15 comments/ 44882 views/ 35 favorites A Building Job By: Cromagnonman It was one of those jobs that a young tradie like me dreamed of when he first started his own business, a renovation of an old family home in an affluent suburb. I knew the house and its owner because I'd worked there before when my old boss did the maintenance on it before he retired. The Sampson family had lived here since the current owner's great-grandfather built it some hundred years ago, its federation styled gable ends either side of the veranda that lead to the heavy wooden front door with diamond lead lined windows either side. A paved agapanthus lined driveway led from the wrought-iron front gates to the garage set just behind the rear corner of the house. There was a covered walkway linking the two buildings. The garage was the focus of this job, a victim of the ever-widening vehicles of today. It was a tight squeeze getting the car into the garage let alone that once inside the doors wouldn't open far enough for the driver or passengers to get out of it, so the old garage was coming down and in its place a new one in the same style as the old one, but wider. Roland Sampson occupied this house with his second decorative wife, his first decorative having grown tired of doing not a lot in the leafy serenity of this affluent suburb, having found herself not accepted by the 'old money' ladies whose tennis days, bridge afternoons and morning teas occupied their time fully. The fact that she was young, decorative and not from an 'old money' family was against her from the very beginning, the general rule being that one is not advised to marry outside one's class. The current and decorative Juliette Sampson had not been around long enough to become ostracized, but she was getting there. There was only one car in the driveway, her Mazda MX5, so I parked my truck out front and walked to the front door. The Westminster chimes echoed through the house on my pushing the button and eventually the image of a wavy figured became visible through the diamond glass. The door opened revealing the robe clad figure of the lady of the house. "Oh it's you, I wasn't expecting you for hours." "It's going to be a hot one today so I thought that I'd get an early start." The Weather Bureau had predicted forty degrees with a hot northerly wind, it was going to be uncomfortable. "Oh," she grabbed her car keys from the hall stand and handed them to me, "could you move it for me, I can't be seen outside dressed in my robe, what would the neighbours think?" I detected a note of cynicism in her voice. It felt strange sitting in her little sports car after driving my truck. I parked it out front and reversed my truck up the driveway before returning her keys. My first task was to remove the timber double doors and they stubbornly refused to co-operate. There were several coats of paint covering the heads of the screws holding the hinges and it took several minutes to clear this out before I could unscrew them and even this was a problem, the screws had lived in the timber for a long time and my reversing electric drill wouldn't even start to move them so it was back to the old methods and this was to prove to be the rule rather than the exception so it was after lunch before the roof was off and the brick walls and the skeletal roof frame were all that was left. I was sitting in the shade, my back against a large tree munching on my brought from home sandwich when she came out the back door carrying a jug of cold drink and a couple of glasses. "Do you mind if I join you? It looks pleasant out here in the shade." "Sure, pull up a tree." I didn't expect her to, there being an outdoor setting a couple of metres away but she did, and she sat next to me her shoulder touching mine. I heard the sound of her pouring a glass of drink from the jug and her hand moved across as she handed it to me. "Thank you, I need something like this, I was starting to think about water from the tap." "I couldn't allow that to happen. How long will you be here today?" "A couple of hours, all I have to do is to knock down the frame and then I can load the timber onto my truck and take it to the recycle yard on my way home." "Would you like some help?" Wow! This was a bolt from the blue, I would never expect someone in her position to offer to help, the most that I would have expected, given past experience, was the offer of a cup of tea for smoko. (That is what the mid-morning break is called in Australia) "Thanks for the offer but I couldn't allow you, I wouldn't like to see you hurt." I had visions of her trying to explain to her husband the blistered hands or the splinters that are common when people who aren't used to this work attempt it. "I've done this sort of thing before, do you have a spare hard hat?" "I have to insist that you can't do this." "And I have to insist that I want to help." What could I say, I grabbed a spare hard hat and tossed it to her, and she surprised me by deftly catching it by the chinstrap and putting it on. "How do I look?" She said, striking a pose. "Like a contestant in one of those reality TV shows where they get rank amateurs and get them to carry out a renovation project for our amusement." She threw the hard hat at me and headed indoors to return minutes later in an old pair of jeans and tee shirt, pulling on a pair of gloves as she strode across the lawn. She grabbed the hard hat, adjusted it to fit her head and plonked it on. "Okay boss, where do we start?" "For the moment just stand back, I'm going to knock the rafters from the top plate and with a bit of luck the whole lot will collapse in a heap inside the garage and the nails will be rusty enough that the timber will separate and make it easy for us." I climbed the ladder I had placed against the outside wall and began to prize the rafters free. As I worked my way along the wall, the roof rafters, without the joists to keep them together, began to sag in the middle until with a crash the whole lot collapsed in a cloud of dust into the garage. Juliette emerged from the dust cloud coughing and spluttering and trying to wipe the grime from her face. "Don't rub your eyes." "But I can't see." "If you rub them you'll make them worse, come with me." I led her to the hose tap. I turned it on and ran the water until the heated water in the hose had cooled down. "Now try to keep your eyes open." I ran water into them to flush out the dust. "How does that feel?" "Better thank you." I took a clean handkerchief from my pocket and passed it to her, she dried her face and smiled at me. "Apart from the dust that was fun." "Just wait until we get to knock down the brick walls, now that'll be fun." I realized after I had said this that I had included her. "I can't wait!" She looked down at her soaked tee shirt, it was fairly obvious that she wasn't wearing a bra because her nipples were standing out and there was no sign of any means of support. "Oops," she caught me looking at them, "I didn't mean for that to happen." She made no attempt to cover up. "Do you want to change?" "No, it'll dry out soon enough. Now what do we do?" "We pick up this timber and load it onto the truck so I can drop it off on my way home and if there's time I want to make a start on the brick walls, they should come down easy enough. I want to clean the bricks and re-use them for the new garage and I can pick up some second hand clinkers to match so that the new garage will look like the old one and blend in with the house." (Clinker bricks are clay bricks that were closest to the walls of the kiln so they were over-baked and very hard, dark in colour with an almost glazed appearance with some irregularities that gave them character) I began picking up the roof timbers and pulling any nails out of them and stacking them ready to load. Juliette was picking up timbers and bringing them to me to save me gathering them myself and in about half an hour we were ready to load. I showed her how to lift one end of the timber onto the tray of the truck and then pick up the other end and slide it in. By the time we had finished loading and tying the load down we were both sweaty and covered in dust. I picked up the hose and turned it on pouring water over my head and over my shoulders, it