Guilty Pleasure (10 page)

It’s then that I know that it doesn’t make any difference what I say, what I do. The decision was made before I even walked in the room.

‘I think the best thing would be for you to resign,’ Mr Thomas continues. ‘I’m sure neither of us really wants to go down the messy route of me having to terminate your employment. Though obviously, it’s your choice.’

Despite everything, despite knowing that I didn’t lead Michael Donovan on, I can’t help feeling a sick sense of responsibility for what’s happening. If I hadn’t started things with Ethan, I wouldn’t have come to work wearing a skirt and heels, and he wouldn’t have got the wrong idea. I broke all my own rules, and now I have to deal with the consequences. But this is wrong. This is so very, very wrong.

‘Well?’ Mr Thomas prompts me. I can’t speak. I don’t have the words. I’m so full of disappointment, of shame, of rage at the sheer injustice of it. All I know is that I have to get out of here. I make for the door. I’m shaking. It’s almost like an out of body experience, like I’m watching myself fumble with the door handle and trip out into the hall. A million things are rushing through my mind, things like mortgage payments and bills and how the hell I’m supposed to get another job.

I stumble past my office, past the clerical staff. I’m halfway to the exit when I crash into Ethan. I bounce off his strong, lean body. I want to cling onto him, but I don’t. I can’t. ‘Did you know?’ I ask him. I can feel all the rage boiling up inside me, and I have to let it out or I might explode.

‘Know what?’

‘Michael Donovan complained.’ My voice is getting loud, too loud, and I don’t care that everyone is watching, listening. ‘Apparently he got fed up with my endless flirting and my general incompetence.’

‘You’re not incompetent.’

‘But I am a flirt? Is that what you’re saying?’

‘No. No, Tasha. Listen…’

‘That man assaulted me.’ My chest is heaving as I fight to get air. ‘He groped me and tried to stick his tongue down my throat, and because I said no, I’m out of a job. How is that fair, Ethan? How is that right?’

Ethan says nothing. He tucks his hands in his pockets, his water-blue eyes stunningly bright in his face. It seems ironic, really, that this is the point at which I finally start to get some perspective, to understand that work isn’t everything, that money isn’t everything. That there is more, and that I need it. That I deserve it. That I’m entitled to it.

I can’t live half a life any more. ‘Ethan,’ I say. I put a hand on his arm, then lift it to cup his cheek. To hell with the rest of the office. This is exactly what it looks like, and I don’t give a damn. I want him to put his arms round me, but he doesn’t, of course he doesn’t. ‘I’ve been told to hand in my resignation or I’ll be fired,’ I say. ‘My choice. After everything I’ve done. I worked so damn hard for this firm.’

The back of my throat burns.

‘Come with me,’ I say, desperately. ‘We don’t need this place. We can find somewhere else. Set up on our own. We could do it, Ethan.’

He looks away, his mouth set hard. ‘I can’t do that, Tasha.’

Where is my big dramatic moment, where he marches into Mr Thomas’ office and knocks the sexist tosspot flat on his arse, before scooping me up into his arms and carrying me out of the office, out into the sunshine, where freedom and a better life filled with equal opportunities and rampant, kinky sex awaits?

In my imagination, that’s where. Because he’s a man, so of course he’s going to side with the others. I might let Michael Donovan get away with it. I might have let Cal Bailey and Mr Thomas get away with it. But I’ll burn my bra before I’ll let Ethan get away with it. ‘Then it’s over,’ I say to him. ‘We’re through.’

And then I push past him, push out into the corridor and run down the stairs. I run out into the sunshine, and I run to the train station. I fumble for my ticket and rush onto the platform, praying that there’ll be a train in the next couple of minutes, only to discover that I’ve just missed one and it’s a twenty minute wait.

Has the world got it in for me? Is that it? Am I being punished for wanting what men have, for wanting to be treated equally for doing the same work? For wanting sex on my terms? For wanting to enjoy it the way men do, for wanting to enjoy the pleasures of being female?

It sure as hell seems like it as I sit on a cold, uncomfortable metal bench with bird crap crusting one end. I’m so angry I could scream. I’m so disappointed I could cry until I’m a dried out shell, and I’m so hurt I’m not sure I can survive it.

