Tied up With Love

by Amelia Thorne

  Ethan was standing there looking unbelievably sexy in jeans and a white shirt, staring at her with those hypnotic azure eyes again.

  There were no words in Izzy’s head at all, nothing to justify the things she had just said or why she was standing there in the world’s most hideous dress while Ethan was smoking hot as always. There wasn’t even a flicker of amusement in his eyes to indicate he might have found it funny.

  The old lady that owned the vintage wedding dress shop suddenly came bustling over. ‘Oh Ethan, there you are. Here’s the money.’ She handed over a huge wad of cash, which he took and slid into his back pocket without taking his eyes off Izzy.

  Suddenly realising that they had an audience, the old lady ushered Ethan out of the room. ‘Come on dear, leave these ladies in peace.’ She smiled sweetly at Bex and Izzy. ‘You both look gorgeous by the way, don’t they Ethan, absolutely stunning.’

  For the first time there was the slightest hint of a smile from Ethan as he looked them over but then it was gone as he was pushed out of the room.

  Izzy waited for a few moments, until she heard the shop door ring as it opened and closed, then she rounded on Bex.

  ‘How long was he there?’

  ‘Long enough.’ Bex winced.

  ‘Oh my god, of all the bloody shops in Chessingburyford for him to walk into, he has to come into this flashback from the eighties whilst I’m dressed like a drag queen and talking about biting his ass.’

  ‘I’m more concerned about the money that poor old lady handed over, there must have been five hundred pounds or more. He’s obviously exploiting her for some con, or it’s protection money for the mafia.’

  ‘Or drugs, maybe she’s paying him for a kilo in heroin, because I’m sure he’s a drug dealer too,’ Izzy said sarcastically, about to launch into a tirade about Bex being so judgemental – but then she noticed Ethan hovering on the edge of the room again, so she rounded on him instead. ‘For god’s sake, do you not knock? At the very least you could wear a sodding bell round your neck so people know when you’re coming.’

  Ethan’s eyes blazed into hers. ‘I need to see you later, will you be home around five?’

  ‘For your information, Izzy doesn’t work weekends,’ Bex rose herself up to her full height.

  Ethan didn’t even register that Bex had spoken, he just stared at Izzy.

  The truth was, Izzy had no plans that evening so she was probably going to be home anyway but she didn’t want him to think she would jump at his every demand.

  ‘I’ll be home about six if that’s any good for you?’

  He stared at her for a moment, no doubt seeing straight through her deceit. ‘Fine.’

  He turned to leave but Izzy called him back. ‘Are you really going this time, or are you going to lurk around to eavesdrop on more of our conversations.’

  ‘That depends if there’s anything more for me to hear?’

  ‘I assure you there won’t, we have far more interesting things to talk about.’

  That faint smile was back. ‘That’s good. Lime green suits you by the way.’

  He turned and walked away.

  Izzy followed him to make sure he really was leaving this time. When the shop door closed behind him, she let out a scream of frustration. She stomped back to Bex to vent her anger on her, but she was already holding up another vile monstrosity for Izzy to try on. She smirked at the orange and black satin creation. She needed something to distract her from the impending meeting with Ethan where he was no doubt going to fire her for insubordination.

  *

  Ethan sat in his car outside Izzy’s house with his eyes closed. This was a terrible idea for so many reasons. He didn’t want her to see something in this meeting that wasn’t there, for her to attach romantic delusions to it. He didn’t want her in that way and he didn’t want her to think he did. After seeing her so upset over her cat the night before, he wanted to do something to put the smile back on her face. It was a friendly gesture, there was nothing more to it than that. But now he was second guessing the gesture too. She’d barely had enough time to grieve over Pete and now he was foisting this on her, she might hate it.

  He opened his eyes, somehow instinctively knowing she was there – and sure enough she was walking down the road towards him, with that gorgeous bouncy little walk, her hair flying theatrically behind her like an ebony banner.

  Something stirred near his chest, though he knew it wasn’t his heart. That had died a long time ago.

  Well he was here now, he might as well get it over with.

