“Thank you.” Phyllipa said as she left the office. “I’ve enjoyed our chat.”
Steven watched her leave, then sat in his chair and gazed into space, trying to work out just who the delectable Ms Gore was. He would have liked to ask a few more questions, but there was just something about her which spelled “Strictly Private”. Sighing, he almost jumped when the door banged open and Phyllipa popped her head around it. “Just one other thing, mister grant. I have to go out for an hour or so.”
Steven looked at her. “Is it company business?”
She shook her head. “Personal.”
He rubbed his hands across his eyes. “Is it a dental appointment or something like that?”
“No, it isn’t. As I said it’s a personal matter.” She wandered into the room again and sat down, uninvited. “Why, is something wrong?”
“We don’t like staff leaving the premises during working hours, Mz Gore.” He sat back and watched her.
“You mean, you don’t like me going out.” She looked at him, defiantly. “Is that it?”
Steven played with the catch on his pen, once again not quite sure how to handle her. “Yes, if you like.” He slung the pen on his desk. “Companies such as this run on rules, Ms Gore.” He explained, carefully. “We have to have them. They are written as much for your benefit as mine.”
Frowning, Phyllipa looked at her wrist watch. “What has all this got to do with me going out for an hour?”
“I’m explaining how we operate. You must have worked with other companies. All our rules are the same.”
She smiled. “I have never worked for anyone else, Mister Grant.”
“nobody? not ever?”
She shook her head “Not ever.”
Steven leaned back in his chair. “That explains quite a lot, doesn’t it?”
“Does it?”
Nodding his head, he waved his hand to the door. “O.K. you have my permission to take one hour off.” Smiling at him, she left his office, walked to the car park and getting into her car, nosed the Aston Martin into the mainstream traffic. It was getting home time for shift workers and the roads were under threat from excessive transport. A lorry driver, high in his cab, tooted his klaxon at her, waving the car on as it eased through a roundabout before chasing down a slip road on to the motorway. Moving her foot on the accelerator, the powerful car surged forward.
Sitting firmly in the driving seat, she started thinking about Steven Grant, quietly admitting to herself that he interested her. She was comfortable with him. She liked talking to him and she admired his laidback manner in the midst of a mind which must be brimming with technical complexities. Although she wasn’t aware of it, built into her natural psyche was perhaps the greatest gift which a woman could inherit. An instant ability to differentiate between the winners and losers. Really, it was a built in defence mechanism, attuned to keeping out the riff raff, but properly used and respected it was a gift from heaven. She smiled and wiggled her body sensuously as she wondered what he would be like in bed?
Keeping pace with the speed of the motorway she slowed the car to a crawl and kept it there before turning off at a junction leading to the town centre. The car parks were half empty, so rapidly slotting the Aston Martin, she switched the intruder alarm on, locked the car then quickly walked through the streets to the Imperial Bank. The Security Guard on the door saluted and the counter staff smiled at one of their favourite people as she headed for the door marked “Manager”. Knocking , she entered.
The Honourable Clive Hunter Braseby, the twenty six year old son of Lord Braseby, chairman of the family bank, sat behind his ornate desk gazing at the customer’s accounts in his hands. “Why do people get themselves into such a bloody mess?” he said half aloud, looking up in surprise as Phyllipa entered.
“Well, how nice.” He boomed, rising and kissing her cheek.
“What’s this load of crap that my father keeps giving me about you loving me”
Clive threw his hands in the air in mock horror. “For goodness sake, sit down,.”
“Well?” she asked, impatiently.
“You should be directing that question to my father. He’s the one feeding your family wrong information.”
“I’m directing at you,.”
He shook his head. “This business is to be handled very carefully by you and I. our venerate parents are not going to be satisfied until they see the pair of us going down the aisle together. It is their dearest wish that we tie the knot and merge our two great houses.
