Charlotte Phillips - All Bets Are On

Humiliation had been long dead and resigned to the past, so she’d thought. But after three years of self-inflicted singledom, during which she’d taken control of every tiny facet of her life and had reinvented herself as career-woman-extraordinaire with no room on her list of priorities for a man, it seemed humiliation was alive and well and living in London.

Alice Ford was gossip-central.

Again.

* * *

Harry Stephens glanced around the bar, having just bought a round of drinks for the entire team. Correction. Almost the entire team. Despite the graft she’d put in to win the prestigious new contract, Alice Ford was a no-show yet again.

He finished his drink quickly and made his way across the bar, nodding at colleagues along the way. Fortunately Arabella had chosen to sit at a table close to the door. Perfect for the swift exit he intended to make the instant he finished speaking.

‘Harry!’ she said with real pleasure as he approached, loudly enough to draw glances from adjacent tables. The three other junior assistants sitting with her looked his way with interest. He was dimly aware that the redhead to Arabella’s left must be new. Worth a second look, just not today. He filed her away in his mind for future consideration.

Arabella ran her fingers through her long blonde hair, twirling the ends lightly as she smiled at him. He kept his eyes on her face. The expression of adoration wasn’t the only thing putting him on edge. The half-dozen texts she’d sent him so far today also needed to be considered along with the following facts:

1. she’d only left his bed at seven a.m.,

2. it was still only lunchtime, and

3. they worked in the same building.

The increasingly urgent texts along with the smile told him all he needed to know. It might have only been one night, but it was still time to jump ship.

Best to do it quick. Short, clean break before she had the chance to big it up in her mind into more than it was. Just sex. Just fun. No letting it run on too long—that led to all kinds of trouble as he’d recently discovered. And he was having none of it.

Keeping his voice deliberately detached, he reached into his inside jacket pocket.

‘Sorry to interrupt,’ he said. ‘You left your earrings at my place.’

He held them out, found this morning in his bathroom. She didn’t take them, a light frown touching the perfectly arched eyebrows.

‘I know,’ she said. ‘I realised when I got to work. I just thought I’d pick them up next time I saw you. Maybe tonight—did you get my texts...?’

She trailed off, eyes fixed on his face, and he literally saw the click, saw her face begin to redden as she caught on. She wouldn’t be visiting his place again. Her time there was done.

Smile gone now, she stood up, pushed past the redhead and joined him a few feet away by the door.

He held out the earrings again and this time she took them. She looked back up at him with a confident smile that was a bit too small to be pulled off.

‘What’s going on, Harry?’

He made his voice light, surprised.

‘Nothing’s going on. Last night was fun but I told you, I’m not interested in anything serious right now. I think it’s best if we just call it quits, go back to being workmates.’ He paused. ‘Friends.’

He could tell from her face that ‘friends’ was going to be a bit of a big ask. All smiles had gone.

‘You’re dumping me? After one night?’

He heard the crack in her voice. He was so right to get out now.

‘We both knew it was just a laugh,’ he said.

Her gutted expression told him that he might have known that, but she’d had much bigger plans. She opened her mouth, undoubtedly to argue the point further and he cut in quickly. Getting into a debate was a bad move; he knew that from experience.

He gave her upper arm a friendly squeeze, making sure he was well clear of her personal space.

‘I’d better get back to the office,’ he said. ‘Thanks for a great night.’

He left quickly, secure in the knowledge that he’d been honest. He was not responsible for Arabella’s feelings. He’d been up front with her from the start, made no promises, had made it crystal clear at all times where they both stood.

The fact she’d read more into the situation was nothing to do with him.

* * *

The outside line began ringing on various phones across the deserted office, but Alice was oblivious to the noise. Her eyes slipped to the bottom of the paper and her stomach gave another sickening lurch.

Page One.

There’s more than one page?

She turned the paper over. Blank on the reverse. Next moment she was scrabbling through the desk, pulling out armfuls of papers, food wrappers, a half-eaten decaying sandwich. Her stomach gave a sickening lazy roll as she threw it on the floor. If there was a second page, if there were more people involved, she would damn well know about it.

Perspiration laced her forehead and upper lip as she stood back, out of breath, hands on hips. The desk drawers were empty, their contents strewn over the floor.

Nothing. Maybe this was it. As if it were enough.

She reread the list, and the wave of upset that she had managed to control until now crested with full force. Names that she dealt with on a daily basis, people she’d believed she had a friendly, trustworthy, albeit working relationship with. People she’d thought liked and respected her. She’d come all this way, put the past behind her, rebuilt herself from the inside out, and now she was a laughing stock again.

The bitterness that flooded her mouth tasted just the same. Back then it had been her own image, plastered on the internet, bandied about between so-called friends. This time she was the subject of a bet. Same difference. Three years ago or present day, she was the butt of other people’s amusement.

The names blurred as tears came in a rush of uncontrollable sobs.

Across the open-plan room, the lift suddenly rumbled into life.

She snapped her head back up mid-sob, heart thundering in panic. In that brief moment it seemed entirely possible that the whole team, some thirty-odd people, were about to pour back in and find Alice a blubbering wreck with her head in her hands and a face full of snot, crumpled in the middle of the office.

The mortification of moments before stepped up to even dizzier heights.

She needed to get out of here. She did not need to be seen having an emotional meltdown by her colleagues. She needed a quiet space to think, calm down, get her head together. She stared madly around the room and finally made a manic dash for the only option of refuge within sprinting distance.

Sad cliché that it was, Alice Ford, top-class ambitious professional, was about to be reduced to crying in the Ladies.

Stumbling blindly between desks, knocking her thigh agonisingly hard against the corner of the printer table and upending a bin as she went, she sprinted in her high-heeled court shoes towards the door of the restroom, actually had it in her sights as the ping of the lift signalled its arrival and the doors slid smoothly apart.

She almost made it. A second or two faster and all Harry Stephens would have known about it would have been the slamming of the door behind her. Instead what he got was a full-on glimpse of her face as she shoved past him. Since the first thing she saw as she made it into the Ladies was her own reflection in the mirror, she knew that, humiliatingly, he’d just been treated to her beetroot-red face running with a combination of tears and snot and her always-sleek chignon looking like a rat’s nest where she’d been clutching in anguish at her hair.

A loud knock on the door made her jump.

‘Alice?’

She ignored him.