It's Complicated (The Agency Book 2) Read online

  “Is there something you can do?” Ethan asks Daniel, stress making his voice crackle. “I can’t go up against BMG on this one. Ridley Gates is leading their bid, and as much as I hate that slimy fucker more than I’ve ever hated any man in my entire life, I have no chance of beating him on my own. I’m not a salesman and I don’t have anywhere near enough experience. Can you try to talk to Stella again?”

  “No, I can’t. And after the bollocking she gave me yesterday, I’m lucky I still have a job.” His body deflates and his shoulders slump. I’ve never seen Daniel like this. I think back to the time he hit on me when we worked at BMG. Even though I knocked him back, he was a perfect gentleman. He’s one of the most self-assured guys I know. “Stella has given me Jelly Whizz, which is the equivalent of grounding me for a week and taking away my PlayStation. I hate working on kids’ brands. I don’t understand children and I don’t like them.”

  “Christ, you sound like the bloody Child Catcher,” says Ethan. He’s trying to inject humour into the situation, but I wish he’d rein it in. Daniel looks like he’s going to implode. He scowls at Ethan then gets back to his work, but I’m too curious to let it go.

  “So, what exactly happened?”

  “Jared Taft’s sister happened.”

  My heart skips a beat. I exchange a worried look with Ethan, and I know he’s thinking the same thing – Daniel has broken the no-fraternisation clause in his contract.

  “Are you telling us you boned Helena Kay?” Ethan asks with all the subtlety of a hammer to the skull. Helena is BMG’s marketing manager and one of those women you don’t try to get to know because of her natural resting bitchface.

  Daniel shakes his head. “No. God, no. Helena scares me. I boned . . . I mean, I had a relationship with Taft’s other sister, Rachel.”

  I didn’t know Jared Taft had another sister, and judging by the look on Ethan’s face, he didn’t know either. “Is the relationship over?” I ask.

  Daniel nods, struggling to make eye contact. “Let’s just say it didn’t end well. She’s married; her husband found out, and he happens to be an old friend of Stella’s. Hence, I’m off the bid.”

  Ethan sits back, his brow pleated in a frown and his hand kneading his jaw pensively. “How pissed off was Stella?”

  “Metaphorically speaking, imagine her putting my balls in a vice, tightening the grip and crushing them to dust.” Ethan winces, and I cross my legs in sympathy. “I thought she was going to fire me. Small mercy I’m still here given the roasting I got.” He sighs deeply, as if the weight of the world is squashing him like one of his metaphorically crumpled balls.

  “Do you love Rachel?” I ask, my gaze flitting briefly to Ethan.

  “Yeah, I do.” Daniel raises his eyes to meet mine for the first time and smiles sadly. “Rachel decided to try to patch things up with her husband, and I hope they’re happy. These things happen, I guess.”

  I can tell he’s putting a brave face on it. “I’m so sorry.”

  He waves my apology away. “Unfortunately these things happened when I had a ridiculous ‘fraternisation’ ban in my partnership contract. The only reason I still have my position is because I only got involved with the sister of a work-related person, which – I could argue – is technically not covered by the clause. I’d like to think I kept my job because Stella values me as a junior partner, but given the arse-kicking she gave me yesterday, I have no doubt that if Rachel had been the client instead of her brother, she’d have returned my investment.” Daniel gathers a few files and places them in his briefcase.

  “Where are you off to?” Ethan asks.

  “Market research at a nursery in Islington – with kids who will be eating sweets. There will be sick and snot and . . . well, obviously I’m going to have the time of my life.” He walks to the door and opens it, but stops for a moment. His dark-blonde hair shines like gold under the halogen lights of the corridor outside our office. “Oh, and this is none of my business, but if you want my opinion on your relationship, you have three choices. You can break it off, Violet can find a job at another agency, or you can continue hiding it and hope to hell Stella never finds out. I had a very close call, but you two are a whole other ball game. If Stella finds out Ethan broke his contract, she will fire him.”

