A Passionate Love Affair with a Total Stranger

by Lucy Robinson

  There was little amusement in his tone and I shook my head until he put his phone back into his pocket. Christ, he had finished with Susan. He was single and he wanted me.

  ‘OK,’ I continued, less firmly than before. ‘I believe what you’re telling me about Susan. And, for the record, I’m sorry. But my question is, why now? What’s made you change policy about not messing around with a colleague, John MacAllister?’

  ‘I just couldn’t take any more,’ he said simply. ‘My life was beginning to feel smaller and sadder by the day without you in it.’

  To my intense embarrassment, I felt my lip wobble. I was strangely moved by this. By John, in fact, who had somehow become smaller. More humble. More human.

  ‘Charley, I’ve never felt like I did when I watched you sleep in that hospital bed.’

  The lip wobbled harder.

  ‘And as soon as I told you I was going to get married, I felt you just shut down.’

  ‘Hardly surprising,’ I replied.

  John nodded. ‘Then when you came back to Salutech you seemed different. As brilliant as ever but your attention was elsewhere. I began to fear you’d met someone.’

  You weren’t wrong, I thought sadly, remembering the mad excitement of my correspondence with William.

  ‘The thought of you being with someone else was ghastly,’ John admitted, looking up in surprise when I burst out laughing. ‘What’s funny, Lambert?’

  ‘ “Ghastly”! That’s such a middle-aged word!’

  ‘Well, I’m a middle-aged man. Asking a beautiful younger girl, of whom I am undeserving, if she will give me a chance.’

  And there they were. The words I’d dreamed of. In fact, they were better than my dream. Never in a thousand years would I have imagined John laying out his heart for inspection on a starched white tablecloth. I’d always just thought that when the moment came – if the moment came – the circumstances would be quite grubby and sordid.

  I looked at him, all six foot four of him, and he looked right back at me.

  ‘Charley? Will you give me a chance?’

  I picked up my glass and downed my champagne, noticing that my hands were shaking really quite violently. For some reason the word ‘yes’ had stuck in my throat. What was holding me back?

  ‘Have a think. I’m going to the loo,’ John said abruptly. He trailed a tentative finger along my bare shoulder and then all but ran off.

  I stared out of the window at the lights twinkling on the Forth. John’s pied à terre was down there somewhere; he owned a bonded warehouse conversion near the high-end boozers and posh oyster joints around the Water of Leith mouth. I imagined waking up in bed to find him padding up to the bed with a cafetière and some sort of aspirational pastry basket, complicated jazz spilling out of the speakers of his multi-zillion-pound Bang & Olufsen. Being with John was what I’d always wanted. For years I had fantasized about us driving to work together, laughing about office politics, sharing our hopes and fears for Salutech. We would spend weekends in his architecturally significant home on the far side of Loch Lomond. And we could maybe even have that troop of super-talented, multilingual but slightly naughty children I’d dreamed of.

  It could all be yours, I thought. The life you’ve always wanted. Your perfect job, home, partner, everything.

  But there was one little problem. And having known John as long as I had, I had a feeling that it would be our final stumbling block. Elation suddenly turned to sadness.

  He came back and sat down. ‘Well?’ he ventured, when I remained silent.

  I shook my head.

  ‘What do you want?’ he asked. ‘I’ll see a divorce lawyer in the morning. I’ll call Bradley Chambers and just tell him we’re together. Face the music. Anything, Lambert. Just tell me what you want.’

  I stared at him, now truly stumped. This was the trump card. The promise I’d thought he couldn’t make. John MacAllister was finally telling me he would do anything to be with me. Risk his job, take on Bradley Chambers.

  ‘And Susan’s leaving England this weekend?’

  ‘Susan is leaving this weekend.’

  ‘Um … Well, yes!’ I heard myself saying. ‘Yes! Call me when she’s gone and then we’ll … We … Wow! More champagne, John, more champagne!’

  Two hours later, happy and drunk, I walked into the lift and leaned against the wall as John directed it to the ground floor. It had been quite an evening.

  ‘I’m excited,’ I told him timidly.

