All Bets Are On (13 page)

Harry choked on his drink. Enough was enough. He slammed his glass down on the counter and took her firmly by the elbow.

‘Outside,’ he hissed.

She went easily, grinning triumphantly around her as he propelled her towards the exit. He was vaguely aware that across the room the table of his work colleagues were rubbernecking in unison to watch, Alice included. He’d have to try and defuse the situation as best he could now and then get back in there and do some serious making up if he wanted to salvage the evening with Alice. If that meant announcing their relationship to the table, he’d have to do it.

He rounded on Ellie as soon as they were out in the lobby.

‘What the hell was all that about? Why all the lies?’ he asked her. His hair was all his own, he’d never used fake tan and no amount of money could have induced him to do something as girly as waxing.

Ellie looked at him defiantly.

‘I was warning them off,’ she said. ‘Trouble is, you’re so bloody perfect I had to make up some faults.’

He rubbed his forehead wearily with a thumb and forefinger.

‘And you turned up here just to do that? You’re stalking me now, is that it?’

‘Don’t flatter yourself,’ she spat. ‘I’m out with friends. I’m well over you. But when I saw you at the bar playing the same old game the opportunity was too good to pass up. Same old Harry. On to the next one-night stand.’

For the first time the hurt in her voice actually registered. To be fair, the last time he’d spoken to her he’d been so consumed by anger over his trashed belongings that he hadn’t really considered how she might have been feeling. He took a closer look. Her face was twisted into an angry frown and he felt a sudden twinge of guilt. He had liked Ellie; she had been fun. The merry smile he remembered was a world away from the bitter way she looked now.

He had done that.

It occurred to him that he hadn’t even apologised for the way things had turned out between them; he’d simply believed their relationship had been as casual to her as it was to him—in fact had blamed her for making too much out of it.

Was this what a conscience felt like?

‘Ellie, I’m sorry,’ he said, on impulse. ‘For the way things turned out between us.’

She gave him a cynical look.

‘’Course you are, Harry. Am I ruining your evening—is that it? Need to get me out of the way so you can get on with finding the next girl?’

He held his hands up and shook his head.

‘I’m not here to pull women. It’s just a work thing.’

A cold pause. She made no response.

‘I know I treated you badly and I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I behaved like a total jerk. I didn’t think for a second about your feelings.’

Her face took on an amazed expression and he felt slightly piqued. Was it
that
hard to believe that he was a decent guy?

‘Seriously?’ she said.

He nodded, smiling in what he hoped was a reassuring way and, too late, he saw the sudden spark of hope light up in her eyes. Before he could put any space between them she’d moved in and thrown her arms around him.

‘I knew it,’ she whispered into his shoulder. ‘Deep down, I knew you’d see sense.’

He stared down in horror as she lifted her head and planted a kiss on his lips.

As the door from the bar opened behind him he finally wrenched himself free. Ellie switched her gaze over his shoulder.

‘Harry?’ Alice said. ‘What’s going on?’

He felt a lurch of nausea in his stomach because he knew how this would look to her. How she would
assume
it looked. Giving a damn about that wasn’t a sensation he was used to.

It dawned on him suddenly that what was meant to be a great laugh of a bachelor lifestyle was really not much fun any more. Was this what he’d turned into—someone who trampled roughshod over people’s feelings and never got to know anyone beyond the most superficial of levels? He wondered what the hell he’d ever thought was good about living that way.

‘
Nothing
is going on!’ he snapped, looking pointedly at Ellie as he put a good couple of paces between them.

The hopeful light in Ellie’s eyes went instantly out. He caught a glimpse of her hurt expression as she put her head down and took a huge hitching breath, then she pushed past him back into the bar and was gone. It could have been worse. At least she didn’t say anything to Alice. Then again, she’d said and done enough already.

The agonised expression on Alice’s face tugged painfully at his heart. He could feel her regard sliding through his fingers like sand.

‘Who was she?’ Alice asked, her face pale and tight.

She’s my ex-girlfriend who’s been hell-bent on revenge since I dumped her like a bag of rubbish.
Oh, yes, that would sound just great.

‘She’s nobody,’ he said.

A frown. And the hurt expression was replaced by one of stony coldness.

‘For nobody, you seemed to know her awfully well.’

