Authors: Jo Watson
Oh, God. I’m losing it.
I need a giant chocolate cupcake. And maybe a double vodka.
And most of all, I need Liam Wiseman to get out of my head.
Chapter Seventeen
I do not like Liam Wiseman.
There. I’ve said it.
And I even referred to him by his actual name.
I’ve decided that my dislike for Liam is such that I don’t see the point in talking to him ever again.
I probably won’t even think about him or his resemblance to a certain Canadian singer.
I’m not saying it’ll be easy, but we managed to go eight months without speaking to each other. Except maybe that time when he almost ran me down in his BMW and shouted some vague apology out the window.
It would be a lot easier if he stopped finding reasons to come to the HR office, though.
Just because I jammed the photocopier again does not mean we need some IT expert to come and fix it. Personally, I don’t see what’s wrong with walking swiftly away and pretending I haven’t been anywhere near it.
That’s always been my method.
But not today. Today, Nora insists on the IT department sending somebody down to take a look at it when she discovers the copier is mysteriously jammed with incorrectly loaded paper.
Of course, it’s Liam who arrives to play office hero.
“Why don’t you talk to him, Meg?” Scarlett suggests.
I glance at Helen, who doesn’t know that Scarlett is withholding information about her unborn child’s father until I give in and ask Liam out.
Oh, God. Put like that, the whole idea sounds completely bonkers.
“No.” I shoot Scarlett’s a firm stare that she will most likely ignore.
But it’s Helen who intervenes, calling him over.
“Problem, Helen?” he asks when he reaches her desk.
“Not me.” She spins around in her chair and points towards my desk. “I think Megan requires your assistance.”
He turns to look at me with his eyebrows raised. “Megan?”
Why would Helen do this to me? What do I say now?
I look around the office, at the irritating smirk on Helen’s face, at the clock above the door, at Nora kneeling down in front of her filing cabinet, oblivious to all these goings on.
“I…erm…”
“It’s your email account, isn’t it?” Scarlett nods encouragingly.
“Yes.” I nod, forcing myself to think clearly. “My email account.”
Liam frowns and walks over to my desk. “What trouble are you having with it?”
“Well, it just isn’t…emailing,” I say, then instantly wish I hadn’t.
“You mean it isn’t sending your messages?” He leans across me and clicks on the icon. He’s so close that his expensive-smelling aftershave surrounds me and I can see the dark scattering of stubble grazing his jaw line.
My company email account loads the way it always does and shows the messages currently sitting in my inbox.
There’s my daily horoscope and a selection of offers from Matalan mixed in with my mundane work-related emails.
I know Liam has seen them. I can see the amused smile on his face as he clicks the button to compose a new message.
He types something so fast I don’t have a chance to read it before he’s hit the send button.
Ten seconds later, Scarlett’s computer pings to signify incoming mail.
“Looks like it works,” Liam remarks.
“Oh.” I scratch my neck. “Weird.”
He shakes his head and returns to fixing the photocopier at the back of the office.
“What did you do that for?” I hiss the second he’s out of earshot.
“You needed a gentle push,” says Helen.
“Well, I don’t think it helped. I’m sure he thinks I’m an even bigger idiot now.”
“No, he doesn’t.” Scarlett’s eyes are gleaming. “At least, not according to the email he just sent me from your account.”
I spin my chair around. “What does it say?”
“It says he likes you and you should ask him out.”
I find my sent messages folder and quickly read Liam’s short message.
Well, it sort of says that.
It says that in an oh-so-arrogant Liam Wiseman sort of way.
From:
[email protected]
RE: Test
When is Megan going to admit she fancies me and just ask me out? ;)
But I’m smiling. Oh, my God, I’m grinning like an absolute idiot.
I cup my hand over my mouth to hide it.
This does not make sense. Why would Liam have snapped at me about Charlotte if he was interested in me? And why didn’t he want Scarlett to set us up?
“So,” Helen prompts, “are you going to?”
I tear my eyes from the screen, from reading the fifteen words over and over. “Am I going to what?”
“Ask him out! You like him, don’t you?”
