Love: A Messy Business (7 page)

“OK! CU soon! KB”

As soon as she pressed the send button and got the confirmatory message that it had been sent successfully, Kate took a quick look at her watch.  Yikes.  It was going to be a race against the clock now.  Colin would be at her house in about 55 minutes.  By the time she got home, she would probably have only about 40 minutes to get ready.  Although that seemed in theory to be quite a lot of time, she knew she had to have a quick shower, do her hair, select her clothes and do her make-up.  It was going to be tight.  By the time she got home, she was absolutely knackered, breathing heavily and dripping with sweat.  In 40 minutes, she had to be transformed into a fragrant vision of beauty and poise.  Fragrant?  That reminded her that she needed to put on the posh perfume that she had got for Christmas.  She had barely used it as there never seemed to be an occasion that merited it.  Well here, surely, was the opportunity she had been waiting for.

Kate decided to pick out her clothes first, before the shower, as she wanted to make sure she didn’t leave the selection too late and find out that she hadn’t got a thing to wear.   Underwear first.  The bra was an easy choice; she had a fantastic underwired one that gave her a cleavage that any man would happily get lost in for hours.  In fact, she had once accidentally dropped a peanut down there at the Christmas party at the pub, and there were no shortage of volunteers to help out with the rescue mission. 

The knicker selection was a trickier decision though.  The obvious choice was a G-string, of which she had a couple.  But that wasn’t going to be the most comfortable option and Kate was absolutely sure that tonight was not going to lead anyway where her choice of lingerie would be an issue.  Liz called her old-fashioned, but she was very firmly not a believer in sleeping with a first date, or a second date for that matter.  So that meant she could choose a more comfortable undergarment, what Liz had memorably once called her “bloody granny knickers”.   That was a bit unfair as it wasn’t as though they were saggy and baggy. They had a satin finish to them, rather than cotton, although she did have to admit that the cut was a bit on the “mature” side.  Well, she wasn’t a teenager anymore!

The next question was stockings or bare legs?   It looked like it was going to be a cooler evening, so bare legs would be a risky choice.  Besides, here was a great opportunity to wear those seamed stockings with suspenders that Liz had bought her for a bit of fun.  They would make her feel sexy, even though Colin wouldn’t be getting the full benefit of them.  Of course, that choice meant that a skirt was logical rather than trousers.  She opted for the new pencil skirt that she had only bought last week; she hadn’t even got around to taking the price off yet.   That left the top.  She dithered over that for a good five minutes for realizing that she was running out of time.  In the end, she selected a white top which fastened at the cleavage – it was one of those tops that you had to keep an eye on to avoid an unexpected exposing but it really did make the most of her assets.   Kate stood back and looked at the clothes laid out on her bed.  She was going for a sexy, confident, yet relatively classy look.  Had she achieved it?  Well, it was going to have to do because there was no time for anything else.

She hopped in the shower and frantically massaged the shampoo into her hair.  There was no time for conditioner. She rinsed out the suds as best she could while soaping herself down at the same time.   Good enough.   Out of the shower and in front of the mirror.  Get dressed first or do her hair?  Hair first, she decided – she could put it in rollers for at least a few minutes to give a bit of shape and body to her long, brown hair, otherwise it could end up looking like a frizz-bomb.  She used the hair dryer to dry her hair and her body at the same time, the heat of the air on her nipples making her wince every now and again.  This was not exactly a model for how preparation for a first date should occur, she thought to herself.  Perhaps she should not have been so quick to agree to the switch of days.  Well, it was too late to do anything about that now.

Her hair dealt with for the time being, she moved on to put her underwear on.  The silky underwear felt nice against her skin.  The bra did its usual heavy lifting in pushing her boobs together and up – not the most comfortable feeling, but the result was worth it even though unlike her mother (who joked that her bra size was now “38 Long”) the negative effects of gravity had yet to really get seriously to work on her chest.

The stockings needed some care as she knew that one stray fingernail would put a huge ladder through them and she didn’t have another pair.  The suspenders also proved problematic because they were quite fiddly to try and attach and this was the very first time that Kate had ever worn suspenders, so she was guessing a bit as to how they were supposed to work.   As soon as she thought she had cracked it, she turned around to look at herself in the mirror.   “Pretty hot stuff, even if I do say so myself,” she said out loud, more to try and bolster her self-confidence rather than it being out of genuine conviction.

