Annie Bailey lay naked in the arms of Max Carter. They were in his bed in the flat over his club, the Palermo Lounge, and she could hear the sound of the star turn coming through the ceiling, a new rising star called Billy Fury. A good singer, but such silly names they had. That Heinz for example. What a joke! Dyed blond hair and a name taken straight from a tin of baked beans.
Max had left the small bedside light on while they had sex. He said that she’d been driving him mad and he wasn’t going to have her in the dark, when instead he could see her and enjoy her all the more.
She lay there, ecstatic, feeling the heat of his big hard body and stroking her fingers over the crisp damp curls on his chest. His right hand was flung over his waist. He had strong hands, a fighter’s hands. On his index finger he wore a gold ring, engraved with Egyptian cartouches on either side of a square slab of lapis lazuli.
Annie stared at his curving nose, at the smoothly tanned skin, the gleaming thickness of his black hair, the flat brows above the long dense black sweep of his lashes. His eyes were closed. She could hardly keep from laughing out loud with triumph and joy.
She’d been to bed with Max Carter!
Annie had wanted Max from the first moment she’d set eyes on him. She knew she was only twenty and he was thirty, but she’d been instantly struck by his elegance, his poise, his presence, and had quickly developed a massive crush on him. She was a girl who could smell power and wealth through a four-foot concrete wall, and Max had both.
Well, he owned the club. Three clubs, actually.
This, the Palermo Lounge, was the one his father had started out with. It was his favourite, and the one he frequented the most. But there was also the Shalimar, and the Blue Parrot. Max exuded an aura of danger and riches, and she loved that. It turned her on. And she had seen a reciprocal flicker of interest in his eyes, much as he might have tried to conceal it.
That flicker was all she needed. She had set out to get Max Carter.
She looked at him again and shivered with the excitement of it. Then there came a pang of guilt, but she quickly suppressed that. No, she was going to relish this moment. Nothing was going to stop that.
He must have felt her shiver. He opened his eyes, his head turned. God, he had such beautiful eyes! They were a bright clear blue, very deep-set and penetrating. Those eyes seemed to look straight into her soul.
‘You didn’t mind, did you – that I was a virgin?’ asked Annie.
Max shook his head, but truthfully she had surprised him. He had thought she was a right little tart, the way she’d come on to him, a dolly bird flashing her arse in those tiny miniskirts, showing off her long slender legs in those trendy white boots. Hanging around the club on the nights she knew he’d be there and giving him the glad eye even when her sister was there taking the punters’ coats and hats.
She had some front – but fuck it, she was a little beauty.
Max liked her big bouffant of long dark hair and her dark green eyes. He liked her low, husky voice. She followed the fashion of putting that horrible panstick on her mouth, making it look white, but he’d kissed all that away and now her lips were pink and she looked even more beautiful, rumpled and warm. No doubt about it, Annie was a handful.
Strictly mistress material, he thought. Unlike her older sister.