Who's Afraid of Mr Wolfe? (31 page)

When she was completely naked, Ellie helped him undress and, as she did, she knew she had to tell him how she felt. It all came tumbling out – how she had fought the feelings she had for him, how he made her feel so sensual and wanted. And then, before she could bite it back, how she suspected that she was falling deeply in love with him.

When he finally took her, it was slow and tender and in bed. Not on the floor or spread across a chair or on a
table, but deep down in the bed with her hair tangling on the pillow.

Afterwards Ellie sat up to look at Jack and knew she was completely lost. It had been like falling into quicksand; she had fought and fought to get out, but in the end she had been sucked down into him.

She’d said things to him that she couldn’t take back now. She didn’t know what would happen when they were back at work together, but it didn’t matter. She would cope; they would cope. She loved him. And what she saw in his eyes told her that he felt the same way. She might not know much about men, but she knew the difference between lust and love, and that was a loving look.

She lay back down and felt his arm round her, protective and strong.

Jack lay with his arm round Ellie and knew he was in deep, deep trouble. She loved him and he was damn sure he loved her because it felt like the last time he’d been in love. He thought all the way around that and tried to swallow down the panic that was winding up from his stomach.

This had all been inevitable somehow; there was nothing to be gained from beating himself up about it. Ever since that presentation when that swine Hetherington had savaged her. That’s when it had started. That had made him feel like looking after her and opened the door to all
those other feelings. When he should have been retreating, he’d advanced.

She was exactly the kind of woman he’d done his best to avoid all this time. She was his ‘sort’: feisty, bright, funny and with a direct link to his libido. It was like she’d tied a string round him and could drag him away from wherever he was in London to bury himself in her.

He hadn’t even meant to come here tonight. How many times had he said that to himself over the last two weeks? Where she was concerned, it hadn’t worked. And this evening had been a nightmare. He’d come all prepared with his speech about it being great but being over, how they had to be adult about this, blah, blah, blah, and she’d wrong-footed him at every turn. Everything she’d done had cranked him up another gear. Jack closed his eyes. Why did her parents have to be dead? That did it. Lost.

His innards squirmed as he went back over all the loving things he’d said to her. How much worse was that going to make what he was going to do to her next?

There was no getting away from it; the whole thing was a great big mess. A mess he needed to sort out quickly.

He opened his eyes again and thought with anguish of that look she’d given him just now. It had been pulled right up from her heart. And why had he said all that stuff about wanting to protect her? The very thing he was unable to do.

But it didn’t matter. He was going to run. Let her think
it was because he couldn’t handle a relationship with someone he worked with.

She need never know he couldn’t handle a relationship full stop.

Jack lay there a bit longer, relishing the way Ellie’s leg was lying between his own and the feel of her hand cupped on his neck.

He should really tell her to her face that it was over, but there was no way he could do that. He’d be down on the floor with her five minutes later and back to square one. Keeping on confusing her was a bastard’s trick anyway.

He felt Ellie’s other hand move lazily on to his stomach and then relax, and suddenly, appallingly, he was crying. He blinked furiously and got himself back under control.

Well, her being lovely and loving didn’t count for anything in the long run. In fact it made it worse.

He wasn’t leaving himself open to all that crap again. To all that pain.

The Sophies and Leonoras of this world were the ones he should be concentrating on. Shallow, self-obsessed, put-downable, safe.

Jack ran his hand over Ellie’s hair and heard her sigh. He bent his head to kiss her and said softly, ‘Ellie my darling, I am so, so sorry.’

She was already half asleep and just mumbled, ‘What for?’

‘Everything from here on in,’ he said into the dark.

The text Ellie had just received from Jack made her frown. She had heard nothing from him since he had flown to New York, and now all she had was this one-word message:
Fine
. Two days, one word, and she’d had to drag that out of him by sending him a text first. She’d tied herself in knots composing it, trying to strike a light, jokey tone. Finally she’d come up with,
How is the city that never sleeps?
when what she really wanted to say was,
I miss you. I love you
.