  Daniel leaves the office. His words hang heavy in the air behind him, making my stomach knot. I think back to five months ago. I had doubts about joining Tribe, but Ethan talked me into it. I followed him here because he said he needed me, and I admit I didn’t want to give up the best of us, which is our work relationship. Staying at BMG with a director who tried to blackmail me into sleeping with him was obviously far less desirable, so I chose Tribe. But maybe I should have struck out on my own. My thoughts are interrupted by Max as he returns to his desk with his rolled-up comic book stuffed under his arm.

  “Can you try to be more careful, Max?” says Ethan. His voice is crippled with anxiety. “Imagine if Stella had walked through that door ten minutes ago instead of Daniel.”

  “Okay, I’ll be more careful, but Daniel’s a good guy. He won’t grill the bacon.”

  “Grill the bacon?” Ethan repeats, his face screwed up in confusion.

  “Yeah, grill the bacon. You know, tell Stella.”

  “Do you mean spill the beans?”

  “Spill the beans? That’s stupid. What does that even mean?”

  “It means whatever you thought ‘grill the bacon’ meant.”

  Max and Ethan continue to bicker about beans and bacon, but I’m not listening. All I can think about is Daniel’s warning, the panic in Ethan’s voice, and the realisation that any hope I had of him tackling Stella about our relationship has been completely shattered.

  3

  THE LAST TWO WEEKS HAVEN’T been the greatest. Daniel – the guy who never loses his cool – lost his cool and has been haunting the office like a lovesick teenager, snapping at everybody, ever since he told us about his break-up. Max, somehow, has convinced himself that his loyalty to Tribe will ensure Stella makes him the new studio manager. He is now certain that he’s heading for the promotion of his dreams. We’ve tried to tell him that may not be on the cards given she thinks he’s an idiot, but he won’t listen. I dread him crashing back down to earth.

  Finally, and most tragically, Ethan has developed a horrible case of “fuck it all”. One minute he’s buzzing about leading on the JET Financial account; the next, he’s so convinced of his impending catastrophic failure that he’s talking about jacking it all in and heading off to Ibiza to run a bar with his brother. I’ve never had to convince Ethan that he’s capable of conquering the world before, he’s always been the one building me up, so the role reversal has been strange to say the least.

  And not once has he mentioned telling Stella about us.

  Stella returned from the States yesterday, so today we’ve all been summoned to her home for brunch. It’s 10 a.m. when Gabriel, Stella’s ever-loyal Catalonian assistant, opens the front door of her extremely smart terraced Georgian house in Paulton’s Square. Everything about Stella exudes the possession of a prestigious SW postcode, and her Chelsea home is exactly how I’d imagined: classy, airy and decorated in white. I must be missing something with the white as Ethan and Max also have decidedly bleached-out homes. Maybe it’s a feng shui thing. A sign of a pure, uncluttered, organised mind and a straightforward life. Hmm, maybe I should give that a try. Following Stella Judd’s path to getting what you want in life is something every woman should embrace.

  Daniel Noble is already sitting cross-legged in a comfortable chair, up to his ears in a mountain of paperwork. One wall of Stella’s sitting room is lined with bookcases, and a gigantic print of a red poppy hangs on the opposite wall – the whitewashed room’s only splash of colour. I scan her shelves to find books I don’t recognise; thrillers, crime fiction and bios of trailblazer businesswomen intermingle with self-help manuals I could probably make good use of. I decide we don’t own any books in common, so we pr
obably don’t have anything else in common either.

  Gabriel asks us if we’d like a coffee. I decline in favour of water. Max and Daniel both order black. I smooth down the skirt of the floral boho-chic dress I bought last week and wonder why I’m wearing it. I look like I go to festivals in the rain. I expected to stick out like a hedgehog in a bikini but, to my astonishment, when Stella enters the sitting room I see she’s swapped her usual killer designer dresses for rolled-up jeans and a crisp white shirt. I’ve never seen a dressed-down-Stella before, but even in jeans she looks the epitome of sophistication.

  She’s accompanied by two men. The older man looks to be in his sixties and is introduced as Arthur Lovett, Tribe’s new chairman and one of six senior partners who own over eighty per cent of the agency. Arthur is the former CEO of Lovett Ives marketing agency and – weirdly – the father of one of Stella’s four ex-husbands. He’s tall with dark-grey hair and a full beard. His eyes are bright turquoise, and a layer of crinkled skin overlays chiselled features which I’m certain would have made him super good-looking in his youth. His tweed three-piece suit and Victorian Gothic cravat are a different matter, however. God only knows why he’s come dressed for dinner in Transylvania rather than brunch in Chelsea.

