Who's Afraid of Mr Wolfe? (16 page)

He thought about those flecks in her eyes again and blew his breath out slowly and sat motionless for a while. This was not good. On so many levels. Ellie was someone who worked for him, someone he couldn’t dump in a hurry if things got too serious.

What was the point in having a perfectly good ‘no mixing work and sex’ rule all these years and then tearing it up?

Mind you, she’d been great in the presentation today. Fired up, really selling the idea, charismatic. He’d hardly had to do a thing.

Still a scruffbag, but that was kind of growing on him.

Hang on. Jack ran his hand down his face. It was ‘kind of growing on him’? Where had that come from?

Too much adrenalin still coursing around his body, that was the trouble. Probably post-presentation euphoria.

He reached for his mobile and punched in a number.

‘Sophie darling … Yeah, I know it’s late, but I was
wondering if you felt like … You do? Right. I’m on my way.’

Jack ended the call, smiling a thin little smile. Then he threw his mobile on the passenger seat and drove off.

‘I think this would be better if we changed the comma to a semi-colon,’ Jubbitt Junior said, positively hyper-ventilating with excitement. Ellie fumed as he destroyed her lovingly crafted copy but made sure her ‘You are a complete idiot but you are a client’ smile was still on her face. It had been plastered there for so long it was making her ears hurt.

Now she was going to have to go back to the agency and knit the brochure copy together tonight if they were to meet the printer’s deadline.

Jubbitt Junior pored over the brochure again and Ellie let her mind drift back over the week. Things had moved quickly since Pauline Kennedy had rung and green-lighted the knickers idea. They’d already had a preliminary meeting with the animation company, and yesterday Lesley and she had spent the whole day with Dave, the guy composing the original music for the knickers song. They had auditioned ten singers, searching for the best voice
for each pair of knickers. It had been a long day, but all in all exactly the kind of experience that had attracted Ellie to advertising in the first place.

Unlike today. The voice of Jubbitt Junior brought Ellie back to the present for a few seconds as he made a particularly unfunny joke about hanging participles and then she returned to thinking about the way Dave had lunged at her to say goodbye after the auditions were over. Even she, who had spent years out of the dating pool, had recognised that he seemed a bit keen and was probably aiming for her mouth.

She hadn’t been sure how she’d felt about that at the time and she wasn’t quite sure now either. She still missed Sam, his physical presence around the flat, their easy companionship. You couldn’t simply forget all those years of shared experiences. And the humiliation of being cheated on still felt like a shameful burn somewhere inside her.

But since the excitement of getting approval for the singing knickers and all the work that had brought, she’d lost touch with those intense emotions she’d felt when Sam had first left her. How could that be possible? All those years together and now, a matter of weeks later, she could only dredge up regret and sadness.

Ellie focused on Jubbitt Junior momentarily to make him believe that she was actually listening, and noticed with unease that one of his hands was deep in his pocket. Eeew, that was a new trick.

She retreated back into the relative safety of thinking about lost love. Was Sam right? Familiarity and habit had been the only glue keeping them together?

Ellie decided to stop thinking about it any longer or she’d spiral off into the deep, brain-frying question of ‘What is love?’ She had no ready answer; all she knew was that if Sam turned up at her door now and begged to come back, she wouldn’t have him. What would be the point? Whatever they’d had was over; there was no way of reheating it.

Ellie flinched as she felt Jubbitt Junior’s hand on her knee. Yeuch, was that the hand that had been in his pocket?

‘Oh look, Eleanor my dear,’ he said as though he had discovered a rare and exotic animal, ‘I think that we can put another colon here.’

Ellie smiled politely, imagining in great detail what she would like to do with Mr Jubbitt Junior’s colon should she ever get her hands on it.

It was already eight o’clock when Ellie got back to the agency, and reception was deserted. Ellie didn’t mind. There was something about the place at this time of night that was inherently exciting to her, more so than when it was full of people. It was almost as if she were part of some special little group within the agency that made it tick – people who worked late to produce the raw material by which the agency stood or fell.

Either that or she was a deluded workaholic.

