All Work and No Play (11 page)

‘How long isn’t particularly the issue,’ he said. ‘The issue is that you’re asking me to do it at all.’

She didn’t answer. She toyed with her glass and avoided his eyes.

‘I want to date you, Jane. But instead you want me to pretend to do what I want to do for real.’

‘If you want to do it for real, then pretending won’t be so hard, will it?’ She glanced up at him, and then back down at her glass.

She was most definitely not telling him everything about this. He felt the same anger and frustration he’d felt this afternoon come rushing back. ‘Do you mind if I ask you why?’

‘Everybody saw us this afternoon,’ she said. ‘Plus, it seems that Gary didn’t stop with telling Thom about what I’d said to him. The entire company is buzzing about it. I mean, I hadn’t even told anybody that Gary and I split up, and then all of a sudden I’m kissing the campaign model in my office.’

‘So what? Tell them it’s none of their business, and get on with it.’

‘It’s not that easy. Nobody’s saying anything to me. It’s just whispers.’

She met his eyes finally and he saw the baffled hurt there.

And he remembered that hurt. He remembered the whispers.

There had been a year or two, when he was a teenager at school, when he’d been the recipient of both of them. His tormentors had mostly been boys, and boys
were usually pretty straightforward about their bullying. Their preferred method was generally to ambush him after school and kick him around a bit. But there had been whispers, too.

His anger could take a back seat for a moment.

‘Jane, you can’t let other people get to you. You have to fight back. It’s one of the things my dad taught me; when I was getting beaten up at school he made me take up running and helped me learn boxing. When I was strong enough to confront the bullies, they stopped.’

‘This is different,’ Jane answered quickly. ‘I’m not being bullied. It’s just that—this job is important to me. I need the people at work to respect me. And from what’s happened, it looks like I’m somebody who’s been dumped by her boyfriend for another woman and has straight away thrown herself at the nearest male. I need to prove to them that I’m not desperate. And that …’ She blushed harder. ‘You know, you want me, too.’

‘I do want you. But not like this.’

‘I’ve already told you, we can’t have a relationship. Our friendship is too important.’

Jonny felt like jumping up and pacing around the room. As they were in a crowded café, he restrained himself. But only just.

Jane must have seen how he felt because she leaned
forward on the table, her hands clasped together in supplication.

‘Please, Jonny. I don’t want to look desperate, but I am. It’s not just the people at work. It’s Gary. He came to my office this afternoon and told me that since I’d found a new boyfriend, he’d be bringing Kathleen to Thom’s agency party. If I turn up on my own—’

He was trying to stay calm, but it wasn’t working. ‘Ah. I see it now. It’s back to Gary and using me to make him jealous.’

‘It’s not just about making him jealous.’

‘But is about using me.’

Her pleading hands clasped into fists. ‘Jonny, I’m asking for your help, that’s all. You were the one who had to go and kiss me this afternoon! If you hadn’t done that, this all would have blown over.’

‘Tell me the truth, Jane.’ He was leaning over the table now, as well. ‘Are you asking for my help because I’m your friend, or because I’m working as a model and it’s some kind of strange status symbol for you?’

‘Dude! I should have known you’d be hiding away canoodling with your new babe, you crafty dog!’

A chair scraped back and Thom threw himself down in it, blond hair flopping in his face. As usual, he looked as if he’d just stepped off a beach.

‘Hi, Thom,’ Jane said, and leaned quickly back in her chair. Jonny sat back, too.

‘Don’t pay any attention to me, my friends, you go right ahead and make all the goo-goo eyes at each other that you want. Jane, I’m stoked you like my man Jo—Jay.’

‘Jane knows my real name,’ Jonny told him.

Thom bobbed his head in delight. ‘Excellent, that is excellent. You’re really getting to know each other, huh?’ He patted Jane’s hand. ‘I’ve been telling Jonny he needs a good woman to lighten him up, and I’m glad I was the person to introduce you.’

‘Yes, it was quite a fateful lunch, wasn’t it?’ Jane smiled at Thom, with only the smallest of glances at Jonny to gauge his reaction.

‘Written in the stars,’ Thom agreed.

Thom didn’t appear to be going anywhere until he’d done his full share of congratulating the two of them on their so-called relationship.