Kate threw on the rest of her clothes, being as careful as she could be not to dislodge all the rollers from her hair as she put the top on.   It was only then that she realized that, inexplicably, she had overlooked the most important element of any women’s wardrobe – her shoes.  What sent her into a panic was that it dawned on her that she had never got around to taking her dressy shoes to the cobblers to get fixed.  The heel of one had come lose, and was hanging on by a thread – she couldn’t risk going out with it like that and she didn’t have time to hunt through her dad’s toolbox in the garage for some superglue as a quick fix.  She cursed her own laziness.  There was some justification – there was no cobbler in town, so it required a special trip to Bridgemount, which was a round trip of about thirty minutes, depending on exactly when the bus decided to turn up in each direction.  It wasn’t really such a long way, but the task never seemed urgent enough to get it done. 

Well, there was nothing else for it.  She was not going to borrow a pair of her mum’s shoes – she still had some self-respect left – so it was going to have to be the boots with the stiletto heels.  It wasn’t the end of the world as they were a really nice pair. But they didn’t really match the suspenders – her sexy high heels would really have done them justice.  There was no point in crying over spilt milk at this point.  She just had to put it behind her and finish getting ready.  As she thought of Colin, who would be arriving any minute, she envied men who could be ready in less than five minutes and still look fantastic.  It really wasn’t fair.

Kate sat on the bed with a bump and started to unzip her boots.  Why was it that boots looked so much sexier when the zip was down the back of the boots instead at one side?  Perhaps because it made one think of the back of a dress which could be unzipped frantically by an eager and amorous suitor who just could not wait to get his hands on soft, bare flesh.  The boots were tight around the top of the calf at first but Kate knew from experience that they would soon loosen once they warmed up.   One of the best things about these boots was that they made her legs look long and slim, like a corset really.  Kate had never been a big fan of her legs, partly because they were usually milk bottle white.

Realizing that she still had her rollers in, Kate jumped up and nearly stumbled right over because she had not gotten used to the heels yet.  It was like she was drunk already.  The rollers came out in a few seconds and Kate did her best to fluff her hair into something resembling a style.  Actually, that didn’t look too bad, she thought to herself.  Her hair was actually co-operating for once.  People always told her she had a beautiful head of hair, and it really was – thick and lustrous, and lots of it.  But when it was in the wrong mood, it was almost impossible to tame. 

Kate heard the purr of a car engine approaching the house.  She looked out of the window and saw it was Colin, bang on time.  There were only a few seconds to address the tiny little details that make any women’s appearance truly complete.  Bracelet?  Yes.  Necklace?  Yes.  Earrings?  Of course?  Nails?  No time for that, they would have to do. She grabbed her handbag off the bed and tottered downstairs trying to go as fast as she could without sustaining a permanently life-altering injury.  Her parents’ house was a hundred year-old terrace and so the stairs were steep, narrow and uneven – a threefold recipe for disaster for anyone in high heels.  Thankfully unscathed, she made it to the door before either of her parents had bothered to get up to answer the door.   For some reason, she didn’t want to introduce Colin to them at this stage.  This was a first date after all; now didn’t seem the right time to do it.  What if the first date was a complete disaster?  Better to wait to see if a relationship developed and then do the introductions later.  

Kate opened the door with as large and as welcoming a smile as she could muster, to find Colin there looking reasonably smartly-dressed but really not that much different from his usual standards.  He did look very, very nervous though, which Kate found to be very sweet and encouraging at the same time.  She was also nervous but to sense that he was as well made her less nervous somehow, rather than intensifying the emotion.

“All ready?” said Colin.

“Ready for anything!” said Kate brightly, eager to get things off to a positive start.  This was not another one of those lies that she had fed to Fred Yates earlier in the day.  But just because something is not a lie, doesn’t mean that it is true.  She did not, and could not, know it, but Kate was certainly not remotely ready for what was about to happen that evening!

CHAPTER SEVEN: AN INDECENT PROPOSAL

Colin nodded in approving fashion as he quickly looked Kate up and down as she stood in the doorway.

