After Hours: Black Lace Classics (9 page)

Well, Micky thought, now they’d done it. And as they
got washed off and dressed, and the vampette dried her hair while he grabbed a shave, he started thinking about this new day and the possibilities it offered. Buoyed up by good sex, he felt fairly invincible and happy to say yes when she asked for a lift back up to London after breakfast at Wheelers’ Oyster Bar. He realised that he had been planning on going back there today anyway; he might have been blown out by the dragon lady last night, but this was another day, and he was not about to give up on her quite yet. After all, she had been pretty drunk last night. He smiled to himself about that. Drunk as a skunk, in fact. And who could say how much she could remember about it?

Despite the most raging hangover she had ever had in her entire life, Venny was dressed and ready to leave for work at her usual time on the morning after the party. She had new staff arriving at ten, and she had to be there to greet them, point out their assorted duties, reassure them that they could all muck in together for a couple of days and get through a pretty heavy workload until she sorted out this chef problem.

Hell, she was even prepared to roll up her own sleeves and peel the veg, if need be. One way or another, she was keeping the all-singing, all-dancing show that was Box of Delights on the road, even if she had to push the damned thing along single-handed. She hadn’t cancelled any bookings. She could handle the bookings, with some semi-skilled staff and a fair wind behind her. Even with a headache, even with blurred vision, even
with a ghastly white-coated tongue, and even without a professional chef.

She poured out tea in the kitchen and trod carefully along the hall with Dani’s cup and saucer. She tapped on the door, winced at the noise, and went in, placing the tea on the side-table in the half-dark, able to do this because this was what she always did, part of their comfortable routine as friends and flatmates. Venny walked straight across to the window and pulled back the curtains. The summer sun blared in, almost batting her over with its intensity. Oh God. Oh, she had to wear shades today. Another bright, hot day coming. She turned back to the bed, and started to say – very quietly – that she was going now, see you later, Dani, don’t oversleep, because Venny was the practical one, the boring one, the one who, she freely admitted, had totally chickened out last night when confronted with Micky Quinn. Chickened out twice, actually.

‘I’m going—’ she started, and stopped dead.

There were two people in the bed, lying naked and tangled together on top of the thin summer sheets, and they were both staring at this intruder. Venny thought that she shouldn’t be so surprised. But she was. She was shocked. Because the other person in Dani’s bed wasn’t Jamie, whom she had expected. Or even Caspar, whom Dani had spent last evening drooling over and flagrantly pursuing. It was red-haired Flora, Caspar’s alarmingly full-breasted wife.

‘Oh,’ said Venny when she’d recovered the power of speech. ‘Sorry.’

‘Oh, it’s OK,’ said Dani, sitting up and yawning hugely. She smiled at Flora. ‘You know Venny, my flatmate, don’t you, Flora? You met her last night at the party. Venny, you know Flora.’

‘Yes, thank you for the introduction,’ said Venny tartly. ‘But what happened to Jamie? I thought—’

‘What, that I’d be spending the night with him?’ Dani gave a disapproving pout. ‘God, that boy is so moody. Just because I was chatting to Caspar last night, he stormed off.’

Venny nodded, thinking that Dani’s definition of chatting was a bit loose in this case. She had distinctly seen Dani fondling Caspar’s crotch at the party, and she had seen Caspar handling Dani’s breasts pretty freely. What she had missed, apparently, had been Dani and Flora pairing off at some stage.

Well, so what? she pondered. It was clear that Flora and Caspar’s marriage was rocky; if either of them wanted to grab a little extramarital fun along the way, good luck to them. Venny had seen enough bad marriages to know that when the going got grim it got very grim indeed, and any sexual time out was a relief for the protagonists.

Venny smiled at Flora. She was very pretty, with that long straight red hair and those grave grey eyes. And those breasts! Flora was made upon statuesque lines, with generously curving hips to match the bounty set above them. Dani had been right, thought Venny. They were absolutely huge, and they looked natural too. They were heavy enough to hang a little, but still pert
enough to have upright and exceedingly large nipples of a delicate shell-pink. When Flora propped herself up on an elbow, they dangled and swung most invitingly. Venny had never considered her sexual proclivities to be anything other than straight, but she suddenly found herself wondering what Flora’s breasts would feel like under her hands. Seeing the direction of her eyes, Flora smiled sleepily and stretched in a deliberately inviting manner, lifting her arms and accentuating those gobsmackingly beautiful breasts, the smooth indentation of her waist, the curves of her long and splendid legs, and almost accidentally flaunting the fire-red thatch of thick pubic hair between her milky-white thighs.

