"You'll enjoy meeting her?"
"Yes, that is exactly what he said. His tone was oily and he spoke with what can be described with great certainty as having a leer in his voice."
"That sounds innocent enough..." my voice trailed off with what could be described as great uncertainty. My conviction was fading as she looked at me with both bemusement and an incredulity that I could be so ignorant.
She continued. "It was in a boardroom of a listed company? He was talking about me to a PR flack - admittedly a brand name PR flack - as though I was some sexual trophy he could bag. That is just lecherous and objectifying and perverse."
The truth of it was that she was so beautiful that it was hard to blame people for objectifying her. I tried to look at her anew. Middlingly tall, athletically thin and blonde, I was admiring her as she stood framed by potted lemon trees on a colonnaded terrace. The wind was teasing her golden hair: largely swept back into a softly billowing mane, a tendril or two had strayed over the high and chiselled line of her cheekbones. The face was classic and serious yet softened by the limpid, jade green pools of her eyes. Frustrated at my inability to comprehend the life a woman in a man's (business) world, she pivoted, moving with an athletic economy of motion. Just out of her 30s she could have been a decade younger. She managed to combine an athleticism with an entirely appealing hint of rounding. She pivoted back from the sea-view, and sighed. Firm, high C-cup breasts rose and fell. She leaned back and relaxed her legs - lean, long, fit: skier's legs. She was a superb, indeed enduringly superb, Nordic beauty. Her accent, European overlain by New York, only added to the allure.
"I will grant that it is objectifying. You are right." I paused, smiled and gently tried humor: "But you make a very good sex object."
The sea below was rapidly darkening to a Tyrrhenian purple; the sun had disappeared and the evening was darkening rapidly. Gathering their glasses we began to stroll back to the main building. We halted, she to perch on a squarely modern wicker sofa and he in an armchair at right angles to it. She smoothly and elegantly tucked her legs up and draped one of the outdoor blankets over the bare skin below her shirt-dress. The demure hint of thigh was surprisingly erotic. I glanced up. The temperature was dropping. The position she had chosen had stiffened her nipples and outlined the bra-less swell of her breasts against the crisp white cotton.
The sea was now a darkening Imperial purple, seizing attention. It reminded me of a far more lecherous historical figure. "Tiberius settled just along the coast. Surely that qualifies as perverse." I turned back towards her, trying out arching my eyebrows, but it was ineffective.
"You want the story, do you?" She was now smiling. Swirling her armagnac in its glass she locked eyes and said "Would that excite you?".
I nodded. She began her story.
"Three years and some before we met I was put on a trans-Atlantic deal. The law firm was very excited about it, though in retrospect I wonder if there was not a slight element of pimping out the female associates. At any rate, I ended up in London, in the boardroom of a holding company led by a lecher with the manners of a rutting dinosaur: outside of business he was a gentleman and you were safe but he viewed anyone inside his business domain, even lawyers billing an impressive amount per hour, as a safe bet for sexism, pickups and sexual banter. I'd already rebuffed him once (hand firmly removed from thigh) when he invited me in ostensibly to discuss some PR aspects of the deal. None of the bankers, no-one from the rest of the legal team. Just us. Me, placed on a low and sinking sofa, no doubt offering a nice angle up my skirt. A chair pulled close. A hand on the knee as if to emphasize whatever point he was pretending tomake. A smell of the vile cigars he smoked and Cointreau and an ill-chosen cologne. Yes, I know what you are thinking, but I removed the hand, glared sternly and he and brought things back to the deal. He gave up on chasing me. And then he called the PR firm, and displayed his innate piggishness by offering me like a trading card.
I noted (in as teasing a way as I could) that thus far the story was, while far from innocent, not exactly living up to any standard of lecherousness or licentiousness that could match up, for example, against the August standards of Tiberius. Confident in the knowledge of what was to come she waved me off.
"Yes, well that's the funny thing. The PR guy he called came almost immediately (the offices were close by). His firm was smaller then, but he'd already made a substantial amount of money and he was a bit of a big deal. He was early 40s, I imagine, and elegant and handsome. Unlike the CEO, he smelt faintly of a lovely and perfumed soap, nothing else. He had wavy hair, swept back, serious glasses worn for effect, and lovely and clear grey eyes. He had a reputation as a bastard, and after the 'phone call I was expecting the worst, but his manners on first meeting were lovely, and other than a smile and a focus on me as though I were the most important woman in the room, he did not look anything like he was 'enjoying meeting' me in any obviously sexual sense of the word. He even moved the conversation immediately to communications and the closing timetable, and suggested we do it at the boardroom table (as opposed to the peeper's delight sofa). 'Far more efficient and sensible for our chat,' he said, smoothly and he then went on to joke about saving on lawyer's bills by keeping the pace up. In that first meeting he was a lifeline. We met, he was entirely professional, he defused and he left without even a sidelong glance of conspiracy at his older client.
"We met again the next day, a larger group this time. The meeting was long and it wasn't until the evening, when I was leaving, that I found him next to me, as if by chance. 'Fancy a spot of dinner?' , and he smiled. And I said yes. And other than a chaste kiss on the cheek at the end of an evening a nearby restaurant - no reservation - he was a complete gentleman. He even asked if he might ask me out again. I was more than a little taken. He was good-looking and charming and professionally respectful.
She must have sensed a mix of growing boredom on my part. "Yes, yes, I'll get to the good bit now.
"The way he seduced me was to use the next all hands meeting to single out my work for praise. The senior partner was there, surprised but evidently happy to hear him speak so positively of me. After he had praised me he paused and smiled at me; let me tell you, the attention and praise worked. And then he stopped talking to me. No more sidelong glances. No more calls. The deal advanced and he ignored me. After a week, I was comprehensively confused. He seemed ... interesting. I'd turned over more than one pretend Prince Charming by this point, so there was disappointment someone seemingly so nice and good looking had shifted to radically. And then one day my 'phone rang, and it was him and he point blank invited me to a house party at his villa in Ibiza along with a 'few friends'. After the deprivation of attention I had basically given up, so this fell like a bombshell."
My contribution was to lamely observe that 'so presumably you went?'. As exciting as her stories could, the process of listening was sometimes tinged with a little retrospective jealousy.
"Yes. I did. The deal ended. I had billed a small fortune for the firm. I deserved a week off but I had no intention of letting him fly me. I bought a pair of bikinis, some light summer clothes and sandals and off I went.
"His house was large and discerningly designed into the landscape. It overlooked a picturesque cove with a sliver of sand. Well off the tourist track, it was a good half hour to the town life of sunburnt hooligans, lager and fish and chips. It backed onto a dozy landscape of farms and farmhouses stretching towards the forested backdrop of the Truntoi mountains. It was an E-shaped structure open towards the cove, with an infinity pool occupying one indentation, and terrace the other. The modern villa layout was compensated for by a traditional sort of Finca dΓ©cor, all wood beams and white walls."