Kara scanned the room, looking for another escape route but unless her hero was waiting on the roof with a helicopter she was going to have to front it out and leave the way she came in.
‘He was no good for you,’ Jack said.
‘Who?’
‘Your man whore. The one who took it upon himself to video you in a compromising position and sell the tape.’
Kara didn’t dare let on that she knew this was all down to him. She wondered if he’d had a conversation with William. If they’d discussed what he should do with her. She wondered if the ring that she’d loved so much had ever been William’s idea. She swallowed back her tears. She’d been completely taken in by him and that probably hurt more than anything else. It was evil! He was just plain cruel. Kara wondered what William’s price had been but she remained silent. Jack had taught her that – never give out too much information until you know what your opponent’s strategy is.
‘You have something you want kept secret and all I want in return is sex. It’s a match made in heaven, darling.’
He made it sound so simple. Kara was disgusted with him.
‘Why me? You never seem to be short of a woman to share your bed so why me?’
‘Because you said no, Kara.’
Kara suddenly noticed movement from beneath his robe. He was getting an erection! It turned Kara’s stomach but she did her best to keep her face neutral. She didn’t want to risk angering him. He wasn’t the man she thought he was and she had no idea what this mad man was capable of.
‘I’m a fair man and I won’t blackmail you but I believe you owe me for getting rid of Granger for you.’
‘I’m grateful for that, Jack – truly I am – and I’ll happily do anything I can to repay that debt, but not this.’ She took a step away from him.
‘You’re not indispensable, Kara,’ he snapped. He was losing patience.
‘I believe my integrity was one of the qualities you admired in me when you first brought me in.’ Kara tried to reason with him.
‘For Christ’s sake, woman. It’s only sex. I’m not asking you to fiddle the books. What I want won’t leave these four walls – you have my word on that.’
‘And the videos?’ Kara asked. She wasn’t considering his offer she just wanted to see his hand.
‘I’ll give them to you and no more will be said on the matter.’
‘Kara was tempted. She’d dearly love to be able to draw a line under this dreadful nightmare and Jack was offering her that opportunity. In return she would become just another notch on his bed post.
‘No, I can’t do it, Jack.’ She remained firm. She knew she had to. If he sacked her here and now there was nothing she could do about it, but at least she’d leave with her head held high even if he’d managed to drag her self-respect through the mud. She could only pray that he wouldn’t sink so low as to expose the sex tape even if he did sack her.
CHAPTER TEN
William arrived at Laura’s house feeling a little edgy. He’d half expected not to hear from her again after that funny business with her old man, but she seemed completely unperturbed by recent events and invited him in with a smile.
When she slid the envelope across the table towards him William pushed it back.
She looked up at him questioningly.
‘Today’s on me if you’ll tell me everything you know about Kara Kavanagh.’ William was worried how she’d react – they’d never really had a personal conversation before and he really didn’t want to be the first one to tell her that there might be something going on between her husband and Kara but he needed answers. He was worried about her. She’d tried to contact him earlier but they’d been cut off and when he’d attempted to ring her back he hadn’t been able to get through.
‘Why do you want to know about her?’ Laura sounded a little annoyed.
‘Is your husband having an affair with her?’ William was risking getting thrown out but Laura just laughed.
‘My husband doesn’t have affairs, William.’ She offered nothing more and William realised that he was going to have to push her harder if he wanted to get to the bottom of what was going on.
‘Then I’m worried that your husband might be blackmailing Kara.’
‘Kara Kavanagh’s more than capable of looking after herself,’ Laura laughed.
William smiled. He’d learnt that much about her but this was different. He was afraid that he’d done something that could have put her in harm’s way. He decided to tell Laura the whole story.
‘Kara got in touch with me by email – at least I thought it was her at the time – and requested my services.’
‘Kara Kavanagh did? I don’t believe it,’ Laura sounded shocked.
‘Why wouldn’t she?’
‘She’s not the type of girl to hire a gigolo.’
‘Why not?’ William was slightly offended by her description of him. He might use it himself in his head but in reality he considered himself to be an ordinary guy just doing what he had to do to get through a rough patch.
‘I don’t know, she just isn’t. She’s too straight – too morally upstanding, I suppose.’ Laura said it as if she thought these attributes were a bad thing. William was remembering Kara lying in the wheat field with her legs spread wide in invitation. He knew different.
William carried on.
‘The email detailed exactly what she wanted from me, including her wanting me to make it seem like a real date…and videoing the sex.’
‘Christ! You didn’t do it, did you?’ Laura suddenly seemed to take an interest in what he was saying.
‘Yes, I did but now I think she may have been set up,’ William added.
‘By my husband?’
‘Perhaps.’ William wasn’t sure. It looked that way but he couldn’t work out a motive other than sex and Laura seemed adamant that Jack wasn’t unfaithful.
‘Jack wouldn’t do anything like that.’
‘How can you be so sure?’
