All Bets Are On (12 page)

‘Zoe, that’s very sweet but it’s been over between us for ages,’ Harry said, rolling his eyes at Alice in a ‘can-you-believe-this’ gesture. ‘It was fun while it lasted but it was never going to be anything serious.’

Yet another of his dropped-like-a-stone exes. She’d been knocked off-task by the night spent chatting to him. Well, here it was: her wake-up call.
This
was how Harry treated women. He took what he wanted and then chucked them away.

‘I know I was too full-on but things are different now. And I’m sorry I was so angry when you ended it. I don’t want to change you, or pressure you.’ Zoe’s face was turned imploringly up to his. For her, Alice didn’t exist. ‘I bought you an iced coffee from the café round the corner,’ she said, nodding at a couple of cups on a nearby desk. ‘I thought we could have a quiet talk in the staff room. Peace offering—what do you say?’

Alice stared at the girl in disbelief. Was she for real? Did she have no self-respect at all?

Her mind tried to sideslip back to a time when she’d regarded Simon in exactly the same way—apologising for being too clingy, excusing his bad behaviour by blaming it on herself. She crushed the memory hard. She would not be that stupid downtrodden girl any more.

‘Please?’ Zoe said.

Simon. Harry. In that moment they blended into one. Alice walked as if in a dream over to the table and picked up one of the plastic cups. It was icy cold beneath her fingers as she peeled off the lid. She took a couple of quick strides, reached up and tipped the whole thing in one freezing splash over Harry’s head. Ice cubes clattered to the floor around his feet and brown liquid dripped down over his face and neck as he gasped at the sudden cold.

Zoe leapt back as if burned.

‘Why the hell did you do that?’ she squawked at Alice, horrified.

Alice tossed the empty cup in a nearby bin and rubbed her sticky fingers together.

‘Because unlike half the office, I don’t have
mug
written on my forehead when it comes to him. He deserves it.’

She was vaguely aware of Harry in the background wiping coffee from his face and licking his fingers and, she was surprised to see, grinning in spite of the mess.

She patted Zoe comfortingly on the shoulder as she walked away.

‘You’ll thank me for that one day,’ she said.

EIGHT

‘I know we
agreed to keep things quiet between us at work but you didn’t have to go quite that far for a cover story,’ Harry said, running a hand through his hair.

A rinse under the tap in the men’s room hadn’t quite removed the stickiness from his hair. He’d abandoned his jacket and mopped the worst of the coffee splashes from his shirt. As a result he’d had no time to eat lunch and only managed to catch up with Alice in the lift at the end of the day.

The situation with Zoe should have been nothing more than an amusing inconvenience to him. Strangely there hadn’t been the usual temptation that might accompany such a conversation with an ex-conquest—she’d practically offered herself on a plate and he couldn’t have been less interested. Taking her out again would only make things worse. Maybe his recent brush with revenge had affected him more deeply than he thought.

‘Oh, so you think it was all about me watching your back and putting people off the scent?’

She gave a cynical laugh and pressed the button for the ground floor. The lift shuddered into life.

He held her gaze, noticing that she didn’t drop her eyes. Instead she looked at him with confidence.

‘Wasn’t it?’

‘Of course not. It was about respect. That poor deluded girl.’

He opened his mouth to protest and she talked right over him.

‘Don’t kick in with all that claptrap about how you’re up front with them and you never make promises. However you dress it up, you basically sleep with these girls and then dump them. You’re kidding yourself if you think you’re treating them fairly. For most women sex isn’t something you do lightly. Don’t you understand what that might do to their self-esteem—that the moment you’ve got that from them you lose interest?’

He looked at her, all fired up and indignant, and heat sparked in his abdomen. The tiny frown-line knitting her eyebrows made her look delectable. He could have Zoe back in his bed with one simple phone call, yet he had no idea what he would need to do to get Alice there. The challenge of that was just tantalising.

She looked down at the box file in her arms for a moment.

‘I’m not sure where gunking you in iced coffee came from,’ she said, shaking her head wonderingly. ‘It just seemed like a good idea at the time.’ She glanced up at him with a little half smile that touched his heart. ‘Maybe I overreacted.’ She paused. ‘A little bit.’

‘Don’t,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘Don’t backtrack. You said what you thought. Maybe part of the problem is that girls don’t do that enough. It’s all so easy to just do what you want when someone tells you what you want to hear, whether or not you think it’s right or wrong.’

‘When you put it like that it isn’t much of a step away from bullying,’ she said. ‘I’m not backtracking. You so deserved the gunking!’

Her tone of voice was jokey and she was grinning mischievously at him, but the comment hit him like a sledgehammer nonetheless. Was that really what she thought of him? Why did he even care?

The lift pinged to a standstill and as the doors opened she walked full speed ahead out into the ground-floor reception hall.

