Sins by Penny Jordan

ofthe magazines on the coffee table and starting to flick through it.
    She certainly was a little madam, Dougie decided. Someone should have put her across their knee years ago and paddled her backside until she learned a few manners. It was too late now, of course. She was certainly nothing like the three girls he remembered from the party; they had all been really decent sorts, not arrogant little snobs like her. Well, she’d certainly get her comeuppance when Lew did show up. His favourite mantra was that no day was worth living unless it contained both sex and work, and when he returned it would be with sex on his mind. Lew could deliver caustically cruel put-downs when he was so minded. Dougie had seen Lew reduce girls to tears with his unkindness when he was irritated or bored with them.
    But so what if he did hurt this little madam’s feelings? Why should he care? He returned to his typing, breathing heavily over the unwanted task made all the more difficult by the small keyboard and the size of his hands.
    Really, the man was disgustingly boorish, Emerald decided contemptuously. All that heavy breathing interspersed with the odd swear word. He looked as though he’d be more at home on a farm than working here, although no doubt the nature of his work was equally menial. He wasn’t even properly dressed. Instead of a business suit he was wearing a pair of those silly narrow black trousers that a certain type of bohemian young man wore teamed with a black polo-neck jumper, its sleeves pushed back to display muscular tanned forearms. A lock of histhick dark brown hair had fallen down almost over his eyes, adding to his uncouth appearance. Emerald was more used to men with the traditional short back and sides, favoured by the establishment and the services.
    The sound of the front door suddenly opening had them both looking towards it, Emerald’s quickly prepared smile faltering for a moment as she saw the man coming in and immediately recognised him as the society photographer. What she hadn’t expected, though, was that he would be dressed in the same bohemian fashion as his dogsbody, only his polo-neck jumper was enlivened by a red and white spotted handkerchief knotted round his neck.
    Lew was back and on his own. Dougie immediately recognised that his employer was not in a good mood. He had that air of suppressed tension and irritation about him that Dougie had learned to recognise. Predictably, though, the instant he saw Emerald that tension was broken, replaced by one of his deliberately caressing looks accompanied by a warm smile.
    Now the fat was really in the fire, Dougie recognised. Deprived of his afternoon of sex with his girl, Lew would be like a cat on hot bricks until he had relieved his sexual tension, and who better to do so with than the snobby little madam sitting there looking at him with such confident expectation. Well, it would serve her right if he simply left her to her fate and she became yet another of the girls Lew picked up, seduced and then very publicly dropped, ruining her reputation as he did so.
    Lew, predictably, was all charm, going over to Emerald to offer his hand and an apology.
    ‘I’m sorry. I hope you haven’t been waiting too long.’
    ‘She hasn’t got an appointment,’ Dougie felt obliged to point out, but neither of them was listening. Instead they were gazing deeply into one another’s eyes.
    ‘I did write to you, about you taking my coming-out photograph,’ Emerald was saying, her cut-glass accent suddenly accentuated and grating on Dougie’s already frayed nerves. ‘Once I’d seen the photograph you took of Amelia Longhurst I told Mummy that I couldn’t possibly have my photographs done by anyone else.’ She smoothed her hand over her skirt as she spoke. She had dressed very carefully for this meeting in the palest of pink cashmere twinsets, its plainness relieved by a string of startlingly lustrous pearls, and a deep rose-pink full mohair skirt that