She walked over to Rachel’s desk to see if there were any messages, smiling at the make-up bag carefully positioned out of view. Then the lift doors opened and out came Jack in a dinner suit.

‘Bit posh for the pub, isn’t it?’ she said, trying not to stare.

Jack did a mock yawn. ‘Trade do at the Dorchester.’

In his dinner suit he didn’t look like the customary penguin, more like some dangerous panther that had been partially tamed but could turn nasty at any minute. He didn’t smell nasty, though. The smell of him curled its way into her consciousness and she couldn’t place what it was. No doubt, in her breathy way, Rachel would say, ‘Essence of Man’.

‘Working the night shift on the Jubbitt thing?’ he asked.

‘I toil at night so that the world can rest easy that not a piece of punctuation will be out of place.’

Jack laughed. ‘I heard yesterday went well, though. You got some good voices. You happy?’

‘Yes, it was really good. I learned a lot. So now, once I’ve got this brochure out of the way and Jubbitt Junior’s handprints off my thighs, I’ll be ecstatic.’

Jack went very still. ‘Jubbitt Junior’s what?’ he said, barely moving his mouth.

‘His handprints … He’s a bit of a hands-on client, if you know what I mean.’

Jack stared at her and for the briefest of moments she saw his gaze travel down her body and then back to her face. His look was deep, unfathomable, and Ellie felt she had done something wrong. Then he gave her a curt nod and walked away.

‘Bye, then,’ she said to his retreating back, and went off to tackle the Octopus Man’s amends.

The next morning Ellie looked at Jubbitt Junior standing in front of her in the meeting room and wondered what fresh hell he was about to subject her to. Her eyes were still tired from the marathon session she’d put in last night to deal with all the changes he had flagged up yesterday and she’d had the amended brochure biked over to him first thing. All he needed to do was check he was happy with it, sign it and have it biked back. If he didn’t approve it today the printers would go ballistic.

So what was so important that he had turned up at the agency? Perhaps he’d decided he wanted copperplate writing instead of type, or maybe he’d like the whole ruddy thing printed on parchment and not paper.

He was acting very strangely. He’d leaped to his feet when she’d walked in, and there was a crumpled look about him. Sweat beaded on his top lip and his forehead, and he was executing a strange little movement from one foot to the other.

He looked as she imagined Mr Collins did in
Pride and
Prejudice
just before he proposed to Lizzy Bennet. It was a thought that made Ellie take a couple of surreptitious steps backwards.

‘Um, Eleanor, I mean, Miss Somerset, I have approved the copy amends.’ He pointed towards a large folder on the glass-topped table. ‘You must have worked very hard yesterday after we met, very hard indeed. I wanted to say how pleased I am with it. We’re all very pleased with it.’ Jubbitt Junior plaited his fingers as he talked.

It couldn’t be that simple. If he fell on one knee and asked her to marry him, she was going to have to kick him in the groin, despite having promised herself she was never going to get anywhere near Jubbitt Junior’s groin.

She saw him lick his lips nervously.

‘I also wanted to say, Eleanor, that I have always been a very tactile person and it may be that sometimes I am tactile in the … ahem … wrong situation.’ Jubbitt Junior’s blinking was reaching worrying proportions. He stumbled on, ‘If this … um … tactile approach should have occurred in any of our meetings’ – more blinking – ‘I’m not saying it has, of course, but if it has, I unreservedly, without any further preamble, straight to the point, want to say I’m sorry.’

Good grief, the dirty devil was apologising. Ellie was unable to comprehend why he should realise right now that he’d been a lecherous old goat. Even more perplexing was the way he was looking at her as if pleading with her to say something.

She should leap down his throat and tell him exactly what she thought of his fondling ways, but he already looked scared half to death. All those things she had rehearsed to say to him dissolved. Next Christmas she was definitely asking for a harder heart.

‘Well,’ she started hesitantly, ‘I have found that maybe you don’t respect people’s personal space as much as you should.’ She waited for him to deny it, but he looked more terrified. ‘And with you being one of our clients, it has made it very difficult for me to say anything to you about it.’

Jubbitt Junior’s words came out in a torrent. ‘Right. Yes, well, good point, Eleanor. A lesson learned by me there, Eleanor. Yes. Say no more. A lesson learned. Thank you.’

