by S M Mala
‘She’s terribly upset, your mother. Why don’t you call her? I know you won’t return her messages and I hate to see you both like this,’ he gently said before stroking Finlay’s hand. ‘It’s always Alice and you versus Toby and I. Never have you ever quarrelled and this seems so silly.’
For a moment Finlay held his breath and knew Piers was in the middle of it. He glanced around at the diners sitting at the tables and just wanted to go and see Sylvie.
‘I won’t be told who to see and what I can and cannot do,’ he began quietly, seeing Piers glance down at his own drink. ‘I know I work for her, it was her idea for me to join my father’s business but now she wants to throw it all back in my face, if I don’t do what she says. Who was I kidding? I’m no more a director than Toby is and he doesn’t even work directly for her company.’ Finlay looked at Piers’s grimace. ‘She hates the idea I’m with Sylvie doesn’t she? Did you tell her you knew?’
‘Your mother doesn’t hate the idea of you being with Sylvie, she hates the idea of you being fleeced by your wife and the chance you will lose your son. I know I haven’t helped matters and …’ He watched Piers frown for a moment before taking a deep breath. ‘You see Fin, she knew I was unhappy about things, about the way my life was going and then I got this idea about supplying sex toys after reading an article in the ‘Observer’ about the growing demand through the internet. I thought ‘why not?’ so I told your mother. She nodded in the right places and then before she knew it, I’d spent the cash, bought the land, premises and hired Sylvie in the process. Not for a minute did I think it might be successful, as I got the deal at a knockdown price. Previous owner went into administration so it was a good opportunity.’
Finlay smiled for a moment, reading in between the lines of what Piers was trying to say.
‘You thought of something ludicrous and she backed you up, just to keep you happy but you had no idea it would work out, did you?’ he smiled as Piers sheepishly glanced up and nodded. ‘And then Sylvie started making it real?’
‘Sylvie and the others made it into a business. In the first six months I was at a loss on what to do, but they ticked it over, focussed while I just went out for lunch. Lots of lunches,’ he grinned. ‘It’s over three years that place has been going and I don’t want to see it closed down but your mother knows the retail value is high and probably wants pay back. Then there’s Toby working there. That’s just peed her of a little especially with the police getting involved and now you… you can see why she wants shot of it.’ He put his hand on his heart and half smiled. ‘And this old ticker just showed me that I can’t take the stress, but god love your mother for trusting me and letting me show her I’m not completely useless. I love that place but I don’t have a business head, neither has Sly but she’s trying her best. Thing is, she went into it head first just to avoid thinking about how shit her life had turned out and come to terms with losing Rupert. That’s the bottom line. And now she’s found you.’
‘She’s found me,’ he smiled for a moment thinking about her before discreetly gulping. ‘Do you think she’s rebounding on me?’
‘Are you rebounding on her?’ he gently asked, before grinning broadly. ‘I’ve never seen you look so happy even though you’ve fallen out with your mother. Thing is Finlay, nearly a year ago you said you were in love with your wife and now it’s all changed.’
‘You think I’m making a stand by being with a widowed older woman who has a child? A woman my total opposite and who I tried not to fall in love with but did? If that’s making a stand then I would have chosen a less complicated one.’ He sighed for a moment. ‘I wish I could help her, I really want to. I promised my mother and I will stand by that but the people who work there, they deserve better than this. Sylvie deserves better than this.’
‘And what does Juliette deserve?’
He stared hard at Piers and gulped hard, shaking his head from side to side.
‘I told her I want a divorce and I want access or custody of my child. She hasn’t spoken to me since and the lawyers are dealing with it.’
‘And you expect Sylvie to bring up your child while you jet off doing what you’re doing? Are you looking for a mother substitute?’
‘If you told her that she’d punch you!’ Finlay laughed out loudly as Piers smiled. ‘I’m prepared to stay with my son, look after him, that’s what I want to do. Very much as you did for Toby and for me, Piers. I haven’t forgotten. I’ll never forget you being there when I was growing up. That’s what I’d like to give James.’
