This is a short story that isn't too hardcore. I focused quite a bit on character development while leading up to an intimate occasion. This is a fairly tame story, by the standards of literotica.
The Adventures of Emily Rybolt:
Adventure 1: Tubeck the Mason
*****
The ended up being a fortuitous and unintentional ice breaker of sorts. Initiated of her desire to use her pool freely on the first day of spring, the bet had evolved from a simple business incentive into something more. A self-admission of her desire to... to exactly what, Emily didn't know. Something? Anything? Nothing? She wasn't sure what she wanted. What she did know was that, now, after getting to know Tubeck, thinking about him made her heart beat a little faster and her mind wander to infrequently visited places. It all started on her back steps back in December.
***
Even though she was working at home, she was dressed like she was working at the office. The truth was, she did most of her work from home. She had all of her legal references electronically and found office environments to be dense with distractions. However, she found that dressing for work helped her to maintain focus and did wonders for making her feel like the patent lawyer she was instead of a person who works out of their pajamas. So, today she wore a long pin stripe grey and black skirt and an admiral pressed cotton blouse. She wore no shoes, though, as that was one concession to comfort that she would not part with.
Emily turned what must have been page 132 of a very technically and technologically challenging patent case that she was reviewing for the third time. She was waiting for her new mason, Tubeck to show up to bid the build of a stone wall around her back yard. She had discussed the specifics with him over the phone and had asked him to go straight to the two acres she called her back yard for his surveys. She looked up and scanned her back yard, noting that he hadn't shown up yet. She envisioned her beautiful stone wall for a few moments, imagining the cliff side ocean view feel that she hoped the wall would engender. She returned to her document review, making detailed notes and citing references on the Greg ruled legal pad sitting on her standing desk. Minutes turned into hours, until she caught motion out her bay window from the corner of her eye. She looked up to see a man who could only be Tubeck in her back yard with a briefcase and a tool bag. He wore a white long sleeve shirt over khaki work pants. She watched him pull a large tape measure spool out of the bag and, after consulting what appeared to be prints of some sort, he placed marker flags several feet from the edges of her pool.
Her pool was massive. The pool had been her gift to herself last spring when she finished paying offer her home and became debt free. She had been making great money for a while now and decided to start buying what she loved, and so long as half of her earnings continued to be saved every year she would continue to do so. So, she bought the pool in the spring and loved it, loved it, loved it, all summer and fall. Her life was perfect, until when, late in the fall, city limits were expanded and now encompassed her home, obligating her to comply with city codes, which required that "a wall, fence of some other such prohibitive structure be established around all pools to prevent drowning by children". The day that her home became part of a city was not a happy day. So, she had to either build a prohibitive structure, or lose the pool. The later would happen over her dead body. In the first summer alone, she practically lived in her pool and had serious plans for what she would call her rejuvenation tub. She even had a water friendly office set up and did a lot of her easier work pool side.
She found fences to be visually repulsive. Metal chain and pipe or wooden boards and posts. Unattractive. Unnatural. Fences were established to keep humans and animals in or out of place. Walls of stone were different somehow. Walls supported structure. Stone walls occurred naturally. Being in her pool surrounded by stone would be a cliff side ocean view.
Occasionally, she looked through the bay window behind her standing desk to see Tubeck making phone calls, taking measurements of her back yard, and prodding the ground around the entire perimeter of her yard with a steel rod. She watched as he made a phone call after phone call. He made notes in his portfolio. After what must have been five or six phone calls, he opened his tool bag and withdrew a blanket, spreading it on her lawn.
She set her case file aside again. Reviewing that particular case while distracted about her wall was distinctly unprofessional. She would go as far as to say negligent. She watched as he sat upon his blanket, with his legs crossed wide, using his briefcase and knees as a desk as he made what she assumed to be various work calculations and notes. He withdrew his cell phone and performed many, many screen manipulations. After what must have been a solid hour, he closed his portfolio and stood up, without using his hands. She found the motion to be graceful and pleasing. A smile quirked across her face as she had an impulsive thought about watching him do graceful maneuvers over the next couple of weeks. She had no idea where the thought came from. Those kinds of thoughts were not terribly common for her. That kind of activity happened about once a season and, she realized, she was about a season past due.
Maybe he could be my winter wonderland...,
she mocked at herself.
But only after my wall is complete.
Dalliances and flings had their place, and their place wasn't above her pool.
Tubeck stowed all of his gear. She watched him as he walked to her back door. She opened it before he could make it to the four steps up to her house. She looked
up
, she realized, to his face. That put him almost two feet taller than her, making him a few inches from being seven feet tall. At 5 feet flat, she was short to begin with, and knew she would feel even shorter standing next to him. She would be practically breaking her neck to look up at him. She stayed in her doorway.
"Miss Emily, I am Tubeck" he said, extending a long muscular arm above the steps. She grasped his hand from the top, but at a glance, took in how much larger his hand was than hers.
Christ was he tall!
An accent was present, but not specifically discernable for her. English was his second language and he had learned the British version. His dark completion and light eyes told her he was not African. South American, maybe? She wasn't sure.
"Nice to meet you Tubeck. Thank you for coming out. I know we discussed my rules on noise over the phone. Do you have questions about them?"
"I just need to know when the first day will be that you won't be here to I can get some of the loud work done without disturbing you."
"Look, this wall being done soon is very important to me. I will work out of the office building in town as you require, if it keeps you on or ahead of schedule, but give me two days advanced notice. I know I asked you for a fast timeline, and I appreciate that you have agreed to accommodate that. Were I to offer you an additional 25% in cash off the books, could you make March 20
th
instead of the beginning of summer."
He looked down and shook his head. Then he met her gaze and smiled. "Sure, sure. I can probably make that happen".
"Can you give me a guarantee?"
"I can, but would prefer not to," he said laughing. "The weather gets a vote and that is a lot of work in a small amount of time. I would almost end up sleeping in your yard!" he said laughing.
She returned his smile, and even laughed with him. "Tell you what, you make March 20
th
, you get the 25% bonus, and you are my first pool party guest of spring. If you don't make it, I pay the contract price. If you don't make the first day of summer as specified in the contract, I pay you the contract price officially, but you pay me 25% off the books."