BUILDED ATTRACTION 1

SYNOPSIS:

When Clare Markham has an extension added to her house, she finds herself increasingly - and mutually - attracted to the hard, muscled body and sheer physicality of builder Gary Newby ...

CHAPTER 1

EVERY DAY FOR a week. The same routine. First thing in the morning after she’d dressed and made-up. She felt ashamed of herself. She felt like a guilty schoolgirl, hiding behind the lace curtains of her bedroom window so she could see but not be seen. She couldn’t help herself. It was hot and after only a few minutes of digging he would strip off his shirt. His legs were already exposed, by jeans cut off at the top of his thighs.

Clare Markham had never seen a body like it, which is why it fascinated her. His chest was broad, his abdomen flat and delineated by hard, stringy muscles, his biceps bulging as he worked. He was tall with long legs which were contoured by thick, well-defined muscles, his whole body like some relief map of musculature. His buttocks were small and tight and hard, like two cantaloupes wrapped in denim.

But it wasn’t only his physique that proved so magnetic. He was handsome too. He had short, blond, curly hair and very blue eyes, under a rugged brow. He had a small, straight nose, sharp, high cheekbones and a square jaw. She noticed he had small, very delicate ears.

He had arrived with the other builders on the first day that work had begun.

Clare had decided to have her house extended. She wanted a new kitchen to replace the small, porky room she used at the moment, and a new bathroom that would be en suite with her bedroom. The one could be conveniently constructed above the other. Two months ago she had been promoted to Managing Director of KissCo UK and the alterations were a sort of present to herself. The firm of builders she was using had been recommended by a friend who had been more than satisfied with similar work they had carried out for her.

Reluctantly Clare tore herself away from the bedroom window. The foundations were nearly in place and once they started knocking into the back wall to which the extension was being attached, she would not have such a goo vantage point. For one thing she’d have to move into the front bedroom. Her daily routine would have to change.

Checking her appearance one last time in the mirror, she adjusted her short black hair with a single sweep of her fingers and marched downstairs.

‘Morning, Mrs Markham,’ George Wickes said politely, although he continued to insist that Clare was married, no matter how many times she told him she was not. ‘Just making sure everything’s going well. Sorry about the mess. Inevitable I’m afraid.’ George Wickes was the head of the firm of builders and had arrived every morning to inspect the work. He was a large, avuncular man with heavy jowls and a ruddy complexion, the veins on his face very close to the surface. He had eyes like a basset-hound and, like Stan Laurel, seemed to take an extraordinarily long time to blink, as if the effort of raising his eyelids was too much for him. Even in the hot weather he wore a tweed sports coat with leather patches on the elbows.

‘Going to be worse when they knock through,’ Clare said.

‘Yes, but we'll do that at the last possible minute. Less disruption that way.’

The whole of the ground floor, including the sitting room and dining room, had been stripped of furniture and sheeted with plastic. The carpets had been taken up and scaffolding boards laid on the floor as a path for the wheelbarrow loads of rubble dug out of the back garden, and the hard core that had to replace it.

‘Morning, Mrs Markham.’ The blond was coming towards them from the back, wheeling a barrow piled high with soil.

‘Morning, Gary,’ Clare said, her eyes inevitably dropping to the contours of his chest. Perspiration had run down his collar bone, carving a trail in the dirt and dust that caked his skin. The trail ended at the waistband of the sawn off jeans, the denim darker there where it had soaked up the sweat. Clare tore her eyes away, not wanting to be caught staring at his crotch. His muscles rippled as he manoeuvred the heavy load past her.

Leaving George Wickes to get on with his inspection she took her car keys out of her bag and followed Gary outside. He wheeled the barrow up a plank to the top of a large skip parked outside her house, and dumped the contents.

‘Nice car,’ he said as he headed back down and saw Clare unlocking her 5 series BMW. He wiped the sweat off his brow with his forearm. He was looking at her, not the silver-coloured car. Clare was not tall, no more than five foot two in her bare feet, and Gary seemed to tower over her.

‘Goes with the job,’ she said, wishing she had the courage to say what was really on her mind and knowing she never would.

‘Nice job, then,’ he said. He had a strong South London accent.

Their eyes met. He smiled at her. It was a wistful smile. She wondered if he had ever entertained thoughts about her as graphic as the ones she’d had about him in the last few days.

‘Are you working late tonight?’ Gary was always the first to arrive and the last to leave.

'Yeah.’

‘See you later, then,’ she said cheerily, getting into the car. She started the engine but could not resist staring at those taut buttocks, each one a neat handful, as he wheeled the barrow back into her house.

