The Taming of the Bastard

  THE TAMING

  OF

  THE BASTARD

  Lindy Dale

  © 2011 Secret Creek Press

  Smashwords Edition

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   1 

  For longer than I could remember, well, at least the last three years, I’ve had a dream life mapped out in my head. By the time I was thirty I was going to be living on a tropical island with water lapping at my feet and a little B & B nestled in the palm trees behind. I was going to be my own boss. Of course, no one I told believed I’d ever do it. Most people thought I was the type of girl who wandered through life looking for something she’d never find. Most of them thought I was some sort of flighty, under-achieving ditz. Little did they know that hidden behind my collection of Pandora beads was a business head like no other.

  Okay, I might be exaggerating a little but I was definitely smarter than they gave me credit for. I did have a Bachelor degree in Communications. With honours.

  Having skirted my way around a minefield of professions after graduation—PR Girl, Personal Assistant and Tupperware Lady, to name a few—I’d come to the conclusion what I needed was for my life to be pared back. Simple. Uncomplicated. Anything was preferable to my current life choice of nanny-slash-waitress at the local German beer house. Yep, five days a week I chased a set of twins and a six year old round the house. And two nights a week, and sometimes on Saturdays, I could be found wearing a natty frilled apron over a red checked frock. It was never my number one choice as a career path but rather a means to an end. And with the small inheritance I’d received it looked as if my dream might become a reality sooner than even I’d planned. Everything was going swimmingly, in a ditzy, organic chicken and pilsner kind of way.

  Then I met Sam Brockton.

  Hot, sexy, and utterly bastardly Sam Brockton.

  And my life became something I never thought it would.

  *****

  It was Thursday evening at The Lederhosen and the dining room was packed to the gills. Our regular gang of businessmen were at their table in the corner partaking in after work ales. A party of girls sat at another table in the centre of the room. In a corner of the bar, three bikies in manky black jackets sat swilling schooners of lager and Dianne—the bar manager—was polishing glasses while chatting to them. I was in the servery and Bob, the owner of this classy establishment, was helping me to prepare garlic bread for a table near the window. Bob had a habit of popping up during busy periods on the pretext of lending a hand. I didn’t mind. I knew he was keeping an eye on me because he thought I was hopeless.

  You see, though my job was easy, I had a habit of becoming distracted by little things around me and this often led to an annoying trait of mine: destruction. I was public enemy number one to all manner of breakable things and a few that were once considered imperishable.

  “Have you met the new bloke just started working in the front bar, Millie?” Bob asked, as he stood between the microwave and me, guarding it like that soggy bit of garlic bread was crown jewels. Bob was still perplexed as to how, on a previous shift, I’d managed to jam my fingers in the door of said machine and not realise I was nuking them. He said it wasn’t that he didn’t trust me with the microwave anymore but rather didn’t want to have to explain my lack of digits to the customers. I knew he was trying to spare my feelings. Deep down, he loved me.

  “No,” I said.

  “You two will get on like a house on fire.”

  “How so?”

  “He’s hot. You’re single. I see romance in the air.” Bob paused to slap the garlic bread into the basket, a little glob of butter splashing onto his polo shirt. Then, he winked at me in such a way I wondered what it could be that would make him think such a thing. Did I look like I had ‘shag me’ tattooed on my forehead? Did I really look the type of girl who slept with the any man who smiled at me? Really?

  Shaking my head, I wandered off in the direction of table six to deliver the bread. That comment had been way off base and, well, frankly, a little hurtful. I hadn’t had a boyfriend in months. Another couple of weeks and I’d officially be declared a natural disaster, a woman in the depths of a man drought. And if anyone was deserving of such a rude tag, it was probably Chantelle. Or Donna. And possibly Dianne. I was pretty sure they had some kind of tally system going under the timber of the front bar.

  Shoving the thought from my mind, I put the baskets of bread down on the table and turned back to the servery. I remember it exactly because it was the precise moment the double doors at the end of the dining room flung open, like a scene from an old fashioned western movie.

  A masculine form filled the space.

  It was tall.

  It had shoulders the size of a small European country.

  And for reasons even Helen Keller could see, I suddenly realised what Bob had meant. I’d definitely shag that given half a chance. I might even do it on the first date. Naughty me.

  The figure paused inside the doorframe and perused the scene before him. A boyish grin spread across his face, revealing a dimple in his cheek. Oceanic eyes twinkled with bad boy mischief. Though I tried not to, I fully checked him out as I collected a heap of dirty plates and walked back to my station, a doleful sigh escaping my lips.

  It had to be the new guy.

  Nobody else who worked at The Lederhosen looked like that. In fact, the majority of men I worked with were the product of one too many German sausages with extra sauerkraut.

  This guy was sex on legs.

  So much so, that as I stared while trying to look like I wasn’t, I lurched full frontal into one of the pillars that had been strategically placed for just such a moment. My carefully constructed tower of dishes flew into the air and fell with a clatter to their death. Left over bolognaise sauce stained the carpet. I tumbled to the ground, landing right in the centre of the mess.

  It was a moment frozen in time.

  And not a good one.

