Synopsis
Forced to become an apprentice electrician, Nicola gradually becomes enamoured with her mentor and reacts violently when her erstwhile office boss tries to muscle in on him.

Coerced Apprentice
by obohobo

Warnings
Please take note!
The text in this story contains erotic material and is expressly written for adults only. 
MF Spanking Rom
If you are underage or offended by such material, or if viewing this file is illegal in your locality, then leave, close or delete this file-story now. 
This is a work of fiction, any resemblance to persons living, dead or otherwise is purely coincidental. The ideas and thoughts that follow are pure fantasies.  In real life, at the very least they would be unpleasant and probably illegal. Fantasies are like that; daydreams where we can contemplate and imagine the sensations without suffering or inflicting the pain, despair or humiliation. 
(C) obohobo 2011

Terry

"Excuse me Miss, Mr. Costain said to see you when I needed help with the rewiring of this place and I thought it better to find out who was available and when, before I started."

Carol Pearman, Mr. Costain's personal assistant, looked at me with some distain before replying, "That had better be Nicky, she's pretty useless in this office and we'll be better off without her." I noticed the spite in her voice.

"No way, Carol. Make Sally help him or get one of the garden staff," Nicky responded angrily, "You've no right to make me go with him and do manual work."

"We need Sally to answer the phone and do the filing, and without having to correct your stupid mistakes, we can run this office more efficiently."

"I didn't expect to have a girl helper and expected you'd have the authority to hire a young lad as an apprentice because with just me to rewire this old house completely, will take months. Another pair of semi-skilled hands will reduce the time and could give a boy a start in the job market." 

"No, I don't have the authority to do that. And what do you have against girls? Are you gay?" Carol smirked and went on, "Women have equal job opportunities these days, or haven't you read the papers?"

"I'm not going to work with him, and that's that. I'll go and see Daddy and he'll put a stop to it," Nicky butted in.

"Just because your father owns the place, doesn't mean he'll alter my decision." 

"Okay ladies, okay, I'm setting up a workroom in the basement and when the catfight is over, perhaps one of you will be kind enough to let me know who will be available and when." The whole situation promised to escalate into a nasty scene. Not an auspicious start to my new job and I certainly hoped I wouldn't have the boss's daughter as my work mate, and he'd appoint someone more appropriate.

I'd worked on the maintenance staff for Costain Industries since leaving school at 16 and by taking night classes and attending day release school, became a fully qualified electrician as well as being able to turn my hand at almost any maintenance jobs that came up. The selling of the company to a multinational conglomeration and with it (along with many others) the loss of my job, came as a complete shock. Fully expecting to either be unemployed for a long while or having to move from my home town, the request by Mr. Costain to see him in his office on the last day before closure, took me by surprise as did his offer of employment. "Mr. Tildeman, Terry, as you probably know, I also run a financial advice business as a sideline and I intend to continue with this in the old manor house I have bought. The place is run down and the survey said much of the electrical wiring is unsafe and in parts of the house, dangerous. From the report, I understand, the newer part of the building, the part the previous owner actually stayed in, had its wiring renewed in the 1950's and while it doesn't conform to present regulations, should be safe if not subjected to undue load. Would you be prepared to do the renewal of the wiring and any other work that needs doing at the same rate of pay you now enjoy?"

Of course I accepted and we went on to discus the projects and my requirements, one of which was my need for an assistant and a properly equipped workshop. Neither created a problem for him and having sold his main company for an undisclosed amount rumoured to be several millions, money wasn't a problem but the fact that I couldn't hire an apprentice, puzzled me. "Ask Carol Pearman, my P.A. when you need assistance and she will appoint someone." Very strange but now I began to see why.

Nicola

My pleading with Daddy did no good at all and I soon learned that he'd thought of the idea saw it as a way of placating Carol and her bitchiness concerning my working in the office. I know I made mistakes but doesn't everyone? Not that office work really appealed to me but to work as a lowly apprentice, for that is what Daddy said I would be, to a man not much older than me, seemed degrading, to put it mildly. My verbal protests, the stamping of my feet and my tears, were all ignored and my refusal to accept the job received the ultimatum, "Take the apprenticeship or pack your bags and look for other work. You're twenty-four now and still living with us without contributing much except for a few hours unnecessary office work for which you get paid. Not like your sister Sarah, who is doing very well for herself as an accountant." As usual he had to bring her into it. Can I help it if she has brains and I don't? It's not as though I fooled about at school, I just couldn't grasp maths and stuff and quickly forgot what I did grasp so there wasn't any chance of my getting into university.

