I told Lori we were dining at one of the best restaurants in London, so she had to get her boots and socks on, as we only had an hour to make our reservations.
30 minutes later we were walking out to the waiting car, a sleek Mercedes limousine. Lori was wearing that stunning red minidress she’d worn for dinner with Sophie the night she’d told her she was pregnant, and those stellar red stiletto’s, and with her china complexion and her jet black hair cascading down her back, she looked completely stunning. Passing cars were slowing down to ogle her, and I had to grin; I was right, she really was a traffic stopper!
We got the same kind of reception at the restaurant; people were craning their necks to look at her, their foreheads wrinkling as they tried to place her. ‘A stunningly beautiful girl in a micro-dress, with a body like that, she must be famous, where have I seen her before?’ was the general undercurrent in the room as we were seated, and Lori lapped up every molecule of it, playing to the crowd for all she was worth. Her Midwest accent broadened, and her frequent head-tossing as she flicked her hair out of her eyes, and her constant crossing and re-crossing of her legs were followed by every man in the room. We had no lack of waiters; all she had to do was look up and there would be one there; I got the impression they were competing to see who could get there fastest just so she could grace him with her attention.
A couple of minor TV celebs came in and were seated at their own tables, people I knew vaguely from some soap or the other, and one of them, a sleazy-looking individual, sent a bottle of champagne over to our table; Lori declined it without looking at him and had it sent back, much to the amusement of his friends and the surrounding tables. He tried to send it over again, but I intercepted it, asked a waiter for a wastebasket, and dropped it in, again much to the amusement of his friends and the restaurant in general. At that point the Maitre d’ asked him to leave, so he and his mates slunk out, where no doubt any passing paparazzi would capture the picture of a minor TV celeb being booted out of a top restaurant for being a boorish prick.
Lori was highly amused, and asked why I’d gone through the whole pantomime of dropping the champagne in the trash.
“You know, darling boy, I could have just gone over there, dragged him upright, and kneed him in the balls, that would have given him the message loud and clear!”
I laughed out loud; I didn’t need to protect my wife, she was quite capable of defending herself against pests. When we eventually left, having had a superb meal of wild salmon, grilled beef, scallops, and a selection of cheeses, the car and our driver was waiting for us. As we came out, that idiot from earlier tried to accost Lori, so I had to accidently elbow him under the chin and listen to the click as his teeth slammed together. He tried to splutter something so I pulled him closer by his neck and grabbed his balls, squeezing as hard as I could, enjoying the sight of his pupils dilating as the elevated testicular compression threatened to pop his eyeballs out of their sockets. When I judged I had his full attention, I spoke quietly and urgently to him.
“Look, twat, if you don’t fuck off and leave my wife alone, I’m going to crush your plums and feed you the squashy remains, are you getting this? Now fuck off and stay fucked-off! Keep away from my wife, you pathetic little prick, the only time she’d ever go with a snotty little shit-stain like you is after she’s dead, and not even then, so fuck off or I’ll rip your balls off! I mean it, boy, do yourself a favour and fuck off, or that man over there is going to shove your face down your neck and pull it out of your arse!”
He looked disbelievingly at me, the words ‘do you know who I am?’ hovering on his lips, when a hand like a shovel descended on top of his head and pulled him upright by his cane-rolled nappy hair. It was our driver, who’d seen what was going on and decided to intervene.
“Listen to me, you little prick!” he rumbled, “The nice gentleman told you to fuck off, now fuck off!” Our new chum tried to struggle, whereupon the driver spun him round and head-butted him right between the eyes. I heard the crunch from where I was standing, and watched interestedly as blood spurted from his flattened nose, but I made no move to assist him; I’m a Cardio, Maxillo-Facial is a closed book to me…
The driver pulled him upright again by his frizzy hair, and gave him an underarm punch between the legs that must have made his balls vibrate like speed-bags and shredded his eardrums, turning him around so he could throw-up in peace, then tripping him into the gutter, kicking him in the backside while simultaneously punching him in the back of the head as he went sprawling. His mates all stood around staring at the huge man who’d just kicked their friend’s arse with such ease, and the excited comment from the TV crew waiting outside to catch the rich and shameless at play as they caught the whole thing in glorious living colour was a delight to hear.
Lori was trying her hardest not to laugh, but it burst out of her, and our little friend had to contend with the sound of her laughter pealing out as he picked himself up out of whatever nasty thing it was he’d just landed in. We watched the camera flashes going off, capturing the shot of a minor TV soap star trying to scrape dogshit and puke off his pimp suit while cradling his sore balls in the full glare of the paparazzi spotlight. Blood was drooling down his face from his squashed and pulpy nose, said face not improved by its sudden impact with the road, vomit smeared his shiny jacket, and a large patch of his cane-rolled hair was mysteriously missing from the top of his head. The driver grinned wolfishly at him, and opened his hand to let a hank of hair fall to the pavement, dusting his hands off as he opened the car door for Lori and me.
We climbed back into the car and drove the short distance back to the hotel. On the way there, I thanked the driver, whose name was Jimmy, who tried to brush it off as part of the service.
He did say one thing that caught my attention, though.
“If you don’t mind me saying so, Sir, your wife is a very pretty lady, she’s gonna get a lot of that, maybe you need to think about getting someone to be with her so this doesn’t happen again!”
I thought for a few seconds, agreed that he was right, and made a decision.
“You’re right. You’re hired!”
He sputtered as he tried to backpedal.
“I didn’t mean me, I was just pointing it out, I wasn’t…!”
I grinned at him.
“You just talked yourself into a job, Jimmy. We’ll talk about the money inside, but it will be significantly better than what you earn now, I promise! Do you own this car?”
He shook his head. “Nossir, it belongs to the service, I rent it from them.”
“Okay,” I said, “from tomorrow it’s yours; you drive my wife around, keep an eye on her, and help her with whatever she wants. That means you’ll probably be spending a lot of time in Malls; I don’t envy you! I’ll have all the paperwork sorted for you by the end of the week, but from now until you’ve had enough, you work for Lori. And we’ll have none of this ‘Sir/Ma’am’ nonsense; my name is David, Lori’s you already know. Tomorrow we want to do a little sightseeing, so could you please be here for breakfast at Nine o’clock, then Lori wants to see the Tower of London and drive across Tower Bridge, are you okay with that?”
Jimmy grinned broadly.
“‘Course I’m okay with that, I’m looking forward to it!”
“Good, because after that she wants to see Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square and go shopping in Knightsbridge, so you’re going to have your work cut out for you; once you get Lori in a department store you may have to send in the dogs to get her out again!”
By this time we’d arrived back at the hotel, so Lori went up to our suite while Jimmy and I ‘repaired to the bar’ where we managed to find a couple of beers with our names on them.
We chatted amicably, sounding each other out. I discovered he’d been a Royal Marine Commando, when he finally left he’d worked as a security guard, then as a bouncer, before landing this job as a driver/chauffeur, always on single-drop gigs, so he’d rarely even spoken to the people he was driving around. I told him this job was going to be more interesting than that; Lori was going house hunting, probably in Oxfordshire or Royal Berkshire, so he could look forward to a lot of house viewings.