Under the Devil’s Belly
By
Peter G Bailey
Smashwords Edition
Published by:-
PGPublishing on Smashwords
Smashwords License Statement
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not,
by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise
circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of
binding or cover other than that in which it is published and
without a similar condition including this condition being
imposed on the subsequent publisher.
The moral right of Peter G Bailey has been asserted
First published in Great Britain by PG Publishing
Copyright 2011 by Peter G Bailey ©
All characters in this book are fictitious and bear no relationship to any person, alive or dead, known to the author.
A catalogue record for all published eBooks is held in the British Library.
ISBN 978-0-9569572-8-3
Dedicated to matchless Joy
Dust cover Endorsement:
When ex-Wren Officer and ex-ski racer Linda Scott changes career and begins working for financial consultant Barbara Schofield she has only one object in life, to become fabulously wealthy. She finds wealth, power, prestige and status by feminine wiles and ruthless opportunism.
One thing mars the two women’s relationship; they both secretly love the same married man, Lucius Hunter. Dark haired, green-eyed Barbara succeeds in luring him into a love triangle, but the affair becomes complicated when the two girls meet two businessmen in London and begin casual affairs with them. One turns out to be Lucius’s father, a man carrying on a long-term affair with his son’s wife.
During attempts by their employer, entrepreneur Moris Dickey, to take-over the Fidelity Mutual Assurance Company, Barbara and Linda find themselves making the rules in a male dominated business.
Barbara is not able to twist the emotional rules quite as easily as the financial ones however, especially when some holiday romance indiscretions threaten tentative relationships. When Lucius Hunter refuses to leave his wife she threatens to marry his father, a move that brings tragedy and happiness.
Once he succeeds in taking over the insurance company, Moris Dickey, with his south London underworld connections, is caught laundering criminal money through the company accounts and is forced to resign leaving Barbara and Linda to take advantage of the resulting confusion.
Under the Devil's Belly
Contents:-
Chapter One - Games for two and four players.
Chapter Two - First steps.
Chapter Three - The Master Plan Unfolds.
Chapter Four - Doubts.
Chapter Five - Corporate Games.
Chapter Six - A Deal Concluded.
Chapter Seven - Family Secrets.
Chapter Eight - Gstaad.
Chapter Nine - Happy Christmas.
Chapter Ten - New Year.
Chapter Eleven - High Finance.
Chapter Twelve - The Target.
Chapter Thirteen - Uncomfortable Bedfellows.
Chapter Fourteen - Durmoor Manor.
Chapter Fifteen - Days of Reckoning.
Chapter One
Games for two and four players.
Barbara Schofield arrived a few minutes late at the Bristol Indoor Sports Club dressed to play in her company’s mixed doubles squash final without a partner. The player who served her so well through the previous rounds had strained an Achilles tendon and could be seen hobbling around in a plaster cast loving every moment of the obsequious condolences he received for his theatrical pains.
Paying the taxi driver and waving away the fumbled attempt to offer change, she picked up her two rackets and a small holdall and entered the sports club that resembled the hushed annex to a plush upmarket hotel rather more than a place to inflict muscular torture while sweating inelegantly. Inside the door a track-suited Julian Coburn greeted her cheerfully.
‘I’ve found you a partner, boss,’ he informed her with a broad smile and twinkling dark eyes that suggested he had laboriously trawled the murky depths of the local hospital casualty department and had come up with an intensive care candidate half-way through a triple by-pass heart operation, a thought that seemed to afford him a great deal of barely supressed self-satisfied pleasure. ‘We’re on number seven court. You know, the glass sided exhibition job and we’ve got half the office packed in the spectator’s gallery to cheer.’
‘A real partner, JC?’ she demanded suspiciously. Talk of court allocations and barracking spectators was of little interest if there was to be no game. He nodded with a self-assured grin. ‘Someone, who knows a squash racket from a side of frozen beef,’ she went on darkly, ‘and I hope he’s not one of your office dead legs you’ve programmed to miss every ball.’
‘Now would I do a thing like that, boss?’
Coburn’s smug grin should have made her turn on her heel and order a taxi back to her office. He was not a man to buy a second-hand car from.
Instead of taking that wise precaution, and because there was no time to negotiate anything better, she accepted his selection on trust.
Together they walked to the allocated court along corridors inches thick in expensive carpet and walls covered with equally expensive flock floral wallpaper. Elegant print masterpieces hung at regular intervals to give the impression of good taste and understated sophistication. No smell of stale perspiration and pungent embrocation fouled the air since nobody who had been in the games’ rooms to generate a healthy sweat was allowed back into the main section until showered and changed into something fresh and less piquant. The strict rule had something to do with management’s desire to create the right image and ambience for an elite sports club. It was also the reason the fastidious Barbara had taken out a personal membership.
‘He’s a member of my sales team, sure,’ Coburn continued persuasively, ‘but I promise he’s not been got at. He says he’s played before, and he moves well.’ He chuckled mischievously. ‘OK, the crutch gets in the way of some of his low drives, but what the hell! It’s only a game. That’s him in there knocking up now.’
They stopped outside the glass walled court and peered into the brightly-lit interior.
In the locker section a light haired girl stood idly smoothing the front of her short pleated white skirt. She looked slim, elegant and unacceptably fragile for such a robust game. In a white and red squash outfit a watcher might be excused for thinking she was nothing more than a squash club groupy there to admire and applaud the sterling efforts of the more gifted male players. In fact, despite the appearance of relaxed boredom Barbara knew her to be a formidable squash and tennis player capable of walking off with first prize in any competition, an attitude ruthlessly encouraged by the ebullient Coburn.
‘Who’s that?’ Barbara demanded in a voice tone changed from dubious reluctance to accept whatever fate decreed to pure wonder, her attention centred on the player inside the court hitting the small black rubber ball into the two end corners of the court in a blinding display of controlled accuracy and ferocious power.
