Temporary Girlfriend
Should his every wish be her command?What choice did Elyss have but to put up with Saul Pendleton calling the shots? Because of a series of dreadful mistakes, she owed him a whole lot of money and hadn't a hope of being able to pay him back. However, if she signed up with Saul's personal loan scheme and became his date for every social occasion, then all her troubles would be solved. Or would they?It soon became apparent that Saul expected interest on his loan–but did he want a temporary girlfriend or a permanent wife?
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“I need a—woman-friend for a few days.”About the AuthorTitle PageCHAPTER ONECHAPTER TWOCHAPTER THREECHAPTER FOURCHAPTER FIVECHAPTER SIXCHAPTER SEVENCHAPTER EIGHTCopyright
“I need a—woman-friend for a few days.”
Elyss knew that there was more behind it than he was stating. “What’s the matter, Pendleton, your charm failing?”
Totally serious, he went on. “In return for you giving me five days of your time, I am prepared to cancel all present and future debts in relation to repairs to your vehicle and mine.”
Elyss stared at him dumbstruck. There had to be a catch! “What’s the snag—accepting that I’d have to put up with you for five days?” she queried warily.
She saw his mouth move almost imperceptibly, as though she made him want to smile. He didn’t smile though. “I said I needed a ‘woman-friend,’ I didn’t mean enemy.”
“I can be a friend,” she said. “To be free of a debt that big, I can be a jolly good friend.”
Jessica Steele lives in a friendly English village with her super husband, Peter, and a boisterous, manic but adorable Staffordshire bull terrier dog called Florence. It was Peter who first prompted Jessica to try writing, and after the first rejection, encouraged her to keep on trying. Luckily—with the exception of Uruguay—she has so far managed to research inside all the countries in which she has set her books, traveling to places as far apart as Siberia and Egypt Her thanks go to Peter for his help and encouragement.
CHAPTER ONE
ELYSS drove into the forecourt of the well maintained block of flats where she lived. A smile touched the corners of her lovely mouth as she parked in her usual place and thought of the contrast between where she had driven from and where she had arrived.
She let herself in through the main door of the building, musing: forget the quiet, forget the serenity of the weekend she had just spent with her parents in their Devon cottage; her forty-eight hours of peace and tranquillity were over.
Not that she minded—now. Up until five months ago, though, she had been living on the outskirts of London with her parents in a household where raised voices were seldom heard. Which was why, when she had started sharing the flat, she had at first been constantly startled by the top-of-the-range squeals that had assaulted her ears as an outraged Victoria would demand of Nikki, ‘Have you got my hairdryer?’ and Nikki would retaliate at high pitch, ‘Have you borrowed my black shoes again?’
Elyss had adjusted—now. But she guessed that her bewilderment, her fear that she might have made the wrong decision when she had answered the ‘Fourth wanted to share flat’ advertisement must have shown. Because Louise, the eldest of her flatmates and, Elyss was to discover, the more steady of the three, had told her not to worry and that the other two would calm down in a few minutes.
Which was true. In no time at all Victoria and Nikki would forget all hostility and, as suddenly as they had flared up, they were the best of friends again.
Elyss took the stairs to their second-floor flat feeling lucky to be part of the group. The flat was intended to be a three-bedroomed apartment, but when Nikki, who seemed to lurch from crisis to crisis, had lost her job over her poor time-keeping, she could not pay her share of the rent in full.
Louise, Victoria and Nikki had a conference where Victoria confessed that she was struggling financially, and Louise owned to being stretched money-wise on account of her twelve-year-old son. Her ex-husband paid Thomas’s boarding school fees, but it seemed that never a month went by when the growing boy wasn’t in urgent need of something. It was her ex-husband’s view that in paying his son’s school fees he was already doing far more than he should—anything extra was down to Louise.
The upshot of the conference was that having a fourth flatmate to pay a share of the rent and service bills would help them all out. What did they need with a separate dining room anyway? It would make an ideal fourth bedroom.
All this Elyss had learned later. At that time her family were having to make tough decisions as her father could ignore no longer that his failing business was past saving. It was time to stop throwing good money after bad.
But that was then, and Elyss did not want to dwell on a time that had been so heart-rending for her family.
She inserted her key into the door of the flat and wondered instead how her flatmates had fared that weekend. By now she was used to the weekly disasters that seemed to befall Nikki, and, though she had blonde hair herself, Elyss reflected that blondes didn’t come any dizzier than Nikki.
‘Anyone home?’ she called as she let herself in.
‘Hi!’ Louise, a pretty, brown-haired woman who, at thirty-two, was ten years older than Elyss, appeared from the kitchen. ‘Had a good weekend?’
‘It’s always good to see my parents.’ Elyss smiled, dropping her weekend bag down for a minute or two. ‘Anything happened here?’
‘Victoria’s out with some new man, and Nikki’s still being messed about by Dave.’