Laura sighed and fiddled with the tissue in her hand. She looked a little fearful as she started to speak, as if she was about to impart something of great significance.
‘You can trust me to be discreet,’ William coaxed her gently. They had a strange relationship but he believed that she trusted him.
‘My husband and I have a rather unconventional marriage.’ Laura stood up and crossed the room. She seemed to want to put some distance between them before she continued. ‘I love him dearly.’
William enjoyed listening to Laura speak. Her upper class accent hid a soft Irish lilt that occasionally managed to escape and when it did he was able to see the girl in her that she kept hidden – skipping through the heather with her hair flying free – less bleached – less coiffured – less stiff upper lipped.
‘He’s a good man.’
‘It didn’t feel that way when he was holding me warmly by the throat the other day.’
‘I don’t understand.’ It was Laura’s turn to look confused.
‘He warned me off Kara. He paid me handsomely not to contact her again. Why do you suppose he would do that if he’s not having sex with her?’ He’d said it, now. He waited for Laura to get angry ad throw him out.
Laura sighed and looked at the ground.
‘My husband’s impotent, William,’ she whispered. ‘We have never had penetrative sex and as Jack was my first and only love I believe that officially makes me a virgin.’
‘Shit!’ William couldn’t hide his shock. It was the last thing he’d been expecting to hear. It sounded ludicrous.
‘I suppose you understand my motives for hiring you, now?’ She blushed and looked at the floor
‘Actually I don’t. Why do you feel the need to be punished so regularly?’
‘It’s guilt. I can’t live without some sort of sexual stimulation but I would never cheat on Jack so I bought myself a vibrator and use that when he’s not around.’
‘That’s understandable given your circumstances. That doesn�
��t deserve a beating, surely?’
‘Because Jack’s the way he is he likes to try and please me in other ways. He still likes to be the one who makes me come, but sometimes his finger’s just not enough, William. Sometimes I crave a hard cock. It would break him if he knew.’
It wasn’t right that such a beautiful vibrant young woman should be trapped in a marriage with such a repulsive man. William couldn’t understand why she stayed.
‘Do you think your husband would go as far as to set Kara up so that he could blackmail her for some other reason?’
‘Never! What possible reason could there be? He holds her in high esteem.’ Laura was adamant. William had to believe her even though he remained unconvinced. In his experience he’d found that if something smelled like bullshit it usually was and this stank to high heaven. The Jack that Laura described was nothing like the thug who’d been leaning on his doorbell on Monday morning.
‘Can we get on with this, please?’ Laura pushed the envelope back across the table. ‘I’d feel happier if you took the money.
Thank you for your honesty, Mrs Finnegan. You can rely on my discretion.’
‘I know, William – otherwise I would never have invited you into my home in the first place.’ She smiled and left the room. She had a purity about her that was at odds with modern day life. He wondered if this is what appealed to Jack Finnegan.
William waited in the kitchen for her to change out of her flowery cotton dress and into her gymslip. He was flattered that she trusted him, but Christ what a fucking revelation! This job had certainly given him new insight into the weird and wonderful complexities of the human race but it didn’t give him much hope for the future. Did no one have normal healthy relationships anymore? Or was it just the idle rich that sported such dysfunction? Perhaps they needed to employ their minds on something more productive. But Kara was anything but idle and here she was buying the thrill of a new boyfriend without ever having to suffer any of the commitment of a long term partner. That wasn’t natural either.
Laura was standing next to her husband’s desk, staring at the floor, when he entered the office. She didn’t look at him.
‘Take off your knickers.’ He fell into character and she obeyed him as if their recent conversation had happened to someone else but today he felt slightly disgusted with himself and his performance was automated as his mind constantly wandered back to Kara.
Afterwards he emerged from the office and into the hallway to be greeted by Laura in her cotton sundress holding the door for him to leave. He studied her face for signs of dissatisfaction but found none – only her usual eagerness for him to leave.
‘Thank you, William,’ she managed as he stepped out of the door.
‘See you next time, Mrs Finnegan,’ he replied but he wasn’t entirely sure there would be a next time.
William stopped off at the coffee shop at the end of the road. He ordered an Americano and sat alone at a small table on the pavement to drink it and ponder the thoughts that were racing around in his head.
The street was busy but he felt strangely lonely and slightly grubby after his appointment with Laura Finnegan and he was still no closer to discovering what had happened to Kara. How the hell had he gotten involved in this – he was a property developer, for Christ’s sake! The bane of his life used to be council officials – now it was mafia style tycoons threatening to make him disappear.
He tried putting Kara out of his mind. He tried telling himself that she was just another client, but he’d never taken a client out in his father’s beloved Astin Martin, before, nor made love to one in the middle of a wheat field, and he was damned sure that none of his clients had ever looked quite as sexy as Kara had when he dropped her off at her house with bits of straw still hanging from her tousled hair.