‘Hey! I didn’t know about this,’ Coburn gasped in shocked consternation as his expression changed smug pomposity to one of disbelieving chagrin. ‘Shit!’ he swore gracelessly. ‘He said he’d played a few times about eighteen months ago.’ They watched for a few seconds until Coburn became conscious of the widening grin of relieved appreciation on his match opponent’s lips. ‘I guess he does know the difference between a squash racket and a sirloin steak,’ he conceded sourly. ‘I’ll kill the bugger tomorrow if he beats us.’
‘Hey! Wait a cotton-picking minute,’ Barbara protested indignantly. ‘They’re two of us in this team and it’s about time I had a partner I didn’t have to carry after three games.’ She looked appreciatively at the practising player. ‘What did you say his name was?’ She grinned happily at Coburn’s evident discomfiture. He had shot himself in the foot and knew it. Pain was written all over his good-looking features. ‘And I’ll be putting police protection on him after this game.’
They watched for a few more minutes with mixed emotions.
‘Wow! Are you going to get hammered?’ She chortled as she recognised talent and polished squash playing ability.
Coburn grimaced sourly as he opened the door to the court to allow her to pass into the playing area.
‘That’s Lucius Hunter. He’s a trainee having joined the company six weeks ago. We call him Luke. Lucius is a bit of a prat’s name, although don’t tell him I said so; he’s a big lad.’
‘I will, if we lose,’ Barbara threatened unkindly. She nodded to the girl seen earlier as she smiled and touched her hair nervously. ‘Hello Linda!’ Barbara did not offer to shake hands. Such a friendly gesture would be classified as fraternising with the enemy before the game, although she did return the smile. ‘You look lovely. Are you looking forward to losing?’
They pressed cheeks in the guarded manner adopted by two females who respected each other’s considerable talents, but who were not prepared to give the other an inch of sporting superiority.
Although Barbara had the confidence gained by being on top of the female squash ladder with Linda some way below her, she knew; when it was time to face her in combat Linda would be hard to beat. A match between them would be worth watching.
‘Hello boss. Thank you. Yes, I’m looking forward to not losing.’ Linda answered the questions mechanically in the order they had been asked. She felt uneasy and awed in the august presence of her illustrious branch manager. To her, Barbara seemed a remote and awesome figure only seen at branch meetings and through the glass partitions of her hangar sized office. Not always as unapproachable as she seemed and legend eulogised Barbara oozed confident and condescending authority. ‘Can I say you look chic as well? I like the Alice band,’ Linda added as she self-consciously raised a tentative hand to touch the wide red ribbon in her own long blond hair pleased to see her heroine wearing an almost identical strip to keep her long black hair in place while they were on court. At least they had that mutual solution to a universal female hair control problem.
Barbara dropped her holdall on the wooden bench beside Linda’s and selected a racket as her partner came out of the court to join them in the small changing section.
Suddenly it seemed crowded. Coburn was right. Her partner was a big lad.
‘This is Luke, boss!’ Coburn called as the young athlete held out his hand in amiable greeting to his partner for the evening. ‘I don’t think you two have met formally. You were away when he joined and you’ve missed each other since. Anyway, for good or evil, he’s yours for the evening. Oh, by the way Luke! It’s accepted club practice for new players to tie their shoelaces together for the first game in the doubles’ league.’
Barbara straightened indignantly.
‘Ignore him,’ she advised. ‘He smells defeat and he’s looking for excuses to justify going down.’ She smiled brightly, eyes shining with eager approval at what she could see of her new partner close up. ‘I’m sorry we’ve had to leave it so late before we played together,’ she apologised. ‘A squash final is hardly the time to form a working partnership, but there it goes! That’s our excuse, if we need one.’ She took his hand. The bare forearm, lightly tanned from the fast fading summer exposure, rippled under smooth blue veined skin. ‘JC tells me you’ve played before, but not for a while.’
Barbara looked the young man over with candid interest. It was not true that she did not know who he was. She did. She would be a poor branch manager if she did not know who toiled under her thrall, although her workers reported to their own managers rather than to her directly. She merely allocated tasks and expected results. She certainly knew about everyone who came into the office to earn a crust. They were a future source of income to add to her already fat monthly pay cheque.
Lucius Hunter, like Barbara, was in his early to middle twenties, but unlike her; was tall, lean, tawny blonde and blue-eyed. He moved with the supple confident ease of a fit athlete and judging by the way he hit the small squash ball around the court, he had a good eye for timing and an innate ability for positioning himself in the right place for the return. He was a natural ball player.
As he gripped Barbara’s hand, she noticed he was not out of breath from his pre-match efforts.
‘Yes, I’ve played before,’ he acknowledged modestly. He spoke without the deference shown by Linda. ‘I hear you’ve played all the way through the tournament so far,’ he went on. ‘I hope I don’t let you down. Perhaps we’d better discuss the way we should play. I don’t want to disturb your system.’
‘Team tactics?’ Barbara chuckled doubtfully. She was not used to that refinement. ‘Good idea, Lucius! We can talk in there without the enemy listening.’ She led him into the court still holding his hand.
Inside the glass aquarium-like court, they paused.
‘If I might have my hand back, Mam. I play better with it free, unless that’s going to be another of the handicaps JC was talking about?’
He grinned as he pulled his hand from her grip.
Unabashed, Barbara poked him gently in the rib cage with her racket
‘Sorry, I wasn’t thinking.’
Taking the ball he offered her, she tossed it in the air and struck a shot that dropped, after rebounding off the front court wall, unerringly into the opposite corner behind her. A good opening serve that would have tested a professional and would probably have left him gasping helplessly after lashing out at fresh air. Hunter casually followed the ball’s flight and from a ridiculously cramped position, hit the return ball with such force that it left Barbara, who confidently assumed the serve unplayable, standing flat-footed in the centre of the court unable to respond.
