A Conference Legacy Ch. 01

Chapter 1: How it started

My feelings for Louise were for the most part ambivalent. She was, in comparison with most of the girls who work in our office, very attractive, yet her face was probably only average on a scale of one to 5. What made her stand out from the other girls in the office was the way she dressed. The dress code in our Company could best be described as "smart-casual", which always leaves the women, particularly the young ones, with much more

Flexibility than the men. Louise always wore plain tops, half-length sleeves, subdued colours, high neck-lines, and so on. Her skirts and dresses, on the other hand, were nearly always very short, or if not, slit to mid thigh to accentuate the appearance of her extremely long slender legs! Even though the office was well air-conditioned, from May till the end of October she never wore nylons, and she appeared to positively delight in showing off her very sexy smooth bare legs. It wasn't just what she wore, but how she presented herself. She always seemed to find a way of positioning herself so that my attention, and that of every other red-blooded male in the office, was drawn to those alluring long legs. Increasingly often, I found myself wanting to reach out and touch them, and stroke them, but I new this could, and almost certainly would, land me in a whole heap of trouble that I really didn't need.

Then, one Tuesday morning, Louise telephoned me to say that my boss Monica had asked her to check out my availability for a sales conference in Madrid in two weeks time. The conference would entail me giving a presentation on the application of the financial project management software package (FigureSkate Plus) which the Company had been developing. Monica had suggested that, since Louise had been extensively user testing it as a project co-ordinator, she might make a very suitable co-presenter for me.

The assignment would entail presentations on two days, (on

Wednesday and Thursday afternoons and hosting a reception on

Thursday evening. She had suggested that Louise might like to take in a shopping opportunity on Friday morning, and that we return to the UK on Friday evening.

My heart leapt at the prospect, and I could barely contain my delight and anticipation at spending two nights in the company of our leggiest of leggy staff member. I managed to ask Louise if she felt ok about the idea before expressing my own enthusiasm about it, and to my delight she said that she thought it would be really "cool". She said that she had never been to Spain before and really wanted to see Madrid in the summer.

She asked me what I thought she should wear, and I decided to be non-committal, but did add that Madrid could be very hot in July, and that I wasn't sure how wised up the Spaniards were likely to be on air conditioning, either in hotels or in their conference venues.

"I'll bring something cool to wear then," she said with what I felt was definitely a hint of a knowing giggle.

I arranged two meetings with Louise during the next fortnight, to plan and prepare our presentation for the conference. The first meeting took place in Monica's office, a small but comfortably furnished individual office, in which was a desk with two chairs, along with two filing cabinets and a two-seater sofa with a coffee table in front of it. I sat in Monica's chair, working at her computer, which I used to produce a first draft time flow plan of our 50-minute presentation. Louise sat on the sofa, placing a folder of notes on the coffee table in front of her.

"I feel more relaxed sitting here," she said, smiling broadly, "is that ok?"

"Yes, of course!" I replied casually, trying not to look at the way she was sitting. She positioned herself at one end of the sofa, and, having discarded her flimsy sandals, she swung her legs around, hooking her left leg over the far arm, letting her right foot rest on the floor. Glancing round, I had a wonderful view of most of her beautiful bare legs, and in particular, of her smooth inner thighs. I rapidly returned my eyes to the computer screen, deciding as I did so that her choice of position was no coincidence.

We finished our planning session in good time, and I decided to make us both a cup of coffee, using the filter machine which resided on top of the filing cabinet at the head end of the sofa.

Louise turned to sit in a more conventional position as I placed a rather uninviting disposable cup of coffee on the table in front of her next to her folder of papers.

"I'm really looking forward to this trip." she said. "I think we should really knock 'em dead, knowing your skills with

PowerPoint."

I accepted this compliment, and refrained from observing that it was more likely to be her legs that "knocked 'em dead". I suggested that I would put together some slides and draft some speaker's notes based on our discussion, and that we should have a further meeting in the training room next week so we could run through the presentation for real, and do some timings to make sure everything we wanted to cover would fit into the allotted time slot.

"Sounds good to me," she smiled, reaching forward to take hold of her drink. As she did so, her already very short skirt rode up her long bare legs, until there was definitely more of her legs revealed above the knee than was covered by her skirt. She did not adjust her skirt as she straightened herself to drink her coffee.

"I still don't really know what to wear for the presentation," she said somewhat shyly, "Do you think something like this would be ok?"

"Why yes," I replied, carefully, "I think people will certainly remember the girl with the pretty legs and with practical experience of "FigureSkate Plus!"

She didn't respond verbally, but as she collected up our disposable cups to lob them in the bin at the other end of the sofa, I was certain I detected a wink in her eye.

"You don't think this skirt will be too short then?" she asked with a shy smile.

"Louise," I replied, glancing down at her beautiful long legs, "it isn't for me to say, is it?"

"Well, no, I suppose not, but it's you I will be working with, so I suppose I would really like your opinion."

"Well, for what it's worth, I think it shows off your" attributes" perfectly!"

"Thanks for the compliment!" she smiled.

We ended our meeting without further incident. I was keen to see what would happen next Wednesday at the final run-through.

(To be continued soon)...