  The other man introduces himself as Lucas Bartle, our MD and the former managing director of film studio Diablo Brown. Like Arthur, Lucas is a senior partner, but whilst Arthur voluntarily assimilated his agency, contacts, customers and experience into Tribe, Lucas had little choice. If he hadn’t agreed to Tribe’s buyout, rumour has it he’d have been forced into bankruptcy.

  Lucas looks to be around fifty, with light-grey hair which is swept back in waves that meet his shoulders. He is casually dressed in a dark shirt with light jeans. He greets all of us in turn, exuding charm, confidence and a seemingly genuine affability. I decide I probably like him – and that Ethan definitely will.

  “Is our young Mr Fraser always this late?” Arthur Lovett asks, his deep voice strained with agitation.

  Stella’s hands shoot to her hips. “He is, and I’ll kick his arse when he gets here.”

  An oversized and overly loud mantel clock on the fireplace ticks away every second of Ethan’s lateness as all six of us try to make small talk and tiptoe around the fact he’s missing. For fuck’s sake, if he’s going to be a junior partner in an ad agency, he needs to act like an executive, not a doesn’t-give-a-shit summer intern.

  “I must say, I was a little surprised you made that kid a partner in Tribe, Stella,” says Lucas Bartle, and I switch seamlessly from liking him to not liking him. “I heard his employment at BMG ended with a brawl in the men’s toilets. Did he really beat up Ridley Gates and Malcolm Barrett?”

  Stella’s gaze flits to me briefly, but her countenance remains steady. “Yes, he did. But they both deserved it.”

  “I didn’t know about this, Stella,” interjects Arthur, his voiced raised slightly. “What on earth happened? I heard Barrett McAllan Gray had gone to the dogs, but goodness me, a brawl in the office toilets? Really?”

  “Gentlemen, I’m afraid you’re going to have to trust me on this,” says Stella wearily. “I can’t give out specifics, but Malcolm Barrett and Ridley Gates are both extremely lucky they’re not behind bars. Ethan was not at fault.”

  Lucas’s eyebrows arch with interest, but Arthur looks unconvinced. “I’ve known you almost thirty years,” Arthur says. “Forgive me for remembering all the times your judgement has been off.”

  “Like when I divorced your son?”

  “Like when you married my son in the first place. You always ran rings around that boy.”

  They both erupt into laughter and the mood begins to lift. Thank Christ for that. Ethan’s self-doubt-itis would progress to terminal if he knew Tribe’s senior partners were questioning his suitability this early in the game.

  “I’ve already got to know Daniel, but what about you, sir?” Arthur says to a bewildered-looking Max. “What will you be doing at Tribe?”

  “Art.”

  I hold my breath, waiting for Max to finish his sentence, but nothing comes. One word is literally all we’re getting.

  “Art, eh? Very good. I do love you creative fellows. Always so enigmatic.”

  If everyone is thinking what I’m thinking, then they’re translating Arthur’s “enigmatic” to “totally fucking weird”.

  “And what about you, young lady? How has a pretty little thing like you found yourself amongst this lot?”

  Jesus, could he be any more patronising? Someone please call the 1950s and tell them my white-male-privilege-detection radar has found their missing person.

  “I’m Tribe’s creative director, Mr Lovett.”

  Arthur’s eyebrows shoot to the heavens. “Our creative director? How old are you? You look like you’ve just left school.”

  I straighten my body, gaining a few extra centimetres of height. “I’m twenty-eight.”

  Arthur smiles weakly. “Having a twenty-eight-year-old creative director seems almost as ridiculous as having a twenty-eight-year-old managing partner.”

  “Why?” I say, a little more sharply than I intended. Shit, Violet. Engage brain before mouth. Do NOT piss off the chairman of the board. “I’m sorry, Mr Lovett, but my age is irrelevant – as is Ethan’s. We were the best creative team in the city for three years, and I know how to advertise. I have an AdAg award for Advertising Campaign of the Year proudly displayed on my mantelpiece to prove it.”