‘She temped at Innova for a while.’

She flung a hand up.

‘I knew it! She’s one of your exes. What, did you decide on an action replay?’

The unfairness of that comment riled him and he remembered with a hot stab of jealousy that she too had been ramping up her social interaction back in there.

‘She came on to me, not the other way around,’ he snapped. ‘Which you might have noticed if you weren’t so busy flirting yourself. You were totally surrounded in there.’

She stared at him, eyes wide and incredulous.

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she snapped. ‘I had no choice but to try and socialise since my
date
for the evening disappeared to flirt at the bar. And then, next up, he disappears outside with a pert blonde. I don’t know why I’m even surprised—we both know you’re just waiting for the next best thing to come along. And you certainly had your pick tonight.’

This was what she thought of him. And she had the weight of his past reputation to prove her point. He felt a surge of angry frustration.

She began to shrug herself into her jacket.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Isn’t it obvious? I’m going home. I’ve had enough.’ She glanced up at him. ‘I don’t need this. We’re not even a proper couple. This is just a...a
warm-up
!’

That last dismissive comment really tore at him. He meant nothing to her beyond a few sample dates and now she was bailing? His heart plummeted with such sudden force it made him gasp for breath. She pushed open the door to the street and a rush of cold air filled the lobby. He darted after her as she crossed the pavement and raised an arm to hail a taxi.

‘It wasn’t what you think,’ he shouted. Just this need to protest was alien to him. Why did he care so much what she thought of him? Why didn’t he just let the bet slide, forget about the money, forget about the whole thing? Nothing was worth this much grief.

But he had a lot more than money staked on this now and convincing her that he’d changed seemed nigh on impossible.

A taxi pulled up beside her. She turned back to him, her face set.

‘OK, fine. Is she or isn’t she an ex of yours?’

He couldn’t lie to her. Not to her. Not now.

‘She is, but—’

‘And did I not just see the pair of you kiss? Or was I hallucinating?’

He threw his hands up in exasperation.

‘You did, but—’

‘Then it
is
what I think,’ she snapped. ‘I’ve seen and heard enough.’ She yanked the door of the taxi open and got in. ‘Enjoy your evening.’

The door slammed and she was gone.

* * *

‘Let me get this straight,’ Tilly said, pushing her red hair back from her face. ‘You saw him kissing another woman and you’re actually
debating
whether you might have got it wrong. What have you done with the real Alice Ford?’

Alice stopped pacing the sitting room long enough to speak.

‘She’s one of his ex-girlfriends. He tried to insist it was all down to her, said she came on to him. And now I think about it he did seem to be trying to fight her off. I didn’t hang around to hear him out and now...’ she clenched her fists at the ceiling in frustration ‘...now I don’t know what the hell to think. I don’t even know why I’m giving him a second thought—his reputation should speak for itself, right?’

She looked at Tilly for reassurance.

‘Not necessarily. Maybe he’s changed.’

Not the answer she was looking for.

‘Oh, honestly, people don’t really change, do they? This is Harry Stephens we’re talking about. Not all men are like lovely, straight-down-the-line Julian, you know.’

She could do without one of Tilly’s rational chats right now. When her stomach was churning like this with hurt and confusion. What she needed was a pat on the back and to be told she’d done the right thing. An offer to break out a bottle of wine and a tub of ice cream might be nice too.

Tilly grinned.

‘That’s what you get when you go out with someone who believes in karma. And I did offer to set you up with one of Julian’s friends, remember? Someone with no hidden agenda, with scruples and a moral code. You declined. Which tells me that perhaps straight-down-the-line doesn’t float your boat as much as you’d like it to.’

Alice ran a distracted hand through her hair. Maybe that was the problem. Despite her past she was still drawn to exactly the same kind of man as she always was: smart, funny, exciting and challenging. And because of her past, the payoff for that had to be lack of trust.

It was true she’d done her own share of flirting too, swept along by the idea of playing him at his own game. Despite her protestations to Harry it had actually been fun to be the centre of attention for a change. Maybe she just hadn’t liked it when he’d tipped the balance of power a bit too far his way. Maybe he was telling the truth. Perhaps he had changed, as Tilly said. Maybe for the right woman he could be a keeper after all. Was she just jumping to conclusions and thinking the worst of him because of her own damn baggage?

