Free Enemy Lover by Pamela Kent Page A

and in the meantime relax as much as possible and have a good time spending your money. I’m glad you made your decision about the car. The chap I put you to telephoned me.... he seems to think you’re a valuable customer. The next thing you’ll have to do is get yourself someone who can drive you.”
    “I’ve already done that,” Tina confessed, a little thinly.
    “You have? Oh, good! I hope he’s got a clean licence.”
    “He says he has,” Tina said.
    “And is well recommended?”
    “Oh, yes, I should say he’s fairly well recommended ...” “I suppose you haven’t had time yet to take up his references?” The doctor sounded puzzled.
    “No, not yet.”
    Well, don’t rush the matter. Take your time. “I will,” Tina promised, but she was not at all certain what she was to take her time about once she had replaced the receiver. It seemed that she had already engaged Angus, and he would most certainly hold her to the terms of the engagement—or become something more than a thorn in her side. There was apparently, no way out. She was stuck with him!
    Unless he did something outrageous, and she could give him the sack!
    She felt desolate and a little disconsolate. It was extraordinary how she had come to depend on Dr. Giffard in such a short time, and somehow the world seemed empty now that he was temporarily flying away out of her life... Although only, thankfully, to Northern Ireland!
    She decided to skip dinner that night, and had some sandwiches on a tray in her room. Somehow its luxury oppressed hear. London was no place for a girl on her own—even a wealthy girl. She decided to go north without delay, even if it meant having Angus mocking her with his cold blue eyes, and saying deliberately unpleasant things. At the worst, she could always retaliate... And somehow she felt she was getting a little better at that sort of thing. Where Angus was concerned she was not quite so timid and long-suffering as she had been.
    CHAPTER EIGHT TINA was even more confident of her ability to handle him when they met for the first time as employer and employee on the day that he was driving her to Giffard’s Prior.
    She had issued her instructions to him on the telephone the day before. Alaine was still in Ireland, and she had no word from him, so she felt she had to be strong in her own right. She said clearly and concisely, from her hotel room, that she wished to be collected at ten o’clock the following morning, and if possible she wanted to reach Stoke Moreton before nightfall.
    “That means four o’clock, since it’s dark around then,” Angus returned with suave affability. “You forget that it’s early February, and we’re liable to get stuck in a snowdrift if it’s snowing in the Midlands— and I believe it is at the moment. However, it’s your car, your risk. I’m completely at your service!”
    “We could always stop for the night somewhere on the road,” she said rather more diffidently.
    “We could. You’ll be footing the bill, and I’m in no hurry. There are one or two very comfortable hotels I can think of between here and Stoke Moreton.”
    She wasn’t sure whether he was being helpful or merely mocking her. “Anyway, I want to leave tomorrow.”
    “Splendid. Your wishes are my commands— madam!
    “You have had a look at the new car?”
    “I’ve done better than that. I’ve tried it out. A first-class job, running beautifully. I couldn’t have done better myself if I’d gone out to buy a car.
    She refrained from saying anything further, and that night she collected her hotel bill and was ready to leave by ten o’clock the following morning. She felt a little embarrassed when various members of the hotel staff—one of the two small page-boys in particular—having been suitably rewarded by her for any extra attentiveness they had paid her, collected in the vestibule to watch her depart. All her new cases were stacked ready to be loaded into the Bentley when it arrived; and