Chapter 6

Sitting at my kitchen table eating breakfast with a half naked woman was strange to say the least. I was no monk and over my adult years had needed to get laid as much as the next man. I had never had a live-in girlfriend or to be truthful any proper girlfriend. Since I'd bought this house, almost all of my sexual activity had taken place at the woman's place as most seemed to prefer it that way. The few married ones had always come here for obvious reasons and for equally obvious reasons never stayed the night. To the chagrin of many I'd always baulked at letting any of the single ones spend a night here. That was something I'd always viewed as being the first step towards that scary thing called a relationship, something that had overtaken most of my few friends and I'd always vowed that I would not caught out.

Watching Amanda wearing nothing but a smile and one of my shirts and looking a damn sight better in it than I ever could, I suddenly understood those same friends when they tried to explain that morning feeling with the right partner, how the world seemed that much better somehow. I had done us each a good fry-up, as I knew after the night's exertions that I needed something substantial. Judging by the way Amanda was tucking in, she was feeling the same.

As if reading my thoughts, she said. "I'm not much of a breakfast person, especially a greasy fry-up, but this definitely hits the spot." She grinned impishly. "Maybe it's all the exercise you forced on me last night, to say nothing of this morning."

"Don't seem to recall needing to use a lot of force." I laughed.

"You must have done something as I've never been like that before." She laughed with me.

I was secretly pleased with that statement, it just added to how close I felt we'd suddenly become. Emotionally I too, felt that it was better than I had ever had before, although being truthful with myself, I guessed that the purely physical side had not been that much different than a few of my previous better performances. Again I remembered those old, now married, friends saying how much better it was with the right woman. So physically it was as good as I'd had it but now that I'd encompassed feelings as well, I knew things had changed for good. Based on all that then Amanda was certainly the right woman, at least for me.

We talked properly about ourselves for the first time. I had a slight surprise when I found that she was actually twenty-two, but that was the only one. Up to then we'd both led pretty normal lives. Like me she'd had a basically happy childhood, the only blot being her brother Mark, and that only in the last decade. At one stage I reluctantly reminded her that today was a working day, at least for her.

She giggled. "Oops! It just doesn't seem like a weekday. Still, this is more important and a lot more interesting. Besides, I have nothing urgent and being the boss' daughter should have some perks."

We carried on talking for what I thought to be a short time but the sound of the mail arriving told me it was almost noon. I wondered where the time had gone. But as they say, time flies when your busy or doing something interesting. I wonder if this is what Einstein meant when he talked about relativity.

At one point I recalled that Amanda had said that there were three reasons to see me. I could only remember her mentioning two. When I asked her about it she laughed.

"Well to be honest, it depended on your answer to the second question, and as your answer was an emphatic yes I suppose its fine to discuss it."

"Go on then." I prompted.

"It is work related."

I frowned at this and started to interrupt but she raised her hand.

"Give me chance. Based on my inability to work with my brother and my love of working with you I have decided that I will follow you to wherever you go next. But, and this is the real biggie, I think that we should look at setting up our own company."

I was shocked. She was certainly right about it being a big one. It was something I had never even considered. On my own it was almost definitely non-viable financially at least, and I doubted whether Amanda's contribution would change that. We discussed that snag but she was convinced that together we could raise the capital. Amanda had a small inheritance that she was prepared to invest and I could re-mortgage my house. If I could guarantee some contracts then the banks just might lend us the money.

To get those contracts I would need to use my contacts and they had come exclusively from Thomas Engineering. Even though I no longer worked there I still felt uncomfortable about stealing their business and would do as long as Amanda's father was in control. Oddly enough I felt more guilt than Miss Thomas who was convinced that our bid, which is the one her father had submitted, would prove successful and mean he had less time for the smaller jobs. It was this latter work that Amanda had deemed our target market. Did I mention that she had a first from Cambridge in Business Management.