I fiddle with a loose thread on my jacket. “I don’t know. I can’t just go up to him and ask him to come for a drink with me. Isn’t that the man’s job?”
“That’s such an old-fashioned view!” Scarlett shrieks. “Of course you can ask him.”
I glance over at him in the little copier room, glad that he can’t hear us.
But he must know we’re talking about him. That’s probably what he was counting on when he typed that message.
“I don’t think I can do it.” I turn back to my colleagues. “At least, I can’t do it sober.”
“That’s not a problem,” says Scarlett. “I’ll send out an email now about going for office drinks tonight. It’ll be less intimidating in a group.”
“Tonight?”
I look down at my quilted skirt and thick winter tights. “Come on, Scar. I hardly think I’m dressed for—”
“No arguments,” she interrupts me. “And remember what I said.” She places a hand to her stomach.
Of course. Our stupid little agreement.
Okay. Everything is going to be okay.
He probably won’t even come.
* * *
We’re in a pub near the office. I don’t even know the name of it, but Scarlett seems to know the young barman quite well, and she assures me he makes fabulous cocktails.
She orders two purple drinks in tall glasses and hands me both before getting a non-alcoholic beverage for herself. “Somebody needs to have my drinks for me,” she says with a helpless shrug.
“Does anyone know yet?” I scan the small group of people from work. “I mean, apart from Helen.”
She shakes her head and points out an empty table at the back of the pub. I follow her and sit down in the seat facing the door.
Helen had apparently already double booked Brad from the gym and Alistair, the gym’s personal trainer for tonight and couldn’t possibly fit a third date into her hectic social life, so it’s just the two of us from our department.
“Nobody from IT is here yet,” Scarlett says as I watch a group from accounts walk in.
“I wasn’t looking for him.” I pick up one of my drinks.
“You should probably drink that quicker.” She nods at the cocktail glass in my hand.
I stare at the purple liquid before downing the whole thing. “That’s got a kick to it.” I replace the empty glass on the table. “What is it?”
“I’m not sure. It’s one of Scott’s own creations.” She turns to stare at the barman.
“Oh!” I notice the way her eyes are set upon him. “It’s him.”
“Where?” She looks towards the door.
“No, not Liam. I mean Scott. He’s the father, isn’t he?”
“I wish he was.” She sighs and takes a sip of her vodka-free screwdriver.
“Are you going to tell me who is?”
“Drink that other cocktail,” she orders. “You haven’t done your end of the deal yet.”
Two hours and several cocktails later, my drunken self decides it’s time to satisfy my side of the bargain.
Liam is chatting with one of his boring colleagues by the bar. I march over to him, clutching a drink in my hand.
“So do you really like me?” I ask, ignoring whatever conversation the two men were having. “Because there are better ways of showing it.”
His friend takes the hint and slips off to bore somebody else.
“How many of those have you had?” Liam nods at whichever of Scott’s creations I’m holding.
“That’s irrelevant.” My fingers tighten around the glass.
“Is it? He smiles. You’re always this confrontational, are you?”
There’s no point in lying. My alcohol-absorbed brain won’t be able to think of anything that quick, anyway. “No. But that doesn’t mean you can ignore my question.”
His smile widens. “You’re a nice girl, Megan.”
“A
nice
girl?” I snort. “Nobody wants to be a nice girl.”
“Some do. Probably the bad ones.”
“Know a lot of bad girls, do you?”
“Not many.” He takes a drink from his pint, then adds, “Not my type.”
“So what is?”
He smiles again, his dark eyes sparkling. “I like nice girls.”
“Like Charlotte?”
“Charlotte?” He looks to the other side of the room, where she is probably watching our exchange with her buddies from reception. “What gives you that idea?”
“That morning when I walked in to work with you.”
A look of recognition crosses his face. “Right. Well, I’m sorry about that.”
“But then you keep turning up everywhere at work, sending flirty emails and acting like you’re interested in me.” I take a final gulp of my drink for the extra courage and place the empty glass on the bar.
Then I decide that I can’t keep this going without another drink, so I lean over the bar and call Scott over.
“Think that’s wise?” Liam watches Scott measure out the alcohol.