‘Perhaps you’d like to join us for some fun?’ asked Flora hopefully, eyeing up Venny with interest.

Dani leaned over and ran a hand over Flora’s lolling right tit, then she glanced up at Venny with an almost proprietorial smile. ‘How about it, Venny?’ she asked.

Venny almost weakened sufficiently to say yes; a morning lovefest with these two glorious women could only do her hangover good, she thought. But then her sense of duty got the better of her.

‘No can do,’ she sighed, slipping on her shades. ‘New staff coming. I’ve got to be there to sort them out.’

As she shut the door on the embracing couple, Venny distinctly heard Dani say: ‘You see what I mean? It’s always business before pleasure with Venny. That girl is
so
straight.’

She was only in the nick of time. Outside the restaurant
her new staff waited: two handsome young men, two attractive young girls, all eager to please and ready to get started. Cynically Venny acknowledged that this ‘honeymoon’ stage would only last a couple of weeks. Before very long she knew that these go-ahead youngsters would be like all the other staff that had gone before, and had left so summarily with Bill Thompson – lazy, truculent and light-fingered. Still, for now they were keen; and in her delicate hungover state she was glad of that. They shopped in the market and then got on with the vegetables and the cleaning and even the menu planning without having to be watched every step of the way.

At about eleven she took the opportunity to creep upstairs to her office. She put the coffee on to percolate and fished out a couple of paracetamol from her bag. After checking that the blinds were safely down, she removed her shades and sat down in her big leather chair with a huge sigh of relief. She leaned her elbows on the desk and rubbed her temples slowly, vowing never ever to drink again. Even her skin, confined beneath her navy business suit, felt itchy and sore. And her mouth. She didn’t even want to think about her mouth.

She shuddered and poured herself a cup of coffee. She sipped it cautiously, wincing because it was still very hot, grimacing because everything tasted awful today, and it was nobody’s fault but her own. She swallowed the two vile-tasting pills along with the vile-tasting coffee.

‘Oh, God,’ she moaned, closing her eyes in anguish.

‘You called?’

Venny’s eyes flew open. There was a man’s shape in the doorway. The light from downstairs was backlighting a tall, angular body with a hedgehog shock of dark hair. The shape looked horribly familiar. The hair looked familiar, too. He was carrying, incongruously, a steel briefcase. Micky stepped forwards into Venny’s office.

Venny stood up and quickly opened the blinds. She almost staggered back into her chair as light zapped in and connected with her optic nerves, frazzling them like lasers. She clutched a hand to her head, half-suspecting that it was about to fall off of her shoulders and roll across the floor.

‘What do you want?’ She squinted worriedly at him. This might be the DTs. After all, Micky Quinn wasn’t very likely to be standing here in her office, was he? He was wearing a grey slouch suit and a cream polo shirt. He looked fresh, neat, stylish. His blue eyes twinkled. He didn’t look as if he’d got totally wasted last night and was now paying the price, as she was. He looked perfectly in control. It was maddening.

‘What do I want?’ He stared at her as if she must be joking. ‘I want to start work, what else?’

‘Work?’ Venny decided to risk it. She took her hand away. Her head stayed on.

He came forwards and sat down in the seat opposite, expansively crossing one leg over the other and dumping the case on the floor. He looked at her with concern.

‘Wow, you really did get plastered last night, didn’t you?’ He smiled and the blue eyes glittered with good
humour. ‘You mean you don’t remember that you offered me a month’s trial last night?’

Venny blinked in disbelief. ‘What?’ she asked, dry-mouthed.

‘A month’s trial,’ said Micky patiently. ‘Last night. You offered it to me. And I said yes.’

‘I couldn’t have!’ Venny burst out.

‘But you did.’ Micky looked at her sympathetically. ‘Really, Venny, you ought to take it a bit easier on the sauce. Blank spaces are a bad sign. Flora’s a big drinker, and she tends to think that everyone else can take as much as she can. Was she forcing it on you?’

