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 mere thread. The next morning, sanity returned, and I decided I had to keep some distance between us.'

This was all so wonderful, so unbelievable and yet, because of the integrity she had witnessed in him, Yancie joyously knew that she could believe him. `It must have thrown you when I turned up as the substitute driver to take you to Manchester,' she said impishly.

'I confess it was wonderful to see you again,' he replied, `but that night I so wanted to kiss you again, to feel you in my arms again, that the only way I could handle it was to keep myself aloof.'

'You were aloof in the bathroom the next morning too,' Yancie teased, trusting more and more in his love the more they spoke.

'Wretched woman. You stretch my selfcontrol to the limits.'

'You said `This won't do',' she remembered without any effort at all.

'Nor would it. While desperately wanting you, Yancie, I didn't dare make love to you. You'd been unsure before-how did I know you wouldn't regret it afterwards?"

'At the risk of sounding a hussy, I wouldn't have,' she murmured-and was soundly kissed for her trouble.

'You do love me!' he murmured, almost in wonder, when at last they drew a little way apart from each other.

'Is that so incredible?' she asked softly.

'In a word, yes,' he replied. `When we returned from Manchester, I tried to apply what logic I could find to this emotion that had erupted in me. I was in love with you, heart and soul. But the more I thought about it, the more I became certain that you would never love me. I decided to cut you out of my life.'

'How could you?"

'Probably, I never could. But, to my muddled thinking then, you could help there.'

'How?"

'I went over what I knew of you. There was a tremendous chemistry between us which had ignited a couple of times. But you are a proud woman. To my mind then, if you had the idea that I was seeing some other woman, you, in that pride, would mentally tell me to get lost. You would, in fact, help me to cut you out of my life, by…'

'By deciding to cut you out of my life,' Yancie finished, amazed now how easily she could hop onto his wavelength. `That was a pig of a thing to do!'

'Oh, sweet love, were you jealous?"

'Not at all,' she so obviously lied so that it couldn't be called a lie at all. `I just went and played cards with some other men I knew.'

'And I would much rather have been in that kitchen with you than in that recital.'

'You knew I was in the kitchen?'

'I was just coming out to check on you when I saw one of the maids and, reason telling me-depending on your degree of mutiny-that you might not yet have returned from where you'd taken off to, I asked her if anyone was looking after my driver.'

'She told you we were all having supper in a lovely warm kitchen?"

'She did, and at the end of the evening we dropped off Julia, and then I remember nothing else until I regained consciousness-and I was panicking about you.'

'And then there I was,' she smiled.

'And I was so full of joy to see you, I forgot totally all that guff about cutting you out of my life-and asked you to marry me.'

Yancie's smile became a beam. `That's what happens when you're caught with your defences down.'

Thomson smiled a loving smile at her. `The only problem with will-power versus a syringe full of something sleep-inducing. I managed to get the question out-but couldn't stay awake to hear the answer.'

Was he again asking her to marry him? Yancie felt that he was, and she now knew that, as she loved him, so Thomson loved her. But this totally alien shyness that seemed to go hand in hand with this love business was getting in the way again-and she was both shy and unsure.

But Thomson was looking at her, a touch of strain there in his look when, as she hadn't answered, he continued, `I thought, when you didn't come to see me again, that I had your answer, your refusal. But, given that you have come to see me now-in spite of my mother's interference-may I take it you don't believe I was engaged to someone else?'

Yancie took a deep and steadying breath. And repeated back a phrase he had used earlier. `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…' she broke off to fly solo '…to know that your integrity is without question. And, while I'll agree that it took me a long while to get there, to get to see it-this love thing is a devil for clouding the issue-I just couldn't see that you would allow yourself to get in the situations we did, a couple of times, if you were serious about someone else.'