Hostile engagement Read Online Free Page B

but had gone so far away from the point at issue that it looked a long road back, Lucy almost spat the words at him. 'Because I had occasion to box his ears the last time he took me out,' she snapped, and was instantly aghast that this man she barely knew had extracted that piece of information from her that normally nothing would have had her revealing. 'Look,' she went on, furious with herself now as much as him, 'can we get back to the reason for my call ...'
     
    `Ah yes. You are laying claim, I believe, to my—er fiancée's engagement ring.'
    `It's my ring,' Lucy reiterated. 'To be more precise, since you seem to want to know everything, it was left to me by my mother. It has great value to me, and I want it back.'
     

 
    ----

CHAPTER TWO
     
    `So,' Jud Hemming said consideringly. 'You say the ring is yours. Which I wonder has the greater value to you—the fact that your mother left it to you, or the actual monetary value of the ring itself?'
    Lucy felt sick that anyone could feel the need to ask such a question, and raised hurt eyes to his hard stare. She saw his jaw harden briefly before he grated at her :
    `You think that an unfair question? Believe me, it isn't. There are plenty of women around who don't give a damn about sentiment—women whose whole slant on life is jaundiced by a materialistic outlook.'
    `And you think I'm one of them?'
    `I'm hardly in a position to judge, am I? Seeing that before today I had never set eyes on you.'
    Lucy didn't swallow that. Jud Hemming was a type of man she had never come across before, but even so she had a shrewd idea he could look, sum up, and file away, all in the space of five seconds.
    `Well, I'm not,' she said clearly. 'You seem to have been particularly unfortunate in your—er—relationships with my sex—but we each get from a relationship what we put into it, you know.' She was rather proud of her little homily. That should put him in his place, she thought, a feeling of triumph washing over her that for the first time since she had entered this room she felt on top—her triumph was short-lived .
    `Is that why you felt it necessary to box this Donald chap's ears?' he asked smoothly.
    `I ...' He had her there and he knew it. She hadn't given Donald that sort of encouragement, but he had made a
     
    grab for her just the same.
    `So if I'm to believe you,' Jud Hemming went on when it became apparent his remark had floored her for the moment, 'you're asking for the return of property you say is yours, not because of its financial worth, but because of the sentimental attachment you have to it?'
    Lucy nodded. `I'm not even sure of its true value in pounds and pence,' she stated, and when he raised a disbelieving eyebrow, she went on, Rupert-my brother-was going to get a jeweller's estimate of its value so that we could insure it. He was taking it to be polished and cleaned when he lost it.' She didn't like confessing that bit, but knew before this man would let her have her ring back he would want to know how she had lost it in the first place. `Rupert thought it might be insured for about eight hundred pounds—only we weren't sure.'
    Jud Hemming looked at her steadily for several seconds, then announced shatteringly, 'I paid three thousand for it.'
    `Three thousand-pounds? She wished she had never stood up. She would give anything now to have something solid supporting her. 'The ring is worth three thousand pounds?' She couldn't take it in, and she had an idea her astonishment had got through to the man-who had paid out that amount without apparently turning a hair, and that he believed she really hadn't known how much it was worth.
    `You had no idea, had you?' he seemed to be saying from far off. Then with an irritable movement, as though believing her when he didn't want to irritated him, he said harshly, 'Do sit down, Miss Carey-you'll make the place look untidy if you give in to your obvious desire to pass out.'
    Lucy felt his hand on her arm, nothing gentle in