When I first met Lucia, she had been wearing some pretty expensive clothes or at least the labels told me that they were way, way out of even my former spendthrift wife’s price range.

Now that she was working as my housekeeper, I began to understand that no matter what she wore, she had a knack of making whatever she wore look like it was worth a million pounds. Some women had that but most didn’t. My ex-wife was one of those who didn’t. She had to work hard but even on her best day, she never came even remotely close to Lucia’s natural beauty. That and her grace made it hard for me to resist her allure.

Lucia’s desirability made it hard for me to look at her but after the application of some willpower and I was able to push those thoughts to one side. I just had to think of those behind the bid on my company and things got a lot better.

If Lucia came to Grimsby to hide then she was going about it in a strange way. When we were out shopping together for things for the house, it was clear that a lot of men were lusting after her even though she was dressing down. There was something about her aura that attracted men to her like flies are attracted to dead meat. Irresistible. That was the only word to describe her.

When I returned home from work, she was always immaculately dressed and made-up. To say that she took pride in her appearance would be the understatement of the century. I soon began to look forward to going home in the evening despite my reservations about my desire to be more than an employer to her. That willingness was something that I’d not felt since I discovered that my former wife was having an affair less than a year after we were married.

With movement on the takeover front being quiet, I was able to concentrate on work. That calmed me down and for a few days, I nearly forgot all about it. I had other issues to deal with including my expanding waistline. Lucia’s food was so ‘moreish’ that I’d put on a bit of weight where it was not wanted. My change in diet was noticed by Sue who just smiled back at me.

The chance to mention it to her came sooner than I’d envisaged when I discovered that a folder of plans that I needed to talk over with my team that afternoon had been left on my desk at home.

“I need the plans for the Franklin project. I left them at home,” I said to Sue.

“And you are going home for lunch and to collect the plans?”

“Plans yes, lunch no,” I replied patting my stomach.

She grinned back at me. I shook my head and headed out of the office.

---

I heard the sound of a cleaner being used upstairs when I opened the front door. I crept into my own home… and found the folder. I was just about to leave when I heard a voice behind me say,
“You should have called. I would have happily brought whatever it was that you left here to your office.”

I had to do a doubletake. Lucia was dressed as a maid or pretty close to the maids that used to appear in the Benny Hill shows. A very short black dress that showed plenty of cleavage, frilly underwear, black fishnet stockings with the tops clearly visible and black high heels.

Lucia smiled at my drowning fish impression.
“I take it that you like my work clothes?”

“I do but…?”

“A little over the top?”

“Yes.”

“But do you like it?”

“Yes.”

“Then I’ll keep wearing it. I like to look pretty when I work.”

Just then Scamp came padding down the stairs. Today, she was wearing a pink bow in her hair. The pink matched the pink of the frilly apron that Lucia was wearing over her dress as well as her knickers.
Then it clicked. The same pink was used on the hoover that she’d brought with her in the back of the BMW. I had to admire Lucia.

“You look pretty even when you come out of the shower,” I said and immediately regretted it.
We’d had an ‘encounter’ the previous morning when we bumped into each other with her wearing nothing but a towel wrapped around her body.

“You say the most delightful things.”

She gave me a peck on the cheek and whispered ‘thank you’.

---

I was still in a bit of a state when I returned to the office.

“Well, did you?” asked Sue.

“Did I what?”

“Talk to your housekeeper about your diet?”

“No, I didn’t,” I snapped back.

“Ohhhhh. I like it when you are angry!”

“Sorry Sue. I didn’t mean to snap at you.”

“Was she naked? I’ve read about housekeepers who do their work in the buff so to speak.”

“No, she wasn’t and that’s all I am saying on the subject.”

I headed into my office and tried to get on with some work. I failed. Lucia was getting to me.

---

That evening Lucia was dressed for her, very demurely in a long, almost floor length skirt and a top that showed zero cleavage.

“I’m sorry for earlier,” she said as they sat down to dinner.
Scamp was chewing loudly on a bone under the table.
Those sounds took the edge off the moment.

“You don’t have to apologise for how you look. This is your home as much as it is mine. At least you weren’t stark naked.”

