Last Chance Saloon - Marian Keyes [9]
Thousands of women were thrown into great confusion when they met Lorcan and fell immediately in lust with him. ‘But I don’t find red-haired men attractive,’ was a common refrain. ‘This is so embarrassing!’
Lorcan was a very special redhead. Not for Lorcan the cries of ‘Would you look at the ginger fuck!’ following him up the road. Entranced gazes were more likely in his wake.
And in the rare cases when someone wavered on the brink of being mad about him, instead of diving straight in, he revealed his secret weapon. His Irish accent. This was no bogtrottery brogue that people imitated when they wished to pour scorn on the Irish, all ‘Dis’s and ‘Dese’s and ‘Yer honour’s. Lorcan’s soft-spoken voice was mellow, lyrical but, above all, educated. And he had no fear of dropping the odd quotation or line of poetry into the conversation, if he reckoned it was called for. Women were hypnotized by Lorcan’s voice. Because he made damn sure they were.
At the exact moment that Tara ordered two desserts (‘Well, it is my birthday!’ she said, defiantly), Lorcan decided he was going to screw his hostess’s sixteen-year-old daughter, Kelly. She was obviously gagging for it, had been coming on to him all evening, giving him meaningful looks with her big doe eyes and brushing her high firm tits against his arm whenever she passed him. OK, so Angeline, her mother, might be pissed-off, but it wasn’t the first time a mother and daughter had come to blows over him and it wouldn’t be the last. He eyed Kelly, entertained by her glorious adolescent lushness. Her legs were long and slender, her bottom high and round. He could tell she was the type who’d put on weight quickly. In a couple of years she’d have gone to hell entirely, spare tyres, rolls of fat and all the rest. Wondering how everything had gone so wrong. But right now she was perfect.
‘Time to go, mate,’ Benjy reminded Lorcan, trying to keep the anxiety out of his voice. Lorcan had been due at his girlfriend Amy’s birthday party several hours ago.
Lorcan waved Benjy away. ‘Not just yet.’
‘But…’ Benjy protested.
‘Get off my case,’ Lorcan bit.
Benjy was Lorcan’s ex-flatmate and unofficial social secretary. He hung around with Lorcan in the hope that Lorcan’s tremendous success with women would rub off on him. In the event of that failing, he hoped to be on hand to help Lorcan’s cast-offs – and they were legion – pick up the pieces, preferably in bed.
Lorcan stood up, unfolding himself from the sofa with easy grace. His face gleaming, he made his way over to Kelly, who dropped her eyes coyly, but not before Benjy had seen their spark of triumph. He couldn’t hear what Lorcan said to Kelly, but he could guess. Lorcan had once, out of the goodness of his heart, shared some of his chat-up lines with him.
‘Try murmuring very close to their ear, “You’re a terrible woman, tormenting me with those eyes of yours,” ’ he’d advised. ‘Or – and you’ve got to say this one in a stammering, halting way, like you’re dead nervous – “Sorry to interrupt, I just had to tell you that you’ve got the most beautiful mouth I’ve ever seen, sorry again to have bothered you, I’ll go away now.” That’ll increase your success rate by a hundred per cent,’ he promised Benjy.
But a hundred per cent increase on nothing is still nothing. And the lines that were so successful for Lorcan earned Benjy either blank stares or scornful laughter. And, once, a belt across the face that gave him tinnitus in his right ear for three days.
‘What am I doing wrong?’ Benjy had demanded in despair, when his hearing was back to normal. It might have helped if he wasn’t five foot eight, tubby, with sandy, thinning hair, but Lorcan didn’t say that. He was enjoying playing benefactor.
‘OK,’ he’d grinned, ‘listen to the master. You find two girls, one a babe, the other not so hot, that’s often the way. You home in on the dog, right – all over her like a cheap suit and ignore the good-looking one. The dog is delighted to be picked over her babe mate. The babe is pissed-off