felt good and cooling. "Okay stud, when you've finished showing off your six pack I'm sweaty and dirty too." I turned the hose on her expecting her to squeal and turn away but she stood there as I hosed her hair and shirt until she was clean. I turned the hose off and while I was coiling it up I felt her hand on my shoulder. I stood to face her not knowing what to expect but I guess I was hoping for. . . . "I'm going to get us a drink so that we can cool down, I don't know about you but I was getting a little hot there, not that it bothered me." She touched my face with a hand and reached up to kiss me. Now that's what I was hoping for. When she returned it wasn't with the expected soft drink, she had a stubby (375ml bottle) of beer in each hand and was still wearing her wet tee shirt. Hell man what's happening here, I'm doing this job for her husband who I know from previous jobs and here's his new wife coming on to me big time. I took the bottle from her and poured a generous amount of amber down my parched throat. "You like beer do you?" "Not all the time but at a time like this beer is as good as anything. When's Roland due home?" "Not for hours, he plays squash on the way home Mondays so I won't see him until late, I'll probably be in bed asleep when he gets in after today's effort, I haven't worked this hard for a long time, not since high school when I helped my father when he was busy." "Your father's a builder?" "No, he was a plumber but he died in an accident, someone hadn't slung a load properly and it dropped about twenty metres onto him, he wouldn't have felt anything." "I'm sorry." I didn't know what else to say to her. "It's alright now. I'm just about over it but I did miss him there for a long while, we were close, I was the nearest thing to the son he never had, and I probably would have gone into the trade if it hadn't been for his accident. How long have you been doing this?" "I did my apprenticeship with the builder that did work here for years and a couple of years ago he decided to retire so I sort of inherited his customers." "So you would have known my predecessor then?" "I met her only once, just before she left your husband, she wasn't a happy little vegemite (this comes from the advertising slogan for a yeast spread beloved by Australians but nowhere else) ." "I can understand that, the ladies of this district can be a little standoffish but it doesn't bother me, if they have a problem associating with a plumber's daughter that's their problem." "Doesn't it bother your husband that you aren't accepted by the in crowd?" "Nothing bothers him he's a world unto himself. I guess when you have as much money as he has people have to respect him." "So money doesn't do it for you?" I was getting the feeling that she wasn't happy in her marriage. "When we first met his buying me expensive gifts was fun but lately it seems that any time he does something wrong he has to buy me a present to make up for it, I don't know what he did and I don't care, but he must have done something pretty bad to buy me a new car." "You're not interested in finding out?" "I'm beyond caring." "So why do you stay?" "I suppose that I don't want to confirm the already held opinion that I only married him for his money." "I'd better get going Mrs. Sampson," I had to try and re-establish the proper relationship between us before it goes too far. "I may be a bit later in the morning, I have to pick up a compressor and jack hammer to break up the floor slab." "I'll make sure that my car is out of the way before you get here. See you in the morning Mister Spaulding." The emphasis she placed on my name showed me that she had recognized the discomfort that I felt at our familiarity and was trying to lighten the mood, but sarcasm didn't suit her. I saved time by picking up the compressor on the way home instead of in the morning so I arrived on the job at the same time as yesterday. Juliette had just parked her car on the street and followed me as I reversed the truck and compressor up the driveway, she was wearing similar work clothes as yesterday, jeans and a tee shirt. I climbed out of the cab. "Good morning Mrs. Sampson." "Please Mark, don't call me that, it's Juliette and yes, it is a good morning." How did she know my first name, she must have read it on the quotation that I gave her husband. "Where do we start today?" "You wouldn't have a trumpet would you?" "Trumpet?" Her look was quizzical. "Why would you want a trumpet?" "I thought that we could march around the garage blowing a trumpet and the walls might fall down like they did in Jericho, it'd save a lot of effort on our part." She smiled at this. "No I'm sorry I can't help you there, it'll have to be brute force." "Ah well, plan B it is then, stand back." I pushed against the wall between the piers and a large section of it fell into the garage. "Are you sure your name's not Sampson? That seemed so easy." "Not really when you know how, the lime mortar they used when this was built has no real structural strength and without a load pushing down on it, it doesn't take a lot of effort to push it over." I attacked the remainder of the wall with a lump hammer and bolster lifting the bricks from their bed of mortar. The mortar fell away leaving the brick clean, these I stacked straight onto a pallet that I had brought with me. Juliette took a brick from me. "You lift them off and I'll stack them." Her gloved hand touched mine as she took the brick from me sending an electric shock through my body and her eyes held mine for a second or two longer than was necessary. By smoko time and with two extra pallets we had the bricks stacked leaving a pile of powdery mortar in the middle of the garage floor. It had been dusty work so I made use of the hose to rinse the dust off my face and out of my hair. "May I?" She took the hose from me. "You missed a bit." She squirted my face while at the same time she brushed away the dirt with her fingers, the cool water running down my chest soaking my shirt. She then turned the hose on herself, ducking her head to allow the water to cascade around her face to the ground. Standing up she ran the stream of water over her face and it swept down her neck and the front of her shirt. "You do realize the effect that this is having on me don't you? I think that we should take a step back and decide where this is going, if it's going anywhere." "Do you mean is this going to be a casual fling or is it going to be something more serious like a full blown affair?" "Something like that?" I gulped. "I haven't worked that out yet, there's so much to think about, like is there a good lady waiting for you at home who'll be upset if we decide to take this further?" "No there's not one of those." "So you're worried about the implications for my marriage is that it?" "Yes, apart from me not wanting to hurt you there's another problem and that concerns my work around here, if word got out that I had been having an affair with you it might affect my reputation with other clients." "I can put your mind at ease about both of those, you won't be hurting me because working with you yesterday and this morning have been the happiest time I have had for a long time, a very long time, it was like working beside you was what my life should be like. As for the other, for all of his money and status my husband is not well liked around here, it seems that he has incurred the wrath of several people who had been long-time friends over some business deal and losing a wife to you would make them happy." "Are you saying that you want this to move ahead?" "At last, the penny drops! I've been sending out vibes to that effect since yesterday morning with my wet tee shirt. Yes I want to make love to you, but not right now, what would you like to drink?" The change of subject caught me by surprise. "A cup of tea would be fine thanks." Get a grip mate is that the best that you can do, here she is offering herself to you and all you can say is 'a cup of tea will be fine'. We sat as we had yesterday with our backs to the tree sipping our tea and eating the cake that she had made especially for me. "When I said earlier that I wanted to make love to you I didn't mean that I will, it's just that I want more than anything