This is a Jack Grierson story, following from the 10 Chapters of Her Fiancé's Father.
This story uses Indian female clothing – sari, choli and petticoats – as a part of the action. A choli is a short blouse that typically ends just below the breasts. A sari is a six-yard bolt of cloth that is wrapped around the body, pleated and tucked into a petticoat. One end is worn over the left shoulder and is called the pallu. The pallu is sometimes worn over the head and sometimes drawn around the right shoulder to envelope the entire upper body over the choli.
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1. "I'd like to see something old," said Jack. "I'm in India, after all. I'm after something that has a provenance. My wife is the daughter of a billionaire and I need something unique."
The salesgirl looked disappointed. She was on commission and she could see that this well-heeled customer wanted something that she could not sell. Jack tore his eyes away from her and looked around the counters to all the other salesgirls. They were uniformly young and very pretty. They were all dressed to exude sex appeal, calculated to encourage customers to spend money. They wore very thin blue chiffon uniform saris with embroidery done with gold thread. They wore the saris "hipster style" – very low waists that exposed a great deal of midriff, with the pleats tucked in just above the crotch. They wore very brief choli-style blouses that ended in a band of gold thread embroidery just below their breasts. The cholis had halter necks that tied in trailing bows at the back of their necks and bared their shoulders.
"What seems to be the problem?" asked a newcomer who appeared suddenly out of a back office
"He is asking to see antique pieces, ma'am," said the salesgirl.
"I see," she said. The newcomer had come up quietly, but once Jack saw her, he could not take his eyes off her. She was tall with a complexion the color of milk chocolate. Her eyes were large, dark and very expressive. Her hair was straight, jet-black and piled on top of her head in an attractive coiffure.
She wore an identical sari and choli outfit to the other salesgirls, but hers was in yellow. There were gold bangles on both her wrists as well as red kumkum in the part in her hair, indicating that she was married. In addition, she wore pearl earrings and a pearl choker – a double strand of smoky pearls with a gold pendant.
She had a ripe, hourglass figure and the outfit showed it off to very good advantage. Her breasts were full without being too large and her waist was narrow. The swell of her belly was very sexy under the gauzy, translucent chiffon of her pallu. Her rounded hips rolled as she walked in a manner that was guaranteed to attract male attention. She wore her sari waistline as low as the salesgirls and Jack mentally measured the few inches between the hipster pleats and her crotch.
"What did you have in mind?" she asked him.
"Who are you?" asked Jack.
"I'm Ayesha Banu Peerally Premji. My father is Seth Ismail Azeem Peerally, the owner of this store. He owns three other ones just like it. I can take you into the strong room and show you some antique pieces with impeccable provenances. But they will be very expensive."
"How much?" asked Jack.
"The cheapest ones are about ..." she paused and did the mental calculation converting the rupees to dollars. "A hundred thousand US dollars."
"Good. That's just what I was looking for."
"We don't take personal checks. There is a twenty percent markup on credit cards. We really prefer cash."
Jack put his hand in his jacket pocket and pulled out a wad of US currency. He riffled through the wad, showing her the denomination of the wad – they were thousand dollar bills.
"There's a hundred G's here," he said. "I've got four more wads, in case I see something I really like."
"Follow me," she said, completely unimpressed.
She led the way to the rear of the store and pressed a sequence of panels on the wall. A section of the wall slid away to reveal a six-foot tall strong room steel door. She used a palm scanner, then placed her face in a retina reader and finally punched in a code. The strong room door swung open slowly.
She gathered the pleats of her sari and stepped over the sill into the strong room. Jack followed her, noting Ayesha's high-heeled thong slippers and trim ankles as she raised her sari. As soon as he was in, the room swung shut behind him and the locks reset with an obvious whirring sound. The walls of the strong room were covered with metal lock boxes, while both sidewalls had full-length mirrors that made the room appear larger that it actually was. There was a heavy, polished table that ran down the center of the strong room.
The air-conditioners in the strong room was set quite a bit lower than those in the outer store. Ayesha drew the pallu of her sari around her bare shoulders, but it was so thin that it offered little additional protection. She went around one side of the table and turned to find him on the same side with her.
He was staring at her breasts. She realized that the cold had hardened her thick, meaty nipples and they projected forth quite obviously even through the thin layers of her bra, choli and two chiffon layers of the pallu she had wrapped around herself. The openness with which he stared at her breasts disconcerted her. To cover it, she turned away, unlocked one of the lock boxes and drew out a heavy gold necklace studded with diamonds and emeralds.
"This is a fine piece," she said. "It was made for Asaf Jah VI, the 9th Nizam of Hyderabad who presented it to his fourth and youngest wife on the occasion of their wedding. Its provenance dates it to 1896. The descendants of the Nizam sold it at auction in 1953 to finance their sheep station in Australia. My grandfather acquired it then and it has been in our collection ever since."
"How much?"
She read down to the end of the provenance.
"Five hundred thousand US dollars," she said flatly.
"Ridiculous. I could get a two thousand year old Greek amphora for less than that. I'll give you a three hundred thousand."
"Four hundred and fifty," she said.
Jack looked from the necklace to Ayesha. His eyes traced a path from her crotch to her breasts and back again, lingering on the swell of her belly and then on the prominent bumps that her nipples made in her clothing. Finally, he raised his gaze to meet her eyes.
"Put it on," he said.
She hesitated. But then she thought of her frustration at her father's airy dismissal of all the modernizing management practices she had put in place. Of how he refused to understand how her hard work had reduced their operating costs by twenty percent, swelling their profits by millions. Of how he refused to pay her a salary, insisting that he would buy her whatever she wanted. 'We are merchants, little one,' he always told her. 'If you really want to me to pay you, sell merchandise and I will give you a thirty percent commission.' This sale would be worth millions of rupees. It would make her a handsome commission and it would be her own money. More importantly, it would make him take her seriously.
She took the necklace out of the steel tray and ran it through her fingers. The diamonds and emeralds sparkled in the recessed lights in the strong room ceiling. She draped it around her neck and snapped on the clasp. She had to raise her arms to put on the necklace and it raised her breasts, causing them to jounce seductively.
"There," she said. "What do you think?"
