Chapter 7: Extravagant Gifts and St. Croix Trip

Mark

Monday did not start out as well as the weekend days with Elsa and Cindy. I was up at four-thirty and immediately checked my texts and emails. I had a message from John Thornberry of my London Office that one of the deals to trade around some cash and chemical plants in other places around the world was falling apart. He needed me in London ASAP.

I went and kissed the girls goodbye, but neither woke up enough to take in that I was leaving. I put Elsa’s cellphone beside the bed, and then left for the airport. I’d arrive in London in time for drinks and dinner with the head of Royal Chemicals and his negotiating team.

As morning got underway, I talked to Sheila and Andy at the office from my trans-Atlantic flight, and then I called Elsa, giving her a wake-up call.

Elsa said in groggy tone, “Where are you? I thought you were in the other room.”

“I think the Citation is just coming up on Newfoundland, why?”

“Newfoundland!” I could visualize her suddenly sitting up in bed.

“On the way to London, and I’m not sure when I’ll make it back. One of my deals is faltering.”

“Anything we can do?”

“Not really. Andy and Sheila will rally the troops on this American side of the pond. In another few hours I’ll start to get the details I need to get things back on track. I love you – both.”

The girls pledged their love to me, and then told me they were going to shower and dress for work. I’d arranged that when they came out of the master bedroom suite, my butler Barnes would be there offering them breakfast. I also had made sure the limousine was waiting for them to do their bidding. I’d told them to stay at the condo anytime they wanted, but I learned that evening when I called them that they each went to their own apartments. A little part of my brain verified yet again that these girls were not gold diggers.

I met with Clive Rowland, the head of Royal Chemicals, and some of his minions for five hours Monday late-afternoon into the evening, and we picked up again on Tuesday morning for another six hours. We hammered out a new agreement that he hoped would pass muster with his Board of Directors. His Board had been the reason for the scuttling of the prior agreement.

Clive set out about two o’clock London time to walk the new agreement past enough of the Board to get an indication of yea or nay on it. He urged me to stay in town one more evening in case there were further details, and so I agreed. My week’s schedule was already in chaos, but Sheila was working to keep anything else from falling apart. She was superb in that role.

I headed over to Bond Street in Mayfair to do some shopping for my new girlfriends. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for, but I knew that by most standards it would be an expensive trip. Cindy and Elsa had reluctantly kept the diamond necklaces and tennis bracelets as well as the gowns and other clothing items I’d bought for them for the Hospital Gala. I needed some other ideas.

I found the perfect gift for each of them in an exclusive jewelry store – Rolex watches. They were beautiful, very feminine, and only $14,000 each, plus applicable taxes. Each watch was rimmed in pink gold, with twenty-four diamonds around the bezel, the diamonds at each numeral being larger than those in between. The backdrop was mother of pearl inlay. The watches were functional yet a work of art.

I walked out of the high street jewelry store about five thirty just as my cellphone rang. Clive was calling to tell me that we had been successful in this go around as far as his Board was concerned. They would formally approve the swaps, mergers, and cash trades at their regular meeting on Thursday. We were both happy executives.

Clive invited me to dinner at his club, so I accepted. Clubs in London have a special meaning unlike in the U.S. The gentlemen’s clubs started in the seventeenth century for members of aristocracy, with the area around St. James Square being the epicenter of ‘club land.’ The private clubs were and are exclusive, and one could always find companionship and get bar service regardless of time of day, unlike the regular bars. Many of the clubs today have women members as well, a recent addition and break with three hundred years of tradition.

Clive belonged to a club named Annabel’s at 44 Berkeley Square. The club had morphed from several prior incarnations with other names, but it had always been exclusive and swinging. Members of the royal family belonged, and many famous people have attended or been members. Lady Gaga was one of the recent entertainers.

Dinner was posh and delightful, and with a glass of port in hand Clive led me to one of the social rooms. A fashionably attired and most attractive middle-age woman welcomed him, who fawned over him so much I thought perhaps she might be an escort. Clive asked about a friend of hers, and almost instantly another knockout of a woman came and joined us from across the room. Thus, I met Lady Vane and Dame Ross.

I don’t pretend to understand the pecking order of the British honors systems, but given the youthful age of these two women, I knew they must be extraordinary individuals. In an aside, Clive told me that Lady Linda Vane had brought honor to the empire by her solo long-distance yachting around the globe; Dame Holly Ross had started some kind of special charity that met a crying need in the country and had been personally instrumental in its growth and success over the past two decades.

The women were delightful company and flirted outrageously with us. The pair reminded me of Elsa and Cindy in how they flirted, and I resolved to be a good boy and didn’t make a pass at either of them although I could have caught a few. I did however nurse several small fantasies. I’d save those for later. We ended things about eleven-thirty, and I left, leaving Clive with his two companions.

I caught a few hours of sleep at the hotel and then in the limousine, made it to Luton Airport, north of London at about five a.m. We touched down at our own airport about eight-thirty local time, and I was in the office by nine a.m. despite rush hour traffic.

