Just Friends (The Agency Book 1) Read online

  “I know what’s going on, I’m not stupid. Ridley told me all about poor Carly,” says Delfina. Would now be the right time to tell her she actually is stupid? Anybody who chooses to marry pervy philanderer Ridley Gates has clearly parked their head then forgotten where they’ve left it.

  “Look, this is none of your business,” Ethan snaps.

  “Stuart was talking about you when he said you wait until ‘women are smashed out of their skulls’, wasn’t he? You should have looked after Carly better,” Delfina says.

  Don’t tell her Carly was screwing her husband. Don’t tell her Carly was screwing her husband. I think the irony is burning my brain even more than the anger. “You don’t know the full story, Delfina. Can we talk about something else, please?”

  Delfina wipes the tears from her face, and Wendy passes her a tissue from her purse. “I do not understand men in this country. Brazilian men have much more respect for women. If it wasn’t for my Ridley, I would have no faith in British men—”

  “Oh please, save us. Your Ridley is a vile pig, and the only person who can’t see it is you. Are you blind as well as shallow?”

  Shit. The words are out of my mouth before I can stop them. I know I shouldn’t have said that, but at least I didn’t tell her about the cheating. The entire table falls silent, waiting for the apocalyptic event we all know will follow. If using sarcasm on Delfina is like pulling the wings off a butterfly, then criticising her beloved husband is like ripping off its legs and decorating a cupcake with them.

  Delfina pulls out of Wendy’s hold, stands up and throws me a glare filled with pure hate. My body tenses. But instead of sniping back at me, she runs off. Wendy chases after her, leaving Alyssa and Chip to scowl at me with the intensity of a pair of velociraptors.

  And I feel like shit. Although calling Ridley Gates a vile pig is insulting to every pig in the world, none of this is Delfina’s fault.

  “What’s the deal with Ridley?” asks Daniel, his voice steady and direct. Ethan’s eyes grow wide, urging me not to let the kittens, catnip, kitty litter, tins of tuna and pint of milk out of the bag with the cat. As if I would.

  “I just don’t like him,” I say in a whisper.

  “Nobody does. But there’s obviously more to it than that,” Daniel says.

  I stand, forcing a smile. “It’s been a long day.” I want to say more, but I’m too upset with myself. Instead, I leave the restaurant and head for my room, pretending I don’t notice Wendy and a sobbing Delfina huddled in a stairwell on my way.

  I’m rummaging in my purse for my door key – just metres away from my room – when Ethan catches up with me. “Hey, Violet. Wait up.”

  My body sighs. I put the key back in my purse and stop walking.

  “Are you okay?” he asks, his head bent to the side and his eyes filled with concern.

  “Aside from devastating Delfina for no good reason, you mean?”

  He shrugs. “She’s an idiot.”

  “She didn’t deserve that.” I suck on my bottom lip to stop my tears from falling.

  “Apologise to her tomorrow. It’ll be fine.”

  My eyes glass over, and his face blurs. I take a deep breath. “I feel terrible,” I say with a shaky sob.

  He swings his arm around me and pulls me into his chest. “It’s not your fault.” The delicious smell of his cologne and the feel of his hard body makes me cry even more. “If anything, it’s my fault. I know you were trying to defend me.”

  He strokes my hair gently and my grip tightens around his waist. Our bodies mould together, and his hand moves to cup my cheek, his thumb brushing softly against my warm skin.

  I can’t move. I don’t want to move.

  His fingers slide under my chin, and he lifts my face to his. I feel his breath float across my body, softly tickling my chest, as his eyes search out mine. What is he searching for? He’s been drinking all night. Is he seeking out comfort again?

  I let my arm fall from his waist and take a step back, my back pressing against the wall. I expect him to apologise, but he doesn’t. I expect him to walk away, but he comes towards me. His breathing is fast. My heart rate speeds up and synchronises with it.

  “I should go,” I say.

  “I . . . just wanted to make sure you were okay . . .” He repeats his earlier words, but this time his voice gets lost in his throat. He moves closer again. We’re inches apart, and even though we’re not touching, I can feel him all over me. He rests one of his hands on the wall behind my head, bracketing me against it. His body is hard and strong and he’s close enough that I can smell his skin. He touches my hair again, and my knees wobble.