  He opened the door and stepped out in front of her.

  *

  Izzy faltered in her walk as Ethan unfolded himself from the car. Everything about him was huge and domineering. He was wearing a leather jacket now, over his white shirt and jeans, and her stomach twisted with desire and need at this new enticing look. Was it the leather jacket that made her want to run her hands down his muscular arms or was it the man himself? And was this insane attraction about to come to an end when he handed her a termination of employment notice?

  ‘I’ve got you something,’ he said, cutting straight to the point. ‘I’m not sure if it’s appropriate and it’s probably bad timing.’ He shrugged, running his hand through his sexy curly hair. She wondered if the ‘something’ was letting her run her hands through his hair. ‘And I don’t want you to read into this, it doesn’t mean anything.’ He unzipped his leather jacket, pulled out a tiny white ball of fur and thrust it towards her. It stirred in the cool breeze and two tiny ears and a pair of blue eyes peered out from Ethan’s fingers. ‘I found him, dumped in a bin a few days ago. I’ve been looking after him but I can’t keep him long term, Psycho would kill him, not intentionally but he’d sit on him or smother him with his farts. I thought…’

  Izzy took the tiny warm bundle from Ethan’s hands and cradled it close to her chest, the kitten snuggled into her.

  ‘You bought me a kitten?’ Izzy stared at him. What was going on with him?

  ‘It’s not a replacement for Pete, I just… I didn’t know what to do with him. If you don’t want him I’ll find him a home somewhere. I was going to give it to Gizmo but his little girl would hound the poor thing and then dress it up in bows and ribbons and curl its hair. I thought you might give it some kind of a normal life. But honestly if you don’t want it…’

  The kitten licked her thumb while purring softly, its warm body vibrating. It stared at her with its blue eyes and she knew she had already fallen in love with him. There was no way she could let it go.

  ‘I could look after it for a while. I go to Australia in a few weeks.’

  ‘Well I’m sure we could find someone to look after it while you’re gone.’

  She nodded. ‘My uncle would probably look after him.’

  He moved to get back in his car, clearly the meeting was over. ‘He’ll need a name, I guess you’ll call it something cutesy like Snowball.’

  At that moment the kitten chose to bite down hard on Izzy’s thumb, it didn’t hurt a lot but it was evident that the cat had an impressive array of teeth. ‘How about Fang?’

  He smiled and the warmth of it filled her. He closed the door and a second later disappeared up the road, leaving Izzy with a tiny ferocious kitten and a huge smile on her face.

  *

  Izzy was busily updating the database from the paperwork of all their past clients when Ethan walked in on Monday morning. He frowned slightly at her, warning her that if she thought that the kitten had changed anything between them, she was sorely mistaken. Well, if he wasn’t going to mention anything about Fang then neither would she.

  He had Psycho with him and the dog ran straight round the desk, nuzzling against Izzy as if he had missed her.

  ‘I don’t see how doing this database is a good use of your time,’ Ethan said, disappearing into the kitchen to make himself a coffee, while Izzy turned her attention to the great dog. ‘Our service is kind of a one-off thing, it’s not something man
y of our clients will do on a regular basis.’

  ‘If they enjoyed it, they might want to come back once or twice a year, especially if we write to them with special deals.’

  ‘I can’t see it myself.’

  ‘It doesn’t hurt to try, we may get one or two more sales out of it.’

  ‘I just think your time could be better used elsewhere.’

  Ethan came out and handed her a mug of tea.

  ‘Like what? I’m answering the phone, I’m still doing the diary, I’ve just put out another Facebook ad. What else would you like me to do?’

  Ethan stared at her, his hungry eyes suggested a million things that he’d like her to do, none of which were part of her job description. She looked away, confident that she was imagining the way he was looking at her, projecting her own feelings and desires onto him.

  He didn’t say anything but she could feel him staring at her.

  ‘It just doesn’t make sense to keep your customers’ details on scrappy bits of paper.’ She carried on typing. ‘What time are the boys coming in, I’d like a meeting with you all today.’

