The Personal Assistant 9

The Personal Assistant

When Brendan is promoted to Senior Manager he inherits a new Personal Assistant, the formidable Mrs Piper, an attractive but strong-willed lady in her fifties. A battle of wills ensues with the unexpected outcome that Brendan finds himself increasingly attracted to his PA.

This is basically another love story. It contains graphic descriptions of anal intercourse, so if that's not your thing, you may wish to pass on by. If you read on, I hope you enjoy the story and I look forward to comments.

Sylviafan, April 2025

I was young to be promoted to senior manager, I'd just turned thirty-one in fact. But I'd worked my arse off for the preceding ten years. I graduated in 2015 with a BSc in mechanical engineering and went to work for a big, multinational engineering company based in a city in the UK Midlands. I started off in one of the design offices but after a couple of years it was obvious that I was never going to be a technical specialist, so I applied for a job in the projects office and that suited me perfectly. I had the right mix of technical understanding, commercial awareness and people skills to thrive in that environment and at the age of twenty-seven I was promoted to junior manager, one of the youngest in the company. Four years later my boss unexpectedly resigned and went to work for our competition in the US. I applied for his job with no real expectation of success but the interview went outstandingly well and I was offered the job, to everyone's surprise.

'Your track record is exemplary,' the projects director told me afterwards, 'and you were the strongest candidate at interview. We couldn't turn you down solely on the grounds of your age.'

I was thrilled and more than a little nervous, too. In this company there is an old-fashioned gulf between junior and senior management. As if to reinforce this the junior managers have offices located close to the teams they manage; senior managers are all located in the giant administration building together with the directors and the CEO. The Admin building has its own facilities, including a restaurant, which are exclusively for the use of the Executive. Junior managers eat with their staff in the various canteens dotted about the campus.

There is also inequality in the secretarial support between junior and senior management. As a junior manager I had a one-quarter share of a secretary; as a senior manager I would have my own secretary, or Personal Assistant, as they liked to call themselves.

I would be sorry to part with Sally, the secretary that I had shared for nearly four years. She was a couple of years younger than me and blonde and bubbly and curvaceous. I had wanted to have a much stronger relationship with her than mere manager and secretary, but she was married and the closest we ever came to intimacy was a dance or two at the Christmas ball and a kiss under the mistletoe.

I had a pretty good idea that Sally was aware of my designs on her and she confirmed this a couple of days before I took up my new position as Head of Projects. We were in my old office tidying up paperwork for the transfer to my successor and as we came to the end of this task she sat back in her chair and looked at me across my desk, a half-smile on her face.

'We never quite made it, did we, Brendan.'

I didn't need to ask what she was alluding to. 'You were happily married,' I said.

She sighed. 'I nearly strayed.' I looked at her enquiringly. 'That time you took me down to Bristol to meet the customer and we stayed overnight. If you'd made a pass at me that evening I think I'd have responded.'

'Now she tells me!' I grinned. 'It's not too late, Sally. I'm not leaving the country or anything. I'll only be in the Admin building.'

'No,' she said, firmly. 'I

am

happily married and besides, you've got a secretary all to yourself now.'

I grimaced. 'The redoubtable Mrs Piper.'

'She's a very attractive lady,' Sally replied, 'if you don't mind a few miles on the clock,' she added, cattily.

'Well I do,' I told her. 'And besides I expect she's married. Either way, she never bothers to talk to me.'

'She's divorced,' said Sally. 'Has been for years.'

'How do you know that?' I asked.

'When I found out you were getting Mr Parsons' job I asked around.'

'Well do tell,' I said, 'because Dave Parsons went on gardening leave as soon as they found out he was going to the States and I've had no handover whatsoever.'

'I don't know much,' she admitted. 'She's divorced, like I said, and she's forty-nine or fifty or something like that and she's got one daughter but she lives on her own and doesn't seem to be in a relationship.'

'Too much information, Sally,' I protested. 'She's going to be my secretary, not my wife. And anyway, fifty! That's only a year younger than my mum.'

'Fifty's nothing nowadays,' Sally replied with a smile. 'It's the new thirty. And she is very attractive.'

