Just Friends (The Agency Book 1) Read online

  “Ethan, let go of him!” Stella’s volume alone should be enough to make Ethan back off, but he’s in full action-idiot mode, hanging onto Ridley like a rogue FBI agent with a grudge.

  “You fucking creep,” roars Ethan, clutching Ridley’s neck with one hand and punching him in the stomach with the other.

  Stella raises her voice even higher. “Ethan! I said let him go! Or I won’t be able to save your job.”

  Ethan releases Ridley by shoving him into the wall. Ridley falls to the ground, his hand clasping his throat. “What the hell . . . ?” he groans, wheezing for air.

  I stare between each person, wondering how I’m going to explain this. Ethan straightens his tie and shrugs his jacket back onto his shoulders. I can’t even look at Malcolm.

  “Anybody mind telling me what the bloody hell is going on here?” thunders Stella. She fixes her ice-cold stare on Ridley as he staggers to his feet. “I don’t know how out of the loop I am, but I assume this is connected to you cheating on your wife with a client, taking cocaine with her until she almost died, and then blackmailing Malcolm.”

  “I’ll deal with this,” interjects a nervous Malcolm, as if he thinks he can still try to keep the lid on his secret.

  “The hell you will,” Stella replies. She’s standing with her hands on her hips, her red tailored dress the only splash of colour in the grey bathroom, surrounded by three men in grey suits.

  “Unless you’ve forgotten, I’m CEO of this agency, and I’ve told you I’m dealing with it,” he says.

  Stella closes in on him, and all of a sudden I’m in the African savanna watching a lioness stalk an elderly gazelle whose survivor-brain doesn’t work half as fast. “Okay, let’s see you deal with it then.”

  Jesus Christ, do we need a turf war on top of everything else?

  Malcolm walks up to Ethan and glares at him. “Fraser, you’re suspended until further notice.”

  Ethan just rolls his eyes and laughs, but I’ve had enough. “You call that dealing with it, Malcolm?” I snap.

  “Miss Archer, this is absolutely none of your business.” Malcolm is standing right next to me, but he isn’t paying me the courtesy of looking at me when he speaks.

  “Malcolm, you know this is my business.”

  “You want to do this now?” he scoffs, trying to front me out. “I thought you were smarter than this, but maybe Fraser has rubbed off on you.” He turns to look at Ethan. “Get out of here, Fraser. Get out of my agency.”

  I can’t believe what I’m hearing. “Malcolm, you don’t know what this is about. You can’t suspend him.” He squints at me, and I can see the confusion on his face. I will him to realise what’s happening here. This isn’t about your secret. Drop it, please, drop it.

  “This is my agency. I can do what the hell I like, and if you don’t like it, I’ll suspend you too.”

  Oh, shit. Okay, I wasn’t expecting that. He’s totally lost the plot.

  “Malcolm, I wouldn’t do this if I were you,” croaks Ridley. He grimaces, rubbing his throat. “This is about her . . .”

  Everyone turns to look at me. Stella’s eyes narrow into a glare that could wilt freshly cut daisies, and I can feel Malcolm scrutinising me, looking between me and Stella and Ethan. I have no idea what he’s thinking. Malcolm turns to Ridley, whose swollen face is already blackening into bruises. “Oh, I get it. I see what’s going on. I always thought Violet had good taste.” His eyes lock onto mine with scorn. “Which one of these two are you screwing?”

  Before I can answer, Ethan lunges at Malcolm, striking out with his already bloodied fist and delivering a blow to the side of his head which sends the older man crashing into the sink units, landing in a heap on his backside. Malcolm’s hand shoots to his head. “You’re fired, Fraser, do you hear me? Fired!”

  “Ethan, get the hell out of here now!” yells Stella. I stand frozen in shock at the rapidly escalating bloodbath.

  “He’s not firing me because I quit,” Ethan shouts, and I could kill him for acting so thoughtlessly. He walks straight past me without a word and leaves the room.

  Stella helps Malcolm to his feet, but he practically shoves her out of the way with grumbles and more threats about what he’s going to do to Ethan. “I have no idea what the hell this is all about,” she says. “But Ridley, if this is down to you, then I’ll be the one beating the shit out of you. I suggest you and Malcolm sort this mess out before the board gets to hear of it.”