  “I’m not okay . . .” I say softly.

  “Neither am I.”

  “What are we doing?”

  “This.”

  He brings his lips to mine. His tongue sweeps into my mouth as his hand moves from my hair to my neck, pulling me even closer in to him. My purse drops to the floor as I move both my hands to cup his face. A swell of desire forms in my belly, urging my lips to part wider and taste even more of him.

  But then he pulls away.

  “I’m sorry,” he gasps, rubbing at the back of his neck. “I . . . I . . . don’t want to . . .”

  My eyes frantically search his, but he looks away. What on earth is he thinking? What is he doing? He takes a step back. Then another. And another.

  “I’m so sorry. You have your law, and . . .”

  Fuck my stupid fucking law!

  He backs away again, but then he stops and turns to face me. “We have everything already.”

  “You think we have everything?” I ask, wondering what on earth he means.

  “Yes, our friendship is everything.”

  He turns away again, and this time he leaves. I watch him walk away, my body groaning with loss as he leaves my sight. These feelings I’ve been so determined to ignore are real, aren’t they? And I’m certain now he’s been feeling it too. But for how long? And what the hell do I do about it?

  I pick my purse up off the floor, find my key and retreat to my room, wondering if I’ve just lost my best friend.

  18

  AS YOU’D EXPECT, I DIDN’T sleep well last night. There’s just something about my best friend kissing me – with tongue – that frazzles my brain.

  And when I say frazzle, I mean frazzle.

  I hoped that getting out of the city for a few days would be a wonderful opportunity to order my thoughts. I wanted to use the time away to come up with a plan to help Malcolm. I also wanted to work out how to silence Ridley – for good.

  Most of all, I hoped to find a way to navigate my relationship with Ethan. But I’m no further forward.

  In fact, I feel like I’m stuck in a huge pit of thick, paralysing mud and every move I make is sinking me further towards the bottom. I’m losing control – the thing I hate most – and, because I’m always firmly in the driving seat of my life, it’s bloody hard to stop the panic . . .

  Oh, and Ethan Fraser kissed me.

  Every time my mind wanders back to the present, or to the shoot, or to what the hell I’m going to do once I’m back in London, memories of the kiss creep back into my brain, making my stomach knot and my pelvis ache: his hands in my hair, his lips on mine, the smell, feel and taste of him . . .

  Oh my god, it happened. Ethan Fraser kissed me.

  I want to accept how I feel, but I don’t know what that is. Am I actually falling in love with him? When I think back to all the great times we’ve had over the years – the best ones usually ending with us getting drunk, falling over and vomiting in a bush – our past and present don’t match up. Ethan and I goof around, do daft things, tease each other, bicker over whose turn it is to choose our favourite takeaway establishment and laugh until our sides split. We’re best friends – just friends.

  Maybe I should just be straight-up honest with how I’m feeling and how confused I am. I should tackle this like any other problem needing to be fixed. Maybe I need t
o put up some kind of a fight for him. But not yet. Wow. “Not yet” . . . that’s solid progress from “never”. When did that scary thought get inside my brain? Maybe a time will come when fighting is a far better and less risky option than shutting my feelings away, but I don’t think that time is now.

  ***

  I skip breakfast and frown at my overnight bag, which seems to have skipped sensible clothing. What weather was I expecting? I grew up in rural Yorkshire, so I should have known better. Yet, an hour later, here I am, standing at the summit of a mossy hill wearing thin jeggings, a cotton shirt and a jacket selected for a London summer – as opposed to a halfway-up-a-mountain-in-northernmost-England summer.

  I perch on a drystone wall and watch the tech guys battle the elements to set up their equipment. It feels like the wind is going to blow me Humpty-Dumpty style off the wall at any moment, and the jagged stones are biting into my behind. You could say I don’t enjoy working on location. I was raised a country girl, but give me the city any day. My nipples are so stiff and raw I could hang a wet raincoat and a bag of shopping on them.