  ‘They’re not. We have no pick ups today so they have the day off.’

  Izzy looked at him. ‘They’ve just had two days off over the weekend.’

  ‘There’s nothing for them to do, I don’t waste their time by having them here when there’s no clients.’

  ‘Well I have some ideas planned for those days without clients. I’d like a meeting with them this afternoon to explain them.’

  ‘I don’t think they’ll like that.’

  Izzy stared at him. ‘I don’t care. You want this company to make more money then we all have to put the hours in.’

  Ethan sipped his tea. ‘I’ll ask them, see what they say.’

  He made no move and Izzy resisted the urge to slam things around the desk, or better yet throw things at him.

  ‘I need a favour actually, I have a thing I have to go to next Thursday, a party at the huge Bloomsberg Hotel in London, and I need you to come with me.’

  ‘You’re asking me on a date?’

  ‘No, definitely not a date.’

  ‘Surely you have hundreds of women who would fall over themselves to go on a date with the amazing Ethan Chase.’

  ‘It’s not a date, it’s for work.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Have you heard of Jemima Hornblower?’

  ‘Hmm, the name sounds familiar.’

  ‘She runs that big website…’

  ‘The Hornblower of course.’

  ‘Celebrity gossip and interviews, but loads of articles too.’

  ‘About sex.’

  Ethan shrugged. ‘Sex sells, there’s no doubt about that. She did a piece on us about three years ago, we got a lot of interest in our company after that. She’s holding a party in the rooftop bar of The Bloomsberg Hotel on Thursday and I thought I could go along and persuade her to feature us again or maybe even get her to invest in us or sponsor us. If we could use the Hornblower name on our website it would be a great feather in our cap to have that association.’

  ‘I don’t know, some people might be put off by the association with something as seedy as The Hornblower.’

  Ethan sighed. ‘We run a role playing sex agency, trust me when I say that the people that visit her website are the exact kind of people that might be interested in our product.’

  ‘Well, what do you need me for?’

  Ethan immediately looked embarrassed and it struck her as weird that a man with no scruples when it came to sex had the decency to look embarrassed.

  ‘Because I want our meeting to be strictly professional and if I come with you it will tell her that sex is off the agenda.’

  Izzy stared at him. ‘You slept with her, didn’t you, and now she’s inviting you back in the hope of a repeat performance.’

  ‘I didn’t sleep with her to get her to feature us, it was… let’s say, a happy coincidence. She did the article, I took her out to say thank you and…’

  ‘You thanked her in other ways.’

  Ethan shrugged. ‘I’m not going to apologise for it.’

  ‘Tell you what, if you get the boys to this meeting this afternoon, all of them, and get them to agree to work for the two days we have off next week too, I’ll come to this party with you.’

  ‘As my girlfriend.’

  Izzy swallowed. ‘I’m not kissing you, lord knows where that mouth has been.’

  ‘Fine, so we have a deal?’

  ‘You have to get the boys here first. I get the feeling Jim might be difficult.’

  Ethan stood up and fished his phone out of his pocket. ‘Leave it with me.’

  Chapter Nine

  Ethan strode into the office after effectively avoiding Izzy all day. Annoyingly the office was her domain now. On quiet days, Ethan would normally sit in the office, reading the paper and idly searching the internet for free or cheap advertising opportunities. He would answer the phone, meet with clients when the need arose, but generally he would have the peace and quiet of the office to himself. Now she had stolen his little sanctuary from him and he didn’t like it. He couldn’t sit in the office without feeling that intense pull to kiss Izzy, to make love to her on the sofa or on the floor, which ever was easiest. He couldn’t take his eyes off her and he knew she was finding it uncomfortable. So he had sat in his car, took the van to be cleaned for a very, very long time, taken Psycho for a long walk and generally did everything in his power to avoid being in the same room as her. Though if he was honest he knew he couldn’t keep it up for much longer. Something was going to have to change.

  Izzy was wearing her jacket and looking very professional in preparation for the meeting. Unfortunately she looked very sexy too. She seemed nervous.

