Bachelor's Wife Read Free Page A

home, Perry had had time to reason, painful though it would be, that until she had this whole tangle sorted out, it might be better if she didn't see him so often.
    'Sorry to be so late ringing,' he apologised. 'I've been out most of the day and only just got back.'
    'That's all right.' There was nothing to forgive. Trevor worked as an insurance assessor and was often out of his office.
    'I'd have rung you tonight before I went to see Mother,' he went on, and her heart warmed to him that not having a phone herself he would have put aside that he had no time for her landlady, would have rung asking to speak to her. Mrs Foster never minded calling her to the phone.
    It was instinctive in Perry to be natural with Trevor, but as he chatted on, telling her about his day, his suspicions that the insured party he had seen was trying to lead him up the garden path, she was desperately trying to think up an excuse why she couldn't see him when he finally came round to that subject. At last he came to the end of how his claimant would have to get up early to fool him, and was asking the question she still hadn't got an answer to.
    'We'll go to the cinema tomorrow night, shall we? I'll pick you up...'
    .'Er—actually,' she stalled him, 'we're rather busy at work at the moment.' Trust Mr Ratcliffe to walk by at precisely that second! He made a face that said, 'I'm the last to know?' and rudely Perry turned her back on him, part of her wanting to grin, for all the matter in hand was so very serious. 'Er—could we give tomorrow night a miss?' And weakening rapidly at the sulky silence the other end, 'We can go to the pictures another night.'
    At home, she made herself a light meal, only picking at it before deciding she didn't want it. Never having time to read the morning edition, she couldn't settle either to read the paper she picked up every evening. Trevor had been huffy that she put her work before him and said if she couldn't see him tomorrow, he was tied up himself until Saturday.
    Well, it was what she wanted, wasn't it? But it wasn't. Had he suggested seeing her on Thursday she knew she
    would have agreed. Now she was getting cold feet that he would ever propose at all. Oh, what a mess!
    At seven she went downstairs to help Mrs Foster with the dress she was making. But at eight, having been invited to stay longer after Mrs Foster had declared she would learn more quickly if she did the next step herself when she had been put right on a facing she had cut incorrectly, Perry decided to go back to her flat. She didn't want Mrs Foster to see that same something in her that had prompted Madge to ask, 'Anything wrong?'
    For a further hour she kicked against her ill luck that Nash Devereux was out of the country, knowing that she'd die before she would speak to that all-knowing voice on the Devereux Corporation switchboard again.
    It was some time after nine when, fed up with her thoughts going the same round again and again, she decided action was the only answer. She couldn't verbally get in touch with Nash, just as she couldn't see a solicitor until that contact had been made with her paper marriage husband. What she could do, though, was write to him. If she wrote tonight, then whenever he got back, always hoping his visit to the States was for a few days only, and if she marked the envelope 'Strictly Private and Confidential', then he was bound to have it handed to him his first day back in business.
    She got out her writing paper, musing that she didn't know where he lived. He no longer lived at the address shown on the marriage certificate,' the house he had been born in. That house had been left to Lydia, his stepmother.
    Perry headed the notepaper with her address, and just in case he wasn't a letter writer, knowing Mrs Foster wouldn't mind, put her phone number too. She didn't want him ringing her at work, everyone would know her secret within five minutes if he rang there.
    'Dear-' she penned, and came to a full stop. A