‘Would you like a drink, Thom?’ Jonny asked.

‘I’d kill for a beer, dude. Make sure it’s cold, though.’

‘This is a café, Thom.’

‘Oh. Yeah, okay, a macchiato, thanks. So, Jane, tell me what you love about our friend Jonny here.’

Jonny paused halfway out of his chair. He’d offered Thom a drink so that he could walk away and gather his
thoughts for a minute, but now he wasn’t sure that he wanted this conversation to go on without him.

Thom glanced at him and made shooing gestures with his hands. ‘Go get out of here. I’m conferring with your girlfriend.’

‘“Girlfriend” is perhaps a little—’

‘Your red-hot babe friend, then. Go away.’

He went. All the way to the counter he kept his ears pricked, trying to hear Jane and Thom’s conversation over the buzz of the café and the whoosh of the coffee machine. He didn’t have much luck.

And what, precisely, did he want to hear, anyway? he wondered as he paid for Thom’s drink. Did he want to make sure that Jane wasn’t going ahead with the ‘pretending to date’ thing without his consent?

Or did he want to hear something that Jane loved about him?

He nearly spilled the macchiato all over his T-shirt in his haste to get back to the table. Jane was smiling and blushing and Thom was grinning and nodding in that ‘all is cool with the world’ way he had.

‘What are you two talking about?’ Jonny couldn’t stop himself asking as he put the coffee down in front of his agent/friend and sat in his chair again.

Thom clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Dude, you are one lucky man.’ He took a swig of his macchiato and
grimaced. ‘Sugar,’ he said, and got up and loped to the counter.

‘Don’t worry,’ Jane said as soon as Thom was out of earshot. ‘I didn’t give away any secrets. We’ve been talking about your career, that’s all.’

‘And how devastatingly attractive you are,’ Thom added, from halfway across the room.

‘Hmmph.’ Jonny covered up his disappointment by drinking his coffee, which was, by now, almost cold.

‘Anyway, I’m sorry to interrupt your little cosy date thing,’ Thom continued, while he finished crossing to them and sat back down in his chair, dumping five or six packets of sugar on the table, ‘but I was on the way to Jonny’s hotel to take him out for a beer and get the skinny on how it went today and I saw the two of you in here. And I want to pick your brains about somebody you work with, Jane.’

‘You mean Gary?’

Jane was too quick to say it, and Jonny swallowed bitter coffee.

It was back to Gary again. Everything came back to Gary, it seemed. Jane’s work, her feelings, this charade she wanted him to take on.

She’d just broken up with the bloke, after all. And how could he, Jonny, compete with that? As well as he believed he knew Jane, as much as he cared about her,
when it was all said and done, besides the years as kids and that one night of wild passion, he and Jane had an internet relationship. And Jane was impressed by him being a model.

Compared with years of living and working with Gary, what he and Jane had together had to be shallow.

His coffee tasted like stale jealousy.

Thom was shaking his head, though. ‘No, I mean your art person, who was at the shoot yesterday. Amy. She’s hot, man. Is she seeing anybody?’

‘No, I don’t think so.’

‘Awesome. Tell me all about her.’ Thom leaned back in his chair as if it were a hammock.

‘She’s a very good art director. Completely reliable, and very creative. I don’t have any talent at the visual side of things myself, so it’s wonderful to have her on my team. I was very impressed with her CV when she joined the company last year, and she’s completely lived up to it.’

‘Yeah, yeah, that’s great. But what about her? What does she like, what kind of guy does she go for, what’s her favourite food? Does she like boxers or briefs? Wine or cocktails?’

Jonny saw Jane blink a few times. He remembered what she’d said about not having any friends.

‘Um,’ she said, and the slightly lost look in her eyes
made him want to hug her. ‘I’m not sure about her favourite food or drink or underwear.’

‘Anything, I’ll take anything. Help me out here.’

‘I know she’s got a little girl, who’s about six,’ Jane said slowly. ‘I think she’s called Stacy.’

‘Oh.’

Thom didn’t say anything else, but his face fell and Jonny could see his mind working. Thom’s conception of a ‘hot babe’ probably didn’t include her having a six-year-old daughter.