to make love to you, but only when and if the situation is such that neither of us will get hurt. Roland I don't care about, he has changed so much since I became his trophy wife that he's not the same man that I married, I'm merely a decoration to show off to his friends to tell them that he can get any woman that he likes, and if he loses one he can always get another." "He's really hurting you, isn't he?" "You could say that, when I went to take his squash clothes out of his bag this morning to wash them I noticed that they hadn't been worn, he lied to me when he said that he was playing squash with his mates." "So you're assuming that he's having an affair then?" "What other explanation can there be?" "I don't know, but what I do know is that it will be just my luck to fall in love with you only to find that he has had a perfectly innocent explanation for lying to you about not playing squash and you'll stay with him. What I also know is that the last day and a bit has been the best time for me and I would love to have you work with me permanently but only if we can sort out the mess that is our lives." "I know how you feel and I appreciate your honesty, most men would have jumped in without any thought for the repercussions for me or anyone else." She rested her forehead on my shoulder for several seconds and then she kissed me on the lips and I was hooked. Juliette picked up the cups and plates and carried them inside while I cranked up the compressor and got the jackhammer ready to demolish the garage floor. The old concrete broke up easily and it was only about an hour later that it was in chunks small enough for the loader that I had booked in the morning to clear out the rubble and level the ground ready for me to form up for the new slab. With Juliette's help I was running way ahead of schedule. "That's it for today, I've got a loader coming in the morning to clear up and level out, a load of reo and some forming boards, and by lunch time we should be ready to pour the new slab. I'll order the concrete for just after lunch and we'll have it down by three with a little luck." I packed the jackhammer onto the truck. "Can I come with you?" "Do you think that's wise?" I wanted her to come but then I didn't want to complicate what was getting to be a messy situation. "No but I want to just the same. I promise not to do anything, I just want to be with you, that's all." She tried hard to keep her promise but then I had to swerve to avoid some idiot who elected to change lanes on top of me. She put out her hand to steady herself and it just happened to end up on my thigh. It stayed there, probably because I placed my hand over hers. I was tempted to move her hand up and place it on my erection but that would have tempted fate too much. She looked at me and then at our hands then just above our hands, the question didn't need to be asked, and the answer remained unspoken, and our hands still didn't move. "Take me to where you live." "Okay, I mean no. Much as I want to it will be too dangerous. Can we just take it a little slow for the time being." "Please." Her hand moved closer and my hand did nothing to stop it. "No. If I take you home we'll probably make love." A Building Job "Probably." "And if we make love we'll probably want to stay in bed for a long time." "Probably, and that's a problem how?" Her hand had arrived at the tip of my cock just about the time that I turned into the equipment hire yard to drop off the compressor. Reluctantly her hand moved away. We sat there for several minutes while I composed myself and unhitched the compressor and carried the jackhammer back into the hire office. "So this is where you live, nice." I pulled up in my driveway and got out to open her door for her. She turned to face me and slid out of the cab and into my arms, her arms encircled my neck and our lips found each other. I pressed her back against the side of the truck and I could feel the heat of her body as she pulled me closer. "Come." I led her into my abode and into my bedroom. It took but seconds for us to get rid of our clothes and fall onto the bed. Our lips found each other and my hands found her breasts, those enticing breasts that I glimpsed through the wet tee shirt for the first time just yesterday were even better in the flesh. My mouth descended onto a nipple and I sucked it. Her hand had found the rest of my cock and was doing its best to pull it out by the roots. "Please Mark make love to me now, I can't wait to feel your cock inside me." As I positioned myself over her and the head of my cock at the entrance to her pussy she literally pulled me into her. "You feel wonderful." "You don't feel so bad yourself." It was as good as I had dreamed it would be as I lay in this same but lonely bed last night and the orgasm she had was just as I dreamed it would be, a quivering sobbing moment that went on until after I had come in her. "Wow! That was better than I've ever had before, you are so passionate." "Ditto, and you are the best, I don't know how I can face Roland after this, not that it's all that often which supports my theory that he's having an affair." "Come on we'd better get cleaned up and I'll take you home." "No, if I have to go home I want it to be smelling of us just to show him that he's not the only one getting some on the side." "Is that what this is, a revenge fuck?" "No, don't even think that, I'd decided that we were going to become lovers even before I found that he hadn't been playing squash with his mates last night, I knew the moment I opened the door yesterday morning that it was going to happen. I have wanted this for some time now." "And I came along to provide you with the opportunity, is that it?" I was beginning to think that I was merely a catalyst, a chance for her to get out of her sad marriage and that as soon as she was clear I would be discarded. "No I've had plenty of opportunities, there are any number of men willing to oblige but they all had the same thing in common, the chance to fuck Roland's wife, to score points against him, but I wasn't going to allow that to happen. That was until yesterday when I saw you standing in the front veranda asking if I could move my car. You were different from all the others, you were the one and that's why I came and offered to help you, I wanted to experience again something that I had lost when my father died, working with a real man." "We need to be sensible, first we shower, and then I take you home and come back to my lonely bed and my hand. But tomorrow we'll see each other again and we'll be working together, I'll even teach you how to use a laser level to set out the formwork for the raft foundations." "Gee I can't wait for that. Alright I'll go home but I'll be thinking of you when I'm in bed tonight with my fingers inside my pussy wishing it was you in there." Showering with Juliette was more than washing the grime of work and the product of lust from our bodies, it was a shared experience of touching each other's body of caressing with soap in hand and of towelling each other dry at the end of it. It took a great deal of willpower to avoid my bed and get into the truck for the drive back to her house. We stopped on the way for a kiss good-bye before I deposited her at her front gate and drove off, glancing briefly in the rear-view mirror at her brief wave. I arrived a couple of minutes before the truck with the loader and the morning air was shattered by the sound of the machinery as the old concrete was scooped up and loaded onto the truck before the blade levelled the ground. After he had left I backed my truck up the driveway and began to unload the forming timbers and the rolls of plastic membrane. Juliette came out as I set up the level. "Good morning darling, I'm so glad to see you, I couldn't sleep last night thinking of you inside me, and even my fingers couldn't replace you." "I know the feeling, I could smell us and I know that I should have changed the bed linen but I didn't want to, it would have been like I was trying to remove you from my memory and I never want to do that." I drove a corner peg into the ground and triangulated the rectangle of the new slab. "What we have to do is to work from this datum point to get the levels for