Just Friends (The Agency Book 1) Read online

  “Get off me now,” I say as firmly as I can.

  He presses even harder against me, his fingers digging deep into my flesh. “You know what I want,” he hisses into my ear, then he nestles his face against my cheek. “I’m bored with Malcolm. Give me what I want, or I’ll destroy him.”

  I tell myself this isn’t happening . . . it can’t be. I feel like I’m drowning as the weight of his body crushes me against the door. But I’m not underwater. I’m at work and there are people – friends – just the other side of the door. “Get your hands off me and move out of my way, or so help me god, I’m going to start screaming.”

  For the first time, I sense his sleazy-evil-bastard resolve wavering. Did he expect me to break? Did he want my tears? Did he honestly think I’d submit? My confidence grows as I realise I can win. I’m not going to give in and I’m not going to cry. I take a deep breath, and I’m just about to tell him to move away from the door again when I hear a knock, followed by a creak as the door handle turns ninety degrees. Ridley moves out of the way, and I step back to allow Lucille to enter the office. Her arms are full of paperwork.

  “Mr Gates, I have three proposals for you to look through, and Avery Hill needs you to sign off her brief before she sends it to Creative.”

  There’s silence in the room as he takes the papers from Lucille, his eyes fixed on me the whole time. Lucille’s eyes are trained on me too and, heart pounding, I take the opportunity to escape.

  ***

  I desperately wanted to see Ethan tonight, but he’s already gone home, leaving me a Post-it note message: All sorted. We’re driving on Monday. Pick you up around ten.

  I slump forward in my chair, ducking my head behind my cubicle wall so nobody can see me. I brush a tear off my cheek and bite down on my lip. I will not cry. I refuse to crack. I adjust my shirt and gag as the smell of Ridley’s cologne floats from the black chiffon. I can still feel him on me. My stomach heaves as I try to order my thoughts. Then I hear footsteps behind me and Lucille appears holding a blue plastic folder, which she places on Pinkie’s desk before sitting down.

  Lucille smiles and tilts her head sympathetically. “I’m so sorry,” she says in her sing-song accent. The string of pearls draped around her neck bounces off her ample chest as she talks. “I should have barged in there sooner. I heard what he said to you and I know what he’s doing. This is sexual harassment, plain and simple. What else did he do? Did he hurt you?”

  My breath catches in my throat as I exhale with relief. If I’m forced to act against Ridley in the future, at least I have a witness. “He didn’t hurt me . . .” I rub my arm, suddenly remembering how tightly he grabbed me. “He held me, that’s all.”

  Lucille scoots her chair closer to mine and lowers her voice to a gentle hush. “Sweetheart, if he laid his hands on you, then you need to take things further. That man is the dictionary definition of a dirty dog, and he needs putting down.”

  I wrap my arms around myself as the horrific reality sinks in. But I don’t want to acknowledge what he’s doing to me. I want to brush it off, and I don’t want to talk about it. I hate all kinds of attention, but the kind that gets dished up with a side-serving of pity makes me want to puke. I refuse to be a victim. His victim.

  “You can’t let him get away with this. I heard what he said tonight and I’ll back you. You’re not alone.”

  My eyes water at Lucille’s kindness. “You’d do that?”

  She quirks an eyebrow. “You’re damn right I would. I’ve been that man’s secretary for five years. I know what he is. Now, how about we find you some support from high up? Malcolm Barrett is about as useful as a zip on a hat, Diego Vega is still away . . . what about Stella?”

  “Stella? Oh god, no,” I say. “She already thinks I’m emotionally unstable for dousing Stuart Inman with a glass of wine. Stella is my last resort.”

  “Our last resort,” Lucille corrects. “You’re not alone, remember?”

  I smile at her gesture of solidarity. She picks up the blue folder she left on Pinkie’s desk and hands it to me. “What’s this?” I ask as I flick through the folder, which appears to be full of photocopies of emails, photographs, spreadsheets, bank records and . . . oh my god, is it a file on Ridley?

  “It’s yours, and you can do whatever you need with it.” She stands up and rests her hand on my shoulder. “I told you, sweetheart, I know what Ridley Gates is . . . and I’ve been waiting years to give this to someone I trust.”

