by Ally Blake
Humiliation had been long dead and resigned to the past, so she’d thought. But after three years of self-inflicted singledom, during which she’d taken control of every tiny facet of her life and had reinvented herself as career-woman-extraordinaire with no room on her list of priorities for a man, it seemed humiliation was alive and well and living in London.
Alice Ford was gossip-central.
Again.
* * *
Harry Stephens glanced around the bar, having just bought a round of drinks for the entire team. Correction. Almost the entire team. Despite the graft she’d put in to win the prestigious new contract, Alice Ford was a no-show yet again.
He finished his drink quickly and made his way across the bar, nodding at colleagues along the way. Fortunately Arabella had chosen to sit at a table close to the door. Perfect for the swift exit he intended to make the instant he finished speaking.
‘Harry!’ she said with real pleasure as he approached, loudly enough to draw glances from adjacent tables. The three other junior assistants sitting with her looked his way with interest. He was dimly aware that the redhead to Arabella’s left must be new. Worth a second look, just not today. He filed her away in his mind for future consideration.
Arabella ran her fingers through her long blonde hair, twirling the ends lightly as she smiled at him. He kept his eyes on her face. The expression of adoration wasn’t the only thing putting him on edge. The half-dozen texts she’d sent him so far today also needed to be considered along with the following facts:
1. she’d only left his bed at seven a.m.,
2. it was still only lunchtime, and
3. they worked in the same building.
The increasingly urgent texts along with the smile told him all he needed to know. It might have only been one night, but it was still time to jump ship.
Best to do it quick. Short, clean break before she had the chance to big it up in her mind into more than it was. Just sex. Just fun. No letting it run on too long—that led to all kinds of trouble as he’d recently discovered. And he was having none of it.
Keeping his voice deliberately detached, he reached into his inside jacket pocket.
‘Sorry to interrupt,’ he said. ‘You left your earrings at my place.’
He held them out, found this morning in his bathroom. She didn’t take them, a light frown touching the perfectly arched eyebrows.
‘I know,’ she said. ‘I realised when I got to work. I just thought I’d pick them up next time I saw you. Maybe tonight—did you get my texts...?’
She trailed off, eyes fixed on his face, and he literally saw the click, saw her face begin to redden as she caught on. She wouldn’t be visiting his place again. Her time there was done.
Smile gone now, she stood up, pushed past the redhead and joined him a few feet away by the door.
He held out the earrings again and this time she took them. She looked back up at him with a confident smile that was a bit too small to be pulled off.
‘What’s going on, Harry?’
He made his voice light, surprised.
‘Nothing’s going on. Last night was fun but I told you, I’m not interested in anything serious right now. I think it’s best if we just call it quits, go back to being workmates.’ He paused. ‘Friends.’
He could tell from her face that ‘friends’ was going to be a bit of a big ask. All smiles had gone.
‘You’re dumping me? After one night?’
He heard the crack in her voice. He was so right to get out now.
‘We both knew it was just a laugh,’ he said.
Her gutted expression told him that he might have known that, but she’d had much bigger plans. She opened her mouth, undoubtedly to argue the point further and he cut in quickly. Getting into a debate was a bad move; he knew that from experience.
He gave her upper arm a friendly squeeze, making sure he was well clear of her personal space.
‘I’d better get back to the office,’ he said. ‘Thanks for a great night.’
He left quickly, secure in the knowledge that he’d been honest. He was not responsible for Arabella’s feelings. He’d been up front with her from the start, made no promises, had made it crystal clear at all times where they both stood.
The fact she’d read more into the situation was nothing to do with him.
* * *
The outside line began ringing on various phones across the deserted office, but Alice was oblivious to the noise. Her eyes slipped to the bottom of the paper and her stomach gave another sickening lurch.
Page One.
There’s more than one page?
She turned the paper over. Blank on the reverse. Next moment she was scrabbling through the desk, pulling out armfuls of papers, food wrappers, a half-eaten decaying sandwich. Her stomach gave a sickening lazy roll as she threw it on the floor. If there was a second page, if there were more people involved, she would damn well know about it.
Perspiration laced her forehead and upper lip as she stood back, out of breath, hands on hips. The desk drawers were empty, their contents strewn over the floor.
Nothing. Maybe this was it. As if it were enough.
She reread the list, and the wave of upset that she had managed to control until now crested with full force. Names that she dealt with on a daily basis, people she’d believed she had a friendly, trustworthy, albeit working relationship with. People she’d thought liked and respected her. She’d come all this way, put the past behind her, rebuilt herself from the inside out, and now she was a laughing stock again.
The bitterness that flooded her mouth tasted just the same. Back then it had been her own image, plastered on the internet, bandied about between so-called friends. This time she was the subject of a bet. Same difference. Three years ago or present day, she was the butt of other people’s amusement.
The names blurred as tears came in a rush of uncontrollable sobs.
