Page 49 of Unstitch

Neither of those options bode well for me, and I can’t believe I’ve allowed Darcy to talk me into this. Nothing good can come from watching her dance.

Nothing good at all.

When I open the next set of heavy doors and step into the bar area, it’s buzzing in a low-key, genteel way not at all reminiscent of a sex club. I wonder if people come here to do deals and then go next door to fuck all that adrenalin out of their system once they’ve closed them.

Of course they do.

We’re in the heart of Mayfair, at a club whose price-point would make Annabel’s or Maison Estelle weep and which is populated by the great and good of British finance, industry and politics.

They can get up to whatever they want away from prying eyes.

I’ve only scanned a third of the room when my gaze meets his.

Max fucking Hunter.

He’s sitting alone at a small table off to one side of the room, his eyes on the door as if he’s been watching for me. He raises his hand in a small and totally unnecessary salute of acknowledgement, because his handsome mug is plastered on the front page of The Economist this week above the apt title: Hungry Like the Wolff: The Next Era.

Everyone in the City of London not only knows what Hunter looks like but wants right now to get into bed with him.

Figuratively speaking.

As I head in his direction, he unfolds himself from the low velvet bench he’s been sitting on and stands to greet me. Once again I have that what the fuck am I doing feeling.

I’m here because Darcy asked me to come, and she seems sweet, and she’s very attractive, so watching her dance will be no hardship at all. Plus, she’s kind of like a distant cousin by marriage, really, if you consider the Alchemy founders to be a family, which they pretty much are.

That’s all well and good. But why the hell I’ve agreed to let the guy she’s fucking sign me in and watch as I, some random guy, perv freely at his sort-of girlfriend, I have no clue. This feels like some awkward blind date, at a sex club, for Christ’s sake.

God. I hope none of these people think he and I are here to…

Surely not.

He’s lean. Tall. He has maybe an inch on me. Like me, he’s in his summer work uniform of suit trousers and a shirt with the top couple of buttons undone. No jacket. No tie. My shirt is pale blue and his is white. But it’s his eyes that get me. Deep-set and blue and piercing.

Alarmingly piercing.

His face is—I don’t know—classically good-looking, I suppose. He sports an even, golden tan, a fact that only enhances his eyes. His smile, when he bestows it on me, verges on smug, but this guy has everything he wants, so the fact that he’s a smug, self-satisfied bastard comes as no surprise at all.

He sticks out his hand, and we shake. ‘Max,’ he says. ‘Dex, I assume?’

‘Good to see you,’ I say. God knows how he recognised me, but I know better than to ask him, because you never get a straight answer from guys as slippery as him.

I thank Christ my colleagues don’t know I have any form of personal intro to Max Hunter lined up for tonight, because they’d be relentless if they thought we had any tiny edge on the Wolff deal.

‘Thanks for coming,’ he says. ‘Darcy’s excited to have you here.’

I don’t like that. He sounds like her pimp or her agent, and what the fuck is wrong with him, anyway? If I was with her in any form I’d go feral at the thought of her exposing her body to anyone else, let alone a club full of sex addicts.

But some people are weird like that. Maybe he gets off on knowing that everyone else wants her and he gets to have her to himself when she’s got off stage. I couldn’t begin to guess what kind of kinks a guy like Max Hunter would have.

I make some polite, ineffectual murmur of acknowledgement like of course or something equally banal, and we take our seats.

‘She’ll be on in ten minutes,’ he says, ‘so I grabbed us both a G&T.’

He slides a tall glass over to me, and we clink. A nice long, quenching gin and tonic is perfect, actually. I take a sip, and he laughs at my expression.

‘It’s practically all tonic. There’s no way you’re getting drunk in this place.’

‘Makes sense,’ I say, recalling the strict two-drink limit here the other night. While I’d like a little more hard liquor to take the edge off, it makes me marginally less uneasy to think none of the animals leering at Darcy next door will be drunk.

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