All Bets are On

ELEVEN


Rule #11 What time slot is he working in? If he never plans to see you more than a week ahead, he’s keeping his options open in case something better comes along.





Tomorrow had been and gone. The weekend had been and gone. And with the passing of each hour in Harry’s company trust grew a little more. At work they maintained a professional distance but it was only a matter of time before their relationship became common knowledge. She felt no need now to rush it; she had nothing to prove.

Cuddled up to him on her own sofa in her own little sitting room, Kevin the cat ousted, Alice felt happiness within her grasp. Things were full-on between them now.

‘I’ve been thinking,’ he said, nuzzling her neck.

She unpeeled his fingers from the remote control and turned the channel from the football to a soap opera. He stopped mid-nuzzle and leaned up on one elbow to glance at the TV and then at her, eyebrows raised. She waited for him to complain and when he smiled instead and went right back to cuddling up, her stomach gave another one of those melty flips. If anything said love it was letting her choose the channel during a World Cup qualifier.

‘What about?’

‘How about we take a break? Go away somewhere, just the two of us before Christmas starts to kick in.’

He curled his arms more tightly around her and she snuggled into him.

‘A holiday?’

When had she last been away on holiday? She’d been away to a festival last year with Tilly. Two nights in a tent in the middle of a muddy field, queuing up for communal toilets and drinking mead. A hideous experience she had no intention of repeating. A luxury break with Harry was definitely more her thing. Plus the thought that Harry wanted to plan ahead and was obviously seeing them together long term filled her with joy. She beamed up into his face.

‘Where shall we go?’

‘Where would you like to go?’

‘Barbados,’ she said, aiming high.

He pulled a face.

‘Too film-star.’

She rolled her eyes. How could anything be too film-star?

‘OK, how about a bit closer to home. We could have a cosy weekend up in the Lakes.’

‘Too close to home,’ he said. ‘Come on. Think of somewhere you’ve always dreamed of going.’

‘Venice,’ she sighed. Was there really any better choice? She had a print of the Venetian canals above her bed that screamed romance.

He nodded.

‘A definite possible. And in the meantime how about a trip to Bath next weekend?’

‘I thought you had no desire to go back there.’

He shrugged.

‘It’s just the weekend. I’d really like you to meet Susie. She’s got a weekend home from university. We could drive down and stay over.’

The enormity of what that meant made her heart turn softly over. Since the night in the hotel there had been no vague comments about when he might see her next, no talk of keeping things fun and no mention of no strings. He hadn’t bailed the moment he bedded her. He couldn’t have slept with her for a bet. She felt a stab of guilt now for ever harbouring that suspicion. He wasn’t a player, not any more. He had proved it over and over again. With every new time she saw him her guard slipped that little bit more as he erased her insecurities.

Now King-of-the-One-Night-Stand Harry wanted to introduce her to his family. If she needed any further proof that he’d changed here it was.

‘I’d love to,’ she said.

He smiled in response, the gorgeous smile she loved that lifted the corner of his mouth and touched his blue eyes in crinkles at the corners. On impulse she leaned a little further, enough to kiss him. The gentle slide of his hands around her waist made her heartbeat speed up and then he was shifting his weight to one side and moving her gently onto her back. She looked up at him, her heart racing, her bones melting as he kissed her and his hands slid lower, finding bare skin beneath her clothes to stroke and caress until she was squirming with desire.

* * *

Afterwards she lay in his arms, his hand stroking her hair gently, her old throw tucked around them. The cosy darkness was broken only by the flickering light of the TV in the corner, with the sound turned off. She delighted in the languorous warmth, so comforting that she felt sated and sleepy. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt this secure.

‘Simon blamed social networking for what happened,’ she said quietly into his shoulder. His skin was warm and smooth against her cheek; she picked up the faint citrus scent of his aftershave.

He frowned.

‘Simon? Your ex?’

She nodded, concentrated on what she was saying. What she wanted to say. She’d fallen in love with him and her trust was completely his. This last thing she’d held back, she finally felt able to share. She’d coped with the past by bricking it up in her mind. Moving somewhere new, rebuilding herself. For a long time that had seemed the perfect solution.

