Chapter Eight – The Proposition

Blog entry: 11.12 a.m.

Greetings to you all! It has been some time and I have a story long overdue to tell. I set out on this adventure knowing that it might well be Missy Misdemeanour’s last. I feel you recoil in horror from your laptop screens, but do not fear: there is a shelf life for everything and everyone in this world and perhaps Missy Misdemeanour has reached hers. We have had a good run and you have been kind enough to follow her adventures, but it is time to close the book.

Wait a minute! I hear you cry. But what of the Mile High Club? Surely you cannot be bowing out with failure because that would never do. Well, friends, perhaps I did and perhaps I didn’t, but the truth is you will never know because I will never tell. I am a changed woman, and as I write this final blog I feel the world changing around me. For so long we have been beaten down with austerity cuts and global double-dip recession news and how we long for a good news story, something that will lighten our hearts and bring a spring into our step. Well, I think the wait may just be over. Just yesterday I read of a footballer and his wife driving the streets of his local city, handing out food parcels to the homeless and needy. There is goodness in this world. There are people who care about the plight of their fellow man and I have seen it with my own eyes.

On a flight from Los Angeles to London I witnessed an act of common decency by a man who shall be called Mr Remarkable. A crying girl had lost her ticket and it was imperative that she return home immediately because her brother had been rushed to hospital. (He is now fine, of this I can assure you!) The airline was struggling to get her onto the plane when a passing stranger bought her a ticket to get her home. He is a rich man with plenty of money to spare so were his actions truly that remarkable? I was intrigued, and like the seeker of truth and facts you know me to be, I investigated and the stories tumbled out. A girl in a fix in Dubai is helped to return home by Mr Remarkable. A wedding wrecked by storms is rehomed and paid for by our very own Mr Remarkable. And the more I dug the more the stories came to light, but in all of these stories Mr Remarkable asks for nothing except for those helped individuals not to talk about their stories, to keep his deeds a secret. Why does he not want the world to know of his kindness and generosity? Because he is a private man and the reward is not the recognition for the good deed but in doing the good deed itself.

I have met this man and now I have lost this man. He is no longer taking my calls and I expect, after publication of this article, he will choose to remain incommunicado. If this is to be his choice then I will respect it. They say, after all, that it is better to have loved and lost then never to have loved at all. Yes, I believe I love Mr Remarkable, even though our time together was brief and I have never believed in love at first sight, until the day I walked into LAX.

But now I have a proposition for you, Mr Remarkable. For your kindness and good deeds the world thanks you, but the world also needs you, and Mr Hugo Masters, owner of Masters Inc., would like you to join with him in eradicating the world of polio and other diseases. There is a battle ahead and he has the stomach for a fight, but do you?

For those of you who want to know the real identity of Mr Remarkable I will never tell. Though you did not want you story told I did it so that the world may know you do exist. Like the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus, we need to believe!

So thank you, Mr Remarkable. May you continue to do remarkable deeds!

I sign off and shut down my laptop. My heart is beating but the deed is done. Whatever will happen next is in the lap of the gods. I feel a little bit sick. It has been ten days since the restaurant debacle. I have heard nothing from Henry Hopper. I do not even have his mobile phone number, which is probably a good thing in hindsight as I am absolutely certain that I would have drunk-texted him, or worse, drunk-dialled him, and that is not becoming. Charlie is unhappy that I have put Missy Misdemeanour well and truly to bed, but it’s time. She’s had a good run but in cards you need to know when to hold and when to fold and this is exactly the right time. So he can scowl and complain but I am moving on and so is Missy.

The light is starting to fade. As I sit at my desk next to the open window of my apartment I am trying not to wonder what my Mr Remarkable is doing right now. Sometimes I torture myself and believe that he is out there at this very minute charming the pants off some sweet, young thing, but at others I just sit and wonder. It’s not healthy to mooch like this, but I think any girl who has had her heart broken will agree that mooching is an important step to self-recovery and to moving on, and I’m determined to move on, just not yet. The mooching phase must continue for a while longer. And that’s where the wine comes in. It’s just sitting there on the kitchen table smiling at me, willing me to open it up and sample the fruits of its endeavour, and I intend to, but in a little while. I look out the window at all the millions of people living their lives around me and know that there are others who feel my pain. It is a part of life and I am a fully paid-up member of the living club so I accept my pain. It will surely pass and I will be fine, but not yet. For now I must savour the pain.

