Free The Best of Times by Penny Vincenzi

lyrical about womb music) and headed for thegents’; on his way back he spotted her working another table, went over to her.
    “Hello again.”
    “Hello, Mr. Gilliatt.”
    She had a very slow smile; it was extraordinarily seductive.
    “I … wondered if you had a business card. I … well, I speak at a lot of these conferences and very often they want pictures, for the local press and so on. It’s … always useful to have a name up one’s sleeve.”
    “Yes, of course. That’s great; I’m supposed to hand them out, so you’ve just won me some brownie points from my boss. That’s his number and this is mine—Abi’s my name. Abi Scott.”
    “Thank you very much, Abi. Nice to have met you. Maybe we’ll meet again.”
    “Maybe,” she said. With another slow smile.
    He went back to the table and engaged very cheerfully in a heated debate on induction, fingering Abi’s card and telling himself that he would pass it to his secretary at St. Anne’s the next day.
    He stayed the night at the hotel; he had strange, feverish dreams, and woke to an appalling headache. He showered and dressed and scooped up Abi Scott’s card, along with his keys and his wallet, which were lying on the bedside table, stared at it for a moment, then sat down again and, before he could think at all, rang her number …
    They had an absurd conversation, both of them knowing exactly what it was actually about, while dissembling furiously.
    He’d like a copy of a couple of the pictures for his wife (important to get that in— Why, Gilliatt, why?); could she perhaps e-mail them to him? She could do better than that: they had prints ready—she could drop them off at the hotel; it was only round the corner from her office. That would be extremely kind. Yes, she could be over in half an hour.
    She’d been waiting in the foyer when he came down, leaning on the reception desk, fiddling with a long strand of her dark hair; she was wearing the tightest jeans he’d ever seen—they were like denimtights, for God’s sake—with the same silver-heeled boots worn over them, and a black leather jacket. Her perfume hit him with a thud as he neared her, held out his hand.
    “Good morning.”
    “Good morning,” she said. “Nice to see you again, Mr. Gilliatt.”
    Her eyes moved over his face, rested briefly on his mouth. She smiled again, and the invitation in the smile was unmistakable.
    “Maybe I could buy you a coffee,” he said, the words apparently leaving his mouth entirely unpremeditated, unplanned. “To thank you for bringing the pictures.”
    “That’d be … yeah, that’d be great.”
    • • •
    “So,” he said as they settled at a table, “do you live in Bristol?”
    “I do, yes. But I come from Devon. Born in Plymouth.”
    “Oh, really? How interesting. I come from Devon, too. I was born in Exeter.” God, he must sound ridiculous to her. Pathetic. “So … what were you doing before you worked for Mr … Mr …”
    “Levine. Stripping,” she said briefly.
    “Really?” He could hear himself struggling to sound unsurprised, unshocked.
    She laughed out loud.
    “Not really. Although it wasn’t a hundred miles from that. I was an underwear model. I worked for some cruddy local photographer who specialised in it. Publicity, you know. It meant having representatives from the manufacturers at the sessions. They liked to adjust the bras, that sort of thing. It was gross. What I do now is quite civilised.”
    “Yes, I see.”
    There was a silence; then he said, “Well, I should be getting along, really. Back to London. Back to the real world.”
    “OK,” was all she said.
    Right, Gilliatt. It’s still OK. You’re still safe. Go and have a cold shower and get off to London . But—
    “I’ll be down here again in a couple of weeks, another conference, in Bath. Staying here, though. Maybe we could have a drink.”
    “Yeah,” she said with the slow, watchful smile, “yeah, that’d be great.”
    And that had been that