A Forbidden Seduction

Debbie beamed with pleasure. If necessary, she’d don a red nose and do comic falls to make her mother laugh. The dress was worth wearing if it meant her mother could be left to cope in a good humour.

‘Let’s hope our customers think so too,’ she said drily. ‘I’m going to look a right idiot in this. Did I really send Penny and Judy out looking like demented Miss Muffets?’ she marvelled, flicking a frivolous puff sleeve as her mother did a solemn twirl with the dress against her aproned front.

‘You’re exaggerating!’ scolded her mother. ‘It’s not that bad an outfit. Rather pretty, really—sprigged muslin, and really demure. Pen and Jude loved wearing their costumes.’

‘But they were drama students, Mum,’ Debbie pointed out wryly.

A knot of nerves began to tie itself up in her stomach. She knew fate would have her wearing one of the costumes in a few minutes. Sprigged muslin wasn’t her scene; she was too tall and big-boned and her legs were so long that the dress would hang just below her knees instead of a prim calf-length.

OK, it fitted the image of her mother’s very English sandwich business—the plain, honest food, the big slabs of bread pudding, hunks of home-made pies and cakes that made City financiers’ knees go weak—but would the English country girl style look ridiculous on her?

The soft, floaty skirts with masses of petticoats had looked attractive on Penny and Jude, and had brought in the punters and made people smile sentimentally on a grey London day. But she dreaded dressing up and going out on the streets of London in anything other than the inconspicuous clothes she usually wore. The delivery girls had loved their job but they were extroverts and Debbie knew she wouldn’t have their chutzpah.

Torn between speed being of the essence and a sudden desire to crawl under a stone, she blinked at the pretty skirt, with its layers of stiffened broderie anglaise and taffeta petticoats beneath, and shuddered at the ghastly prospect of striding through central London looking like Bo-beep. People would stare. The knots inside her tightened.

‘It’s very pretty and you’ll look wonderful,’ said her mother with unusual firmness, affectionately tweaking Debbie’s thick braid. ‘You don’t get out much. Good grief, you don’t get out at all! About time you wore something nice and showed yourself off a bit.’

At the vote of confidence, Debbie gave her a quick but infinitely loving hug. ‘Could be fun,’ she said uncertainly.

‘Shut your eyes and think of England,’ suggested her mother with a smile.

‘I’d hit a bus!’ retorted Debbie drily, slipping off her apron and dropping it on a chair. Suddenly she had a new goal in life—to find out who was trying to cut them out of business, and make them walk up and down Oxford Street in fancy dress. ‘OK, let’s go for it!’ she cried with a light laugh. ‘Give the nursery a ring for me, would you?’

With commendable enthusiasm, she scooped up both dresses and dashed into the back room of the small business premises to select whichever outfit fitted the best. At last she was able to vent her impotent anger in the violent way she dragged off her blue stretch trousers, the old blouse and baggy cardigan with its much washed and wavy hemline.

The softness that characterised her usual expression had vanished completely now. In its place was a tight, shaking fury. ‘Whoever you are taking my business away,’ she vowed quietly, the words shooting with soft venom through her neat white teeth, ‘I’ll get it back. Every customer. Any way I can!’

She wasn’t born under the sign of Taurus for nothing. Her easygoing and loving nature hid a bull-headed determination. And she wouldn’t let the business go under—that could kill her mother.

Money worries had a tendency to take over their whole lives till that was all they could think about. They were surviving at the moment—nothing else. Darn it! If only they were rich! They often planned what to do if they won a million pounds. She’d love her mother to stop working.

Her dove-grey eyes darkened and her plush, sweet mouth took on a stubborn strength. They’d been struggling to keep their heads above water ever since her father had died nine years ago, trapped in the cab of his lorry on the M25 after a multi-car pile-up because some idiot had fallen asleep at the wheel.

Her lovely father. How much she missed him. How much she’d longed in the lonely days of her marriage to have a husband as kind, as thoughtful, as caring and responsible. In the pock-marked mirror she caught sight of her pale-as-milk face with its charcoal-fired eyes fringed by rapidly blinking sooty lashes. Slowly she straightened, fighting the tears.

The cycle of bad luck had to end. Who cared about wearing some stupid costume when there was so much at stake? She’d go out and win more customers, she vowed, and find the chutzpah from somewhere.

With her tall and womanly body naked in all its workhoned, creamy-skinned glory, she stepped into the frilly briefs and snatched up the larger of the two outfits to slide down the zip at the back.

The material whispered over the silky gleam of her skin, giving her an alien and luxurious feeling as it glided upwards. Letting the dress sit in soft folds around her waist, she realised she’d have to dispense with her bra because the dress had been cleverly cut and boned by her aunt to lift and separate without recourse to any bra. And lift and separate it did, shaping beautifully around her generous bosom and startling her with the effect. The only mercy was that the neckline was decent, with enough broderie anglaise to hide the upper swell of her breasts. But their existence was only too plain.

Debbie blinked at the hot-cheeked woman who bore only a passing resemblance to herself. The outfit was really quite flattering; but she didn’t want that because she hated people noticing her.

‘Oh, boy.’ she groaned, appalled to think that her figure was so clearly on display. ‘I can’t do it,’ she muttered in growing panic.

