Stranger Passing By. Lilian Peake
she could have got there, and that was in the arms of the person who had pulled the cover over her.
Brent Akerman, removing her wrap and—she looked down at herself—seeing far more than her outline beneath the lightweight fabric of her nightdress? She blushed at the thought. But maybe she had dreamed that Brent had held her close in the small hours?
Words, whispered in a beautiful speaking voice that she had heard but hadn’t understood, came hazily back. She strained to make sense out of them, but they were just as mysterious now as they had been in the darkness. And the touch of lips on her forehead, the stroking disturbance of her hair—they, too, just had to be part of her dreams, because they’d never really happened. How could they?
Those murmured words...they still wouldn’t let her alone. The way they had been spoken—hadn’t there been a note of sadness, and yes, even of regret? Yet, if there had been, how could she have known when she had been sleeping so deeply?
The note was propped against a flower vase on a table near the main door. It said,
Crystal, thank you for your thoughtfulness in bringing me here. Thanks also for your hospitality.
And, almost as if in his mind he had whispered it,
Thank you for your warmth.
Brent.
CHAPTER FOUR
‘HAVE you noticed?’ Maureen Hilson commented that afternoon. ‘Customers have been coming in in their droves.’ She smoothed back her greying hair. ‘I’ve hardly had time to breathe, let alone comb these beautiful locks of mine.’
‘I noticed. What’s more,’ Crystal added happily, ‘not only have people come in and looked around, they’ve also actually bought things.’
Maureen smiled, glancing at the rose bowl glinting attractively on a pink-tinted glass stand. ‘I suppose you could say that we didn’t get the prize for the highest sales for nothing.’ She sighed. ‘If only the company wasn’t insisting on closing all the shops down. The chief executive—what did they say his name was?’
Crystal looked up from feather-dustering necklaces and picture frames. Did Maureen really not know? ‘Akerman,’ she informed her. ‘Brent Akerman.’ She rolled the names around her tongue, as they had been rolling around in her head almost every minute of every hour since she had slept in his arms. ‘Brent’, he’d signed himself in that note—and ‘Crystal’, he’d called her. She had put the slip of paper, which he had obviously torn from his notebook, in a drawer among her most treasured possessions.
‘Mr Akerman—that’s right,’ said Maureen, mopping up some spilt liquid from the ‘make up your own perfume’ section. ‘You—er—’ She looked askance at Crystal. ‘You wouldn’t—er—have any influence with that very handsome male, would you, dear?’
Crystal swung around, duster held aloft. ‘What do you mean?’ Had she been seen ushering him, her hand on his elbow, through the rear entrance and helping him into her car? Had there been spies watching her house to note the time Brent had left?
Mentally she shook herself, telling herself not to think such melodramatic thoughts about a completely innocent situation.
‘Well,’ Maureen qualified a little defensively, ‘Roger told us that when he looked for you yesterday evening he found you and Mr Akerman in a cosy twosome in a corner of the hotel garden.’
‘Twosome? Myself and the chief executive of Worldview International?’ Relief made Crystal smile. ‘Roger’s got to be joking!’ She added truthfully, ‘Mr Akerman was telling me how jet lagged he was, that’s all, and how often he—well, commuted on business to other parts of the world.’
Maureen nodded. ‘Ah. I thought Roger was making too much of it. Crystal, dear, I think he’s jealous. I’m sure our Roger fancies you.’
‘Oh, no,’ Crystal returned, dismayed. ‘It’d spoil our business relationship if he does.’ Seeing Maureen’s puzzlement, she explained, ‘He’s a nice bloke, but if he tries to get more than friendly I won’t be able to keep my promise to help him out with his written work.’
‘What’s wrong with him, Crystal? A lot of girls would love to have him around.’
‘Yes, well, I’m not one of them. I’ve had enough of the opposite sex for a long time to come. The man I thought for months was the one for me called me on the day he’d promised to buy me a ring and told me he’d found someone else. It’ll take me a long time to trust another man the way I trusted Mick Temple.’
‘I understand how you feel,’ Maureen sympathised. ‘I met him once, remember, when he called to take you to a meal.’ She shook her head. ‘I could sense that underneath that smooth talk he was a no-gooder.’
After a reflective pause Crystal went on, ‘Anyway, even if I’d had any influence with the chief executive, what good would it have done?’
‘It’s just that I was going to suggest you might ask him to make an exception of our branch of Ornamental You. Especially as our sales figures outdid everyone else’s.’
‘You mean, ask him to allow this branch to continue to trade, but close all the others down?’ Crystal shook her head. ‘I don’t think it would be practicable. And I don’t think for a minute that he’d even consider it. You’d realise what a hard man he really was if you’d heard him talk as he talked to—’ She pulled herself up sharply. ‘Talked to me last night about his private feelings,’ she had been going to say.
‘Of course,’ she amended hurriedly, ‘you did hear him speak, didn’t you? At the meeting yesterday evening. Well, there was no “give” in the man, was there? Only the tired old “this hurts me more than it hurts you” routine.’
‘Ah, well.’ Maureen shrugged disappointedly. ‘It was just a thought. Although how I’m going to provide for my mother as well as myself when I lose this job, I just don’t know. As a semi-invalid, she needs so many little extras to help her. Also, jobs don’t exactly grow on trees these days.’ She sighed. ‘All the same, you’d think it would count, wouldn’t you? After all, you and I—we did—’
‘Achieve the highest sales,’ Crystal took her up sympathetically. ‘I don’t know how I’m going to be able to pay my rent, but, unlike you, I’ve only got myself to worry about.’
A group of young women entered, asking each other’s advice as to what to buy. Then they consulted Crystal and Maureen. As they left with their purchases one of them said, ‘We saw a report in the local paper that all the Ornamental You shops are closing. Is it true? Because if it is it’ll be a real blow.’
‘It’s true, I’m afraid,’ said Crystal sadly.
‘Well, we’re at college, and dozens of us come here to buy birthday and Christmas presents because your prices are so reasonable compared with other stores.’
‘Hey,’ said another, ‘let’s get together, girls, and try and scrape up enough cash to buy this shop.’
Filing through the door, they laughingly agreed it was a good idea, although one commented, ‘Count me out. I’ve hardly got a big enough grant to keep myself in food and textbooks, let alone going into the red through trying to move into big business!’
‘Now that’s an idea,’ declared Maureen when they had gone. ‘If you and I pooled our savings... No?’ as Crystal shook her head. ‘No, I guess not. But the idea’s a good one.’
Other customers drifted in, and by the end of the day Crystal and Maureen were delighted to discover that their takings were higher than ever.
That evening, tucking her aching feet beneath her, Crystal curled up on the sofa she had shared with Brent and for the twentieth time read the note he had left for her.
What if she took his words at face