'You're different from the rest of our drivers, I'll give you that,' he pronounced curtly, leaving her to guess whether he meant that she had started to ask questions in what was his interview, or if he meant her feminine features.

She opted for the latter. `I'm the only female driver this particular part of the group has,' she commented. `Ah!' she exclaimed as light dawned. `But you already knew that.'

'It took but a few moments for my PA to discover which female driver in our livery was on that stretch of the motorway yesterday,' he conceded coolly.

Uh-oh. If he knew that much, it was pretty certain he also knew that she shouldn't have been anywhere near that section of the motorway yesterday! Yancie sensed even more trouble. Although, fingers crossed, he still hadn't said those diabolical words she didn't want to hear-You're out. Though it could be, of course, that, after giving her a tonguelashing-let him try-he had plans for Kevin Veasey to tell her she had washed her last car at Addison Kirk. Somebody had almost certainly instructed Kevin not to let her take any of the vehicles out that day; of that Yancie all at once realised she could be certain. Silence, just then, however, seemed the better part of discretion.

'So,' Thomson Wakefield went on, `perhaps, Miss Dawkins, you would care to tell me your version of the events yesterday. The events that led up to you almost demolishing not one motor vehicle, but two-leaving aside the perilous way you very nearly dispatched the two of us into the next world.'

Well, no, actually, I wouldn't. But he was waiting. 'It's very kind of you to give me a fair hearing-er-in the circumstances,' she smiled; he had no charm, so she tried him with some of hers.

Water off a duck's back! Those grey eyes were staying on her, and were noting her smile, her lovely even teeth-her boardingschool had been most particular about teethbut Yancie soon saw that not by so much as a flicker of an eyelash was he to be charmed.