In the gallery seating area outside the glass walled court the many company spectators who had come to watch the mixed doubles’ finals applauded the explosive power of Hunter’s return. He obviously had a strong backhand, or he had been lucky.
As she picked the ball from the floor with a nonchalant flick of her racket Barbara realised she was on the court with a class player and her spirits rose exuberantly.
For a few minutes they thrashed the ball around the court, neither trying to score points, both testing each other’s reactions to the flight of the ball and their ability to cover returns.
After a few minutes Coburn and Linda joined them.
‘I guess we should start, boss. We’ve only have the court booked for an hour and we’re late starting. If you’re ready?’ Although he smiled brightly at the women, his expression changed to a fierce scowl when he regarded Hunter. ‘You’re a dark bugger,’ he growled disgustedly. ‘I thought you said you’d only played a little.’
Barbara laughed at his open display of sour grapes.
‘Come on JC, it’s about time I had crutch to lean on. I’ve been carrying my partner all through the tournament so far. Tonight you’re going to die. Rough or smooth?’ She twirling her rackets and allowed it to clatter to the floor.
It was smooth. Barbara and Hunter took the first service.
‘By the way, how many matches are we playing, best of three, five or seven?’ Coburn asked. He looked up and waved to some of his fans in the galleries.
‘Better make it five since we started late,’ Barbara decided as she effortlessly caught the ball Hunter tossed to her.
‘Hey! Is that fair?’ Coburn protested as Barbara dropped a shot into the corner and watched it bobble to a halt at his feet.
‘We’ve started. One love,’ Barbara informed him picking the ball up and preparing a second serve.
‘We weren’t ready.’
Coburn’s protest ended as the curving second service sent all the players into a frenzy of action.
The game that followed was voted the best mixed doubles squash game ever seen at the club. Non-company club players quickly filled the vacant seats to watch and applaud a game that was matchless in its speed and adroit fury. It was a game with long highspeed volleys that made no concession to whoever had to return them, but it always seemed to be one of Hunter’s crashing returns from impossible situations that won the points and eventually the games.
Barbara and Hunter won by four games to one.
The rally that ended the match was so furious and so protracted that only Hunter remained standing at the end. The two girls and Coburn collapsed on the floor with bursting lungs and pounding hearts. All three looked in dire physical distress. In contrast Hunter, who seemed to cruise through the game at half pace, resumed his practice; hitting the ball rhythmically into the two angles of the courts as if relishing a game he had long been deprived of playing.
Watchers left the gallery and came down to congratulate the winners when they emerge from the court, but that was not for several minutes as they recovered their breath and composure.
‘My God!’ Barbara gasped appealingly. ‘Somebody tell me I enjoyed that.’ She panted a bit more before continuing. ‘I need to know, or I’ll have to visit my shrink to get my head read.’
‘Boss! You enjoyed it,’ Linda assured her as she struggled to her feet and reached down to pull the prostrate Barbara into a standing position beside her. They stood for a long moment panting with their heads in each other’s shoulders slowly recovering. Neither wanted to go outside to meet their office compatriots looking and feeling like death. ‘If you feel like that and you won how do you think I feel, losing?’ she panted.
Barbara chuckled unsympathetically. ‘You’re right! Tomorrow, I’ll have this plastered all over the company and blazoned in the Bristol Evening News. You’ve made me suffer today, Miss Scott, tomorrow you’ll suffer one thousandfold, and the next day, and the next day.’
Linda looked at her doubtfully. ‘If you’re that sore-headed when you win. I’m glad we didn’t beat you. What would we have suffered then?’
‘Stop giving me problems to solve,’ Barbara groaned piteously. ‘I’ve only enough energy to think about how I can keep on breathing for the next few minutes.’ She was either not as fit as she thought, or she had just played well beyond herself. After a few moments reflecting on Linda’s question, she grunted: ‘Not much better, I guess. If you’d won, I’d have you both dissected and fed to hungry traffic wardens without sugar or milk.’
She stood up suddenly brighter.
‘Ah! I’ve just remembered what will cheer me up. The losers are buying the champagne,’ she stopped to listen theatrically with one hand cupped to her ear. ‘I think that’s JC I hear crying. He’s remembered he’s going to have to unstitch his pockets and get his clammy fingers in to pull out a few moth-eaten tenners. Come on let’s meet our fans.’ She waved cheerfully at the many faces pressed against the glass wall mouthing comments she could not hear. ‘How do you spell magnanimous, Lucius?’ she threw over her shoulder.
Hunter stopped hitting his practice balls and joined them. He thought for a moment before offering, ‘g-l-o-a-t-i-n-g’
Barbara smiled and took his arm.
‘I see you’re as unforgiving as I am, darling. We’ll make a great team.’ She paused to smile at him. ‘You know we now go on to the national ‘Temple Pass Financial Services championships’ after winning this game, don’t you?’ she asked looking up at him proudly. ‘I’ll let you know the dates and venues later.’ He appeared almost unaffected from his exertions. ‘You were magnificent Lucius and don’t let anyone tell you different.’
The two teams left the court and joined the throng of spectators waiting in the corridor outside. They were the keener office members who had given up some of their spare time to watch the final that had taken all summer and most of the autumn to reach that evening’s conclusion.
After receiving the noisy congratulations of the watchers and having their photographs taken by the local newspapers; an event that had been laid on beforehand, it was agreed that the players should meet in the club bar for a celebratory champagne toast for which the losers would be paying.
Before disappearing into the shower rooms, Barbara turned to the other three players.
