Maggie 'The Love of His Life!'

By Charlotte Bell

Max was the envy of all. Why not: he had an attractive wife, great kids, nice house, stunning waterfront property and if that wasn't enough, a business that he enjoyed that provided all the money he needed.

 

The god of Serendipity, however, had a hard on for a laugh, and Max was just the party trick to get it for her.

 

From Suburbia to Cairo to Stonehenge, join our intrepid hero on a sexy, crazy and improbable journey.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Charles Goddard
• Release date: May 19, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393173182

Charlotte Bell

Charlotte Bell has been writing short stories for some years. She has decided to polish her Maggie series and release them into the world. There is a book III coming that will be totally different than the first two. Watch for it in the coming months.

Book preview

1

Maggie

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Max woke early, as he usually did, looked over at the slumbering beauty beside him. She had somehow kicked off her blankets and now lay there, bare-breasted wearing only a pair of skimpy panties. He leaned over and kissed her. Her beautiful green eyes fluttered open. He kissed her again. A wry smile took her lips.

Are you interested in a quickie, he whispered.

What do you think? she whispered back, somehow writhing without moving.

He kissed her neck gently and moved to her breasts and down to her soft tummy, kissing gently as he went. He ran his finger tips lightly across her abdomen just above the pubic bone. She sighed. He removed her panties slowly. Her legs opened as he slid on top, and as he entered her, he felt the slight exhale and heard the soft moan he loved so much. He began gyrating his hips slowly. Her nails were trailing across his back. He started to move with more purpose. The nails dug in a little deeper.

She wrapped her arms around him and pulled herself off the bed a little. With the warm breath in his ear he heard, harder, Max, harder.

The nails were now raking deeply into his back, he was breathing heavily as he thrust again and again. She fell back with a sigh of contentment, her emerald green eyes blazing. One more mighty effort and Max would... but no, he woke with a sudden start, ‘my god, not again:’ His beautiful – almost nightly - dream always ended in ball-crushing frustration.

He sat on the side of the bed, head in hands, large erection in underwear. He listened to the soft snoring of his wife from the other side of the bed. He decided not to try for relief there again. He replayed yesterday’s futile attempt in his mind. He had kissed her on the mouth. He wasn’t sure if her eyes had fluttered open under her sleep mask, but she grunted, and her head moved a little.

Interested in a quickie?

Are you crazy?! You woke me for that? Jesus, Max!

Problem gone. Quicker than an ice-cold shower!

******

Max got himself ready for his workday. Twenty minutes later, he was set to go. As he bounded down the stairs to head out of the door, he could see his daughter, Bri, foraging for breakfast in that Tasmanian Devil way she had about her.

Bye, honey, he yelled out to her.

Bye, dad, take care, and comb your hair.

He wasn’t sure what that meant, but it always brought a smile to his face. He was out of the house, down the path and into his car. He loved that car. It was a beautiful Volvo S-70 with all the bells and whistles: sports package, low profile tyres, leather interior and a great sound system. Unfortunately, it was also becoming a source of friction between Max and his wife, Sadie.  She was from the school of thought that preached any money spent on more than what was needed i.e. getting from A to B was a waste and could have been used elsewhere.

Max was sympathetic. She worked in the social field and was chronically underfunded. She was constantly on the scramble for enough money for her charges to live in dignity. Sometimes the lap of luxury offended her.

Max opened the sun roof, cranked up Hell’s Bells and sped on his way. She just didn’t get the sheer joy he felt getting from A to B in his baby. She didn’t understand the difference between being happy having something like his car and being made happy by such things.

Perhaps it was the introspection that comes with listening to AC/DC, but it occurred to him that maybe after twenty years she still didn’t get what made him tick.

There had definitely been an uptrend in silly disputes over the past year or so. Things that had not been dispute-worthy previously.

The Volvo was chewing up the highway as though it hadn’t eaten for days.

Na Na Na...  Thunder! the road had opened up; nary a car to be seen, anywhere, 160, 170...

Na, na, na na na, Thunder!

180, 190...

...You’ve been Thunderstruck! ...the only way to fly.

As he wracked up the airmiles he thought a bit about the couples he worked with in his financial planning office. Over the years he had noticed some common traits. His ‘astute’ observations were rooted in his love of Star Trek. Max had decided that the cloaking device made famous by the Romulans had been borrowed widely by couples to make or keep their relationships going. They were leading pretend lives. The problem was – as the Romulans will tell you – cloaking requires energy. Max had decided that there was a direct correlation between the energy required and the length of the relationship. These masks could not be maintained indefinitely. The long-term couples were typically real from the start. No subterfuge. The deep cover sooner or later wears thin.

The real them comes out and it is typically the end of the relationship. Maybe that was what was going on with Sadie. Perhaps her cloak was slipping and he was starting to see the real her. Or was his thinning and Sadie was starting to see the real him and was not liking what she saw. He hoped to god there wasn’t much more to go, they wouldn’t last.

He reached his exit. A nice ramp. ‘Let’s see how fast it can be taken’. The Volvo screamed around the curve.

‘Cops, dammit,’ Max muttered to himself; his body was being forced to the outer limits by centrifugal force, held in place by the contours of the seat and his seat belt, which ironically was why the police were stationed where they were.

The peered in his window as he zoomed by, and gave him a thumbs up because they could see his body pressed against his securely fastened belt as he hung on for dear life.

Max breathed again as the road straightened out, and laughed: ‘that was fun’.

