Read Online The Typewriter Girl by Alison Atlee - Free Book Online Page B

cantata. But neither were they nothing, especially for a career as young as John’s. Someday, he and she could be walking toward something that truly mattered—a grand concert hall, an important museum, a cathedral. Someday, John Jones and his wife could be the toast of society.
    •   •   •
    “You never showed us your office when you toured us round the hotel,” she said after John had greeted the doorman and they’d come inside.
    “It seemed best to get you out of doors whilst the rain held. And you were bored.”
    She bristled. He dared her to deny it, enjoying her embarrassment. That he’d noticed her boredom all but insulted her femininity, but what did the man expect, dragging her round to boiler houses and underground kitchens and sprawling laundries?
    He warned her his office was of the same practical character but granted she could have a look on their way to the tearoom. She sighed when she saw how accurate he’d been. Land surveys tacked to the wall, a bookcase of engineering journals and reference manuals, a frightfully muddy pair of workman’s gloves on the desk. She approved, in general, of the industrious feel of the room, but the utter lack of a personal aesthetic distressed her. Indeed, she had such a great deal of work to do, if she picked him.
    She ran her forefinger along the spines of a row of journals. “Where is the Tennyson?”
    With his head, he motioned toward a door behind his desk. “My rooms.”
    Lillian swallowed. She’d known he lived here at the hotel, but not precisely here . Being alone with him in his office stretched theboundaries of propriety to their limit. To be a door away from his private quarters was quite, quite —
    “Do you read it?”
    He joined her beside the bookcase. “Times.” He smiled down at her. “When I want to sleep.”
    “You’re a beast.”
    Perhaps it was only a nod, but his head moved, and her eyelids fell shut. She felt his lips on hers, and when he did not kiss her entire mouth the way he had last time, she parted her lips a little more. Had it been appalling, or something else? A credit in his favor, or not? It was necessary to know, so she parted her lips.
    Yes, appalling. She was certain of it now. Appalling, how it conjured up the maddest thoughts, of shedding her gloves, of indiscreet day-trippers lolling in the sand, how it took her quite from her self .
    She pushed him away, informed him again he was a beast, and immediately regretted breaking the kiss. A little longer would have done no harm, but now she couldn’t possibly close her eyes again and offer her mouth, not with John standing there not apologizing like he had last time, looking like she’d surrendered a secret to him.
    “I ought to be done with you this moment,” she said.
    “Before tea? I’ve ordered a fine one for you. And your mother invited me for your musical society in June—”
    “Why did you accept? I’m sure you’ve never had a lesson. You’ll only embarrass us both.”
    “And then you’re here again in August for your holiday. You might as well wait till autumn, Lils, when you can make a clean finish of me, hadn’t you?”
    He wasn’t worried. She didn’t know when she’d allowed that to happen. The moment she’d parted her lips?
    “Mother and everyone else will be waiting.”
    She swept out of the office ahead of him. The presence of someone in the corridor emphasized how reckless she’d been, how easily she might have been caught kissing John in his office. Shehalted only when she realized John had stopped to speak to the person she’d almost run down, a young woman.
    Lillian could hardly enter the tearoom alone. She waited and busied herself with adjusting the wilting camellia John had given her. The woman was unnecessarily tall and apparently worked for the hotel in some capacity, though Lillian could not imagine what. She wasn’t dressed as a chambermaid or as kitchen staff. Switchboard operator? Or some sort of assistant to Mr.