Across the open-plan room, the lift suddenly rumbled into life.
She snapped her head back up mid-sob, heart thundering in panic. In that brief moment it seemed entirely possible that the whole team, some thirty-odd people, were about to pour back in and find Alice a blubbering wreck with her head in her hands and a face full of snot, crumpled in the middle of the office.
The mortification of moments before stepped up to even dizzier heights.
She needed to get out of here. She did not need to be seen having an emotional meltdown by her colleagues. She needed a quiet space to think, calm down, get her head together. She stared madly around the room and finally made a manic dash for the only option of refuge within sprinting distance.
Sad cliché that it was, Alice Ford, top-class ambitious professional, was about to be reduced to crying in the Ladies.
Stumbling blindly between desks, knocking her thigh agonisingly hard against the corner of the printer table and upending a bin as she went, she sprinted in her high-heeled court shoes towards the door of the restroom, actually had it in her sights as the ping of the lift signalled its arrival and the doors slid smoothly apart.
She almost made it. A second or two faster and all Harry Stephens would have known about it would have been the slamming of the door behind her. Instead what he got was a full-on glimpse of her face as she shoved past him. Since the first thing she saw as she made it into the Ladies was her own reflection in the mirror, she knew that, humiliatingly, he’d just been treated to her beetroot-red face running with a combination of tears and snot and her always-sleek chignon looking like a rat’s nest where she’d been clutching in anguish at her hair.
A loud knock on the door made her jump.
‘Alice?’
She ignored him.
‘Alice?’ Louder this time. ‘Are you OK?’
Another knoc
k. Perhaps if she kept quiet he’d give up. She clutched the side of the sink in frustration.
‘Sandra’s downstairs in Reception. I’ll go and get her,’ he said.
Sandra. The resentful marketing assistant who’d been passed over when Alice got her promotion to Account Manager and who would probably like to see her buried under a patio. No, thanks. She could envisage the ill-hidden glee and fake concern on Sandra’s face right now and it was enough to galvanise her into action.
‘I am fine!’ she snapped, hearing the nasal tone in her voice from all the crying and hating it. ‘I don’t need Sandra or anyone else. I’m perfectly all right.’
He totally ignored her.
‘No, you’re not. What’s up? Maybe I can help?’
The idea that she might want an emotional chat about her love life, or lack of it, with the man who was sleeping his way through the office actually raised a crazy bubble of laughter.
‘Go away,’ she snapped.
‘I’m not going anywhere until I know you’re OK.’
The concern that softened the deep voice was, of course, not genuine. Harry Stephens didn’t do concern. As Head of Graphic Design he did creative brilliance in the office and short-term devastation in his personal life. Emotions like concern need not apply. Anyone with a pulse and a pretty face in this building had probably at some point looked into his deep blue eyes and thought he would be different with her. So far, he never had been.
She was just trying to come up with an adequately cutting response that would get him off her case once and for all when he opened the door. She hadn’t considered for one second that he’d actually have the arrogance to follow her into the ladies’ room. She caught a glimpse of her own gobsmacked expression in the mirror as she dashed into one of the cubicles and twisted the lock.
‘You can’t come in here!’ she squawked.
‘I’m already in here,’ he said. A pause. ‘And I’m not going anywhere until I know you’re OK, so you might as well just come out with it.’
She heard the squeak of the wicker chair in the corner as he made himself comfortable. Despair rushed in and buried her. She’d let her guard down; let the mess she’d been in the past show through. And he’d seen it. The real Alice Ford—behind the iron-solid professional glossy persona she’d worked so hard to perfect.
The surge of grief swelled back up, too big to squash down or bat aside, and in her misery her guard slipped a little.
She sat down on the toilet, clutched her hot forehead in her hands, and closed her eyes against her wet palms. She had the beginnings of a headache.
‘It’s nothing,’ she mumbled. ‘Work stuff.’
* * *
A vague comment that would probably put most people off probing any further, Harry thought. She was the expert at keeping things on a work level. He couldn’t think of a single person in the office who had ever socialised properly with her.
He wasn’t most people.
‘Then I can definitely help,’ he said. ‘If it’s work related. I’m always happy to help out a colleague.’
‘Please will you just go away?’
The despair in her voice tugged unexpectedly at his heart. He jumped a little in surprise. Of course, he didn’t do crying women so no wonder his reactions were off kilter. He didn’t need emotional angst. Avoid like the plague.
Except that this situation was also an opportunity.
Alice Ford was the current subject of the office betting ring, an outwardly light-hearted but in reality deadly serious pastime. Naturally he had a huge stake in it and naturally he intended to win. He’d simply been biding his time. And now that time was here.
‘No chance,’ he said.
He heard her strangled sob and was on his feet before he knew what he was doing, moving across to the cubicle door. He spoke through it, making his voice gentle.