Back to more serious matters. Maybe his subconscious had already made a pronouncement as to the fate of his marriage with his wonderful, almost nightly dream.  Thank you, AC/DC, for the insight. ‘What a band’!

He wheeled into his reserved parking spot. His office was on the second floor of a large mall. He bounded up the stairs two at a time.  Picked up some coffee in the reception area and headed for his office. He yelled good morning to Kathy - the maker of the coffee – as he zipped by.

Her response was somewhat muffled by a Boston Crème doughnut.

******

As he sat back in his comfortable leather chair put his feet up and sipped his coffee, he surveyed all around him, he was reasonably content. His office reflected his tastes: a pair of Monet prints, water fountain gurgling happily, standing globe and a long meeting table butted against his desk forming a

T-shape. Not opulent, but aesthetically pleasing. Nothing annoyed Max more than going into an office and sinking to his ankles in plush carpet. Someone was paying for that and it wasn’t going to be him. He made sure his clients didn’t have a chance to feel that way. He wanted professional competence to be their impression as they entered his premises.

Max, himself, was of average height at about 5’11", and a muscular 210 lbs. He had all of his hair, mostly dark with a touch of gray at the temples. He had been told he looked younger than his forty years. Women found him attractive and he could easily have strayed had he been so inclined, but he hadn’t been. He saw no premium in cheating. Someone always got hurt.

His view was that only the selfish embarked on that path; there could only be one outcome: pain and hardship for one or more involved. These laudable views were about to be challenged and some of his life certainties take a battering.

After several fits and starts with different types of jobs and businesses, Max had finally settled into the financial industry to keep body and soul together.

He had started at the lowest point selling mutual funds. He worked hard and had soon worked his way up in knowledge, income and credentials. As he progressed, he realised that he worked in an incestuous, self-serving industry. The best decisions for clients were derived from the best decisions for the broker/planner and his sponsoring company. In other words, if the best strategy for the client would not result in income for the broker/planner or his company, it was unlikely to be recommended. For example, in 2000, it was clear a correction in the markets of some import was coming and yet most clients took it on the chin. It wasn’t clear to Max at that time; it was not his area of expertise. Some of the money managers had announced that they thought a correction was coming and yet as he reviewed their returns, he found they had suffered the same losses as everyone else: their prescience had not helped them one whit.

This puzzled and annoyed him. How could they announce the probability of a large correction in the market and yet not take evasive action? He questioned some of the managers but didn’t get any satisfactory answers.

That was until he got to a gold fund manager, a particularly good one. He took Max aside after one of their in-office meetings and explained the cold reality.

He told the story of when he first started on his fund. He was sure the gold market was about to correct and probably roll over to a down trend.  He moved his portfolio to a high percentage of cash holdings. He received a call from upstairs. They wanted him to move his positions back into gold. In fact, they ordered him to do so. It was simple: the average investor did not want to pay management fees for cash holdings.  He was new and wet behind the ears and had a young family. He made the changes. The market corrected, as he had feared, and his fund took a beating.

He told Max that now they wouldn’t dare interfere in the running of his fund. He said if Max looked at the funds that were heavily in cash when the markets looked a bit shaky, he would find they were being managed by old war horses with reputations, not to be trifled with.

It was like an epiphany; the classic giant light bulb had gone off in his head. He needed to change how he worked if he was going to make a real difference for his clients. It would be a refreshing change from making excuses as he was doing now.

He would give less importance to financial planning and more to the managing of shares/investments directly. He began another make-over, but now it was within the same industry. The months that followed saw a number of money managers coming to his office. They all sang from the same songbook. They claimed that as the advisor, it was Max’s job to move the money out of the funds that appeared risky - vis a vis the markets - to money market or bonds or whatever. He was responsible for protecting the clients from market shocks. This was patently absurd, and not his role.

The conversations got a little testy. It was at this point his right-hand assistant, Olivia, suggested that if he didn’t like the way things shook out, he should do something about it. She had been with him for ten years; he valued her counsel esp. when it dovetailed with his own thoughts.

Four years later he had all the accreditation he needed. He had spent many hours with his nose in his books. He had taken three very difficult exams. The core of his study had been Technical Analysis. Max enjoyed the view of the markets and individual shares that Technical Analysis gave him. He never tired of looking at charts and patterns that formed and repeated in the markets as buyers and sellers waged war. He had taken a hard look at Fundamental Analysis and felt it didn’t really measure up. He especially didn’t trust it because it was the method that all the money managers used who came to see him.

They all banged on about how the markets had failed them. Based on their analysis of various companies, they should have been rewarded by an increase in their share prices.

If there was one thing that Max had learned early on in his studies, it was that the markets couldn’t give a toss for what should or shouldn’t happen based on some clever-sides analysis.  It was the emotion and views of the market participants that drove the prices. He wanted information that kept him as close as possible to the supply and demand matrix that drove all markets ultimately. Technical Analysis gave him pure information. Fundamentals would have him relying on information provided by the companies themselves or analysts whose motivations maybe suspect. More than one had changed his opinion of a stock to retain his job. Allowing the banks to own brokerage firms was one of the grossest conflicts of interest Max had ever witnessed. If the average person was aware of just how the banks feathered their nests due to this arrangement they would be up in arms. Or if they knew the nudge- nudge, wink-wink arrangement the Ontario Securities Commission, in fact all the commissions across the country, had with the banks, they would understand how Canadian banks made billions while the average investor looked at their statements and scratched their heads.

At the two-year mark of his studies he decided