The Arrangement (2 page)

They
were going to get married after all.

The
arrangement placed upon him was becoming harder to keep.

‘W-well…’
he stuttered a reply. ‘Jane is kind of hard to replace. I have
worked with her for over three years. The temps they have sent me
keep getting things wrong. I did ask your Father about this. He is
doing a proper search for a decent secretary for me. Oh damn.’
Lucas wore a mask of defeat upon his face.

‘What
is it?’

‘I
have a meeting with your Father today.’ He let out a deep sigh.

Scarlett
giggled like some sort of school girl. ‘He isn’t that
bad.’

‘You
don’t work for him,’ countered Lucas. ‘Well, not
directly.’

‘Why
does he want to see you this time?’

‘I
think it is merely a progress report on this whole movie deal. If we
can land it then the company will make a nice percentage when the
movie is released.’ Lucas decided to leave out the real reason
her Father wanted to see him. He didn’t really like keep
secrets from Scarlett. In fact, this was the first one he had ever
kept, but without a shadow of a doubt she would not approve of the
arrangement they had made. He just needed to uphold it for three more
months and the two of them would be sorted for life.

‘What
are your plans today?’ he asked.

Scarlett
waved a hand through the air and looked up and away, as she looked
upon her “to do” list within the inside of her head. ‘I
am meeting Anne in town for lunch.’ Lucas rolled his eyes and
nodded for her to continue. ‘Don’t be like that.’

‘I
didn’t say anything.’

‘I
saw you role your eyes. I know you don’t like her…’

Lucas
cut her off. ‘It’s not that I don’t like her. Anne
is your best friend and your sister and if she is important to you,
she is important to me. I just find that when the two of you get
together I always end up getting it in the neck.’

Scarlett
giggled.

He
had a point.

‘Well,
today we are just having lunch. She has been so busy lately with the
kids that I haven’t really had time to talk with her in ages.’

‘It
will be fun then,’ confirmed Lucas. ‘So, what else you
got planned?’

‘I
will most likely tidy up a bit and then work on my book, but then
again I might not. It isn’t exactly going the way I had
planned.’

‘You’re
still having problems with it?’ Lucas was about to suggest the
age old advice of walking away from the project and then coming back
with a fresh approach, but the last time he suggested that he nearly
had his head bitten off.

‘I
don’t know what it is. The idea of the story is really good and
it is really clever. The plot has a good pace. It doesn’t go up
and down and all over the place. I haven’t had to fill anything
to make up the word count. I think the locations are some of the best
I have created and the twists and turns within the story are
believable and realistic. It is not like the reader will be able to
say “That wouldn’t happen in real life?”’
Scarlett paused at the sight of his big cheesy grin. ‘What?’

‘It’s
nothing.’ He shook his head in reply. ‘You just look so
cute when you talk about your books.’

Scarlett
could feel a blush coming on.

‘You
are so passionate about your stories. It makes me smile. So, if you
are happy with the story, the plot, the location and the pace that
you tell it, what is the problem?’

Scarlett
leaned back in her chair and folded her arms across her chest. Even
this small gesture looked incredibly sexy in her night gown. The way
she hugged her body forced her breasts up, almost to the point that
they were spilling out of the front of her dress. Lucas used every
ounce of self-control to keep his eyes locked upon the plate of food
in front of him.

‘I
don’t like the characters,’ she confessed.

‘Why
do you say that? You’re a character writer.’

‘I
know. The story has a really small cast of characters. I wanted to
create a more intimate feel with all the love angles and conflicts,
which are born throughout the story, but it’s the main
character. He is such a bastard.’

Lucas
laughed out loud.

‘I
wasn’t expecting you to say that,’ he admitted.

‘Neither
did I, but that is my problem. I wanted the main character to be
slightly darker than the ones I have written about in the past, but I
didn’t want him to be dark just for the sake of being dark. I
wanted him to have a troubled life and have the heroin of the story
help him overcome his inner demons.’

