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“I’d like to ask you to stay here just until I got a job and found a way to support myself.” She said as she sipped her tea. The cottage she and her father lived in, just outside town, had to be sold to pay the debts of her step-mother’s treatment. There was nothing left. For days she’d harboured doubts about the decision to call on him. She hadn’t got the slightest idea of what kind of person he was.
London was obviously huge and job opportunities were everywhere, he reckoned. At least it was bigger than Cardiff, where she and her father lived “But you have to finish your studies.”
She darted a brief look at him and lowered her eyes. “I know.” Her hand ran over her face in an anxious gesture. “I’ll go to an evening course.”
He was filled with pity. He could not just turn his back on her. There were many dangers lurking around a teenager and he didn’t want to be guilty of exposing her to them.
He raked his smooth dark hair helplessly. “Alright. You can stay for a while, until we find a way of solving this.
She opened a relieved smile. “Thank you very much.” She breathed out.
Later he showed her to her gloomy en-suite.
.
Chapter I
Amy ran up the front door steps happily. She had just received her grade report. The last of her school history. She had gotten the highest grades in all subjects and was about to apply to university. The last two years had been much better than she expected. She was warmly thankful to Mark. He had allowed her to stay up to the end of her secondary school and made the legal arrangements to act as her guardian, a role he’d drop tomorrow, when she’d be eighteen.
She entered the newly refurbished house and rounded a look at the result. The architect who managed the project kept the traditional aspects of the architecture, combining it with the most modern resources. The result was cosiness, comfort and smart gadgets. Amy made it a point to be of help and her influence showed in the details: upholstery, curtains, wall-papers.
She had been keen in helping with the household work as well, as a sign of gratitude. She’d wanted to get a job, but Mark refused to hear anything about it. So she tried to be helpful in other ways.
Mark arrived home at his usual time. It had become routine for him to come home and find Amy going about some task. In his thirty-six years he had never found a more positive and active teenager. It was a good team work, he assessed. She was sitting on an armchair playing one of her endless video-games. Sometimes they’d play together, which built on their companionship.
“Hi, Mark!” She said cheerfully and stood up on her five feet three to come and greet him.
Mark’s stomach tightened. She had grown to be a woman, this was undeniable. Her slim body acquired a thin waist, round hips and full breasts delineated by her eternal jeans and tee shirt. She had grown to a gracious height that became her. Her cinnamon brown hair fell in shinny ringlets around her face and down her back. He would always be amazed by her most remarkable feature, her translucent enormous stare, where every tiny emotion would pass as a bright film.
“Amy.” He complimented, erasing any uncomfortable thought from his mind.
She gave him the school report with a proud stance. He looked at it and was not surprised. After plummeting in the first months due to the changes in her life, her school story had been always brilliant. This had inspired him to give her a birthday present. Only tomorrow, he thought to himself.
“Congratulations!” He put on a satisfied expression on his atentive eyes. He had to remember that he hadn’t been totally honest with her lately.
Next day, Mrs Smith, the housekeeper, prepared a special dinner and a cake to the girl she was so fond of and who helped her non-stop. After dinner, Amy and Mark went to the sitting room to drink her first Port wine and savour the cake.
“If you could go to the University, what would you study?” Mark started.
“Well, I’ve been thinking of it these days. I believe I’d study business management focused on human resources.” She took a sip. “I’ll apply for a study loan.” She gave a shy smile. “I hope I get one.”
He didn’t smile, he turned his back on her and stared at the fireplace. “I have a proposition for you.” He put his hand in his pocket which emphasized his tall lean figure.
“I am curious.” Amy looked at him. She didn’t know when she had realized he was so attractive, but every time he was around her she felt a prickling sensation running through her body and she hid it behind a girlish behaviour. She had also seen a line of lovers go by his life. The more successful he got, the bigger the line became. She witnessed his company overrun all competition and stand the biggest in Europe.
“I’d like to sponsor your university course.” He started and turned to her. “When you graduate, you’d work for me for four years, initially as a trainee, living here. What do you think?”
“Sounds much better than a loan.” She smiled openly and paced to him. They stood close to each other, so close that she had to incline her head back to look at him. Her arms surrounded his neck as she held him for a couple of seconds, in a thanking gesture.
Mark was taken by surprise. He didn’t expect this show of affection. They had never touched each other since she arrived at his Georgian mansion. The feel of her was stunning. His hands lifted to her slim waist in retribution of her affection. But this contact was doing unconfessable things to his body, spreading a warmness he didn’t recognise. Afraid of losing control, he backed away abruptly.
Amy wasn’t prepared to feel what she felt when she held him. The heat of his body against hers, the scent of him, male and aftershave. It coaxed her to come closer; luckily there was no chance. As her arms disentangled from him she felt his dark hair, smooth over his shirt collar.
As he backed away, they stared at each other as if one was seeing the other for the first time. His eyes took on a predator’s edge, narrowing, focusing on her in a peculiar angle, his head tilted sideways, that made it more intense. He placed his both hands on his hips, making his suit coat fall behind his fists. His male magnetism all over him.
It became an awkward moment. Amy felt his predator’s look on her and it did strange things to her body. She withdrew and leaned on the window, her hands on her back holding the window-sill, for fear of doing something foolish. His body language spoke directly to her instincts, as if inciting her to lie down on the sofa and she resisted it. She had never felt like this before with him, even though she was more than aware of his primitive magnetism.
That affection gesture unleashed something in Mark. Something that he’d been repressing for he didn’t know how long. It had been there and he hadn’t seen it. And now it was set free, like Pandora’s Box. But he had to put it back, quick. He didn’t want to see it and he didn’t want to feel it.