the forming." We worked quickly and within an hour the forming timbers were set up and the waterproof membrane laid. A man walked up the drive way and announced that the reo was here so I moved my truck out onto the street so that he could back up and unload the steel mesh and bars. Smoko was getting better, there was no fencing with our emotions, we both knew that this was going to go further and had relaxed our guard and allowed a familiarity to enter into our relationship that to me was the most sublime experience. It was an inside job now, no more sitting on the back lawn with our backs against a tree, we were seated at a proper table drinking coffee from proper cups and eating cake from proper plates. I had been given a guided tour of the house and I noted that, while no expense had been spared with the furnishing and décor, the whole scheme seemed to lack one essential element, love. Each of them had chosen items of furniture and trimmings but there was no cohesion, no united thought in the outcome. Juliette very pointedly showed me their separate bedrooms and there was an invitation to test her bed but this was not to be right now because the next phase of construction was just about to begin, the construction of our relationship would have to remain on hold for the time being. Because I didn't want to run the risk of damaging the driveway by allowing the redi-mix truck up it, a pump truck had just pulled up out front and the operators were unloading the pipes that would transport the concrete to the waiting formwork. I gave them a hand to join the pipes together and we were ready when the mixer truck arrived, if my calculations were right we wouldn't have any left over. Juliette watched as one of the men directed the hose to deposit the concrete where I needed it while I spread it with a square shovel. It didn't take long for the slab to be poured and I was pleased that the pour ended just as the concrete stopped coming from the mixer, I had calculated correctly. The trucks left and Juliette and I worked each end of the screed to make sure that the concrete was level before I finished it off with a long handled float. "Now what do we do?" Juliette asked. "What we do is that I disappear for a couple of weeks while this lot cures and then I come back and make a start on the rest of the job." "Just like that, you disappear for a couple of weeks. What about me and what about us?" "I've been thinking about that. I hadn't planned on getting this far along with this job so soon, and I have another small job to start on Monday that'll keep me busy for a week and a bit. I had thought of getting away for a couple of day's fishing but I've now decided that I don't want to do that, what I want to do is stay at home and tomorrow being Friday, I plan to be opening my front door to admit the most beautiful, sexy woman that I have ever met for a day of gentle bonding." We had been standing at the back of the house so no one could have seen me as I took her in my arms and kissed her. "Do I dare hope that the beautiful and sexy woman will just happen to be me?" Her hand had edged up the leg of my shorts and was caressing my cock through my jocks. "Would you like a test drive of my bed?" She didn't wait for my answer but had the back door open and was leading me down the passage to her room. We chucked my clothes into her en-suite because they were covered in cement dust and I had a quick shower before I joined her in her bed. When I say that I joined her I didn't just mean that I got into bed with her but that I joined her, my cock was inside her and we were joined, but why the fuck am I telling you this because you know what we're doing. Yesterday was all about pent up passion while today was about the slow enjoyment of each other. I never realised that two people could hover on the brink for so long before finally allowing themselves to succumb to the most intense of orgasms. An hour after we started we finished, my cock delivering the last drop of sperm into her pussy as she stopped spasming. "I know that this is not the right time to broach the subject, but are you on the pill or anything?" "It wouldn't matter to me if I'm not but yes I am." As they keep telling us that all good things come to an end and this good thing came to a temporary halt at least until tomorrow. I don't know about you but I found that having experienced the physical and emotional love that existed between Juliette and me, my bed had suddenly become a lonely place to be and I couldn't wait for what the morning held in store for us. I had my usual breakfast at my usual time and then remembered that I wasn't going out on a job today so I did a quick tidy of the house, shoved a load of washing into the machine and went through my CD collection looking for some suitable music. I heard the Mazda come up my drive and had the door opened before she got to it. I was used to seeing her in jeans and tee shirts and she looked sexy in that, but in what she had on now she looked even sexier, she had on a little short skirt that was barely decent and a top that was ever less decent, it was a shirt that was supposed to button all the way from top to bottom but none of the buttons were done up, she had tied it at the waist and I was given an almost uninterrupted view of her boobs. "Are you going to let me in or are we going to stand here all day while you ogle me?" "Sorry, but you have to admit that there wouldn't be a more ogle-worthy sight to be seen anywhere." She came into my arms and I could feel her heart pounding against my chest, she was as excited about today as I am. I kicked the door shut and picked her up in my arms, god she didn't have any knickers on! She must have had the same idea as me because I had decided to go commando for ease of access and because it felt good wandering around with my cock hanging free, not that he was hanging just now. I carried her to my bedroom and lowered her onto clean sheets and then lowered my head between her legs and my tongue found her already wet pussy. "Oh god I've been waiting for this for hours, I couldn't stop thinking about today, oh yes there, that feels so good when you flick my clit with your tongue after you've licked my pussy, oh god oh god oh no I'm going to come already I've never come this quickly I can't stop coming you'll have to stop 'cause I want to suck your cock please stop and let me suck you oh no not again oh god!" I relented and she grabbed my shorts and dragged them down over my hips and my cock sprang to attention. Her mouth engulfed me and it was my turn to experience the pure carnal ecstasy. She was a natural at this and I didn't care where she had learned the art of cock sucking I just lay there and enjoyed every minute of it until I emptied myself into her mouth. She smiled at me as she released him and I could see my come around her teeth before she swallowed it all. I reached for her and brought her up so that I could hold her and kiss her, I could taste my come when my tongue entered her mouth, "Juliette, I love you." She gave a little squeal of joy and her arms were around my neck and her mouth was back on mine. "I love you too. I want us to be together forever, I don't want to wait another moment to be with you." "I'd love that too but. . . " "Why is there always a 'but' when you don't want it?" "I'm being practical here. I have to finish the job for Roland and I can hardly do that if you've run off with me?" "Fuck Roland I don't care about him." "But I have to make a living around here and I can't see that continuing if I don't finish the job." "I know, I was just being selfish, I don't want to be away from you." "I know darling because I feel the same way, but we must be patient, today is about us with no thought for tomorrow, we are going to enjoy each other for as long as we can and that's going to have to hold us for the time being. For now I want to hold you and just feel your body against mine." In answer she came into my arms and we lay close to each other, drowsing and enjoying doing nothing. I must have dozed off because the next I knew was the touch of her hand on my cock. "Wake up sleepy head time for some more loving." She straddled me and fed my cock into her pussy and took control, slowly riding