“True. I…”

“Lucia, if dressing like that makes you happy while you work then that is fine by me. I just wish I’d known about it beforehand so that it wasn’t so much of a shock. That’s all.”

She grinned back at me.
“Consider me slapped on the wrist.”

Then she looked sad for a moment.
“What’s wrong?”

“Oh, it is just that I used to say that when I was with…”

“Your late husband?”

She nodded her head.

“Then continue to say it. That way, you won’t forget him. Without him, you would not be here today.”

Lucia came and gave me a big hug. When we broke apart, I noticed a tear running down her cheek.

It was my turn to hold her. This time, when we broke apart, she mouthed the words,
“Thank you.”

---

The lull in action on the bid front lasted another two days. The new bid was far more realistic in terms of pure numbers. I forwarded it to Rona and my lawyers and got on with supervising the installation of a new flow solder machine. The old one had been on its last legs almost since I bought it at auction some five years before. We’d ordered a new one almost a year earlier so its arrival was most welcome to everyone. It was close to 4pm by the time I was able to return to my office and study the offer in more detail.

Rona had texted me to say that she’d be calling at 5pm or thereabouts because she was travelling. A second text that she’d sent an hour later simply said ‘see page 6, section 3’.

I read the section and began to fume. If I accepted the offer as it stood then I’d be under a restriction whereby I could not start another business in any form of engineering for five years. That made me fume even though I had not really thought about what I would be doing post sale.

That was weighing heavily on me when Rona called. She was a few minutes early.

“Yes, I read it. That won’t fly at all,” I said fairly indignantly.

“No, I have not considered what to do afterwards. I am starting to think about it now thanks to that proposed clause.”

I listened to Rona. From the background noise, I could tell that she was once again at a railway station somewhere. I thought I heard the names, Perth and Stirling in one announcement.

What she was saying made a lot of sense.
“I get you. If we agree to that clause then they have to pay for it.”

I listened to Rona's explanation with a good deal of incredulity.

“That much? That’s… nearly twenty percent of the amount that they are offering?”

“Ok, I bow to your greater experience in these matters. It would show us just how serious they are in their desire to buy the company.”

“No, the legal people have not commented yet. From past experience it will take them at least a day to go through it all then another day to twiddle their thumbs in contemplation before giving us their opinion.”

“Thanks Rona. I’ll look out for your draft email in the morning.”

“Yes, Lucia is doing fine although and the house is yielding to her will and cleaning mop.”

“I will. Speak soon, bye.”

I went home feeling a lot better with the world.

---

Lucia had understood the message about me not needing a gourmet three course meal during the week. Her meals were still incredibly tasty but overall, a lot simpler and contained far fewer calories.

That gave her time to finish clearing out the garage.

As I’d told Sue, the house was gradually yielding its secrets to Lucia’s non-stop attacks. The removal of the dust, grime and countless cobwebs exposed a house in sore need of redecoration.

“But Darling… there are painters and decorators for that sort of thing,” Lucia had said in a faux voice.
The problem was that she was right.

“I know but Lucia, it can wait until the issue of the sale of the company is decided one way or the other.”

“Si padrona”

My understanding of foreign languages was pretty poor. I’d always been more interested in Science and Engineering that learning things like French or German at school but I recognised a female word.
“What’s that with the ‘padrona’ thing? Shouldn’t that be ‘maestro’?”

Lucia giggled.
“Sometimes Anthony, you act and move like a woman. That’s what I love about you.”

“Love?”

“A term of endearment?”

I recognised a question in her last statement but her other words bothered me.
“What’s all this about acting like a woman?”

“It is true. You do. Look at you now. Look how you have folded your legs. Only women do that. Men sit with their legs apart most of the time.”

I looked at my legs. I’d never thought about it before but she was right. I uncrossed them right away.
Lucia reached over and took my hand.
“You don’t have to prove anything to me. I knew that I would love working for you by the time we had walked out of that hotel in Cannes. Scamp approved as well. She loves it here. She’s never adapted to a new home so quickly.”

I didn’t know what to say.

“If you want me, then I am yours,” she said quietly.

Those words made it even harder.

“I am yours?”
That was about all I could manage to say.

“What do you think it means?”

“I don’t know?”

