`You're not afraid of catching your death?' he enquired evenly in return, his glance going up from the fine column of her throat to her piled-on-top of-her-head ash-blonde hair. And suddenly, as his glance fell again to her elegant dress, Yancie just knew that he knew that she would never have been able to afford such an expensive item on what Addison Kirk were paying her.

'Er…' She felt left-footed again. `Um, I forgot to bring a coat,' she mumbled-and was suddenly cross. Hang it all, she sounded more like a fourteen-year-old than the confident twenty-two-year-old she, up until then, had considered herself to be.

'Your uniform jacket didn't quite go?'

Was she being reprimanded? Or-she didn't believe it-was he teasing her? Yancie looked up into his grey eyes-there was something there, but she couldn't be sure. But his reference to her uniform reminded her, if reminding she needed, that she was there only because of her job-the job she very much wanted to keep.

'I haven't been drinking!' she exclaimed hurriedly, apropos of absolutely nothing.

'Did I suggest you had' he answered mildly, and the lift came and Yancie was glad to step inside.

She watched as, plainly knowing which floor she was on, he pressed the two buttons, and the lift started to ascend. `You did insist that I had some dinner,' she thought to excuse that she'd been out to dine using the company car.

'So I did,' he agreed, but, his tone cooling slightly, he added, It didn't take you long to pick somebody up.'

Pick somebody up! Of all the nerve! All too obviously, this was his way of referring to her escort of the evening! Yancie, who was trying her very best to behave, felt the restraint she had put herself under all day getting away from her. Confound it, she had been good all day and on her best behaviour-well, mostly-and, while she tried hard to let his remark go, she couldn't. The words just would not stay down.