"Oi!" Amy said to Jamie, as she manoeuvred back into the living room carrying two mugs of tea. "No checking work email in the evenings!"
Jamie, on the sofa with his company laptop, pecked away at the keyboard. "I'm not 'checking'," he said. "I'm informing. Here." He put the laptop down onto the coffee table and swivelled it to face Amy.
"What am I looking at?" Amy asked, as she put the cups down and picked up the computer.
"That's my updated travel schedule for April," he told her. "In case you want to add any of it to your diary."
Jamie had been doing quite a bit of travel for work lately, visiting clients. Evidently he must be doing something right, because the company kept asking him to do more of it. Mostly, it was within a few hours' drive of Glasgow, but every now and then he had to go further afield.
"Oh, fair enough, then." Amy said, as she looked at his screen. "Oh, speaking of dates for the diary, Nuala has a date. It's in September."
Jamie blinked. "What is?"
"The wedding," Amy said, distractedly. "Keep up."
Jamie was none the wiser. "What wedding?"
Amy rolled her eyes. 'Nuala's wedding, of course!"
Nuala was one of Amy's oldest, closest friends. She lived somewhere down in England. She also had a thing for Jamie, and flirted shamelessly with him in a sorry-not-sorry sort of way whenever she visited; Amy thought it was hilarious. "Nuala's getting married?"
She lifted her eyes, and raised an eyebrow. "Yes. Of course she is. I told you."
Jamie shook his head. "No, you didn't. Nope. Uh-uh."
"'Course I did, yer daftie." Amy admonished, but now she looked unsure.
"Amy," Jamie told her seriously. "You have never mentioned a word of this. She's getting married? To Eoin?"
"Of course to Eoin! Who else?"
"This is
Nuala
we're talking about here...."
"Fair point," Amy acknowledged. "But not in this case. They're both mad for each other. So, anyway, speaking of diaries
like I was
, you should stick the wedding in yours. I'll be off on a hen night around then, too, of course."
"Somewhere's in for the shock of its life, then," Jamie muttered, thinking about Amy, Nuala and Nuala's sisters unleashed upon a poor unsuspecting town.
Amy returned her attention to Jamie's schedule. She peered more closely. "This Newcastle one — is that on a Friday?"
"Er, yes?" he said.
Amy grinned at him.
He was baffled. "So?"
Amy's grin became positively
wicked
.
"Oh!" he said, getting it. "Ah. Right."
***
Normally, Jamie's work trips involved a quick in-and-out at the client offices. Last December, he'd been asked to represent the company at an awards ceremony, and the dress code was "formal." Jamie's wedding kilt outfit — the closest thing he had to formal wear — had created quite the impression on some rather inebriated and
physical
ladies who'd been at an office Christmas party in the function room next door. Jamie had found the experience startling but something of a turn-on. Much to his surprise, so had Amy, when he recounted it the next day, and Amy had been keen to reproduce it — as long as she got a live blow-by-blow commentary from Jamie.
The last overnight trip had been to a dreary town on the outskirts of Birmingham on a February Tuesday, and — not at all to Jamie's surprise, but very much to Amy's disappointment — this did not compare well with work Christmas parties in London, in the "uninhibited packs of young women" department.
Newcastle on a Friday night, on the other hand, had definite possibilities.
Jamie's company booked his train from Glasgow to Newcastle on the Thursday evening, as the client visit was first thing Friday morning. They also arranged a budget hotel for him on the Thursday night, near the client site. He asked them to arrange the train back on Saturday, making the excuse that he wanted to visit a friend since he was in the area. Naturally, he had to cover his own hotel for Friday night, as it was a personal expense. He picked another budget hotel, this time near the city centre. Jamie didn't know Newcastle, having never been to the city before, so he just randomly picked one with "city centre" in its name.
The journey down was uneventful; he spent an hour running through his presentation, getting comfortable with the facts, then settled down to watch some more episodes of
The West Wing
; since he'd been doing all this travelling, Jamie had decided that he may as well watch some of the classic TV that people kept going on about.
He took a taxi to the hotel. After checking in, he unpacked, hanging up his kilt, jacket, waistcoat and shirt, then went down for dinner. He had a passable if somewhat overpriced Thai green curry which wasn't a patch on the one he and Amy usually got from their local Thai takeaway. An ironic pint of London Pride washed it down. He took a second pint up to his room, chatted to Amy for a bit on the phone, and watched a
Fast and Furious
movie on his laptop. Jamie was somewhat annoyed to discover it was one he'd already seen, but he watched the rest anyway.
In the morning, he re-packed everything and checked out as late as he could, making use of the hotel's wifi to get some other work done until it was time for his meeting. The presentation to the client went okay, and afterwards he got a taxi to the second hotel, the one he was paying for himself. Once more, he checked in, unpacked, and sat down to get some work done, but found it much harder to concentrate now. While the client meeting was coming up, he'd been able to focus on that, but now he was sitting in a hotel room where he was staying deliberately so that he could wander out into the unknown, to see whether any women were interested in what lay beneath his kilt while his wife egged him on from home. He kept thinking about the two extremes of the London trip, and the Birmingham trip, and wondering what would happen this evening.
Once more, he had dinner at the hotel's restaurant. In this case, it was an adjacent pub that was owned by the same company as the hotel — it had openings onto the street and into the hotel's tiny lobby. The menu was uninspiring; he settled for a cheeseburger and chips, then went back up to his room to change.
Once again, Amy wanted to see him in his kilted glory, insisting on a video call before he set out.
"Very nice," she said, approvingly, as he stood in front of the bathroom mirror. "You look so handsome."
"And you look beautiful too," he said. She did, too. Amy always looked beautiful to Jamie. She was sprawled on her back on the sofa. Her light red hair spread out on the cushions behind her like a halo. At 23, Amy was a couple of years younger than Jamie, and beautiful. Classic celtic colouring, a lovely, heart-shaped face with a smattering of freckles, and large, expressive green eyes. Her figure was elegant; Amy could rock a ballgown like no-one else, and she'd been heart-stompingly gorgeous in her white dress at their wedding, two years ago.
"All right then," she said. "Let's see it."
"See what?"
"Don't be so daft, Jamie. Get that kilt up! I want to see."
"Amy!"