‘Debbie?’ yelled her mother. ‘People are demanding their orders.’

‘Oh, dam!’ she cursed softly. Hastily she tried on the replica eighteenth-century shoes, with their criss-cross ribbon laces and Louis heel. A bit tight, but bearable. ‘I’m on my way,’ she yelled back, bowing to the inevitable and fastening the huge bow of the little apron that snuggled into the sensuous dip of her waist.

‘Here I am,’ she cried brightly, all rustling taffeta and frothing petticoats. And despite her inner qualms she brazened it out for her mother’s sake, striking a theatrical pose in the doorway. ‘Voilà! What do you think? Am I sweet and countryish?’

‘You look lovely,’ said her mother fondly. ‘Stunning. The dress does a lot more for you than it did for Penny.’

Debbie looked down at her bosom in alarm. ‘It’s not too obvious, is it?’ she asked anxiously.

‘No. I wouldn’t let you out if it were,’ reassured her mother. ‘You just look beautiful, darling. Except for your hair. It’s all wrong.’

‘Mum...oh, Mum!’

Debbie suffered the unpicking of the slippery silk braid and allowed her mother to tease out the rippling waves till her hair hung in a great springy fall down her back. It didn’t seem very ‘country girl’ to her, but time was going on and she didn’t dare stop to argue. Besides, it might serve to hide her face if she blushed when people stared.

A quick check of the map, then, ‘Cannon Street and Cheapside, here I come,’ she said cheerfully, picking up the laden baskets. ‘You know where the list is for the other orders, Mum. The cakes will go in the oven at the usual time. I’ll be back for the next batch of deliveries if I’m not arrested for frightening horses.’ She grinned. ‘Here we go. Is this going to be fun!’

No, she thought morosely, it’s not. Dreading the coming day, she drove as close to her first delivery point as possible, parked, and hesitantly ventured out, the taffeta petticoats sounding irritatingly noisy to her sensitive ears, as if she was deliberately drawing attention to herself.

This was ridiculous, she thought grimly, suffering the double takes of several passers-by as she set off. She was having to make a spectacle of herself because some mean-minded competitor was acting sneakily. Her teeth jammed together in rage. Wait till she found out who it was—she’d grill than and serve them on toast to selected customers!

Sheer anger kept her working that morning. The journeys through the streets of London became something of a nightmare. People had seemed to think that because she was in costume she must be some footloose and fancy-free exhibitionist—despite the demure impression the outfit must have given. Soon she’d collected four invitations to dinner, three to the nearest beefburger bar and two other suggestions of the kind she’d never expected to receive now that she was a married woman—kind of married, she amended.

Remembering she was a moving advert for her business, she’d smiled sweetly and dropped a leaflet into every leering guy’s car, or stuffed one into his pocket, when she’d wanted to scowl and offer knuckle sandwiches all round instead of beef and home-cared gammon. This wasn’t what she wanted to do with her life!

But this was her last customer: nice old Mr Porter, one of the first people she’d ever canvassed. She smiled with joyous relief as she distributed lunch packs around the office. Slowly it dawned on her that the staff seemed tenser than at the office conference a month before, when she and her mother had done the catering. There was fear in the atmosphere. Very odd.

The lift took her to the penthouse suite. The doors slid open and she gingerly walked across the midnight-blue marble floor. Midnight-blue! Her eyes widened. Where was the beige industrial-weight carpet? Mr Porter had transformed the place!

Awed, she swept into the thickly carpeted reception-room which was luxuriously decorated in soft greens and blues, with enormous emerald and sapphire armchairs and huge displays of country flowers in shades of gold and orange. Even the paintings of autumnal English landscapes harmonised perfectly and the music in the background was sensual and seductive, smooth and easy on the ear. Stunning.

‘Morning, Annie!’ she said cheerfully to the secretary who was guarding the entrance to Mr Porter’s office. ‘I’ve got lunch for Mr Porter. One home-cured gammon, one smoked fish, slab of cheddar and one bread pudding. What’s happened to him? The office is wonderful—and he’s even changed his choice of food...’

Her voice trailed away, her surprised gaze fixed on the panelled door of the managing director’s office. Hugh Porter’s name had gone. In its place was a new name: Luciano Colleoni.

‘That’s my surname!’ she cried in astonishment. ‘How extraordinary. It’s a remarkable coincidence; my husband doesn’t have any family, you see. But what a surprise.’

‘Hugh’s gone!’ said Annie, stating the obvious in a conspiratorial whisper.

Before Debbie could ask any questions, the intercom buzzed and an irritable and very deep, alluringly accented voice said, ‘Where’s my lunch, Miss Howard? It’s late.’

‘The delivery girl’s just arrived, Mr Colleoni.’

‘Send her in,’ he grated in the ominous tones of a man organising a firing-squad.

Annie shot a doubtful look at Debbie’s costume. So did Debbie. ‘Um... I can bring your lunch in, Mr Colleoni—’

‘The girl!’ rasped Colleoni.

Annie raised her eyes to the ceiling. ‘Don’t be put off,’ she whispered. ‘I’m afraid he’s been in a filthy mood ever since he had his post.’

‘Fear no longer. I think I’m guaranteed to give him a smile,’ said Debbie wryly, tweaking her pinny.