‘It
sounds good. Why don’t you like him?’ Lucas finished the
last mouthful of his food and placed his knife and fork down onto the
plate. ‘That was really nice,’ he told her.

Scarlett’s
sweet loving smile returned to her face.

Hearing
him say that made her happy.

Making
her man happy was all she wanted in life.

‘I
don’t like the main character because he is so sarcastic. I
mean he has really funny lines, but all the two main characters do is
argue about every tiny little thing. They are supposed to be madly in
love, but it is like some invisible force is pushing them apart and
every time I write dialogue it comes out negative and bitchy.’

‘I
would just keep at it,’ said Lucas.

‘You
think?’ Scarlett didn’t seem sure.

‘Write
the story as best as you can and if you still find that the
characters are not likeable then add an extra element into their
scenes. Bring in a third character, a man or woman. Make it a
character that can add a lighter note to the conversation, or make
the main character the third person and add a new silent hero that
comes good towards the end of the story.’ Lucas looked up at
the clock upon the wall. ‘I have to go.’

Scarlett
pouted. ‘Okay.’

This
was the part of the day she really hated.

Lucas
got out of his chair and walked around the table towards her. ‘Thank
you for breakfast.’ He leaned down and pressed his lips against
her. It was a sweet loving gentle kiss. He went to pull away, but
found her hands upon the back of his head pulling him back down
towards her.

Scarlett
opened her mouth and welcomed his tongue inside.

Before
Lucas even realised what he was doing his hand had slipped down the
front of her loose hanging nightgown. He had cupped her breast within
his palm. The feel of her firm skin was sending dangerous tingles
down between his legs.

He
squeezed her breast.

It
felt like the most natural thing to do.

Scarlett
moaned erotically through her nose.

She
pulled back from the kiss and looked straight into his eyes. ‘Let’s
go upstairs, baby.’

Something
inside screamed for him to say ‘yes!’, but what he
actually said was. ‘I can’t. I have to get to work.’

For
a long moment he continued to caress her breast.

‘We
won’t be long.’ Scarlett was practically begging.

‘I
can’t. I’m sorry.’ He pulled away from her and
picked his briefcase up off the floor. ‘I will see you
tonight.’ It broke his heart to see Scarlett wearing such a sad
and pitiful expression upon her face.

‘Yeah…’
she replied without looking up at him.

‘I
love you,’ he told her, as he reached the kitchen door.

‘I
love you, too,’ she muttered back half-heartedly.

***

Lucas
looked beyond the car in front and groaned at the long line of
traffic. Just like he had predicted, all three lanes of traffic were
at a complete standstill. This was going to push back his work
schedule by a good hour, which was going to be so annoying because
without a secretary he would be the one to call people and postpone
appointments. The one thing Lucas hated in all the world was talking
on the phone.

The
image of Scarlett kneeling naked on the bed came to mind.

He
gave his head a quick shake.

Now
was not the time to be thinking about that.

‘Why
did I have to agree to that god damn arrangement? No. Scratch that.
Why did that man have to offer me such a stupid deal in the first
place?’

Lucas
threw his head back against the headrest of his car.

Something
out of the corner of his eye caught his attention.

He
turned to see the woman in the car beside him. She wasn’t
anything to look really. She had the type of face you could forget
within two minutes of meeting her, but she was wearing a tight
t-shirt, which clung tightly to her large plump breasts. He stared at
them longer than an engaged man should.

‘What
am I doing? I love Scarlett.’ He forced his eyes back onto the
road. ‘This arrangement is messing up everything. Scarlett
looked absolutely perfect this morning and I turned her down, and for
what?’

Thankfully,
the traffic began to move forward slowly, but after a couple of
hundred meters everything was back at a snail’s pace. He
glanced at the clock on the dashboard of his car. Every minute that
ticked by was an extra minute he would be staying after work to get
things done.

It
was going to be a long day.

Suddenly,
something else caught his eye to the left of his field of vision.

