All I've Ever Needed (After the Storm) (12 page)

 
She loved the fact that he’d said “when”, not “if”.

***

Later that night, Natalie lay awake in bed trying to process the day’s events.
 
She’d persuaded Stephano not to accompany her home.
 
He had make another trip to Cadbury’s Head Office.
 
The competition was stiffer than had been anticipated.
 
A much larger, very reputable rival had thrown its considerable resources together to put up a fierce battle.
 
Getting the account would be a real coup, so Paul was flying up from Ireland to accompany Stephano for the last round of talks.
 
Natalie knew how important it was for Stephano to be rested and at his best when he gave his final presentation to the prospective clients.

She’d also needed some time to think.
 
Although she had told her mother about him, she’d had no intention of having Stephano meet the family if she had taken on the role of ‘other woman’.
 
Convinced that he was seeing someone one else, she hadn’t considered what it would mean to be Stephano’s woman exclusively.

Her father would be her biggest hurdle.
 
He had always kept to ‘his own kind’, as he phrased it, but he hadn’t objected to her mother or Nathan having friends of all races or bringing them home.
 
He’d never said it explicitly, but Natalie knew that he’d expected his children to marry within their race.
 
And like her mother, her father would have assumed if one of his children did date a white person, it would have been Nathan.

But as her mother had said, it was her life and she had to live it to suit herself.

Stephano was everything she’d ever wished for in a man—their connection went deeper than skin color.
 
The first day, she’d joined the agency she’d felt it when their eyes met.
 
She had put it down to his good looks and charm, but she’d always been acutely aware of him.

The dynamics at the office would change if she and Stephano started dating.
 
If she agreed with Stephano on an issue it would be assumed she did so because they were sleeping together; if she disagreed, their colleagues would wonder if they were having problems in their personal life.
 
But she and Stephano had a healthy respect for each other professionally and that wouldn’t change.
 
As a matter of a fact, with so much in common, their lives could blend together beautifully.

The hardest part would be telling Stephano about her past.
 
She couldn’t brush it under the carpet and simply start afresh—there were hang-ups she still had as a result of her relationship with Michael.

Working for the agency had helped build her confidence.
 
Paul was like a kindly grandfather and an expert life coach.
 
He had analyzed a few of her presentations, taking them apart step by step, and had been as generous with praise as he was with criticism.
 
The thing he loved the most about her he’d told her was her voice with its merest hint of a West Indian accent.
 
He’d called it “seductive” and “persuasive”, saying that she could “sell oil to the Arabs”.

Paul had told her that she would benefit from a few sessions of therapy to build her confidence and had discretely arranged a meeting with one of the best on Harley Street.
 
The therapist had later recommended a session with a colleague of hers, a reputable hypnotist and Natalie had made remarkable progress over the next weeks.

Paul’s interference should have felt intrusive, but she’d understood that all he wanted was her to be the best she could be.
 
He wanted that for all his employees.

When Craig’s halitosis became increasingly worse, everyone felt too embarrassed to tell him and no one wanted to team up with him.
 
After a monthly staff meeting Paul had invited him for a drink.
 
They had all feared that Craig would be given the boot, instead he had returned to work the next day, bad breath and all.
 
But over the following weeks there had been a noticeable freshening of his breath.
 
Natalie suspected that Paul had arranged a consultation with a specialist on Harley Street as he had done for her.
 
Now few of them remembered that Craig had had a problem, although when he’d tried to kiss her under the mistletoe at the last company Christmas party, Natalie had instinctively given him her cheek.

Morgan didn’t command the same attention as Stephano, but his good looks were arresting and Paul had encouraged him to use both the masculine and feminine sides of his personality to charm an audience when giving a presentation.

Natalie’s suits were made by the same bespoke tailors who specialized in the finest Italian suits and handmade shirts.
 
Nothing boosted her confidence more than wearing clothing that was specially made for her.
 
She didn’t wear trousers suits often.
 
Though it went against all her feminist instincts, she’d recognized that many clients, both male and female, reacted differently to a woman in trousers.
 
But there were times she needed to be one of the boys and help deliver a tough message.
 
At these times she wore trousers suits and flat shoes and acted as tough as needed.
 
Other times called for something softer and though she never overtly flaunted her sexuality, she used her feminine wiles when the occasion warranted.

Her epiphany had come from a surprising source, though.
 
She had heard it mentioned that Beyonc
é
was shy and had believed it to be media hype, unconvinced that a shy woman would voluntarily perform in front of hundreds of thousands of screaming fans.
 
But late one night Natalie had been watching a documentary of the singer which had been recorded early in her career and had seen the evidence of that shyness for her shyness.
 
It had helped Natalie understand how she could feel confident giving a presentation to a room full of strangers and yet feel nervous having a drink with them afterwards.
 
