No Nice Girl (12 page)

“Oh, but I
wanted
to. You see, Cousin Phyllis'
expenses are awfully heavy and—well, she told me she never saved a penny. She just, as she expressed it, ‘lived up to every blinking cent' she made, and if I was going to stay there and eat three meals a day, I'd have to help pay the grocery bill, at least. And so she got me a job here,” said Anice sweetly, and for the moment let it lay.

Kenyon studied her curiously, his chivalrous pity aroused by what seemed to him a shocking story told with such guileless simplicity. The child didn't seem to feel that she had been badly used, but to him the fact that Phyllis Gordon would work Anice half to death and then force her to pay a part of the expense of the apartment seemed to him outrageous.

“So at last you rebelled at such injustice—and quite rightly so,” he commented with vigor.

Anice gasped and her blue eyes flew wide and she said, shocked, “Oh,
no
, Mr. Rutledge. How could I, when Cousin Phyllis was being so sweet and generous to me?”

“Sweet and generous? Letting you work yourself to death taking care of a big apartment, and doing all the cooking and shopping and mending, and then demanding you get a job so she could have part of your salary?” snorted Kenyon.

“Well, but of
course
I liked doing the work. It didn't seem like work at all, for the apartment is—well, it's like something in the movies. And Cousin Phyllis' clothes are scrumptious! It's fun for me just to handle them,” Anice protested, wide-eyed.

“Then if you were willing to be a—well, a sort of slave and even pay for the privilege, I can't quite understand why she should put you out,” said Kenyon dryly. “It sounds to me like a setup that would be ideal from her point of view.”

The quick, hot color burned in Anice's face and
her unhappy eyes dropped away from his kind, interested gaze.

“We-e-ell, you see, she—well, she got annoyed with me,” she stammered miserably. “I—well, I didn't think it was right for her to l-l-let men spend the n-n-night with her.”

“What?” barked Kenyon, startled.

She flushed painfully and could not meet his eyes.

“Oh, I know I'm what she called me—‘a simpleminded country hick,' Mr. Rutledge,” she admitted tearfully. “Only I just
couldn't
g-g-get used to s-s-seeing her d-d-drunk and…and spending hours in her b-b-bedroom with—just any man who came along.”

Kenyon was deeply startled. His mind sped back over that most embarrassing evening when he had so nearly succumbed to Phyllis' allure. On the heels of that, he did not find it too hard to believe Anice's story. After all, if a girl would work so hard for one man's attentions—and she had admitted with painful frankness that she had been the aggressor, deeply wounding his male pride—could it be possible that this golden-haired, blue-eyed, entrancing beauty was telling the truth? He looked at her, and despised himself for doubting her. For how could any man look at Anice and not believe that what she said was true?

“I—well, the whole thing c-c-came to a head,” said Anice forlornly, stealing a small glance at Kenyon through her lashes, “when Cousin Phyllis discovered that…that I'd fallen in love with a man she wanted for herself, even though he was—and is—engaged to somebody else. She—she accused me of—of horrible t-t-things and she—she just threw me out right then and there. She wouldn't l-l-let me t-t-take any of my clothes except just what I had on.” Once more she was dissolved
in tears and Kenyon got up and walked the length of his office and back again, his hands sunk deeply in his pockets, his brows drawn together in a puzzled frown.

So this wide-eyed lovely angel was in love, was she? And why the hell, he demanded of himself savagely, should he give a damn? It was only that he felt the girl had had a rotten experience and he was deeply sorry for her. And now it seemed that she was about to have another. She was in love with a man who was already engaged to someone else—yet must be, judging from Anice's story, having an affair with Phyllis!

He visualized Phyllis, crisply tailored, smoothly efficient and capable; then he thought of her as she had been that night there in the office when he had almost fallen for the trap she had set and baited so expertly, and his jaw hardened. Yes, he told himself grimly, he could well believe that Anice was telling him nothing less than the simple truth.

He turned and looked down at her and said gently, “Don't cry, honey. It's been a nasty business but it's over now. That is, I don't suppose it is, either, if you're in love with this man.”

Anice lifted a tear-stained face and eyes that were like wet violets and said huskily, “I shall always love him, as long as I live. Yet he is as far out of my reach as—as the moon and the stars. But if I can only k-k-keep my j-j-job, so that I can s-s-see him now and then, even though he won't know I'm on earth, because Mrs. Lawrence is so beautiful—” Too late she clapped both small, shaking hands over her mouth, and her eyes were dark and frightened as she looked up at him, shrinking a little in panic.

Kenyon stared at her, frowning, puzzled, a glimmering of understanding coming to him even as he spoke.

“Mrs. Lawrence? What's she got to do with all this?” he demanded sharply.

For a moment Anice merely looked at him, and then she lifted her pretty chin and squared her shoulders and said evenly. “You might as well know all the truth, Mr. Rutledge. The—the man I'm in l-love with is you.”

There was a small, startled moment of complete silence. Anice turned her eyes away from Kenyon, and her hands were clenched so tightly that the small white knuckles were little mounds above the smooth flesh.

When Kenyon only went on staring at her in shocked amazement, she made a little gesture and, her voice choked with tears, stammered, “Oh, I know it's c-c-crazy and presumptuous and that—that you don't even know I'm alive. And Mrs. Lawrence is so beautiful and—and—she's a fine lady and worthy of being your wife. And I'm j-j-just a little nobody. It needn't worry you a bit that—that I just about worship you, Mr. Rutledge. I won't be any trouble, I promise you I won't! I just want to stay on in the office, even if you were never to s-s-speak to me again and forget that I am here. Oh, please, please don't send me away! Please let me stay!”

She broke into soft weeping and Kenyon was touched to the very depths of his being. That this exquisite dove should adore him, even from a distance, was very flattering to his male ego. Letty had a way of being slightly amused at him, of deflating his ego now and then with a barbed remark. It was sometimes almost painfully apparent that whatever Letty might feel for him, it most distinctly was not an unquestioning adoration that felt he could do no wrong. Instinctively, almost subconsciously, he expanded a little in the bright, steady glow of this lovely girl's confession.

But after a moment of stunned contemplation, he said
hurriedly, “Oh, come now—see here, you're imagining things. I—er—I'm far from being a storybook hero.”

“To me, you're much more than that,” she told him soulfully. “To me you're everything any man could possibly be: handsome and clever and—and—oh, just perfectly wonderful! There's only one thing—”

Kenyon smiled a little. “So I do have an imperfection?” he said teasingly.

“Oh, yes, but it's not your fault,” she told him seriously. “And maybe it's just terrible of me not to be pleased about it.”

Curiously Kenyon asked, “What
is
this flaw—from your viewpoint? I assure you there are many if only you knew me well!”

There was, in the eyes she lifted to his, so much naked, unashamed, clean, ardent young passion that Kenyon was startled by it and felt the blood pound in his veins.

“I'm sure you haven't any other flaws, and I only wish with all my heart I could know you better than any person in the world,” she told him, and there was conviction and utter sincerity in her voice. “The only flaw is that you're so terribly rich.”

Kenyon's eyebrows went up a little.

“I'm afraid that wouldn't be a flaw in many women's eyes,” he said dryly.

“But you see, I love you,” she told him gently. “And when a woman—my sort of woman, anyway—loves a man, she wants to take care of him. To cook his food, and wash his dishes, and sweep his floors and—and raise his children.” A flood of color swept over her face and she turned her eyes away from him, as though she could not bear to have him see the look that dwelt there at the mention of his children, whom she could never mother.

Kenyon was touched as he had never been in all his
life. He looked down at the exquisite girl with something very close to tenderness. For the first time in his life, he told himself humbly, he had met someone who loved him—not because he was Kenyon Rutledge, the millionaire, but just because he was a man and she found him enormously attractive. And he found that a very pleasant thing on which to reflect.

She looked up at him wistfully and said with a humility that he found appealing and very touching, “I know that I've been shameless, Mr. Rutledge—only I just c-c-can't be ashamed of loving you. It's—it's the loveliest thing that has ever happened to me. And I'd rather l-love you and never see you again than to be married to any other man in the world.”

“See here, you mustn't say that,” he protested.

“But why mustn't I, if it's true? And it is true, Mr. Rutledge—it will always be true. Oh, can't you see how glad I am to have been able to tell you? You'll never need to pay attention to me, but maybe some day you might—well, be blue and sort of downcast, and it might help just the teeniest little bit to remember that somewhere there's a girl who thinks you're perfectly wonderful!” she told him swiftly, her voice shaking a little, her tremulous lips curved in a little smile that was very appealing, especially so because there was a mist of tears in her soft blue eyes.

“You're very sweet, little Anice,” said Kenyon involuntarily.

Instantly a wild-rose color suffused her face and her eyes were twin stars.

“Oh
,” she gasped as though someone had just made the down payment on Paradise for her, guaranteeing her entry. “Oh, Mr. Rutledge, that—oh, that will be something lovely to remember all my life long.”

She was on her feet now. She was close to him. So close that the delicate flower-like scent—like dew-wet lilacs, he decided hazily, and a perfect scent for such a girl—touched him like a breath and was gone. For a long moment she looked straight into his eyes and he felt that he could gaze straight into her young heart. And then, even as their eyes clung, her color deepened and she became tardily aware of her unconventional attire.

“You—you must think I'm s-s-simply terrible,” she stammered in pretty confusion. “I—I forgot all about not—not being properly dressed. I—I don't know
what you'll
think of me!”

“What could I think except that you are a very fine, sweet girl who doesn't deserve the rotten experience you've been put through,” said Kenyon swiftly.

She looked up at him eagerly.

“Then—then you aren't going to—to have me arrested?” she whispered unsteadily, as though almost afraid to hope for so wonderful a boon.

“Arrested?” He was shocked and appalled at the barbarity of such a thought. “Good heavens, woman, why should I? Certainly not. I'm going to see that you have a decent place to stay.”

“Oh, but I couldn't let you bother with me, Mr. Rutledge,” she stammered humbly.

“See here, don't you know that nothing in the world would bother me so much as not being sure you were decently housed, cared for, protected?”

“That's sweet of you, and I'll always remember it,” she told him wistfully. “But you mustn't worry about me. I can have a room at the YWCA on Sunday. Of course there'll be three other girls in the room, but I shan't mind. With the housing situation what it is, I think we should all make sacrifices.”

Kenyon surveyed her fondly.

“Yes, of course you would,” he told her as though he had expected nothing less of her. “But somehow I can't bear the thought of you living like that. Look here, you trust me, don't you?”

Puzzled by such a question, she answered, “But of
course!
I
know
you wouldn't do anything wrong, or ask me to.”

“That's very sweet and generous of you,” said Kenyon quickly. “Well, then, I'm going to take you home with me!”

She gasped and her eyes widened.

“Oh, but—but you mustn't. Why, what will people think?” she protested, and added conscientiously, “Not that I mind for myself, but people might—well, might misunderstand you.”

Kenyon smiled at that.

“My housekeeper is a most efficient chaperone,” he told her. “She'll look after you for the weekend. I am tied up, unfortunately—an appointment I can't get out of keeping. But Mrs. Clarke will see that you have everything you want, and when I get back to town, I'm sure we can find something more suitable for you than this or your cousin's apartment, either one!”