Who's Afraid of Mr Wolfe? (22 page)

Ellie shook her head. How did he do this every time? Nice and nasty, nasty and nice. It was like being batted about by some temperamental toddler.

Those eyes were mocking her again. No longer pools of grey tenderness.

She would keep her mouth shut, say nothing.

No, she couldn’t.

‘Sorry, Jack, I think we’ve had this conversation before about how I never seem to quite come up to your high expectations.’

He stared at her. ‘That’s what you think, is it, Ellie? That I find you … not quite good enough?’

She wanted to shout that she didn’t know. He had her so confused she didn’t know anything.

She was bone tired now with all the emotion zinging about inside her. Please, please let that taxi come round the corner. Lusting after Jack was humiliating her, changing her into a woman she didn’t recognise.

She shrugged. ‘Yeah, well, we can’t all be like Sophie.’

Jack gave her a funny look. ‘What?’

‘Nothing,’ she said, and then saw the taxi turning the corner. Hallelujah. She started to walk towards it. ‘Thanks, Jack,’ she called back over her shoulder, only to find he was right behind her. He opened the door of the cab and her face was right next to his. She was looking into his eyes and what she saw there made her stop completely still. She wasn’t even sure she was breathing.

She’d been over and over this. It was madness. It was temporary insanity brought on by lust. The Heathcliff effect. Fight it and it would pass.

Then Jack leaned forward and kissed her very gently on the cheek, the lightest of touches. His lips were warm; his hair touched her eyebrow.

‘Night, Ellie,’ he said gently. ‘Look after yourself. Ask the taxi driver to wait until you’ve gone into the house.’ His hand was on her arm helping her.

She sat down on the seat, stunned, looking ahead, not
daring to glance back at him, and soon the taxi was out of the street and away.

All the way home she tried to unravel the threads of Jack’s behaviour towards her. It was impossible; all she knew was how he made her feel. Like she was wrestling with something she couldn’t control that might turn round and bite her at any minute. Was he simply being kind? All that stuff about being careful, those looks. Was this why he was so successful with women, because he made you feel as if there was no one else alive as important to him as you were? It was a good skill, a neat trick.

But what if it wasn’t a trick?

Edith was still up when she got in and Ellie told her all about Lesley and Megan and they opened a bottle of wine to celebrate. She gave her edited highlights of the Dave incident too and mentioned that Jack had got her a taxi home.

Edith sat looking at her with her head on one side.

‘What’s up, Edith? You look like you want to say something. Is it about Megan and Lesley? Don’t you approve?’

‘Good gracious, Ellie dear, I couldn’t be more delighted for them. Splendid news.’ Edith took a large sip of wine. ‘Modern life is so much more sensible than in my day. I had an aunt Rose who lived with another woman, Jessica, all her life and they had to pretend they were just friends.’

‘Perhaps they were just friends.’

‘No, dear. When Rose died, quite a few years after dear Jess, we found certain things that suggested otherwise.’

Ellie didn’t dare ask what kind of things they’d found.

‘No,’ continued Edith, happy that all was now clear about lesbianism in less enlightened times, ‘I am very pleased for Lesley and Megan. It was Dave I was going to ask about.’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Well, I haven’t heard you mention him before.’

‘No? Well, he wrote the music for the knickers ad and I’ve been working with him quite a bit. He gave me his phone number a while ago.’

‘Hmm,’ Edith said.

‘Hmm, what?’

‘But you hadn’t rung him?’

‘No.’

‘But when he turned up tonight, you were glad to see him?’

Sometimes Ellie wished that Edith was starting to lose her marbles. She decided to pretend she hadn’t heard.

Edith carried on, ‘And Jack happened to wander past as Dave left?’

Ellie kept her lips tightly clamped together, but Edith wouldn’t be deterred. ‘Did Jack ask you where Dave had gone?’

Ellie gave in and shook her head and Edith started to laugh.

‘What’s so funny?’

‘Oh, Ellie darling, you’re such an innocent. First that filthy Jubbitt man apologises to you after a meeting with Jack; then there’s that incident with the model-maker where Jack dragged you away; and now this.’ Edith’s eyes were bright with mischief. ‘Dave gets called away; Jack appears on the scene and doesn’t even ask where he’s gone?’ Edith finished her wine and leaned back with a satisfied grin.

