His Christmas Present

Excerpt From: His Christmas Present

His fare was dressed like Charles Dickens’ wet dream.

“What do you think?” she asked him.

Tim glanced away from the road just long enough to get an impressive view of plumped cleavage and a rouged mouth and cheeks. “Aren’t you cold?” he asked, eyes safely back on the windscreen. With the driving snow and black ice patches to navigate, the only curves he could spare concentration for were the hedge-lined hairpins of the country road.

“Worth it though,” she said, and he could hear the satisfied grin in her voice without needing to look again in the mirror.

Bankers drinking late had been his original thought when he’d decided to take one last fare before calling it a night. With Christmas Eve shopping still raging for the last-minute desperate on Regent Street, he’d been confident of finding a few guilty fathers needing a ride to Hamley’s. Instead, he’d picked up the Victorian tart from the corner of St Mary Axe. When she’d told him in her public school purr that she was looking for a lift to deepest darkest Surrey and could he possibly help a damsel in distress, he’d decided she would suit just fine.

He’d recognised her immediately, even in all her fancy get-up, and she’d remembered him too.

“Diana,” she’d said. “I never introduced myself before. And you’re Driver Tim, who got me to my meeting on time. How lovely to see you again.”

He’d driven her before from the Gherkin in a breakneck race to Canada Water. That day her spectacular breasts had been dressed for the boardroom. Money and entitlement had risen off her like perfume. But she’d spared him a cheeky wink, her blouse gaping and her pinstripe skirt riding up her thighs as she’d overpaid the tab. And now she was back in his cab—who said there weren’t such things as Christmas miracles?

Tonight they’d been chatting since she’d clambered into his backseat with her enormous dress and festive shopping bags. Better to listen to her playful teasing than the same old autotune carols on the radio. And those curving pink lips and little flashes of white teeth were an even nicer tip than the tenner the last punter had given him.

“I wore this to work today,” she was saying. “Nothing quite like distracting bond traders with tastefully historic tits and arse.”

He didn’t buy that line for a second. He’d seen enough of her now to know the flighty girly act was just that, and he had no doubt she’d earned every rung of her boardroom rank. But she seemed to expect a response in kind, so he obliged. “You’re like the National Trust on Viagra,” he assured her and was treated to another glimpse of her wide smile.

“It was good fun, though I don’t recommend sitting through meetings with whalebone digging into your soft bits. Have you ever dressed up?”

“Yeah…” Tim chuckled at the memory. “Utter disaster. I saw this bloke a few times, he bought me some leather. Felt like a right tosser.”

She hummed in response to that. “You’re into men then?” She flicked her polished nails against the transparent safety barrier between them. The click-clatter of them so untouchably near made his small hairs stand up to attention, stirred places lower as well.

“Men and women,” he said, with an inviting smile at her in the mirror.

“Very generous of you to let both sexes make you feel like a tosser.”

Tim laughed and she leant forward, the dress creaking, chest heaving, this was his lucky night.