‘By the way, boys and girl, I’ve been authorised to treat the winners to an all expense paid meal at a hotel, or restaurant of our choice. I suggest the Warren in Denmark Street, next Saturday evening, at eight o’clock; wives and/or husbands included. It’s a hideously expensive place, but what the hell!’ She paused to look speculatively at the unmarried Linda. ‘I suspect that can be stretched to include boyfriends, since I’m unattached at the moment.’
‘Is the wives thing necessary?’ Coburn asked. ‘This is a shop do and my wife wouldn’t want to come to a dinner where the conversation is about squash, or flogging insurance and nothing else. She can just about keep up with the goings on in the TV soap operas without pushing her mind into overload with real life.’
‘JC, you’re a real shit! Has anyone told you?’ Linda exclaimed, aiming her holdall at his head. ‘She’s probably like that because you don’t take her anywhere. She might like to meet interesting people.’
Barbara and Coburn exchanged knowing glances. They both knew his wife was not cut out for the social exposure of their high-pressure lifestyle, although Barbara had no hard feelings about her being in the party for the one evening. She could talk to someone else if she found the conversation boring; the lovely Lucius Hunter for instance.
‘I’ll take a raincheck, but I don’t think she’ll want to come,’ Coburn responded defensively.
‘I won’t be bringing anyone,’ Linda added. ‘What about you Luke? Will you be bringing your wife? She’ll want an evening out if she’s just recovering from having a baby.’
Hunter frowned and pushed a wayward lock of long straw coloured hair back behind his ear.
‘I don’t know about that,’ he said dubiously. ‘Like JC, I’ll have to test the water. Audrey’s totally wrapped up with the baby and she gets anxious if she’s away from it for more than a few minutes. A dinner date might be too long and I’d hate to break up a party just to take her home early.’
He stopped as Barbara broke in impatiently. She wanted to get under the shower and into the bar.
‘I can understand that. I imagine a new baby is pretty demanding. Shall we keep it stag then? After all, we’re balanced as it is, two men and two women. If your wives are determined to come, we can always go back to the original arrangement. Meanwhile, I’ll make a booking for four.’ She looked enquiringly at her listeners who nodded one by one in mute agreement. ‘If your wives are worried about you being out with two hungry single females I’m sure Linda and I can sign you a ‘hands off’ chit for one night.’ She smiled and winked slyly.
Later, after the laudatory comments had been made and many of the married staff had drifted off to their homes and their belated suppers Hunter found himself standing beside Barbara. She had been making sure that he received the sporting credits that were undoubtedly his when receiving any verbal team accolades. While she had been the strongest player in her previous partnership she had been made to look ordinary when partnering Hunter. In fact they all had. It was evident that he was performing many leagues under his true standard.
‘I thought this was a one off game,’ he observed as he sipped a brandy and dry ginger and returned to a comment she had made earlier. ‘I didn’t realise there were commitments.’ He glanced over to where the senior branch manager hobbled around amongst his acolytes. ‘Anyway, Calvin might be fit to play soon.’
Barbara laughed hollowly as she followed his gaze. Her green eyes shone with the excitement of being with a crowd of exultant young people who professed to adore her and who hung on her every word as though each was a pearl of unparalleled polished wisdom.
‘No! Cal will be out for months. In fact, I don’t think he’ll play again. He says he’s too old for this sort of thing, anyway. It does things to his heart, he says, brings on palpitations or something unpleasant.’
While Barbara sat near the top of her particular career tree Lucius Hunter lay at the bottom of his. He was one of about forty young trainee consultants in the Bristol branch of ‘Temple Pass Financial Services’, along with Linda. All had recently joined the company and were working through their qualifying period to start the long climb to the level where big money was to be earned. It was this mundane consideration that preoccupied him. At his lowly level, he needed a set volume of production to be kept on in the company and playing unproductive games of squash was not going to qualify him for advancement and it might even jeopardise his chances.
Barbara, aware of the problem, smiled encouragingly.
‘The company started playing inter-branch games about two years ago,’ she explained. ‘The intention was to increase company awareness and engender corporate pride amongst our four thousand employees. We also encourage other sports like cricket, football, sailing and even skiing in season.’ She acknowledged a departing consultant who wished the fact to be registered with her. ‘All the other branches in the company will have produced squash winners, like us, and we now have to play them on a regional basis. By next spring we’ll be holding the grand squash finals in London. There’ll be some mega prizes along the way and a silver cup to hold for a year.’
She stopped speaking as Hunter stirred restlessly. She was moving away from the point of his concern.
‘These squash games take a lot of time what with travelling and training sessions,’ he objected, running his fingers through long hair that could have done with trimming, but the wild look gave him rugged appeal.
She regarded him thoughtfully trying to gauge the depth of his concern.
‘Is that the problem, Lucius? Your wife won’t let you out to play?’ she teased.
‘Well, she might object, if she knew my partner was a woman,’ he explained doubtfully.
‘Mixed doubles are often made up that way,’ Barbara reminded him with a grin. ‘If your wife has accepted that you’re a man, she must suspect that your mixed double’s partner would be of the opposite gender i.e., a woman. She’s not jealous is she?’
‘No! Not entirely, although she might be if she saw you.’
‘Why, Lucius, you old charmer and to think I thought you hadn’t noticed.’
‘You know what I mean.’
He joined her laughter feeling more at ease than he did when he found he was to be her partner. He was also conscious that she was devoting more time to him than she normally did to other consultants and he relished the attention.
‘It’s the Company qualifying production figures,’ he admitted ruefully. ‘If I don’t hit them, I’ll not be with the company long enough to be in the next squash round, let alone in the London final.’
‘Ah!’ Barbara murmured understandingly. ‘That need not be a problem. I might be able to help you there.’
The bar crowd had thinned with only the dedicated drinkers and sycophants remaining, along with Linda and Coburn talking to Barbara’s deputy manager and squash ex-partner, Calvin Harding
‘Has JC mentioned anything about Orphans to you?’ she asked.