‘What are you saying, Edith?’ Ellie asked, starting to nibble at her thumb without realising it.

‘I’m saying that Jack didn’t need to ask where he had gone because he knew already.’ Edith leaned forward again. ‘I’m sure Jack is a good friend of this music man who called Dave, aren’t you?’

‘Edith, I think you’re putting two and two together and coming up with completely the wrong number.’ Ellie was quite brisk; she wanted to shut this conversation down as soon as possible – it sounded too much like the one she’d had with herself in the taxi home. ‘If you’re hinting at what I think you’re hinting at, there’s one big flaw in your theory.’

Edith said nothing, simply cocked her head a little.

‘Jack doesn’t care two hoots about me. Every bit of niceness from him is always followed by something nasty. Always. You wait, come Monday he’ll tear my head off about something to make up for getting me a taxi. He
might have dragged me away from the shoot, as you so rightly pointed out, but he ended up humiliating me in front of Rachel.’

Edith was still doing that irritating cocking-head thing.

Ellie ploughed on, ‘He simply made up a whole story about me sulking. I mean, I was a bit put out about having to come back to the agency, but it wasn’t a sulk. Turned on me and savaged me. I stood there like a muppet while Rachel simpered at him.’

Ellie was pretty pleased with herself. In the course of trying to show Edith how cross she was with Jack, she’d actually made herself angry with him all over again.

All Edith said, with rapier-like clarity, was, ‘And it bothered you, Rachel simpering at Jack, did it?’

Caught off guard, Ellie said, ‘No, of course not,’ much too quickly, and then added, ‘That wasn’t the point I was trying to make, Edith.’

Edith’s eyes were twinkling mischievously again. She tapped the side of her nose. ‘Say what you like, Ellie, I still think that there is a pattern emerging and you refuse to see it. Your Mr Wolfe seems to be keeping an eye on you.’ She stood up slowly. ‘I may look like a desiccated prune, but I do know a little bit about men. I had five brothers, remember? And quite a few boyfriends.’ She bent to kiss Ellie on the head. ‘And you, my dear Ellie, are an open book. Every time you mention Jack Wolfe these days you end up nibbling the skin down the side of your thumbnail.’

‘I do not,’ Ellie said, hurriedly covering up her thumbs.

‘Ellie, don’t fib. I was a drama teacher for years. Body language is my subject.’ She patted Ellie on the shoulder. ‘You should be happy. You’re at the start of a big adventure.’

Ellie was on her feet. ‘No, Edith, I’m not. I’m sorry. You’ve been reading too many romances. Jack is my boss and he’s a serial womaniser. He’s domineering; he insists on getting his own way …’ Ellie became aware that she had raised her voice and made a conscious effort to lower it. ‘Look, I admit I find Jack attractive, but nothing is going to happen. I’m not going to let it.’

Edith continued to smile at her and Ellie felt like shaking her.

‘Don’t smile at me like that, Edith. I’m serious. People are attracted to one another all the time; they don’t have to do anything about it. And I’d have to leave the agency if … Look, it’s always the woman who has to leave.’

‘Ah, so you’ve thought about it, then?’ Edith said triumphantly, and started to move towards the sitting room door.

Ellie made one last attempt. ‘Edith, listen. Nothing is going to happen. For lots and lots of reasons. But the main one is … Jack is getting married soon. A girl called Sophie.’

Edith stopped. ‘Sophie and Jack,’ she said, running the words slowly around her mouth. ‘S-o-p-h-i-e and Jack.’ Eventually she shook her head. ‘No, no, that doesn’t sound
right at all. That’s not going to happen.’ Giving Ellie a cheery wave, she left the room.

‘Bugger,’ Ellie said softly to herself, and very soon her thumb was back in her mouth.

On Monday morning Mrs MacEndry was leafing through
Ad Infinitum
when she came to the gossip column. She started to read and with each word her eyebrows disappeared further into her hair. She put down the magazine and gave a tiny, ladylike snort, then got up and went into Jack’s office and placed the magazine, open at the appropriate page, on his desk.

Jack arrived at work about ten minutes later and said in a confused tone, ‘Lydia, have we won some awards over the weekend that I don’t know about? Three people on the way up here have offered me their congratulations.’

Mrs MacEndry smiled. ‘I think you need to look on your desk.’

