Wall Street Blues (Swashbuckling Romance) Read Free

targeted by a gang of three related criminals.
       Hillary surprisingly turned out to b e a wonderful emcee. Since we didn’t have time on our hands, having rented the hotel room for just two hours, we ended pairing up naturally. Everyone turned to the person next to him or her and immediately started a lively conversation.
       David Seymour, an Irish-American lawyer with a Chicagoan accent stretched forth his hand for a ha ndshake. I grabbed his hand gingerly and avoided looking straight into his blue eyes. A curly lock of hair kept falling on his forehead, which he returned now and then to its place with the back of his hand. I was quite cautious about how much information I could reveal to this complete stranger. I only told him that I worked for a bank, but I didn’t mention which one or said where it was situated. New York City might appear to be a big place, but I reckoned it was small as well: people are quite connected in this age of furious networking. It was hard identifying who had met or known who.
       David’s piercing voice struck me as strange and seductive. Such a voice should belong to a woman or singer. Another odd thing I discovered about him was that he was a mama’s boy; he intermittently made series of references to his mum.
       “My mum is a quiet woman, too,” he enthused when I told him my personality type. “And she cooks a lot, just like you,” he concluded.
      I didn’t feel comfortable the way he held my hand all the while. I tried to free my hand from his firm grip, but he resisted many times: he seemed to be deriving some pleasure from doing this. And his probing eyes! I was sure Hillary would caution him against staring into her body as though he attempted to x-ray her thoughts through some telepathic powers.
        For over an hour, I didn’t find anything quite interesting about him. He spoke slowly, and he could be sometimes incoherent. Was he also afraid or nervous?
       “You’ll like meeting my mum, “he said as we were about to depart from the hotel room.
       Hillary and Laura and their men appeared to be having a wonderful time chatting. They had only drunk a little of the wine served by the hotel; they were obviously engrossed in their conversations. On the other hand, David and I had plenty of free time to drink, munch on the croissants and other snacks supplied by the hotel catering services.
       We received a reminder call from the front desk that our time would elapse in five minutes. While Hillary’s and Laura’s boyfriends were negotiating with them about going to bars or restaurants to continue their discussions, I didn’t expect such a suggestion from David.
       At the lobby, I said goodbyes to Hillary and Laura as they departed from the hotel holding hands with their lucky guys. I was about to say goodbye to David Seymour when he grabbed my hand again and pulled me close to his chest.
      “Do you think we have also finished our discussion?” He asked.
       I was about to correct him that we hadn’t been discussing anything reasonable since we met over two hours ago. As passersby walked past us, I started to feel ashamed of myself snuggling up against a total stranger on the boulevard. I watched each car that went past with caution, hoping that none of them would belong to any of my relatives, friends or even our bank’s clients.
      “It’ll be cool if we can go to my house for a change,” he announced, unexpectedly. A statement that occurred to me as strange as himself! How dared him that he would expect me to follow him to his house and carelessly expose myself to be violated and ridiculed? He might have been a careless dreamer.
      I jerked my hand from his and was about to hurry away from his presence when he passionately lunged forward to grab my shoulders.
      “I understand you are justified to be afraid, girl. But believe me sincerely, I’m not a rapist or a ruffian. I’m a good guy,” he said, almost in an emotion-laden