  Ignoring the stunned silence from the men beside me and the tittering from the group of girls, I wiped the splodges of tomato sauce from my bottom and rolled to my knees. Tears of mortification stung my eyes. The whole place had seen me fall and not one of them was offering assistance. They merely sat with their mouths open. Well, except for the new guy. He was laughing so hard he was drowning out the mood music.

  Bob appeared, handing me a sponge and a bucket of soapy water. “That’ll have to come out of your pay, Millie,” he grumbled and stacked the broken china into plastic crate. “I can’t afford for you to keep doing this. You’re a one woman demolition team.”

  “Sorry Bob.” I didn’t bother to add anything further, there was no point; his face was that frightening shade of puce that could not be put right with words. Besides, it was all that new guy’s fault. A girl needed protective glasses to look at him.

  *****

  A few nights later, keeping my nose to the grindstone and out of Bob’s way, I was polishing forks when the new guy came in. As if it happened every day, he ignored the crowd that parted before him like the Red Sea and made his way across the room. Determined, I held my breath and kept my eyes on my work. I was not going to be led astray by his shoulders again. I had to keep my job.

  “Here he comes,” whispered Alex. “Oh my... he’s way hotter than Chantelle said.” She flicked her blackened loc
ks over her shoulder and pushed out her ample Greek bosom. I think it had been a while between drinks for her, too.

  “Hmph,” I snorted in reply.

  “Do you know his name?” she whispered.

  New guy was getting closer. He must have known we were talking about him; he had that cheeky grin on his face. The one that looked like it could persuade women to sleep with him even if they preferred women.

  “Smug Face?”

  “Be serious.”

  “I’m Too Sexy For This Bar?”

  Alex gave me a look. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  I was about to ask her the same thing. She was behaving like she’d never seen a man before.

  New guy waltzed up to where we were standing, looking like a walking shagfest. His mohair jumper, just a tad too fitted for fashionable, showed off his body a treat and his sooty hair, sexily unkempt, added to his hot guy persona. Even the stubble was sprinkled to perfection across his jawline. He rested his large, smooth hands on the counter. A little tuft of mohair wafted from his jumper and landed on Alex’s cleavage. “Hi.”

  Alex was mute.

  “Has my dinner arrived yet?—”

  Mesmerised, Alex let out an audible whimper. I slunk into my tea towel and tried to pretend he wasn’t there. His presence was making me dizzy. I couldn’t acknowledge him. It would be so weak; perving like everyone else. It would go against everything I’d ever said about looks not being everything, the person inside being the most important and all that.

  “My dinner?” he asked again. “I’ve only got a fifteen minute break.”

  “Um...er, yeah.” I swallowed, taking his fish from the dumb waiter and handing it to him. Our fingertips collided on the edge of the plate and I ripped my hand away, curling and uncurling it behind my back as lightning bolts surged up my arm and my brain registered signals it hadn’t felt in quite some time. Flustered, I gave him a hint of a smile. Surely, he’d sensed it too?

  “Thanks.” He whisked the cutlery from the counter. With a wink at Alex, he disappeared to the front bar.

  What the?

  I was bewildered. Why had he looked straight through me then practically tickled Alex’s cheek? Surely, he’d felt the chemistry? Where was my flash of smile?

  We watched him leave and I prised Alex’s fingers from my arm. I handed her an order book. There was no point in drooling. He had no interest in us. We were waitresses. “Go take the order at table three.”

  “It’s not just me, is it?” she asked, as I propelled her out into the sea of beer steins and schnitzels, “He is the hottest thing you’ve ever seen, isn’t he?”

  Hot enough to get well and truly burned, I’d say.

  “He’s cute but he didn’t even have the decency to introduce himself.” Not that he needed to. We all knew who he was. Even after a week on the job, the gossip was rife.

  “Maybe he’s shy?”

  “Well, I thought he was rude. Smug and rude.” And that was my defence, feeble as it was. I ask you…what hope did I have?

   2 

  For the next couple of weeks I watched New Guy—now christened Sam courtesy of Chantelle who’d been the only one game enough to ask him his name—with the eyes of a hawk, while pretending to do my work. I was mystified by the assumption everyone had that he was irresistible. Yes, he was hot and his charisma was enormous but from what I’d witnessed, so was his ego. He swanned around the bar, flirting with customers and staff alike, basking in his own magnetism. He didn’t do one scrap of work. Yet, in the eyes of my colleagues, he could do no wrong.

  During this time, I discovered two very important things. Firstly, and most distressingly, I was attracted to Sam’s cockiness. It was sort of refreshing that he laughed when everyone else was grumbling, that he never stressed over the little things. He didn’t even lose it when Dianne exploded a beer keg over his shirt and he slipped on the slate floor of the bar, landing on his bum.

  Sam was the exact opposite to the buttoned up professional types I favoured under normal circumstances. He wasn’t depressed or overworked. He didn’t listen to gossip about people because he was too busy making fun of everything. And, despite the fact that he took the piss out of us on a daily basis, everyone still liked him.

