Unexpected Pleasures Read Free

retired, for her father.
    It had been very hard for her at first, getting the clients to accept her, but then she had managed to deal with a particularly complicated case and get compensation for a client who had come to her after being unable to get satisfaction from his insurance company through another broker. He had been so impressed that he had recommended her to his friends, but breaking down the barriers of male reserve and lack of faith in her abilities was a constant battle.
    It didn’t help of course that in her normal, everyday life she was so quiet and unassertive, and she had to acknowledge that at barely five feet two, with a very small body frame and a sometimes irritatingly delicate and feminine set of facial features, her physical appearance was perhaps not that of a woman who could withstand the occasionally slightly sneaky tricks adopted by her clients’ insurers. Not that they would consider it like that.
    Gamesmanship was how they preferred to think of it, a justifiable use of their power, and if someone was weak enough to be browbeaten into giving up a claim or settling for less than they had initially expected then tough luck.
    But Rosie had no time for such tactics. She could be surprisingly ruthless and determined when she had to be, but there was no getting away from the fact that in the two years since her father’s retirement the business had lost out to some of the much larger agencies.
    She had refused to be downhearted; there was still a market...a need for someone like her who was prepared to give specialised time and attention to a client’s needs. The problem was persuading the clients, not convincing herself that her skills were superior to those of a large, faceless organisation.
    Which was what she was hoping to do at tomorrow’s meeting with Ian Davies.
    She had heard in a roundabout fashion that he was dissatisfied with his existing brokers since they had amalgamated with another firm. A fire at one of his rental premises, which had resulted in his full claim being turned down by his insurers, had increased that dissatisfaction, and Rosie had seen her chance and taken it.
    He was a contemporary of her father’s and, she suspected, not wholly comfortable with women taking a leading role in business. She knew that persuading him to give her his business was not going to be easy, but she was determined to at least try.
    To prove to others that she was just as proficient as the equivalent male, or to prove to herself that, just because she was a failure as a woman, it did not mean that she had failed as a human being, that just because she had lost her self-respect, her sense of self-worth, her belief that she was worthy of being loved, it did not mean that every pleasure in life was denied her.
    No, not every pleasure, she reflected bitterly. Just the ones she had always taken for granted that she would one day enjoy.
    Like being loved and being able to love in return... Like having a child...a family.
    As she opened the door and stepped into her small dark hallway, she could feel the angry, impotent tears beginning to sting her eyes.
    Damn Jake Lucas... Why had he had to be there this afternoon...? Why wouldn’t the past let her go? Why couldn’t she ever seem to fight free of its destructive tentacles?

CHAPTER TWO
    R OSIE WAITED UNTIL she felt comfortably sure that the party would be over and that all the other guests, but most especially Jake Lucas, would have left, and then rang for a taxi. There would be no need for her to disturb the Hopkinses—her car was parked outside their house and not on their drive.
    It was just gone nine o’clock when the taxi driver dropped her off, the summer sky still light and the air warm.
    Gemma and Neil had been lucky with the weather, Rosie acknowledged as she delved in her handbag for her car keys.
    ‘Aha...caught you.’
    She tensed automatically and then relaxed as she recognised Neil’s teasing voice.
    ‘Gemma saw you arrive,’ he