Ellie could hear his laboured breathing and actually started to become concerned about him having a heart attack or a stroke.

She was going to say something else, but he abruptly stopped dancing from one foot to the other and made a huge detour round her to get to the door.

‘I’m glad that’s clarified,’ he said hurriedly, and gave her a grotesque little half-bow, half-curtsey before wrenching open the door and leaping out into the corridor.

Most odd. Ellie collected the folder from the table and walked quickly to reception. Rachel was looking up under her eyelashes at a courier who was dressed in an extremely tight pair of cycling shorts and a vest.

‘Sorry to bother you, Rachel,’ Ellie said, interrupting the cyclist and trying to keep her eyes from straying to his crotch. ‘Did Jubbitt Junior simply turn up this morning?’

‘No, Jack asked me to call him in. He was in with the creep for about half an hour before you.’

Ellie decided to take the stairs back up to her office. She needed time to think about this. Jack had stepped in and had words with Jubbitt about his inappropriate behaviour, that much was obvious. Why was she surprised? Probably because Gavin had never lifted a finger to help her. She’d spent so long working for a self-obsessed oaf she’d forgotten what a good boss was meant to do for his staff.

After all, hadn’t Jack brained that guy who had been rude to Mrs MacEndry?

So if Jack was only doing his job, why did it make her feel as if she’d had a warm blanket wrapped around her shoulders?

She ran up the last few stairs and decided not to beat herself up about it. If someone did something for her, why shouldn’t she feel pleased?

‘What are you grinning about?’ Lesley asked when she walked into the office.

‘Oh, nothing,’ she said, and wondered if not telling the truth was the same as telling a lie.

The producer counted out, ‘One, two and three,’ with his fingers and then the sweet sound of the singer’s voice filled the studio: ‘With Sure & Soft you’ve got everything covered.’

Penny was a pale girl with washed-out blonde hair almost hidden by the headphones, but boy, did she have a voice. She was the singer they were using for the last lines of the song and her voice was so good that Ellie and Lesley had decided to fade out the music right before she started to sing. It gave more emphasis to the product name and they were convinced that the sound of Penny’s voice singing out on its own would really stick in people’s brains.

The producer asked Penny to sing the lines again a couple of times and then shouted across to Ellie, Lesley and Dave, ‘I think that last one was the best. You three happy?’ They all nodded. ‘Well, in that case, ladies and gentlemen, I thank you. Our work here is done.’

There was an outbreak of cheering from the musicians,
who had finished recording some time before but had hung around drinking the free coffee and snaffling all the biscuits. The saxophone player, a guy with a straggly goatee, said loudly, ‘Hallelujah! There’s a ton of dust in my mouth needs watering.’ There was general laughter and a move to pack up and leave.

Recording studios had always seemed like glamorous little worlds to Ellie, even though the people who inhabited them were usually dressed more casually than she was. And some were definitely borderline geeks. She supposed the glamour bit came from all those decks and switches and microphones. And every now and then you could catch a glimpse of a famous face coming in to do a voiceover for an ad or a documentary.

On top of that was the thrill Ellie got from knowing that somebody would read out her words here in this room and soon they would be heard by people all over the country. Ignored possibly, but still out there on the airwaves.

Ellie was relieved that it had been a glitch-free day. The producer and Dave had overseen everything; all she and Lesley needed to do was ensure that the spirit of what they wanted had come through.

‘You going to the pub?’ the sound engineer asked them.

‘Just for a quick one,’ Ellie replied. ‘I’ve promised someone I’ll meet them for dinner tonight.’

Lesley gave her a funny look but didn’t say anything
until they were out of the building and some way down the street. Ellie guessed that, like her, Lesley was a little disorientated after being in the studio for so long. It was easy to lose track of everything when you were in there concentrating so hard, particularly as there were no windows anywhere to remind you of the outside world. To come out into the street and find that life was carrying on as normal and it was nearly dusk took a few minutes to absorb. Ellie hoped that Lesley wouldn’t pick her up on her comment about dinner, but soon she felt Lesley’s hand on her arm pulling her to one side.