The knock on my apartment door is as unexpected as it is unwelcome. I’m not expecting visitors nor do I want any. This is my evening of solitude. It is an important ritual I need to perform. I consider ignoring the knock, pretend it never happened and move on with my evening, but the owner of the fist that banged on my door has other plans and knocks again, this time louder and with more insistence, and now my curiosity is piqued and I have to know. So I walk to the door and open it.

That face, those dark eyes, and my attempts at a controlled evening of private drinking are knocked out of the park.

‘Hello, Izzy,’ he says.

‘What do you want?’ Yes, my heart is beating super-fast, but he doesn’t get off that easily. I have suffered these last ten days. If he thinks just showing up on my doorstep is going to make everything all right then he is mistaken.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says.

That’s a start.

‘I was wrong. I walked into that restaurant and I saw Hugo Masters and I flipped out a little bit.’

‘Only a little bit?’

‘I’ve been doing the good deeds a while and it’s been going well, but I’ve kept it a secret and when I saw Hugo I knew the game was up and I just panicked.’

‘You jumped to your own conclusions.’

‘I did,’ admits Henry. ‘I don’t trust many people, and I’d found out that you weren’t really who you said you were. I was angry about that but I figured we could talk about it later, and then I just decided to deal with it right there.’

‘Except you didn’t deal with it,’ I say. ‘You went off on one and then you shut down. You wouldn’t let me talk. You wouldn’t listen and then you just left. What was I supposed to think? I didn’t even have a number to call you and you never called me. Do you know how much that hurts?’

‘I knew I was wrong as soon as I had left, but it was too late, and then I saw your article and I knew it was definitely too late.’

‘Yet here you are now.’

‘If I say I’m sorry again can we start over?’

‘Do you think this is a movie? Do you think you can just waltz in here, bat your eyes and I’ll forgive you?’

‘No, I don’t,’ he concedes. ‘I imagine you’ll take a lot of persuading, which is why I brought this.’ He sets the overnight bag down.

‘You are joking!’ I exclaim. ‘You think I’m that easy? I don’t think you understand how much you’ve hurt me. You can’t play with a girl’s feelings the way you have and think it’s all right just to …’

The kiss takes me off-guard. He steps in and places his palms on my cheeks, holding my head in place as he kisses me, and I remember the touch of his lips, the feel of them caressing mine and the taste of them. How I have missed the taste of them! With his palms still holding my face he whispers, ‘I love you.’

If he is really a player then he’s good and I don’t care. He kisses me again before I can answer, before I can think, and my feelings are scattered to the four corners of the earth and then come racing straight back as my heart explodes into a million pieces and I can’t stop myself from grinning like an idiot.

‘Am I forgiven?’ he asks, and while I’m considering just what to say he reaches into his jeans pocket and produces a little jewellery box, the kind every girl secretly dreams of receiving one day, then goes down on bended knee.

I want to speak. I really want to say something but I can’t. My heart is hammering in my chest and my eyes are blurry and I can’t breathe. Seriously, I can’t breathe! Is this what dying feels like?

‘Isabella Renwick, I know I have only known you for a short time, but in my heart I know you’re the one because since we’ve been apart there hasn’t been a minute gone by when I haven’t thought about you. So, will you marry me?’

Wow! Now I really need that wine.

‘Yes,’ I whisper, and my voice is barely a whisper because I’m crying, and as he stands I hug Henry Hopper more tightly than I have ever hugged anyone in my entire life just in case he’s a mirage and he might disappear. But he doesn’t, and magically he slides the ring onto my finger and I feel just like Cinderella, which is how every girl wants to feel once in their life.

‘So what’s in the bag?’ I ask through my tears.

‘Just a few surprises to help the evening go with a bang,’ murmurs Henry Hopper, enveloping me in those gorgeous arms of his.

I have questions. I have lots of questions, but they can wait. The whole world can wait because right now it’s just me and my man! But then again, there is his bag.

‘No, really, I have to know,’ I say, breaking off from the most delightful kiss. ‘What’s in the bag?’

‘Do you really want to know?’

‘I did ask the question, didn’t I?’

‘Yes, you did,’ he agrees with a mischievous smile, his arms still resting on the small of my back. May he never take them away again!

‘So?’

‘Patience, my sweet,’ he murmurs, and steals another kiss.

‘Tell me what’s in the bag?’

‘Stuff,’ says Henry nuzzling my neck.

I have really missed his tongue. It’s not all I have missed either. I feel him growing reassuringly hard as we stand locked together in the entrance to my apartment.

‘You think we should close the door?’ he asks.

‘Sure,’ I reply. I go to reach for the door but I can’t reach it without letting go of him, and I never intend letting go of him again.