  That’s not true. Owning an AdAg award is the advertising world’s equivalent of owning an Oscar, but given the trophy looks like a pile of glass vomit on a stick, it currently resides in a box under my bed.

  “Impressive,” he says with a broad, but insincere, smile.

  “I see you’re still flying the flag for misogyny, Arthur,” says Stella just as Gabriel announces brunch is served in the dining room.

  He grins. “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”

  I share a look with Max that says “beam me up and out of here”, then we follow everyone through to a bright, airy room with patio doors overlooking a small walled garden. The room and furniture are white, but one wall is painted a clean powder blue. I’m drawn to a large painting displayed in a silver frame. It’s a family portrait: bearded father, mother with wild curly hair, and two blonde teenaged girls dressed in 1980s clothing. One of the girls must be Stella. I realise I’ve never once wondered about Stella’s background. It seems strange to think about her having parents or belonging to a family. She has a goddess-like persona – aside from the excessive swearing, smoking and drinking – so it isn’t too much of a stretch to imagine she was propelled into the universe by some kind of cosmic force.

  We eat brunch over small talk and mounting agitation. Ethan’s absence is getting more and more exasperating with each passing moment and I think I may be more cross with him than Stella is. How on earth does he find acting like a grown-up so bloody difficult? When the discussion naturally moves on to Ethan’s suitability to lead on the JET Financial bid considering his appalling timekeeping – and therefore his immaturity – I catch Stella’s eye. She looks ready to call the executioner and order his neck on the block. And now I can’t eat anymore, because all I can see in my mind is Ethan’s head on a spike with blood, bones and bits of spinal cord dangling from it.

  Thirty excruciating minutes later, Arthur says he has to leave for his grandson’s school music recital and Lucas announces he’s off to Ealing Cricket Club to watch his team get trounced again. Stella shows them the door and returns bearing a face which looks like it’s been spray-starched and steam-ironed. “Where the fuck is Ethan?” she roars at me.

  “I don’t know. He had a dentist’s appointment earlier.”

  “A fucking dentist’s appointment? Are you fucking kidding me? Does he think his six-month check-up is more important than meeting the chairman of the board? I hope for his sake he’s been knocked out with a general anaesthetic and is immobile, otherwise I can
’t promise not to knock him out myself.”

  “Maybe he got held up on the way back.” I don’t tell her his appointment was at nine a.m. – two and a half hours ago.

  “Well, I can’t wait for him any longer,” says Daniel, gathering up his things. He’s clearly pissed off too, and I don’t blame him. JET Financial was his account until he screwed the CEO’s married sister. Everyone thinks Daniel would have been the best guy to close the deal.

  “Let me know how things go with Sunta Motors as soon as you can,” Stella says as she walks Daniel to the door. “And I want you to be under no illusions about where you stand with me. Your indiscretion could cost Tribe dearly. Think of Sunta as a chance to redeem yourself. I put that clause in the junior partner contracts to tackle Ethan’s sex addiction, not yours. You weren’t even on my radar for doing this kind of shit.”

  Sex addiction? Freaking sex addiction? Who the hell am I dating? Pepé Le Pew?

  “So if I win Sunta, can I assume I’m forgiven?” says Daniel.

  “No. You can assume you’re not fired.”

  Stella’s heels click-clack on her hallway’s monochrome tiles and I hear her open the front door. “I really want to bring Sunta back into the fold, so please do everything you can to sign them. Promise the earth if you have to, and give my best to Jae-Kwang. It’s been a while since I saw him . . . ah . . . Ethan, at last. Where the hell have you been?”

  My stomach flips over as Stella mentions his name, and my anxiety level rockets up a few notches when I hear his voice. He makes a half-arsed traffic-based apology and I could throttle him. I know he’s stressed out, but I can’t believe he missed brunch, and I’m suddenly worried he’ll say or do something stupid.

  Max leans in and whispers into my ear. “You know, I still can’t get over the fact that that idiot is our boss. What’s up with that? We’re going to spend the rest of our lives apologising for him being late.”