Yesterday's Echoes. PENNY JORDAN

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ being made to suffer.

      It had all been over within seconds, but those seconds had been long enough to change her life irretrievably. Even now, remembering…thinking about what had happened, Rosie was filled with self-disgust and guilt.

      She had withdrawn into herself afterwards, earning for herself a reputation as a swot, as someone who would rather stay at home with her family than go out with her friends.

      Her sense of shame and guilt over what had happened was so strong that she could not bear anyone else to know what she had done.

      Rather then endure a repeat of the humiliation and shame, the sense of anguished guilt she had already known, she decided that her life must have another focus, that for the sake of her own sanity and self-respect she must accept that that commitment—marriage, a relationship that included a lover and the children they might have together—was not for her.

      And most of the time she managed to convince herself that she was content. Except when she saw a small baby or a pregnant woman, except when she woke in the night remembering the past, except when something or someone reminded her of what had happened.

      Her tea had gone cold. She looked at it with distaste.

      It was fortunate that she was not superstitious, she told herself bitterly, because there could be no worse omen to precede her meeting with Ian Davies than what had happened today.

      Tiredly she went back to bed, promising herself that this time she was not going to allow Jake Lucas to disturb her much-needed rest. That this time she was not going to lie there in the darkness remembering the way he had looked at her, the way he had spoken to her, the contempt and dislike with which he had treated her.

      THIS WOULD HAVE to happen to her today of all days, Rosie fumed anxiously, as she waited on the full garage forecourt for a petrol pump to become free.

      After all the careful preparations she had made for this morning’s meeting with Ian Davies, how on earth had she come to overlook something as vital as making sure her petrol tank was full?

      The pump in front of her became free and she pulled quickly into it, ignoring the attempts of the driver behind her to cut in ahead of her.

      As she unlocked the petrol cap and pushed the nozzle of the hose into the tank, for some contrary reason, instead of gushing smoothly into the tank, the strong-smelling liquid flooded backwards, spilling out on to her shoes and tights…

      It was only a few small splashes, but they left a dismaying strong smell, Rosie acknowledged as she queued to pay for her petrol.

      She always left herself with a good extra margin of time when she was travelling to an appointment, but this morning everything seemed to be against her. She had lost at least fifteen minutes getting petrol, and once she was actually on the motorway there was an unexpected hold-up where a lorry had shed its load and the mess was being cleaned up. She eventually arrived in Chester with only five minutes in which to find a parking spot and to get to Ian Davies’s offices, and Chester was a notoriously difficult place to park.

      Luckily she found a spot just when she was beginning to panic and fear that she was going to be late, and even more luckily she found in the glove compartment a long-forgotten bottle of body lotion which a friend had given her to pass on to Chrissie for one of her jumble collections.

      As she used it to clean the petrol stains and smell off her legs and shoes, Rosie winced a little at its strong scent. It was a perfume designed to be worn in the evening, not during the day, and it was certainly far too strong for her taste, but at least it had removed the malodorous smell of petrol.

      She reached the offices with a minute to spare, and self-consciously checked her appearance in the lift mirror, to see if she looked as flushed and untidy as her hurried rush through the centre of Chester had made her feel.

      A little to her own surprise, the reflection that stared back at her from the small mirror looked cool and composed.

      Idly, as she waited for the lift to carry her to the top floor, she wondered if anyone had ever thought of placing a hidden camera or watching device in a lift, and then, remembering some of the very odd things she had heard that people sometimes got up to inside them, she reflected wryly that it was probably just as well they did not.

      The lift doors opened and she stepped out into the carpeted foyer, composing her features into a calm, professional smile.

      THE MEETING PROVED every bit as tricky as she had expected. Ian Davies was a chauvinist who, Rosie suspected, did not entirely approve of the new role that women were playing in the business world.

      Had she been a secretary, a personal assistant, someone’s wife or woman friend, she had no doubt that he would have been perfectly charming to her and perhaps even have flirted with her in a courtly, old-fashioned sort of way, but it was plain to her that he was antagonistic not so much to her, but to what she represented.

      But, for all his prejudices, he was still very much a business man, and Rosie saw how quickly he assimilated the advantages of using her as his broker.

      ‘Are you saying that, had you had our business, you would have got us more compensation from our insurers?’ he asked her at one point.

      Firmly Rosie shook her head. She was not going to be caught out like that.

      ‘Without knowing the full details of the arrangements your previous brokers had with your insurers, I can’t say that,’ she told him equably, but smiling, a little grimly, inwardly to herself as she saw that he had caught the small hint she had dropped about his brokers’ private arrangements with the insurers.

      She had a very shrewd idea that the brokers he was presently using adopted a policy which she herself refused to consider, and that was an agreement to let some claims go through unhindered in return for the brokers advising other clients not to proceed with theirs, or suggesting to them they should accept lower compensations.

      It was her view that her primary loyalty was to her clients and, if that meant a less easy passage with some of the insurance companies, well, so be it.

      ‘I’ve brought some comparison quotes with me,’ she told him as she stood up. ‘If I may, I’ll leave them with you.’

      A little to her surprise, he accompanied her out into the foyer, but after she had thanked him crisply for his time and turned round to leave she realised why.

      Jake Lucas was seated in the foyer, obviously waiting to see him, because he was now standing up, and beyond her she could hear Ian Davies saying something about taking him to lunch.

      For a moment the shock of seeing him had paralysed her completely, and then Rosie turned quickly on her heel, her heart hammering furiously fast as it drove the blood through her veins, overheating her pale skin.

      She felt hot and sick, filled with panic and a frantic desire to escape. It had been bad enough seeing him yesterday, but this was worse.

      Frantically she tried to cling to her self-control and professionalism, but in her haste to escape she moved too quickly, and the papers she was carrying slid from her hot, tense grasp.

      She bent immediately to pick them up, her face flushing with angry mortification, and then, to her horror, she realised that two pages of paper had drifted to where Jake Lucas was standing.

      For a moment she was too panic-stricken СКАЧАТЬ