She’d comforted herself yesterday with thinking that he was probably too busy to call, but then Ian had been going on and on about the long chat he’d had with Jack on the phone and how he was off to a party at the Waldorf Astoria. That’s when she’d felt the first stirrings of unease.

She was aware that there was a silence in the office and Lesley was shaking her head.

‘You haven’t been listening to a word, have you?’ she said. ‘I’ve been pouring my heart out, telling you how
Megan’s family won’t even talk to her now and you’ve been more interested in that phone.’ Lesley picked up her bag. ‘I have waited and waited for you to get back so that I could talk to you about it. I wanted to ring you up at home, but I thought, No, let her have her holiday. Now you can’t even be bothered to listen. Thanks a bunch, Ellie.’ She got up and left the room.

Ellie put her head down on the desk. Coming back to work had been fine on Monday. She had held the secret about all that she and Jack had shared like a lovely bright jewel in her palm. Nobody knew Jack like she knew Jack. But as Tuesday came, the reality of who Jack was and who she was had started to crowd out the memories of that lovely last night in bed.

If he had only been in touch, it would have made everything fine. Now here she was acting like a lovesick adolescent and ignoring her friends. After all the hours Lesley had sat and listened to her talk about Sam, the way she had looked after her.

She got up and went to find Lesley to apologise, but she was still wondering about Jack, still trying to work out if it would look too needy to actually give him a call.

How’s the weather in Manhattan?
she texted the next day.
Sunny
, came back the reply. She tried again:
Seen anybody famous?
Hours later she got a curt
No
. Finally she plucked
up her courage –
I miss you, Jack
– and sat and waited. And waited.

There was still no reply when she got to work on Thursday. No matter how many times she checked her mobile or her email, there was nothing.

Black, black fear took hold of her.

She stared at the copy she was meant to be editing and it might as well have been hieroglyphics. She got up and made a cup of coffee and tried to look at the copy again, but her hand kept straying to her mobile even though she knew that she would have heard if a text had arrived.

When Lesley walked in, Ellie shoved the phone in her drawer and put on her brightest face to listen to the latest developments in the Megan saga. At least she and Lesley were talking again. Lesley had been her creative partner and friend for years and she’d known Jack for how long? She despised how sad and stupid she was being but couldn’t shake herself out of this thing that appeared to be clamping on to her.

At lunchtime she went to find Ian so that she could work the conversation round to Jack.

‘So, how’s New York suiting Jack, then?’

‘Pretty well, I think. The negotiations with the American agency are going OK.’

‘What’s it called? Something Bootle?’

‘Bar Bootle.’

‘Well, don’t suppose Jack has seen much of the city itself, probably too busy.’

‘I think he’s been out and about quite a bit,’ Ian said, searching on his desk for something.

‘Right. What, being wined and dined?’

‘Knowing Jack, it will be wined, dined and that other thing ending in “ed” and starting with “f”.’ Ian sat down and smiled at his own cleverness and Ellie reassessed whether she did actually like him after all. ‘And if you’ll pardon me being crude, Ellie, I hope he is getting his end away. Might put a smile back on his face. He’s been walking around here like a bear with a sore arse for the last two weeks.’ Ian gave a loud laugh. ‘Perhaps he was missing you while you were on holiday, eh, Ellie?’

He continued to laugh uproariously at what he saw as the preposterousness of the suggestion and Ellie slunk back to her office doubly wounded: Jack had not only been socialising in New York, but during the time he’d been seeing her, he had been spectacularly miserable.

By Saturday, when Jack was due back in the country, Ellie was almost hysterical. A nasty little voice had taken up residence in her head saying, ‘What did you expect?’ over and over again. She stayed in bed most of the weekend, gnawing at her thumb and pretending she had a cold. It was hard to fight the urge to go to Jack’s flat and talk to him. If she could only see him, all would be well again; they could go back to what they were like before he’d left.

Edith was very kind and tactfully did not ask her about Jack.

On Sunday night Ellie could not sleep. Everything about that last evening that she and Jack had spent together told her that they were meant to be together, that he had developed deep feelings for her.

