'I haven't time to stand here all day bandying words with you!' she cut in arrogantly and saw his eyes narrow at her tone. Quite clearly, Mr-High-and-Mighty-Aston-Martin wasn't used to being spoken to in such a way. She saw him take a sharp intake of controlling breath.
Then, his jaw jutting no less furiously, he gritted, `I'll attend to you later,' and turned sharply away and went striding back to the rather superb-looking Aston Martin.
There was nothing he could possibly do, Yancie told herself ten minutes later. His 'I'll attend to you later' had no teeth. What could he do for goodness' sake? It was a cold day, but, thanks to an efficient car heater, she had shed her uniform jacket. She'd removed that identifying tag when she'd left Mr Clements, and had pinned a rather attractive brooch over the Addison Kirk logo on her shirt, so sucks boo! The only way he might be able to trace her was if he'd thought to note her car registration number-but, even then, that nearghastly accident was purely his word against hers-so he could take his `I'll attend to you later' and sling it. So why was she still trembling?
Yancie proceeded on her way with the utmost care after that. The incident had shaken her more than she would have liked to admit. She was, however, correctly uniformed, with her identifying appendage neatly in place, when, with five minutes to spare, she arrived to wait for Mr Clements.
Very occasionally, when she was working quite late, Yancie had permission-after first dropping off her passenger at his address-to take whichever motor she was driving on to her own home. She'd had to assure her immediate boss, Kevin Veasey, that she was able to garage the car, but even then this concession was only allowed on the understanding she would not avail herself of it for her personal use.
She was late that night, so took the Mercedes home. As late as it was, her cousin Astra was still out working. 'Astra works too hard,' she remarked to her other lovely cousin, Fennia.
'She loves it,' Fennia answered. `Had a good day?'
'Given I nearly wrote off an Aston Martin with a Mercedes, can't complain,' she smiled, and shared the experience with her cousin over a sumptuous casserole Fennia had made while waiting for her two cousins to come home.
'Men!' Fennia opined.
'I was in the wrong,' Yancie pointed out.
'I know! But-men!'
They laughed. They'd roomed together, the three cousins, at boarding-school They'd shared each other's secrets, mopped up in the early days-each other's tears when their mothers had hopped from relationship to relationship. Stable backgrounds-forget it! They'd had so many 'uncles', it had needed a young mind to keep up with it.
They'd tried hard not to be judgmental, but it had been just a touch embarrassing not knowing which `uncle' had been coming with their mothers to pick them up at each termend.
Aunt Delia was the rock they'd each leaned towards. Aunt Delia had been ten years old when her widowed mother had remarried, and in three years had produced three daughters. It was the younger girls' dreadfully strict upbringing, Aunt Delia had explained, by a father who seemed to have few sensitivities, that was responsible for the way each of her half-sisters, in turn, had rebelled. Yancie's mother apparently had been well `off the rails' before Yancie's father had been killed. Fennia's mother was twice married-and on the lookout for husband number three. And Astra's mother had twice divorced and was at present living with someone.
With that kind of a background, the three cousins had been sixteen when, fearing they might have inherited some wayward gene from their mothers, they had vowed that they were going to guard with everything they had against turning out like their mothers. They wanted nothing of their mothers' explosive and sometimes quite awful relationships which in the main-brought nothing but disaster.
To date, six years on, it hadn't been a problem. In general the cousins had nothing against men. And so far, thank goodness, none of them had felt the smallest inclination to be wayward where men were concerned. Though it was true that if they ever went out on a date and did dip their toes in unchartered, experimental waters it was mainly with someone fairly safe whom they'd known for ages-usually the brother or relation of someone with whom they'd been at boarding-school.
Yancie drove to work the following morning growing more and more comfortable with her lot. She was still in frequent telephone contact with her stepfather-who now employed a housekeeper-but she still had no wish to return to live in the same house as Estelle. Yancie enjoyed living again with her cousins. Fennia, despite her business training, thoroughly enjoyed the job she had found working with toddlers in a day nursery, and Astra, the most academic of the three of them, was working all hours as a financial adviser, and loving it.
Yancie drove into the vast garages of the Addison Kirk Group and exchanged her uniform jacket and neat shoes for a pair of Wellingtons and an over-large over-all.
The men she worked with were getting more and more used to seeing her about the place. But even though-as she unreeled the water hose prior to tackling the wheel arches on yesterday's Mercedes-she knew she must look a sketch in her present outfit it still didn't prevent one courageous colleague from commenting, `You still look terrific even in that get-up!'
She had no wish to be thought stand-offish. `You reckon?' she answered.
'There's no substitute for style-and you've got it, plus,' he stated, and looked so serious, she had to laugh- which caused him to ask her for a date.
Her laugh faded. `I never mix business with pleasure,' she replied, and turned away to concentrate on turning the water on.
She was happily absorbed in her task when Wilf Fisher, one of the mechanics and a family man, came over to thank her for going out of her way to drop a spare electric kettle off to his mother yesterday.
'It was a pleasure,' she assured him, though it had been a fifty-mile round trip on which she headed as soon as she'd seen Mr Clements safely to his destination.
'I couldn't have got it to her before tomorrow otherwise,' he explained again. `And, well, quite honestly, the wife does get a little bit fed up with me having to drive up there to sort the old dear out all the time.'
Yancie sympathised; she knew all about mothers and their urgent summonses. `Think nothing of it,' she smiled. `Any time.'
Wilf went on his way, clearly feeling better for her offer of `Any time', and Yancie, her smile fading, fell to thinking how, if she hadn't been where she shouldn't yesterday, then she wouldn't have had that run-in-very nearly literally-with Mr Aston Martin.
She owned that the near calamity had truly unnerved her. For all she had made light of it to Fennia, and to Astra too when she had come home, Yancie had not been able to get to sleep last night for thinking about it. She had so nearly caused a very serious accident. And, to make matters worse, when the driver of the other car had followed her to remonstrate with her, what had she done but called him a grumpy old devil and accused him, totally falsely, of being in the wrong lane?
She had been in the wrong, Yancie knew that. Apart from the fact the `grumpy old devil' wasn't old at all-why couldn't she get the memory of his face out of her head? She knew she'd know him again anywhere-not that she would see him again. She must have been in a panic yesterday when she had thought that he'd find out more about her from the car registration number. Records of that nature were difficult to access, weren't they? And, in any case, everything about him had spoken of him being some kind of executive. This morning she doubted he'd have time to bother contacting the police about an accident that had never happened.
Yancie usually had quite a few driving jobs on a Friday. But this Friday, although she caught Kevin Veasey looking over to her several times, he didn't have even one task for her.
She kept busy, however, washing cars, going for sandwiches or running any other errand anyone wanted doing. Then at three o' clock, to her delight, she got the plummiest job of them all. Word had come down, from the head of the whole outfit, no less, that her presence was requested on the top floor at four o'clock.
She had never driven Thomson Wakefield before. Indeed, she had never so much as clapped eyes on him. In fact, having worked for Addison's for three weeks now, she had been beginning to suspect-to the blazes with any sex discrimination law-that old Mr Wakefield would die rather than let some female drive him.
But, not so! Why she thought Thomson Wakefield must be old, she couldn't have said. Probably because it didn't seem likely that someone still wet behind the ears would have the honour of holding his exalted position.
But what was she bothering her head with such thoughts for? He wanted her to drive him-her! Inwardly beaming, Yancie, after her car-washing activities, would have loved to have taken a shower before she presented
