Free Once A Bad Girl by Jane O'Reilly Page B

him nothing more than a glimpse of little black shorts and long, dark hair. He couldn’t decide if he wanted that to be her outfit, or her underwear.
    He pushed the door closed behind him and took a moment to orient himself in her space. It didn’t take long. There wasn’t much of it. He’d stepped straight into the living room of her basement flat, a compact cube of a room with a stumpy sofa tucked into the bay window and a fossil of a television threatening to crush a glass coffee table. A pair of pink porcelain cats sat either side of it, claws bared. At the other side was what he guessed passed for a kitchen, with a couple of gas rings, a battered kettle and a noisy fridge.
    How did she live with so little space? How did she breathe? One thing was clear though. Whatever her job at the auction house paid, it wasn’t much. Could she have been tempted to take a payout from Guilty Pleasures for setting up that photo? He fought the urge to duck as he sauntered through the half-open door that lay to his left, telling himself that the ceiling wasn’t that low, and he wasn’t that far over 6ft tall, and that Lottie was someone he needed to keep an eye on. It had nothing to do with the urge to be near her.
    A loud squeal greeted him. ‘What are you…Josh, I’m not dressed! Get out!’
    ‘What’s the problem? I’ve seen it all before.’
    ‘Last week!’
    ‘So?’
    ‘Last week you had permission to see me naked. This week, you don’t.’
    ‘Then I promise not to look. But before we go out tonight, we need to talk.’ He lowered himself cautiously onto the slippery satin throw that covered the bed. The bedframe groaned. ‘How do you cope with a bed this small?’
    The wardrobe door hid most of her, but it couldn’t hide the delicious curve of her bottom encased in those shorts that he now saw were some sort of clingy black lace. Strictly speaking, that part of her wasn’t naked, so he wasn’t breaking his promise.
    ‘It’s not small,’ she informed him tartly. ‘It’s a perfectly normal size.’
    ‘For a pixie!’
    ‘Then there’s your answer. I use my magical powers.’
    ‘Stop trying to hide in the wardrobe for a minute and listen to me.’
    Fabric rustled, and she muttered something rude. It occurred to Josh that he’d heard her say something similar, loudly, right before she came. Blood crashed south, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.
    He pressed his fingers hard against his temple as she emerged from behind the door, wearing a crumple of noisy black fabric that covered her from armpit to knee. ‘You can’t wear that.’
    Her eyebrows shot up. ‘I can, and I will.’
    ‘Okay.’ Josh held his hands up in surrender. ‘But you can’t wear that tonight.’
    ‘Why? What’s wrong with it?’ She was trying her damndest to be cool, but he heard the panic in her voice.
    ‘This is a film premiere, Lottie. The battleground of the serious attention seekers. We need something “wow”.’
    She smacked her forehead with the heel of her hand. ‘Didn’t I tell you? The shops are all out of “wow” at the moment.’
    Josh got to his feet. It only took one short stride to get next to her. Gripping her shoulders, he moved her to one side. ‘Let me see.’ He glanced inside, expecting to see neatly folded piles of pastel.
    He did a double take. ‘If the shops are out of wow, it’s because you bought it all.’ She had every colour in the rainbow hanging from the rail, plus a few more besides. He pulled out a strapless crimson number that would have made Jessica Rabbit blush, an emerald-green catsuit, a gold-sequinned jacket. ‘Do you moonlight as a showgirl or something?’
    She fiddled with the back of the ruffly black dress, her face turned to the wall. ‘I like fancy clothes. What’s wrong with that?’ She managed to move the zip maybe an inch. Josh didn’t bother to help her. No point. She wasn’t leaving the flat in it.
    ‘But you don’t wear them.’
    ‘I do!’
    ‘You