  John looked at me for a few seconds, then moved over to stand in front of me. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said conversationally. ‘I know we agreed to wait until next week in the interests of decorum but I’m going to have to grab you and ravish you.’ And with that he leaned down and kissed me, hard.

  For a second I struggled but I knew I had no chance. I kissed him back, running my hands up and down his shirt inside his jacket, pressing against him.

  The lift doors suddenly pinged open and we sprang apart, only to find ourselves in an empty corporate vestibule. John straightened his suit jacket and offered me his arm. ‘I’m going to walk you two metres round the corner to George Street,’ he said, ‘where I will flag down a taxi.’

  ‘But I only live on –’ I started to argue.

  John put a finger over my lips. ‘I don’t give a monkey’s vagina where you live, Charley Lambert. You are coming home with me and that is a direct order.’

  ‘Fuck me …’ I breathed, staring around me in wonder. John smiled, hanging his blazer on a rusted iron hauling hook.

  ‘I do rather hope to,’ he said pleasantly, taking my cardigan off. His hands on my shoulders made me shiver and he dropped an expertly placed kiss on the nerve endings at the bottom of my neck. I breathed in sharply, feeling myself fall apart. I knew I should wait until Susan was at least out of the country and living on her new wine estate but – realistically – the likelihood of that happening was minimal. I was here. John was here. We’d waited seven years.

  John’s apartment took up the whole top floor of his building and featured three huge walls of plate glass. An exterior balcony ran the entire length of the room, dotted with pieces of beautiful driftwood furniture and rich yellow globes of light hanging down from the edge of the roof. The interior was subtly lit with a combination of larger, red globes and very technical-looking spotlights on tiered racks, plus a few softly glowing globes arranged around the wooden floor. Enormous, slightly worn Inca rugs lay under some very expensive furniture and a pristine black kitchen ran across the bricked wall at the back. Separating it from the room was a long marble breakfast bar, just like mine. I suppressed a grin. John was right about most things, rather annoyingly.

  ‘Where’s your bedroom?’ I asked suddenly.

  ‘Oh, Lambert, where’s the romance?’ John asked, a mock-peeved expression on his face.

  I grinned. ‘I’m interested from a design point of view,’ I informed him.

  John turned to a metal door. ‘In here,’ he said, flicking a switch. I gasped – it was magnificent. More globes of light were arranged on the floor. The bed was gigantic and an entire wall was made of glass. I grinned with pleasure. ‘Wow.’

  And then: ‘ARRGH!’ The lights had suddenly gone out and an automatic blind was sliding fast down the floor-to-ceiling window. ‘John! I can’t see! Put the lights on!’ I heard an evil giggling from somewhere over my right shoulder. ‘Now!’

  ‘Make me,’ he breathed, somewhere over my left shoulder.

  I felt afraid and excited, not to mention madly aroused. ‘Where are you?’ I said softly.

  A low chuckle, this time somewhere in front of me.

  I tingled in ways that were not related to alcohol. ‘John …’ I said. I was breathing rapidly now, almost unable to believe that I was only minutes away from a dirty tryst with John MacAllister. If I figured out where the bastard was hiding.

  I screamed as a finger trailed up my ankle and then was whipped away. I grabbed out in the direction I thought he was in, an
d got nothing but a handful of thin air. Another low chuckle came from what sounded like completely the other side of the room, near the bed.

  ‘John!’

  ‘Lambert, I should tell you I’ve got the most enormous erection I’ve ever had. You’re going to have to find it and deal with it very quickly.’

  I breathed in slowly, enjoying this prospect.

  I started to move over to where his voice had come from and heard a rumble of laughter to my left. ‘It’s not getting any smaller,’ he said softly.

  I lunged in the direction of his voice but still found nothing. This was excruciating. There was a pulse beating between my legs. ‘I can’t take much more of this,’ I said. ‘If you don’t come and find me, John MacAllister, I’m going to take my clothes off and make myself come and you won’t be invited.’

  I heard a soft groan, very near me now. ‘I would like that very, very much … but I’d have to watch, Lambert. And my dratted night-vision goggles went missing.’

  I began to shake with laughter. ‘You’re a mad pervert! Damn you, scampering around with your massive erection, torturing me. I’m getting naked!’ I unzipped the Stella McCartney, which fell to the floor with a soft, clothy thump.

