CHAPTER 1
Riding on the 8:17 into London, Jo Hart watched the broad shouldered blond guy approach down the aisle and resumed painting her finger nails, timing the brush strokes with the sway of the carriage.
The guy stopped, picked up her handbag that lay beside her on the outside seat and tossed it on to the floor beside her feet and sat down.
"Hey what are you doing? That's my handbag."
"Young lady I paid for a ticket to ride this train seated. Did you buy a full fare ticket to ride your handbag on that seat?"
"Of course not."
"Then stop your bitching."
Jo was furious but suspecting it was a confrontation she was unlikely to win, she attempted to shrink away from him and continued with her nails.
Now the asshole was watching what she was doing.
"Stop watching?"
He made no reply and kept on watching.
She was livid.
The guard came through and Jo called, "This rude man is staring at me doing my nails."
"Sir please be polite to this young lady."
"She'd not lady. Move her to another seat will you."
"How dare you," Jo flared.
"Which of you was seated first?" asked the guard diplomatically.
Jo said with a superior air, "I was."
The guy lied and said was seated first and when she arrived the pushy girl had demanded the window seat.
"You two sort it out will you?" said the guard and walked off, checking his watch.
Jo gave the insufferable guy a withering look and he winked at her.
He winked. She couldn't believe it.
She put away her nail varnish and they both sat staring straight ahead for the remainder of the journey to her stop at Bethnal Green Station.
The guy followed her out of the carriage but so did probably thirty other people.
Jo hurried off, not looking back. She turned sharp left on exiting the station and was \confronted by an unshaven guy with strong body odor. He grabbed her handbag.
She hung on to the dislodged shoulder strap with all her strength.
The guy grunted, "Let go or I'll punch out your lights."
"Go to hell."
Someone brushed past Jo and smacked the asshole with an almighty punch over the heart and the hoodlum drooped like a stone and lay groaning.
Her white knight grabbed Jo by the arm and waved down a taxi and said, "Come on unless you wish to be talking to cops for the next hour giving your lying statement."
"You?" she yelled.
The guy opened the back door of the taxi, pushed her in hard and followed her in and kissed her.
"That's assault," she yelled.
"My daughter is having her monthly," the guy said, using the tone guys use to guys when putting down women. "Tell the driver where you wish to go darling."
Jo gave the name of her destination without thinking and then swore.
"Yeah my missus swears too but usually only when she's on heat," said the driver.
Jo snorted through her nose to indicate repulsion.
Her savior handed five pounds to the driver and pulled Jo out of the taxi.
"Well I suppose I should say thank you?"
He blue-eyed her and smiled and said he supposed so.
"That was wonderful what you did for me. Thank you. Would you like coffee?"
"Please."
She said she worked nearby. They crossed the street to Lucy's joint she called a café. Well perhaps it could pass for a café.
"Two coffees Jo?" asked the jaded woman behind the bar and Jo grunted and paid. She walked to a window table ahead of the guy who obviously had been staring at the backs of her legs because he said great legs.
"Thank you Lucy. When seated she said, I'm Jo Hart and you are?"
"It's of no consequence to you but I would like to see if you really can smile. You have been so bitchy this morning."
Jo gave up on the idea of trying to kick ass and smiled.
"That's better and you'll feel better."
Surprisingly, she did feel better.
"Would you accept a reward for dealing with that would-be thief and thereby saving the loss of my cash, my business cards, my keys and especially my Little Black Book that is so import to me?"
"No."
"Oh I wonder why I'm not surprised. Then will you meet me for lunch?"
"No for dinner and I'd like you to cook for me."
"When," she asked nervously.
"Whenever you feel like unbending. You are so uptight."
She flared. "Well you'd be uptight if your boyfriend had just dumped you."
"Excuse me but I don't have boyfriends of the intimate kind."
She couldn't help it. She giggled.
And that made her feel even better.
"I live in Fenton and share a flat with another female. I couldn't bring you into our home without knowing who you are and knowing something about you."
"I live in Aston Meadows."
"Oh one station closer to the city and that's a swanky place."
"But there are no meadows because of bloody urban sprawl. Still it's better than where I used to live abroad."
"Where?"
"Here and there."
"Oh in the business capitals of the world?"
"Actually I was with the Army."
"Oh."
He frowned and she shut her mouth thinking perhaps that surprised oh was taken as an insult.
"I'm nineteen."
"I'm forty."
"Oh same age as my... um... my flatmate."
He looked bemused and asked had she forgotten her flatmate's name and she said no of course not.
She said pointedly, "You know my name."
"I'm Mac McLaughlin."
Jo thought it was like extracting water from stone but slowly she was getting somewhere.
"What is your role in the Army?"
"I'm ex-Army. I was instructed to shoot naughty people before they shot us. It's called peacekeeping."
She lowered her head and grinned as the coffee came, quite a bit slopped on the saucers.
"Thanks Meg."
"We don't usually deliver to tables but mom told me to do it because you were with a gentleman."
"He's no... um he used to shoot people."
"Holy shit."
Jo said kindly, "Thanks Meg."
Mac looked at Jo closely.
"You are both defensively and aggressively developed for such a young person."
She flared and asked what the hell did that mean and was told precisely what he'd said.
"Are you attempting to come on to me?"
He said no, that he'd be too big for her.
"That's so fucking vulgar," she snorted and was told he'd meant in body weight and she began giggling and apologized for being so rude to him after having misinterpreted what he'd been trying to say.
"That's fine and your mistake is understandable. I should have said when making the comment I would be too heavy for you. Do you fuck indiscriminately?"
Jo dumped two sugars into her coffee and stirred and then said defiantly, "Yes."
"See what I mean about being defensive? You ought to have said yes in a normal tone."
"I responded like that because you were prying."
He was blue-eyeing her again, his eyes crinkling in the corners to show the birth of a smile.
"Is that so? I bet the egg from my pet rooster to your ten pounds that you are beside yourself wanting to know what I do for a job in civilian life and am I married with kids and how much money I have?"
"Roosters don't lay eggs."
"Yeah well there's no way you'd give me a tenner in losing that bet."
"I had wondered if you were married."
"There's no way I'd marry you, a 21-year old."
"I'm almost twenty."
He appeared ready to duck under thrown coffee and asked, "Are you a prostitute?"
Jo sniffed and said no, an entertainer.
"Please explain the difference."
"I work for an agency across the street. Bored businessmen phone in for a girl to go to their office to pull them out of their Blues and that usually means wifey is not giving it to them. So I go in, he locks the office door and I offer to jerk him off, or to sing or dance or to blow him off. The jerk costs him fifty pounds, a sing and dance twenty-five and the blow job is seventy-five."
"Ah but why is the sing and dance the cheapest when technically both arts require greater skill than the jerk and blow?"
"Because I can't sing and dance very well but I do the partial strip okay."
He grinned.
"The blowjob costs more because most guys have a smelly crotch."
Mac rolled his eyes and Jo say sorry but it was the truth.
"Do you have a good telephone technique and can you write legibly?"
"Does that mean write good enough so people can read what I write?"
"Yes."
She replied yes.
"Our business is picking up. We need an office assistant because we are losing business by relying on an answer phone when we have our mobile phones switched off when with clients or whatever."
"I could be interested. Blowjobs or jerk-offs would cost you guys."
"What if I were to say my partner is a woman?"
"They still liked to be blown or jerked off."
Mac looked quite astonished and made Jo smile when he said he didn't know that.