‘Then maybe Finlay this is the perfect time to change your life for the better.’
As she walked out into the afternoon sunshine, Sylvie noticed a taxi pull up just where she was heading and immediately looked at the person coming out.
It was Juliette.
There was no mistaking the stunning woman with lithe limbs, elegantly stepping out onto the pavement.
And Sylvie vaguely recognised her from the video of her screwing the chef.
She held her breath at the beauty and put her head down as she continued to up her speed.
‘Sylvie?’ she heard her ask and stopped rooted to the spot, wondering how she knew her name. ‘Are you Sylvie Mather?’
Slowly turning around, her face was frozen as she looked at the woman and nodded, her voice leaving her throat for a moment.
‘I see,’ smiled Juliette as she stepped closer and Sylvie stepped back, just so she could look at her face without leaning her head totally at a backwards angle. There was a faint smile on the woman’s lips. ‘Can we talk for a moment?’
‘How did you know it was me?’ she eventually asked, gulping hard and looking around, not hoping for a scene.
‘There was a picture of your daughter on his phone. You look alike,’ she said, before smiling gently. ‘Is there somewhere we can go?’
They crossed over the road and headed towards ‘Rick’s’. Sylvie was aware that people just stopped and gawped at Juliette, as her own heart and ego had completely disintegrated. Pushing her shoulders back and standing up straight, she led the glamorous lady into the bar and sat at the back.
Sylvie observed Juliette looking uncomfortably at her and wondered if the woman was thinking her husband was having some sort of a breakdown.
‘Would you like a drink?’ Sylvie asked, smiling brightly.
‘Espresso, please,’ she replied in her Anglo French, very well spoken, accent.
In her two word answer, Sylvie knew the woman was pure class.
‘Espresso and a skinny cappuccino,’ Sylvie grinned, glancing up at Rick behind the bar, who seemed shocked to see a beautiful woman on his premises. ‘Please?’
‘Yeah,’ he said, nodding and going at a snail’s pace.
‘I don’t want to argue,’ Sylvie immediately said and put her bags to the side of her as Juliette stared, with a blank expression.
The sunlight was coming through the glass ceiling and it just made Juliette look more alluring than humanely possible.
‘He says he’s in love with you,’ Juliette said and, from her voice, Sylvie knew she wasn’t convinced. ‘Is that true?’
‘He said it, I didn’t,’ she gulped avoiding eye contact. ‘Are you surprised?’
‘He tells me he loves me so I’m not sure what he means.’
Swallowing hard, she looked at Juliette’s face and wondered if she had a valid point.
‘I haven’t come here to cause trouble,’ the woman continued as the coffees turned up and Rick managed to shuffle back behind the counter, unable to take his eyes off Finlay’s wife, consequently bumping into another table.
Juliette looked around and got up quickly, going towards the counter to get some sugar.
Sylvie looked at the slim woman then immediately down to her feet. She was wearing very strappy sandals and her toes were… beautiful. Taking a deep breath she automatically twisted her foot where her two ugly toes were.
As she walked back to sit down, Sylvie looked a
t Juliette and wondered if Finlay could seriously be in love with her when he had all that gorgeousness wanting to take him back.
If ever she realised he was on the rebound, it was then.
‘As I was saying,’ Juliette continued putting the sugar into her cup. ‘I’m not here to cause a scene but I wanted to speak to you, face to face, woman to woman.’
Sylvie knew that sounded ominous.
‘Okay,’ she replied, waiting for what was going to come next.
‘I take it you know about me? Everything?’ Juliette asked with a half-smile. ‘Then you’ll know I made a mistake and paid for it for nearly seven months while Finlay left me. I love him but I know I’ve hurt him.’
‘You want him back?’ Sylvie said, knowing the answer immediately. ‘He said you wanted to go to counselling and try and fix what went wrong.’
The woman glanced at her for a moment then a pained expression spread across her face.