***

The following Monday I entered the Admin building at eight o'clock in the morning with a sense of unreality and made my way to the north end of the first floor where my new office was. I had spent the weekend fretting about my new role, aware that for a time at least I would be in thrall to Mrs Piper as she would know considerably more about my projects than I did.

My office consisted of my room, with a window looking out over the engine test beds, and an anteroom with a desk and filing cabinets where my PA sat. Between the two was a glass partition with blinds that could be drawn to give additional privacy.

Mrs Piper was already at her desk and she stood up and came round to greet me as I entered the anteroom through the door which still had my old boss's name on it together with "Mrs D Piper - PA". I had seen her many times, of course, on visits to my boss's office where she had treated me a bit like a teacher might treat a favoured but errant pupil. She had always come across as ultra-efficient but distant, unwilling to engage in small talk, cold even.

But she was, as Sally had pointed out, a very attractive woman, though I probably wouldn't have described her as pretty - she was too severe. She stood about five feet eight or nine inches in heeled shoes and she had a model's figure, remarkable for a lady of her age. Slim legs in black stockings or pantyhose, a black, tightfitting, knee-length skirt and a long-sleeved, emerald-green blouse of some shiny material which did a good, but not perfect job of concealing her full bosom. The top two buttons of her blouse were undone, revealing a pearl necklace at her throat.

Facially she had good features: pale skin, an oval face with a firm chin, full lips, high cheekbones, deep-green eyes and a straight nose. But there was a severity about the set of her mouth and the vertical lines between her dark eyebrows. Undoubtedly her most striking feature was her hair: a collar-length bob of deep, burnished copper, which may once have been natural but was nowadays surely out of a bottle. Her make-up was as polished as the rest of her: dark-red lipstick, some clever work to accentuate her cheekbones, carefully applied eye-shadow and eye-liner and nail polish to match her lipstick.

She held out her hand and gave me a tight smile. 'Good morning Mr Martin.' Her voice was clear and accentless and she enunciated her words perfectly; altogether better than my local dialect.

'Good morning Donna,' I said, taking her hand and giving it a gentle squeeze before she removed it. 'And please call me Brendan.'

'The staff mostly call me Mrs Piper,' she replied carefully, making eye contact.

'But we're going to be working so closely together,' I told her, 'we should be on first-name terms. And Donna's such a nice name,' I added, disingenuously. I opened the door to my office and turned back to Mrs Piper. I've got a few calls to make, Donna, do you think you could rustle me up a coffee? White, no sugar.' She gave me a sharp glance before disappearing out of the door, presumably to the restaurant or tea station.

I put my briefcase on my desk and stood looking out of the window. She'd called my boss "David" and he'd called her "Donna" so I was damned if I was going to let her dictate otherwise. And ordering a coffee was a nice touch, I thought. These were presumably the first skirmishes, but I'd say it was one-nil to me so far I thought smugly.

My smugness was short lived. Donna arrived back with a mug of coffee five minutes later and put it on my desk with a slight thump. 'Senior Managers' diary meeting at nine, Mr Martin, so we'll need to go through your diary for the week before then. Then you've got project meetings starting straight after lunch.'

'Well that'll be interesting,' I told her. 'The only project I know anything about is the one I was managing.'

'Mr Parsons made sure I was up to speed with everything before he left,' she replied, a little sternly. 'We can make a start at going through the individual projects after your diary meeting.' Well that told me. I was surprised, I'd assumed that PAs just answered the phone and wrote letters and organised meetings and travel. Clearly they were a superior breed to the lesser spotted secretaries like Sally, or at least Mrs Piper was.

The Senior Managers' diary meeting was painless. I was introduced to those people who didn't know me and after that I was largely ignored while they took it in turns to tell everybody in excruciating detail what they were doing for the forthcoming week. It all sounded a bit like self-justification to me. I was in no position to copy them; Mrs Piper had printed my weekly itinery but most of the events and meetings were largely meaningless to me and I began to realise that I had a mountain to climb in a very short space of time if I was going to do this job properly. I cursed Dave Parsons again for buggering off to the US without giving me any sort of handover.