After reiterating his ultimatum and forcing me to agree to his terms, he took my hand and almost pulled me downstairs to a large room in the basement that I knew had been allocated to the electrician when he started three days previously. Fortunately it wasn't a dark, gloomy place and looked reasonably tidy and clean. 

Terry

My thoughts on being set-up were confirmed when half an hour later, Mr. Costain literally dragged his daughter into my workroom. "Terry, we can be on first name terms in this house unless I have clients, this is your new apprentice, my daughter Nicky. Treat her as you would any other apprentice, make her work and ensure she learns the trade and can handle jobs in her own home in future."

"I don't intend to learn anything," Nicky sullenly interjected. 

"I'm sorry Terry but as you can see, she's not very willing. She has the alternative of moving out and finding a job herself but she's not keen on that either. Please take her on a month's trial and don't put up with any of her nonsense. If she plays up, put her across your knee and spank her bottom, something I should have done years ago."

I could see Nicky face mirroring the shock on mine but I suspect with a different viewpoint; me imagining have my hand on her bare bum while she squirmed on my lap, she with the humiliation of having her trousers down and being chastised by a man only a little older than herself. I shook my mind free of the images and asked about work clothes and tools for her, but again, money wasn't a problem.

Throughout the morning Nicky feigned indifference while we walked through the house with the survey report in hand and ended up in a bedroom in the old wing that hadn't been used for years by then I'd had enough of her attitude and wondered if I should take Ralph Costain at his word and put his daughter over my knee. Grabbing her shoulders, I pushed her down on the bed and from her struggles and swearing, I guessed she expected me to spank her but I decided to leave that for another time. "Nicola Costain, I'm lumbered with you for at least a month unless you bugger off and get yourself another job. You didn't want to be with me and I don't want you, not unless you at least try and show some interest in the work. If you're going to shut your mind to everything I say, one of us is going to end up dead! There will be times when I'll be handling 440 volt lines which can kill a person in the blink of an eye and I don't want that person to be me and despite your attitude, I don't think you'd really want to be responsible for my death either or suffer the aftermath enquiries." From the way her eyes opened at the realisation of the dangers, I knew she had at least taken that much in. "What sort of job would you really like to do?" I asked a little later.

"Anything, nothing, I don't know."

"Well at least give this one a try if only for a month. You will find there's much more variety in it than sorting paper in the office and you won't just be feeding cables through holes in walls."

The first hint of a slight breakthrough came at lunchtime. The cook provided a light lunch for the family and those working in the house and we all sat round a large table with Carol and Sally opposite Nicky and myself. "It doesn't look as if she's done any work with him either, Sally, her hands are not dirty and nor are her clothes. Maybe they found a quiet room to be together."

I saw Ralph Costain look at her but I stepped in and in a loud voice that drew everyone's attention said, "Miss Pearman, please lift your thoughts from the gutter. My new apprentice and I have enough to learn and do without suffering snide remarks from a secretary who knows nothing of the inherent dangers or the work involved. Please leave her alone because the time may well come, perhaps not that far into the future, when you will require her services." I gave Nicky's hand a covert squeeze and she looked relieved that I'd outspokenly defended her.

The next morning didn't start very auspiciously, at least for Nicky. I arrived early from my one room bedsit and in the kitchen, Karen, Nicky's mother, answered my query as to Nicky's whereabouts, "She's still in bed. Last evening she sulkily complained to Ralph and me about being apprenticed to you and being made to crawl into dark cupboards and go into the attic with the spiders and bats when she hadn't even been given proper clothing. I think she's in rebel mood again but she also hates the threat of being thrown out and made to find her own way in life. "You're blackmailing your own daughter," she grumbled to Ralph. I suppose we are but we think it is for her own good."

"Is her door locked?" 

"No, none of the doors in this part of the building have locks, I guess they didn't bother too much in those days and we observe the rule that if the door is shut we don't go in without knocking."

"I guess not. In the real old days some bedrooms were passageways and the beds had curtains round them for privacy. Will you mind if I break your rules and go and disturb her sleep?" I grinned and she laughed too and shooed me in the direction of Nicky's room.