  ‘The boys are here, they didn’t like it but I persuaded them,’ Ethan said, sitting down in one of the four chairs she had laid out for them. In truth, Kyle and Gizmo had been more than happy to come in. He’d had to threaten Jim with actual bodily harm before he agreed but he knew Jim wasn’t going to make it easy for her. Jim was the laziest person he had ever met and would be quite happy to be unemployed for the rest of his life if his dad, Ethan’s uncle, hadn’t foisted him onto Ethan.

  The boys walked in, Kyle and Gizmo chatting happily between themselves and Jim, true to form, sulking like a child. She had provided donuts and coffee for them all and she waited whilst they all took one and got themselves settled. They all sat down and he watched as Izzy took a small breath and sat down too.

  ‘Thank you all for coming. I have some exciting plans which I wanted to share with you all and I hope you will be on board in making this company into a big success.’

  It was a corporate line and not from the heart. He hoped for Izzy’s sake that she had something better than this.

  ‘So the idea is that we use some of our days off to do some marketing and self-promotion. We have two free days next week and I’ve got permission from the council to hand out leaflets. I’d like us all to be there. The more people on the streets, the more leaflets we can hand out. I have –’

  ‘I’m not doing that,’ Jim said. ‘I’m just the driver. I didn’t sign up for all that rubbish. That’s down to you and Ethan.’

  Ethan watched her, but surprisingly she remained cool and unruffled.

  ‘From what I understand you are an equal partner in this business, that all profits are split equally four ways. That means you have as much responsibility to be there as the rest of the boys.’

  ‘I think it’s a brilliant idea,’ Kyle said.

  ‘You would. But I’m not wasting my time doing stuff like that. And I only take my orders from Ethan, so I’m not going to be told what to do by some little woman just because she has some stupid business degree.’ Jim folded his arms across his chest.

  Ethan remained quiet. Again Izzy didn’t miss a beat.

  ‘Ethan has employed me to make some changes in this company, and as he has already agreed to do this
, I believe I have his full backing.’

  Jim looked at him, Izzy looked at him. It was make or break time. If he didn’t stand up for her now, she would walk, he knew that. And she was right, in every way. Jim had to start pulling his weight more if he deserved to get the same pay as the rest of them. If they were to be a success they all had to work for it. Handing out leaflets was a great idea. But he still didn’t want Izzy to think she had won. She drove him mad and he certainly wasn’t going to get down on bended knee and kiss her arse like Kyle seemed so keen on doing.

  He leaned over and whispered in Jim’s ear. ‘You better do it or she’ll only start crying.’

  Jim snorted with laughter and Ethan glanced over at Izzy just in time to see her face fall.

  ‘Fine, I’ll do it.’

  But regardless that Jim had just agreed to go along with it, in that brief, spiteful moment, her confidence had been shattered. Ethan sighed. Why did she always make him feel so crap?

  ‘Well… I have created a short speech which I erm…’ She looked around on the desk. ‘I’d like you to memorise.’ She rifled through a folder. ‘I … it… I think it will show our company in a, erm, professional light.’

  She knocked her bottle of water off her desk as she looked for the speech and Jim burst out laughing again.

  The last thing Ethan wanted was to ally himself with Jim, the man was a dick. He was just about to say something to him when he saw Kyle dip his napkin into his cup of coffee. He narrowed his eyes in confusion. Kyle scooped out the dripping mess, balled it in his hands and threw it straight into Jim’s face with a big splat.

  It fell into his lap and Jim blinked for a second before he launched himself at Kyle. Ethan grabbed his shoulder and forced him back in his chair.

  ‘You little prick,’ Jim spat.

  ‘You’re a selfish idiot,’ Kyle said. ‘How many times have you moaned about the lack of money, how many times have you threatened to get a proper job? Izzy is working her arse off to raise our profile, to make more money for you, and you just throw it back in her face. If the job means that little to you then you can piss off.’

  Ethan looked at his little brother with renewed respect. He couldn’t have said it better himself. In fact, he should have said it.