Desideratum

By Pauline Montagna

Linda is bereft when Marcus, her enchanting young hairdresser, announces he's returning to England. Linda offers to marry him so he can stay in Australia, but is this marriage of convenience too painful to bear?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pauline Montagna
• Release date: Sep 10, 2012

Pauline Montagna

Pauline Montagna was born into an Italian family in Melbourne, Australia. After obtaining a BA in French, Italian and History, she indulged her artistic interests through amateur theatre, while developing her accounting skills through a wide variety of workplaces culminating in the Australian film industry. In her mid-thirties, Pauline returned to university and qualified as a teacher of English as Second Language, a profession she pursued while completing a Diploma of Professional Writing and Editing. She has now retired from full-teaching to concentrate on her writing.

Book preview

Desideratum

a novelette by

Pauline Montagna

Copyright © Pauline Montagna 2016

Other titles by Pauline Montagna on Smashwords:

The Taming of the Shrew

Not Wisely but Too Well

The Slave

Suburban Terrors

Ever the Bridesmaid

Out of the Ashes

Secrets and Suspicions

Echoes and Other Stories

Table of Contents

Desideratum

Also on Smashwords

The Taming of The Shrew

Not Wisely but Too Well

The Slave

Suburban Terrors

Desideratum

Linda stifled a sigh as Marcus’s long, strong fingers caressed her, sending streams of delight through her body, right down to her curled up toes. His probing fingers found wells of pleasure she had hardly dreamt of. Waves of desire broke over her gripping, white-knuckled hands. But it was against the rules to move or make a sound. Instead she lay back and let him reach deep into her very soul and uncover an aching bliss, an agony of longing, long since submerged.

All too soon, the probing became a gentle stroke, and she let out the breath she had been holding. A shower of warm water flowed over her forehead down through her hair.

‘Is that too hot for you?’ Marcus asked.

‘No,’ Linda sighed. ‘It’s perfect.’

When he had towelled most of the water from her hair, Marcus led her to a tubular black chair in front of a full length mirror, leaving her for a moment while he fetched his instruments.

Linda groaned as she regarded herself in the pitiless glass – a woman of a certain age, her dark wet hair swept back severely, exposing her pale, drab face to the harsh fluorescent lights. Wrapped in a black kimono with a heavy black rubber collar protecting her shoulders, she resembled a medieval Japanese warrior awaiting his execution.

Yet despite this emotional torture, her monthly visits to Desideratum were a spiritual necessity. Linda had only one vanity left, her hair, which was still as thick and lustrous as it had always been. She spent nothing on make-up and little on clothes, but she had always been to the best hairdressers. Clive Miller was Perth’s most awarded hairdresser, his salon, Desideratum, Perth’s most prestigious. And since Marcus had started doing her hair three months earlier, these visits had become her one guilty, agonising pleasure.

‘Tracy, you look fantastic,’ Linda heard in the distance. Clive was working his way down the salon. ‘Linda,’ he pronounced as he reached her, ‘that colour is perfect on you.’

‘As long as it covers the white,’ Linda replied dryly.

‘White? I don’t see any white.’

They exchanged wry smiles. Clive was still a very attractive man, Linda mused, but he was getting a bit too old for long hair and leather pants himself.

‘Isn’t Marcus taking care of you today?’ Clive asked, looking around the salon with a frown. Linda followed his gaze as the frown turned into a bemused grin.