  As the sun breaks through a fluffy white cloud, Wendy, Ethan and Daniel set up a great shot with Delfina, who is refusing to make eye contact with me, while Chip tries her best, given the wind, to straighten Alyssa’s hair. When Delfina jumps in the back of the vomit van to change into another outfit, I try to have a word with her, but she won’t even look at me. I tell the van door that I’m sorry about yesterday after she slams it in my face.

  Ethan has been working with Wendy all morning, entirely engrossed in our project, and although he’s given me a wink and a couple of smiles, we haven’t had the chance to speak to each other. To be honest, I’m feeling like a bit of a spare part this morning. As a copywriter, it’s useful to watch the shoot and I’ve scribbled a few copy ideas down on my notepad, but this is Ethan’s baby. He knows exactly what he wants the ad to look like, and he knows how to work with Wendy to make it happen.

  Daniel slides up next to me. “Have you seen Stuart this morning?”

  I hop down from the wall and give my arse a discreet rub. “No, not a word. Did you have breakfast together?”

  Daniel nods, just as his phone buzzes. He takes it out of the pocket of his jeans. “Ah, speak of the devil. It’s Stuart,” he says as he answers the call. “Hi Stuart, where are you? . . . Uh-huh . . . What do you mean you need help? . . . Look, mate, calm down. Don’t you have another pair of shoes? . . . Uh-huh . . . Okay, well the production assistant can go to your room . . . No, he can’t go to your room if you have the key. You’ll have to come up . . . Don’t be silly . . . Look, they’re just shoes and they can be cleaned. See you soon.”

  He puts his phone back in his pocket as a large grin spreads over his face, making his cheeks round like apples. “Trouble?” I ask.

  Daniel starts to laugh. “He was on his way up the hill when he trod in some shit.”

  “Oh.” I imagine how horrific this will be for Stuart’s Italian leather shoes, not to mention his vanity. “That’s too bad.”

  We laugh as Ethan approaches. “What’s up?” he asks Daniel, his eyes briefly fleeting to meet mine.

  “Stuart trod in some shit,” says Daniel.

  “Jesus Christ, is that all? Can he not rub it off on some grass? We’ve been waiting over an hour for him to review our film. How long is he going to be?”

  “He’s on his way up now.”

  Ethan heads back over to Wendy, who is straightening a sparkly halter-necked dress on Alyssa. Wendy has arrived on location in Hunter wellington boots, a canvas jacket and layers of sensible clothing. You can tell she’s a mum – always prepared. I pull my much thinner jacket around me and rub my still-stinging nipples to make sure they haven’t dropped off. There is nothing on earth like nip-freeze. Nothing.

  “Oh my fucking god, it’s Bigfoot!” Ethan shouts.

  I turn around and gasp as everyone else breaks into howls of laughter.

  Stuart makes it up the hill, and we’re all horrified to see that he hasn’t just trodden in your regular everyday animal poo; he’s fallen into something a brontosaurus might have done. Thankfully his head and the top of his chest look clean, but from his abdomen down he’s covered in shit. The wind blows waves of grass around his feet as he trudges towards us, bringing the overbearing aroma of fresh dinosaur dung with him.

  “Jesus Christ, Stuart. What the hell happened?” Daniel asks.

  “I told you I needed help,” he moans, holding his hands high to stop himself from touching his body. This is pointless because his hands are covered too. “I lost my footing climbing a fence. Thought I’d fallen in mud, but I think it’s sheep shit.”

  “You reckon?” howls Ethan.

  “I don’t think a sheep could produce that much,” says the ever-practical Wendy. “And sheep excrement is usually darker and more solid.”

  “Thank you for your input, Farmer Giles,” Stuart says, just as Delfina appears from the vomit van in an ochre knitted mini-dress.

  “Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god!” she shrieks when she sees him. Her body convulses, then she starts to retch. “I will be sick! Why have you done this?” She shields her mouth and nose with her hands and dives back into the van.

  “Don’t you dare be sick in that van,” shouts Stuart. “I have to drive back to London in that, and nothing stinks like puke.”

  “Erm, you might want to have a smell of yourself, Stuart.” Ethan is clearly enjoying Stuart’s predicament to the max.

  “Cow!” Wendy shouts. “It’s definitely not sheep shit. I’d guess cow shit.”