him, moving her hips in several different ways, all good, until she increased her pace and she came with an urgency, gasping for air and collapsing onto my chest. "Oh this just keeps getting better." "Smoko time." I got out of bed and held my hand out for her. "Spoil sport." We went out to the kitchen and while I made the coffee and got us something to go with it she wandered into the living room and was flicking through my music collection. Soon the strains of the Rodrigo 'Concierto de Aranjuez' wafted through the house. "You surprise me, in amongst all the old rockers, Led Zeppelin, Van Morrison, and the Stones I find this and there are a lot of other classical CD's here," "The taste for heavy metal I inherited from Dad, there's a collection of vinyl in that cupboard under the HiFi that I'm hanging on to, I figure that one day it will be valuable, most of the albums I've collected on CD so I don't have to play the vinyl and wear it out." Juliette was surprised at how Classical music as background noise for lovemaking enhanced the experience. We had just finished our third, or was it fourth, session and I got up to change CD. "I would have thought that sex to 'Whole Lotta Love' would have been your speed." "How long does that track last? Do you think that you'd reach a climax in that short a time?" "No come to think of it, stretching it out to good music is so much better, it's just that I've never had it this way before." I pushed play and a CD made up of a bunch of adagios swelled into life as I got back into bed and her arms. If this is being in love then I'm sorry I'd never experienced it before, here I was at thirty-two and still a bachelor, don't get me wrong I'm not lacking in experience but there has never been anything like this. "What are you thinking?" Juliette asked me between kisses. "I hope it's not work." "No, I was just thinking how much I've missed out on." "I'm glad that you have otherwise I mightn't have met you and then I would have missed out on so much. I will never forget today for as long as I live, it is the first time that I've known true love as opposed to lust." Juliette left me at four o'clock after extracting a promise that I would contact her when I got a free moment. I walked through my front door on Monday afternoon to find the light on my answering machine telling me that I had a message, the number on the screen told a different story, there were three messages, the first from Juliette. 'Hello my darling, just thought that I ring to say I miss you and can't wait to see you again'. The second was from Juliette. 'It's me again darling, I remembered after I hung up that I forgot to tell you that I love you, I love you darling.' The third was from Juliette. 'Darling will you ring me in the morning after Roland has left for work and tell me where you're working so that I can come and help you on the job.' This job was an unusual one, it was an octagonal gazebo made of timber, a corrugated iron roof and the north facing walls had a timber lattice to provide shade from the hot sun. I had the ground levelled and the posts up with the top beams in place yesterday and a scaffold in the centre this morning before Juliette arrived looking gorgeous as usual. "Hi boss, what are we doing today?" "We're building this gazebo, it's a little out of the ordinary so we need to take a little time to get things right and the clients aren't home, it's really great to see you." She rushed into my arms and held me tight for several minutes. "Okay, that's over, we're here to work." "Slave driver. What do you want me to do?" "When I get up on this scaffold if you could pass me that funny looking metal bracket and then while I lift this end up and support it I want you to grab that rope that goes over the beam and pull it, it'll lift your end up and I can push it onto the beam to support it while we do the same thing with the other side. Once we get those two frames up and bolted together we can then do the right angle frames and that'll hold the lot together while we lift the other four into place. Once they're all in place the roof frame is complete and self-supporting. With a bit of luck we'll have the roof frame complete, painted with a finish coat and ready for the sheeting tomorrow." It was a great feeling working with her again, she seemed to know instinctively what to do next and it made life so much easier for me. The frame went up without a hitch and by lunchtime we were ready to fix the purlings for the roof sheeting in the morning. Juliette went to her car and came back with a cooler box with cold meat and salads, a large container of cool drink and I noticed what looked suspiciously like a couple of stubbies of beer surrounded by cool bricks. We used a couple of planks on two sawhorses as a makeshift table for our picnic and to sit on. "I missed you so much over the weekend, it was all that I could do to resist calling you or jumping in my car and coming over to your place. Mark, the sooner we're able to move on with us the sooner I can leave Roland and move in with you." "I want you to move in as well, I've never felt as lonely in my entire life as I have since Friday. I don't want to sound like a slave driver or anything but I would like for you to work with me full time." "Do we have to wait for that? I can tell Roland that you've offered me a job and I intend to take it." She was getting excited at the prospect. "I hate to be the one to put the brakes on this plan, but I think I should finish your job before we put that into action." "I know, I'll be patient but I need a kiss to be going on with." We kissed and I stroked her face. We eventually separated and got back to work. With the two of us working together we had the whole of the timber structure painted. "Would you believe that's it for the day?" I began to pack up the tools while Juliette was washing the paint brushes and pots. We were soon packed up and ready to leave. She reached into the cool bin and brought out the beers so we sat on the back of my truck drinking our beer. "Life doesn't get much better than this." "I've got a surprise for you." She had this mischievous look on her face before jumping to her feet and going out to her car. She returned holding a box containing a mobile phone. I bought this for you, it's prepaid and I have one the same, it won't go through my normal phone account so there won't be a record on that Roland can find. We'll be able to talk to each other whenever we feel like it and I'll be able to call you when I'm in bed and describe what I'm feeling as I masturbate, imagining that it's you inside me not my fingers." A Building Job "You're one horny person, do you know that?" "I wasn't until met you and this is what I've become because of you. I wouldn't want it any other way. By the way my number is speed dial1." We spoke that night, she with her fingers in her pussy and me caressing my cock, my loneliness wasn't as bad but my sexual frustration only got worse, I wanted her so much it hurt. Wednesday we had the roof on the gazebo and with her plumbing experience Juliette was a great asset to the team. In that afternoon we painted the lattice ready to fix the next day before we went to our separate home, tired, happy and closer than yesterday. Thursday we finished the job by lunch time and after presenting the client with the account and getting paid, adjourned to my place for an afternoon of love. We got a little carried away and Juliette had to scramble into her clothes and race home to arrive before Roland. Friday, what can I say about Friday? I rolled my other car out of my garage and Juliette was most impressed. "This is another thing I inherited from my father." I told her as I wiped an imaginary speck of dust from the immaculate British Racing Green paintwork. "A 1963 Triumph TR3A, four cylinder, just under two litres, push rod overhead valves wire wheels with knock-off hubs and cutaway doors so you don't bang your elbows going around corners." The motor kicked over first time and settled into the characteristic Triumph burble as I reversed out of my drive. "Where are we going?" "You'll see." She settled down in the seat and didn't say anything until we pulled up outside a pub in a small seaside town. We had just sat down for lunch