Phyllipa sat on the offered chair and gazed at her friend. She liked Clive. Although a trifle pompous, he was good fun. “I know, but your father keeps telling my father that you are violently in love with me.” She peered into his face. “Are you?”
“I’m very fond of you, Phyllipa. You know that! Years ago, I stood in for that brother that you never had.”
Phyllipa chucked. “The things that you and I did would have been illegal between brother and sister.”
“Happy times. Eh?” his eyes gleaming with memory pleasure.
“Happy corn field times, indeed.” Phyllipa agreed. “But, joking apart, we do have to get this business straightened out. You know what your father is like?”
Clive nodded. “I most certainly do.” Gloomily, he recalled his family’s aims. Old money hitching up to old money! Aristocracy bedded with Aristocracy. What could be more neutral, they asked?
Unfortunately, both forgot their respective offspring’s were highly talented and intelligent people who would rather make their own arrangements when it came to affairs of the heart. Clive’s mother mentioned to her husband more than once that his son didn’t’ respond to his wishes in such matters but Lord Braseby scoffed their misgivings. His eyes saw only the family blood lines, and to him, the alliance was as natural as English rain. “I think we should draw up some sort of fighting plan.” Phyllipa suggested, cutting into Clive’s thoughts. “And tell them once and for all that neither of us is interested in the other.”
Clive quickly grounded as he looked at her with an odd look in his eye. “Not one little bit?”
“Not one little bit.” She echoed, looking around her. “Still, there is always for just one more time between friends, isn’t there?”
Bending over him, her long fingers unzipped his flies. “You and I haven’t pushed the boat out together for some time, have we?” smiling happily as damp heat filled her hungry loins, causing her swelling nipples to heave against the silk of her business blouse, she pushed her hand inside his trousers to grasp his congested penis which was thickening nicely. Lowering her head she put it to her eager lips, gently teasing the head with the tip of her inquisitive tongue.
Clive’s eyes gleamed with carnal greed as she took his whole length in her mouth, greedily sucking as it stiffened yet again.
Abruptly, much to the chagrin of Phyllipa, he stood up, looked at his watch, and wrenched his flesh from her. “I must lock the door.” He apologised, wary of the fury in her eyes. “I wouldn’t like my Chief Accountant to pop in!”
“He could have joined us.” she complained, angrily. “Two men and one women are always more interesting than one on one.” Slowly getting to her feet she walked to the door, turned the key in the lock, then rejoined her friend. “There, does that suit you?” she asked sarcastically. “Now, perhaps you would like to select your favourite position?”
Clive nodded, begging her forgiveness for the interruption, bending Phyllipa’s body forward over his desk until her nose was almost touching the polished surface, he pulled up her skirt around her shoulders. “This is where I do all my best work.” He told her, ramming his hardened manhood between her eagerly spreading legs deep into her sodden flesh.
Phyllipa squealing with delight at the ferocity of the salacious invasion, wriggling her bottom, arching her thighs even further apart, lowered her pelvis in a desperate effort to make his entrance more facile. Clive, heavily grunting, pumped himself so forceful into her that
for a few seconds all that could be heard was the erotic sound of carnal collision which immediately transported her into a series of mind blowing orgasms. She gasped at the racing rapidity of the varied delights which one after another tumbled through her greedy body, whilst her lover fleshed his hugeness into the far reaches of her rapacious womb.
“Now!” she suddenly screamed, almost throatily, as Clive with a final gigantic thrust, which, moved her with the desk into the middle of the room, climaxed, mixing his warm offering with her own giant orgasm.
For a moment or two she lay there with Clive’s weight pinning her down, then struggled from under him. “You haven’t lost your touch, then?” she said, sitting on a chair and watching him pull his clothing over his rapidly diminishing phallus. “It must be all of two years since you enjoyed me.”
He looked disappointed. “Since I enjoyed you, Surely you got something out of it?”
She sat, deliberately thinking for a while, then laughed. “, alright. I suppose I did receive the odd thrill.”
