Guilty Pleasures
Authors: Manuela Cardiga
Guilty Pleasures
The Food and Fornication Fables
By
Manuela Cardiga
First published by The Writer’s Coffee Shop, 2013
Copyright ©
Manuela Cardiga
, 2013
The right of
Manuela Cardiga
to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her under the
Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000
This work is copyrighted. All rights are reserved. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
All characters and events in this Book – even those sharing the same name as (or based upon) real people – are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead …
or undead
… is purely coincidental. No person, brand or corporation mentioned in this Book should be taken to have endorsed this Book nor should the events surrounding them be considered in any way factual.
This Book is a work of fiction and should be read as such.
The Writer’s Coffee Shop
(Australia)
PO Box 447 Cherrybrook NSW 2126
(USA)
PO Box 2116 Waxahachie TX 75168
Paperback ISBN- 978-1-61213-192-4
E-book ISBN- 978-1-61213-193-1
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the US Congress Library.
Cover image by: © Depositphotos.com / Юлия Бурлаченко,
© Depositphotos.com / Maxim Loskutnikov,
© Depositphotos.com / Yuri Arcurs
Cover Artist - Thaigher Lillie
www.thewriterscoffeeshop.com/mcardiga
To my Father, Vladimiro Cardiga,
and my Grandmother, Micas Ruiz,
who taught me the secret of life
and the magical language of spices.
Prologue
Lance Packhard, sex therapist, the world’s number one G-spot sleuth and premier undercover man, was flummoxed. Never in his long career had he been faced with such a challenge.
Millicent Deafly—his mark—ignored him.
Him
. It seemed almost impossible. Instead of eyeing his magnificent body, Millicent was lasciviously fondling a cucumber. Her eyes misted. Her delicate pink tongue flicked over her pouty lower lip.
“Yes. Oh, yes!” she whispered. “Tonight, yes . . .”
Lance had spent the last hour following her through the local supermarket trying to get her attention, to no avail. Millicent ignored him at the fruit and vegetables section, and at gourmet cheeses he deliberately brushed up against her back, murmured an apology in his huskiest bedroom voice, and accomplished nothing.
Undeterred, he followed her to the wine section, where he attempted prolonged eye contact. Alas, she always seemed to be looking in another direction, and Lance found himself trailing her into the Seafood Court. There, he liberally doused himself with a powerful pheromone spray he usually avoided using because of the unpleasant side effects.
But again nothing happened.
Nada.
All he got was a serious skin rash from the pheromone spray and a multitude of lustful supermarket attendants—not all female—insisting on giving him a “hand.”
Lance should have known when he first saw Millicent that she was trouble—big trouble. In fact, he should have known before. He’d never been hired by a mother. Husbands hired him, lovers, concerned friends, even someone’s boss once, but never a mother.
Something in the almost always competitive mother/daughter synergy precluded a mother from fixing her daughter up with a man she fancied herself, and let’s face it, Lance was well aware that all women fancied him. From his dark, silken hair to his sinewy—and talented—toes, he was regarded as prime genetic material, and he had improved on nature’s bounty. He worked out four times a week—running for an hour each morning before sun-up—and rigorously watched his diet. He used a moisturiser, a hair conditioner, and carefully barbered his muscular chest and abdomen, while cultivating a becoming three-day scruff. All this was in addition to a six-foot-three lean and mean frame, a sculpted face with dreamy green eyes, and a sulky, sarcastic mouth.
Everything about him screamed
absolute bastard
and he came across as absolutely irresistible.
And what happens when an irresistible object collides with an indifferent target? Something’s gotta give . . .
Chapter 1
If you have never explored the hidden depths, or valiantly searched for the Holy G, fear not . . . the cavalry is here!
—Sensual Secrets of a Sexual Surrogate
Lance struggled valiantly with inspiration and was deep into chapter twenty-three, “Go for the G-Spot,” of his revolutionary how-not-to book,
Sensual Secrets of a Sexual Surrogate
, when his phone rang.
“Lance Packhard.”
“Mr. Packhard, it’s Gwen Spencer from the Willow Bend Clinic.”
“Mrs. Spencer? My gran is . . . is something wrong?”
