Chapter 4 #2
His secretary, Marge, was already parked at her desk, her face a mask of efficiency and disapproval.
Over the years, Lila had given up trying to win her over.
Thankfully, she was screwing Ken, not Marge, so what did it matter what the old boot thought of her?
She’d soon change her tune when she was Mrs Lila Manson, wife of the esteemed cardiac surgeon.
Then, metaphorically, Marge could kiss her slutty black-knickered arse.
Lila chirped a cheery ‘Good morning’ to the bitter crone as she passed, long having established that she didn’t have to wait to be announced.
The noise of the shower in the office en suite told her that Ken had probably only just arrived before her, no doubt having cycled in.
She loved that he kept himself in such good shape.
He was over twenty years older than her, but his body – while it didn’t compare to Cammy – was that of a man ten years younger.
The age difference didn’t even factor for her though.
She’d always had a thing for older men, as her sixth year biology teacher had found out, when she bumped into him a year or two later on a visit to her uni to give a guest lecture to the science students.
They’d spent the next two nights in his South Side flat doing things that they’d probably once covered in human anatomy.
The sound of the shower stopped, followed a few moments later by the click of the door. Ken smiled when he saw her sitting on his desk.
‘Calling me this morning? Naughty,’ he told her, but she could see he wasn’t annoyed. He liked her boldness, just as long as it didn’t actually go as far as getting them caught.
A familiar thought ran through Lila’s mind.
Surely Bernadette must know? She must. How could she not have guessed, not have questioned all those nights when he was with Lila instead of going home to her?
Surely, for her own dignity, she should walk away and allow Ken to be with someone who was a perfect match for him?
Lila pushed the question aside, deciding to address the more pressing matters in front of her right now. She held up the coffee.
‘Room service,’ she announced, flashing a smile that came from the best cosmetic dentist in the city and had set her dad back ten grand. Not that her father had come and held her hand, but a BACS transfer was the second best thing.
Ken took the lid off, dipped his finger in, then trailed a slick of warm coffee from the middle of her neck down to the space between her breasts.
She gasped as he leant down and followed the caffeinated path with his tongue.
Lila threw her head back, lost in the double pleasure of his hand moving up her thigh.
She opened her legs wider to allow…
The buzz of the phone interrupted the crescendo of ecstasy that was working its way from the toes of her Louboutins upwards.
‘Don’t answer it,’ she whispered, biting his earlobe, holding him there.
‘You know I have to,’ he said, yanking his head away, all business again now.
The ecstasy was immediately swept away by a tsunami of irritation. That bitch Madge. She’d probably timed that, waiting for what she reckoned would be just the right moment to disturb them.
Ken picked up the phone, slipped it under his ear and pulled his tie on while he spoke.
‘Yes? Okay, I’m on my way. Tell them to go ahead and get him into pre-op.’
When he put the phone down, Lila looked at him quizzically.
‘So you do actually have a surgery this morning? I thought you were just saying that as an excuse to leave home early. Didn’t you only have an afternoon surgery scheduled today?’
‘An angiogram. Came in late last night.’
She couldn’t hide her disappointment. She’d booked out an hour slot for him this morning on her work schedule – her bosses didn’t need to know that the wealth of orders that came from Ken’s department required five minutes of conversation and fifty-five minutes of the kind of demonstration that hadn’t come from her company presentation manual.
So far today was turning out to be a complete bust. Unless…
‘Will you be finished for noon? I was supposed to meet my mum for lunch but she got a better offer. We could…’
‘River Hotel,’ he said briskly, pulling his jacket on and making for the door, already in fully fledged ‘doctor’ mode. Lila got a flutter of a thrill just from watching him.
God, he was sexy. She felt no guilt about their affair, but even if she had, this feeling of desperate attraction would have been enough to muffle it to death.
‘I’ll have a couple of hours before afternoon surgery.’
‘That’s all?’ Lila asked, exaggerating the petulance.
He smiled – that gorgeous, square-jawed smile that made him look like the doctor in an American soap.
‘That’s all,’ he repeated, running a tantalising finger down the side of her cheek. ‘But I promise we’ll make it count.’
That was the moment. The moment that she decided that she wasn’t going to wait any longer, couldn’t bear not to have him.
Enough of playing to his timescale. A plan had been forming in her mind for a long, long time, one that took bottle and a bit of subterfuge, and sure it risked backfiring in a major way, but Lila just had to have confidence that it wouldn’t.
She wasn’t prepared to spend another Christmas hoping he’d get away to call her.
She definitely didn’t want to spend it pretending to Cammy that they were love’s young dream.
She wanted Ken. And her. Together. Waking up on Christmas morning, swapping the kind of gifts that involved nudity.
No more procrastination. Ken would thank her when it was done and they were together.
By the end of the day, she decided, Ken Manson would be all hers. He just didn’t know it yet.