I thought Ethan would be on my side. I guess I was wrong. I stare at the platform, at the cracked yellow line that separates the safe part from the suicidal part, and I feel every little brick of the skyscraper of self-esteem that Ethan had helped build inside me crumble into dust. A train rolls alongside the platform, and I get on it, mindlessly taking a seat, resting my head against the window. It’s quiet at this time of day and only a few more people get on. I ignore them. If I make eye contact, I might cry, and that would be the final straw. The door signal beeps, and that at least gives me some comfort, letting me know that we’ll be moving soon, that I’ll be moving away from the place where everything went so fucking wrong.

The doors start to close, and someone crashes onto the train. I can’t see who it is, and to be honest, I don’t care.

‘Sorry about that,’ someone says, in a cut-glass accent. A very familiar cut-glass accent.

It can’t be. Can it?

I straighten up in my seat, lean forward, trying to get a better look at whoever it is, hoping, not daring to hope. Telling myself that even if it is him, he can go screw himself. I pin my gaze to the seat in front of me before I can be caught staring. I twist my fingers together, pretend I’m not interested, pretend I don’t care as the train lurches forward and someone makes their way towards me. I catch sight of a long-fingered, elegant hand gripping the headrest of an empty seat as the man continues his forward progress.

I know that hand.

My throat goes dry and tight, and I can’t seem to swallow. And then Ethan is folding himself into the seat next to mine and the train is speeding along, the outside world whizzing past.

‘Hello, Tasha,’ he says.

I flatten the palms of my hands over my knees. I can feel myself shaking. I want this to be something, but I’m terrified that it’s not. ‘Ethan,’ I say. ‘Shouldn’t you be at work?’

‘I resigned,’ he says.

Oh, god. That’s something. ‘What the hell did you do that for?’

‘I decided the company wasn’t for me,’ he says. ‘I don’t think I can work for a pompous, sexist prick. Or the sort of clients who want to employ pompous, sexist pricks.’

‘And you couldn’t have decided that half an hour ago?’

Ethan stiffens in his seat. ‘No,’ he says quietly. ‘I guess not.’

I push my spine back against the uncomfortable seat. I don’t want to make this too easy for him. I don’t want it to
be
easy. Instant forgiveness doesn’t work for me. It can’t. I don’t have enough left to lose to have anything to spare. ‘That’s a shame,’ I say, wanting to lean against him, to curl around him and cry my heart out, wanting to rewind time back to yesterday and hit the pause button.

The train is rushing forwards, and darkness surrounds us as we speed through a tunnel, the lights inside the carriage bathing everything in a harsh, white glow. Ethan and I sit there like colleagues, like semi-strangers, not like two people who fucked each other every which way, who discovered that they both take their kink the same way, who said those three little words with such heartfelt passion that it seemed like it was real.

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘It is.’ He reaches out and takes my hand, and I’m surprised to find that I let him. I’m trying to hold on to the anger, the disappointment. I need to hold on to them. But he’s here. He quit his job, the job I know meant so much to him. ‘There are things you need to know, Tasha. Things I didn’t tell you.’

He slides his fingers between mine. I don’t say anything. A strange sense of dread is creeping over me. I’m not sure I want to hear whatever it is that he has to say.

I’m scared that if I do, I’ll forgive him.

‘I’m an addict,’ he says. ‘A cocaine addict, to be precise. I didn’t start out thinking I would end up that way. It was just a little pick-me-up every now and then, to help me work longer, party harder. To help me when I had to network in a room full of strangers when all I wanted to do was go home and sleep for a day straight. And then, one day, it wasn’t.’

‘Oh, god,’ I say.

He squeezes my hand. ‘It destroyed my marriage,’ he says. ‘It nearly destroyed me. When Vicky left me, I knew I had to sort myself out. Not because I thought I could fix the marriage –– we didn’t have enough in common or enough love between us for that –– but because I knew I was going to be dead by forty if I didn’t, and I’m too much of a masochist to let myself take the easy way out. I quit my job, got the one at Thomas Associates. Got out of London, out of the ratrace, away from the pressure, away from women.’ He turns to me. ‘I don’t make fast decisions,’ he says. ‘Because I can’t. It’s something that my therapist really hammered home. When I make fast decisions, I make poor ones. I get married to a woman I’m not sure I’m in love with. I say yes to the colleague who offers me a couple of lines even though I think he’s a jerk.’ He smiles, a painful grimace. ‘I buy yellow ties and slip-on shoes and I design buildings that aren’t fit for purpose. And then I do a few more lines, because I know I’m losing my grip but when I’m high I don’t care, and not caring is easier than dealing. My gut told me to tell Thomas where he could stick his job the moment you told me what had happened, Tasha. But I couldn’t do that. You have to understand.’