Now she realised she’d been living her life to half its potential.

Putting the past in a box was not the same thing as letting it go; she knew that now. Boxing it up had been the perfect way of making it portable. She’d carried it all the way to London with her. What she needed was to really let it go instead of just kidding herself that she had. She wanted to look forward and confiding in Harry would be her first step in ceasing to look back.

‘Social media sites, smartphones, all that kind of thing,’ she said. ‘It was just becoming popular when I was with Simon. No need to speak to someone face to face when you could do it virtually. Everyone was using it, posting messages, posting pictures.’

She gave a small bitter laugh.

‘I don’t even have an account now. Me, in Marketing, and I don’t have a social media presence.’

‘You’re not making any sense,’ he said gently. ‘Did you discover he was having some kind of affair? Is that it?’

Alice shook her head, wishing it had been something so straightforward. Still a betrayal, of course, but maybe that level of humiliation might have been easier to rise above. She didn’t move her head to look at him, stayed curled against him, fitting in the crook of his arm that was made for her, bare skin against his. It felt somehow easier to tell him if she didn’t look into his eyes. She was afraid of what she might see there. She didn’t want to feel stupid, the butt of a joke, not with him.

‘Simon posted some photos,’ she said, hearing the small click in her throat and trying hard to keep her voice neutral.

‘Of what?’

‘Of me.’ She paused, wondering if he might get what she meant just from those two words. A quick glance up and she saw his eyes were filled with concern and something else. Anger.


‘I let him take photos of me wearing...’ She sighed against his shoulder. It sounded so damned seedy spoken out loud. ‘Wearing hardly anything. And they ended up on the internet, viewed by all his friends, probably viewed by lots of people who weren’t his friends too. In fact they’re probably still lurking somewhere on the Net, still out there if you know how to use a search engine. There are sites, you know, where things like that end up.’

She closed her eyes briefly against him, her eyelashes faintly brushing his warm skin.

‘I can’t believe this,’ he said. He sounded sickened.

‘So now you know,’ she said. ‘Why I moved to London from Dorset. Why I find it so hard to take anyone at face value. Why I hadn’t dated for three years. Why I tuned out everything apart from my career. Because at least in my job my success or failure is my own making, I don’t need to worry about anyone else’s meddling or intervention. That’s why I found it so hard to believe you were anything more than your reputation. That’s why I had you help me out at Tilly’s face-painting party—I thought there was no way you’d be up for that if your only interest in me was sex. That’s why I peered through your kitchen window when I thought you might be there with your ex instead of knocking on the front door and challenging you outright. Because the only explanation I could trust was one I found out for myself.’

Harry closed his hand over hers.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

She looked up at him then, her eyes wide, and his heart turned over softly in his chest.

‘I don’t tell anyone,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t bear it when I found out what he’d done. The pictures had started to spread, people forwarded them like some hideous virus. Eventually someone took pity and let me know, but by then they were everywhere. It was harder to find one of our friends who hadn’t seen them than one who had.’

She raked a hand through her hair, remembering.

‘It was awful. Everyone looking at me, either pitying or leering. I haven’t had to think about any of that since I moved here and it’s been such a relief. That’s why I haven’t told anyone here, because I didn’t want the whole circus to start up again.’

Dark anger boiled through Harry. If this Simon were to walk in the room now he knew he couldn’t be held responsible for what he might do. Protectiveness of Alice so strong it made his heart contract combined with the desire to rip the man’s head off for what he’d done to her. And then in the wake of that anger, the knowledge that he’d won the bet bore down on him again like a form of torture, a bomb ticking away beneath them. How long would this last between them if she were to find out he’d taken part in something so disrespectful?

He realised with a sickening lurch that he was pretty much cut from the same cloth. Sewer-rat, she’d called Simon. Well, he must be around that moral level too. She had lost the capacity to take a risk. Everything he’d said to her, every promise he made had to be double-checked. And after what had happened to her, who the hell could blame her for that? He could spend the rest of his days proving himself to her and it would be blown apart in an instant if she ever discovered the premise on which they’d got together.

He knew now what he’d found with her. Now that he knew how fragile it was. He was in love with her; he was happier than he could ever remember. And trust would be the thing on which they’d be broken. It filled him with despair.

