' she charged; if he was trying to be amusing she just wasn't in the mood for it. `You know what I meanhow dare you get under the bedcovers with me?'
'Ah!' he drawled, and then she realised he was too sharp for her. `You knew I'd had enough of the chair and had to stretch out? You knew I'd joined you on the bed?'
She wasn't sure there wasn't a hint of kindness there-she was in no mood for that either. `You didn't have to get into it!' she raged, wanting to push him furiously out of it, but not totally certain that he was wearing anything.
'Oh, put your chaste outrage away!' Thomson ordered bluntly. `The central heating went off. I was half asleep, half frozen.' There was not a scrap of kindness in his tone when he went on to say, `Do you honestly think that after our last amorous excursion I'd choose to repeat that non-event?'
Non-event! Her awakening! How she stopped herself from thumping him then she didn't know. Toad? He was worse than that! `Fog or no fog,' she snapped, 'I'm going back the minute I'm dressed.' If he was about to say that went double for him, Yancie wasn't waiting to hear.
Wrenching the duvet the rest of the way off him, she made a cape of it and, turning all at the same time, she left the bed and went storming to the bathroom. Tears sprang to her eyes; she swallowed them back. She never used to be so emotional. She didn't want to be emotional. She didn't want to be in love. Being in love hurt. And making love to her was a nonevent! Those intimate moments when she'd shared more of herself with him than any man had been a non-event! That awakening to how she felt, how she could feel, how she was her and not her mother-had been a non-event!
Yancie sat down on a bathroom stool with the duvet wrapped around her and hoped he froze. Though knowing him, without a cover to bless himself with, he was probably getting dressed and going to look for a cup of coffee. She could murder a cup herself.
It seriously crossed her mind to get dressed and get to the Jaguar and take off and leave Thomson stranded. Heaven alone knew where they were-she didn't. There was only one thing wrong with that-well, two, actually. One, Mr-non-event-never-again-Wakefield out there had the wretched car key. Two, if she did leave him stranded, it was a foregone conclusion she would lose her job. And, even though she was not thinking very kindly of him just then, she still wanted to keep her job. It was rare that she saw him, but she did sometimes, and she just couldn't face risking never seeing him again.
She got up and angrily shot the stiff bolt home on the bathroom door. Car key he might have, but he wasn't having the bathroom. The problem was, it was a bit boring sitting here doing nothing.
Yancie rinsed through her briefs, got most of the excess moisture out with a towel, and finished the drying process by use of the hairdryer attached to the bathroom wall. She felt like being perverse, and purely because she was positive, weather permitting or not, that Thomson would want to be on the road as soon as possible she decided she was no longer in a hurry.
She heard a sound like a door slamming to, and felt fairly confident that was the door to the room. She felt confident enough anyhow, though still with the security of the duvet around her, to unbolt the bathroom door and peer out. Good. T. Wakefield esquire had gone to breakfast.
Yancie went back inside the bathroom again, bolted the door and ran a bath. She had time, she decided, for a good long wallow. And, even if she hadn't, even if sir had merely gone to check road conditions and wasn't going to bother with breakfast, she was still going to enjoy her bath.
Yancie had her wallow, and found when she got out of the tub and patted herself dry that her long soak had calmed her. She was even slightly amazed that she could have been so mutinous. Hurt had done that to her. Since