‘Come on. Tell me what’s up,’ he encouraged. ‘Is it family stuff? I know what that can be like.’ He certainly did. Putting family stuff out of his mind was pretty much up there at the top of his priorities.
‘No,’ she mumbled, between sobs.
‘Boyfriend stuff, then?’
A perfunctory suggestion and he knew it. The word was that there had been no boyfriend in years—the surprisingly high-stakes bet proved that. But no harm in confirming the fact, confirming the challenge.
‘You don’t know the first thing about it!’ she howled angrily through the door. ‘With your life-is-a-cabaret attitude.’
‘Oh, OK, so tell me the first thing about it. Has some bloke dumped you? Because if he has, he’s an idiot.’
In Harry’s opinion, flattery was always a good starting point.
She snorted bitterly.
‘Are you having some kind of a laugh?’
‘No. I just assumed that the main reason women cry in toilets is over men.’
‘Well, of course, you’d know that, wouldn’t you? I bet there have been plenty of tears shed in here over you.’
He chose to ignore that.
‘If it’s not over a man, then what the hell is it?’
‘Will you please just leave me alone?’ The anguished note rose in her voice. Maybe if he just pushed her a bit harder.
‘No. Not until you tell me what’s wrong.’
The answer came in a sobbing shout and the cubicle door rattled as if she’d beat a fist against it. He stepped back in surprise.
‘All right, then, it is over men! Plural! Not just one man, the whole damn lot of you! You think I’m having a meltdown because some bloke’s dumped me? I haven’t dated in three years. Go on and laugh it up now!’
She dissolved into a flurry of sobs again, coming up every so often to blurt out more details.
‘It’s not that I don’t want to date, it’s just been so long I haven’t a clue where to start. I can’t face the whole nightmare of meeting a guy, investing all that emotion, all that time and energy, only to be kicked in the teeth a few months down the line.’ A sob. ‘I’ll be single for ever and end up one of those women in a houseful of cats smelling of wee.’ A loud snuffle followed by a furious snarl. ‘And my clock is ticking!’ Another sob, tapering off into sniffles.
He took a moment to consider how best to play this. He couldn’t quite believe his luck. By pure coincidence he’d happened to come back to the office early, find her like this and now here it suddenly was. The chance he needed.
Insider knowledge.
A way into her life where he could then stay put long enough to win the bet and scoop the cash and the kudos.
This year or so in London, the job here, were beginning to pay dividends. Finally a sense of freedom. New place, new people. After the last few weeks he was definitely ready for a new challenge. Arabella had just been a diversion. This would be something else entirely. It was common knowledge that Alice was a workaholic who kept all men at arm’s length. Now he knew that wasn’t what she really wanted, he could use the fact to his advantage. She was just too used to being single; that was all it was.
She needed some persuasion.
‘Alice, listen to me,’ he began.
His voice was gentle and kind, and Alice’s stomach gave a sudden melty flip-flop. Apparently even in the depths of emotional meltdown her body was as receptive to his charm as the rest of the female workforce, who cared only that he looked like an Adonis with his dark-hair-blue-eyes combo and the muscular build and leftover tan from whatever sporty summer holiday he’d taken.
Fortunately she was able to rely on her mind, which knew only too well the kind of man he was.
‘You just need to get out more, that’s all,’ he said, jump-starting her temper, which up to now had been squashed into submission by humiliation and disbelief. She unwound a huge wad of toilet roll and wiped her eyes angrily.
There was a surprised silence.
‘The point is to have fun,’ he said. ‘Look, I’m not trying to criticise. I’m just saying that the sun doesn’t rise and set with Innova. When did you last go out? Socially, I mean. For a drink or a meal?’
‘I go out,’ she said defensively, glaring at the back of the cubicle door, imagining him on the other side of it, with his dark tousled hair, crinkly-eyed smile, and his endless string of girlfriends and rampant social life. An image of her own previous evening flashed into her mind. Herself on the sofa, Kevin the cat on one side, stack of work files on the other, laptop open, CSI box set on the TV in the background. Hell, it might as well be an image of any evening this week. This year.
‘When? Where? Who with?’
‘What are you, my father? I see people.’ She frowned indignantly at the closed door.
‘See me, then,’ he said in a low voice and that soft melty sensation bubbled hotly back up inside her. She slid her hands across her middle and pressed hard to make it stop as she groped for a suitable response. Any response.
‘Alice?’ he said. Her stupid heart had begun to beat madly.
She took a deep calming breath.
‘What?’
His voice was low and close. She knew he must be literally right on the other side of the door.
‘If you haven’t dated for a long time and you’re thinking of getting back out there—’
‘I didn’t say that!’ she snapped. Oh, what the hell was she thinking, blurting out all her problems to him? At best he could go back to the office and report that Ice-Queen Ford was having a crying fit over being perpetually single. At worst, there really might be a Page Two of the damn bet pool and Harry Stephens could be right there on it with a big fat stake.