Back in my office, Mrs Piper came in from the anteroom with an armful of folders and we spent the two hours until lunch going through the purpose, progress and funding of all the workstreams under my aegis. I won't pretend it wasn't difficult, having the formidable Mrs Piper sitting across my desk from me and taking me through everything about my projects with the assurance and clarity of in-depth knowledge. I wondered fleetingly why they'd bothered promoting me to the job. Wouldn't it have been easier to just give it to my PA? Every question I asked she answered clearly and intelligently and usually, I noted sourly, with a hint of condescension.

The other problem was Mrs Piper herself. I'd only ever been exposed to her when passing through the anteroom or sitting waiting to go in. On those occasions she had largely ignored me as she typed at her keyboard or answered the telephone. I wasn't into the mature scene, and I had always considered myself immune to her charms, but this extended period of close physical contact, albeit with a desk between us, was a bit unnerving. I found myself looking covertly at her face and the way her copper hair curled under her chin when she lowered her head to read a document to me and how she flicked it behind one ear with a finger. I sneaked a look at the exposed skin of her throat, expecting to see the beginnings of a middle-aged turkey's wattle but there was nothing. I looked at her hands as she flicked pages over, noting both the absence of rings and her long, tapered fingers with their red nails. She crossed and uncrossed her legs several times during the meeting and I thought I heard the rustle of nylon against nylon and I had a fleeting vision of her stocking tops (I had decided this lady couldn't possibly wear pantyhose) and the creamy smoothness of her upper thighs.

It was a relief when twelve o'clock came and Mrs Piper said, 'Well that's everything you'll need for this afternoon, we can finish off tomorrow morning. If you have no further questions I shall put these folders away and go up to the restaurant for my lunch.'

'Isn't the restaurant just for senior staff?' I asked before I could stop myself.

'PAs are permitted to use the Executive restaurant,' she corrected me with a touch of ice.'

'Oh,' I said, with a conciliatory smile. 'Well perhaps I can come up with you and we can have lunch together.'

'The Executive PAs always lunch together,' she informed me dismissively and, picking up the pile of folders, left my office.

So I sat by myself for lunch in the grandiose restaurant where there were while linen tablecloths and waitress service. Years ago, wine had been available to diners and I thought it a pity it wasn't still; I could have done with a glass after the travails of the morning. The Executive PAs sat at the other end of the room to me on two eight-seat tables presided over by Mrs Sheila Hibbert, the long-serving PA to the last three CEOs. There was a subdued murmur coming from their tables as they no doubt discussed the merits of their respective bosses. I wondered how I would fare and I was reminded of the Norns of Norse mythology who determine the fate of men.

I was just telling myself not to be so stupid and paranoid when Tim Brough, the Projects Director and my immediate superior, came and sat down next to me and ordered his lunch. It was the best thing that could have happened as he chatted easily to me and made me feel at home for the first time that day. Months later he admitted that he'd also felt out of place when he was first promoted to senior manager.

The afternoon was informative in that it showed me how strong and comprehensive a grasp Mrs Piper had of the projects and I was grateful to her for her time and effort in the morning. I was able to discuss problems intelligently, assess progress and allocate actions without looking too much of a fool. It was almost five o'clock by the time the last person left my office and I stretched and rubbed my hands over my face. In the anteroom Mrs Piper was tidying her desk. I got up and went into her little domain.

'Are you off, Donna?' I asked.

'It is five o'clock,' she replied haughtily, as though I'd accused her of shirking off.

'Yes, of course, but I just wanted to thank you for your time and effort in getting me up to speed today. I couldn't have done those project meetings without it.'

Mrs Piper's expression relaxed slightly. 'Well that's what I'm here for, Mr Martin.' She took her suit jacket from a hanger and put it on and I tried and failed to not watch as she slid her arms through the sleeves and her blouse tightened over her breasts. She flipped her hair clear of her collar with an easy elegance that seemed to be the hallmark of everything she did.

'I'll see you in the morning, then,' I said. 'Have a nice evening.'

'Good evening, Mr Martin,' she smiled tightly as she picked up her handbag and left the room. After she'd gone I walked over to her desk and stood looking down onto the chair she had just vacated. Her desk was bare, in accordance with company policy, apart from a framed photograph of a woman in her twenties, who I assumed was Mrs Piper's daughter. She was a slightly plumper, softer version of her mother and she was smiling at the camera.