  Stella ushers me out of the bathroom with her, leaving the two men to lick their wounds. The corridor has become home to a small audience, which, after a fierce glare from Stella, scatters to the four corners of the office. Will launches a paper aeroplane into the crowd and a group of interns rugby-tackle each other to the ground for it. Lucille – who has been guarding the bathroom door the entire time – receives a “Thank you” from Stella before returning to her desk.

  Once we’re alone, Stella leads me round the corner to a quiet area of the lobby. “Violet, I want to know two things, and I don’t want you to be offended by the first. Was Malcolm right about you having a relationship with either Ridley or Ethan?”

  “No!” I say quickly, grossed out by the first option, but feeling guilty about the second. Does a kiss constitute a relationship?

  “Good. Second. Did Ethan give them what they deserved in there?”

  I want to give the right answer, but as I don’t know what that is, I opt for the truth. “On balance, Ridley deserved more.”

  A look of quiet reflection sweeps across her face before turning into a faint smile and a slight raise of her eyebrows. “I see. Well, in that case, I think it’s about time I sorted out this mess once and for all.”

  “You mean . . . sort out Malcolm and Ridley?”

  “No, I don’t actually. They can sort themselves out. I’m talking about what’s best for my own life, and it looks like now’s the right time to unleash the dragon.”

  21

  I’M THANKFUL THAT THE TUBE ride from Bank to Piccadilly Circus only takes twenty minutes, because as usual on this line, the carriage is absolutely rammed. Annoyingly, I’ve no choice but to spend the entire journey holding onto a pole whilst standing directly under a fat sweaty man’s armpit. For an added bonus, I also have an old lady’s tartan shopping trolley digging into my legs every time the train jerks on its tracks.

  To make matters worse, I don’t even know if Ethan headed straight home after he was fired, so the battle scars – stench-induced nausea and bruised heels – could all be for nothing. I’ve texted him three times since I left the office but he hasn’t replied. I’d ring Rory, but I know he’s at a concert in Berlin. I’d start messaging his other friends, but Ethan is one of the world’s worst Facebook-friend collectors. He barely knows who most of his thousand-plus nobodies are, so I’d have no chance of distinguishing a real friend from some girl he met in a bar once. I don’t know how he finds the time to maintain such a huge fanbase. His timeline must be permanently clogged with drivel: football talk he isn’t interested in, photos of people’s kids he doesn’t know and mindless, duckface selfies from the contingent of hangers-on he seems to attract. Why do women pull those ridiculous faces? Has any man alive in the history of the planet ever said, “I thought you were just okay before, but now you’ve contorted your face to look like a constipated duck, I can see you’re the hottest girl alive?” Nope, never happened, has it? I need to have my finger on the pulse for my work, but I don’t get this craze. In fact, I’m wondering if the RSPB should jump on the duckface bandwagon in order to raise funds for Britain’s waterfowl when my train pulls into Piccadilly.

  I get off the Tube and make my way to the surface via a succession of escalators to the tune of Coldplay’s ‘The Scientist’. “Yes, I wish somebody had bloody told me it would be this hard,” I mutter to myself as the lyrics hit home. I throw a couple of pound coins into a cap at the feet of a dreadlocked keyboard player. He shoots me a wink. I thank him (and Chris Martin) for the life
lesson.

  I make the ten-minute walk from Eros’s statue, through Theatreland and up Lexington Street to Ethan’s penthouse on Broadwick Street. It’s almost 7 p.m., so I’m walking shoulder to shoulder with hordes of tourists on their way to the West End’s many theatres and bars. It’s an exciting area on any night of the week, but tonight a new show is premiering, so some of Soho’s backstreets have been cordoned off to make way for the celebrity and VIP guests and their entourages.

  I take the lift to Ethan’s apartment and ring the bell. I’m not sure what’s going to greet me – it could be nothing at all as I’ve no idea whether he’s home. Sure enough, there’s no answer, but I try again, and then again, hoping I haven’t had a wasted journey.

  And then he opens the door.

  And I do my best not to laugh myself into the ground, because the last thing I expected him to be wearing was a bag of frozen peas.