“If I didn’t know you better, I would say that you were fibbing, and for your information it is exactly one year, eleven months, and precisely two days since our last encounter.” He eyed his desk calendar, his face still aflame with his effort.
“Huh! You remembered, then? I always thought that times and dates were usually a woman’s prerogative?”
Pulling the zip of his trousers up, he nodded. “So they say, but you, Phyllipa are someone I could never forget. That is why I will always love you.” He looked at himself in a wall mirror, adjusted his tie, smoothed his unruly hair with his hand, and looked at her. “How’s that?”
Phyllipa nodded. “All ready for the next customer, eh? And talking of customers, I’ve taken a job.” She moved her feet as he pulled the desk back to its original position.
“Pardon?”
“I’ve taken a job.” She repeated.
“Good for you.” He walked to the door and unlocked it. “I’m impressed, what are you doing?”
“S.G Packaging. We print cartons and things.”
Clive sat down again behind his desk. “That’s Steven Grant, isn’t it? He banks with us. Do you want to see his accounts?”
“No I don’t!” Phyllipa shouted, furious at the suggestion. “You would be breaking a trust.”
He pushed his hand through his hair again, pulled a face and eased his crotch. “Oh, that old thing!” Walking over to his built-in bar, he rattled glasses. “Like a drink?”
“Soda water and a slice of lemon, please.”
“On the face of it, S.G, is a well-run company.” He went on. “It’s what we bankers call “dependable” it has an overdraught situation, but then, who hasn’t. We consider it has great potential.”
“Look that’s private, Clive. You shouldn’t be telling me. I don’t want to know all that.”
“I wish we had a few more Steven Grant’s on our books.” He continued, completely ignoring her plea for confidentiality. Placing the drink in front of her he sat down again, sipping his glass of white wine. “What do you think of him?” he suddenly asked.
“Who?”
“Steven Grant.”
“I just work for him, Clive.” She answered, not wishing to discuss her boss with his bank manager. “That’s all.”
“What did your father say?”
“About what?”
“About you working?”
Phyllipa shrugged. “He accepted it.”
“It will surprise me if he has.” Clive sipped his drink “Still, never mind. Now then, I don’t suppose you would consider marrying me, would you?”
“Crickey, Clive! The times you and I have been through this charade are legend!”
He grinned. “Just checking, that’s all.”
“Well, check off!” she shouted, indignantly. “And, no Ms Phyllipa regrets that she will never ever marry Clive Braseby.”
He laughed. “That’s what I thought you would say.”
“I always do.” she insisted, “So you are wasting your time asking.”
“So, returning to our little problem again, we must get our respective fathers to accept the fact that we will not be joining one another in holy matrimony. Right?”
“Right!”
“Mind you….” He went on “I do have plans of my own with a certain lady.”
His visitor looked at him, quizzically. “Really, . I’m pleased for you. Do I know her?”
“I really don’t know.” He shrugged his shoulders. “But, I wouldn’t have thought so, although she does work somewhere in the city. But, she won’t tell me where.”
“And I can see you are not going to tell me her name.” Phyllipa hazarded. “Am I right?”
“Dead right” he pulled a wry face. “It’s still very much of a secret. I don’t want my family to know at the moment.”
“Is it serious?”
“ Apart from you, she is the best thing that has ever happened to me.”
She nodded knowingly. Clive was a warm generous guy, genial to the extreme, but she knew he was no match for her father, who would probably go crazy when his marital intentions became known. “Clive. I need a favour.”
Sipping the last of his wine, he grinned. “I thought I just did you one.”
Phyllipa clicked her tongue in mock vexation. “Huh! And there’s me thinking I had granted you one. Silly me, eh?”
“What can I do for you?” he asked.
“I need a post restante. An address I can give S.G Packaging. I don’t wish to bring “Rosewood” into things. They just know me as Phyllipa Gore at the works and I’d like to keep it that way.”
Clive nodded. “I understand. I’ve got a furnished flat that I don’t often use. You can have that one if you want it?”