  Secondly, in the space of three short weeks, Sam had transformed The Lederhosen into a cesspit of lust and desire. So much so, I began to check the paper every morning to see if he’d taken out an ad. Women from all over the city descended upon us simply to have him pour a beer and grin. The cleavage I saw every shift was enough to fill a Victoria’s Secret catalogue. Yet, I appeared to be the only one who realised this. How could this be?

  The revelation was no help at all.

  Simultaneously attracted and revolted by Sam’s smugness, I became more of a ditz. I spent so much time trying not to think about him that I could think of nothing else. I delivered T-bone steaks to people who ordered Bratwurst, I poured pilsners to overflowing and, horror of horrors, I almost agreed to go out with Jason, the kitchen hand. (Jason was a sad loser with greasy hair and pimples. He picked his nose when he thought people weren’t looking and wiped it under the kitchen bench. Sometimes, when a bench wasn’t handy, he ate his snot.) No girl who regarded herself as sane would ever agree to go out with Jason. But I nearly had, and all the while, Sam continued to saunter in and out of the dining room for no reason I could fathom other than to amuse some small voice inside his head that told him it was time to give his adoring fans another fix.

  I hated Sam. His walk messed with my head. His smile made my knees wobble. I was so annoyed with myself. Where was the strong independent Millie?

  *****

  “What do you know about Sam?” I asked Dianne, during a quiet part of the Thursday evening shift. We were standing behind the bar stacking pint glasses, a duty I was now allowed to perform only under supervision since I’d dropped a tray of them while looking at Sam’s bum.

  Dianne didn’t bother to look away from her shelving. “Um, he’s single, from over East and is always talking on his mobile to someone called Gracie. He calls her ‘sweet cakes’.” She twitched inadvertently at the memory. “Oh, and he’s working his way around Australia. Why?”

  “Just wondering...” I handed her another tower of glasses. How could he be working his way around Australia? I was positive prancing around like a model for GQ magazine didn’t count as work.

  “Do you like him?” Her over-tinted eyebrow raised a tad.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. He’s not my type. He’s an idiot.”

  “A rather sexy idiot.”

  I groaned. I was not going to validate that statement by agreeing.

  “He’s trying to break the all time ‘Shag around Australia’ record,” added Chantelle, plonking a tray of empties for the washer onto the bar.

  ‘The what?” I froze, glass in hand.

  “It’s some sort of game. To be declared the winner he has to have enough female numbers on his mobile to clog up the sim card.”

  “Oh my God.” I was traumatised. That did not sound like a game I wanted to be involved in, even if I had admitted to thinking his stubble was cute on a previous occasion. “How did you find that out?”

  Chantelle raised her eyebrows at me and lowered her chin, waiting until Dianne bent under the counter. It was common knowledge Dianne had her sights set on Sam and as manager believed she had seniority. “My name’s on the list,” she mouthed.

  I hoped that didn’t mean what I thought it did but, from the way she was smirking, I guessed it did. Satisfied I had all the ammunition I needed, I went back to polishing glasses. I had no interest in a man who played games like that. He was clearly not worth considering.

  *****

  For weeks it went on.

  And on.

  And on.

  No one was immune from the charm of Sam. The barmaids were smitten. Desensitised from years of ridiculous come-ons by patrons, they were a hard bunch to crack but every time Sam chastised the
m for wasting company profits, all they could do was giggle, agree and promise to do better. Dianne was the worst of all. She was pathetic. She undid the top button of her blouse and gushed like a giddy schoolgirl, leaving one of the regulars to ask, “Is that woman on something? She’s acting bloody weird lately.”

  “Menopause,” I said. “She’s having the hot flushes.”

  He didn’t seem to think it odd. Even though Dianne’s only about thirty.

  “We can’t throw the baby out with the bathwater, you know,” Alex said, one night over a shared bowl of chips and gravy. We’d been discussing the fact that Sam had been spotted helping old Lydia—our longest serving customer—down the back stairs and into her car. “I mean, what criminal was ever convicted on hearsay?”

  “Lindy Chamberlain?”

  “I don’t think a dingo eating your baby has a lot to do with this, do you? And that was thirty years ago, give or take.”

  I supposed she had a point.

  I sucked the gravy from the end of my chip. Sam’s act could not have had any ulterior motive unless he wanted to be written into her will. He was simply being kind. Maybe there was another side to him we’d missed? Maybe he was actually an angel in disguise?

  “Well, I still don’t like him.”

  I sighed and got up to take our bowl to the sink. No one else gave two hoots about what Sam was really like, as long as he wore those tight fitting t-shirts. Besides, Sam had no interest in me. It was widely acknowledged that he’d only said two words to me and neither of them constituted a sentence.

   3 

  It was fortunate that working at The Lederhosen wasn’t my only form of employment or I would have gone crazy in those first heady weeks of Sam. I had my main job and I was returned to normality every morning when I stepped out of my bedroom and into the hall of the Richards-Shaw household. Well, as normal as their upwardly mobile, brand conscious lifestyle allowed me to be. Living with the Richards-Shaws was like being on a reality game show but without the singing and cooking. Most of the time I had no idea what they were on about, which only added fuel to the assumption that I was a ditz. They were utterly bonkers and I loved them to bits.