Country Pleasures Read Free Page B

taxi before you could say Marco Pierre.’
    â€˜Haven’t lost your touch, then,’ murmured Janie, easing a peanut from her tooth with her tongue.
    â€˜I was on a roll. After this knock-back at work, I needed a good seeing to. It’s what I always need when I’m stressed, and that’s why I cast my beady eye over him.’
    â€˜I didn’t even notice him,’ said Janie.
    â€˜That’s because you’re never on the lookout. Wake up and smell the coffee, Janie. You never know what or who is out there. And it’s usually where you least expect it.’
    Janie laughed and pulled a couple of cushions off the sofa: one to sit on and one to hug. The wind rattled the latch on the door and she shivered.
    â€˜I don’t care if Antonio Banderas is out there today,imploring me to come out and play,’ she said. ‘I’m staying put!’
    â€˜That’s why you’ll never have adventures like I do,’ mocked Sally.
    â€˜No, poor old me. I’ll just have to get my kicks out of hearing about yours.’
    â€˜We’ll see about that. Now, where was I?’
    â€˜Zooming through London in a cab with a shady tycoon.’
    Sally picked up the thread. ‘It turned out we could have walked. He only lives round the corner. But there’s something about cabs, isn’t there? Very dangerous and exciting being in a cab with a strange man.’
    â€˜And you couldn’t have walked more than a couple of yards in those shag-me shoes, anyway.’
    â€˜I know. Daft. And those taxis have plastic seats, don’t they, and my thighs kept sticking with sweat because it was so hot in there. Every time I crossed my legs, the skin squeaked, and that little skirt just rode up higher. Very unsophisticated. But he just looked at me, and after a while I couldn’t help wondering –’
    â€˜That there might not be anything lurking inside those tight black jeans, after all?’ Janie cut in.
    They both laughed.
    â€˜Yes, in a way, except that he was so cool , you know? A kind of Bryan Ferry type. You could just tell . And all of a sudden his fingers brushed down my arm and I jumped like a scalded cat.’
    â€˜Oh, Sal, even I’ve had more than a brush on the arm to write home about,’ yawned Janie, sipping from her glass and absent-mindedly stroking the velvet cushion.
    â€˜Yeah, but we’re talking starved here, Janie. I hadn’t had more than a handshake from another human being since Jonathan and I got naked on that businesstrip to Paris, and that was ages ago … well, two months.’
    â€˜You’ll have to tell me about that in our next storytelling session. Tomorrow, in fact, if the weather keeps up.’
    â€˜Oh, it’ll be your turn tomorrow,’ corrected Sally. ‘My Paris story will have to wait. It’s a corker, though – Jonathan has the biggest dick you’ve ever seen. Stands right away from his stomach when it’s erect, all proud and stiff, like some kind of a –’
    â€˜Gendarme ’s truncheon?’
    Sally grinned lasciviously. ‘You said it. Just like that. It has to be seen to be believed. It’s a wonder we got any work done on that trip. Humping away we were. Paris in the spring, or early summer, it was, right on the hotel balcony overlooking the Champs Elysées, those posh shoppers trotting up and down below with their designer bags, all unaware of him taking me from behind, bent over the railings a couple of floors above them, the Eiffel Tower just a few blocks away –’
    â€˜I thought you were going to save it,’ said Janie.
    â€˜I’m going to have to, otherwise I’m going to explode just thinking about it. I’m just trying to explain to you why I was so sensitive, sitting in the taxi next to Mastov, after all that dreary celibacy. Like I said, a flick of the fingernail, right on my sunburn, was all it took.’
    â€˜I’m