‘No! I don’t think so,’ Hunter hedged, not wanting to get his team leader into trouble if the omission proved lethal. ‘We heard them mentioned on primary training, but were told not to expect any until we reached senior consultants’ level.’
Barbara wrinkled her nose distastefully. That was true, but Hunter had to be an exception. Besides being beautiful to look at the Company could not afford to lose a squash player of his ability. His remarkable talent would be worth a lot in publicity and he would look magnificent standing beside her in the national public relations blurb that would accompany the squash finals.
‘You were saying you needed to return to the office to collect something?’ Barbara asked as she remembered an earlier comment. ‘I have to return there myself. You can give me a lift and save me calling a taxi.’ She paused as if making up her mind about something. ‘I might be able to help you and Linda. I’m sure she’ll be having the same problem. We can talk about it on the way. You ready?’
He nodded. ‘But I can’t stay long. I promised I’d be home early.’
Barbara looked at her watch before draining her glass.
‘OK! Get your car out front while I say goodnight to everyone. I’ll see you there.’ She turned to look at him as a thought struck her. ‘You’re not parked miles away, are you?’
Hunter shook his head
When she found his small family saloon ten minutes later, he opened the door to let her settle in the front seat beside him.
‘I see you’re not a boy racer,’ she remarked as they set off to drive the short distance to their company office block. ‘Family responsibilities, huh?’
Hunter laughed and cast her a sidelong glance. ‘I didn’t race in my youth and I certainly don’t now,’ he confessed. ‘I’ve somehow survived the hump in the actuaries’ mortality curve and I put that down to driving these staid cotmobiles.’ He paused at a road junction and after manoeuvring into the lane he wanted, he went on. ‘I’ve promised myself something special though when I hit the big time.’
‘Something with ‘Cosworth’ in the name, no doubt?’ Barbara asked, still teasing.
She glanced sideways. He looked the type for driving fast racing models, but like he said, he had probably outgrown the urge for speed with his responsibilities as a family man.
‘No, not really,’ he demurred. ‘Some of the so called hot cars are pretty ordinary machines with a poky motor as their only distinguishing virtue. No! I fancy a top of the range ‘ultimate driving experience’.’
‘Yes! I must say I’ve always fancied one of those myself,’ Barbara admitted. ‘An ultimate experience in the back seat of a super car might be fun.’ They both laughed at the salacious slant to the comment. ‘Tell me about how you’re so good at playing squash,’ she went on in a quick change of subject. ‘You surprised everyone tonight.’
He laughed dryly
‘Yes, I guess I did; but JC only asked if I’d played before. I told the truth and said I had, but not for a few months, which is true. Had he asked if I was any good, I would have had to admit that I was the public schools’ national squash champion at sixteen, seventeen and eighteen years of age. I also played for my university, county and the youth national team.’
‘Wow! That’s explains why you looked so classy,’ Barbara breathed. ‘You’re right, JC would never have let you play with me, figuratively speaking, if he even suspected you were at all reasonable.’ She looked out the window at the ambling pedestrians for a few moments. ‘JC’s a cunning bugger,’ she went on. ‘You’ll have to watch him. He’s not above the odd sharp practice or even doing you trainees down if he gets the chance. He says it’s all part of the learning curve and you’ll be better financial consultants after a learning a few hard lessons.’ She patted Hunter’s tracked suited knee to emphasise the point. ‘Still, with you as my squash partner I think we can go all the way to the top.’
‘Linda was good, but I didn’t let her get into her game too much,’ Hunter admitted ruefully. ‘I think you’re the better positional player though. She runs around too much and wastes energy when she could let the ball come to her. She doesn’t understood trajectory and angles of bounce.’ He paused wondering whether his passenger would approve of too much praise being heaped on another woman. ‘You seem to understand those problems better,’ he ended with a wry grin.
‘Does that mean you’ll keep me as your partner, or you’d prefer to take her over?’ Barbara asked testily.
‘I don’t know,’ he chuckled, unfazed by her abruptness. ‘Who has the better car for travelling to away matches?’ He kept his face dead pan.
She leaned over to punch him lightly on the shoulder.
‘I don’t know what she drives, but we could have an ultimate experience in mine.’
They arrived at their destination before anything could be added to that interesting suggestion.
At that time of the evening there was no trouble parking outside the tall office block where the night commissionaire let them into the building still illuminated as though all the floors were working and occupied, but most workers had long since departed and would not be returning until the morning. Only office cleaners worked their magic at that hour bringing shining brightness to dirt, squalor and confusion.
Barbara carried her sports kit into the lift and waited until Hunter joined her before pressing the button to take them to the twelfth floor where ‘Temple Pass Financial Services’ rented a regional branch office.
As a mere trainee Hunter was not privy to the entry pad security code needed to gain access to the enormous main office where they worked, so he stood aside and watched Barbara tap in the numbers. Over four hundred consultants and secretarial staff worked at neatly regimented desks spread over the whole floor area leaving ample room to walk between them. Hunter had his desk on the less favoured shadowy side of the building close to a window. The uninspiring view from it was of the plain vertical concrete expanse of the outside of the lift shafts and the emergency stairways that extended from ground level to the top of the fifteenth story.
Barbara, as the overall branch manager, had an exclusive area with its own annex and its own security. Inside was enough space for a small ballroom and her desk, of comparable size and grandeur, looked small in the space she called an office, although that was not the only furniture in the room.
‘Come in when you’ve got what you want and we’ll have a chat.’
She noticed for the first time, that his desk could clearly be seen from where she sat. That was something she had not been aware of. In fact, she had not been aware of Hunter all that much, although she must have seen him at weekly sales production and training meetings held every week; some she conducted herself, but with four hundred faces staring back at her it was not always easy to pick out those not immediately familiar to her.