‘The mistake I made was not to get pregnant by the man I love,’ she said quietly as Sylvie did a double take and immediately closed her open mouth. ‘Finlay has everything a woman could want and I love him. I’m not from such a comfortable background and it doesn’t matter how high you think you might be on the social scale, poor is still poor.’
At that moment Sylvie wondered if that meant she had just a couple of hundred thousand in the bank, as opposed to her own fifteen hundred pounds sitting in the Halifax web account.
‘You wanted the chef to be the father of your child?’ Sylvie asked. ‘But then you realised it was more than likely Finlay’s, so you decided to stay with a man who you… do you love him?’
‘He has been generous and kind to me since the moment I met him and I am very grateful. Finlay has supported me when I set up the business and he let me get on with it. In the past few months he has made it clear he no longer wants to be married to me and I have to accept that, but I don’t want to scrimp and save as I have his child, I need a job.’
‘Well if you’re looking for one at my place, you’re out of luck,’ Sylvie smiled, taking a sip of her lukewarm drink. ‘I’m being forced into a corner too.’
‘Do you love Finlay?’ she suddenly asked, leaning closer. ‘Are you sure he loves you? You do know Marc-Philippe was the same as you.’
‘Are you calling me a man?’ smirked Sylvie knowing exactly what the woman was implying.
‘Your colouring?’
‘We’ve crossed that bridge,’ she replied, not wanting to say too much. ‘I love Finlay very much. He’s the last person in the world I would have ever wanted to be with but … if he doesn’t really love me I’ll soon find out.’
‘Like I did,’ Juliette replied and Sylvie noticed she looked a little upset. ‘I gave Marc-Philippe money to help with his business and now he’s selling the place, as well as calling it a day on our relationship. If I was a bitter woman I’d contact his wife but they have disappeared. Finlay and his mother are angry about the missing money and she’s threatening to close ‘Le Font’. I am at a loss at what to do.’
‘Why are you here?’
‘I wanted to talk to you about something. You know Finlay says he wants a divorce stating that I committed adultery which-.’
‘Which you did.’
‘Which I did but he hasn’t got any proof so that won’t stand.’
‘He filmed you having sex with your lover,’ Sylvie said quietly and noticed the stunned expression on the beauty’s face. ‘He told me.’
‘That was deleted,’ she flatly replied. ‘So he has no evidence now.’
Sylvie wondered if Finlay decided seeing his pregnant wife get screwed by a large black man was taking its toll on his ego, therefore deleting it.
‘Are you going to agree to the divorce? Do you still want him now your friend has gone?’ Sylvie quietly asked, hoping she didn’t want the man she was desperately in love with, worried he might just turn his back and prefer some exquisite French tart.
‘What are you willing to do to make Finlay happy?’ Juliette quietly asked. ‘What are you willing to do to show how much you care for him?
Sixty two
He walked into the hotel on the banks of Richmond and was led to the room. Sylvie told him to meet her there at noon and leave the rest to her.
They’d managed a quickie on the morning of his birthday before he had to go to an array of meetings. Mainly to show his mother he was willing to do some work.
Still he hadn’t spoken to Alice, even though she left a message and sent him a very generous cheque, which he immediately thought was his severance pay. The rift was upsetting but he didn’t want to show it. All he wanted to do was spend two days and two nights with the woman he loved and had desperately missed on his birthday, because she wanted to stay in with Daisy, knowing she’d be away for a few nights.
He knocked on the door.
‘Who is it?’ she asked and he immediately smiled on hearing her voice.
‘I’ve come to give you a good seeing to,’ he politely replied.
‘Well you better come in then.’
Opening the door, he stepped into the room to see there were blue helium balloons on the ceiling while blue ribbons trailed to the floor.
Then he saw her standing on the bed, with a sheet wrapped around her, a balloon attached to her wrist.
‘A day late but happy birthday once again!’ she said and jumped on the bed for a moment as he shut the door, flung his bag to the ground and walked towards her. ‘Welcome to your dirty weekend.’