Without
thinking Lucas turned to look at the blonde woman in the car beside
him. She was slightly younger than him. If he had to guess he would
say she was in her early twenties. In many ways she looked a lot like
Scarlett with her blue eyes, blonde hair, and sweet face, but when
you compared the two of them Scarlett won hands down when it came to
looks. Nevertheless something dangerous was happening down within the
depths of his body, as he looked at this woman.

‘Stop,’
he told himself. ‘What is wrong with me? I haven’t had
sex in a month and I am already looking at other women?’ A
thought occurred to him, as he turned his attention back towards the
road. ‘I might have to use the showers at work.’

***

The
elevator doors opened with a ping. Lucas charged out like a man on a
mission and headed towards his office. He kept his eyes firmly on the
light brown carpet in an attempt to resist the urge of looking up at
all the pretty secretaries sitting outside of the numerous offices on
the floor. A chorus of hello’s greeted him, as he rushed by.
Without looking up he regurgitated the greetings back to all the
lovely ladies.

‘Hey.
Lucas!’ A voice called out from one of the open office doors.

Lucas
did not stop.

‘Wait.’
Craig darted out of the doorway and power marched after him. ‘What
are you in a hurry for?’

‘I’m
late,’ Lucas replied.

It
was what one might consider a half truth. He was in fact late, which
was not something his colleagues associated with Lucas. Normally, he
was the first person into work and the last person out of work, but
then again that is what happens when you work for your future father
in law. It wasn’t like Lucas could say that the lack of sex
with his gorgeous wife was making him hornier than is humanly
possible and every single woman no matter size, or shape, was looking
extremely appealing to him at this point.

‘Well,
do you want the good news or the bad news?’ asked Craig.

They
reached the vacant secretary desk outside of Lucas’s office. A
mountain of paperwork, folders, artwork and other such important
documentation had consumed the entire surface of the wooden desk.

‘What
is the bad news?’ Lucas headed into his office.

He
threw his coat and briefcase onto the leather couch at the side of
the room.

‘The
bad news is that you still don’t have a secretary.’

Lucas
opened the blinds and headed for the drink cabinet.

‘And
what could possibly be the good news?’ He poured two small
glasses of whisky.

‘I
have narrowed it down to four possible candidates and they are all
coming back today for their final interview. It means you will have a
new secretary sitting outside your office tomorrow morning.’

Lucas
nodded his head.

‘That
is good news.’ He handed Craig one of the glasses.

***

Scarlett
walked through the crowded mall. That’s if you could call it
walking. It felt more like some sort of obstacle course with the
amount of people she had to dodge. She broke away from the crowd and
used the escalator to get down to the next floor. She glanced over
the side towards the small café below as she was carried down.
The familiar figure of Anne was already sitting at one of the tables.
In many ways the two sisters were the same. If you took away the
bright blue eyes and long flowing golden blonde hair you would still
be able to see that they were siblings because their faces were
almost identical, even though, Anne had a good four years on her baby
sister.

Scarlett
hoped off the escalator and headed into the café.

‘There
she is.’ Anne was smiling ear to ear. ‘It’s been
ages since I saw you.’

She
stood up and hugged her.

Scarlett
giggled. ‘We went out last week.’

‘When
you have four kids a week is a long time,’ explained Anne.

Scarlett
dropped herself into the seat opposite. ‘You look really
beautiful today.’ She found herself unconsciously looking her
sister up and down. Anne was wearing a long black skirt and a dark
red low cut blouse. She wasn’t the slimmest woman in the world,
but she seemed to have all the right curves in all the right places.
The other thing that Anne had in abundance was sex appeal. She knew
exactly what men liked, how they liked it, and how to get their
attention, which was why she never managed to stay single for long.

It
was also why Scarlett wanted to see her so badly.

She
had to pick her brains.

‘So,
how are my nephews and nieces doing?’ asked Scarlett.

‘They
are doing well. Brian has a karate test coming up next week, which he
has been practising for non-stop.’ Anne allowed a cheeky smile
to split her lips. ‘He still gets beaten up by his baby sister
all the time, but he enjoys going to karate and watching his Japanese
cartoons, so he is happy.’