She moved across the thick pile carpet of the client reception area with its telephone switchboard strategically placed where all incoming calls were deliberately routed to give a comforting illusion of beehive industry to anyone visiting the branch and awaiting attention.
The furnishings throughout the floor were in soft black leather and stainless steel, while in the reception area, low glass topped coffee tables carried back copies of financial magazines and newspapers. There was no disguising from the visitors that they were in a busy office dealing with money and peace of mind, a priceless commodity in the world in which Barbara and her many consultants dealt.
Walking through her personal assistant’s office she entered her private code into a security pad to gain access to her office. During the day the formidable Gillian Hart guarded this inner sanctum, and she allowed nobody to intrude into Barbara’s private office without approval, and no one under the rank of branch manager status rated that concession. Even the senior branch manager, Calvin Harding, had to wait while his business with Barbara was vetted for its time-wasting possibility. He hated the imposition, but she enjoyed it as a small retaliation for his antipathy towards the total dominance her gender exercise over the predominantly male staffed branch. The rigid security was not needed to protect anything of intrinsic value in the office, far from it; apart from confidential files and a few expensive computer terminals the office contained nothing worth the effort of mounting a robbery. The security protected something far more valuable, Barbara’s time. Each month, she turned-over ten million pounds worth of insurance business by herself. A personal effort that meant achieving deals worth on average, about half a million pounds each and every working day. At that level of production she could not allow herself to be distracted with organisational trivialities. Gillian recognised that and acted as her implacable protector. It needed an exceptional excuse to pass her while Barbara was working.
Pushing the door open with a thrusting hip she crossed acres of ankle-deep plush wool carpet to reach her desk. Apart from the normal furnishings found in a busy office, a conference table with seating for twenty-four people occupied most of the space; any more and the nearby training room could seat five hundred and did so every working Friday afternoon.
Without casting a look around her familiar office she sat down in her soft-backed infinitely adjustable swivel chair and pulled an electronic memo pad towards her. Gillian left reminders there whenever either of them left the office early. As she listened to Gillian’s soft cultured expensively educated voice listing the items she thought important for her employer to know Barbara opened a locked desk drawer and withdrew a fat envelope she had received earlier that day. It contained the month’s list of orphans for the West Country, including Cardiff, a branch office that came under her jurisdiction. She would deal with them the following morning when she arrived to start her day, but at the moment she was interested in finding suitable cases for Hunter and Linda to look at before handing the rest to her most consistent performers as rewards for their sterling consultancy efforts.
In giving Hunter and Linda orphan cards they were not normally entitled to receive Barbara accepted that she was giving them preferential treatment over other trainees, but she excused the indulgence by her perceived need to keep them both in the group. In them, she recognised talents that would repay nurturing, not that an ability to hit a squash ball around four walls of a squash court equated to an ability to sell insurance, it plainly did not, but Barbara had found from experience that young consultants with strong talents in one field, could often develop others, a process she called personality capitalisation.
She smiled grimly to herself as she remembered that benign philosophy had definitely not favoured her formative years in the company. Nobody had helped her in a way she was prepared to discuss in polite society.
At sixteen years of age, when she left school, she had nothing but stunning good looks and a shapely body, a God given gift not granted to every woman her headmistress told her solemnly in valediction. Barbara had smiled modestly at the comment and promptly ignored it. She knew exactly what she wanted and nine years later she had it without taking the step her headmistress had broadly hinting at, marriage to the first man who asked her to be his wife. In making a success of her chosen career Barbara felt she had scored personal victories over her critics. She had rebelled against social conventions and defied her headmistress’s unkind, but probably heartfelt prediction that Barbara would never amount to anything more than she was at that moment, a vapid mouthy hothead. Nine years later, she was rich, free and still under thirty; twenty-six to be exact; nor had she been back to her old school to give the educational executive an appropriate two fingered digital salutation, not yet, although she promised herself that self-gratifying pleasure one day soon.
Switching Gillian off at the end of the tape’s active run she looked through the sound proofed glass walls of the office to where she could see Hunter sitting at his desk telephoning someone, probably his wife. He was a nice lad; well-mannered, well-spoken and above all well-muscled in a sleek lean way she found exciting. On the squash court she had admired the silky effortless way he moved and how the lithe muscles rippled under his skin without the ugly bulges seen in other muscle-bound posing athletes. He was as beautiful as any Adonis could ever be she conceded as he put the telephone down and turned to walk towards her. She wondered what he would be like stripped naked and rampant. The thought made her feel weak as the lust, started two hours earlier as she had held his hand in the squash court, started working anew on her distracted hormones.
‘Come in, Lucius,’ she invited as he paused uncertainly by the door. The herd instinct that acknowledged entry into a tabooed area had made even Mr Cool hesitate before stepping into an area his ilk were forbidden to trespass. She remained seated at her desk sorting out the client cards she thought would be useful for him and Linda.
‘Did you get what you wanted?’ she asked as he joined her.
He nodded as he looked around the high tech office with its computer screens, filing cabinets and forest of tropical plants that gave the place a less severe atmosphere, but it still overwhelmed.
‘I see you have just a bit more room than we’re allowed,’ he observed, reverentially touching her large polished oak desk.
His tubular steel desk with a black matt laminated compressed wood worktop with one lockable drawer was functional, but cheap. He did have two phones on his desk where she appeared to have only the one, but he noticed hers was more like a miniature telephone exchange, with all sorts of buttons and lights for multi-site conferences. She scored on that one.
‘All this could be yours, my son, if you get the right amount of business in,’ she chuckled. ‘Hey! There’s me talking like a branch manager of an insurance brokerage company again.’
‘I’ve completed three policies this week doesn’t that count as a deposit on a bit of the carpet?’
He moved to her side of the desk to see her view of the main office from her closeted Amazon protected world.
‘Sure, that’ll do if you want to wait another century to move your desk six inches away from the reception area,’ she responded wryly. ‘There is another way though...’
