Travel Delight

Excerpt from: Travel Delight

“I’m going for lunch, Sophie. Get that letter done by the time I get back…” Janet Davies mentally pulled herself up for being tyrannical. “Please,” she added.

“Yes, ma’am.”

Urgh, when had she become a ‘ma’am’? Surely she was still too young for that? But when Janet was honest with herself, this close to forty she couldn’t be considered a ‘Miss’ any more.

She strode confidently to the lift, fixed her hair in the wall-sized mirror and plunged down to the ground floor. Her mind was still filled with evaluations and pie charts from her boring analyst job, and it wasn’t until she reached the café that her thoughts turned to matters of the stomach.

The streets were packed with hustle and bustle. It was a hot day and casual students mixed with serious suits and a spattering of dazed tourists as they made the most of the sun. She pushed her way through the café door. This place was always packed, but it was the closest place to work, so most days she could stop, munch and get back to work in less than half of her allotted lunch hour.

It took a few minutes to reach the counter, but in that time she’d remembered an important email she needed to send when she got back to the office.

“The usual?” she heard a feminine voice say and looked up.

“Yes, please.” “You eatin’ in?” the rough Mancunian accent jarred, but she smiled and nodded and waited for her tray. She carried the cup of coffee and turkey salad sandwich to the window seats, there was one spare next to a tall, handsome guy who was completely absorbed in watching the people out on the street.

“Can I sit here?” she asked, and his head turned then he nodded.

“Sure, a pretty lady such as yourself doesn’t even need to ask.” His mellow growl was filled with a foreign accent, and his dark brown eyes sparkled with mischief. Janet blushed and sat down.

“Thank you,” she said and settled herself on her seat, pulling her knee-length navy skirt down over her crossed legs so that the folks in the street would not get subjected to a view of her flabby, old thighs.

“So, you work round here, then?” The American turned on his stool to face her, stunning her with his easy smile.

“Erm, yes,” she replied and pulled the cucumber out of her sandwich, delicately dropping it into the discarded plastic packet.

“Cool. I’m not from around here,” he added, and Janet nodded.

Oh geez. Why do I always pick the seat by the talkative weirdoes? she thought, absently biting into the brown bread and barely noticing the taste on her tongue.

“I’m from the USA. Mississippi to be precise. I’ve just finished my degree.”

“Very nice.” She wouldn’t normally talk back, but this guy held her attention with his dark eyes and softly tanned skin. He was quite hot…for a crazy man.

“And I thought I’d go out and enjoy the world for a bit, you know, so I sold my business, put on my backpack and headed for the place with the prettiest girls, England. I love sweet English roses, like yourself, ma’am.”

Now that compliment was good, and even the ma’am sounded sexier in his accent. Janet blushed. “What business were you in? I thought you said you’d just finished university.”

“Oh, I see you’re a feisty one, all the better.” He laughed and his Adam’s apple bobbed invitingly. ”I have indeed just left ole miss, degree in business in hand but while I’ve been studying, I’ve also been working. I set up this little internet thing. It got kinda popular and a bit too much for me to handle right now, if truth be told, so I sold it.”

“Very nice,” she replied, glancing at her watch. She’d had twenty minutes already, and she’d barely even started on her sandwich. She took a gulp of her coffee and turned her attention from the handsome young man and back to her lunch.

“So what do you do? I mean, you can’t be paid for looking damn sexy in a suit, can you?”

Janet looked back towards the young man and felt the full blast of his lecherous stare and was amazed that it turned her on.