If she found out about the bet now, it would ruin her.

* * *

A new day and he should be elated. New relationship. New life.

‘There’s still a faint whiff of prawns,’ Alice said, walking into his sitting room with two steaming coffee mugs.

‘You’re imagining it,’ he said.

She handed him one of the mugs.

‘I’ll buy you some scented candles.’

He pulled a face.

‘Scented candles are only permissible if a girl lives on the premises,’ he said.

She laughed.

She was barefooted and wearing one of his shirts, on her way upstairs to dress for work. The shirt gave a tantalising flash of creamy-smooth thigh that made him want to carry her straight back up to bed. Her hair was loose and she looked completely relaxed. She was a different person from the uptight workaholic he’d followed into the office Ladies weeks ago. His heart twisted. He wanted things to stay this way. He wanted her belongings to start filtering into his house, their lives to become one.

Before he could look forward there was damage limitation.

He knew he had to be prepared to let all this go if he were to have the slimmest chance of keeping it.

* * *

Alone in his kitchen after she’d left for her early meeting, Harry forced himself to pull up the bet list on his laptop. He could hardly bear to look at it now; shame made his gut churn nauseatingly. The list made no reference whatsoever that this was a person’s feelings they were betting on. How had he missed that? Had he disengaged himself so completely from caring about anyone else that he’d lost all sense of wrong and right? How could he have been so inconsiderate to her feelings?

He made a list of the participants and their bet amounts and tucked it into his wallet. Later today he would seek out each and every one of them and pay their stake money back, make it crystal clear that the bet was no longer on and that its existence was to be kept confidential.

If only he could be sure that was enough.

There was always the chance she might never find out. Part of him—the part that wanted to carry on being with her for ever, that wanted to protect her from the slightest thing that might cause her pain—wanted to grab that chance with both hands and run with it.

But it was unrealistic to think that he could remove all trace of the bet from their lives. It had been attached to numerous emails, was probably sitting in personal files on half the hard drives in the office; it might even be lurking somewhere in the office in print. Could he really risk Alice stumbling across it somewhere down the line? How could he live like that, loving her and waiting for that bomb to detonate?

Repaying the stakes and voiding the bet would be the easy part. He’d come to realise that the only real way to put this behind them was to tell Alice the whole truth. Yet after what had happened to her in the past, could he really expect their relationship to survive such a revelation?

Somehow he needed to find a way of coming clean to her that wouldn’t make her hate him for the rest of her life.

* * *

Alice headed back to the office earlier than she’d expected. What a total waste of time that had turned out to be.

What was meant to be a meeting to sign off final logo designs had turned out to be a nightmare shift in the client’s brief that sent the whole thing whizzing back to the drawing board.

She went straight up to the graphic design department to break the news to John that he was back to square one and the hours he’d already put in had come to nothing. There was a bit of a lull in the office as the lift opened and she checked her watch. Mid-morning, so half the staff were probably hanging around the coffee machine. The lack of background noise meant she was able to hear them before she turned the corner and saw them.

‘I’m cancelling the whole thing. As of now,’ Harry was saying.

Her heart give a tiny skip just at the sound of his voice. A smile rose on her lips as she picked up the pace, eager to see him although she’d only left his house a couple of hours earlier, and then faded away as her brain processed the conversation he was having.

‘Cancelling the bet isn’t an option,’ John was saying. ‘You can’t just pull the plug. This isn’t some high-street betting shop—it’s a matter of honour. I know you think you’re well in there with the Ice-Queen but I’m telling you, she was all over me at Roger’s leaving do the other week and I deserve a crack at her. There’s serious money riding on this, man.’

The floor felt suddenly unsteady beneath her feet, as if it were sand.

In disbelief she rounded the corner. Harry stood with his back to her, broad shoulders she’d been cuddled into just a few hours ago. John sat at his work station. As she watched Harry forked over a few banknotes onto the desk. John didn’t pick them up. He’d caught sight of her and his rabbit-caught-in-headlights expression would have been priceless if her heart hadn’t been breaking.

Harry turned to follow John’s gaze and the colour drained from his face.