  ‘Oh, good God,’ John muttered, from what sounded like just in front of me. ‘Charlotte Lambert is shedding her clothes in my bedroom.’

  I took my bra and knickers off and stood there, feeling my whole body pulsating. ‘Correct,’ I told him. ‘Naked and very, very ready.’

  I screamed again as a hand reached out from nowhere and grazed past my nipples. ‘Bullseye,’ John murmured, his breath sounding raggedy. I made a sudden lunge to my right and then I had him.

  My hand closed around his arm and I swung myself over, clamping my body against his. He slid his hands up into my hair, tilted my head back and kissed me very, very hard. We both gasped as he slid his erection along the gap between the top of my thighs. It was, as promised, pretty enormous. It grazed my clitoris as he moved, kissing my neck and shoulders. I held on to his torso for all I was worth and he moved himself against me, still kissing me hard. I slid my hand down his back and grabbed his rewardingly muscular backside, pulling him in.

  ‘Lambert, I …’ he muttered hoarsely ‘… I don’t know what to do. I want to taste you, I want to be inside you, I want to see you, I want to feel that wonderful mouth of yours around my cock …’

  ‘Right,’ I said, digging my hands up through his hair. I pushed him downwards on to what felt like a very expensive hide rug beneath us. ‘I suggest we try all of the above in that order. Item one on your agenda: tasting me.’

  I lay back against the end of the bed as John kissed his way down my chest and stomach and arrived between my legs. At first, he just breathed hot breath on me, until I was writhing and begging. A slightly unwelcome memory of Hailey popped into my head, of her eyes sparkling as she said, ‘I bet he’d just make you scream in bed!’

  As John’s tongue finally made firm contact with me, and his fingers slid into places where I’d never expected John MacAllister’s fingers to be, I started to do just that. ‘Oh, GOD!’ I shrieked. ‘John!’

  Chapter Thirteen

  ‘I don’t know what you find so funny, Lambert,’ John said. He was wearing his favourite peeved expression, a mixture of furrowed brow and wickedly twinkling eye.

  I pulled a section of pricey feather duvet over my face but carried on laughing. ‘It’s just –’ I broke off, laughing even harder.

  John looked down at his naked body. ‘Are you laughing at my physique?’ he asked. ‘Because really, Lambert, I don’t see anything to laugh at here.’

  ‘No!’ I giggled. ‘It’s just … It’s just that when you ran off to the loo in the restaurant last night I was looking down at Leith and imagining spending the night with you and this is exactly how the day started! You padding towards me with a wanky cafetière and a basket full of aspirational pastries!’

  John grinned. ‘You’re every bit as much of a wanker as I am,’ he said. ‘I ordered these at great expense to impress you. The least you could do would be to eat one and shut up. There’s even a brown one made of horrible health-food things in case you decide to be difficult,’ he added.

  ‘They’re lovely,’ I replied. ‘And you’re naughty, assuming that I’d come home with you.’ John smiled and got into bed next to me.

  ‘Well, of course you were going to come.’ He grinned, leaning down to kiss my left nipple. ‘You’ve waited seven years, Lambert.’

  As we shot through the early-morning streets of Leith twenty-five minutes later, BBC Gaelic gabbling away softly in the background and smatterings of rain driving into John’s windscreen, I began to sober up mentally.

  I turned my head and watched him driving. He looked strong, relaxed and undeniably happy. ‘Stop perving at me, Lambert,’ he said, without glancing round.

  ‘I thought you’d ditched Lambert in favour of Charley,’ I said, ‘as part of your attempt to convey the depth of your sincerity about us.’

  ‘I’ll call you Charley if you want,’ he said, placing a large warm hand on my thigh.

  ‘We have to be really, really careful,’ I said quietly.

  John turned the radio off and the sound of the rain hitting the windscreen increased. ‘I know. At a time like this … I’m sure you won’t be discussing it with anyone.’