‘Maybe a
frappé
in the face was a wake-up call I could do with,’ he called after her.

She stopped and waited. He caught her up by the doors.

‘Really?’ she said, eyebrows raised, a light smile touching the corners of her mouth.

‘It’s easy to go too far, trample on people’s feelings, when they act like a pushover.’

‘I always thought that was exactly what did it for you—someone who will go along with whatever you want in the name of fun.’

‘Maybe it was. And maybe you’re right and I should think about consequences more.’

Especially as all the consequences he’d encountered recently had been unpleasant ones. It wasn’t just today. There was the whole revenge mess Ellie had unleashed on him, making him wonder if a few dates’ worth of single fun was worth all the grief.

And deep down, deny it though he might, there was this new feeling that women per se were no longer particularly interesting. All thoughts seemed to be consumed by Alice, and she was hardly about to leap into bed and put him out of his misery.

She shifted the box file from one arm to the other and looked at him with narrowed eyes.

‘Is that some kind of apology? To womankind at large?’

He shrugged.

‘Am I forgiven if it is? Still up for going out tomorrow?’

For some reason her answer seemed massively important to him.

She nodded and he felt a happy flash of relief, which was totally uncharacteristic. He really was getting sucked in by his refusal to lose; all his perspective had gone out of the window.

‘There’s a work party in town,’ she said. ‘Roger from Accounts is leaving. Maybe we could go to that.’

His heart sank. Keeping his pursuit of her under wraps out of work time wasn’t likely to be easy. But he would have agreed to anything.

‘I’ll pick you up at eight,’ he said, leaning in to kiss her cheek.

She grimaced.

‘You might want to shower a few times before then. You absolutely reek of cheap sugary coffee.’

* * *

Harry kept the taxi waiting outside and rang the doorbell, the unease in his stomach seething there. He really should have seen this coming. Of course she’d want to flex her new dating muscles by going out with work. And shouldn’t he really be pleased with that?

But he’d spent these past days getting to know her without sex on the agenda. And as the time passed the bet felt more and more like a hideous liability than a laugh.

She opened the door and agitation spiralled off the radar.

Her wide brown eyes were highlighted by some smudgy dark make-up that emphasised the soft porcelain of her complexion. She wore her dark hair long, its waves curling softly to the creamy skin of her collarbones, exposed deliciously by the boat neck of the black dress she wore. It fell in a softly flowing skirt of layered chiffon, which ended an inch or so above her knees. All those trouser suits and opaque tights at the office meant he’d never noticed she even had legs, let alone tapered slender ones like that. His tongue felt as if it were melded to the roof of his mouth.

‘You look beautiful,’ he managed, swallowing hard.

She gave a here-we-go-again roll of her eyes.

‘I toyed with the idea of wearing a bin bag, just to see if I got that stock reply,’ she said, reaching behind the door to grab her bag from the side table. She made a move to walk past him out of the door, his compliment instantly dismissed as worthless. He regretted his flip manner on that first date now.

‘Alice,’ he said.

She glanced back at him as she shrugged her jacket on.

‘I mean it. You look beautiful. Far too good for some dull work party. Why don’t I take you somewhere else? For dinner maybe?’

She was looking at him, eyes narrowed.

‘Don’t be daft. I’ve been looking forward to this. Do you realise I’ve worked for Innova for four years and I’ve only been out for a drink with work half a dozen times, all of them in the first month or so when I was trying to settle in? I haven’t even done a Christmas party yet. Oh, I do business lunches, that kind of thing. But they’re work really, not play. I got myself into such a damn rut.’

He didn’t answer and she looked up at him then with an odd little smile and disappointment in her eyes that brought a fresh wave of guilt.

‘I thought you went to all these things. What’s the big deal?’ She frowned. ‘I suppose I could make my own way there if you’re not up for it.’

The thought of her turning up among the pack of wolves he worked with, looking like that with her suddenly open attitude, filled him with horror. Even without the bet incentive any man in his right mind would be blown away by her.

‘No, it’s fine,’ he backtracked. ‘Just a suggestion.’

She slammed her front door shut and walked towards the waiting taxi. He followed her down the path, disquiet churning in his gut.

He knew perfectly well that one stray comment could give the game away tonight and let her know he was only dating her for a bet. Suddenly he couldn’t care less about a few hundred quid and a bit of glory over his mates. All he could think was how it would make her feel if she found out this was all some stupid game. She would be hurt. Their friendship, whatever else this was between them, would be over.

What the hell should that matter? Even if there was no bet it would be over between them anyway in a week or so, was always going to be. That thought made his mood plummet and it dawned on him in that moment with a sudden flash of clarity.

He was in too deep.

