by DJ Black
"I get it," she said rolling her eyes up. "I'm a screw up, what can I say?"
Zoe Frayne sat with her arms folded across a pink mohair pullover crushing her small but prominent breasts. The pink matched the tinge of dye in her black hair, the only visible concession the punk-come-Goth girl had made to her femininity. Her black faded jeans were ripped and the whole parody of an ensemble was covered with masculine leather biker jacket.
"Look at you, you're 25 and... what are you wearing?" Masterson sighed, "You have no job, you have spent the allotment your uncle gave you at 18, and you have given up on that PhD in what was it... the impact of music on Western Civilisation?"
Masterson, Zoe's late uncle's lawyer, listed her deficiencies on his fingers.
"I said I get it." Zoe shifted uncomfortably in the overstuffed leather armchair of the lawyer's office. "I had to make something of myself by the age of 25 or no filthy money." Masterson sighed again and sat back.
"That's it then, I'm screwed." Zoe threw him a sour expression as she got up to leave.
"You want to hear about plan B first?" he said wearily.
"I can see from your face that I won't like it," Zoe grunted and gave him another eye-roll as she slumped back down.
"Your late uncle Benjamin Romantique was a very wealthy man, but an eccentric one." Masterson let out a long breath.
This was nuts, he admitted, wondering how he was going to broach the subject.
"He was out of the Ark, I know that, but I always thought he was kind of cool," Zoe snorted.
"Old fashioned, yes, that's a positive take I suppose and that brings me to the point." Masterson leaned forward and made a bridge of his fingers as he clasped them as if in prayer. "There is a man called Anthony Barnwell Steel..."
Zoe shifted uncomfortably in her seat and blushed.
"...He was your uncle's friend... I see you know of him?" Masterson put in.
"We met when I was a kid..." The words clung to her mouth like a childhood lollipop being removed from a saucer.
"If you spend the summer with him, on his terms, then however it works out you get an indexed £30,000 a year until you are 30 and then a first payment of 10 million with a second 10 million when you marry or when you turn 45, whichever is first."
Zoe was still thinking of Tony Steel and that summer not so long ago when the 'second 10 million' got her attention.
"You mean I get 10 million quid when I marry?" she said incredulously. "But what if I don't want to get married?"
"You have to spend three months with Mr Barnwell Steel first. On the same terms as you had when your uncle was alive. I believe you know what that means?" Masterson let the question hang.
He too had a pretty good idea and he was dreading explanations and the quite reasonable fall-out that would ensue.
"A three month holiday at the old family estate... it could be worse," Zoe said brightly.
The 10 million was too far off to contemplate, but with 30 grand a year she could get a neat pad and hang for a while until something turned up. There was a certain amount of relief that she wasn't off to the dole office just yet, but the thought was tempered by the rousing little bugs that begun to tickle the inside of her tummy.
The summer she had spent at her uncle's after her gap year and before college had been the best of her life. It had been the only time she had not felt in utter free fall and the screaming need for attention had faded to a dull roar.
"It might not be a holiday..." Masterson said carefully, "I have read the side letter... I am not even sure that it is legal. We might..."
"I'll do it." Zoe rolled her eyes yet again. She hated all the boring faff.
"You have to sign an agreement first and if you do then you are pretty much committed. I am sure..." Masterson was suddenly uncomfortable with the whole deal.
"I said I'll do it," Zoe said impatiently.
The old house was much the same, although Zoe knew that it was now rented to a Middle Eastern millionaire. Tony had inherited it from her uncle, but he had chosen to continue to live at the old lodge which he had rented before.
Zoe had never been sure of the relationship between Tony and Uncle Ben; she only knew that they had met in the army and that Tony did various jobs around the estate for the old man. She had first met Tony as a girl on her first visits to the estate, but in those days Tony had been a distant figure, always driving tractors and hefting great tools about the woods.
Only after her mother had died and she had come for an extended stay that summer had she really got to know him.
"Still a fright then," Tony snorted as Zoe strolled up the drive to the lodge with a black denim bag hauled across her trademark leather jacket.
Her short pixie cut hair looked bedraggled as if cut with a knife and fork for a mixed salad.
"And you look so chic," she countered, nodding towards his tattered checked shirt, which was rolled above his elbows to reveal his tanned and toned arms.
He was younger than she remembered, maybe not even 40, although his dark brown hair was dashed with grey flecks. But then at 10, 25 would have seemed old she now realised. It was a strange thought, because now at the same age she didn't feel remotely grown up.
"I'm surprised you agreed to this," he said in a non-committal voice.