‘And she’s really nice. Amy, I mean. I haven’t met Stacy, though I’ve seen her photo on Amy’s desk. Amy’s divorced.’ Jane’s brow furrowed. ‘Or maybe they were never married. No, I think they’re divorced.’

Thom’s face was getting gloomier and gloomier, and Jane was obviously feeling awkward. Jonny opened his mouth to say something to rescue them both, but Jane beat him to it.

‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘I know she’s very excited about your party. She said she was definitely going to come and that she was impressed that you’d invited her yourself.’

Thom brightened. ‘My party, yeah. It’s going to be totally gnarly. The decadent decade, nineteen twenties theme all the way. Art nouveau building, beautiful
people dressed like something out of
The Great Gatsby.
Awesome.’

Jonny had been to Thom’s parties before, in California, always packed with glamorous people. He wasn’t exactly the ‘see and be seen’ type himself, but there were usually interesting people there to talk to. And of course it was fun to see Thom in his element, talking with people, playing the host.

‘Sounds great,’ he said, privately hoping there would be lots of people there, so he could escape early and do some work on his book before its deadline without Thom noticing.
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had been neglected lately, what with the photo shoots and the hot sex and the trying, and failing, to sort things out with Jane.

‘And don’t think you’re going to slip off early and do some writing while I’m not looking, Clark Kent,’ Thom said. ‘I want to see you escorting your new lovely lady, fetching her drinks all night and whirling her around the dance floor and all that romantic stuff. You hear me?’

Jonny glanced over at Jane. Now was the time to come clean about their lack of relationship, before Thom expected them to put on a show in front of everyone he’d invited to the party.

Which included Jane’s ex, and his new girlfriend. And everybody who had seen him kissing Jane.

Jane’s expressive grey eyes pleaded with him. Underneath
the table, he felt her hand seek out his, and grip his fingers.

The touch of her skin, only this small extremity, was wonderful. He remembered holding her hand, sprinting down the pavement to his hotel and the most incredible experience he’d ever had in his life.

‘I hear you,’ he said. ‘We’ll be there.’

Jane checked her hair for at least the fourteenth time. She’d like to check her outfit, too, but for some reason Gary had owned the only full-length mirror in their flat and he’d taken it with him. The closest she could get to looking at how her rose-coloured drop-waisted silk dress fitted her was to stand on a chair in front of her mirrored bathroom cabinet and twist her body so that she could see the reflection of both her chest and her hips at the same time.

She didn’t really need to look at her dress in the mirror. She’d only bought it this morning, and she’d looked at it plenty then, from every angle, trying to work out if it showed any humiliating bulges or gaps. It had taken quite a while before she’d decided that it was both concealing enough not to embarrass her and sexy enough to show the world that she was over Gary, happy with a new man, and on her way up.

She stood on her tiptoes and looked at her chest. Definite
cleavage showing. If she were planning on trying to seduce Jonny—which she wasn’t—she would say that this dress pretty much conformed to all of what he’d told her he liked in his date’s clothing.

Not that she cared about that.

And then, of course, this dress was pink.

Jane forced herself away from the mirror. Second-guessing herself wasn’t going to do her any good. She’d bought this dress especially for Thom’s party, and any minute now Jonny was going to pick her up to escort her there, and, in any case, she didn’t have anything else to wear. Her only other suitable dress was all wrinkled from being shoved up around her hips while she and Jonny …

She went right back to the mirror. Second-guessing herself about her dress was much better than thinking about the last time she’d dressed up for Jonny.

Perhaps if she put on a different shade of lipstick her dress wouldn’t look quite so pink. She dug in her handbag to find the lipstick.

Jonny wasn’t going to think that she was dressing up for him, anyway. She’d made herself quite clear on that point: they were friends, and that was it. She was glad that he’d agreed to go along with the act that they were seeing each other, but he definitely understood it was an act.

He hadn’t called her, or emailed her, or sent her any more flowers; he was reserving his attentions for public display. When she’d visited the photographer’s studio this morning to see how the last day of the shoot was going, he’d greeted her with a warm smile and a kiss on the lips that was equally warm, but over nearly as soon as it began.

She pursed her lips to check the effect of the lipstick. It had been a brief kiss, but an effective one. She’d seen it register with the photographer and his assistants.

And it had certainly affected her.