Shock slipped through her veins like ice. The need to find out every tiny, horrible, sinister detail blocked out every other thought.

‘I want to see it,’ she heard herself say.

‘Alice...’ Harry said, sounding sickened. ‘I can explain. Let’s go somewhere quiet, just the two of us—’

‘I wasn’t talking to you,’ she snapped, not looking at Harry. Her voice sounded as if it was coming from a distance, not part of her at all. She looked at John, contempt flooding through her. ‘You’ve got a copy of it, right? Unless you want to be sacked on the spot, show me the damn list!’

The open-plan office was broken up by room dividers and at the sound of her raised voice heads popped up like meercats to take in what was going on. Humiliation burned in her face at their interest and she fought the impulse to sprint from the office. Not this time. No crying in the Ladies for her any more; she was better than that.


After a glance at Harry during which he obviously decided his first loyalty was to his own pay packet, John made a few clicks on his computer and finally vacated his chair. She barely noticed him walk away as she sank into his chair and looked at the screen.

‘Alice, don’t,’ Harry pleaded.

She ignored him. Because there it was.

The official Nail-Ice-Queen-Ford Betting Ring.

She scrolled down automatically to the bottom of the page and watched as the line continued. There was a Page Two after all. And there, a quarter of the way down, was his name. She looked at it, burning it into her brain as if staring at it might somehow make it disappear.

Harry Stephens.

And next to it, his stake. Two hundred pounds.

A quick scroll showed her his was the biggest stake of all. And that prompted her next move. A quick right click, a glance through Properties, and at last she knew everything. All the sickening details. The document was created by him. He’d not only organised the whole thing, he stood to gain the most from it too.

Correction. He had gained the most from it. Past tense. Because he’d won this thing a few weeks ago now. His winnings had probably more than covered the hotel bill for that first perfect night. Had he got some kind of hideous kick out of knowing that? It was that thought that punctured the calm and tipped her finally over the edge.

She felt the sudden lurching roll of nausea deep in her stomach, the wrenching contraction at the back of her throat. She clutched at her mouth with both hands and swallowed hard, gasping, forcing the hideous feeling back down, as if by controlling herself she might be able in some small way to retain control of the situation.

Some hope.

This situation was way past her redemption. And because she’d harboured suspicions for so long about him and then believed herself proven wrong it was somehow a million times worse. She’d known the full sweetness of relief as she let her guard down and put her trust in him, and the agony was all the more intense because he’d outwitted her. There’d been an ulterior motive all along. More fool her.

She looked up at Harry. He shook his head at her faintly, his expression despairing. She was dimly aware of her colleagues watching, soaking up the office joke. She should be used to it by now. The humiliation paled next to the total crushing defeat of his betrayal. She pushed back from the desk and stood up on shaky feet, held her head up high and walked from the room.

* * *

Harry followed her into her office, shut the door behind him and closed the blinds. None of which meant a thing. Outside that door she was gossip-central.

‘Let me explain,’ he said.

As if there could be an explanation?

‘Explain?’ she whispered. She could hear the desperation and disgust in her own voice. ‘You organised a bet with your mates on who could get me into bed. You put the biggest damn stake of all on it yourself. You blagged your way into my life, you made me trust you, all in the name of getting the proof required for a cash win.’

Her voice was rising as anger began to seep in past the shock. Tears were here now, making her voice hitch. Her bag was on her desk and she grabbed it and hooked it over her shoulder, ready to leave.

‘What was the proof, by the way?’ she said. ‘Did you come into work brandishing my underwear? Or maybe you took a photo of me sleeping.’

She was crying so much now that she could hardly see. ‘What the hell kind of explanation can you possibly have?’

He sank both his hands into his hair and gazed desperately at her.

She wiped snot and tears from her face with the back of her hand. Her eyes felt swollen and scratchy.

‘When I think back to that first day here in the Ladies, you made it seem like you were some kind of solution to all my problems. Like you were helping me.’ She shook her head at the ceiling in disbelief. ‘I’m such an idiot, buying into all of that.’

He reached out to take her hand and she snatched it away.

‘Don’t touch me!’