A pert young twenty-year-old brunette was situated outside my office door as I arrived. She was stunning, but looked almost as if she had just finished junior high school. I wondered if she had any brains and knew her way around the company or even what a company was. I’d run into more than one airhead in the company. Her name was Melanie Wood. I told her to call me Mark and we agreed that I could call her Melanie or Mel, a name she said she liked.

I went into my office and there on my desk carefully arranged in the middle of my desk were five sheets of paper. The pages were titled in large Helvetica type: Calls you should return, Calls that came in that you don’t need to return unless you want to, Appointments for Today and Tomorrow, Things You Should Do Today, and Interesting Things That Happened While You Were Gone. Each page had a detailed list of items.

I scanned each of the five pages. They were great and told me perhaps all of what I wondered about what had been going on for the past two days that I’d been in England or traveling. Yes, I’d been in contact with the office and talked to Sheila, but these pages were a whole different insight into what had been going on.

I shouted out my office door, “Melanie, who did these five pages on my desk?”

She scurried to my door and came about ten feet into my hallowed sanctuary with a steno pad in hand. “I did, sir.”

“Who helped you?”

“No one, sir. I mean I got the information from other people, but I organized it and put those pages together. Are they all right?” She looked worried that I’d admonish her in some way.

I studied her. “Where did you learn to do this?” I smiled to show my pleasure in what she’d done.

Mel kind of shrugged. “If I’d been out of the country for two days locked in critical negotiations in a billion dollar deal, this is what I’d want to find out when I got back to my office. Sir.”

“Melanie, two things. First, these are great; this is A+ work. I am instantly impressed with your work and qualifications, whatever they may be. Your thinking is spot on, as the British say. Second, don’t call me sir. I just came from Britain, and I am not knighted, therefore I am not Sir Mark Worthington – yet. Mark is my preferred name around the office.”

“Yes, sir ... errr, Mark.” Mel gave me a crooked smile and then I waved her back to her desk. I could hear a phone ringing that she needed to get. She scurried out.

At the top of the ‘Things you should do today’ page was a bullet point that read, ‘Call Elsa and Cindy to tell them you’re home and missed them. Send flowers? Dinner?” Mel was going to go far in my office. I found out later for sure that Melanie had done similar things for Andy and Sheila while I’d been gone, helping Andy’s secretary create a similar view of things. She was very creative and had done her homework. Neither Andy nor Sheila knew of the pages she assembled for me, but neither was surprised. Melanie had asked some simple questions about my social life from them.

When Sheila came in to review things with me, I asked her about Melanie. She smiled. “I thought you might like her. She’s new with the company – three months I think. She graduated college a year or two early, but the job market sucks, so she decided to try being an executive secretary since she learned all those skills when she was an early teen. She’s smart and engaging too. She was quoting Shakespeare to me yesterday about something that happened, and she knew the play, act, and scene. She’s due to rotate back downstairs when we find you an experienced executive secretary.”

I squinted my eyes at Sheila to see if she was jerking me around, as she was prone to do; it was her way to tease me. I said curtly, “Don’t move Melanie without my permission. I’d like to see her C.V. Also, kick up her salary twenty percent. I like her too, and she’s already impressed me – a lot.”

I moved into my other meetings and calls. I did call Elsa and Cindy, and set up dinner for seven-thirty. Flowers followed, sent to their work addresses thanks to Mel’s further research and my meager knowledge of where they actually worked.

I sent the limousine to pickup the girls at each of their apartments for dinner. They brought a change of clothes for the office and a small cosmetic kit that they left in the car. They came into the restaurant looking very hot in clothes that revealed a lot of cleavage. I met them at The Geneva, an upscale European restaurant, where we had an exquisite meal and teased the daylights out of each other.

Both girls asked whether I’d gotten laid during my trip. I explained that I hadn’t, and that I thought I’d had the opportunity with Lady Vane and Dame Ross, and then I teased them telling them about how hot my new secretary was, and how I was sure that I’d be ‘doing her’ across my desk before the end of the following week.

Cindy and Elsa responded by promising me untold feminine pleasures that evening, and they asked for a photo of Melanie so they could see whether they wanted their own time with her above and beyond any satisfaction that I thought I might be able to bring her.

Elsa

Our teasing with Mark took on a new flavor after his sudden trip to London to glue some big deal back together. We were now taunting each other with little fantasies about fucking other people. Upon questioning, Mark admitted he’d met a couple of hot women during the trip over drinks with his important business associate. He also talked about his new secretary.

Cindy and I teased about how we might also like to fuck his new girl and do other pleasurable things to her. Cindy then talked about some hot guy in her office too, although I knew from an earlier chat with her that there was no chemistry between them. I think Mark sniffed that out too.

Mark then did something after our marvelous dinner that blew Cindy and me away. He presented each of us with a small gift as a token of his love that he’d picked up in London. He made sure we knew he’d picked each of them out personally. We each opened our little box uncertain as to what lay inside. After the wrapping paper came off, I knew it was jewelry of some kind because the store name was on the velveteen box embossed in a brass plate.