Counterfeit Bride(2)

'It's rather different,' Nicola argued. 'If he'd forbidden her to leave  the hostel, she'd have been unhappy perhaps, but it wouldn't have been  the end of the world. But if he makes any objection to her marrying  Cliff, then it will break her heart. She might have yielded to pressure  over the apartment issue, but not over Cliff. I'm sure of it.'

'Well, you have a touching faith in her will power which I don't share.'  Elaine turned back to her paper shredding. 'I guess we'd better get on  with the packing. The place already looks as if we'd moved out.' 'Yes,'  said Nicola with a little sigh. She hadn't expected to enjoy her stay  with Trans-Chem. She knew very little about the technicalities of  chemical plants and their construction and was happy in her ignorance.  She'd just been desperate for some kind of contract which would take her  away from Zurich, and ensure that she wasn't there to see Ewan marry  the stolid blonde daughter of his company chairman.                       
       
           



       

Nor had she really expected to get the job, although she knew that the  fact that she already spoke Spanish, garnered from an intensive course  at the Polytechnic where she'd undergone her secretarial training, would  stand her in good stead. Trans-Chem were after all an American company,  and most of their personnel were recruited in the States, as Elaine had  been.

But the job was offered to her, and she accepted with a growing  excitement which helped to alleviate some of the pain and humiliation  Ewan had made her suffer. She had fallen so deeply in love with him that  it seemed impossible for him not to share her feelings. In fact, he did  share them. He admitted as much, but it made no difference to his  plans. Ewan intended to marry well, and a mere secretary earning her own  living didn't fill the bill as a potential bride at all. Although he  did have other plans for her, as Nicola had shamingly discovered when  finally he had been forced to tell her that his marriage to Greta was  imminent.

She'd sat in the circle of his arms, feeling as if she'd been turned to  stone, while part of her mind registered incredulously that he was  telling her that his marriage needn't make any difference, that it could  even be an advantage. When the promotion which his future father-in-law  had promised as a certainty finally materialised, then he would have  Nicola transferred to his office as his own secretary. There would be  business trips which they would make together, he'd said, and he would  help her to find a bigger flat where they could be together as often as  possible.

She sat there in silence, listening to his voice, to the confidence in  it as he made his sordid plans, and wondered why he should have thought  she would ever agree to any such thing, when they had never even been  lovers in the generally accepted sense. She had often asked herself what  had held her back from that ultimate commitment, and could find no  answer except perhaps that there had always been a deep, barely  acknowledged instinct which she had obeyed, warning her not to trust too  blindly, or to give herself without that trust.

When she was able to think more rationally about what had happened, she  knew she ought to feel relief that she hadn't that particular bitterness  to add to her disillusionment, but it had seemed cold comfort then, and  still did.

She had come to Mexico determined not to make a fool of herself again,  and her bitterness had been her shield, not merely against the Mexican  men whose persistent attempts to flirt with her had at first annoyed and  later amused her, but also against the mainly male American staff of  Trans-Chem, many of whom would have shown more than a passing interest  in her, if she had allowed them to.

Sometimes she wished she could be more like Elaine, who uninhibitedly  enjoyed a series of casual relationships, and wept no tears when they  were over. Nicola was aware that some of the men had privately dubbed  her 'Snow Queen', and although it had stung a little at the time, she  had come to welcome the nickname as a form of protection.

What she hadn't realised was that some men, observing the curve of tawny  hair falling to her shoulders, the green eyes with their long fringe of  lashes, the small straight nose, and the willful line of the mouth,  would still be sufficiently attracted to find her determined coolness a  turn-on, forcing her to an open cruelty which she wouldn't have been  capable of before Ewan came into her life.

'My God,' Elaine said once, 'You don't fool around when you're giving  someone the brush-off! Poor Craig has gone back to the States convinced  he has terminal halitosis.'

Nicola flushed. 'I can't help it. I try to make it clear that I'm not  interested, and then they get persistent, so what can I do?'

'You could try saying yes for once.' Elaine gave her a measuring look.  'Whatever went wrong in Zurich, sooner or later some guy's going to come  along and make you forget all about it, only you have to give him a  chance.'

'Perhaps,' Nicola said woodenly. 'But I can promise you that it's no one I've met so far.'

Probably there never would be anyone, she thought. She was on her guard  now. Indeed, she had sometimes wondered if she would have fallen for  Ewan quite so hard if she hadn't been confused and lonely, away from  home for the first time.

Travelling, seeing the world, had always been her own idea ever since  childhood, and her parents, recognising the wanderlust they did not  share, had given her the loving encouragement she needed. Her undoubted  gift for languages had been the original spur, and she was fluent in  French and German before she had left school.

Nicola wondered sometimes where the urge to travel had come from. Her  parents were so serenely content on their farm at Barton Abbas in  Somerset. It was their world, and they needed nothing better, no matter  how much they might enjoy her letters and photographs and stories of  faraway places. And Robert, her younger brother, was the same. One day  the farm would be his, and that would be enough for him too. But not for  her. Never for her.                       
       
           



       

Now, she wasn't altogether sure what she wanted. Working for Trans-Chem  had been more enjoyable than she could ever have anticipated. The  company expected high standards of efficiency, but at the same time  treated her with a friendly informality which she had never experienced  in any previous job, and certainly not in Zurich. And they had been  keen, as their contract to assist in a consultative capacity with the  building of a new plant in Mexico's expanding chemical industry began to  wind up, for her to work for them in the States on a temporary basis at  least.

Nicola didn't really know why she'd refused. Certainly she had nothing  better in mind, and there would have been no problem in fitting in her  longed-for and saved-for sightseeing tour first. Yet refuse she did, and  for no better reason than that she felt oddly restless.

Perhaps it was the anticipation of her holiday which was making her feel  this way. The last months had been hectic, and the past few weeks of  clearing out the office and packing up especially so.

She would miss Elaine, she thought. She'd been a little taken aback when  she first arrived in Mexico City to find that she had a readymade  flatmate waiting for her. How did she know that she and this tall  redhaired Californian were ever going to get along well enough to share a  home? And yet from the very first day, they'd had no real problems. And  then, later, Teresita had made three ...

Nicola smiled to herself. Had there ever been a more oddly assorted  trio? she wondered. Elaine with her cool laconic humour, and relaxed  enjoyment of life, Teresita the wealthy orphan, shy and gentle and  almost morbidly in awe of the guardian she never saw-and Nicola herself,  a mass of hang-ups, as Elaine had once not unkindly remarked.

In some way, Nicola almost envied Teresita. At least she had few doubts  about the world and her place in it. Her upbringing in the seclusion of  the convent school had been geared to readying her for marriage, and a  subservient role in a male-dominated society. The purpose of her life  was to be someone's wife and the mother of his children, and she seemed  to accept that as a matter of course.

Even her one small act of rebellion against her strictly ordered  existence, her decision to move into the apartment with Nicola and  Elaine, had contributed towards her chosen destiny, because without it,  it was unlikely that her relationship with Cliff Arnold could have  prospered.

They had met during Teresita's brief but eventful spell at the  Trans-Chem reception desk. Cliff had been one of many finding himself  suddenly cut off in the middle of an important call, and he had erupted  into the reception area looking for someone to murder, then stopped, as  someone remarked later, as if he'd been poleaxed, as he looked down into  Teresita's heart-shaped face, and listened to her huskily voiced  apologies. His complaints forgotten, he had spent the next half hour,  and many more after that, showing her how to operate the switchboard.