ONE
A beautiful smile possessed the oval soft-featured face of Lily Mathieson as she unhurriedly turned the page of her book – unhurriedly as she was trapped in her private little world of romance and had no wish to escape prematurely.
The tiny alarm clock in her handbag would shrilly bring her back with a bang when it was time to return to the office.
But on this day she was returned before the alarm triggered.
"What are you reading that can make you smile like that?" enquired a smooth, well modulated masculine voice that seemed straight out of the pages of a recent novel she'd read, 'Banished to the Colony'.
"Oh," said the slim twenty-five year old with mousy brown hair and unfashionable blue cut glass drop ear-rings. "A woman writer, whose name will be unknown to you."
"Try me."
The request burned into Lily's cheeks, so she kept her head lowered, having interpreted those words as being almost obscene. Sensible men did not roam around asking women they did not know to try them.
"Kate Lambert."
"Oh yes, Katie," said the man, with a familiarity as if Mrs Lambert, who was sixty-one years' old lived next-door to him.
"She is securing quite a loyal following despite having only had three of her fifteen manuscripts published."
What nonsense. Lily knew this was Kate Lambert's fourth book and in none of the five or six reviews she'd read had any mention been made about a string of failed novels by this author. This man was a prig, attempting to chat her up for reasons unknown. She reached for her handbag nervously.
"Sorry, four books as I don't recognise the title I'm attempting to read upside down. I had not realised, um, 'Banished to the Colony' was no longer her latest published work."
Lily looked up at him, surprise showing on her face but that how it was. Anyway, there was no need to conceal what she felt about the implausibility of his assertion. How on earth could a man in Auckland know of an emerging writer from the Barossa Valley, South Australia?
Kate Lambert probably was not even on the Internet list of emerging writers of women's fiction yet, as her emergence had been so recent, the flash of her acceptance igniting like an Aussie bush fire.
This man was a fake. Manufacturing this pretence that he had knowledge of women's literature was one thing, but to ridiculously claim that he knew the author well enough to call her Katie, for goodness sake!
"This latest novel is titled 'Imprisoned in My Own Little World'."
Lily, an avid reader, had never come across an author who seemed so compatible with her in thought and utterances and in the descriptive word images.
Lily didn't write, but when alone her thoughts invented dialogue and visual landscapes; and she refined characterisations as if playing mental chess. This fellow wouldn't be aware of her skill in playing such games or why she did it.
"You have lovely shaped breasts."
Lily's breathing stopped, momentarily. She was in the process of being picked up. How disgusting, how interesting, how should she react? Those thoughts raced into her mind, confusing her, so she sat dumbly.
"Would you like to come across the street for a cup of coffee?"
Lily looked about wildly for a police officer, but as usual when one was wanted, none were in sight. There were plenty of people close by, though, but none seemed aware of her plight.
"Only for a cup of coffee. I'm really not a molester of pretty women on public streets and certainly not of women in crowded lunchtime enclaves like this one. Don't you ever take a risk?"
Well, that did it! Lily's deceased maternal grandmother had been full-blooded Irish, and it must have been Grandma's influence – she'd also been named Kate – that rose inside her and burst out of her mouth.
"Of course I do," she lied. "Lead on, Mr -?"
"Chalmers, Gavin Chalmers," he grinned like someone landing a fish while Lily decided to keep her identify concealed for the moment.
"Here, let me carry your book."
This Gavin practically tore it from her hands, although she had to admit her resistance melted as his fingers extended out towards the novel. He was tall, his features were soft just like hers, and his hazel eyes were laughing at her, not in the way of a maniacal rapist but with warmth and intelligence.
Her knees, just as Kate Lambert had described in 'Married at Last'. In that book the heroine had felt 'felt dangerous under-powered, desperately in need of underpinning support'. Almost like a Zombie, Lily slipped her arm through Gavin's and neither of them reacted as if something extraordinary had just occurred.
*
TWO
At five forty-five that afternoon, Lily had both hands dug deep into Gavin's thick thatch of hair pulling it painfully, screaming in ecstasy, as lying between her legs he slurped at juices flowing from her vagina. Her cheeks were glowing and just like Flossie's in 'Married at Last'.
Lily's heart soared and soft tearlets fell. Her body was on a high, the highest she'd ever experienced. Gavin was a man with a golden tongue.
Although married with two children and being 'an experienced woman' through four brief bouts of sexual encounters prior to meeting her husband Tom, Lily had never felt like this before – NEVER!