  ‘Most certainly not,’ I said. Someone who looked very much like Hailey was jogging across the road ahead of us at the traffic lights. I leaned forward, rubbing the windscreen with my sleeve, but the rain was too heavy for me to be sure. Hailey didn’t run anyway. In Leith or anywhere. I settled back and tried to come to terms with the enormity of what had happened. Oh, my God! Arrgh!

  Fifteen minutes later I was sitting at my desk, eyes down, convinced that everyone knew what John had done to me that morning after I’d eaten the ‘horrible’ wholegrain pastry. The memory of it both delighted and terrified me. John was right: we’d both be dead if Bradley Chambers found out.

  I turned my chair to the window to take a deep breath and compose myself. Tomorrow was the launch day for Simitol and tonight we were all flying to London, ready for a day of press interviews. It was the biggest day of my career: I simply couldn’t have a head spinning with mad thoughts – indeed with anything that didn’t involve Salutech.

  I felt rather irritated when, a few minutes later, an email entitled ‘William/Shelley’ dropped into my inbox from Sam.

  Good morning, you dirty woman, I thought we agreed there was to be no rogering your boss last night? Anyway, I know you’re up against it today but any chance you could reply to William’s email? I really think we need to keep these two simmering: they both seem to go mad when there’s any gap in communications. Sorry to ask but knowing you it’ll only take twenty seconds. Have a good day. Bowes, Acting Director, First Date Aid X.

  ‘Piss OFF, William and Shelley,’ I muttered, under my breath. ‘I’m busy!’

  But I had never been good at saying no to people when they asked me to do things. As fast as I could, I opened up Shelley’s email and read Sam’s latest offering. As usual he’d done a good job and – as planned – ‘William’ was now asking about Shelley’s family.

  Without fully realizing what I was doing, I went a little off-piste with my response.

  My family … well, my father is credited with having invented vibrating anal eggs. He now runs a naturist resort in Ibiza. My mother is an art thief and was last seen skulking in a bush outside Drumlanrig Castle in 2003. The world’s press reported the theft of Leonardo’s Madonna of the Yarnwinder the next day and I haven’t heard from her since. But a large sum of money is deposited anonymously into my bank account annually so she must be alive. Oh, and my brother is having an affair with the milkman. Pedestrian stuff.

  Bugger, work calls. I’d better go. Thank God I’m leaving tomorrow. And I just cannot believe we’re seeing The Pearl Fishers, you have no idea how much this means to me. It is the best second dat
e ever.

  Shelley x

  John walked past the glass walls of the comms office, throwing a gigantic grin in my direction. Oh, fuck it, I thought happily, adding a whole row of kisses.

  As I closed down Shelley’s email and got to work, an instant message pinged onto my screen.

  MacAllister, John: I know we have to be careful

  MacAllister, John: BUT

  MacAllister, John: Dear GOD Lambert! I cannot stop smiling.

  MacAllister, John: You have the most divine body I have ever had the pleasure of servicing.

  MacAllister, John: I am a walking erection today.

  I blushed deeply, checking over my computer to see if anyone was watching me. Then I put my head down and worked. John having fallen into place somehow helped me shut out everything else and concentrate solely on tomorrow’s launch. I worked without stopping until eight p.m. when a car arrived to take me to the airport. All the boxes were ticked, the people briefed, the problems ironed out. By the time we took off, I knew we were ready.

  Maybe I’m getting another crack at a perfect life, I thought, as our plane banked down into the glittering light maze of London. I was truly back on top of work; Margot had somehow faded away; the madness of my William phase had vanished. John wanted to start a life with me; Sam was running my brilliant little business for me; and, even though Granny Helen was ill, my family were still as close and loving as ever.

  I wasn’t really sure what I wanted beyond this.

  Three hours later, wrapped in a combination of luxurious sheets and a slumbering John, I decided I didn’t want anything else. Which must surely mean that I had arrived. Perfection.

  The next day was caffeinated, stressful and difficult. Unlike just about every other pharmaceutical company in the UK, we did not have our offices out near Heathrow so we couldn’t very easily invite the press to come to us. Today we were running around between various media studios in the morning and giving interviews at Claridges in the afternoon. A mini press launch had been organized at the last minute and was taking place at the end of the day. This didn’t happen for drug launches any more. Today was big. The pressure was on.