Mark Smith

Virgin no more

CHAPTER ONE

Jim was the first person Sheila had ever really been in love with, so when he left her she thought the world was going to come to an end. Needless to say, it didn't, and she was surprised to find that she could get along quite well without him.

For a while at least.

She was twenty when they broke up, and still a virgin. This had a lot to do with his decision to walk out, a fact which Sheila had a great deal of difficulty understanding. In many ways she was a bit old-fashioned, and this was one of them. Her mother had always told her that if she went to bed with a man before they got married, he would stop respecting her and would soon leave her.

Now, belatedly, she began to wonder if perhaps her mother might have been wrong.

After three days of crying and being otherwise generally miserable, Sheila came up with what she hoped would be the solution to her problems: she would quit her job and move to New York. She knew that her parents wouldn't like the idea, but there was little enough they could do about it, since she had her own car and had managed to save a tidy bundle of money by working as a secretary and living at home since high school.

Once her mind was made up, she wasted no time in implementing her plan. There were too many bad associations with Jim as long as she stayed around here; if she left she was certain she would feel better.

And she was right.

As soon as she emerged from the Lincoln Tunnel into midtown Manhattan, she could sense the excitement of the city. Things were definitely going to be better here, she just knew it.

Though it was late in the afternoon when she arrived, Sheila wanted to waste no time at all in looking for a job. Her first intention was to go to an employment agency, but as she looked through the classified section of the newspaper, one job in particular looked interesting to her. It was listed as a secretarial job, but the fringe benefits included free travel to Europe and the west coast.

She decided to try it.