But his past spoke for itself, didn’t it?

She’d reacted to the thought that she was being played by him by doing exactly what she’d done when Simon had betrayed her. She’d got herself out of the situation as quickly as possible. She hadn’t left time for lame excuses. Why prolong it? Why drag out the humiliation?

She so desperately wanted to believe she’d moved on from that awful time, that she was stronger now. And maybe the only way to prove that would be by giving him the chance to explain. She wasn’t operating blindly here, was she? She was still in full mental control. She could hear him out and make a proper decision, like the calm controlled woman she was now.

She grabbed her jacket from the back of her chair on her way back out.

NINE

Rule #9 A player will involve you in his home life as little as possible. Don’t be surprised if he finds excuses not to invite you back to his place.

Right up until
Alice got out of the taxi at the end of Harry’s road, she intended to knock on the door like a grown-up and give him the chance to discuss the evening rationally. Unfortunately, somewhere during the short walk, sensibility was crushed underfoot by paranoia. Since she’d left him at the bar there had been a wall of silence. No follow-up calls to protest his innocence. No chasing after her in a taxi. And suddenly she couldn’t shake the feeling that he might have given up on talking her round because he’d taken the lean blonde woman home with him.

How could she trust her own judgement? When had she been such an expert on character-guessing? When she’d dreamed of marriage to a man who turned out to be exploiting her for fun? Add in Harry’s reputation and it would never be enough for her to just give him the benefit of the doubt. That was Simon’s legacy. Listening to whatever explanation he wanted to give just wouldn’t cut the mustard. If she was to be sure, she had no choice but to check up on him. That was the price of peace.

And so instead of walking up the path to his front door like any normal human being and pressing the doorbell, she was now teetering on the top of a wobbling pile of crates in his back garden, craning to see through a chink in his curtains.

The worst thing of all was that she could no longer deny it. Pressing the doorbell would have meant she was still in control of her emotions. Teetering like a lunatic in his back garden meant she was in too deep. She cared far too much now what his game was. Because if this visit was really only about her list of player behaviour, a knock on the front door would have done. The fact her insecurities had taken over meant the worst was true. She was falling for him.

She leaned forward and gripped the windowsill to give herself a few inches more leaning ability. Falling for him she might be, but she could still save herself. It wasn’t too late to curb that now if her worst fears happened to be realised. The lights were on. He was obviously home. The question now was whether he was home alone or whether he’d brought the blonde along for company. Or maybe even picked up someone else entirely. It had been more than two hours since she’d left him in the bar, plenty of time for a player like him to pick up an entire harem.

It rankled that he had never invited her back to his place. She thought of Arabella, who’d left her earrings here. Obviously he hadn’t been above taking her home with him. Maybe he reserved his shag-pad for one-night stands only—that way he could pursue two women at a time, right? The easy ones could come straight back here, and the ones who didn’t immediately fall at his feet could be wined and dined. She could see plates, mugs, some pots and pans through the gap in the curtains. A pigsty admittedly, but undeniably a kitchen.

She could hear faint sounds inside, too indistinguishable to work out if he was in there with someone or if the TV was on. Another surge of paranoia made her shift her weight.

And suddenly there he was, in the room, gorgeous as ever in jeans and dark blue shirt. She watched as he opened a cupboard and took out a glass. She framed her eyes against the window with her hands to try and get a better view, see if he took down a second glass, then maybe a bottle of champagne would appear and then...

Without warning, although the wobbly danger signs had been there all along, there was a shift beneath her knees and the crates below her crashed in a crumbling mess of sharp corners and hip-scraping sides into a haphazard pile. She went down with them, unable to stop an anguished squawk as she lost her footing, and ended up lying on her back staring up at the starry sky. There were bruises all over her and, worse, the burn of embarrassment rushed through her like fire as the back door opened with a bang and suddenly he was there, looking down at her with an incredulous expression on his face.

‘You only had to knock.’

* * *

Unfortunately there was no ladylike way of clawing your way out of a pile of crates. Alice ended up heaving her way out onto the damp grass like a hippo. She looked up at him, towering above her in the slanting glow of light from the open back door, his hair lightly tousled, an amused expression on the chiselled face, and wondered if there was a nearby stone big enough for her to crawl under. It didn’t matter now if he turned out to be a keeper in player’s clothing, because she’d blown it.