  I’m stunned. “Are you sure? I mean, what if he finds out you gave it to me?”

  “Then he finds out.” Lucille smiles at me again, her eyes sparkling like black opals.

  “I don’t know what to say. Thank you.”

  She gives me a hug as she leaves. On the Tube ride home I start reading through Lucille’s collection of documents. Given the risks, I can’t help being impressed that a secretary in her sixties has bigger balls than most of the men I know.

  16

  I’VE BEEN WAITING OUTSIDE MY apartment, accompanied by my overnight bag, handbag and laptop bag, for the past ten minutes. Ethan’s never on time for anything, so I should have expected I’d be standing in my street like an idiot for at least half an hour.

  I can’t say I’ve put the time to good use, either. I’ve been wondering and worrying about how I’m going to handle the next couple of days away with him. We need to talk, but the thought of talking about him almost kissing me . . . I’ll admit I’m afraid. I’m afraid of what I’m feeling, afraid of losing control and afraid of having to expose emotions I’d rather hide.

  And then there’s Ridley. The folder Lucille gave me last night contains the most explosive information known to mankind since the Watergate tapes. I kid you not. I need to think long and hard about how – or if – I’m going to use the information, because one wrong step and . . . BOOM. I could be responsible for destroying more than just the life of BMG’s very own Richard Nixon.

  As the minutes tick by, I decide the best course of action might be to tackle the near-kiss issue head-on. No pussyfooting around, no procrastination, no wishing it away . . . just steamroll straight in. But promises are easy to make to yourself when it’s early in the morning, the sun is shining, the birds are singing and you haven’t quite overthought every single possible consequence of steamrolling yet. What if he thinks the near-kiss was the worst mistake of his life? How will I feel if he blames the wine? How will I feel if he suggests round two . . . And why the hell is the thought of round two so enticing that I made a conscious decision to pack sexier-than-normal underwear in my overnight bag?

  Seriously? What the hell is wrong with me? I can’t even think about why I’m thinking about this. Even if Ethan were to confess his undying love for me, it wouldn’t work. I’m totally wrong for him. He dates models, actresses and perfect secretaries. He doesn’t date women like me.

  I hate feeling like this. Violet Archer does not worry about what people think of her. She’s chilled and confident and courageous, remember? Although I usually despise my frosty nickname, I’d much rather be Violet, the aloof office Snow Queen, than Violet, the fragile office drama queen.

  My worries are interrupted by a screech of titanium alloy wheels as Ethan pulls up in his vintage navy Jaguar XK8. I was expecting the BMG “vomit van” – so named because Will threw up in it three times on the way to a shoot for Chez Marie jam in northern France – and I expected our full team, not just him.

  He grins at me through the tinted windows as the car roof retracts. His designer shades and black Henley t-shirt are giving off a bad-boy vibe that destroys my vow to not think about ripping his clothes off and doing rude things with him.

  “Oh, no. No, no, no. I am not travelling up to Cumbria al fresco.”

  “What? Why not?” Ethan pops the boot open so I can put my bags inside.

  “Wind, dirt, cold and flies. And why is it just us? I was expecting the vomit van.”

  “No room. Daniel’s driving up with Wendy, Stuart,
three film techs, two models and a make-up artist.” The car roof makes a “vroom” noise as it closes shut again. Ethan removes his shades and pops them in the glove compartment. “If the sun is shining like a bastard the whole way up the M6, the roof is coming back down. You know the score – we usually only get five days of summer in between the rain, and Nessie is lucky if she gets her top down once a year.”

  “Nessie?” I climb into the car and get comfortable on the ivory leather seats. Ethan loves this car and takes great care of it, but living in central London makes driving about as enjoyable as taking a bath in a bucket of ice.

  “Yeah, Nessie’s her name,” he says as we pull away.

  “You named her Nessie, as in . . . ?”

  “Ferocious-Ness,” he replies, a tiny twitch of embarrassment dimpling his left cheek.

  I laugh. “Nothing to do with the Loch Ness monster, then?”

