LITMIR.BIZ

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was still standing there at any rate when, his survey of her over, he looked into her velvety brown eyes. His voice, when she heard it, was the sort that could quite easily liquefy her bones—if she’d let it.

      But he was amusing too, and she realised she was feeling at her most light-hearted when he asked solemnly, ‘And whose little girl are you?’

      Solemnly she eyed him back. ‘Mr and Mrs Dalton’s,’ she replied prettily, wanting to laugh but managing to hold it in.

      She saw his glance go from her merry eyes and down to the ringless fingers of her left hand. Then his eyes were steady on hers again, as, unhesitatingly, he enquired, ‘So tell me, Miss Dalton, are you having dinner with me tonight?’

      Karrie had all but forgotten her surroundings, forgotten that she was in a large office with a dozen or more other people. But as Farne waited for her answer, a hush seemed to descend over the office—and she could only be astonished at his supreme confidence that in front of everyone he was asking her out!

      She supposed few had turned him down, so she smiled as she replied, ‘Can’t I’m washing my hair!’

      She could tell nothing from his expression as to how he had taken her refusal. Then she saw his glance go to her squeaky clean, washed-only-that-morning, shoulder-length gold-streaked luxuriant blonde hair, and suddenly he was laughing. She watched him, fascinated, and then the laugh that had started to bubble away inside her a few seconds earlier would no longer be suppressed. All at once her laughter mingled with his.

      And that was all there was to it. A moment or two of shared laughter, then Farne Maitland was extending his right hand. She offered her right. They shook hands, and he went on his way—and she did not forget him.

      Apart from anything else, how would she get the chance? No sooner had the double doors at the end of their office closed after him than three chairs wheeled over at speed to her desk.

      ‘He asked you out!’ Heather exclaimed.

      ‘And you turned him down!’ Lucy squealed—as if she just could not believe it.

      ‘We hadn’t been properly introduced,’ Karrie laughed.

      ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’ Celia wanted to know.

      ‘He—er—was only being pleasant because I’m new here.’ Karrie thought she’d better down play it a little.

      ‘He’s never asked any of us out!’ Lucy stated.

      Darren Jackson walked up to the group. ‘None of you has hair the colour of cream and golden honey!’ he explained.

      ‘Shut up, Darren!’ Karrie’s three colleagues told him in unison.

      The fact that she had turned down a date with Farne Maitland was still being talked about the next day, and Karrie did not like to confess that, in a way, she was sorry that she had said no. According to office gossip, his visits were few and far between. So Lord knew when she might see him again.

      Not that he would ask her out a second time. Not after having been turned down in front of an office full of people. Not that her refusal had bothered him. He had laughed. She had liked his laugh. She had joined in.

      Would she refuse a second time? She didn’t know. Though since in all probability he had only asked her out on impulse, she felt sure the thought that he might not ask her out a second time was something she should put entirely from her mind.

      She wished she could so easily forget him. Thoughts of him, pictures of him—tall, darkish-haired, sophisticated—seemed to spring into her head at the oddest of times. Darren again asked her for a date on Thursday—and she thought of Farne Maitland. He had laughed when she turned him down; Darren didn’t.

      She went to visit her cousin again that night. ‘Anything new happening in your life?’ Jan asked. Karrie thought of Farne Maitland—but couldn’t tell her.

      ‘I’m enjoying my job,’ she smiled.

      ‘You should have left Uncle Bernard’s firm years ago!’ Jan stated categorically. ‘In fact, you should never have started there—you know that old saying, a cobbler’s children are always the worst shod!’

      From that Karrie gathered that her cousin must be meaning something along the lines that the boss’s children always had the worst deal—and were always the worst paid and treated.

      ‘It wasn’t so bad,’ she commented lightly, but saw that Jan didn’t look anywhere near convinced.

      ‘Now that you’ve made the break with Dalton Manufacturing, have you thought any more about leaving home?’ Jan asked.

      Because her cousin was family, and had first-hand experience from childhood overnight stays of the strife that went on in the Dalton household, Karrie had been able to confide at one particularly bad time that she wouldn’t mind leaving home.

      ‘I can’t,’ she answered simply, forbearing to mention that her parents still weren’t speaking. ‘It seems—sort of disloyal to my mother, somehow.’

      ‘Aunt Margery’s too sensitive. You’d have thought she’d have toughened up by now,’ Jan mused, but kindly offered, ‘You know you’re always welcome to come and stay with me if things get too unbearable.’

      Karrie thanked her, and later went home. But on Friday she felt sorely inclined to take her cousin up on her offer. The cold war was over. Her parents were speaking again. That was to say they were yelling at each other, rowing. Karrie did not stay downstairs to find out what the problem was this time—experience had shown hostilities could erupt over the merest trifle. She went upstairs to her room and stayed there.

      Oh, how she wished it could be different—her parents could still be at it—neither of them prepared to yield an inch—a week from now. Where had it all gone wrong? Well, she knew the answer to that one: at the very beginning.

      After one gigantic explosion, when her father had slammed out of the house, her mother, near to hysteria, had instructed a sixteen-year-old Karrie to ‘Never give yourself to any man until you’ve got that wedding ring on your finger!’ Her mother had then calmed down a little to go on and tearfully confide how all her rosy dreams had turned to ashes. She and Bernard Dalton had married after a very brief courtship, when Margery Dickson, as she was then, had discovered she was pregnant. They had been taking precautions, apparently, but she had conceived just the same.

      A week after their wedding, however, she had suffered a miscarriage. Bernard Dalton had accused his wife of tricking him into marrying her, and the marriage that had never had time to get on any steady footing had gone steadily downhill from then on.

      But Margery Dalton had adored her husband, and had hoped that, when she again found herself pregnant, matters between them would improve. But things had gone from bad to worse when, instead of presenting him with the son he had taken for granted he was entitled to, she had given birth to a daughter. She’d had an extremely difficult time having Karrie—and was unable to have another child.

      And Karrie had known from a very early age that she would rather not get married at all than have the kind of relationship her parents had. And from the age of sixteen, when her mother had taken her into her confidence about her father believing he’d been tricked into marriage, she had known that she was never going to give herself to any man before their wedding—regardless of what sort of contraception might be around. No man was going to have the chance of accusing her of trapping him into marriage.

      Not that she found any problem with either of her deep-dyed decisions. For one thing, while she was not lacking for men who wanted to take her out, she had never met one she would dream of getting engaged to, much less marrying. And as for sharing her body with any of them—while it was true she had enjoyed skirting on the perimeters of the kissing pitch, she had not felt the least inclination to go to bed with any of them.

      Karrie was brought rudely out of her thoughts by the sound of doors slamming downstairs. It sounded as though it was going to be one of those weekends. She wondered,

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