Chapter 1

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The printer was jamming. Again. Bess Dearborn glowered at the paper stuck in the slot and groaned.

“All good, boss?” Marco stuck his head into door of the office.

“It’s great but would be even better if this thing didn’t decide to play up late on a Friday afternoon,” Bess complained.

She plonked her substantial frame down in the office chair and glowered. At 45, Bess, the manager of the Harris Beds and Furniture big box store in the suburb of Parramatta in Western Sydney, presented a formidable sight, especially when glowering. She was never a small woman and since her divorce, has stopped worrying about keeping the weight off. Everything about her was large – her body, her bouffant hairstyle, her booming voice, her personality and, Marco couldn’t help once again noticing, her bust. It loomed above her table as she drummed her fingers on the mahogany surface.

Marco crossed the threshold to the printer. His slim fingers deftly opened the inner workings of the machine and extracted the chewed up paper. “Here you go, boss”, he grinned. Marco was one of the younger employees of the store, being in his early 20s. Bess tried to make a point of knowing everyone who worked in her area and she knew that his best friends were Stuart and Bruce, who were of similar age.

“Thank you very much ... hopefully the head office might allow us to replace these things. Some of them are older than me, and that’s saying something!”

Marco chuckled. “Well, boss, if I may say so, you are a lot better looking than the printers are.”

Bess jokingly growled at him as he scampered out the door. Standing up, she followed him, looking out on to the sales floor. At this hour, not far away from closing time, there didn’t seem to be any customers. In fact, only Stuart and Bruce seemed to be duty, apart from Marco. She recalled that a few more people were supposed to be there but they all seemed to want to take annual leave at the same time.

“Typical!” she groused to herself. At least there weren’t many customers today.

Bess sometimes had trouble remembering that other people might have a life outside of the store. I guess they have lives, she thought with some resentment, thinking of her empty place. She sat down in her chair, picking up a sales report. Normally she found it easy to lose herself in focusing on her work but now stray thoughts kept intruding.

I should start dating again, she thought. But something inside her always seemed to rebel against that idea. She tried after... after the bastard left, she thought scowling ... but between the only-after-one-thing losers, blowhards and people who were totally up the themselves, the pickings were slim.

Or maybe you need to move up the age brackets, her mind suggested. She was a bit susceptible to going after younger men, she knew. Though she would rather die before admitting it to anyone, perhaps her motives were not entirely ... serious. Well, everyone deserves to have a bit of fun, she protested internally against some imagined moraliser. Yes, a lot of them are good looking. We could have started with something purely ... physical and then progressed to something bigger. But the physical stuff ... I think I miss that.

Bess shook her dark head of bouffant hair and felt like she needed to take her mind of things. She looked out of her office again. The big warehouse-sized store was still empty. Marco, Stuart and Bruce seemed to be in a confab down one end, causing her to click her tongue disapprovingly. They should be circulating. She knew there was no one there but company policy was company policy.

She was going to go over and tell them to stop standing around on company time when an alarm went off on her Apple Watch. It was closing time.

Bess sighed again and went back to her desk as the young men started moving to the door to close up and disperse to do a myriad of little jobs that needed to be done when the store was closing.

Sometime later as Bess was buried in one of the reports, a cough came from the door. Marco stood there flanked by Stuart and Bruce. “Hi, boss,” he said somewhat nervously. “I think ... congratulations are in order, yes?”

Bess stared at them and then guffawed. “How did you guys find out my birthday was a few days ago? Employee files are confidential,” she added with mock seriousness, crossing her hands below her huge breasts.

“People talk,” Stuart piped up. He was something of a more serious foil to Marco’s happy go lucky nature. “We found out from Estelle.”

Bess harrumphed. Typical Estelle. She was the closest Bess had to a friend in this place but she was way too chatty to be able to rely on her to keep anything back about the manager’s private life.

“So...” Bruce said. He stepped forward, a smirk playing on his lips. If Bess had to characterise him, she would describe him as “tricky”. He always seemed to have some agenda or an angle he was working, an off-putting quality, which was ameliorated when he was part of a group. Perhaps this was why he was quick to attach himself to Stuart and Marco.

Now, he whipped his hand from behind his back with a flourish. He was holding a bottle of wine and a box of chocolates. “We thought we should throw a small party for you,” he said.

Bess chuckled, despite herself. “You want to drink in here?” she asked.

“We’ve closed up,” Marco said. “It should be fine – it’s Friday after all. C’mon, boss – you deserve it after a week like that.”

Bess appraised them. She wasn’t born yesterday and, looking at the glint in Marco’s eyes, she definitely had cause to suspect that this offer was not entirely altruistic. Surely not ... are they really... quick thoughts flashed through her mind as she looked at them considering.