‘I can explain,’ she said, reaching out to take his proffered hand. He pulled her to her feet in one easy tug and then she was next to him, his gaze holding hers, the clouds of their breath mingling. Her heart raced.

‘I look forward to that,’ he said, his voice dangerously neutral, giving no reaction away. ‘Just let me grab a jacket. I’ll take you for a drink, there’s a good pub at the end of the road, and you can go for your life. I’m sure it will be a gripping story.’

He turned back towards the door, and as she digested what he’d said and realised what he was doing humiliation was pushed out in its entirety by one thought of absolute clarity.

He doesn’t want me inside his house.

She stumbled after him, grimacing at the ache in her bones from her ungainly fall, and grabbed his arm.

‘No need to go to the pub,’ she said. ‘I’m here now. A cup of coffee will do. Let’s just get inside out of the cold.’

Although frankly she wasn’t feeling the bite of the autumn evening one bit. Her whole body seemed to be boiling up with anger. Who did he have in there that he didn’t want her to see? Had he left the blonde in his bed?

‘Pub’s much nicer,’ he said, his face inscrutable. ‘I forgot to get any milk in and the place is a tip.’

‘Black coffee is fine and I don’t give a toss about a bit of mess,’ she said, not letting go of his arm. She thought that might be enough, but still he didn’t invite her in and stood blocking the way.

Enough was enough.

She dropped his arm, sidestepped him neatly and walked across damp grass onto the gravel path, heading towards the door.

‘Alice,’ he called after her. ‘Alice, please don’t go in there.’

‘Who is she?’ she snapped over her shoulder at him, almost at the door now. ‘Your ex from tonight, the Innova temp? Or just someone you picked up after I...oh, my flippin life!’

The smell hit her as she made it through the door. Inside was a galley kitchen with a table at one end, a sink full of washing-up, yet she didn’t register any of it because it felt as if only one of her five senses was working. The gagging stench of rotting dead fish assaulted her and extinguished all coherent thought. It was so dense the air felt almost soupy with it. She clapped a revolted hand over her mouth and turned back to him as he caught up with her. She vaguely registered that his face was apologetic.

‘What in the name of hell is that
smell
?’ She gasped, shoving him blindly aside so she could stick her head out of the back door and take a few gulps of fresh air.

‘I wish to hell I knew,’ he said.

She moved outside to stand on the doorstep. She could still pick up the stench from here but it was diluted enough by the fresh air outside that she could at least think coherently.

‘Why don’t we just go to the pub?’ he said again.

She remembered why she was here. Surely the smell didn’t permeate the whole house.

‘Is there someone else in here? Is that why you’re so reluctant to invite me in?’

‘That’s why you were lurking in my garden in the dark instead of ringing the doorbell? You think I’ve got some other woman holed up in here somewhere?’

Embarrassment at the fact he’d caught her gurning through his window made a comeback.

‘Alice,’ he said slowly, as if talking to a toddler. ‘There is no one in here apart from me. If I haven’t invited you over it’s because I didn’t think you’d particularly enjoy spending time in my house when it smells like something’s died in here.’

‘Oh,’ she said in a small voice.

‘What do you think—that I’ve got some woman hidden in my wardrobe? Go on and look,’ he said, moving aside so she had easy access past him. ‘Go on, check it out. You’ll find a bit of a mess but you won’t find any other woman.’ His blue eyes were fixed on hers. ‘I’m not interested in any other woman.’

Her stomach gave a slow and melting flip. Part of her, the part that kept glancing back instead of looking forwards, wanted to push past him and ransack the place. Yet she knew if she succumbed to that desire it would be a regression. And for Pete’s sake, it wasn’t as if his excuse weren’t plausible. She had the godawful stench filling her nostrils to prove it.

She took a deep breath and forced herself to think rationally.

‘I don’t need to go through your cupboards,’ she said. ‘I’ll take your word for it.’

He sighed in a finally-she-sees-sense way.

‘OK, then,’ he said. ‘Bring on the explanation. In fact, you don’t need to. It’s pretty obvious why you were lurking in my garden. You were suspicious because of what happened tonight and you decided to check it out—is that it?’