“You look stunning, Kate.  A great choice of outfit, if I may be so bold.  I really love those boots.  They are perfect.”

Kate appreciated the compliment but wondered what was meant by that last comment.  Perfect for what, exactly?  Did he have a foot fetish and was hoping to do some foot worshipping with them?  Kate wasn’t quite sure if she fancied that or not.  She had once got a foot massage from a very sexy masseuse on holiday last year, which she found to be incredibly relaxing and also quite a turn-on, but that was probably as much because the masseuse was buff and topless as much as anything.  Foot worship, toe-sucking and all the rest of it was another thing entirely.  She had always been a bit of a vanilla girl when it came to that sort of thing.  

“Well, it was all a bit of a rush, to be honest.  You didn’t give me much warning about the change of plans you know.  A bit more notice next time would be appreciated!”

“Ah, yes.  Sorry about that.  I promise to try and do better next time.”

“Oh, that’s OK.  I didn’t really have any other plans this evening, to be honest.  Only another episode of Coronation Street, which I can really live without.”

“Ah, Coronation Street.  That’s one programme I can honestly say that I have never watched in my life.”

“You’re kidding!  Never?  Never, ever?”

“Never, ever! We were an EastEnders family when I was growing up.  Oh, and The Bill.”

“I suppose that makes sense, being from London and all.  I just thought everybody watched Coronation Street, and Emmerdale.”

“Nope! Just a bit more evidence of the great north/south divide, eh?

“And here we are doing our bit to bridge the gap!”

“I didn’t realize we were in the business of diplomatic rapprochements but, hey, let’s kill two birds with one stone if we can.”

“So, where are we off to, then?”  As Kate asked the question, they were just approaching Ashton House.  To her surprise, Colin indicated, slowed and pulled into the driveway.

“As a matter of fact, I…err…thought we could do the main course here and then perhaps go somewhere later for dessert.”

“Oh! Right, OK!”

“You sound disappointed.”

“No, not really.  I just wasn’t expecting it, that’s all.  But that’s fine.  If you’ve got everything planned already, then that’s perfectly OK.

“OK, great!  The plus side is that I do have a couple of exceptional bottles of wine - one of which I will open as soon as we get in.”

“Sounds lovely.”

Colin opened the door and motioned to Kate to go in ahead.  Kate had been expecting there to be a smell of dinner cooking coming from the kitchen but she couldn’t detect anything.  Perhaps it was some kind of salad, which would be slightly disappointing.  As she moved further into the house, she noticed that the dining room table was not set either, which was also a bit puzzling.  Her rumination was interrupted by a sudden pop, which she realized was simply Colin opening the bottle of wine as he had promised.  In he came, proffering a large glass of red wine.

Kate took it and took a sip.  It was, as Colin had said, very nice indeed.  She took a large sip to help fortify her in readiness for asking what was an awkward question.

“Colin, I hope you don’t mind me asking you this…but nothing seems to be cooking and the dining room table isn’t set for a meal either…”  Kate paused, hoping that Colin would be able to see the point she was trying to make and avoid her having to end the sentence with something like “so what the hell is going on.”

Colin, himself, took a large swig of wine in preparation for his reply.  He paused for no more than two seconds, which seemed far longer to Kate, took a deep breath and then launched into it.  “Yes, well, I suppose I should explain that.  You see, the truth of the matter, Kate, is that I asked you to come here because I actually need your help.  I really need a big favour from you.”

Kate took another swig of wine, nervously.  Help?  What kind of help?

“It’s work-related as a matter of fact.  You remember that Japanese client that I was speaking to last night?

“Yes…”

“Well, we had arranged a session for tonight, but unfortunately my…err…colleague rang me earlier to let me know that her car had broken down on the motorway and there was absolutely no way that she could get here in time.  That’s really left me in the lurch as you can imagine – as I said yesterday, he is a very important customer and pays very, very well for my services – the last thing I want to do is let him down.  There’s absolutely nobody else who I could call to come and fill in at this stage of the game.  So…I was hoping that you might be able to step into her shoes, just this once.  I’d pay you of course and make it worth your while. And then we really could go out later, I really meant that.”