Free Naughty Bits: Too Hot to Print by Rebecca Chance Page A

their father, were now, respectively, a QC, a decorated naval
officer, and something in MI5 that he wasn’t allowed to talk about, but the child Judge Glossop boasted about constantly, the one whose photograph had pride of place on his desk, was
Victoria, editor-in-chief of Style , a fashion icon in her own right.
    Still, despite Victoria’s meteoric rise to success, all she had achieved in her thirty-four years of life, she had one more crucial goal to achieve. And – she checked her slender
gold watch bangle, a Vacheron Constantin antique which had cost her husband nearly ten thousand pounds as her birthday present last year – it was almost time for the dinner appointment which
might bring the ultimate prize within her grasp.
    Victoria’s heart pounded with excitement. This meeting had been a long time coming. She’d schemed and planned and manoeuvred for years to get here, worked every single contact she
had, charmed her way inexorably towards the ultimate goal: the crucial conversation she was going to have over dinner with Jacob Dupleix, head of the Dupleix media empire, the man whose name was on
the building, who made the ultimate decisions about who edited his flagship magazines. Jacob’s range of investments was enviably extensive. He had been an early adopter of the internet, and
his tentacles stretched far and wide throughout the media. But no matter how much money Jacob coined from all the pies in which he had fingers, his real love was print. His magazines were his
babies, his editors carefully chosen for their artistic skill and business sense, but also for their ability to incarnate the magazines they represented.
    Thin, elegant, hyper-chic Victoria was the living, breathing embodiment of UK Style ; however, this coveted, prestigious job, was, to her, simply a stepping-stone to the definitive job in
fashion. The peak of the pinnacle. The biggest prize of all.
    Picking up her Bottega Veneta bag, Victoria pushed her chair back and stood up from the desk. She looked around her office with a critical eye, at its polished teak floor, silk rugs and
custom-made cherrywood bookcases housing back issues of Style , and her own huge collection of photography and fashion tomes. She strode towards the door in her high-heeled United Nude pumps,
designed by the famous architect Rem Koolhaas – white leather ballet-style shoes set at a stratospheric angle to the blocky black heel. They were very hard to wear, very hard to build an
outfit around, which was precisely why Victoria had chosen them. Thousands of women would try to copy her by buying the Block Pump Hi and fail abysmally to look as good in them as Victoria did.
    By the time she had opened the door, Coco was already on her feet and moving towards her boss with a loop of wide brown sticky tape already wrapped around her hands, as if she were winding wool.
Victoria opened her arms as if she were being crucified. She stood there motionless, the huge white handbag dangling from one wrist, as Coco meticulously went over her with the tape, lifting every
single tiny piece of lint from Victoria’s clothing. Coco unwound the tape, dropped it into the wastebasket, produced a lint roller and repeated the process, now including Victoria’s
wide suede belt, which she had avoided with the tape, the delicate surface of the suede being too fragile to be touched by anything sticky.
    ‘Your car’s waiting, Victoria,’ Coco said as she finished the linting. This was a procedure she executed at least four times a day – when Victoria came into work, before
and after her lunch, and when she left for the evening. Plus, of course, after Victoria had been looking at angora or cashmere samples, or whenever she capriciously deemed it necessary.
‘It’ll be pulled up outside when you leave the building. The Fiji water in the car is chilled to twelve degrees this time. I’ve instructed the driver to take it out of the fridge
three minutes before he picks you