Jack went into his office with the confused look still on his face and shut the door behind him.

Mrs MacEndry sat very still and waited. When Jack’s door flew open and he stood there, magazine in hand, he was looking murderous.

‘For God’s sake,’ he said, and threw the magazine into Mrs MacEndry’s wastepaper bin. ‘Get Sophie on the phone for me, will you? She can hear wedding bells, can she? Well, she must have better hearing than I’ve got.’

He went back into his office and stood looking at the phone. Marry her? Hell had frozen over, had it?

He thought back to Friday night. Well, that explained Ellie’s comment about Sophie.

Jack sat down at his desk and let his mind linger yet again on the particularly satisfying memory of how Ellie’s cheek had felt against his lips. Soft, warm, incredibly inviting. Thank God he hadn’t managed to get to her mouth.

The way her beautiful eyes had flashed at him when he’d annoyed her was worth replaying too, along with all those little electrically charged glances that had passed between them in the pub. But the absolute top moment had been that look she’d given him right before he’d put her in the taxi.

Had she guessed he’d had something to do with dull Dave buggering off? Had she worked out what she was doing to him?

He was stuffed if she had.

But then again, he was stuffed if she hadn’t. Right now he was stuck in some kind of no-man’s-land where he didn’t dare do anything about claiming Ellie for himself, but he was damned if he was going to sit around and watch any other man get his hands on her.

He cast a look at the phone, willing it to ring so that he could escape from having to go over all this yet again.

Perhaps he could persuade her to go into a nunnery.
That was the only solution. Because making a move towards her would be like embarking on some chemical experiment that you knew was going to blow up in your face and leave you lying among broken glass.

He put the heels of his hands over his eyes and tried to stop thinking completely, and then the phone was ringing.

He took a deep breath. ‘Ah, Sophie darling,’ he said when he picked it up. ‘Look, there’s no nice way to tell you this …’

Jack was standing very close to Ellie in his office.

‘Ellie,’ he said, ‘we have a real problem with the ad. The client has decided that they don’t want knickers any more. They want model aeroplanes with huge wings.’

He was rubbing her arm with his hand. ‘You have to go to the model-makers and get them to make some planes.’

‘Planes, Jack? But none of the song will make sense,’ Ellie said, starting to cry. ‘I’ll have to write a new song and get new music and I can’t because I kissed Dave and now I wish I hadn’t.’

‘What?’ snarled Jack. ‘You were kissing someone else?’ He grabbed her by both arms, pulling her close. ‘You know that’s wrong. You know it’s in your contract that you have to kiss me.’ He moved his mouth to her ear and whispered, ‘What’s wrong with me? Don’t I turn you on enough yet?’

‘No, Jack … yes … I,’ she tried to say, but he was looking at her with such intensity that she took his face
in both her hands and started to kiss him. Deep, searching kisses. She could feel his stubble on the palms of her hands.

They were down on the floor now under his desk, his hands undoing the buttons of her blouse, and then she felt his hot mouth on her nipple, hot even through the material of her bra.

‘Oh God, Jack, yes … yes,’ she said, but he probably couldn’t hear her over the sound of somebody hammering on the office door.

A voice shouted, ‘Ellie dear, I heard the most dreadful thump. You haven’t hurt yourself, have you?’

Jack disappeared and Ellie found herself face to face with a pair of shoes. She was lying on the rug by her bed. Several bits of her hurt.

‘Ellie dear?’ shouted Edith through the bedroom door.

Ellie sat up slowly. ‘No harm done, Edith. I think I must have fallen out of bed. I had a bad dream, that’s all. Sorry.’

Edith muttered something and went downstairs, and Ellie hauled herself back into bed and lay there looking at the ceiling.

Sleep wouldn’t come again, though, no matter how hard she tried. Jack wasn’t just disturbing her days; he was prowling through her dreams with his glittering, dangerous looks. She was being stalked and there were only two things she could do about it.

One was too embarrassing even to think about, and the other would involve leaving an agency she liked and people
she had grown to love. She couldn’t go on much longer like this, though, acting like some schoolgirl. Perhaps she had to face the fact that it was time for a move. Once the knickers ad was on TV, she and Lesley were bound to be more in demand.

She climbed out of bed, got dressed and went and had a look at the ‘Situations Vacant’ in her copy of
Ad Infinitum
.