For some reason traffic was light and it took Clare no more than fifteen minutes to drive from her house in Kensington to Grosvenor Square. She parked her car in the underground car park of KissCo’s offices, one of only three employees allowed to do so, and took the lift up to her office. It overlooked a corner of the square and the hot weather had already brought people out on to the grass, men stripping off their shirts, women furtively hitching vay their skirts to expose the maximum amount of leg to the sun’s rays. None of the half a dozen men she could see stretched out on the grass had a physique to rival Gary’s.

The phone on her desk rang before she’d had a chance to sit down.

‘Call from Houston,’ Janice, Clare’s secretary, said with the appropriate foreboding in her voice. Houston was the company headquarters and calls or correspondence from there often resulted in a great deal of extra work for Clare and her team.

‘It’s a bit early.’ Clare sat down at her highbacked, leather swivel chair and looked at her watch. It was five to ten, which meant it was five to four in the morning in Houston.

‘The early bird,’ Janice joked.

‘Put it through.’

The line clicked. ‘Ms Markham. I have Bridget Goldsmith on the line for you.’

The line clicked again. ‘Clare, good morning.’

‘Ms Goldsmith, you’re up early.’

Bridget Goldsmith was the President and Chief Operating Executive of KissCo worldwide. Clare was not at all surprised to get a call from her at such an early hour. The rumour in the company was that Bridget never slept.

‘l’ve decided to come to London, Clare,’ she said, getting right to the point.

‘Oh?’

‘The European launch is set for when?’

‘First of September.’

'That’s just over three months. I think I should come and have a look see before then. I’m going to schedule a trip to Paris too.’

‘To see Claude,’ Clare said coolly.

‘Should be swinging by in, say, two weeks. I'll fax you the actual schedule when it’s confirmed. Meantime can you work up a presentation for me. The ad agency, the marketing people. I want to review everything.’

‘We’re already in the process of combining a presentation.’

‘Good.’

'Is there a problem?' The European launch was to be KissCo’s biggest marketing operation outside America. A whole new range of cosmetics was to be targeted at every major European country at the same time, with an integrated advertising campaign.

‘No, no problem. I just want to have a look. My thinking on this is that it might be better to co-ordinate the launch from Paris.’

‘I see.’ Clare saw exactly. Claude Duhamel, the managing director of the French subsidiary, had recently returned from a visit to Houston. He had obviously not missed the chance to cast doubt on Clare’s competence to handle such a large and expensive operation.

Clare’s promotion had been sudden and unexpected. Usually all senior staff up for such important positions were shipped to Houston for extensive evaluations. But KissCo’s UK managing director had been poached by a rival company and there had been no time. Clare, as the second most senior person, had been the only possible replacement. Claude had no doubt made capital out of the fact that she had not been properly vetted.

‘Don’t worry about hotels. We'll do it all from here.’

‘Anything else you want?’

‘I'll call you if I think of anything. Bye for now.’ Having dropped the bombshell Bridget sounded cheery.

Clare put down the phone and began making notes. Janice peered in through the door. She was a plump, short woman who wore knitted twinsets whatever the weather. In combination with her tightly permed, rather thin, brown hair, they made her look at least ten years older than she actually was.

‘Can I help?’ she asked.

'Yes. Come in.’

They spent the next hour setting up meetings with all the departmental heads to advise them of Bridget’s visit and instruct them what would be needed for it. The presentation they were working on would have to be a great deal more detailed if it was going to be made to Bridget in person rather than sent out to Houston by courier.

It was about an hour later when the phone on Clare’s desk rang again. This time it was her private line.

‘Clare Markham,’ she said answering it herself.

‘Clare, it’s David. How are you?’

‘Could be better,’ she said, rather abruptly.

‘We're still on for tonight, aren’t we?’ She heard the worry in his voice that something might have come up which she would use as an excuse not to see him.

‘Yes, of course.’ Actually seeing David Alliston tonight was the last thing she really wanted to do, but she didn’t have the heart to disappoint him. David's attitude to their relationship was like that of a small child with a new toy. She couldn’t bare to snatch it away from him, however much she would have preferred to have an early night and curl up with a good book.

‘Great. Do you want to have dinner?’

‘I can’t cook. My kitchen’s been ripped out, remember?’

‘Shall I book a table at The Ivy?’

‘No, no. Nothing like that. I’m not in the mood to get dressed up. The local Italian will do.’ Bearing in mind what David would inevitably demand from her after they'd eaten, going to the Italian restaurant she frequented just off Kensington High Street seemed to involve the least effort after what was undoubtedly going to be an exhausting day.

‘OK. Eight, then? Is that all right?’ She could hear the excitement in his voice. The child had been given his toy again: now, she knew, he would spend the rest of the day planning what games to play with it.