Ignoring him, I pay for my cocktail, down half of it, then say, “So when you told me you weren’t playing Scarlett’s matchmaking game, I was supposed to take that to mean something else, was I?”
He sighs, resting his elbows against the bar. “No.”
“Is that it, then? You haven’t even got some excuse?”
“Would you listen if I had?”
I shrug. I had been expecting him to spout some crap about how he didn’t mean what he said. Then I could stand here, maybe fighting back a yawn and pretending to be really bored.
“You know what Scarlett’s like,” he says.
“So do you,” I retort.
If he has picked up on the bitter edge to my words, he ignores it. “She wouldn’t shut up about how great you are. And I thought you’d asked her to say all that stuff about what flowers you like.”
“But I hadn’t.”
“I know.” He turns his smooth brown eyes on me. “I know that now.”
“It was all Scarlett. I never even told her I was interested in you. I never said I wanted to go out with you.”
“Ouch.” He presses the palm of his hand to his chest. “So you don’t want to ask me out?”
I glance at our mutual friend, who’s nursing her orange juice and watching us out of the corner of her eye. “I need to tell Scarlett that I did.”
He turns back towards the bar. “You can tell her whatever you want. I’ll back you up.”
“You mean I can tell her you’re an arrogant, confusing idiot?”
“If that’s what you think.”
“Okay.” I pause. “Well, I guess I’ll see you around.”
I linger for a few seconds longer than I need to before going back to the table where Scarlett is waiting.
“I did it,” I tell her.
She glances over her shoulder at him. “He doesn’t look like he just got a date.”
“Well, it didn’t go exactly to plan,” I explain.
Scarlett frowns. “You mean you didn’t ask him?”
“No, I did,” I my fuzzy braining remembering his promise to back me up.
“And that’s what he’ll say if I ask him?”
I nod.
She stands up and goes to talk to him. She’s only gone for a few minutes, but I manage to finish my drink. I’m considering getting another one when a woman from marketing, whose name I can’t remember, sits beside me.
“Hi,” she says. “You’re friends with Scarlett, aren’t you?”
“We both work in HR,” I explain, assuming this woman has no idea that I even work for the same company as her.
She nods once and tucks a thick strand of her reddish bob behind her ear. “You’re close, then? Close enough to know why the only drop of liquid that’s passed her lips tonight has been orange juice?”
My head snaps up to meet her deadpan expression. And in that moment, I know that she knows.
How the hell does this woman know Scarlett’s intimate secret?
“A woman has her intuitions,” she says by way of explanation. “I’m Rebecca, by the way. I work in marketing.”
“How do you know?” I watch Scarlett talking to Liam. “It can’t possibly just be intuition.”
“Not entirely.” She pushes her square-framed glasses back up her nose. “Perhaps I should introduce myself again. I’m Rebecca Cording. Charlie Cording’s wife.”
Charlie Cording…Charlie Cording.
I try to place her husband’s name. It does
sound
familiar.
Then I see him looking over at us as he waits to get served round the other side of the bar.
Of course!
Charlie.
Charlie from accounts with the handlebar moustache and the knitted pullovers.
I look back at his wife, still not making the connection. Why is it significant who she’s married to? That doesn’t explain how she knows anything about Scarlett.
“What’s Charlie got to do with anything?”
“Oh.” Her blue eyes widen. “She hasn’t told you.”
I frown. “Told me what?”
“I felt sure that she would have confided in somebody,” Rebecca continues. “Maybe I should have asked the blonde you work with.”
“Helen?” I ask in confusion. “She knows even less than me. But how do
you
know?”
“I told you I’m Charlie’s wife because he’s the father of that baby she’s carrying.”
“What?” I stare at her like she’s started speaking in fluent Japanese. “No. Scarlett would have told me if… No. It can’t be him.”
I’ll be honest—I didn’t know Charlie was married. But even if Scarlett was equally clueless about this, she wouldn’t have slept with him.
He must be at least twenty years older than her. And he wears brown shoes.
He comes over then and hands a drink to Rebecca. Without saying anything else, she takes the glass and they go back to wherever they were sitting before.
I stare into my empty cocktail glass.