Nicola

"Get out Terry, get out you bastard, you've no right to come in here, it's not..." I screamed when I heard and saw him enter. I thought to grab the duvet, but in my half asleep state, he'd whipped it off and grinned when he saw my thin, baby-doll nightdress. "Very nice," he commented and I tried to hide my breasts with one hand and my mound with the other. "Very nice," he repeated and noticing my efforts to cover myself, went on, "Don't bother Nicky, I'm not going to fuck you. Get into the bathroom and do what you have to but forget having a shower or putting on makeup, you'll get grubby later. I'll give you twenty minutes and by then you'd better be dressed and ready for breakfast."

"Get out you..."

"Not before I see you on the way to the bathroom." Thinking that I'd better move before he manhandled me, I slid out of bed and felt his hand give a light smack on my bottom before I made it through the door. He only laughed when I swore at him but sitting on the loo I had time to reflect on his `very nice' comment. Did he really mean it? My body isn't very glamorous, I'm thin, my tits are small and my short dark hair surrounds a round face with an upturned nose. Normally I dress to hide my body and only wear a bikini or swimsuit when I'm alone. 

"What are you doing today?" Mother asked my master when I came down to breakfast.

"I'm taking her clothes shopping and getting tools for her and a load of cable and fittings for the house. It's all at the wholesalers so we won't be wandering around town or visiting any boutiques."

Certainly the store held little resemblance to a boutique! He bought two `boiler suits' and two `bib and brace' overalls for me and after he'd adjusted the straps, suggested I kept one pair on. Then on to the tool department where he kitted me out with tools, many I'd never seen before but he said I'd soon learn to use them. Some hope of that!

Half an hour before lunch we wandered into the office to present the invoice for payment, both of us dressed in overalls and with a toolbelt around our waists. Carol and Sally looked smugly at me and Carol in her superior, snooty voice remarked, "Well at least you look the part dear, but where is your little yellow hard hat?"

"It will be you that needs a hard hat if you make any more snide comments, I'm fully armed to deal with bitches like you." Pulling a hammer from the belt I mock aimed it at Carol's head and then produced a pair of pliers and threatened to nip Sally's breasts. 

I had to smile and Daddy, who'd entered the room when he heard the noise, did too. "Now you just need to learn the proper use for them Nicky," he grinned as he said it and it diffused the situation but not the antagonism between the girls and me.

Over the coming weeks and with a number of setbacks, Terry and I began very gradually to work as a team. The month long trial period passed without comment on my leaving or his wishing to be rid of me, indeed, he began to try to get us together on a more social level but I always refused his offers to take me to the cinema or for a day out. I feared that might lead to sex and at that time, I wasn't sure I wanted to go that far with him. I'd begun to like him and we could joke and tease each other without rancour but nothing more intimate and I fended off the few attempts he made to touch and feel me.

That changed too when on a three-day weekend, he proposed we work the three days and get the computer benches in Carol's office done while she was out of the way. "We can take the days off afterwards and go to the seaside or do something else," he suggested and while by then, I'd begun to have thoughts on agreeing, I only agreed to work the holiday days, mainly because the office bitch would be away, but didn't commit myself to the days at the seaside. At least I'd have days off when Carol worked. On the Saturday morning we started to run the cables from the new consumer unit to the office. Terry stayed in the basement to connect the wire to the unit and didn't see Carol come into the office to collect a ticket she'd left in her desk. I did, although I swore that I didn't. The office bathroom and toilet had at one time in the past, been the entrance to another room and unusually for a bathroom, the door opened outwards and when Carol decided to use the loo, I quickly pushed a heavy table against the door and then another against that, trapping Carol inside. "That'll teach the bitch," I thought and went downstairs and suggested we had a pub lunch because cook had taken the day off and Mother was out and it was supposed to be a day off. I persuaded him to try a country pub the other side of town so our lunch hour would be longer than normal and drove my car instead of going in his van, even so it took nearly half an hour to get there. I wondered if he had any suspicion that I had set him up, especially when I suddenly became amorous and held his hand when we entered the pub. Being a holiday, the pub had more than its usual number of customers and it took a while to get served and we'd barely started our meal when his phone rang. 

Terry

I could hear the humour in Ralph's voice when he said, "Carol just phoned, says she's trapped in the toilet. She said there are desks blocking the door. She wanted me to free her but I'm halfway round the golf course and I wondered if you did it and would free her before she calls the anti terrorism branch." 