  “Yeah, totally the Loch Ness monster! Don’t say you haven’t heard of The Family-Ness cartoons? Ferocious-Ness was the main character and he rocked.”

  I think I vaguely remember an animated kids’ TV show featuring a group of monsters that looked like yellow dinosaurs with fat noses and googly eyes. “So, that was your favourite show when you were a kid?”

  “I loved it. I had a teddy called Nessie. He was green and threadbare and my gran had to knit him some trousers just so his legs wouldn’t fall off and—” He stops suddenly and looks at me out of the corner of his eye. “I don’t trust you with any more details. This is highly sensitive material.”

  “I think it’s sweet,” I say with a smile as I start checking through the messages on my phone. This would normally be a good time to launch into a merciless piss-take session, but I seem to have lost my teasing mojo. The only thing that’s running through my brain is a heart-melting image of Ethan as an adorable little Scottish boy.

  We hit traffic and it takes us ages to get out of the city. We’re heading for the Midlands by the time I finally pluck up the courage to speak to him about last Thursday.

  “Okay, so I guess now’s a good a time as any to talk about the kiss that almost happened last week?”

  Ethan freezes, and so do his hands – which wouldn’t be so bad except he’s driving a car that’s heading around a bend. He swerves to avoid hitting an articulated lorry to the sound of a gigantic, roaring beeeeeeeeeeeeeep! “Jesus Christ, Vi!” he exclaims, straightening up the steering wheel. He clutches his chest, his breathing shallow and rapid. “Are you trying to kill us?”

  My heart is racing as I grip the door handle for dear life. “That wasn’t my plan.”

  His breathing calms, but the colour of his face doesn’t. A flush of pink spreads from his neck to his cheeks and then up through to his forehead, bringing tiny beads of sweat bubbling to the boil. I stare at him because I’m finding the physical reaction fascinating for purely scientific reasons.

  He turns and meets my gaze briefly before returning his attention to the road. “Why are you staring at me?”

  “I’m just waiting for you to speak.”

  “Well, I’m not talking about that now.”

  “Why? Because you can’t run away and hide?”

  “No,” he says sharply, meeting my gaze for another millisecond. “Okay . . . yes. And because of reasons.”

  “Such as?”

  He shakes his head in despair. “Such as I’m driving and I don’t want to be distracted.”

  “Okay, how about I drive so you can talk.”

  “Are you insane? No way are you driving Nessie.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you drive like an old lady with cataracts.”

  I summon some mock outrage. “How dare you? I’m cautious, that’s all.”

  “Yeah, well I want us to get to Cumbria by teatime, not next week.”

  His colour slowly fades down a level from beetroot to tomato. It’s funny – he’s always been far more willing to talk about his feelings than I am. He’s an open book. It’s usually him who can’t settle until we thrash through our differences and it’s always me who resists. But he definitely doesn’t want to talk about this, so the next few hours of the drive are spent in awkward silence. A stop at a noisy service station for a sandwich is crippled with awkwardness too. Ethan spends the whole half hour faffing with his phone, his body language screaming ‘leave me the fuck alone’.

  The traffic slows down as we approach Manchester. The radio gives a warning about a serious car accident on the M6 – police and ambulances are apparently in attendance, but they’re reporting a five-mile tailback. It’s two thirty in the afternoon and we’re still an hour and a half away from our hotel in the Lake District.

  “Fuck, this is all we need,” says Ethan, checking his watch. “I wanted to have plenty of time to talk through the shoot with Wendy before tomorrow.”

  “It’ll be fine. And at least we’re fine. There’ll be people up ahead having a much worse day than we are.”

  “You think I don’t know that?” he snaps.

  I fall silent, hurt that’s he’s shouting at me again and wondering how – or if – we’ll ever be able to get our friendship back on track. I stare out of the window and I’m greeted by three bored kids in the back of a beige Ford Focus. I smile at them, and in return one sticks his tongue out, another sticks a pen up his own nose, and the biggest one . . . shit, is the horrible little sod mooning us? He is! Gross.

  A few minutes later, I can’t bear the silence any longer. “Ethan, I get you don’t want to talk about what happened last week, and that’s fine. I’m sure I’ll be able to push it out of my mind and forget about it, but right now you’re being a dick and I’m sick of you yelling at me.”