when Juliette grabbed my hand. "Fuck, pardon the French, but guess who just pulled up in the car park? It's my bastard of a husband and his floozy. What are we going to do?" "Let's see what he does, he won't have recognised my car because he hasn't seen it before, we just have to hope that he doesn't come in here." I was watching Roland as he walked up to the reception desk and took a room key from the receptionist, the fact that he had not signed the register would indicate that he pre-booked and was probably a regular customer. "It seems as if your husband is here for a dirty afternoon, so we can relax and enjoy the good food." After a pleasant lunch, we drove back to my place and it didn't take anywhere near as long because I drove the short route, not the scenic as I had to get to the pub. We had time for some very satisfying loving before Juliette had to leave for home. She was back within half an hour. "He left a message for me telling me that he had to fly interstate on business at a moment's notice and wouldn't be back until Sunday evening. The bastard, how dare he cheat on me like this, I'll have his guts for garters." "Hey, slow down, don't you see what this means for us, you can stay here until Sunday, that's two nights in my bed with me, we should be thanking him for giving us this opportunity." "That's another thing I love about you, your ability to take a potential disaster and turn it into a positive. Now that I've had a chance to look at this rationally I can't really get angry at him because am I not doing the same to him? Am I not having an affair behind his back? Although I have to admit that I haven't looked on what we are doing as an affair because that would suggest that I thought that we are doing something dirty but it's not that is it? What we have is something pure, something above a seamy affair." I kissed her to stop her rabbiting on. "Darling hush, forget about trying to rationalise what's happening with us, it is a good thing and it's going to get even better and soon. You and I are meant to be and that's the bottom line, we make a brilliant team both at work and play. Now what I want is to feed you food that I am going to cook for you and then we'll sit down and have a long discussion about our future and then we are going to bed to, what was it that Shakespeare said 'to sleep, perchance to dream.' But not before I make love to you like it is our wedding night." And so it happened, I cooked one of my specialties, at least I think so and Juliette proclaimed it to be so, chicken thigh pieces cooked in a sauce of tomatoes, onion and garlic with red wine and herbs, served with spirelli noodles and grated parmesan accompanied by crusty bread and red wine. After we'd eaten we cleared up, washed the dishes together and settled down on the sofa to discuss us. We hadn't achieved much when we decided that discussion would be replaced by loving. This began in the shower and ended in our marriage bed doing what newly-weds do, for that's what we considered it to be. Eventually we drifted off to sleep. I was the first to wake and I lay there looking at my beautiful Juliette, so peaceful, so soft and naked, I couldn't believe that this was just a temporary thing and that she would be going home to her husband tomorrow, how cruel this world was. I felt her stir, she rolled over to face me and a smile slowly came over her face. "I was just dreaming about you, about us, and I was getting moist just thinking about what we are going to do today, and tomorrow, and I'm not going to think beyond that because it will spoil the mood." She put her arm around me and lifted herself up so that she could kiss me."I love you so much." She kissed me again and as she did so she straddled me and fed my hard in anticipation of what was to come cock into her. "Oh that feels so good inside me. Don't move, I just want to stay here like this for as long as possible without moving, just enjoying him." She kissed me again. We didn't move for what seemed like hours, but probably wasn't, before temptation got the better of us and we began to move, slowly at first and more rapidly as the heat of our passion took control of our bodies and led us to a shattering and mutual orgasm. "Whew!" I said as we came down and he went down inside her. "Will this never stop getting better?" "Never." She whispered. Saturday passed in daze of love making interspersed by snacks and the occasional and necessary pit stops. We did not discuss our future together other than to continue building our relationship. Exhaustion took over sometime around mid-night and we slept until well into Sunday morning and that was when the mood started to come down. It would soon be time for Juliette to go home and my loneliness to set in. The light at the end of that tunnel wasn't far off, she would come back on Monday morning after he left for work and spend the day with me. But Roland didn't go to work. Instead he spent the day at home fending off phone calls from business associates. It was after lunch when he left but it wasn't to go to the office, he told Juliette that if anyone called looking for him he would be in meetings for the rest of the day and possibly into the night and not to expect him home until late. Because he was vague about the time of his return she couldn't commit to meeting me but would speak to me later. I was in my bed that still smelt of us when she called, he wasn't home yet and we were just getting into our usual routine of telling each other how much we loved each other and how much we missed each other when he came home. She only just had time to shove the phone under the bed when he stormed into her room and I could hear quite clearly the conversation that they had. "Where's my dinner?" He slurred. "What do you mean where's your dinner? You leave here going you don't tell me where and not knowing when you'll be back, I wasn't expecting you to come home at. . ." She looked at the clock radio beside her bed. "Almost twelve o'clock wanting your dinner. What do you want me to do, get out of bed and cook dinner for you? You're drunk, go to bed and sleep it off and I'll make you a big breakfast in the morning." "Isn't that what a good wife would do, get her husband a meal when he wants it?" "Yes a good wife would probably do that providing her husband arrived home at a reasonable hour and not in your condition. Go to bed and sleep it off." He must have sat on her bed and tried to kiss her. "Just leave me alone, I was asleep when you came in and I want to go back to sleep." "You're not even going to kiss your husband good night." I heard a quick kiss. "There, good night and go to bed." He grumbled off and the door slammed shut behind him. "Did you hear all of that?" She whispered. "Yes, we'll have to get you out of there as soon as possible, I don't know that I can trust him not to do something stupid and hurt you." "I'll be careful." We spoke for another five minutes before she kissed her phone good-bye and hung up. Her call the next day did little to allay my fears for her safety. "He was full of remorse and contrition and left for the office early I had to drive him to the station because he left his car there yesterday. I have to get out of here because the phone's been running hot with people looking for him, I keep telling them to ring his office but they say that he isn't there. Something is happening and I don't know what he'll do if he gets desperate." "If he looks like he's threatening you ring me and I'll come running and hang the consequences." "Thank you darling, I'll see you in a little while, I'll bring you some lunch." I had a small job that would only take a day or two so I hadn't arranged for her help. She arrived right on twelve with a couple of sandwiches and a flask of coffee, we sat in the cab of the truck and ate. Between mouthfuls she told me more of what seemed to be happening. "It would seem that he had borrowed heavily both from commercial lenders and from friends and was having trouble repaying the loans. He had been stalling for some time but the whole mess was now catching up with him. His friends have apologised for burdening me with their problems but I felt that they had to dump their frustrations on someone and I'm the nearest and