‘Fuck,’ I say. It’s the only word I seem to be able to say, and I cram all my feelings into it. Anger and sorrow and disappointment, not in him, but for him. Respect, too, a huge swell of it for everything that he’s got past, everything he’s overcome, for the changes he’s made. And then I do lean against him, I all but crawl into his lap as silent tears slide down my face. His arm comes around me and he strokes my hair in that protective way men do in romance novels and soppy films, and for the first time I understand the appeal of it. It doesn’t make me less than him. It doesn’t make me weaker, or less intelligent because I like the way it feels. It’s simply his way of offering comfort to me. And more than that, by letting him comfort me, I’m comforting him, too. I can see it in his face.

The train rushes on and on, and we sit there in silence, holding each other. We speed through another tunnel, stop at a station before the final charge to King’s Cross, where we both get off and make our way to the tube. It’s busier than the train was, although not rush-hour busy. There are empty seats, but we don’t take them. We tuck ourselves into the corner of the carriage, Ethan leaning back against the wall as I fit myself against him, my feet tucked in between his feet.

My hand pressed firmly over his rapidly stiffening cock.

I don’t rush him, knowing that’s not the way he plays, but knowing that he will make his choice. He always does. I’m the one who doesn’t. I thought I was decisive, but I’m not. I’m not at all. If I was, I’d have left Thomas Associates months ago. I’d have declined to work with Michael Donovan the first time he made a pass at me. ‘I didn’t give Mr Thomas an answer,’ I say, as the train stops at Ethan’s stop and neither of us makes a move to get off. We’ve already gone past mine.

‘What?’ Ethan replies, which I suppose is understandable, given that I’m currently stroking his balls.

‘When he told me to either resign or he’d fire me, I didn’t give him an answer.’

‘Are you going to give him an answer?’

I think about it. ‘Yes.’ I smile. ‘Yes. I am.’

Epilogue

I didn’t give Mr Thomas an answer straight away. I let him stew for a few days, let him start the process of terminating my employment, then I got myself some legal advice and told him that he could make me redundant with a very generous payout or I’d sue his arse into the middle of next week for failing to protect me from sexual harassment.

It turned out that I wasn’t the only female employee at Thomas Associates that Michael Donovan had harassed. And that Ethan wasn’t the only male employee fed up of Mr Thomas’ attitude. Cal Bailey was too. He resigned two days after Ethan, which brings me to where I am now. The work on the shop is almost done. The walls have been painted, and the fitters have been in, building the shelves that will hold fabric samples, carpet samples, wallpaper, trinkets, ornaments. Ethan and I are handling the architectural side of The Full Package, Cal managing the onsite building. He’d always wanted to be out of the office. We’ve got another ex-Thomas Associates employee on board too, Verity. She was working as a clerical assistant but it turned out that she’d got a degree in art and design and a penchant for stylish interiors, as well as a bottom that Michael Donovan had liked to pinch when no-one was looking.

The big launch is seven days away. We’ve already got clients, people who want the personal touch, a company that will nurture their house from the ground up. I’ve come here with Ethan to check on progress. Okay, partly to check on progress. Mostly because we’ve thought it through and made a decision. It’s time for us to christen the office.

I set myself down on the lush brocade sofa that sits in front of the wide, Art Deco desk that softly dominates the office at the rear of the shop. The lights are on, and the office door is open, and the shop door is unlocked, because, well. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you why.

Ethan is sat on the lovely leather swivel armchair on the other side of the desk. His breathing is shallow, his cheekbones flushed, and fuck me, does he look beautiful. His hair hangs over his forehead, shining strands of red gold, and those water-blue eyes are fixed on me as he pleasures himself, right there on the other side of the desk.

I uncross and recross my legs, knowing full well that he can see that I’m not wearing underwear. ‘Stand up,’ I say. I’ve let him sit there for long enough. It’s time he stopped hiding, time he let me see exactly what he’s got.