"Carol's not in today." 

"She popped in to collect something."

"I've been in the basement most of the morning but I know someone who has been upstairs and who tricked me into taking her to lunch in Felthamstead. I'll go as soon as I can get away from here."

Nicky denied knowing that Carol had been in the office but from the way she looked and grinned I knew she lied and from the way the tables were placed, it didn't take a detective to know it had been deliberate. "I had to move them to clear the space for the computer bench and to give me room to pull on the cables," she avowed, but I knew she had no need to move them that far or to that position. Carol furiously berated Nicky and me and threatened legal proceedings for false imprisonment but Nicky continued to assert her innocence.

"I think you deserve that spanking your father authorised me to use on a wayward apprentice," I told her when we were alone, "But I think that can wait until Tuesday morning when the ladies can hear you yell, "Unless we are on our way to the seaside together," I added.

"You're blackmailing me."

"Yes."

"You just want to get into bed with me!"

"Yes."

"You're a bastard."

"Yes, but I didn't falsely imprison someone, perhaps I should now." Before she could move away, I wrapped my arms around her and held her tightly to my chest and suffused her struggles with a mass of kisses on her face and neck. Finally she quietened and kissed me back.

"You're a blackmailing bastard but I agree to go with you."

"Well we'd better get this office finished so they can work in it on Tuesday."

Ralph and Karen came in and found us working late that evening. "I hope you've tanned her arse for that little escapade, Terry."

"No Sir, I intended to do that on Tuesday when the girls were at work but she took up my earlier offer of a few days at Corsham-on-Sea to help relieve the stress she's been under for the last few weeks."

"Sounds like an enjoyable punishment to me, I'll have to think of something like that and maybe Ralph will take a few days off work and take me away," Karen laughed.

"Your few days away would be somewhere like the Caribbean and not a little seaside town, dear. But to get back to her prank, this feud between Carol and you has to stop..." He read the `riot act' to us and made it perfectly clear that there were to be no more catty remarks, no more practical jokes, neither from us, nor Carol and promised he would have strong words with her when she came back to work.

Nicola

"Please Terry, be gentle with me, I haven't done it before." 

Over the preceding few days in the slack times at work and in bed at night, my mind went over the decision to go away with him and the likelihood that we'd have sex, something I'd resisted until then. The few other boys I'd been out with were either too brash and forward in their approach, or I felt they were only with me to get at Daddy's money. Neither of these criteria applied to Terry. He flirted a lot and at times, I flirted back, but even when we were alone in the old part of the house, he'd never tried to feel my breasts, such as they are, or force me to give him a blowjob or go the whole way and have sex. He kept proper and accurate accounts of the money he spent and even chided me when I tried to add a personal item to the `Electric's Account'. Carol would have spotted it anyway and tried to humiliate me afterwards. Despite having pots of money, Daddy takes care over what he spends. He paid for Sarah's university education and didn't complain but wouldn't pay for me to go because he knew I wouldn't benefit from it, he did pay me over the odds to work in his office and now pays more than a normal apprentice would earn for my apprenticeship, but it is less than Terry earns.

Over the weeks I'd been with Terry, I'd grown to like him and certainly found working with him far more enjoyable than being in the office even if sometimes I ended up looking like a chimneysweep. I know I teased and called Terry a blackmailer several times over that weekend but I'm sure he knew I did it mainly in jest, and countered me by saying it was my punishment. Now as I lay on the hotel bed with my legs spread, I wondered if indeed it would be a punishment or if I would get the enjoyment I'd read about so many times.

Terry

Nicky's remark that she hadn't done it before, surprised me. Not many twenty-four year-old girls were virgins these days but I couldn't complain, I'd been 20 when I lost my virginity and only fucked four girls since. Being tall and slim, wiry, I called it, I rarely got on with girls for long enough to form a relationship but working alongside Nicky for a couple of months had drawn me close enough to offer to take her to a hotel, knowing we'd be sharing a bed. Even using the blackmail card, I hadn't been too hopeful that she'd accept.