easiest. I haven't seen him drink as much as he had been lately and never as drunk as he was last night." "It seems as if I did the right thing by getting him to lodge the construction price for the job in a bank account before I started work, at least I'll get paid." "That's if he countersigns the withdrawal." "Do you have any reason to think he won't, he can't touch it without my signature?" "It just means that we have to wait until after you get paid before I leave him because when he finds out he'll refuse to sign." "Can you wait that long?" "It'll be hard for both of us but we have to do this, there's quite a bit of money tied up in this job and I don't want to see you lose out." "What about you, you'll lose a lot more than me, the house, the car and the lifestyle." "I'll be sad about the house because it actually has character, not that the decor shows that, but it's old and has a style that modern houses try to emulate without success. The car's not a problem, while I like it and it's fun to drive, I'm not married to it if you get my meaning, and as for the lifestyle you can stick that, I certainly won't miss it." "The house I can offer you isn't as grand as yours but it's liveable, and with you there it will seem like heaven to me." "Aren't you sweet. I've got to go, I'll ring you tonight, just to hear you tell me how much you love me." She kissed me and walked to her car, I could tell by her walk that this was getting her down. I finished this job the next day and arranged for her to come to my house on Thursday. She stayed with me while I organised delivery of a cement mixer, bricks, sand and cement for the walls, the timber and corrugated iron for the roof, two windows, an access door and the tracks and panels for the new garage doors. "Just think I'll be able to do all of this for you when were together, particularly when the kids start to arrive." I looked at her. "You aren't, are you?" "No, not yet, but we are going to have a family aren't we?" "Of course, I want at least two sons who can take over the business when I retire." "What do you mean sons, you sexist pig." She accompanied this by thumping me on the arm. "Ouch! Brutality we're not even married and you're beating up on me." Anyone witnessing this would think that we were in the middle of a domestic until they saw the smiles and the laughter that followed. We made time for making love after lunch and three hours of bliss followed, we could hardly call it marital bliss seeing that we weren't actually married, but it was every bit as good. Friday was much the same and the weekend was a real downer with us only able to have short conversations because Roland was coming and going all the time. Monday I reversed my truck up the drive and Juliette came out ready for work. "What's first?" "We have to stack bricks around the slab so that they're easy to get at then we can start setting out the first course and work up from that. We build up the corners first that gives us the datum for the string line so that the courses are straight and level. There will be two piers on each long wall for the roof beams to sit on and returns either side of the door, a window at the back and in the middle of the side wall as well as the access door." I took a pair of leather gloves from my pocket. "Here, wear these and chuck those gardening gloves away." I had a pair like them, they were rigger's gloves in soft but durable leather. I started to take bricks from the pallets and making stacks on the slab where they would be easy for us when we started laying. I loaded brickies sand, cement and water into the mixer until I had the right consistency and emptied it into a barrow to take to the mortar boards I had set up. "Do you want me to start the next load?" Juliette asked. "I know the right mix and I'll leave the water out until you're almost ready." I set out the front corner and laid the first course down one side to the back corner, squared that off and continued across the back and down the other side to the front. Having set the first course out I started to work up the corners and the piers. Juliette mixed mud and, after a quick lesson, began to help fill in between the corners, moving the string line up for each course. By smoko we were ready to scaffold up to the next level, at the rate we were going we'd have the walls finished by Tuesday afternoon. By three we had one side and half of the back wall done and we pointed up the mortar joins and brushed the half dry mortar off the bricks before washing out the mixer. At four we walked around the back of the house and I kissed her good-bye, soon I wouldn't have to hide to do that. By Tuesday afternoon we had completed the brickwork, a heavy galvanised angle iron supported the bricks of the gable end over the door with rafters behind and bargeboards in front to stop any movement. The back end was finished, the wall plates on and the rafters over the piers in place along with the ridge beam. Tomorrow will see the guttering in place and the rest of the roof rafters in place, the roofing on making it water tight ready for the final fit out on Thursday. While I was setting up the tracks and motor for the four panel door that retracted along the ceiling beams Juliette was showing off her plumbing skills by making the round down-pipes to carry the rainwater from the roof, these required a double off-set at the top that required some skill that proved that she had learned from her father. She showed them proudly to me before soldering them and I was suitably impressed. I kissed her, "Think you're clever, don't you?" "My father taught me well, I guess that I didn't forget the lesson." I had to admit that the finished product was better than I could have produced. Most down-pipes these days are PVC or colorbond and require little skill but because I wanted to keep the original integrity of the place, I used traditional materials. By Thursday afternoon it had reached lock-up stage and there was only finishing touches and the clean up to do on Friday, but rain intervened. We did as much as possible inside, the lighting and the wireless control box for the big door, the rest would have to wait until Monday. We finished up just after lunch on Monday and I loaded most of my gear onto the truck. "There'll be one more load to take away tomorrow morning." I gave her the papers for the final payment. "Can you get Roland to sign that for me?" "Sure, when's our next job?" "Seeing as how we finished this one a week earlier than I anticipated, I don't have another straight away." "What will you do?" I could see that she was working towards a commitment from me. "I hadn't really thought about it," I teased, "Did you have anything in mind?" "I'll think about it." She teased in reply. Tuesday morning I had just finished loading the last of the gear onto my truck when Juliette came out with the signed paper. "You've been paid in full." She had a funny look on her face. "I've got a surprise for you, wait here." A couple of minutes later she emerged from the back of the house lugging a large suitcase. "Can you give me a hand to throw this on the back of your truck. I've left him." All loaded up I drove out of the property with an excited Juliette sitting as close as the seat belt would allow and kissing me every time I had to stop for lights or at an intersection. I don't know what other people thought of our behaviour and , quite frankly I didn't care. On Wednesday morning I left a message on my machine telling callers that I had gone fishing for a few days and to leave a message and I'd get back to them. We actually did a bit of fishing, we didn't catch anything just sat at the end of the jetty with lines in the water but no suicidal fish took the hint. The fish and chips from the shop tasted just as good as if we'd caught and cooked it ourselves. The rest of the time was doing honeymoon stuff like walking along a nearby beach, making love in the dunes where no one could see us, we only did that once because sand got in places that sand was never supposed to get. We went to bed early and slept late and by the time we had to head home we were so totally in love with each other we thought that we were invincible. That came to a screeching halt not long after we got back. A knock