Zoe shrugged.
"The old man can keep his millions, but the 30k a year is worth putting up with you for a few weeks," she replied in a bored voice. "But I am not sure what the point is."
"The point..." Tony sighed, "I don't know there is one. Show half willing and you can bugger off and leave me in peace and you'll get your cash. But that summer you were here... well you almost left here a decent human being. I think your uncle hoped that one more chance and you would stop wasting your life."
"What didn't he like me blowing his money on sex, drugs and rock and roll? Or was it that I wasted the rest?" Zoe said drily.
"That smart mouth of yours will get you..." Tony let an edge touch his voice.
"What are you going to do, spank me?" Zoe challenged.
"You know I will," Tony warned her.
Zoe blushed and worked her suddenly somewhat dry mouth. She remembered long hot days and the smell of freshly cut grass and of giving him attitude. It had been a duel between them and a way to get some attention.
She remembered taking the dump-truck after he told her not to and ending up in the ditch. He had hauled her over his knee and had spanked the seat of her jeans right there next to the tumbled truck.
She had been embarrassed, especially as afterwards when her determination to show it hadn't hurt, had ended in a bottom-clutching dance and some barely suppressed tears as Uncle Ben had laughed.
"You touch anything dangerous again without training or my permission and you'll get some more. Only next time your pants and trousers are coming down," Tony had promised.
No-one had ever stood up to her before and the line he had drawn in the sand for her was the clearest of her murky life; a line that was shiny and sharp and a border to a foreign land.
It was too exciting not to cross, no matter what the cost, and cross it she had. Not that she had believed in the consequences. At 19, one never does. Not the first time or the last.
The industrial trimmer had been ripe with limb slicing potential, but the instruction not to touch it had seemed babyish. The topiary hadn't appreciated her efforts and nor had Tony.
Across his knee, her skinny jeans and knickers had slid over her slender hips with a single burst of the button at his hands. She had been mortified, an emotion that retreated quickly with the first biting sting of his palm across her bare bottom.
"Are you determined to cross me?" he had snarled at her.
"Get off me you bastard," had been just her opening tirade.
But even with what followed he must have heard worse and had spanked her for some long minutes until her bottom had sung to him and had taken on the appearance of two polished tomatoes.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she had sobbed.
"Are you?" he had asked.
"Yes, oh yes, please Tony," she had pleaded.
"Then stop struggling and stick your bottom up to accept what you deserve," he had ordered.
It had been too embarrassing and within the confines of the potting shed she had renewed her struggles. In response Tony had resumed the spanking as if from scratch. It hadn't taken long for Zoe to tuck in her knees and proffer him her obscenely rounded bottom for continued punishment.
The rest of the spanking was neither token nor brief and afterwards Zoe would have obeyed any command.
In the corner afterwards Zoe had seen her real self for the first time in a long while. All anger and resentment had been stripped away as she was reduced to her rightful place as a little girl at the bottom of the heap. Or so it had seemed. And it had been liberating.
Every four of five days after that Zoe had found a way to challenge him. And each and every time she had earned herself a sound spanking and a good hour or two standing bare-bottomed in the corner.
It escaped her notice that her battles were not only small, but increasingly diminished as the bar was set ever lower towards a destination that represented civilised behaviour. By the end of that summer she had not only learnt some manners, but had enjoyed sharing them.
Despite her battles, she had vowed to return the next summer to continue her contest with Tony and Ben, but that winter her uncle had died and that chapter had been closed.
"I am here to work hard and learn some good old-fashioned values aren't I?" Zoe broke from her recollections with a jocular tone and mock saluting punch to the air. "I mean I'm too old for... what happened before."
Tony folded his arms and regarded her seriously.
"Pretty much, but I haven't changed and you weren't exactly a child then and you're certainly not now," he said examining her curves appreciatively. "So you mess with me young lady and you know exactly what to expect."
"Does that mean I can't drive your dumper truck?" It was an attempt at levity to disguise her embarrassment.
"You go anywhere near it, and you'll get what you should have got last time," he said in a dark chocolate voice rich with menacing promise.
Zoe blushed.
"You didn't exactly pat me on the head last time," she blustered.
"It won't be your head I'll be patting next time either and they really won't be pats," he said earnestly.
Zoe sucked in her cheeks and looked at the ground. For once her smart mouth failed her and the almost-girl from a summer long ago reasserted itself.
Zoe had been painting the fence for over an hour, desperately trying to make an excuse to break off from it. The smell of the undercoat was vile and she was feeling a little sick.
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