In the large shower cubicle we'd washed and played with each other until both of us were fully aroused, me obviously so, and now kneeling between her thighs, my prick aimed at her opening, she pleaded for me to be gentle. "This is supposed to be a punishment you know, dear," but she knew from my expression that I didn't mean it and I'd already made sure her juices were flowing before carefully entering my prick and waiting for a short while after I'd penetrated her hymen before fucking her with more force. Unfortunately, although I tried to prolong the act, I came before she climaxed but, like a previous partner had instructed, I slid down the bed and tongued her clit and slit until she too had an orgasm. From the expression on her face and her comments afterwards, I knew she'd enjoyed it.

"Are you going to punish me again?" she asked when we awoke at an early hour, neither of being used to sleeping with another.

"Definitely, that was only the first of many." With it only being a few hours since my last ejaculation, I took much longer that time and she climaxed noisily and nearly had a second, before I sent my sperm into her. 

"Finish me off with you tongue again, please," she begged and that set the pattern for our lovemaking until the morning of our third day when I turned round and straddled her face with my crotch and allowed my prick to dangle close to her mouth whilst I slavered over her mound. She took the hint and started to suck me and indeed made me hard enough to fuck her twice in a row, something I'd not done before.

As the weeks went by, it became accepted that Nicky and I were an item, especially so when we'd finished the bulk of the electrical installation in the main rooms and began to run cables into the previously less used, historical wing and Ralph suggested that I take up residence in the servants quarters on the top floor. The large room that in its heyday probably housed four maids, overlooked the back garden and had its own, rather antique bathroom and toilet facility. When we'd sorted the electrics enough to make the room habitable, Nicky frequently spent the night with me. Ralph and Karen obviously knew but never remarked on it or banned their daughter from visiting me. For some reason, my having Nicky as a girlfriend made Carol jealous although I couldn't see why. She'd never shown any liking for me and being in her late thirties, ten years or so older, perhaps she wanted a toy boy but more likely she wished to spite Nicky. Whichever way, she started flirting with me and making suggestive remarks, to which I responded in kind, at least when Nicky wasn't around. It came to a head when Carol remarked, "Perhaps I should visit you when you work in the old wing alone and see what you get up to?"

I laughingly replied, "Maybe you should just do that, I'm sure there's plenty I can get up and show you."

Nicola

"The bastard, the lying cheating bastard!" I overheard the conversation and disappeared into the loo to cry and decide what to do. Until then I'd thought Terry and I were an exclusive unit, but now it seemed that bitch Carol wanted him too, but I wasn't about to allow her in on my property, not without a fight. First though I had to deal with bloody Terry. I doubted if he'd cheated on me yet and I needed to make sure he didn't.

With a tear stained face and in a temper, I strode in and twice slapped his face hard and followed the slaps with a furious onslaught of blows to his chest. "You lying, cheating bastard!" I yelled and cursed and swore at him. Of course he soon recovered and wrapped his arms around my body, stifling my arms rendering me helpless. It took a long while and many kisses to calm me sufficiently to talk rationally and for me to believe his reassurances that he'd had no thoughts of having any sort of relationship with Carol. 

An hour later, we resumed work but still upset and seething with anger, not now at Terry, I came up with an ill thought out plan. At the time he'd gone to the room above and I fed the cable through from the room below and when it appeared to be pulling through the opening without my help, I picked up a short offcut of the cable and ran to bitch Carol's office. 

Dashing passed Sally's desk I burst in on Carol and seeing the anger on my face and the makeshift whip in my hand, she backed away. WHACK! The sound the stiff cable made against the wood reverberated loudly through the room when I slashed her desk and sent her orderly piles of papers, flying in all directions. WHACK! "Keep your hands," WHACK! "Off my boyfriend." WHACK. I kept up an angry tirade and enjoyed the look of fear of the bitch's face. A noise behind me announced Terry's arrival.

Terry

The cable snagged and I yelled down for Nicky to clear it but nothing happed. Unsure whether she'd heard me, I went down and found the room empty but hearing a door slam on the ground floor, I rushed down fearing, correctly it proved, she'd take her vengeance on Carol. On reaching the doorway to the office, my eyes saw Carol huddled in a corner behind her desk, and Nicky with a length of electric cable thrashing the desk, knocking the papers to the floor. Sally stood in another corner out of range of the whip, pleading with Nicky not to harm Carol. Ralph arrived just as I pinioned Nicky from behind, "Put the cable down Nicky before you get into real trouble," I said quietly and pulled her further away from her victim, "You at least had the sense not to actually hit her." Turning to Carol I said, "Perhaps you will now realise there are repercussions when you try to get between a girl and her loved one."