He had to at least talk to her. If she wanted nothing more to do with him after that then he’d walk away but he had a niggling feeling that something was wrong and that he might just be partly to blame. If it hadn’t been her idea to film the sex he needed to find out who would do such a despicable thing and put it right with her, but how the hell did he broach that subject?
William rang her office. The secretary answered.
‘Could I speak to Miss Kavanagh, please?’
‘I’m sorry, sir, she’s not in her office at the moment. Can I take a message?’
William declined, hung up and called her home instead. No one answered. Maybe she was in transit between the two, but he wasn’t going to risk ringing her mobile again.
William thought about the envelope full of money that Jack Finnegan had shoved in his hand. He’d counted it. It contained ten thousand pounds! No one gave away that amount of money lightly – especially not someone like Jack Finnegan and William didn’t feel happy about keeping it, anymore. It felt dirty. It felt like blood money. He was going to give it back.
William finished his coffee and got up from the table. He had an appointment with a planning officer that he couldn’t afford to miss but his head wasn’t really in the right place for tricky council workers at the moment.
He took his van and drove out to the site. The odious man was already there when William arrived, poking around in things that didn’t concern him and asking questions of his workers. William clenched his fists
‘Just check the work you’re here for and get off my site,’ he snapped. His foreman looked at him strangely and stepped in between the two men.
‘Do you want me to deal with this?’ he said.
William nodded and walked away. Why the hell was he so irritable?
The day seemed interminable but his thoughts never wandered far from Kara.
He had an afternoon appointment with a woman that he wished he could cancel but the client would already be waiting for him so he drove out of town to the cheap motel she had chosen and found her standing in the car park.
She was wearing clothes that a back street hooker could very well have thrown out, although the expensive highlights in her sun kissed hair were more difficult to disguise.
She pulled him into the same grubby little room she always pre-booked. And reeled off the list of services she offered and their price. William opted for straight sex and shoved a twenty pound note down her low cut top and pushed her down onto the bed that smelt vaguely mouldy. He ripped off her fishnet tights and panties but didn’t bother removing any more of her clothes. She liked it quick and rough and impersonal and that suited him just fine. He caught hold of her ankles and spun her onto her front so that he wouldn’t have to look at her face in the throes of orgasm. His heart wasn’t in this game anymore.
The woman grunted and squealed and wriggled on his dick but it seemed to take her ages to come. William was struggling, so in the interest of servicing her as she had requested he slapped her ass a couple of times. That sent her over the edge and he finally felt her vaginal muscles milking his cock.
William washed up in the dirty little bathroom without speaking to the woman. He didn’t even know her name, even though he’d been doing this once a week for over a year, now. That was the way she liked to do business, who was he to judge.
When he was finished in the bathroom he walked over to where she was sitting on the edge of the bed and took back his money.
‘Sorry love, you weren’t worth it.’ God alone knew why she liked it that way. It wasn’t his job to ask. He just knew that when he got home his fee would have been transferred from an anonymous bank account into his own and that he would be able to make his mortgage repayments at the end of the month.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
‘Jack, I need to get back to the office.’ Kara tried to sound authoritative and confident, neither of which she actually felt but he was beginning to scare her.
‘No,’ he snapped. ‘I expected you to be more grateful. How dare you turn me down after everything I’ve done for you?’ He started to pace the floor like a caged tiger as he chewed on his unlit cigar
‘I got my job on merit – n
ot because I was an easy lay,’ Kara hit back.
‘You got your job because I wanted you to have it, Kara. Face the truth, you owe me and now it’s time to pay up.’
‘That’s not true.’ He was trying to rattle her and knock her confidence. She’d seen him work before but had never found herself in the firing line of his vicious tongue before. He was an imposing man. Kara found it difficult to stand up to him.
‘I won’t be blackmailed into your bed, Jack.’ Kara repeated. She was trying to remain calm and friendly but firm and she was pretending that his words weren’t denting her armour, but they were. She felt in her pocket for her mobile. If things got really bad she could speed dial someone – or maybe even call the police – but it was missing and when she tried to remember when she last had it she couldn’t. She thought back in her head for want of something sane and normal to occupy her mind whilst Jack Finnegan paced the room. It had been last night when she was drunk and Jack had rung her, but she couldn’t remember what she’d done with it after that. She’d ring her number when she got back to her office.
‘Jack, please. This isn’t doing either of us any good.’
He stopped pacing and stared at her.
‘Maybe you’d be more willing to take my cock if I tied you up.’
Kara’s heart stopped beating for a moment and when it started again it thudded so hard in her chest that it hurt.
‘No.’ Her voice came out small and shaky and she couldn’t quite catch her breath. She felt as if she was on the verge of a panic attack and fought to control her breathing.
‘Why not? You did it for that man whore and you even seemed to be enjoying it.
Kara felt her cheeks colour up as she recalled the scene but she quickly wiped it away. Every time she thought about William she got angry and cried and she didn’t want to cry in front of Jack, again.
The Gigolo Page 9