‘Am I interrupting something?’ My head whips around to the sound of Keir’s voice. Standing in the doorway, he looks far from impressed. In fact, he looks pretty pissed.
‘Keep your kilt on,’ his wife says. ‘I was just talking to Flynn here about Chas.’
‘Fuck’s sake,’ he grumbles under his breath. ‘You’ll gi’ the man a mangina!’
‘A man-what?’
‘We’re blokes. We don’t talk about problems—about that kind of stuff.’
‘Really?’ she says, sliding off the edge of my desk. ‘So you didn’t need a little push when it came to me?’
‘Aye, but not from the likes of him,’ he says, pointing in my direction.
‘Thanks, fucker,’ I say on a chuckle. Coinage chinks on glass next to my ear.
‘You said a bad word,’ Sorcha sings. ‘Pay up.’
‘Sorry, Sorch.’ I slide my wallet from my back pocket. ‘I forgot you were around. Sorry for starting that, too.’ With a five-pound note, I point in the direction of the bickering pair.
‘Don’t worry, Flynn,’ she replies in an air of long suffering. ‘They never argue long. Besides,’ she adds, watching the pair with ease. ‘When they’re friends again, they go upstairs to apologise in private, and I get to eat a big bowl of ice cream while watching whatever I want on TV.’
‘Cool.’ My reply sounds sort of strangled, but what the fuck else is there to say?
‘Do you know what they’re doing up there when they become friends again?’
Oh shit. I shake my head quickly because this is a job way above my paygrade. ‘No idea,’ I answer quickly.
‘Hmm,’ she says still studying the pair. ‘I’m pretty sure that’s when they have s-e-x.’
Chapter 19
CHASTITY
Paisley:How’s Operation Yoni going?
Me: I think I’d rather stick to calling my vagina Barbara, thanks very much.
I slide my phone away before Paisley replies with some other ridiculousness and make my way to the studio door to lock up for the day. I’m just about to set the alarm when the roar of a motorbike pulling into the carpark gives me a start. The studio isn’t in a great end of town. Also, “studio” might be too lofty a title because it really isn’t much more than a unit housed in an industrial estate because who wants to rent space to a company that makes dirty movies?
But I digress; the motorbike.
I pause at the doorway, one hand holding the large bundle of keys with the other wrapped around the heavy steel door. The clearly expensive machine pulls to a stop almost directly outside of the building. The powerful engine cuts out, and still I don’t move. While the registered office of my company isn’t this address, I still feel the slight warning edge of anxiety creeping in when I think of the weirdos I’ve had contact me in the past. Not that I’ve ever made myself the face of the company, but in the early days, certainly around Fast Girls inception, we did get quite a bit of media interest. And following that, a few strangers with even stranger requests had sought me out.
My footing is sure and my body tense as the rider dismounts and reaches for his helmet. A suit and a pocket square? This is either a man who means business or is hereonbusiness? Either way, I don’t think anyone is murdering me today. Not in the way my imagination had sprung to because I recognise the hard body under that suit...
Chastity Leonore Landry, peddler of posh smut, killed by the sight of a man in a sharply tailored suit.
The rider lifts his hands to his helmet, the action of removing it slowing to striptease pace, eventually revealing Flynn’s gorgeous, though slightly battered face.
‘Are you seriously wearing Tom Ford on a motorbike?’
‘G’day, Chastity.’ After our awkward Sunday lunch, it does my heart good to see his almost perma-cocky grin firmly back in place.
‘Well?’ I ask, sounding like my aunt Camilla. Out with it, boy!Yes, please,pings a voice somewhere in the vicinity of my knickers.
Flynn glances down at his suit before making a show of brushing invisible dust from his shoulders. I’ve never seen Flynn in anything other than jeans, apart from when we were in St Lucia, and I can’t for the life of me remember what he wore then. Though I remember every inch of him without his clothes because who could forget that? Those toned abs with a happy trail leading to a lewd kind of heaven. His strong, tanned arms and lightly furred legs. The pale scar on his side he’d attributed to a surfing mishap, and the way his hair had fallen over his forehead as his body rippled above mine.
‘You like thege-ah?’ he asks, moving closer in a confident swagger.
