'It's all right, isn't it?' he asked quickly. `Hell, I'm so confident in the work I do-but this. I feel as shaky as some schoolkid.'
'Yes, it's all right,' she told him quickly. `It's fine. I want you to love me.'
'You do?'
He still seemed tense, and hurriedly again Yancie replied, `It's what I want more than anything.'
His eyes searched her face. `You've lied to me before-you're not lying now?'
'Oh, Thomson, I'll never lie to you again!' she cried, feeling slightly astounded that he should need her reassurance.
'Then tell me truthfully-what are you feeling for me?' he promptly wanted to know.
And, when Yancie had always been a fairly confident person, suddenly, and quite ridiculously, she felt, experienced an overwhelming shyness to tell him of her love. `I…' she tried, but didn't make it. She tried another tack. `When you were in hospital and were so ill, I knew that if you died I wanted to die too.'
'Oh, my darling,' he said hoarsely, and, as if he couldn't sit merely holding her hands any longer, he moved to the sofa to be closer to her, thrilling her by taking her into his arms. `Thank God you escaped with so few injuries.'
'You asked about me?'
'Repeatedly when you didn't come to see me again.'
'After you'd asked me to…' shyness gripped her again.
'After I'd asked you to marry me,' he finished for her.
'I came the very next day-only I bumped into your mother guarding the door.'
He shook his head, hardly crediting what she was telling him. 'I'd no idea that my mother had interfered. That you'd tried to visit me,' he owned. `I found out from Greville that you were getting on so well they'd allowed you to go home. That you went home without bothering to stop by my hospital room to visit me again clearly meant, I thought, that my proposal meant nothing to you.'
'No!' she protested, and they just seemed to kiss quite naturally.
'Wonderful medicine,' Thomson breathed.
'You never thought to try and get in touch with me?' Yancie asked, not caring about anything any more. She was here with Thomson, the man she loved, the man who, incredibly, loved her.
'Would you, sweetheart? You hadn't come to see me again. Two days I waited, watching the door, my heart leaping every time it opened, hoping it would be you. I thought, when you didn't come, that I had your answer. After a few days of waiting I couldn't take any more-I switched hospitals.'
Her anguish for him sent her shyness flying. `Oh, Thomson, I do so love you!' she cried and as joy broke in him so Thomson gathered her close up to him once more. Held her close, and kissed her, held her, pulled back so he could read the truth in her face, in her eyes, and he kissed her again.
'When did you know?' he asked, holding her still, but seeming to want to know everything about her.
'I suspected it that night I was late picking you up, the night we ran out of petrol,' she began, feeling then she could tell him anything, so confessed, 'I'd been delivering a parcel to the mother of one of the mechanics. She lives in Derby.'
'Not too far away,' Thomson teased; oh, she did love him so. `Even if you did get me all knotted up inside that you were late and might have had an accident.'
'You-were worried?' she asked, staggered.
'Going silently demented,' he owned. `Later I had a chance to hold you safe in my arms. I knew you were getting to me in a big way when I felt I wanted to keep on holding you safe.'
'Back then!' she exclaimed.
'Before then, if I'm honest,' he answered.
'Oh, be honest, please,' she invited.
Thomson grinned, a wonderful grin. Her heart turned over. `What can I tell you, Yancie mine? Shall I tell you how I tried to convince myself I had no interest in you-yet found you were in my head more and more?'
'Yes, please,' she sighed.
He laughed, kissed the top of her head, and went on, `Even when I was telling myself it wouldn't do, thinking about you all the while, that I'd have another driver-other drivers had the wrong-shaped head, the wrong-shaped hands on the wheel. But even as I was telling myself that I'd be better off with a driver who wasn't impudent, with one who wouldn't lie to me, one who wouldn't cause me to get plastered in farm yard mud-I was having to face that other drivers didn't have the power to make me laugh-in spite of myself.'
'Did I do that?'
He nodded. `Life has been so unbearably flat without you,' he revealed.
'Oh. Thomson,' she cried tenderly.
'You're here now,' he smiled. `I can't quite believe it, but you're here. Those jealous moments of pure torture…'
'Jealous!'
'Jealous,' he smiled down at her. `How dared it come nipping away at me when I was supposed to be thinking only of business, when you-looking absolutely stunning, may I say?-came into the same restaurant with some male and…?'
'You were jealous?'
'I wasn't calling it by that name, but was well and truly out of sorts that when I'd imagined you having a solitary dinner back at our hotel-I should have known better than to expect you to do the expected, of course you come into that restaurant laughing away with some man who was obviously smitten.'
'I've known Charlie most of my life-he's just a chum.'
'I know,' Thomson smiled. But went on, `The next I knew, you were on the way to charming the heart out of me at breakfast the next morning.'
Was this delightful, or was this delightful? `Don't stop there,' she begged, and was beautifully, and quite breathlessly, kissed for her trouble; then, looking fairly delighted himself, Thomson was pulling back.
'I wasn't having that, of course.'
'My charm?'
'Your charm,' he agreed. `I was, naturally, determined not to be charmed by you.'
'Naturally,' she laughed.
'When I caught myself looking at the back of your neck on the way home, and found I actually had a desire to kiss it,' he owned, to her further delight, `I knew I was going to have to take some drastic action.'
It all fitted in. `Which is why you asked for any driver but me?' she questioned, remembering how, in particular, he had asked for Frank that time.
'I was in denial,' Thomson confessed. But went on to admit, `After a week of not seeing you, I caved in.'
'You missed me?'
'It was starting to hurt.' Yancie knew that feeling. `I should have accepted that Cupid had got me that night I recognised one of the company's Mercedeses outside a party I was looking in at.'
'You thought it might be me driving it?'
'Of anyone, I knew I wouldn't put it past Yancie Dawkins to treat the firm's car as her own.'
'You were angry?'
'How could I be? At the thought that you couldn't be very far away, my heart was starting to speed.'
'Oh, how wonderful!'
'One way and another you've put me through hell, woman,' he growled. `I even thought I was going mad when I found a picture of you growing in my shrubbery!' Yancie laughed in utter enchantment.
Then, her eyes going dreamy, she confessed, `That night that night you wrapped your jacket round me because of the cold I knew then that I was in love with you.'
'Oh, Yancie! You knew then, that night? When we kissed, and loved, you knew?'
'Yes,' she sighed. Then recollected. `You called our lovemaking a non-event.'
'So I can lie too in extreme circumstances.'
'You lied?'
'Yancie, dear Yancie, the memory of that evening, your shyness yet eager loving, is etched for ever in my brain. You'd got me so that when I risked a goodnight kiss before I let you go I knew my self-control was hanging by a
