'Do you want me to start with what happened this morning!' She realised that this wasn't really the beginning. 'Or when I left home yesterday?'

'Start at the very beginning! The night is still young!'

'It's only late afternoon here!' She decided to start the tale. 'You remember the couple, I told you about when we talked before. They were going to float their company on NASDAQ.'

'Yes! I do!' Just as she was about to reply, a second message came through. 'You mean Houston Environments Inc! Do you not?'

She was dumbfounded. How had he known? Had she disclosed something she shouldn't about the Bradfords and their company? She decided to tell him, that he was wrong. 'No it's not them! It's another company.'

'Are you sure it's not?' At least, she had sowed a seed of doubt. 'I was pretty sure!'

She decided to attack. 'Why did you think it was that company? There must be several making specialist control systems in Houston.'

'But only one went on NASDAQ last week!' She smiled with relief as she realised, he had only been guessing. 'Houston Environments happen to be clients of Cambridge Total Control and we received a press release the day after it happened. I just put two and two together!'

She decided to come clean. 'You were right about the company.' It had been a good guess. 'I thought, I had told you something I shouldn't! I'm very relieved I didn't!' She added the obvious question. 'Do you know the owners, the Bradfords, then?'

'Only as customers and signatures on lots of very large cheques! We're one of their main suppliers.'

She was now worried that she was going to give away personal secrets. 'Perhaps, I shouldn't give you their personal secrets? Would you want you and your wife's intimate details to be published all over the Web?'

'No! But, do you think I would ever use anything, I learnt here in any way, that could hurt the person, who told me? Or anybody in any story!' She realised he had a point there. 'If it were ever traced, that I came here, the tabloid newspapers would have a field day!'

She suggested a suitable headline. 'Naughty corset secrets of the rich and famous on the Internet!'

He replied with another. 'Something like that! How about? Entrepreneur laced into a tight spot.'

She was not really impressed with either suggestion. 'I'm sure we could do better than that! Hopefully no-one else will get the chance.'

***

She returned to her story. 'As the company has now been floated and because they were so pleased with my very small part in organising all of their finances, they decided to take me and their local manager and friend, David Carlson, out for a celebratory lunch.'

'Was it a good lunch? I suspect that the tale starts by you eating and drinking too much!'

She then proceeded to tell the full story of the lunch at the Club. She told of how they had all eaten slightly to excess and drunk enough to mean that she couldn't have driven home. She described in detail, how Catherine and herself had embraced and explored each other in the ladies room. In response, he had asked the usual male question about size, proving Catherine absolutely right.

She then described how back at the Bradfords, Catherine had stripped to her corset and had in turn undressed her in the lounge. And then how all three of them had sat talking and drinking coffee until the small hours. 'I think I would have been very embarrassed, if I hadn't had so much to drink. But Peter, was a real gentleman. He considered it totally normal to be in the presence of two extremely tightly corsetted ladies.'

'Reminds me of my fiftieth birthday party! There were twenty couples, with the men all in evening dress and the ladies in exotic underwear! My wife had corsetted our two daughters and several of our friends for the first time!'

She gasped at the thought of the party. 'Our little soiree must have been tame by comparision? One man in a suit with a Scotch and two ladies in corsets drinking coffee!'

'Our party was all very chaste, but highly erotic. Did yesterday turn you on?'

She knew that if Peter had made an advance towards her, she would have found it hard to refuse. 'It was! We were all turned on! Later in bed, I was very wet and I don't think I have ever pleasured myself so much!' She remembered the noises coming through the walls. 'I don't think I was the only one. as I could hear them laughing and enjoying themselves in the next room for ages!'

***

'I suppose today was not as exciting as yesterday!' She thought about the rush to get to the meeting and then the meeting itself. 'I rushed home and then went to a very important meeting.'

'Some will say that power is the greatest aphrodisiac of all!'

'True!' She would agree with that totally. Especially after the meeting, where she had turned nineteen disorganised men, with as many opinions, into a group that agreed totally with her views!

'So tell me about today!'

She told the details of the being woken by Peter, the drive back from the other side of the city, the quick change of clothes and the arrival for the important meeting, with just five minutes to spare. She finished by telling with relish how she had finally triumphed!

'You obviously enjoyed that meeting! Did they realise what you were wearing?'

'I would think it would have been hard to have missed!' Especially, as she had followed Catherine's advice about important events and laced herself to twenty. 'I did most of the presentation with my jacket off! And I've developed this rather annoying habit of standing with my hands on either side of my waist!' It certainly had kept everybody's attention! 'If they didn't think I tight-laced before today, they certainly believe I do now!'

'Does the Bank mind? I certainly like everybody in my company, to be properly dressed! But, unfortunately, I don't have anybody who dresses like you, so I can't voice an opinion! I don't like scruffs though!'

'Well! Let's put it this way!' She remembered the end of the meeting. 'I had three offers of lunch and Henry Taylor, the Regional Director from The Club yesterday, ushered me oh, so cleverly through the door, checking as I brushed past him. I ought to call him a lecherous sod, but he's rather charming.' He certainly had been the complete gentleman at lunch, afterwards.

***

'Can I change the subject and ask your opinion on something?' She needed to see if he know of a solution for David's problem.

'Go ahead!'

She then told David's story. She left nothing out, including all the personal details of his sporting and banking careers, his homosexuality and his lover, an finally his promotion, and how diabetes would probably block it! 'It's sad really, because he's such a nice guy! And a good and loyal member of staff!'

'I think I might know of a solution!'

Copyright 1999 by Ewart Higgins