“I don’t want to use it.” Phyllipa explained. “I just want the address. Where is it?”
“Knightsbridge.”
“Oh dear! That’s almost as bad as “Rosewood”.
“Tell them you live at the cheap end.” Clive suggested.
“There isn’t a cheap end.”
“Come on, Phyllipa wake up, a two up two down isn’t going to fit with your designer clothes, is it?”
“You’re right. O.K., Knightsbridge it is.”
Clive’s eyes narrowed. “Since meeting this new friend of mine, I’ve come to realise that if something is difficult to acquire a few white lies don’t come amiss.”
She stood up, smoothing her clothing down. “I wouldn’t like my boss to think I am fibbing to him. It’s just sometimes it pays to keep a low profile.” She smiled. “Like your secret girlfriend.”
Clive left his chair and accompanied her to the door. “Exactly! A very low profile.”
“Keep in touch. I have a feeling that perhaps you and I may need one another’s help in the near future.”
“You’ll want this.” Scribbling on a business card, he handed it to her. “It’s the address of the London flat.”
Phyllipa thanked him, touching his lips with her own.
“Are you sure you wouldn’t like to marry me?” he asked again. A smile on his face.
“Bye, Clive.” Phyllipa said, leaving the bank. Walking back to her car she started musing about her friend’s mystery girlfriend. If he wouldn’t tell her who she was he must be keeping things very close to his chest. Clive could handle his mother, but breaking the news to his father could be quite different and dangerous. Lord Braseby was well known as one of the worst losers in London.
Reaching her car. Phyllipa climbed in, started the engine, and two minutes later joined the motorway traffic, taking the route home to “Rosewood”.
The factory was busy, the huge printing machine was thundering, shaking the very building as the staff rushed about their various tasks.
The Managing Director walked through the print floor and smiled. They were all on station!
A BT engineer with a pair of coloured telephones in his arms brushed past him and disappeared into the offi
ce allotted to Ms Gore. Fitted with curiosity, Steven entered and watched her giving instructions on the positioning of the instruments and shook his head in astonishment. He hadn’t given anyone instructions of any kind on additional telephones to be installed. In fact, he hadn’t given instructions on any additions of any kind to the spare office. But, someone had, the floor was covered in thick carpeting and surrounding the brand new desk, Swedish office furniture was dotted. Someone rudely pushed him out of the way as an outside supplier plonked a huge rubber tree down, whilst a strange face wired the latest fax machine to the wall. Suddenly Phyllipa saw him and waved a manicured hand. “How do you like it?” she asked, indicating the luxury of the renovated room.
Steven did his best with a frown. “I love it. But, I never authorised it.”
She stared at him. “So?”
“Ms Gore.” He spoke slowly. “The route of trouble-shooting within this company does not give you carte blanche to purchase a load of expensive furniture.” He worked on the frown again, but found difficulty in matching the defiance in her eyes. “Damn it!” He swore. “This is another armchair story! I don’t want you turning this place into a three ringed circus. This is a quality production unit.”
Phyllipa flicked a strand of hair back into line. “I’m sorry you think that.” She indicated the door to someone carrying a brass name plate. “I want it on that door, and I want it perfectly horizontal.” She smiled and turned back to Steven who waited patiently. “You were saying?”
“Ms Gore, you are undermining my authority. The switchboard is already overloaded and….” He broke off as Phyllipa interrupted him. “These are outside lines and not touching your switchboard, Steven. They are outside lines.”
Steven rocked on his heels. “Oh, are they really.”
“And the furniture belongs to me.” She gazed at his face intently again expecting him to say something, but Steven just shook his head. He couldn’t think of the appropriate answer and there was a moment silence. “O.K.” he suddenly said, “But no curtains is that understood?”
Phyllipa’s face glowed with hidden laughter. “Of course not. Whoever heard of curtains in a production unit.”
His Lordships Daughter Page 3