First Love, Last Love

‘All right,’ she sighed. ‘Why were you worried about me?’

‘You know why! It can’t go on, Lauri. God, what will everyone at work say if they find out about you and Blair?’

‘Sorry,’ her cheerful voice belied that statement, ‘they already know. It’s been buzzing around the building all week.’

‘Oh God!’ he groaned.

‘Stop being so melodramatic, Steve. I must say I dreaded the gossip too, but it will soon die down.’ As soon as she had told Alex she couldn’t see him any more! She would have to leave Blair’s, there was no other answer for it. She might think she was in love with Alex now, but if she continued to see him it could only become worse. She would become dependent upon him, was even now becoming so, and when he lost interest, which could happen at any time, she would simply fall apart.

‘You obviously don’t know office gossip,’ Steve grimaced. ‘It can be murder.’

Having already sampled some of it she was well aware of it. People stared at her wherever she went at work, conversations stopped when she walked into a room, and worst of all, hardly anyone spoke to her. Oh she knew all about office gossip, but she hadn’t let that frighten her into not seeing Alex, that decision was being made completely removed from anything but the way she had discovered she felt about him, her love completely different from the emotion he felt for her.

‘It’s just a nine days’ wonder,’ she dismissed. ‘And certainly not enough to influence you getting to the top of the salesmen’s list,’ she added teasingly.

‘As if I—Stop teasing, Lauri!’ he said angrily as she laughed outright at his indignation. ‘This is a serious matter.’

She put his breakfast down in front of him. ‘Only if you let it be. And I’m certainly not going to do that.’ She sat down opposite him to eat her own meal.

Steve shook his head wonderingly. ‘You’re so calm about this. Don’t you realise who you’re dating!’

Oh, she realised, and she found it no less daunting did he but know it. ‘I’m not dating him,’ she said calmly. ‘I’ve gone out with him a couple of times, that’s all.’

He attacked the food on his plate as if he would like it to be Alexander Blair. ‘I suppose it’s all my fault,’ he groaned. ‘If I hadn’t let you drive my car you wouldn’t have crashed into him and probably never have spoken to him.’

‘That’s silly, Steve, and you know it. As it happens, I met him again quite by chance. I was in the lift when he got in it.’

‘Oh.’ Steve still didn’t look very happy. ‘But even so, he might not have spoken to you if it hadn’t been for the accident.’

Remembering what she had been doing when the lift doors opened, kissing Daryl, Lauri thought it very likely that Alex would have spoken to her anyway. And it hadn’t stopped at talking that time either! ‘I think he may have done,’ she said huskily.

‘Maybe. When’s lover-boy going to get here today?’

Lauri smiled. ‘I don’t think either term applies to Alex. And I have no idea what time he’ll be here.’ But she had plenty to talk to him about when he did get here!

‘He just turns up when he—My God!’ Steve broke off as the doorbell rang. ‘Doesn’t he even believe in letting a man finish his breakfast before he calls?’ He pushed his empty plate away moodily.

‘But you have finished. And it is almost eleven o’clock.’

‘On a Sunday,’ he said disgustedly. ‘Everyone has a lie-in on a Sunday.’

‘Obviously not Alex.’

‘Obviously. Well, go and let him in before he kicks the door down. I’m going back to bed.’

‘But—’

‘I’m sure you don’t need me around.’

Lauri sighed as he stomped up the stairs. She shrugged, moving to open the door. ‘Alex, I—’ Her words faded in her throat as she saw that it wasn’t Alex at all, but Laurence Daniels. And he looked terrible, completely haggard.

CHAPTER EIGHT

‘HELLO,’ she greeted him shyly.

‘Lauri,’ he returned huskily.

She couldn’t get over how ill he looked, his tan having faded almost completely, a permanent whiteness about his taut mouth. ‘Would you like to come in?’ she invited gently.