“No, Mr. Packhard, not at all. Mrs. Pecklise is as well as can be expected for a woman of her age, and in her clinical condition. The problem . . .” She paused, trying to word things delicately. “Um . . . I really hate to do this, Mr. Packhard, but you’re overdue by two months. We have a rather strict policy. We provide the best care, and that is most costly. We cannot carry patients. If the settlement is not made by the end of the week, we shall need to ask you to remove Mrs. Pecklise from our facility.”
“Mrs. Spencer, please, I just need a little more time! I have some assets I’m trying to liquidate, but I can’t acquire the funds overnight. Would you consider depositing my art collection with you as surety?”
“I’m afraid not, Mr Packhard. Settlement in full, for the last two months, and don’t forget next month is due in two weeks’ time.”
“I won’t.”
“Thank you, Mr. Packhard.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Spencer. I’ll be there on Friday.”
“I look forward to seeing you then.”
Desperate, Lace ran his hands through his hair.
Three months?
That came out to a little over nine thousand pounds. He already had his car on the market, and he had been trying to sell some of his art collectibles for several months now, but in this financial climate, people just weren’t buying.
Busy as he was with his clients, he just wasn’t making ends meet. His last hope was tied into the self-help book he was writing. When he handed in the bloody edit, he would get the first instalment of his advance, but he was at least two months away from that.
Somehow, he had to come up with the money and fast. But since when did money rain from the sky? He sighed.
By three o’clock, he was busy juggling numbers in his accounts when his appointment arrived. They exchanged very short pleasantries before she got straight to business.
Mrs. Deafly, an elegant platinum blonde in her sixties who exuded perfection, deliberately leaned forward in her chair and fixed a cool, analytical eye on Lance. “Mr. Packhard, I want a grandchild and I am prepared to pay handsomely for it.”
“I’m afraid you’ve been misled, Mrs. Deafly. I don’t do impregnations. I do
Awakenings.
You know, help women get in touch with their senses, unlock their sensuality, and awaken their libido. Whatever you may have been led to believe, I do not touch or engage in any sexual or physical contact with the client,” Lance explained.
“Mr. Packhard, my daughter is not interested in sex. Not with men, not with women. I even gave her a Great Dane three years ago to see if her inclinations steered that way, but nothing attracts her. If she’s not into sex, I can’t get her to procreate.”
“That’s unfortunate, but I fail to see how I can—”
“We are the last of our line, Mr. Packhard—a fertile and lusty line, I might add. I could tell you some stories . . . but the truth is that I am faced with the extinction of my way of life. Unfortunately, my late husband’s grandfather had the ridiculous idea of entailing his estate. Under the provisions of that entail, my children need to reproduce and continue our family line before their fortieth birthday. My son is forty-two, and has gone from being high on drugs to being high on God. My daughter is thirty-six. It’s now or never.”
“Mrs. Deafly, I’m sorry but—”
“Now you see, Mr. Packhard, if I don’t have a grandchild, control of Deafly Enterprises passes from my hands in four years’ time. I know all about your financial situation, and I am prepared to pay you handsomely for your services.”
Lance shifted uneasily. “Mrs. Deafly, my financial situation is not up for discussion—”
“Mr. Packhard, as profitable and successful as your practice is, it does not come close to your actual financial needs, does it?” Her perfectly shaped head swiveled on her long neck, taking in the pristine expanse of the office’s exquisitely decorated open space full of artwork: the early Francis Bacon on the wall, the Lucian Freud hanging opposite it, and the tiny Paula Rego of a girl kneeling with spread thighs, arched back on an artist’s easel in a corner.
“I regret you—”
“You have expensive tastes. Very expensive tastes indeed, but I must admit, quite exquisite!”
“Mrs. Deafly, thank you for your praise and the offer, but I must refuse. Unless of course you’d be interested in purchasing some of my art pieces.”
“I have no need for art, Mr. Packhard. I was commenting on your financial situation. You have, as I said, exquisite taste: refined and most expensive. Which is all wonderful, but you also have a huge mortgage on one of the most expensive pieces of real estate in the world, a 1936 Aston Martin in a garage, a grandmother who has recently—and most inconveniently—been diagnosed with an incapacitating degenerative disease—”