TWO
Oi Em can u c a car in visitor’s c/pk yet?
Even though her id was displayed on the flash message Emma knew it was Elaine because of her abbreviated spelling. All four of them chatted with the messenger service on their PCs. It was a fun and discreet way of passing gossip, especially when Mr Royle was in the room. She was sure it had a legitimate purpose, conference calling and the like, but no-one ever used it for serious reasons. She occasionally managed to speak to Simon, when he wasn’t in a damned meeting. Boring stuff; what do you want for tea, are we at your mum’s this weekend, what time are you finishing etc. etc. ad nauseum. It would be nice to talk to Simon in an intimate, sexy way, like the Internet chat that Elaine was always telling them about. She was a regular cybersex chatter with blokes from around the globe, all through her PC. Emma typed back:
No car yet. Be patient you desperate cow!!
Emma got up and walked over to the kitchen area to make another cup of coffee. As she was adding her sugar, the door banged open making her jump and spill it. She turned to see who had made such a noisy entrance but whoever it was was obscured by a stack of boxes. She glanced over at the other three girls and they were all looking at the man with the boxes. This had to be Lewis Anderson, she thought. He turned towards Ellis’ old desk and, from her vantage point at the kettle some twenty feet away, between the fronds of the cheese plant she caught her first glimpse of him; a bronzed cheek and dark hair. Not much to go on there.
Elaine, Maggie and Jane had got up from their desks and had made their way over to greet the newcomer, or to smother him probably. Once he had dropped his belongings on the desk and turned to face the room, Emma could see him more clearly.
As the others cooed and fussed over him, Emma took advantage of her distance and seclusion to appraise him. She put him in his early- to mid-thirties, with a strong-looking, tanned face, and dark, shortly-spiked hair. He was neatly shaven, with high cheekbones that put her in mind of a younger, less-grey George Clooney. He was dressed in an olive-green Italian silk suit which fitted him well; or rather he filled it well she thought to herself. She was aware of herself staring rather too hard at him, and was quite surprised, if not a little pleased to find her heart beating a faster than usual and her thoughts spinning back to her bus ride this morning.
The way she felt now reminded her of the time her lottery ticket had turned up with four numbers. She had sat there with Simon one Wednesday night last year, ticket in hand, along with millions of others. Also like millions of others, when the first number came out she had played that little game; “wouldn’t it be funny if I had the next one..?”
But that night she did have. And the next one, and the next. The luck ran out there. Four in a row. Not six but four – good enough for a hundred quid. She usually pretended that she hadn’t thought “what if?”, just in case it jinxed her, and was blasé about the next number.
The point was, you don’t expect it to happen, but it’s an incredible feeling when you want it so badly that it you almost seem to make it happen; to will good fortune to come your way. This is how she felt now - she’d wanted a bit of excitement for so long now, it was almost an obsession, but one that seemed would never become a reality. Now she was staring at Lewis Anderson, the man quite literally of her dreams and wondering ‘if only..’ Could she make it come true?
She snapped herself out of her reverie and decided to go and say hello before she was caught with her tongue hanging out and a lump in her throat. Cupping her coffee to her chest she slowly walked between the filing cabinets to where the other three girls were helping Lewis unpack his boxes. Even thought the distance took her a mere ten seconds to cross, she was so transfixed by Lewis that her thoughts, the way her heart was almost beating twice as fast and her shortness of breath all appeared to make it happen at half speed. Jane turned round as she approached and even her hair seemed to spin from her head in slow motion, like some stupid shampoo advert.
‘Oh here she is!’ squealed Jane, a little too enthusiastically thought Emma. ‘Emma, I’d like to introduce our new man in the office, Lewis Anderson.’
His deep blue eyes imperceptibly widened as he extended his hand and spoke with a voice like a box of molten Black Magic. ‘Emma. Lovely name, pleased to meet you. Like Jane said, I’m Lewis. Transferred from the Salford branch’.
She unwound her hand from the warmth of her mug. His smile was wide and warm and made her legs shiver slightly, but when their hands touched she almost gasped with a mixture of pleasure and fright. She had become so keyed up in the last few minutes that she thought she was going to burst. His hand was warm and slightly rough, yet firm and very masculine. She was close enough to smell him now and it was a light, fresh and vibrant cologne that he was wearing. The combination of this and his touch almost made her fall over. She recovered well though, she thought and made a pretty good job of not embarrassing herself.
‘Hi Lewis’. Not bad, not too squeaky. ‘Welcome to our little group. Would you like coffee?’ Great. But she’d have to sit down soon, her legs were shaking.
‘Thanks, but I’ll pass. I just had one with your Mr Royle downstairs. By the way, ladies, he said he was going to pop up in ten minutes so I’d make yourselves look busy – I know him of old and he doesn’t like slackers’
‘Ok ok’ said Elaine, backing away with her hands up ‘we're going. “Royle's rules are broken by fools”, so he says. We’ll let you settle in and er, catch you later’.
She almost could have winked there, Emma thought and instantly felt jealous. Jealous? She didn’t know him from Adam but felt like telling Elaine to stop being a tart. How weird.
Maggie put a Man Utd team photo back on Lewis’s desk. ‘Let us know if you need anything, Lewis’.
‘Thanks, I will’
Jane joined the other two in shuffling back to their desks, looking like a set of dejected kids.
‘Well,’ continued Emma slightly embarrassed on behalf of her friends, ‘I suppose I’d better carry on too. Accounts won’t account for themselves’ she laughed girlishly. Damn. Stupid.
‘Ok. If you must. I’d rather hoped you’d show me around.’
Emma’s jaw dropped and then snapped shut again. She was about to stammer something stupid but never got the chance because at that point Mr Royle came through the door.
‘Ah, Lewis my boy. How are we getting on? And Mrs Wallace, haven’t you got something to be getting on with? I’m sure if Mr Anderson here requires some assistance he is fully capable of asking himself, hmm?’
‘Yes, of course. See you later Lewis’. She caught his eye long enough to feel a spark in his gaze before turning and walking back to her PC.
The two men continued talking while he sorted his desk out and put his stuff away.
That was her first meeting with Lewis Anderson.
Chapter 3
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