  “I don’t give a fuck which animal’s arse this stuff came out of.” Stuart looks down at his ruined Balmain jeans. “I just need clothes and shoes quickly. They won’t let me in the hotel looking like this. The Hayfield is a five-star establishment!”

  “I’ll go and get them for you,” I say, figuring I’ll take the opportunity to put a vest on under my shirt and try to warm my nipples up a bit. They’re in a climate zone all of their own at the moment.

  “Erm, no thanks,” says Stuart.

  “Why?”

  He looks a bit embarrassed, but all eyes are on him, waiting for an answer. “Well, I don’t want you getting my underwear.”

  As if I haven’t seen his underwear before – and the sorrowful appendage that dwells beneath it. “Are you being serious?”

  “I’ll go,” says Daniel. “Come back with me, and I’ll see if the hotel has something I can hose you down with.” Stuart starts to follow Daniel down the hill. He’s walking carefully, but he slips on some moss and lands on his bottom. “Ordinarily I’d help you up, but today I’m not touching you,” Daniel says as Stuart clambers to his feet.

  ***

  The shoot continues until late. When the sun starts to set over the vast landscape of green hills and navy-blue lakes, Wendy declares she’s lost her light and we have all the shots we need for the ad. We finish up and have a late dinner.

  Back in my hotel room, I reward myself with a muscle-tingling bath. The smell of grapefruit-scented bath bubbles cleanses the aroma of the outdoors from my skin, and I take a few soothing moments to think about today. Aside from Stuart falling into a pile of shit – hereafter remembered as “karma at its finest” – today felt totally normal. Ethan was naturally absorbed in creating the ad, and it’s been a productive and creative day. We worked together just like old times – or rather, like last night’s kiss never happened. And I’m not sure how I feel about that. On the one hand, I’d be ecstatic if it meant our friendship could go straight back to normal. But on the other hand . . . I want to find out if he really is feeling what I’m feeling. Could we have an even better relationship if we became something more than just friends?

  I sigh. It’s 11 p.m. and I know I could easily stay up all night asking myself these questions. I put on my pyjamas and climb into bed, twisting my still-damp hair up into a hairband. I switch on my Kindle and start reading one of the many books I seem t
o collect but rarely get a chance to read, determined to lose myself in someone else’s love story.

  ***

  Bang! Bang! Bang!

  I climb out of bed to the sound of some twat with a death wish hammering at my door. I’ve never wanted to kill somebody so much in my entire life. I was enjoying a rather lovely dream involving Tom Hardy taking me on an adventure up the Nile. And no, that isn’t a euphemism for sex, although if my dream hadn’t been bulldozed I’m sure Tom and I would have ultimately explored our feelings for one another in a long-lost tomb of a forgotten pharaoh. Who says my passion for Egyptology is dull?

  I thunder my way to my door, leaving a cloud of angry mist in my wake as the knocking continues. My hair’s a damp matted mess, my vest is erring towards indecent, and my stripy pink pyjama bottoms have a blob of orange body scrub stuck to them. I usually don’t care what I look like, but when I open the door to reveal Ethan brandishing a bottle of wine and two glasses, I suddenly feel like the tail end of a donkey.

  “Ethan? What the hell are you doing here? It’s the middle of the night!” He cocks his head to one side and smiles a mischievously sexy smile, but it doesn’t have the usual effect when my eyelids are stuck together with sleep. I still want to kill him.

  “Firstly, I’m here because I want to talk to you. Secondly, it’s only eleven thirty.”

  I gasp and run my hand through my hair, but stop when my fingers get tangled in a knot so large it would make the perfect home for a colony of ants. There’s also something sticky in the knot. Ah, more body scrub. I pull my hair out of the hairband, attempt to smooth the ants’ nest down, then scrape it up into a ponytail. “Only eleven thirty? It can’t be.”

  “Yup, I’m afraid so,” he says with a wine-infused slur.

  “Well, what do you want?”

  He twists his face at the abruptness in my tone. “I want to talk to you, but preferably not in the hotel corridor.”

  I roll my eyes then move aside. His eyes drift to my indecent vest top as he walks into the room. Or rather, they drift to what’s underneath the indecent vest top. “I hear Malcolm Barrett isn’t the only one interested in my tits,” I say as I close the door behind me.