She stood up, gripped his arm and turned him around to face her. Putting her hands on his shoulders she looked up searchingly into his eyes, lips smiling invitingly, green eyes softening with a misty look immediately translatable by every male ever born. Placing her hands behind his neck she pulled his face down to her level. He moved backwards to rest against the desk as she pressed her pelvic region suggestively into his groin.
‘What are you trying to do?’ he asked in a suddenly husky voice. ‘Don’t you know there are laws against this sort of thing?’
‘That’s right, Lucius darling,’ she murmured kissing his lips. ‘You’ll find it in the Industrial Relations Act under the heading of ‘Sexual Harassment at the place of work. ’I’m striking a blow for every woman who has ever suffered under a rapacious male employer.’
‘I should be so lucky,’ he murmured returning her kisses. ‘But I’ll have to complain in about five hours if you don’t stop. We can’t have this sort of thing going on.’
He punctuated his words with kisses that were held for longer and longer as he realised the time for teasing was passing. Barbara was intent on more than friendly kisses. He felt her hands drop from behind his neck to his waist. With a tug of his tracksuit top he felt her hands slip into his trouser bottoms and fondle his buttocks.
‘You have a nice tight bum,’ she breathed, nibbling his ear. ‘I like that. Take them off!’ She pulled his tracksuit bottoms over his hips as an encouragement.
‘You’re kidding!’ he gasped looking over her shoulder at the office and up at the glaring overhead lights. ‘This place is lit up like a lighthouse, supposing someone comes in.’
‘I hope they find us both coming,’ she responded, tugging at his clothing urgently. Standing up he let the tracksuit trousers fall to the floor. Stepping out of them his naked condition began to show indications of an arising interest in the proceedings.
Pushing him backwards to the edge of the desk she manoeuvred her chair between his knees. For a moment, she looked up at him with a triumphant smile before running her hands provocatively along his inner thighs until she took his engorged penis in her fingers and slowly began masturbating him. He groaned as he leaned backwards on the desk using his arms as a support for his upper body. He could not bear to look into her green mocking eyes.
After a while she lowered her head and placed his penis in her mouth and began to caress the sensitive glans with soft lips and gentle tongue.
‘Make that five months,’ he gasped. The sensations running through his brain were relentlessly exquisite in their uncontrolled confusion. He wanted them to go on forever but he had no control over the ultimate result. Within seconds he reached a climatic orgasm that was so quick he was not able to warn his tormentor of the impending torrent. Unperturbed, as he writhed in tormented relief, Barbara sat back and reached for a packet of tissues from inside an open drawer,
‘I’m sorry. I sort of lost control,’ he apologised.
Barbara spat into a tissue. ‘I thought you said you were married,’ she complained wiping her lips with another sheet. She looked at him speculatively before throwing the used items into a waste bin at her feet. ‘You been on short rations lately?’ she enquired. ‘That was some mouthful and so quick. If I didn’t know better, I’d say hadn’t indulged your wife for a while, a long while.’
Hunter shook his head, scarcely believing what had just happened. ‘Well, it’s the wrong time of the month for Audrey,’ he admitted, easing himself off the table and reached for his discarded tracksuit bottoms. ‘And she’s just had a baby.’
‘You mean she doesn’t do what I’ve just done,’ Barbara asked curiously, mischievously kicking his trousers further under the desk out of his reach. ‘Doesn’t she even give you a wank, or turn over and let you play in the other half of the pitch?’
‘Guess not, boss. She’s a bit old fashioned when it comes to adventurous bedroom antics.’ He looked at her curiously wondering why she wanted him to remain half-naked. His penis, slowly sinking into a self-satisfied flaccid state, was of no further interest to her. ‘She’s never done that.’ He frowned, realising he should not be talking so disloyally about the mother of his child. ‘Can I get my track suit from under the desk?’ he asked. ‘I’d feel a bit of a prat if anyone came in. What would we say?’
‘In a minute,’ Barbara agreed unhelpfully. She stood up and moved to the wide picture window that overlooked the city centre. Below, the evening traffic was building up and everywhere groups of people hurried about their nocturnal business, ‘We haven’t finished yet. You’ve done nothing for me, remember.’ She motioned him over to stand beside her. ‘Come and have a look at Bristol by night.’
Obediently Hunter moved to stand beside her while modestly pulling his tracksuit top as low as it would go. She slipped an arm companionably around his slender waist while they looked out over the city and discussed various illuminated building projects they could see taking place within their visual range.
‘Large building projects are a sign of a healthy economy,’ she informed him profoundly. ‘Despite that, too many show the first signs of over-heating though. A pundit once pontificated that if you could see more than seven working cranes from an office window it was a sure sign of a coming dip in the economy. Interesting theory that,’ she mused. ‘I must mention it at one of our Friday afternoon chats.’ She leaned her head on his shoulder as he slipped his arms around her waist. It seemed the natural thing to do. ‘You’re hell of a good-looking guy, Lucius,’ she remarked. ‘I can’t understand why your wife isn’t grabbing you off the doorstep and racing you upstairs with her pants off every time you get near the front door. I think she needs some vitamins in her diet, or some erotic imagination.’
He grunted noncommittally. He did not want to comment on his wife’s apparent lack of sexual initiative. Instead, he kissed the top of her dark hair.
‘Perhaps you don’t prepare her well enough,’ Barbara continued. ‘Don’t you know what girls like? They don’t always appreciate the direct approach they like to be romanced with plenty of foreplay, kisses and gentle caressing. Then they like being screwed until their brains drop out.’
‘Are you going to show me?’ he asked, bending to nibble her ear. ‘Because, you’re too late. I’ve lost interest.’
‘You think so?’ she asked. She turned to brush her cheek against the soft material of his tracksuit top as her hand dropped to his flaccid penis. She looked up with a secretive smile as a startled look came over his face.