She pulled her coat more tightly around her and folded her arms against the cold. She avoided his eyes. No point denying it.

‘That’s pretty much it,’ she said.

He nodded.

‘You could have just asked me straight out,’ he said.

She wondered for a crazy moment if she would ever be the kind of person for whom asking straight out would be good enough. Or if she was doomed to mistrust everyone and everything until the end of time.

‘The problem with that is your track record,’ she said, on the defensive because she’d made such a fool of herself. ‘Based on your past and the way you and that blonde disappeared for some
private time
...’ she made sarcastic speech marks in the air with her fingers ‘...do you really blame me for thinking if I asked you outright you might not have given me a straight answer?’

Silence while he looked down at his feet and ran both hands through his hair. Then he sighed and looked up at her.

‘Ellie is an ex-girlfriend,’ he said. ‘I told you that. There’s absolutely nothing between us now.’

She pulled a face.

‘You were in a clinch. I know what I saw.’

‘You saw
Ellie
kiss
me.
But you didn’t see what went on before that and you were too determined to think the worst of me to give me five minutes to explain.’

A warm flush crept into her cheeks because he had a point and she knew it.

‘This is just a few dates to you, right?’ he carried on. ‘If that’s really all it is, if you don’t really care one way or the other, then why go through all this cloak-and-dagger stuff? If you don’t feel you can trust me, don’t come here trying to catch me out, just bail.’

A sharp prickling at the very back of her throat made her swallow hard. Because it no longer was just a few dates to her and, although admitting it to herself felt like pulling fingernails, she didn’t want to bail.

‘Trust is...’ she took a deep breath ‘...well, it’s a big ask, that’s all.’

He took her hand in his then, and the prickly throat almost made a comeback.

‘There
is
no other woman,’ he said. ‘There won’t be. Not while I’m seeing you. I don’t cheat. If I’m not happy I end it before I move on.’ He looked over her shoulder, through the door into the foul-smelling kitchen.

‘Trouble is, with Ellie I left ending it a bit too long.’

* * *

He grabbed a couple of the crates and turned them upside down, then sat down and tugged her down next to him. It was a perfect clear autumn night and moonlight washed the small garden in silver. Behind him golden light from his kitchen pooled outside the back door. Her senses were so focused on him that she barely registered the chill air.

He looked her in the eye.

‘You want to know what’s going on between Ellie and me?’

Her heart began to pick up the pace as she nodded her head.

‘I haven’t told anyone about this.’

Hideous scenarios paraded through her head, making it spin. Was she pregnant? Were they secretly married? Her heart felt suddenly like lead. She bit her bottom lip and waited for the bombshell.

‘I’m the victim of a woman scorned,’ he said.

For a moment she couldn’t quite comprehend what he’d just said.

‘You’re what?’

‘Ellie is a vengeful ex-girlfriend. A bunny-boiler.’ He paused. ‘And she really got me good. No one knows about it. Except for you now.’

She stared at him. His blue eyes were totally clear and because the look in them was one of weary resignation she bit back the compulsion to laugh. How ironic that Mr Love-Them-And-Leave-Them was fed up with being messed about by an ex.

‘Of all the things I expected you to say,
that
didn’t even make the list,’ she said.

As a past member of the woman-scorned club herself, curiosity was eating her up as to what this Ellie had actually done.

‘What happened?’ she prompted.

He shrugged.

‘I dated her for a few months. We went out, had a good time—at least I thought we had a good time—and then—’

‘What?’

‘She started to talk about next steps, moving in together, meeting her parents, that kind of thing.’

This time she couldn’t suppress a laugh.

‘Let me guess—you ran for the hills.’

His lips twitched into a small smile at that.

‘I didn’t exactly run for the hills but I told her I didn’t want anything serious, I thought it had run its course between us...’

‘You’d like to be just friends, blah blah, the usual.’

‘Exactly.’

‘How did she take it?’

‘Like a total lunatic,’ he said. ‘She came round to my place to pick up a few of her things that she’d left there. I was in the kitchen, keeping out of the way. I didn’t realise until after she’d gone that she’d shredded my entire wardrobe and tipped coffee dregs over my laptop.’

‘Oh, wow.’

‘I know,’ he said. ‘It gets worse. A couple of days later and my car was keyed. Really badly. It cost me a fortune to get a respray.’