  I suck in my cheeks to stop myself from giggling. “I’m guessing that hurts a little.”

  “Yup.” He grimaces and stands back to let me in. I’ve already mentioned that Ethan’s place is the size of a cupboard. It costs a small fortune to rent, but it’s painfully tiny. In this city, if you opt for ‘location, location, location’ over practicality, it usually means you have more money than sense and an ego that’s writing cheques your body will have to run itself into the ground to cash. Sadly, this is Ethan to a T.

  Still, I have to concede that the penthouse is impressive. It has an industrial feel to it with exposed brick walls, original painted Victorian pipework and restored wooden ceiling beams. Like Max, Ethan has decorated every room white, but unlike Max, there are no paintings or prints on his walls – instead he has classic guitars and framed album covers: Fleetwood Mac (I think), the Rolling Stones (I’m sure) and Coldplay (of course). It’s the epitome of cool bachelor pad and it suits him.

  I go straight to his bathroom and rummage around in his cabinets for the box of medical stuff he produced when I was helping him build flat-pack furniture and I nailed my thumb to the back of a bookcase. Yes, there was blood. Yes, I cried. Yes, I’ve tried to blank out how much of a wuss I was.

  When I find the box I return to the sitting room, taking a seat next to Ethan on his charcoal-grey corner sofa. “What on earth were you thinking?” I ask as I open the box and take out cotton wool and antiseptic cream. “Did you honestly think beating the living daylights out of Ridley Gates would end well?”

  “No, but it felt great.”

  “Did it? Doesn’t look too great from where I’m sitting. Give me your hand.”

  He puts the peas down on the table and cautiously does as he’s told. “What are you going to do? I don’t think I want you to touch it.”

  I roll my eyes at him. “Don’t be a baby.” Men, eh? One minute they’re Bruce-Willis-in-a-vest-style action heroes, next minute they revert to type and wimp out because of a couple of scratches. I manoeuvre his hand onto my lap and dab some antiseptic lotion onto his cut knuckles.

  “Argh! Jesus Christ, that stuff burns like fuck.”

  “Oh my god, you’re such a child. Just hold still. This will only take a second.” I attach a few strands of cotton wool to his hand with some tape, hoping that will keep the antiseptic in and the cut clean, but I have no real clue how to do first aid. “Give me your lip.”

  “What? No fucking way!”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yes, seriously. I’m getting a very distinct Nurse Ratched vibe from you here.”

  I put on my best attempt at an evil-nurse face. “Do you want me to sedate you?”

  He shivers. “Okay, now you’re scaring me.”

  I laugh and move closer to him. He flinches, and I raise my eyebrows just enough to let him know he’s being ridiculous. He grudgingly gives in and braces himself for the sting. How the hell would he have coped in the trenches? I dab some cream onto his cut lip. “There, all done.” I put everything back in the box and close the lid, snapping the metal clasps on each side. “Was that so bad?”

  “Yes.” He returns the peas to his cheek. “And I suppose I’m going to get a lecture now.”

  “You are, but I’m going to tell you you’re an idiot first.”

  He pouts. “I already know that.”

  “So . . . ?”

  “So what?”

  “So, why are you such an idiot?”

  He removes the peas again and draws in a deep breath. “I was angry.”

  “Yeah, so was I, but . . .” I look at him and can’t help feeling a swell of gratitude, even if what he did was stupid. “Look, I would have loved to have slapped the shit out of Ridley Gates’s smug face myself, but he’s a director in our agency.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I quit . . . and I was fired, remember?”

  “How could I forget?” My mood darkens as I realise that, for the first time in three years, I’ll be going to work without him tomorrow. “So what are you going to do?”

  His face bursts into a grin. “Get a new job, I guess.”

  “I’ll come with you,” I say in a flash. “Doesn’t matter where.”

  He pulls me into a tight hug which sadly only lasts for moments because he shoots to his feet. “We need to celebrate our future then. I’ll get us a drink.”

  He goes to the kitchen and returns with two glasses and a bottle of whisky. I hate whisky. If evil had a taste, it would be whisky. If Satan were real he would live up a mountain in Scotland and whisky would be the flavour of his piss. I thank him as he hands me a glass, and I take a tiny, polite sip, but then I twist my nose and cough as my throat burns.

