“It looks pretty big.” Liam stood back a little while I opened the door, the alarm starting to ring again.
“It’s the second largest. Pretty much the full works in here. I’ll give you a tour.”
He followed me in and I headed straight to the alarm panel. There was a fault that had happened before, which meant we needed a new alarm fitting. We were just about out of contract with the current security firm for this building, so we’d move to Killian’s and probably get better service.
“Sorted.” I entered a couple of pin codes and pressed a series of buttons. The alarm stopped and looked normal. “Where do you want to start? Out here’s the reception.” I gestured around us. It looked like a salon; sofas and minimalist art. There was no explosion of pink or overt girly shit. It was discreet.
“We’ve got ten therapy rooms.”
His hand rested on my lower back as we walked down a corridor. I opened a few of the doors. Each led into large rooms with treatment tables or consoles for nails, some had massage beds. We kept them similar; light and airy, with the ability to darken them. The treatments we offered were from the traditional manicures and waxing through to aesthetics that tightened and added. We didn’t want separate rooms for each, so no one knew what anyone else was having done.
I explained bits to Liam, talking him through a couple of the machines in the barest of details.
“This makes no sense to me.”
“Let me book you in at our men only branch. Just for a massage and to use the hammam.” I prodded his chest. “I promise you you’ll enjoy it.”
“Would you do the massage?”
I laughed, mainly because I hadn’t expected that response. There was no snarky remark or outright refusal.
He wasn’t being a jerk.
“I can do. Let me show you downstairs.” We came to the spiral staircase that led down to what had been the cellars and probably my biggest investment.
“I thought that was a euphemism.”
“Look at you being all flirty.”
He just shook his head.
Downstairs there was a small changing area and a dark heated pool. A sauna led off it, next to it was a whirlpool bath.
“This is amazing. It feels like we’re in a different country.”
“You’re meant to. It’s based on the hammams in Marrakesh. All these rooms have massage tables and sunken baths.” I opened one, showing him the inside.
“How about that massage now?” He stood still, looking at me as if he was seeing something that he’d missed before. There was an intensity in his gaze that wrapped round me and pulled me in.
“Now?”
“Unless we need to get back to your friends?”
“They’ll all be in a food coma by now. I don’t have any swim shorts for you…” I looked down his body. “But that doesn’t matter. It’s still hygienic enough. I’ll get changed – you go for a dip in the pool. There are towels next to the sauna.” I didn’t poke his chest this time. I put the palm of my hand on it instead and let it linger there.
He didn’t move it away.
* * *
We kept a store of clean white coats on the ground floor, washed and pressed by a service two streets away. It was warm downstairs, the heat kept to at least thirty degrees.
I couldn’t wear jeans. Underneath my sweater I had on a sleeveless tight fitted T-shirt and a bra. I pulled off the sweater and tee, got rid of the jeans. And then I paused. We were in one of my spas when it was closed. No one was around. I had an attractive man relaxing naked in my pool and I’d shortly be giving him a massage, using skills that were probably a bit rusty.
Would being naked under the white coat be too much like a bad porn film or would I get a pass for ingenuity?
I lost my underwear. Bad porn or not, my body was liking the idea of exactly where this could go, unless Liam genuinely was just interested in seeing what my business was like.
There was a passing thought that he might try for a percentage of my business when we got divorced, but I pushed it away. We had a pre-nup; my businesses were established years ago and he had enough money to buy me out multiple times – I’d seen his accounts.