“Yes, you do but you are too afraid to talk about it. You English are so uptight about all this L’amour…”
Lucia was right about that. I’d never really opened up to anyone even my former wife about my desires.

She didn’t wait for me to digest those words. Instead, she led me upstairs and into the third bedroom. Since it had been cleared out and the new wardrobes installed, I’d not been in there.

“What are you doing?”

“Letting you free from your inhibitions. Getting rid of that stiff upper lip.”

She opened one wardrobe and pulled out an outfit. She held it up against my chest.
“That will fit perfectly.”

“You… you want me to wear that?”

Lucia grinned.
“I do. I have all the accessories here for you.”

“I’ll… I’ll look like a total dork, a man in drag.”

“That’s it darling, you won’t. Hasn’t anyone ever told you that you move like a woman before?”

The horrors of my childhood came flooding back. I’d been called all sorts of names by the ‘it-crowd’ at school. I’d been pummelled into the ground more than once for standing up to them. The word ‘Sissy’ had been used quite a bit. I never understood why that was. I wasn‘t gay and I was attracted to women. My broken nose was just one of the injuries I’d received at their hands. That was then. This is now and I started to understand what Lucia was talking about.

I nodded my head.
“This bent nose was my reward for being myself. The goon squad didn’t like people who were different. I got off lightly because we moved home and away from one lot of bullies. It was like that all through my time at school. I escaped what I called the gulag when I went to university. Then it was all about passing my exams.”

“Then you are a long way along the road towards being the person you were put on this earth to be.”

“What about you?”

“Me? Scamp and I are going nowhere.”
After a brief pause, she added,
“We are going nowhere unless you are with us.”

“Why? You have lots of money and could be living the high life somewhere yet you are her in the back of beyond?”

She grinned.
“When Rona suggested to me that I would like being your housekeeper I laughed back at her. Before I met my late husband, I was just that, a housekeeper. I came to this country to study but I couldn’t be bothered to study for my A-levels. I spent a couple of years working as a sort of housekeeper in the French Alps during the ski season. They called us ‘chalet maids’. Back then, I hid away and saved all my money. In the summer, I did some housesitting while the owners were on Holiday. Many of those clients were the same people who came to the chalets in winter. I dressed down. I mean really down. Then one summer, I was working at a house not far from Silverstone when there was a knock at the door. Standing there in need of some help was the man I was to marry although he didn’t know it at the time. I knew then that our paths would cross in the future and sure enough, it did when I was visiting my country of birth.”

“But you are here? Why? I mean it. Why did you come and don’t say that it was all down to Rona.”

“It was in part. You know that she helped me out of a big hole when my husband died. At first, it was to pay her back but almost right away, I found that I loved being in this mostly cold and damp part of the country. Here, I can be me and not have to fight off the sort of men that you saw in Cannes. Then I grew to know you and then to fall in love with you.”

She had me there. Not even my ex-wife had come out and said those words to me.

“You have more than enough money to have just about anyone in the world but… but you say that you love me?”

Lucia smiled. That particular smile would normally have me being like putty in her hands but this time, I was determined to resist her charms.

“Don’t smile at me like that. I know your smiles.”

“Ok. At first, I accepted this job to hide from a nasty man who was trying to get me into bed. It worked. I found out that he has a new love of his life. She’s from Brazil and very young and very beautiful. He announced his engagement three days after I came here. I fully intended to honour my agreement with you but… then I got to know who you really are and that’s when I decided to go nowhere unless it is with you.”

“With me in a dress looking like a fool?”

“No. You have it all wrong. My home city of Rome was not built in a day the same would go for you.”

“But only if I sell the company?”

“That is up to you but it would give you a break from your work. Then you’d have the time and money to truly see if you can make it as a woman and my wife.”

Those last words took me by surprise.

“Are you saying that you want to marry me?”

“I am. Is that so strange?”

“What if I don’t sell the company? What then?”

“We get married and I become your wife but in private we can be ourselves.”

I shook my head.

“I don’t know what to say?”

“Don’t say anything. Don’t say anything until you are sure about the sale.”

As if to seal the deal, Lucia kissed me.
For a moment, I was back at the railway station in Cannes only the tizzy that my mind was in was a thousand times worse that before.

[to be continued]