The weeks leading up to giving a presentation of her final project to her entire class at university had been nerve wracking.
 
And yet on the day it had gone so smoothly she had amazed herself.
 
She had never been shy giving a presentation to any client.
 
It was the intimate, close eye-to-eye contact that embarrassed her.
 
It was a bit like acting she’d realized—learning one’s lines by heart and delivering them flawlessly.

Watching that documentary on Beyonc
é
had made her realize that her shyness didn’t need to get in the way of being successful or stop her from doing anything she wanted to.

Standing in front of Stephano on Saturday evening wearing just a thong hadn’t been excruciating as she would have imagined it being, but it hadn’t been easy.
 
Her body wasn’t perfect, but she’d seen enough naked female bodies in the changing room of the fitness club after exercise classes to know that hers was in pretty decent shape.
 
Her hips and thighs could be smaller perhaps, but most women would probably say the same thing.

She had embraced her height and found it an advantage in many ways.
 
She took time to pamper her skin and it glowed as a result.
 
Every time she went for a facial massage, the beauty therapist always said that she wished her skin was as gorgeous as Natalie’s.
 
The woman’s skin was flawless, but she’d confessed that it took a lot of maintenance to achieve the look.

When Michael had gripped her hair to force her to go down on him, he’d torn out clumps of it out and left several bald patches.
 
The baldness hadn’t been permanent, but she’d had to crop the back really short.
 
To her surprise the style really suited the shape of her face and her thick, healthy hair and it had become her signature hairstyle.
 
Cut expertly it looked chic and whenever she wanted a softer, more feminine look, as she’d wanted for the dinner date, she curled it into loose carefree waves.

***

Natalie made a sound of annoyance when her doorbell rang much sooner than she’d anticipated. She’d rushed home after work hoping that she’d finish cooking and have a quick shower before Stephano arrived back from Uxbridge.
 
She hadn’t tried to compete with his mother by cooking pasta or other Italian dish.
 
Instead she’d cooked Curry Chicken with rice, instead of roti.
 
She slipped the apron off and hurried to the front door.

Even after a long day of negotiations and the additional travel time King’s Cross St. Pancras to Uxbridge, Stephano looked gorgeous.
 
The jacket of his suit folded neatly over one arm, holding the extendable handle of his small, wheeled travel case.
 
He was the epitome of the young profession traveling for business.

“Hi,” she felt suddenly shy and a little nervous.

“Hi.”
 
His response was like the purr of a lion as he placed the jacket over the handle of the case and wrapped his arms around her.

“Did you miss me,
cara mia
?”

Like crazy.

“You were only gone for two days!” she protested weakly as he found the vulnerable pulse point of her neck and sucked it into the heat of his mouth.

“
I
missed you,” he admitted, staring into her eyes.

It should have been the easiest thing to say that she’d missed him too, but the word stuck in her throat.

Stephano lowered his lips to hers as he lifted her bodily.
 
She wrapped her legs around his hips and reveled in his strength and the feel of his arms around her.
 
She was a tall, not-exactly skinny woman, yet he made her feel slender and utterly feminine in comparison to his larger frame.
 
It was silly, but she loved it.

She was mostly leg and Michael had a long torso, it had been odd feeling his feet above hers when they made love.

Stephano strode to her large Moroccan sofa and lowered them onto it.
 
His hand reached under the hem of her Indian cotton skirt to stroke her inner thighs and then move upwards to caress her through the gusset of her thong.

She felt heat flood her face—she was drenched already.
 
She’d been thinking about him all day and in the last half an hour as she prepared the meal she’d allowed herself to relive the last time they had made love in glorious detail.

“Ah, sweetheart,” Stephano groaned.
 
“You missed me, too.”

The arrogance of the man thinking that only
he
could be the object of her sexual imaginings!
 
But he was so right, she conceded.

“I can’t wait to be inside you, my sweet,” he growled, as he sat up and reached down to undo the laces of his black Oxford brogues.

“I’m cooking!”
 
She suddenly remembered the meal and surged off the sofa.

“Turn it off,
cara
” Stephano encouraged with a seductive wink and he slipped his socks off.

The rice would have needed a few minutes more if they were sitting down to eat immediately, but it would soften to the perfect consistency by the time they were ready.
 
The curried chicken breasts were perfect, fully cooked but tender.
 
She moved it to one of the cool electric hobs to stop it cooking further.

“That smells wonderful.”
 
Stephano came up behind her, pressing his erection into her bottom as he nibbled on her neck.
 
“Almost as good as you do.”

She slid her arms around his neck as he lifted her and returned to the sofa.

There was little finesse in their joining.
 
It was fast, out of control and all consuming.
 
Stephano acted as though he was starved of her.

As they lay together afterwards his stomach rumbled suddenly.

“Are you hungry?” she asked with a laugh.