‘Come here,’ he said, rushing forward and wrapping his arms around her. ‘Are you naked underneath?’
‘Old birthday suit for the birthday boy!’ she laughed before wrapping her arm around him then sniffed. ‘Are you sober after last night?’
‘That devious little brother of mine forced Sambuca shots down my throat. I had no choice.’
‘What do you want to shove down my throat?’ she smiled mischievously. ‘As it’s your birthday, I’ll take my dentures out.’
Sylvie was all over him. Nothing was too much trouble as she kissed, licked and sucked every inch of him as she possibly could. Looking down he saw her mouth cover his head as she closed her eyes. He wanted to come but not in her mouth so he gently pushed her head away.
‘Let me make love to you,’ he groaned as she looked up and smiled.
It was a different sort of smile, crossed with happiness and something else.
He couldn’t quite figure it out.
‘Are you okay?’ Finlay asked gently, as he reached out and stroked her hair.
‘I’m very much okay when I’m with you,’ she softly replied and crawled up his body before kissing him gently on the lips. ‘I just want to make you happy.’
‘Oh god, you’re making me very happy,’ he sighed, before turning her over and kissing her, pushing his tongue through her soft lips and forgetting everything for a moment. ‘I want to make you happy.’
Slowly he parted her thighs and held on to his cock as he entered her wet hole, feeling her hot and sticky inside before moving so fast, all the time looking at her as she closed her eyes. Her breathing became heavy as his thrust became stronger.
‘God I love you,’ she said, holding onto his shoulders and he felt like he was on the verge of coming. ‘I love you so much.’
As he came in her arms, he opened his eyes and noticed tears were streaming from her closed eyelids. Trying his hardest to catch his breath he stopped and looked at her, gently wiping them away with his thumb.
‘You’re making this very easy for me,’ she whispered, before gulping back her tears.
‘What?’
‘Falling more in love with you.’
Finlay smiled and felt an overpowering tide of love for her before another tide of tiredness swept over his body.
He lay sleeping in bed as she sat by the small balcony window, looking at the people walking on the path down the river. It was just after two and he’d been asleep for over an hour. Sylvie kne
w he was exhausted and partly hung over but she let him sleep, knowing it gave her a few moments to think about what happened with Juliette a few days back.
Since then her head and heart had been all over the place.
She didn’t know what to think.
Juliette wasn’t awful, though Toby’s description of Julie Le fuck kept coming into her mind. The fact she knew the woman was all too aware that Finlay had seen her having sex with another man, and she had sucked Toby’s cock, made her wonder what type of woman she was.
Then it clicked.
She was the selfish type.
Sylvie’s heart squeezed for Finlay, sleeping in total oblivion to what had happened. Half of her wanted to tell him and the other half wanted to desperately protect him from hearing anything about the encounter…anything about the agreement.
She weighed everything up then turned to see the tired green eyes looking at her, with the sheet just about covering his backside.
‘Come back to bed,’ he mumbled before smiling. ‘I need you.’
Letting out a massive sigh, she knew deep down what decision she needed to make.
Wanted to make.
‘You don’t want to talk about work?’ he asked as Sylvie shook her head and grinned at him. ‘In a fortnight you know what my mother is going to do, don’t you?’
‘I hazard a guess… listen, can we just enjoy our last hour together,’ she said quietly. ‘I had a wonderful time. Did you have a good time?’
‘Jesus Christ! My cock is so sore I don’t know when I’m going to be able to have sex with you again,’ he whispered, before laughing as they sat in a coffee shop down Chiswick High Road on Sunday morning. ‘It was worth it.’
‘Thank you,’ she replied and, again, he caught something in her eye he’d seen a few times over the weekend.
‘Sly are you okay?’ he asked gently, stroking her face, wondering if something was troubling her. ‘Was I a pain in the arse to be with over the past two days? Did you cry on Friday because you were pissed off you had to spend time with me?’