  He laughs at me, but I don’t mind. I love his laugh. “You enjoying your drink?” he asks.

  I swallow and then giggle. “No, not really.”

  “Do you want something else?”

  “No, I just want to talk.” I put my glass down on the coffee table and turn to face him. “What happened back there, Ethan?”

  He takes a long drink and swirls the whisky around in his glass, the amber liquid lapping from one side to the other in waves. His face is etched with regret and his eyes seem to retreat. “I’m sorry I behaved like that. I couldn’t help it. I was just so fucking angry I couldn’t even see straight. All I could think about was hurting him.”

  “I know Ridley’s a pig, but . . . I’ve never seen you like that before.”

  He looks at me like there’s a hundred things he wants to say, but I only hear silence. For once I can’t read him. “You’ve never seen me like that because I’ve never felt like that.”

  “I was dealing with it,” I say softly, a slight tremble in my voice.

  He clenches his jaw. “You were upset . . . I . . .” He turns his attention back to swirling his whisky for a moment. Why is he finding it so hard to talk to me? I don’t usually have to draw Ethan’s feelings out like this. He isn’t me. I’m the closed book – he’s always been completely open and unguarded.

  “I wanted to protect you.”

  “I don’t need protecting, Ethan, I’m—”

  “The hell you don’t!”

  My breath catches in my throat and my heart leaps. I don’t understand. I’ve never given him cause to believe I was fragile. We sit in silence again, intimidated by unspoken words.

  “You’re my best friend,” he says at last.

  “I know. And you’re my best friend too.”

  “Remember when I said I thought we were more than friends?”

  My stomach takes a sky dive. “Um . . . yeah.”

  “Well, ‘friends’ just doesn’t seem the right word. It’s not enough. It doesn’t explain what you mean to me.” He bites on his bottom lip, and there’s hesitation in his eyes. “Do you think soulmates is the right word?”

  Wait, aren’t ‘soulmates’ supposed to end up together?

  “Maybe,” I say. “I mean, I know we’re great friends who know each other inside out . . . but sometimes I feel as though we’re two strangers who don’t understand each other at all.” />
  “I understand you. I always have.”

  He looks hurt, and my instinct is to hold him, but I’m too afraid to reach out. “I know you think you understand me, but I don’t think anyone ever has. Not really.” I lean in close to him and whisper, “I’m pretty weird, you know?”

  “You are, and that’s what I love about you. That’s why I think we’re soulmates, and I know that’s a bit of a girly word, but I can’t think of anything better.” My eyes lock with his. The intensity in his gaze is drawing me in so deep that I panic and look away from him. I want to know what he’s thinking, but at the same time I’m absolutely petrified. “Look, I’m just trying to tell you that you mean more to me than anyone, and that’s why I did what I did. The thought of him hurting you . . . I just couldn’t let him get away with that.”

  My heart is pounding so fast in my chest I think it might shatter. The beat is like a drum, and the lyrics which keep playing over and over in my head match the rhythm: Soulmates are friends, friends are platonic. Soulmates are friends, friends are platonic. Soulmates are friends, friends are platonic. Da-dum, da-dum, da-dum.

  “What are you thinking?” he asks.

  “Hmm?” His question breaks my daydream, and my eyes are forced to meet his again. But I can’t speak. I don’t have the right words, and the words I do have terrify me. “Nothing really.”

  “I know we still need to talk about what happened in the Lakes . . . and last week in your apartment.”

  Oh. Shit. And. Hell. I don’t want to go there again. I’m not ready. I pull my legs up onto the sofa and tuck my knees in under my chin. I know, the body language couldn’t be any more obvious – leave me the fuck alone.

  “The Lakes scared me,” he says, his accent more pronounced than normal. He always gets more Scottish when he’s angry, but when he’s drinking whisky he may as well paint his face with woad and wrap himself in the Saltire.

  “Why?”

  “Because, at first, I hadn’t expected any of this to happen. Not with you. Then all of a sudden – when we were in the Lakes – I wanted it.” He closes the gap between us on the sofa, and my stomach cartwheels when I feel his fingers rest lazily against mine. “I can’t describe how I feel, but I know I’m terrified of ruining everything we have.”