‘Hey! I don’t perform too well a second time,’ he announced anxiously, but not stopping her gently manipulation. ‘I need a night’s rest between...’
Still holding him she moved from the window and returned to the desk.
‘Don’t you know your second wind gives you stamina to screw all night?’ she asked.
Without stopping the movement of her hand she pulled his face down to her level and kissed him on the lips letting her tongue explore his mouth in a long lingering kiss. Already he was displaying unmistakable signs of arousal under her caressing fingers.
After a few minutes she released him and looked down at her handiwork.
‘There!’ she breathed triumphantly. ‘Good as new. You could lift a wheel barrow with that,’ she pressed his penis downwards to test its rigidity as he looked around the office wondering where he could lay her, for that was her obvious intention. ‘I’m not too keen on legs of mutton,’ she concluded giving him a playful slap. ‘They’re a bit restrictive and can make your eyes water shoved in the wrong place.’
‘Where we can go?’ he panted. Under the desk with his tracksuit bottoms appeared the most obvious choice, but it seemed an unromantic choice for someone of her sophistication.
Barbara laughed. ‘I like a bloke who has a sense of humour when he’s hard and doesn’t know what to do with it.’ She eased her track suit bottoms from her waist.
‘Hey!’ he murmured. ‘I haven’t any protection. I wasn’t expecting to play any encores.’
Again she laughed. ‘Well, the first eleven’s in the waste bin. Now, let’s see what the second eleven can do, but if you put me in the club, it’ll be the most expensive baby there’s been in Bristol for a long time.’
She lowered her trousers to knee level, then, moving her chair nearer to the desk she rotated the pan and knelt in the seat. Leaning over her desk and resting her elbows on the polished surface she turned to look at him with an inviting smile. ‘There, that should be about right. I’m ready when you are.’ She paused. ‘Nothing more adventurous, not today, at any rate.’
Eagerly, he moved behind her smooth rounded inviting buttocks. The invitation was obvious as she widened her knees as far as the restraining track suit bottoms would allow, nor was there any need for manual manipulation as she lowered her face into the palms of her hands with a contended groan as he gripped her hips and set about his task. Starting with long controlled thrusts he slowly worked up to something more urgent as she reacted with hip rotations and increasingly frantic backward lunges to gain extra penetration
‘You’ll have to hurry,’ she gasped after a few minutes. She looked over her shoulder with a face totally changed by the cascading emotions of sensual gratification she was feeling. She had been hot to have him possess her almost from their first handshake and she was not being disappointed. He was strong, big and urgent in his demands. ‘The cleaners will be here any minute.’
‘Shit! Now she tells me,’ he gasped, not willing to stop for any reason short of a heart attack. Things were getting climatic. ‘How long have we got.’ The question was mechanical; he was not interested in the answer.
‘Not long, just shift your arse,’ she groaned in a subdued ecstatic gasp as he increased the urgency of his thrusts and her orgasm came nearer. ‘Don’t stop, you bastard, faster, faster.’
Suddenly they both stopped in a state of desperate suspense. After a moment of chaotic rigidity, Barbara collapsed weakly on to the desk.
‘God, I want to die,’ she groaned, eyes screwed tightly closed as if not wanting to face the world after such a cataclysmic orgasm.
Hunter, panting from the effort, slowly withdrew and propped himself on the desk beside her inert form.
‘Bloody hell! So that’s what sex is all about,’ he gasped, running his fingers through his hair before reaching for the box of tissues. ‘They never taught that at boarding school.’
With Barbara still prostrate in her confused state, he placed a wad of the absorbent tissues over the battle site and modestly pulled her tracksuit up as far as it would go in her droopy position.
‘Thanks lover,’ she murmured dreamily. ‘Here, feel my pulse. It must be off the clock.’
With her eyes closed she moved one arm across the desk in his direction. After retrieving his tracksuit bottoms and climbing into them, he lifted her arm. Kissing the palm tenderly, he felt for her wildly beating pulse.
He paused for a few moments before lowering her arm. ‘It’s orbital, but you’ll live if you survive re-entry.’
Opening her eyes she sat back on her calves adjusting her dress as she did so.
‘Re-entry?’ she muttered absently. ‘Life will be one big disappointment after that. Hey, but that was one hellava screw, wasn’t it? I must have needed it.’
She stood up and straightened her clothing before crossing to a wall mirror to tidy her hair and replace the Alice band that had gone askew in the frenzy.
‘It was cosmic right enough,’ he acknowledged in an understatement of the true surging elation he had felt at the culmination of both events. His wife, Audrey, was not the first women he had ever slept with, there had been others during his school and university days, but none had been as satisfying as the wildly erotic, overstated Barbara. She had a way of talking and acting that raised sex to an exhilarating experience that went beyond reason. Her comments needed no innuendo, nor was she afraid of taking control of a situation and touching areas his wife considered unnatural. No girl who had been to a private school could be that reserved. Sex was subject all privately educated girls could get Grade A passes at without trying. Between wife and Barbara, Hunter could only admire Barbara.
‘I wish I could say we could do it more often,’ she said walking over to him and lightly brushing hair from his eyes. ‘I’ll go weak every time I sit at this desk from now on and remember what happened here, but I can’t promise anything more.’
‘That’s not what I want to hear,’ he said putting both his arms around her waist and pulling her towards him. She was more beautiful than a woman had the right to be, especially in the job she did. That required no beauty at all.
She looked at him with wide serious eyes. Although they had been lovers a few brief minutes ago, already he could feel social and business barriers rising between them again. She had lowered her guard just enough to let him assuage her sexual desires, now she wanted it back in place. She needed to retire behind her barricades and think no more about it while he wanted to delay the moment. She was too precious to be allowed to slip away that easily.