'I didn't know you were so friendly with my mother,' he commented.
'I'm not!'
'And yet you say you know her well enough for her to impart details of my personal life.'
'I don't know her at all,' Yancie insisted. `She was just there one of the times I came to see you in the hospital.'
'You came more than once?' he questioned sharply, that alert look in his eyes again.
Had he remembered her coming to see him that day? She couldn't ask. Yancie was all at once feeling on very shaky ground. She needed to get out of there, and with her pride intact. And yet she couldn't go. And, she discovered, when she had been able to lie to him in the past, now, with his eyes steady on hers, to lie to him was totally beyond her.
'I came several times,' she confessed, and felt her heart go a touch crazy that his breath seemed to catch and a warm kind of look came to his eyes. But she was fearful she was reading more into his every word, his every look than there actually was, so went on hurriedly, 'Well-we were both in the same hospital though I doubt you'd have come to see me had you been the one who was mobile,' she added hurriedly. And was pleasantly contradicted for her trouble.
'Don't doubt it for a moment,' Thomson assured her. `My first thought when I regained consciousness was you and how you'd fared.' Well, don't read anything into that, Yancie. You were his employee, remember; naturally he'd… `I was still wired up to various contraptions when I knew I had to see for myself how you were.'
'You weren't well enough,' Yancie said softly, knowing she was in a meltdown situation again, even as she tried to rise above it.
'I threatened to come and find you, just the same,' he replied, shaking Yancie rigid.
'But-but you were all tubed up!' she exclaimed.
'Which is probably why, a short while before you escaped your warders, they zapped me with something guaranteed to keep me quiet,' he transfixed her by saying.
'You-you remember my visiting you that day?' The question wouldn't stay down this time as she clearly recalled how he'd teasingly spoken then of her warders.
'You were wearing a pink silk robe,' he answered, and Yancie swallowed on a suddenly dry throat.
'Do you-remember anything-else?' she asked jerkily, excusing, `You had just been heavily sedated so I don't suppose…'
'I was fighting that sedation all the way,' he cut in, but he paused and, holding her eyes with his own, he said clearly, `I can quite well remember that I asked you to marry me.'
Her heart wasn't merely pounding, it was thundering. She swallowed hard, and managed to find an uncaring smile as she replied, `Well, in those circumstances, I'll do the honourable thing and not hold you to it.'
Thomson drew a long breath, and, leaning forward in his chair, he looked at her for long moments, and then plainly stated, `I would regard that as a very great pity, Yancie.'
'Y-you-would?' Her voice had come out sounding all weak and feeble. Yancie took rapid steps to alter that. `Just how many fiancees do you want, Mr Wakefield?' she asked a touch sharply.
'Only one. I'll have a word with my mother on the subject of her powers of invention.'
'Don't bother on my account.' Invention?
Thomson looked at her levelly. `While I'm willing to concede there's a vast amount I don't know about you, I think I've learned enough to know that you wouldn't have come here to see me today without some good reason. And while, I might add, you took your time in getting here I'll tell you now that all Julia Herbert has ever been to me is a friend.'
'Your mother made the fiancee bit up?'
'She did,' he answered. And, just as though he could see that her head was having a hard time coping, he urged, `Just take on board, Yancie, that I have never proposed marriage to anyone but you.'
Oh, my-her legs had gone weak again. `Did you mean it?' She found enough nerve to ask, knowing she was just about going to die if he laughed his socks off.
He did not laugh. If anything, he seemed nervous suddenly, and that surprised her. But after a moment or two he manfully admitted, `I took a long time getting there, a long time in accepting the feelings, thoughts, joy, that invaded my life on the day I met you.' He smiled and, leaning forward, he tenderly kissed her cheek. `Oh, yes, dear Yancie,' he said softly as he pulled back and looked into her eyes. `Oh, yes, I meant it.'
Yancie looked at him, tears welling up inside. He meant it! He meant it. Thomson had meant it when he had asked her to marry him. She wanted to throw herself into his arms. Wanted to hold her arms tight about him. But- she was nervous still. Nervous, and very unsure. 'Th-this has never happened to…' she broke off; she was saying too much! `I think I'm in a bit of a panic,' she confessed, loved it when he smiled and gently caught a hold of her restless hands. His touch warmed her through and through and gave her the confidence she needed to enquire, albeit huskily, `You spoke of feelings and things, on the day we met.'
'That day you crashed into my life,' he murmured, and Yancie could read nothing but encouragement in his eyes as he recollected the event.
'Leaving aside I didn't quite crash into you, though I concede it was a close thing,' she said, managing in her nervousness to find a smile, `you weren't so benign that day.'
'Why would I be?' he countered. `There was I in my work-filled world, a man who didn't have time for nonsense, and there you were, in a place where you shouldn't be-naturally having very nearly caused an accident- and giving me a load of lip.'
'You could have dismissed me for that,' Yancie murmured.
'Which was the puzzling thing,' he said.
'Puzzling?'
'It was to me. I just couldn't think why I hadn't issued instructions for your department head to get rid of you.'
'You sent for me instead.'
'Fully intending to dismiss you myself,' he smiled.
Her heart was racing. Surely there was a tender look in his eyes for her! `But you didn't dismiss me,' she reminded him, a little breathlessly.
'Oh, my dear, dear Yancie, how could I? You'd entered my life, crashed into it, and brightened up my dull world.'
She swallowed. `I did?' she questioned chokily-his dear, dear Yancie? She started trembling anew.
'You did,' he replied. `While I'm still wondering what on earth I am doing not only using my valuable time personally interviewing you-and prolonging that interview-I find that you're making me inwardly smile so much, my intention to dismiss you never got said…' Thomson broke off, paused, and then distinctly said, `I realise now that you had started to get to me even then.'
'Oh,' she mumbled, wanting more, needing more, much, much more. `What are you saying, Thomson?' She just couldn't hold back from asking. And, to her delight, discovered that he was in no mind to hold back. Not now.
For, fixing her with that steady gaze, perhaps reading in her beautiful blue eyes her nervousness, her need to know, he said, I'm saying, sweet, dear, often aggravating Yancie, that when I was a busy, work-oriented man with no time for nonsense I got you as a driver, and my world as I knew it started to fall apart.'
Yancie stared at him, her eyes huge. `What did I do?' she asked-and heard a whole list of what she had done.
Though first Thomson leaned forward and placed a feather-light kiss to her mouth, and seemed reluctant to pull back. But, having done so, he began, with a smile, `You turned up late, took me on short cuts that turned out to be the long way round-not to mention running out of petrol while you were about it. You made me laugh-in spite of me telling myself that I didn't find it in the least amusing-you made me laugh. You beat me up. Gave my hotel room away and expected me to sleep in a chair. Got a fit of the giggles when…' he broke off, then added, `And life is so unutterably dull without you.'
Yancie swallowed hard. `I'm a terrible person,' she whispered shakenly.
Thomson gripped both her hands tightly in his, and, looking deep into her eyes, said, `So, is it any wonder that I've-fallen in love with you?'
Her mouth fell open from the shock of hearing him say what she so wanted to hear. `Oh, Thomson!' she gasped tremulously.