on the door revealed a policeman. "Mister Spaulding, I understand that you did a construction job for Mister Sampson, is that correct?" "Yes. What's this all about?" "It seems that Mrs Sampson has disappeared, I wonder if you have any knowledge of her whereabouts." "As a matter of fact I do. Come in." I ushered him into the kitchen where Juliette was preparing dinner. "This policeman wants to know if I know where you are, what shall I tell him." "I'm Juliette Sampson, what is this all about?" "We've been trying to contact you since Wednesday, we need for you to accompany us to the mortuary and identify a body for us." "Who is it?" "The identification that was on the body was of your husband Roland Sampson but the body is a bit of a mess, when you see it you'll understand." "I'll get my coat, can Mark come too?" "Yes, I don't see why not, we'll bring you back afterwards." He wasn't joking when he said that the body was a mess. "Your husband stepped in front of a train early on Wednesday morning, the driver had no way of stopping." "The poor driver, how is he getting on?" "He's being treated for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, he had to uncouple carriages so that the body could be removed, it affected him quite badly." Juliette blamed herself for Roland's suicide. "Darling, don't blame yourself, there may be another reason why he did this, possibly connected with the fact that his business was doing badly." "But me leaving might just have been the final straw." "You weren't to know that, he had been acting a little strange of late, he could even have had a falling out with his girlfriend, who knows what drives people to do that sort of thing." A Building Job The police investigation into the circumstances of Roland's death turned up a lot of reasons for his action; he had fallen out with his girlfriend the previous weekend and she was blaming herself, he was deeply in debt, his company was insolvent and his land-lord had sued for non-payment of rent, his office had closed. There were several personal creditors who were unlikely to see any of their money, and there was, for a short time, the suggestion that he may have been pushed under the train, but CCTV footage of the incident showed that there was no-one near enough to have pushed him. Juliette was contacted by his lawyer and went to his office to talk to him. It seemed as if she was his sole beneficiary, but that wasn't saying much, the property would have to be sold to repay debts and there would be little left over. "If it wasn't for Roland and the way that he behaved I would have liked to have kept the house, it was a lovely place and it wasn't its fault that my life there was unhappy, if we'd lived there I would move heaven and earth to keep the place." "Maybe we can." "What do you mean?" "What if I were to buy it, would you be happy living there with me?" "Darling I'd be happy living in a bark hut if you were there. Do you think you could do it?" "It'll be a bit of a struggle but I'll see what I can do. In the mean time I think that we should get back to work and take our minds of this. I have a job to do for a lovely old lady that I've done work for before, you'll love her. I'll ring her to see if we can start tomorrow." "I know this place." Juliette said as we pulled up out front. "It's Mrs. Hitchens' place." "That's right, I bet she has a cup of tea waiting for us." She had a cup waiting for me, she wasn't expecting Juliette to be with me but a cup appeared very quickly. "Good morning Mark, how are you this morning? I see that you have a new assistant." She looked at Juliette for a couple of minutes while she poured the tea. "I know you, it would have been fifteen years ago, you were a young girl at school helping your father during school holidays, Juliette isn't it?" "Yes, you've got a good memory." "I'm was sorry to hear about your father, he was a good tradesman, very thorough, but what are you doing with this reprobate." "He was doing a job for my husband and I decided that I needed to be doing something so I insisted on giving him a hand, we got on really well as a team and I've been working with him ever since." "But it hasn't been long has it, and you've left your husband because of Mark, haven't you?" "How. . ." "I'm not in the same league as Miss Marple, but you've recently taken off your wedding ring and because you've been working outdoors there's a white line around your ring finger. You were married to that Roland Sampson that jumped in front of a train the other day, weren't you?" "Yes." "Can't say that he'll be terribly missed, he was a shifty character, never liked him myself. What are you going to do now?" "I have to decide, we have to decide, if we want to buy the house, it has to be sold to pay off debt and Mark is looking at buying it because it is a lovely house for all of the problems of late." "Mark, can you see yourself living in that house?" "Yes I can. I have worked on that place over the past ten years and if the asking price is reasonable it would be worth buying, it is structurally sound and I should know." "Then young man, you do it. Get yourself a good lawyer who can sort out the financial mess and negotiate with the creditors to see if you can arrange favourable repayment terms, it could be that a repayment scheme to pay off the debt might be a better proposition for them than you having to take out a mortgage. And don't worry about any scandal, I'll spread the word that you had nothing to do with his financial situation and that the two of you are a wonderful team. Actually, come to think of it, I know some of the people he borrowed from, I'll have a chat to them and explain the situation, they may be in a position to help you out in some way." Juliette hugged her. "We don't know how to thank you, my father always had a high opinion of you." "You two just do your usual good job here and if you decide to have children, and you should, just don't name your daughter after me, you don't know how hard it is to live down having been christened Temperance." I took her advice and approached a lawyer that I had used from time to time and he had a look at the situation and called me in for a meeting. Juliette and I sat in his office and after introducing him to her, we got down to business. "Your husband was in a financial mess, he was over-exposed to some marginal deals and decided on a ponzi scheme as a short term solution, hoping he could cover his debts. Unfortunately those schemes only get you deeper in debt and it all got too much for him. I have separated his company debt from his personal debt and, as you were not involved in that debt, you will not be involved in recovery. As for his personal debt, I have spoken to the people involved and put to them your proposal to buy the family home and for Juliette to use the money from the sale to repay the debts, they have promised to consider it once we crunch the numbers, I'm hopeful that they will accept. When we began to crunch numbers we found that we were in for a pleasant surprise; the amount that I would get on the sale of my house would cover the debts and then some. We paid off the debts, and Juliette moved back into her house and I moved in with her. Juliette and I stood in the Registry Office in front of a Celebrant and close friends and made our relationship legal. A limo took us to the airport for our interstate honeymoon. I carried my wife over the threshold into the bedroom of the hotel suite and our formal marriage bed. "Mark, darling, I am happier than I have ever been, I want our first time to be better than our last." I helped her out of her clothes as she helped me out of mine and we slipped between the sheets in each other's arms. "Be gentle with me." What began as a simple building job ended up as much more. Juliette and I have entered into a building partnership in more ways than one; we have our business partnership that seemed to be going from strength to strength. We have our emotional partnership that could not be better, our physical partnership that keeps getting better and better. And if I know my lovely wife, we will soon be building on an expansion of our family partnership, so I guess that you could say that all in all it has been a pretty good building job.