Back at my desk I fired up my computer for the first time that day and logged on to find a hundred and sixty-two emails in my inbox. Oh God! I looked at the screen for five minutes then I shut down the computer and went home.

Tuesday was nearly as bad as Monday. I was in by half-past-seven but my PA was already at her desk, typing quickly as she read from a document. She was dressed similarly to the day before except that her satin blouse was an oyster colour. 'Good morning, Donna,' I sang out. 'Good morning Mr Martin,' she replied without looking up from her screen. Why wouldn't the wretched woman call me by my first name? I felt a sudden urge to order her to get me a coffee, as I had done the previous day, to establish my authority, but prudence reasserted itself. Instead I asked her.

'I'm going to the tea station, Donna,' I said. 'Can I get you anything?'

'No thank you, Mr Martin,' she replied, again without looking up. It was becoming like a bloody music hall act.

We spent most of the morning going through the remaining projects and in the afternoon I sat through a couple of presentations on new company processes and systems. It was stultifyingly boring and I had to pinch myself a couple of times to stop from nodding off. I got back to my office at five minutes to five, just as Mrs Piper was preparing to leave for the day. She looked up at me as I came into the anteroom.

'I've been through your inbox and filed everything in project order. I've actioned all but six emails, which are things you'll have to deal with.'

I suddenly felt like hugging her. That was fucking amazing! If she'd been twenty years younger I'd have suspected her of being a Stepford wife. 'Thank you very much, Donna,' I said with such heartfelt gratitude that I almost called her Mrs Piper. 'I wasn't looking forward to tackling that. You've saved me a mountain of work.'

'She shrugged slightly. 'Most of them were rubbish.'

'What's left?' I asked.

'I'll show you.' I walked round to her side of the desk and leaned over her shoulder, aware of our unprecedented closeness, aware of the scent she wore. She'd got my inbox up on the screen and she ran a blood-red fingernail down the list giving me a brief précis of each email. 'I thought I'd better leave this one to you,' she said as she came to the last one, which was from Sally Waters, my ex-secretary.

She shut her computer down and put her jacket on. 'You might want to have a word with Mrs Waters,' she said, straightening her jacket and picking up her handbag. Was it my imagination or was there a ghost of a grin on her face. Impossible, I told myself. It must be wind.

'Goodnight Mr Martin,' she said. 'Goodnight Donna,' I replied to her back as she walked out, heels clicking on the tiled floor.

I switched on my computer and opened my inbox, clicking on the mail from Sally.

Hi Brendan, how's the new job going? How are you getting on with your new PA? Remember what St George did when he was faced with a dragon! Life here is same-same. Drop in if you're passing. It would be lovely to see you.

Sally x

What the hell was Sally thinking of? She must know that Mrs Piper had access to my inbox. But maybe she didn't. Sally hadn't had automatic access to my inbox when she worked for me. I wrote a short reply telling her that I was fine and would certainly drop in soon but could she please refrain from putting inappropriate content in her emails. I felt like a fraud, but I needed to do something and I suspected Sally would understand where I was coming from.

'I'm sorry about the email from Mrs Waters,' I told Donna the next morning. 'She's a good secretary but sometimes she can be a bit... well, high-spirited, I suppose.'

'Is that how I'm seen outside the Admin building?' Mrs Piper asked by way of a reply. 'A fire-breathing dragon?'

'Not as far as I'm aware,' I said, struggling to keep a straight face. Mrs Piper looked sternly at me for a second or two before sitting back down at her computer and picking up the phone. Was that ghost of a grin back? I did a double take but Mrs Piper's face was expressionless again.

Wednesday was largely a repeat of Monday and Tuesday except that I managed to get a smile out of Mrs Piper. It was lunchtime and we were both in the anteroom and I was trying to engage her in a bit of inconsequential chat about home and holidays, with no success. She just didn't seem to be interested in talking to me except about company related things. I was becoming aware of just how powerful an assistant she was but I was sure that if our working relationship was a bit less formal, a bit friendlier, we would make a formidable team. In an act almost of desperation I said: