The Grafton Girls by Annie Groves Page B

down a quiet side street, where, in its shadows, he had placed his hands on her arms and pushed her back against the wall. Now those hands were resting on the wall either side of her head, virtually imprisoning her. She smiled inwardly. Nick might think he knew all the moves and had the advantage, but she wasn’t stupid enough to let him have what he wanted out here up against a wall, like some floozie. Oh, no, all he was going to get tonight was a little taste of what he was after. Just enough to keep him eager for more, Myra decided smugly.
    ‘I’d better go back. My friend is going to wonder where I am.’
    ‘Let her wonder,’ Nick told her as he moved closer to her and bent his head towards hers.
    Quick as a flash Myra ducked under his arm and moved away from him.
    ‘What the…?’ he began angrily.
    ‘Like I said, I’d better go back. After all, we only came out for a breath of fresh air, didn’t we?’
    ‘What is this?’ Nick demanded roughly, trying to grab hold of her arm. ‘Don’t you go playing games with me, honey. You were coming on to me like there was no tomorrow.’
    ‘Coming on to you? Is that what you thought?’ His anger had her body tensing warily but Myra wasn’t going to let him see that. ‘No such thing,’ she told him, shaking her head. ‘I was just being friendly, that’s all.’
    ‘Like you were being friendly to that sucker who gave you the stockings,’ Nick challenged her.
    Myra drew in her breath. This wasn’t the way she had expected things to go. She had expected her refusal to encourage Nick to press her for a proper date, not make him angry.
    ‘Like I said, I was just being friendly,’ she insisted. ‘It’s our duty to welcome our allies.’ Conveniently she was choosing to forget just how she had come by her stockings. They didn’t matter now, nor the man who had given them to her, not now that she had met Nick. But he mustn’t be allowed to think she was some sort of pushover. Men like Nick didn’t respect women they thought would give them everything they wanted the first time they asked. That was something she knew instinctively.
    ‘I’m going in,’ she told him.
    She started to walk away from him, knowing he would catch up with her and prepared for him when he did, softening in his hold as he grabbed hold of her and swung her round to face him.
    ‘Just a kiss,’ he said.
    ‘No,’ Myra refused. ‘It’s too soon. I don’t give my kisses out so freely.’ She could see a look in his eyes that was a mix of resentment and grudging respect.
    ‘Tell that to all the guys, do you?’ he demanded.
    ‘Yes I do,’ Myra agreed tartly. She knew that she wanted to see him again. A quick glance at his companions had told her what she had already guessed – that he was very much their leader -and Myra had already decided that the rightful place in the new life she dreamed of for herself was as the wife of just such a man, rather than as the wife of one of those he led. But she knew too much about men to go openly chasing after him, no matter how tempted she was to do so, to make sure that no other girl got her hooks into him.
     
    Ruthie could hardly believe what was happening and that she was here dancing with an American. An American, what was more, who had lost no time in telling her earnestly that he had been watching her all evening and that he thought she was ‘real cute’.
    ‘I’d like to walk you home,’ he began awkwardly, ‘but, see, we’ve been told not to do that.’
    ‘Oh, no, you couldn’t anyway,’ Ruthie told him, both horrified and excited by the suggestion.
    ‘Well, will you let me see you again then? I mean here, perhaps…or I could come and call on your folks…introduce myself to them…’
    Ruthie stared at him whilst her heart turned over inside her chest.
    ‘What I mean is that, well, I can see you’re not the sort of girl…that is…’
    ‘Hey, buddy,’ another GI called out in a loud voice. ‘Quit whispering sweet