Chances

Chapter 1

Chapter 1Beauty is a much sought after quality, the fashion industry spends billions every year trying to create an iconic look. Women flock to the stores or browse websites to buy clothes worn by professional models and yet beauty is an elusive quality.

I’ve seen many beautiful women over the years but now and then one stands out from the crowd. It could be the way they dressed or their hair style, sometimes it was a stolen look that hinted of something else. More often than not the woman was straight but whether straight or gay they were quite often with someone else.

The first time I saw her that looked to be the case. It was in the Manhattan hotel in Ringwood, a sprawling megaplex of a hotel on the corner of two busy main roads in Melbourne’s outer eastern suburbs. It was a Friday night when I ambled into the hotel and after buying a beer I walked over to a pool table and took a seat to await a vacant table. I’m a pretty good player and Friday night was my usual night to shoot balls. I bring my own cue when I go out playing pool.

One table looked promising. There were two people at it, a man and a woman who seemed to be just fooling around. The man I disregarded straight away but the woman caught my eye. She had shoulder-length brown hair and an aquiline shaped face. She wore a red, strapless dress with a generous half cape around the neckline, it had a flared skirt and a white belt at her waist matched her cream heels.

She’d caught the eye of men at other tables but because the man she was with looked as if he could handle himself no one made so much as eye contact, at least not while he was looking at them. The guy was built like a rugby player and although he seemed friendly enough, there was something in his eyes that hinted of sudden violence if someone crossed him. You didn’t have to be Einstein to work out she felt safer in his company, women like safety and security.

A lot of straight women hang around me for much the same reason. I’m twenty nine and heavily tattooed, which stands to reason as I’m a registered tattoo artist but men step carefully around me. I’m often seen with beautiful women but if I was to tick off the number of those women I’ve actually slept with, it would be somewhere around the five percent mark.

I’m great at getting to know straight women but when it comes to bedding them I’m not so quick off the mark but more of that later. Needless to say, while other guys were perving on this guy’s woman, I was getting a little eyeful myself and kind of getting turned on.

I know it was why I approached them just as the game finished. I just wanted to get closer to the woman even if it was just a friendly game. He Man gave me the once over. I was wearing a white button down shirt with the cuffs folded part way up my arm and jeans.

“Nice tatts,” he nodded.

“You like my work then?” I put my cue case on the edge of the table, “I’d show you more but I’m only wearing a bra under this.”

“You’re a tattooist?”

“Yeah,” I nodded at his girlfriend, “Kelly’s the name, how’d you and your lovely lady like to play me, two on one?”

He opened his mouth to reply but then the woman stepped in between us. She was so close I could smell her shampoo. She looked me straight in the eye. Where He Man was macho and full of bravado, she was almost cat-like in her study of me. She had a look in her eyes that I’ve seen on women on the hunt, but I thought I’d overstepped my mark. A moment later I felt a hand on my wrist and I looked down as she slid the sleeve up to my elbow to study the sleeve.

“You did this?”

“Yeah,” I replied, “I’ve been doing tattoos for years.”

“Nice work,” she pushed up the sleeve on my other arm and when she’d examined it, she took a step back to look at the flowers around my neck, “are you tattooed all over?”

“Arms, legs, back and a couple here,” I touched my breasts.

“Nice work,” she stepped back.

“I’m up for a game but not if there’s money involved, no one carries a pool cue into a pub unless they’re looking to win money and we were just f*****g around.”

“I can play for fun too, it’s why I introduced myself.”

“Whatever,” she propped against the table, “I’m Jodie and this is my friend, Scott.”

“Kelly,” I held out my hand.

We shook hands and I took out my money.

“I’ll shout the first game, but if I win you pay for the second.”

“Deal,” she stepped forward and nudged Scott, “get me a drink and we’ll set them up.”

“So, where do you work?” Jodie asked as we set up the balls.

“Got my studio out in Upwey, it’s only been up and running for six months but I’m getting regular clients nowadays. It’s slower than I thought but I’m getting there.”

“Six months,” she arranged the balls into a triangle, “and before that?”

“Unemployed for nearly twelve months. I did a NEIS program,” I glanced at her, “that’s...”