  He sighs as the car rolls from one mile an hour to a complete stop. For the tenth time. “I’m sorry.”

  “Are you sorry?”

  “What? Yes, of course I am.”

  “You apologised for yelling at me on Friday, and now you’re yelling at me again. Over nothing.”

  “Friday wasn’t nothing,” he says reaching for his shades as the sun beats down through the windscreen. “I was just disappointed that you didn’t trust me.”

  My stomach dips. I can’t bear disappointing people – Ethan most of all. “I do trust you. I just made a promise. One which I did eventually break, by the way. For you.”

  “I realise that now,” he says softly, his eyes hidden by dark glass so I can’t see if his expression matches his tone. “That’s why I apologised. I just expected you to do what I would have done. If our roles were reversed and I had information like that, I’d have put you first.”

  “I guess you must be a better friend than I am.”

  “Oh, Vi, don’t be like that, for fuck’s sake. That’s not what I meant.”

  “It was exactly what you meant. I come up short in the friend department – got it.”

  He sighs and drives the car a further few feet, his jaw tensing the second he’s forced to stop again. “You didn’t come up short. You were just you.”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean? Are you calling me cold or unfeeling or like a bloody machine again?”

  His hands brace tight around the steering wheel. I wish I hadn’t started this. “Again, that’s not what I meant,” he says as a gap in the traffic opens up in front of us. I wait for him to continue, but he says nothing. He shifts into first and crawls forward another few metres. Then he goes back to neutral, pulls the handbrake on and turns away from me, staring out at the speeding traffic on the other side of the motorway.

  I have an impulse to get out of the car, stand in the middle of the road, scream in frustration and start walking. Nessie – a metal prison on wheels – is becoming a twenty-first-century instrument of torture from which there’s no escape. I gaze out of my window again. One of the kids in the Focus makes a snout by pushing his nose flat against his window.

  “I meant you’re always trying to fix other people’s problems for them. That’s all.”


  What was the question again? I think back to ten minutes ago. You were just you. “So, me fixing other people’s problems makes you angry?”

  He winds down his window and rolls up the sleeves of his dark t-shirt. My eyes fix onto his bronzed, defined lower arms and I imagine being held by him. I realise that not only are these fantasies becoming more frequent, but I’m no longer forcing them out of my head. I’m even starting to enjoy the places my debauched brain is taking me – a guilty pleasure.

  “Other people don’t need to be fixed as much, Vi,” he says with forced casualness, one arm resting on the opened window frame. “Me, Max, Malcolm – we’re all big enough and ugly enough to sort out our own problems . . . or we should be.”

  I have literally no idea what he’s talking about. “Max needed my help last week. And I think I can help Malcolm. But I can assure you the last thing I want is to be involved with any of this—”

  “No, that’s not it. Listen, you’re great at fixing stuff. I don’t know what I’d have done without you through all this. I know Max feels the same. But Malcolm? You shouldn’t have to clean up after him. You shouldn’t have to fix other people’s problems when you have problems of your own.”

  I’m still confused. Shit, has he found out about Ridley? No, he can’t have. Lucille wouldn’t have told him. “Ethan, I don’t have any problems.”

  “The hell you don’t.”

  “What? Is this about Stuart, again? I’ve told you that chapter of my life is closed. I have my law. I know where I am.”

  “Screw your law and screw your stupid bet!” He removes his sunglasses, and his icy blue gaze makes me shiver. “You’re running. You were running the first day I met you and you’ve been running ever since. That’s all you ever do – run and hide and build walls around yourself to shut people out. Why does nobody else know about your sister? I only know fragments of information about Ryan – the guy who broke your heart so badly you left the job of your dreams in New York. Why? I don’t even know your parents’ names. I don’t know who your best friend was growing up. I don’t know if you had a pet dog or a pony or a fluorescent-pink unicorn. I don’t know anything about you, yet I care for you so fucking much I . . . I just . . .” His voice breaks up, and I feel my heart break with it. “I want you to realise you need to fix yourself before you think about fixing anybody else.”