But everything about the past week told her that he had lost them pretty sharpish.

Her thoughts drove her out of bed and down to the kitchen to make toast. She took it back upstairs and couldn’t eat it. She fell asleep and dreamed of Jack, woke up again and thought he was in bed with her. Around about 5 a.m. she fell asleep, and when she woke up, it was past ten and she was very, very late for work.

By the time Ellie got off the bus, it was lunchtime. She hesitated outside the front entrance to the agency and wiped her hands down her skirt. Only one thing would be worse than bumping into Jack and that was not bumping into him.

Rachel was on her feet before Ellie had even reached the reception desk.

‘What a morning for you to be late, Ellie – you missed all the fun.’

‘Bit of a rush, Rachel.’ Ellie said, feeling too exposed. There was no way she could bump into Jack here and pretend nothing had happened.

She tried to get past Rachel, but she put out her arm
and stopped her. ‘You’ve got to listen to this, Ellie. We’ve bought that agency, Bar Bootle, and guess what? Jack’s moving out to New York to run it.’

Ellie didn’t hear the rest of what Rachel said, all the details of when he was going and how sorry everybody would be to lose him.

She would not accept this version of reality. It was not the one she’d seen in that bed.

One last hope was left. ‘Is he taking anyone with him, Rachel?’ she said, straining to make her voice sound normal.

Rachel gave her a confused look and then said, ‘Oh … I see. No, Jack’s tried to persuade her to go with him, but Mrs MacEndry says she’s too old for New York. She’s been thinking of retiring for a while, so this has made her mind up.’

Ellie wanted to scream, ‘I don’t mean Mrs MacEndry, you stupid bitch. I mean me. Is he taking me?’ She stumbled across to the stairs and started to climb them. With every step the little house of potential happiness that she had built came crashing down.

That snide voice was back inside her head too. This time it was shouting, ‘What did you expect, a white wedding and lots of Jack-shaped kids? You knew what he was like.’

The ‘Jack is going to America’ story was all that people talked about that day, and every time she heard it Ellie wanted to strangle the person who was speaking. Even
Lesley never shut up about it. She kept providing little updates with such glee that Ellie had to press her lips together to stop herself from screaming. Lesley had bumped into Jack coming out of the big board meeting and he’d told her he was going next week and had already found an apartment. They’d laughed that he had already started calling it that and not a flat. He’d seemed happy. And he was going to have a big leaving party at Zucchinis and everyone was invited. It was going to be a joint party with Mrs MacEndry to mark her retirement.

‘So, lucky old New York, eh, Ellie?’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s all you’ve got to say? I mean, I know you and Jack have had your ups and downs, but you were getting on better recently. It’s going to be quiet around here without him.’

‘Yes. Look, sorry, Lesley, I’ve got a thumping headache.’

‘Thought you were off colour. Only a headache, is it?’

Ellie nodded slowly. ‘Didn’t sleep very well last night. Feel a bit wobbly.’ She got up and went to the mini-fridge to get the one bottle of water she knew was still in there and, while she was facing away from Lesley, asked, ‘When do you suppose Jack decided he was going to move to New York? I mean, has it been on the cards for a while?’

Before Lesley could answer, Ian stuck his head round the door.

‘Big creative meeting in Jack’s office in ten minutes.
Catch up on the New York stuff and what’s happening on all the accounts.’

Ellie put the bottle back in the fridge and walked down to Jack’s office with all the enthusiasm of a woman going to stand in front of a firing squad.

‘Right, any more questions about New York and the operation there?’ Jack asked.

Juliette raised her hand. ‘Only, can I come with you, Jack?’

There was laughter around the room and Jack smiled down at the desk.

‘Hey, I get first refusal,’ Ian said.

There was more laughter from everyone and Ellie wanted to smack their stupid faces for them.

When she had first walked into the room and seen Jack, she knew that there must have been a mistake. He was going to turn round and come to her. They had been so close, so intertwined that he couldn’t possibly shrug her off like all the others. They had connected at some deep level that made another person seem somehow part of you. He’d felt that too, she was sure of it.