‘Were you also miles away at lunchtime too when you should have been meeting me?’ he cut in forcefully.
She quite literally had been, although she couldn’t tell him that! ‘I—I wasn’t feeling well,’ she lied. ‘I left early.’
‘So I gathered when I went to your office to see you. The only trouble is,’ he added slowly, ‘there’s a rumour going around that you left with Alexander Blair.’
Lauri paled, her eyes huge green lakes of despair. ‘Who told you that?’ she croaked breathlessly.
‘Does it matter?’ he shrugged. ‘Surely all that matters is whether or not it’s true.’
She forced a careless laugh. ‘Of course it isn’t,’ she dismissed tautly. ‘How on earth do rumours like that start?’
Daryl’s eyes were narrowed as they searched her features. ‘They usually start with a grain of truth.’
‘Do they?’ her voice was slightly shrill. ‘Oh well, I can’t—Oh, I know, maybe Mr Davies saw me talking to Mr Blair before lunch and assumed we were together. Yes, that must be it,’ she announced almost triumphantly.
Some of Daryl’s anger began to fade and he eyed her uncertainly. ‘Do you think that’s it?’
‘It must be, mustn’t it?’ she reasoned. ‘I can’t think of any other way such a story could have started. Mr Blair was just asking me if I’d seen Jane, that was all.’
Still Daryl frowned. ‘Bob Davies has never seemed the gossipy type to me.’
‘No? Well, I—I don’t suppose he is. But his wife could be. She does work in Accounts too. Maybe he mentioned it to her and then she mentioned it to someone else, so that by the time it reached you they had me going out with the man. You know how quickly these things become distorted.’
‘I suppose so,’ he agreed slowly.
Lauri laughed. ‘You don’t honestly think I had lunch with Alexander Blair, do you?’
‘I—No,’ he gave a sheepish grin.
She heaved an inward sigh of relief. All she needed now was for Steve to challenge her and she could have a complete set. But luckily her uncle hadn’t been in the office at all today, and he hadn’t got in from his rounds until after Jane had left the house, although she might not escape questioning from him when he had been in to work and been acquainted with the gossip about his niece.
How had that story got around, and so quickly too! It might have happened the way she had described to Daryl, although it was more likely that someone had seen Alex kissing her in his parked car, after all the Blair building did overlook that car park. So all her efforts to keep their meetings a secret had been a waste of time. And it could all have been for nothing anyway. The way Alex had behaved when they parted earlier she didn’t think there would be any meetings to be kept secret in future.
‘Shall we stop discussing boring old Alex Blair and go out?’ she gave Daryl her most endearing smile.
‘You’re feeling better, then?’ The scowl hadn’t left him.
‘Better—? Oh yes, yes, I feel fine now. Are we going out?’
He sighed. ‘I suppose so.’
But he wasn’t very good company, and she couldn’t really blame him. She hadn’t been fair to him the last few days, so she deserved his moody behaviour. She had no excuse for the way she had been behaving, except perhaps that she found Alex Blair so overwhelming. But that wasn’t really a good excuse and she ought to be thoroughly ashamed of herself. Looked at coldly it would seem as if she had gone after a better prospect, although she herself knew she had simply been rushed off her feet by an Alex who wouldn’t be denied.
The girls in her office suddenly went silent when she got in the next morning, and if they had heard the same gossip Daryl had it wasn’t surprising. What made it worse was that she hadn’t been with the company very long, wasn’t particularly friendly with any of the other girls in the typing pool, and so she found it all the more awkward to behave as if everything was as normal.
By the time coffee-break came around she was beginning to feel really uncomfortable, wishing she could just walk out and never come back. But she had always been a fighter, and she wouldn’t be seen to run away from anything.
She didn’t bother to go to the canteen with the others, opting to stay behind and finish off some of the work she had been constantly making mistakes in all morning. Besides, she was grateful for the breather from curious looks and unasked questions.
‘Are they giving you a hard time?’
She looked up to find Carly standing in front of her desk. She shrugged. ‘They’re curious, that’s all.’
‘Aren’t we all?’ Carly grinned.
She had accepted Lauri’s excuse that just talking about going to the dentist had made her feel ill, although she had told her to call in the next time.
Lauri couldn’t look at her now. ‘You’ve heard the rumours?’