* * *

The party was at exactly the kind of bar in West London that she imagined Harry spent every ounce of his spare time in, on the prowl. Already buzzing with people, it had a lively and sophisticated atmosphere. There was a long backlit bar and subtle scarlet-tinged lighting picked out the tables, one of them occupied by the usual suspects from work. A couple of weeks ago there was no way she would have contemplated coming here and, despite what she’d said to Harry, if he hadn’t accompanied her she would never have made her way here by herself. Maybe in another month or so when she’d finished her study of Harry, she’d be ready by then, fully prepped to weed out the dross and find herself a keeper. The bet might have knocked her confidence but at least it had pushed her to take stock of herself. At least she had that. She was gradually coming out of her antisocial shell.

Arriving with Harry was very different from walking in alone. He was the centre of attention at once and she was the subject of curious and definitely envious glances. She was aware of his hand pressed lightly at the small of her back, glad of it. Yet in the few short minutes since he’d left her to buy drinks she turned in her seat to see him surrounded by women and looking as if he was enjoying every second. Her eyes widened when he pulled up a stool as if he was settling in for the evening. The damn cheek of it! He was meant to be her date.

The red-haired girl who’d recently joined the company smiled up at him. Skin-tight trousers under a floating silk top and killer heels. Her red hair fell almost to the middle of her back. With his dark good looks picked out in the mirrored lighting of the bar, Harry looked perfectly suited to her. The pair of them looked as if they were in some TV ad for a cutting-edge new drink.

He hadn’t so much as glanced Alice’s way and it was a sharp reminder of his awful reputation. You didn’t get a reputation like that by magic—you
earned
it. By behaving in the way he was right now.

Self-consciousness kicked in as if it had never really been away. She felt out of place. And of course she was. Her place was at home on the sofa, not out with the crowd. She toyed with the idea of making a quick exit to the Ladies to take stock and decide what to do.

That’s just about enough.

Something snapped inside her and as boiling humiliation began to rise she forced it back down. She wasn’t about to let him play her like this. Exit to the Ladies? She could do better than that. She hadn’t spent hours observing him for nothing. Playing him at his own game should be a piece of cake.

Compliments
—that was how he started out, wasn’t it?

She turned to John, one of the Design team, flashed him her most brilliant smile and rested her hand lightly on his arm.

‘I’ve got to tell you, I thought your new logo ideas were completely
fabulous
,’ she gushed, although privately she’d thought a toddler with a wax crayon could have come up with them. ‘Genius.’

John beamed at her and immediately grabbed the opportunity to bury her in a ton more of his suggestions. She tried to make her eyes focus on him when they wanted to glaze over. And then a sidelong glance gave her a burst of triumph. Harry was suddenly ignoring his gaggle of women and was staring over at her, a look on his face that could only be described as furious. Hah! Result!

Harry tried and failed to tune out the overenthusiastic babble of Saskia, the new addition to the secretarial team. He could tell by her body language, by the way she hung on every word he said, that with a few well-placed lines he could hook her. He found he had absolutely no interest in doing so.

Unheard of.

He was unable to tear his gaze away from Alice as she spoke animatedly to the rest of the table. He could see the men at the table hanging on her every word and John from his own team actually had the gall to rest his arm along the back of her chair.

Does that oaf have a stake in the bet ring?

If John didn’t have a stake he was no threat, right?

Wrong.

Suddenly the bet seemed utterly unimportant. As he watched Alice laughed at something John said and the fiery stab of jealousy he felt in response told him in a way he couldn’t deny that he had a lot more at stake here than just money.

He was off the stool before he really knew what he intended to do. Maybe cross to the table and join them while crushing the urge to knock John’s head from his shoulders.

He didn’t make as much as a step away from the bar. Last seen gloating after shredding his wardrobe and trashing his laptop, his ex-girlfriend Ellie elbowed her way unexpectedly into the middle of the group, which until then had consisted of himself and four eligible women. She had a glass of red wine in one hand and a look on her face that told him if he thought she’d got the anger out of her system, he was deluded.

Great.

‘Don’t get too keen, girls,’ she announced, her eyes fixed on Harry. ‘There are a few things you should know up front about Mr Perfect before you go any further.’

Oh, for God’s sake. Just what he needed after spending so much effort convincing Alice he didn’t deserve his awful reputation: an angry scene with a jilted ex.

‘You think that gorgeous dark hair’s natural?’ Ellie glanced around at the speechless girls as she waved a hand towards Harry’s head. ‘Wait and see what’s underneath the Just For Men hair dye.’

Harry stared at the aghast faces.

‘You wonder how anyone can actually
be
that gorgeous?’ she asked, warming to her subject. ‘Well, truth is, he’s not. It’s all fake. And he’ll dump you the moment he beds you. That extreme sports tan? Fake. And he waxes.’ She raised her voice to a shout above the bar’s background music. ‘Three words, Harry. Back, sack and crack!’