‘I can’t reach the door,’ I murmur, revelling in the sensations that his tongue is bringing me.

Reaching behind him, Henry locates the door handle and pulls it shut, locking us away in our own private universe.

‘About the bag,’ I say.

‘Whips and chains.’ He raises his eyebrows hopefully.

‘Are you serious?’

‘I brought ropes and cuffs as well,’ he whispers, kissing my earlobe.

‘How kinky do you think I am?’

‘Very,’ he replies as his tongue returns to my neck. I feel the tingling sensation start to fizz in my groin. It is happening again. I force myself to stop and release him. It takes all my effort to break free.

‘Do you honestly think I’m going to go for that sort of thing?’

He frowns and looks at me quizzically. ‘Are you not impressed?’

‘Do I look impressed?’ I demand. I can’t keep this up for much longer.

‘You’re joshing with me.’

‘I’m deadly serious,’ I say, but the façade is crumbling. The smirk turns up the corners of my mouth and then I can’t stop the smile from breaking out across my face. ‘I got you there, mister!’

‘You’re a bad girl!’ warns Henry Hopper.

‘You’d better believe it,’ I tell him. ‘I’m a seriously bad girl. So what about those whips and chains, then?’

He looks me dead in the eye and I see the desire flare in his gaze.

The game is on. He draws me into his body and finds my lips. My groin starts to heat up as I feel him press against me. His kisses melt me from the inside out. In milliseconds I am hot for him. I am so damn hot for him. It’s been ten days. That feels like for ever and now having him here with me feels so right.

The buttons on my shirt seem to fall under his hypnotic command. His tongue brands my neck, my nipples strain for the touch of his lips through the lace of my bra. We bounce off walls as lust takes over, sending a glass vase crashing to the floor.

‘Oops!’ he whispers, temporarily derailed by the smashing glass.

‘Leave it,’ I murmur. I ache for him. I want him inside me, drilling into my core. I want to feel him stretching my lips, his rock-hard cock sliding into me and filling me completely. We bypass the bedroom, leaving a trail of destruction in our wake. He clears the kitchen table and magazines and a coffee cup go flying. He hoists me up onto the hard wood, spreading my thighs as he strips my shirt off. I drag his tee off, kissing his chest as he tears my bra away. I let the straps fall and peel the flimsy material away, and like a starved man he gorges on my nipples, feasting on my areolas, and the sensation is exquisite. I work his belt loose and wrench his jeans down, dragging him free from his Calvins. As my palm closes around him I see the ecstasy flame in his big, brown eyes. I rub him, feeling my way along the whole length of his shaft, and lick my lips, ready to take him between them, but my lover has other plans.

Gently, he pushes me back so that I am lying on the kitchen table and goes to work on the buttons of my jeans. I raise my buttocks, allowing him to pull the denim free, and exhale as he peels my thong away. The air is cold against my moist sex and I close my eyes, awaiting the touch of his tongue.

The thrust is as hard as it is unexpected. I open my eyes as his cock drives between the folds of my sex. He slides deep into me before sliding back out, the tip of his cock just nestling between my lips, and the sense of yearning is completely overwhelming. I hold my breath as my body awaits his return but he is there, just on the edge of leaving me waiting, and I can hardly bear it. As he slips his cock back into my sex I can breathe again. With Henry inside me I feel whole again.

As he slides deep inside I hold him in and reach out to him. He gathers me in his arms, and I taste his lips, overdosing on the sensation of having him to myself. He backs up until he crashes into the fridge. It wobbles and another ornament makes a break for freedom, smashing into tiny pieces around us, but there is no time to worry about such trifling matters. He is hard inside me and the need for release is completely overwhelming. Straddling him, I grind down the length of his cock, my nipples tingling as they rub against his muscular chest. I feel the explosion begin deep within and know that it is coming. Soon I will be coming and I need him to come too. I raise myself up to his very tip, holding him just inside me before driving down his shaft as hard as I can. It sets off a chain reaction that I am powerless to prevent. I feel the contractions spiral through me like a tornado, feel him mutter and groan and thrust into me as he comes hard and fast. The orgasm blows through me, ripping out the windows of my apartment and blowing the roof off.

A long time later, I lie panting against my lover, feel his chest rise and fall as the last, lingering traces of his orgasm drift away and can’t help but smile. This is perfection, right here and now.

Looking around me, all I can see is destruction and devastation.

‘I think I’ve been the victim of a robbery,’ I murmur dreamily.

‘Yes, you’ve stolen my heart,’ replies Henry Hopper, kissing the top of my head softly.