"What the hell was that all about?" Ralph demanded.

"I'll tell you later, Sir, when I've dealt with this young lady and no doubt Miss Pearman will give you her version when she's cleaned herself up." We all saw the prominent dark stain running down the leg of her light coloured jeans. Nicky had certainly frightened and humiliated her.

"Make sure you deal with her properly, Terry, or you can both find other jobs! I don't want another disturbance like this."

"That was a pretty stupid thing to do, dear, had you hit her with that whip, you'd be in jail."

"I'm not that stupid!" she hissed when we sat on the bed in my room, "I only intended to frighten her, and I did. Anyway you're partly to blame."

"And you're going to get your bum smacked in case your father keeps his threat. I've bolted the door so get your clothes off, or do I have to force you?" When she saw me start to undress too, she must have believed that her spanking would be a token one before sex but I had other ideas. "Lie across my lap, you naughty girl," I chided and still believing it to be a joke, she followed my instruction and also placed my now erect prick between her thighs. My first smack dispelled any notion of my going soft on her. Making sure I held her firmly I hit her arse as hard as I could and proceeded to spank each cheek alternately until they were bright red and she sobbed and pleaded with me to stop. I did when I believed she had enough and rubbed her sore bottom for several minutes.

"You sod, you bloody sod!" She called me various insulting names and struggled without success to free herself. "Don't think you're going to fuck me now, you bastard."

Eventually I managed to calm her and I could speak without interruption. "Nicky, dear, you were right, I am partly to blame for allowing and responding to Carol's flirting but at least I didn't threaten anyone with physical violence. Nevertheless, I'm going to lie across your lap and you can spank me too and perhaps afterwards we can call it quits and get back to the relationship we'd developed until this fiasco."

Nicola

The cunning bastard tricked me into assuming I'd get off lightly. Lightly! He hit me hard and held me despite my efforts to get free. First one cheek and then the other, blow after blow, smack after smack. I yelled, screamed and pleaded until eventually he stopped and gently rubbed my arse, the arse he'd punished far more severely that I anticipated and certainly I felt more pain than my victim. With us both naked I expected he'd want to fuck me and set my mind to resisting all his efforts in that direction but, no, after cuddling me until I'd simmered down a little, he laid himself across my lap and told me to punish him for his part in the affair.

I made a couple of half-hearted complaints at having his weight on my thighs when I'd a sore bum, then took my revenge and with some pleasure set to work slapping his arse with vigour although I knew that my blows weren't as hard as his. He didn't yell or cry, which made me continue longer and made my hand sore, but I certainly made sure he had a tender rear end by the time I finished. Like him, I spent some time rubbing his sore arse and, feeling his erection on my thigh, I released him and we hugged and kissed before falling side by side on the bed. "I'm going to be on top," I stated, "Someone made my arse too sore to lie with his weight on me." We'd only done it in that way once before, partly because I couldn't keep lifting myself up until he climaxed but this time, after all the foreplay, he came relatively quickly and had to finish me orally.

Ralph looked enquiringly at us when we both sat down gently on the hard chairs at the dining room table but neither of us said anything. Fortunately Carol went home to change and didn't return until the next morning.

Terry

Four months later, we'd finished the rewiring and started decorating and remodelling the rooms, which Nicky enjoyed, but our relationship with Carol didn't improve although neither of us did anything to aggravate the situation. We had the last laugh though, because she tried the same thing with Ralph and Sally, who no longer condoned her behaviour, quietly informed Karen. In front of us all, Karen demanded Ralph dismiss his P.A. By then Ralph had enough of her ways, "You're a very efficient secretary but poor at public relations," he told her.

"Looks like your apprentice is coming along well, Terry, do you think we can give her journeyman papers yet?" Ralph remarked when he came into the basement and found Nicky hand planing a frame while I tried to match a moulding.

"No Sir," Nicky answered for me, "I need a boss to keep me under control and I've a lot more to learn yet.

"Well maybe a marriage certificate would be more appropriate."

"He hasn't asked me yet but it will soon be the 29th February and then I'll do the asking," Nicky laughed.

For some time we'd lived together more or less as man and wife so that night I switched the manual calendar to read, `February 29'.

Finis