“New Enterprise and Incentive Scheme,” she finished for me, “I was an accountancy lecturer for the NEIS course out at Box Hill for two years but then I had to pull out for a family emergency and by the time I got myself back on track they had a very good lecturer. I’ve been thinking of getting back into it next year, I did enjoy the sessions.”

“I found the accounting section really hard, I’ve never been good at maths.”

“I love figures,” she looked me up and down and smiled playfully, “I was very good at maths and balancing budgets is almost as good as sex.”

“I’ll take your word on it.”

Scott came up at that moment with their drinks and she took a sip and inclined her head.

“Well, don’t just stand there, toss the coin.”

There was something in the way she addressed this mountain of muscle that just turned me on. He tossed, I lost and he broke.

As games go it wasn’t my best but I was distracted by Jodie. However, Scott was drunk enough to blow more chances than yours truly and eventually I potted the black.

“Looks like another game is in order.”

“Yeah, well,” he turned around and focused on one of the televisions.

“Scott,” Jodie nudged him, “why don’t you get me another lemon squash and I’ll play the next game with Kelly.”

Give a man a choice of watching the footy or getting his arse beaten in pool by a woman and he’ll take the first option every time and soon we were happily chatting away. She seemed to lose her reserve once he was standing in front of the telly with a beer.

“Tell me something,” she leaned over to pot a ball, “do you swing left or right?”

“Pardon?” I asked as she potted a ball into a corner pocket right by my crotch.

“Are you gay or straight?”

“Gay.”

“I had a feeling but you can’t always judge by appearances,” she straightened up, “I swing right but now and then I do take a good look at the left.”

“So you’re curious?”

“Not that curious,” she smiled, “but it’s one of those things I do think about from time to time.”

She glanced over her shoulder, almost as if she’d read my mind.

“Scott is my boarder, but he’s also my best friend.”

Now I was interested.

Jodie McNaughton was thirty two years old. She’d been married at twenty three and it lasted for nearly five years before they broke up. After that she’d thrown in the towel as a tax consultant for H & R Block and started her own accounting business. She worked from her home in Selby.

“The bulk of my work is still tax refunds but lately I’ve been doing the books for small businesses, tradesmen and the like.”

We played one more game after that before she got tired of it.

“Come on, escort me to the shithouse, there’s something I need to see.”

We detoured via Scott and there was a conversation that lasted the better part of a minute before he shrugged and turned away. We stepped into the toilet and she seemed almost carefree as we walked along the row of cubicles and stopped at the very end one.

“Step into my office,” she nudged me.

I know I hesitated but it was only for a second. She’d said curious but not that curious. At that point I thought this was about the fastest come on move I’d seen in a long time.

“Well? Let’s see these tatts.”

I unbuttoned my shirt and let it fall free. She studied my arms and then made me turn around, I felt her fingers tracing my designs and then she took a step back, dropped her panties and sat down. It took me by surprise. Here was me locked in a cubicle with my shirt undone and she had her panties around her ankles and her dress hoisted up over her legs.

“Sorry,” was all she managed before she emptied her bladder.

I managed to distract myself by rearranging my wardrobe and pretending that this kind of thing happens all the time. She had this intense look on her face and it was not from answering a call of nature. The woman was thinking, but about what?

It was all revealed as she washed her hands in front of the mirror a few minutes later.

“Do you have an accountant yet?”

“No, I’ve got my mentors I go and see every quarter, I’ve just had a session last week but it’s something I need to get because I’m hopeless when it comes to balancing books, left to my own devices I could really cook them to a crisp.”

“I have a proposition for you,” she held her hands under the dryer and I waited until it had stopped blowing air. “I’ll do your books once a month if you do me.”

“What?”

“Tatts,” she took out a brush, “I want one on my back, one on my shoulder and one on my thigh, I pick the designs, I’ve got a few in mind. You turn up with your books, I do my thing and then whenever you can book a time slot, you come up to my place to do my tattoo and I hand you back your perfectly balanced books.”

One of those financial gurus once wrote that you should never take the first deal but I never read that book and so I said yes in a heartbeat.

“Gee that was quick,” she slipped a hand into the crook of my arm and led me out of the toilet but once we were outside she released me and we made our way back to Scott. They left not long after that and she handed me a card.

“Call me when you’re ready to come up,” she held out her hand.

As I drove home an hour or so later I found myself drifting into fantasy land. Was this woman playing with me?