It came as something of a relief not to have to lie or prevaricate—she had an idea that she wasn’t very good at either. ‘I love it,’ she smiled.
She saw his glance flick from her eyes to her curving mouth, but he was as unreceptive to her charm as ever. ‘Presumably you wish to keep your job?’
Yancie at once saw another glimmer of hope. By the sound of it he was more interested in giving her a grilling than dismissing her. ‘I do,’ she assured him sincerely.
‘Why?’ Just the one word.
Grilling? He was giving her a roasting! ‘I’ve never done anything but housekeeping before,’ she began to explain, by then certain that this very thorough man who knew she had been with the firm a very short while also knew that the previous occupation she’d listed on her application form was that of housekeeper. ‘I thought I’d like a change. And I really love my work,’ she smiled. She loved the freedom, the use of a car. ‘I am a good driver,’ she thought to mention. Though at his steady, grey-eyed stare she felt obliged to add, ‘Normally.’
‘You do appreciate that while you’re wearing the company’s uniform, and driving one of the company vehicles, that you are an ambassador for Addison Kirk?’
‘Oh, yes,’ she agreed, ready to agree to anything as the feeling started to grow that, by the skin of her teeth, it looked as if she might be able to hang onto her job.
‘You also appreciate that any bad driving and subsequent insolence to another road user reflects extremely badly on the company?’
Oh, for Pete’s sake! Yancie could feel herself getting annoyed again—what was it with this man? Quickly, she lowered her eyes. She couldn’t afford to be annoyed. She couldn’t afford that this shrewd man opposite should read in her eyes that she’d by far prefer to tell him to go take a running jump than answer him. She swallowed hard on her annoyance.
‘Yes, I do appreciate that,’ she replied as evenly as she could—and raised her eyes to see, astonishingly, the merest twitch at the right-hand corner of his mouth—for all the world as though she amused him!
In the next moment, however, his expression was as stern and as uncompromising as it had been throughout the interview. ‘Good,’ he said, and a wave of relief started to wash over Yancie. Surely that ‘Good’ must mean ‘Right, you’ve had a wigging, now clear off and don’t do it again’. She consequently got something of a shock when, his expression lightening very slightly, he stared fully and totally imperviously into her lovely blue eyes, and enquired, ‘What were you doing on that stretch of the motorway yesterday?’
Crunch! With no little sense of disquiet, Yancie saw she had lost the tenuous hold she had on her job, as it suddenly went shooting from her grasp. And, because of it, her brain, usually lively and active, seemed to seize up. She should have been ready for this; but wasn’t.
‘I—er—I—er—paid for the petrol I used myself,’ she heard herself say idiotically. ‘I have authority to book petrol and oil to the company, but wh-when I stopped at that service station I paid…’ Her voice trailed off at the realisation that—oh, you fool—she had just, by her statement, confirmed that she hadn’t been on that stretch of the road on the firm’s business.
Thomson Wakefield looked over to her, but if he was waiting to hear more he wasn’t getting it. Her tongue, like her brain, had gone into reverse.
‘That was very fair of you, Miss Dawkins—to pay for the petrol,’ he commented silkily—but she suspected that sort of tone. And a second later knew she was right to suspect it when he continued, ‘And the milometer? How did you square that?’
Like she was going to tell him! Like she was going to tell him any of the ‘wrinkles’ that went on down in the transport section! How, when Wilf Fisher had asked her to make that fifty-mile round trip on unofficial business, he’d said to give the correct mileage but, if asked why the extra mileage covered, to state that her passenger had asked her to do an errand. Either that, or the said passenger had asked her to take him to see a friend or family member. Since their passengers were almost exclusively board members or someone very high up in the executive tree, nobody, according to Wilf, would dream of questioning why the top brass had needed to do the extra mileage. Certainly, no one in the transport section.
‘I’m waiting!’
Oh, crumbs! Dumbly Yancie stared at him. If he’d only smile—he had rather an attractive mouth. She blinked. For goodness’ sake pull yourself together—had this man totally scrambled her brain?
‘I—er—can’t tell you,’ she managed falteringly.
‘What—the mileage scam or what you were doing being where you shouldn’t have been?’
Neither, actually. ‘There’s no great scam,’ she replied—well, you could hardly call fifty tiddly miles a scam.
‘So, what business did you have—other than the company’s business?’
Oh, honestly! Why didn’t he back off? Because he was it, that was why. He was the numero uno, the big cheese, and, having her on the end of his pin, he was enjoying making her squirm—and she didn’t like it. Had her errand been for herself, then, she conceded, she might very well have told him what she was about. But there wasn’t only herself to think about here—there was Wilf. Wilf had a wife and four young children. And, while Yancie was having to face that there was a very real danger here that she might be looking for alternative employment at any moment now, she just couldn’t wish the same fate on Wilf. She wouldn’t be able to live with herself if, through her, Wilf too was dismissed.
‘You’re not going to say?’
‘I—No,’ she mumbled.
Thomson Wakefield didn’t seem to have expected any other answer, but leaned back in his chair and, looking sternly at her, he questioned, ‘Just how badly do you want to keep your job?’
Yancie felt sick in the pit of her stomach. She was about to be dismissed, she knew it. ‘Very badly,’ she answered. ‘I really, really need it,’ she emphasised, in a last-ditch hope.
Thomson Wakefield’s look sharpened. ‘You have a family to keep—a child?’
‘I’m not married.’
He leaned back in his chair again, his look speculative. ‘You are acquainted with the facts of life?’ he queried.
Sarcastic pig; she didn’t need him to tell her that you could have a child without necessarily being married. ‘I know the theory,’ she replied, putting in more effort to stay calm. Though, at another of his long, steady stares, she felt herself go a bit pink—and saw him take in her blush, too. Well, it wasn’t every day, or ever for that matter, that she told a complete stranger that she was a virgin.
However, if her blush just now confirmed her statement for him, her ultimate employer did not comment on it either, but, with a quick glance to his watch, as if believing he had wasted more than enough of his precious time on her, Thomson Wakefield got to his feet. Yancie, too, was on her feet when at last he gave her the benefit of his deliberations.
‘You may keep your job, Miss Dawkins,’ he told her coldly.
‘Oh, thank—’
‘But…’
She might have known there’d be a ‘But’. ‘But?’ she stayed to enquire.
‘But you’re suspended—without pay—until you give me an answer to my question of what you were doing on that part of the motorway.’
Thanks for nothing! Yancie came close then and there to telling him what he could do with his job. Why she didn’t she couldn’t have said.