a bank. Not the bank who’s threatening to sell us up. One of those merchant banks which specialises in low-interest business loans. Trudy’s given me the name of a loans officer there whom she knows personally. It seems he’s simpatico to damsels in distress.’
Actually, Trudy hadn’t put it quite like that.
‘Wade has an insatiable appetite for women,’ she’d said. ‘He’ll do anything to get his leg over. I was at a New Year’s Eve party the other week and he boasted to me of the loans he’d granted last year in exchange for some slap and tickle. I think he was trying to impress me with his boldness. Didn’t do a bad job, either. Given his penchant for female flesh, you’d be sure to qualify for one of his loans.’
‘I’m not that desperate, Trudy,’ Justine had said, shuddering at the thought of giving sex for a loan. That was no better than prostitution!
‘No one’s suggesting you have to actually come across, Jussie. Of course I might, just for the hell of it,’ Trudy had added with an impish grin. ‘Wade is a handsome devil. But I can understand that a girl like you, who’s waiting for true love to strike, would not even consider such an outrageous idea!
‘So just smile and flirt and flatter the sexy scoundrel. And give him the impression that he’ll be amply rewarded if he sanctions your loan. With that face and figure of yours he’ll be drooling at the mouth, his brains firmly in his pants as he puts pen to paper.’
‘But what will happen when I don’t deliver?’ Justine had pointed out.
‘Oh, he’ll be seriously peeved. No doubt about that. But he can hardly go to his boss and complain, can he? Believe me when I say that the head of that particular bank would not take kindly to one of his employees using his position to rubber-stamp loans in exchange for sexual favours. I’ve met Marcus Osborne. Father’s had him over to the house on a couple of occasions. He’s a formidable man at the best of times. Ruthlessly ambitious but straight as a die. If he ever finds out what Wade is up to, poor Wade will be out on his ear.’
And well deservedly, Justine had thought at the time. She still did. But she also saw she had no alternative but to keep her appointment with the lecherous Wade or let the house be sold. All Justine’s other banking options had finally run out. After a myriad of phone calls, only one other loans officer had consented to see her during the past week, and he’d actually laughed at her idea.
The memory of that laughter hardened Justine’s resolve. Come ten o’clock tomorrow morning, she was going to sashay into Wade Hampton’s office, ready to do anything to achieve her goal and save her family home. If she had to humiliate herself a little, then she would. If she had to surrender some of her infernal pride, then too bad. If she had to beg, then...
No-no, she would not beg. That was going too far.
So was actually sleeping with the man. Good Lord! The very idea!
‘What are you going to wear?’ her mother asked.
‘What?’
‘For your appointment with this man in the bank. What are you going to wear?’
‘I’m not sure. I haven’t thought about it yet.’
‘Then perhaps you should, before you sell off all your decent clothes.’
The word ‘decent’ struck a certain irony with Justine. Decent was not the look she would be striving for tomorrow, not if she wanted Wade Hampton’s brains to be addled from the moment she walked into his office. She needed to wear something very bright, very tight and very sexy.
A certain lime-green dress popped into her mind. She’d bought it whilst shopping with Trudy—always a mistake. Trudy was a bad influence at the best of times. Admittedly, the girl did have an infallible taste for the kind of clothes which made men sit up and take notice.
This particular dress was made of a double knit material which clung like Howard Barthgate. It had a modest enough neckline but was appallingly short, the tight, straight skirt curving provocatively around her derrière. Justine had only worn it once, to lectures late last year. When she’d sat down and crossed her long tanned legs to one side of her cramped desk, the poor professor’s eyes had nearly popped out of his head.
Would Wade Hampton’s eyes pop out as well?
Justine cringed at the thought, but beggars couldn’t be choosers, she’d found out. The rules of her life had changed. She was now playing a new game. It was called survival.
Oddly enough, the thought enthused her. She jumped up from the chair, full of new determination.
‘Come on, Mum. Time for us to go downstairs and have a hearty breakfast. We have a lot of work to do today!’
CHAPTER THREE
MARCUS sat at his desk, angrily tapping his gold pen on the leather-inlaid surface, his eyes not properly focused on the paper in his right hand.
He still could not believe the gall of that young man! Not a hint of remorse, or conscience. He hadn’t even cared about being dismissed on the spot, without a reference.
Of course he came from a moneyed family, with plenty of the right connections and contacts. He didn’t need his salary. He hadn’t had to work his finger to the bone to make something of himself, to drag himself out of the gutter of abject poverty and succeed against all the odds. Wade Hampton’s job as loans officer was really just a fill-in, a way of passing the time till he inherited the Hampton family fortune.
The Wade Hamptons of this world had no idea how the other half lived. They were born with silver spoons in their mouths and grew up without having to toe the line in any way, shape or form.
Even Marcus’s diatribe this morning over his lack of moral fibre had not made a single dent in the young man’s insolence and arrogance.
When Marcus had been told of Hampton’s tendency to approve loans not on the merit of the business venture but on the sexual co-operativeness of the client, he’d seen red. The thought that the reputation of the bank was being besmirched behind his back was like salt rubbed into a raw wound. If there was one thing Marcus valued above all else it was his good name, and the good name of his bank. Yet here was an employee, using his position of power to virtually blackmail women into his bed.
Not that Hampton had seen it that way.
‘Blackmail?’ he’d scorned when this accusation had been thrown at him. ‘I don’t have to blackmail women to go to bed with me. Not the second time, anyway,’ he’d smirked. ‘There’s nothing wrong with what I did. Everyone was happy. Me. The ladies. And your stupid old bank. Not one of my loans has ever been foreclosed. It’s only stuffed shirts like you who think combining business with pleasure is a crime. God, just look at you. You dress like an undertaker. And you act like my grandfather. I’ll bet you haven’t been to bed with a bird in donkey’s years.
‘But that’s your problem. As are my appointments for today,’ he’d declared as he whirled and strode for the door. ‘I’m outta here!’
A good fifteen minutes had passed since Hampton’s departure, during which time Marcus had instructed his secretary to inform Personnel of the situation, then get him a computer printout of the loans officer’s appointments for that Friday, all of which had been done with her usual efficiency.
