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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 knock. 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.
‘I need to get out more?’ she snapped through the door. The simplicity of the suggestion, pigeon-holing all her problems into one easy sentence, infuriated her. ‘Like you, you mean? Your social life is the talk of the post room. You must be barely ever home. I’m surprised you’re able to fit work in. Don’t you ever wonder what the point of it all is?’
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.
His voice was serious though, steady, making her feel as if he could see perfectly well through her bravado. Her insides felt suddenly squiggly.
‘Because if you were...’
‘Were what?’
Her thumping heart seemed to be working independently of her mind.
Please. Was she actually having a swooning moment over Harry Stephens of all people? After all she’d been through in the past had her body learned nothing? Did her heart have no reservations about reacting to the most unreliable playboy bachelor London had ever seen? Over the past year or so, he’d had more female workers in tears than she’d had hot coffees! She gritted her teeth. Obviously she’d been thrown off balance by discovery of the bet. Her usual defences had been scrambled.
‘If you were thinking about dating again, maybe you’d like to go for a drink,’ he said.
‘With you?’
The question exploded from her lips in the form of a laugh. Because it was laughable, wasn’t it? That after her past experiences she would look twice at someone like him.
‘Your amusement could be construed as an insult, you know,’ he said mildly.
‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘Sorry.’
Stock answer. No excuse required. Always worked on the run-of-the-mill guys in the office, those that dared broach the aloof distance she kept between herself and her colleagues. She could count the times she’d been asked out at work on one hand and, come to think of it, two of them had been in the last month or so. Her cheeks flushed hotly. Now she knew why—because there was a pot of cash waiting to be scooped by the man who managed to land her. She wondered again if Harry was involved.
‘Of course you can,’ he said. ‘No one works twenty-four-seven. Not even you. It’s only a drink. An hour. Everyone has an hour.’
‘I’m busy,’ she said again. ‘I don’t date.’
In Harry Stephens’s world, of course, no meant maybe. He realised it was a simple matter of finding the right approach. One that might appeal to her reluctance to get out there instead of feeding it. Start small. If she hadn’t dated for years, more than a drink or a coffee was going to seem monumental. And most important of all, offer some kind of incentive.
Make her think he could be part of the solution instead of part of the problem.