‘No. Not at all.’ Venny was back to clutching at her head again. This could not be happening. She couldn’t have offered the chef’s job to this bolshy, overconfident, brash male person who had – oh, God, she didn’t want to think about it, but it was true, it had happened – who had done such rude things to her in the lift. And people had passed by while he was doing it to her; people had seen her with his head between her legs and her body totally exposed. And it had been wonderful. So wonderful, in fact, that she had beaten a very hasty retreat right after he’d brought her to orgasm.

Yes, she had bottled out. And she had been terribly drunk, that was true. It was entirely possible that she had offered him a month’s trial. Perhaps she had. She looked at him, blinking through bleary eyes. He was looking back at her with calm expectancy. I must have, she thought in amazement. I really must have offered him a month’s trial.

‘Look, whatever I said—’ Venny started uncertainly.

‘You said I could have a month’s trial,’ said Micky positively. ‘And I wouldn’t be so boorish as to get difficult with you or anything but, well, there is such a thing as a verbal contract, you know. I think you’d find the law’s on my side. Not that I would ever consider reverting to law.’

Like hell you wouldn’t, thought Venny painfully. Whether she’d said it or not, he had her as neatly stitched up as a kipper.

‘Look,’ she said, trying to get her scattered thoughts in order. ‘If I said that—’

‘You did.’

‘If I did, then I’ll honour it, of course.’

‘Well, of course you will,’ said Micky cheerfully, as if that went without saying.

‘Yes, I will.’ Venny took a deep, steadying breath. ‘But if at the end of the month I’m not happy with your work, then I want it understood between us that I will then dispense with your services without any further notice.’

‘Understood,’ said Micky, nodding.

Venny stood up. Pride made her manage it without clutching her head in agony. She stared down at him. ‘And that’s a verbal agreement,’ she said smartly. ‘Understood?’

‘Absolutely.’ Micky stood up too. He was tall. She liked his shoulders, wide and strong. She remembered in a brief humiliating flash that she had clutched at them last night while he was lapping at her. She felt herself start to blush.

‘What’s in the case,’ Venny asked, adding with sarcasm, ‘your sandwiches?’

‘No.’ Micky grinned, apparently unoffended. He put the case on the desk and popped the catches open. There were a dozen knives of various sizes and types cushioned inside on a bed of dark blue velvet. ‘My knives. Every chef worth his salt has his own knives.’

Bill hadn’t, thought Venny.

‘OK.’ She turned her back on him in a deliberately dismissive gesture. ‘You’d better get on with it, then.’

When she peeked over her shoulder a few seconds later, he’d gone downstairs. She felt a little lurch of what felt like disappointment. With angry movements she switched on her computer. He might have wheedled a month’s trial out of her, she thought, but he needn’t forget who was the boss around here. She’d keep reminding him, just in case he ever did.

For the remainder of the week Venny concentrated on keeping out of Micky Quinn’s way. But, irritatingly, news of him nevertheless reached her from every quarter. The new waitresses each told her, on separate occasions, how much they fancied Micky. Then on Saturday one of the new waiters came up to her office and said in outraged tones: ‘All that stuff we got from the market, he’s saying it’s rubbish, unusable.’

Venny had to admit he had cause to be outraged. She thought he’d done a good job and had told him so. He had bought carefully, choosing only top-quality goods and haggling for the best prices.

‘But what’s wrong with it?’ she asked, puzzled.

‘It’s not organic,’ said the waiter, whose name was Neil. ‘He says that no client of his is going to eat lettuce that has been sprayed with pesticides up to forty times before it gets to the table, and he says it’s ridiculous to pay the mark-up on cherry tomatoes on the vine when there’s a sunny backyard here where we could grow our
own – organically, of course. Venny, the man’s a pain.’

Venny returned her attention to her computer. ‘The man’s the chef,’ she said flatly. ‘In the kitchen, what he says, goes. OK?’

Neil retreated sullenly. Venny hoped to hear no more about Micky, but then Dani phoned in a panic and told her that Jamie had not shown up, and tonight was the night of the hen party she’d made the fake cake for. He was supposed to be there at the flat but he was sulking again, as usual, and she couldn’t find him anywhere.

‘So what do you want me to do about it?’ asked Venny, sighing heavily. ‘Offer to jump out of it myself? Lend you a waiter or something?’