‘I did want to help you,’ he said. ‘That was never a lie. I didn’t like seeing you so unhappy.’ A tortured frown touched his eyebrows as if he was thinking how to explain. ‘I suppose what I was thinking, if I gave it a moment’s consideration, was that it would be a win-win situation. We both have fun, you get back into dating again—’

‘You win a wodge of cash,’ she spat. ‘Certainly a win for you. Really not sure now what the hell was in it for me. Or did you think that sleeping with you might be enough of a reward for me—is that it?’

‘Alice, please...’

Harry clenched his fists with the sheer frustration of this because there was no way of explaining his way out of something so tacky. The fact he’d been intending to come clean would be no mitigation now.

‘Do you know why I was crying in the Ladies that day?’ she asked, her voice suddenly tinged with defeat. She didn’t wait for his response. ‘Of course you don’t, because you never bothered to press further and find out once you’d got what you wanted out of the situation. I was crying because I found the first page of your bet list in one of the spare desks.’

A pause while she waited for that knowledge to sink in.

‘Three years I’ve spent building a reputation at this company. Three years working hard and gaining respect instead of being known as a laughing stock. That’s the thing with being publicly humiliated. After it happens it’s the first thing people think of when they look at you. Doesn’t matter what you do from then on, how good or clever or successful you are. You’re always defined by that one hideous fact they have about you. That’s what it was like back in Dorset. Why do you think I moved away and started again?’

He couldn’t answer. What the hell could he say? The magnitude of what he’d done to her wasn’t going to be smoothed over with a few apologetic sentences.

‘Thanks to your pathetic, juvenile game I’m right the way back to square one.’

She paused for breath and looked at him steadily. He could hardly bear to look at the pain on her face, how pale she was, her eyes puffy and red-rimmed from all the crying.

‘Alice, I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Please just let me try and explain.’

She stood back and looked at him then with such coldness it tore at his heart.

‘I don’t know why you’re so dead set on explaining and apologising,’ she said. ‘You won the bet. Why the hell should you care about the fallout? Or are you afraid that I might lob paint stripper over your car or start sending funeral wreaths to your address?’

‘If it made things better I wish you would,’ he said.

‘Don’t flatter yourself,’ she said. ‘I’ll settle for never seeing you again.’

Sickening despair rose and sat in the pit of Harry’s stomach like a stone, perspiration crept up his neck and his throat felt dry. The thought of being without her now filled him with crushing misery.

‘We work together,’ he said. ‘You have to talk this through with me.’

‘I don’t have to do anything,’ she said. ‘And we won’t be working together. I’m going to hand my notice in the first chance I get.’

He saw with sudden clarity how she was handling this.

‘You’re going to run away again, then?’ he said.

‘It worked before, didn’t it?’ she said. ‘It was working perfectly well until you. I’ll find another new town, another new job. And I won’t make the same mistake next time.’

‘Mistake?’

‘Falling for you,’ she spat. ‘Goodness knows I was aware of the danger but I had to go and chance it anyway. Well, more fool me.’

She’d fallen for him.

The miserable ache that knowledge invoked made him gasp for breath as his throat constricted.

‘Alice, I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I truly was about to tell you.’

He knew how that sounded and her cynical snort told him he was spot on.

‘I just bet you were.’

‘I was.’ He tried to hold her gaze so she would see he wasn’t lying. She stared back at him and her look was pure hatred. He dropped his eyes because he couldn’t stand it.

‘This last week I’ve paid back every last person on that list. I’ve cancelled the bet. I wanted to undo as much damage as I could before I told you, so at least you would know it was over.’

‘It’s never going to be over,’ she said.

He looked down at the floor.

‘I know that,’ he said. ‘But no one stands to gain anything from it now, least of all me. I know that doesn’t wipe away the fact that the thing existed in the first place but it’s the best I could do. If I could go back and change things I would, but when it started I was up for a laugh, nothing more. That was the person I was then, the person I thought I wanted to be who didn’t have to take anyone else’s feelings into account.’ He ran a hand through his hair. ‘But then I got to know you. And now the thought that I’ve caused you so much pain is killing me. I was going to tell you about it. After you told me what your ex did I knew how much it would hurt you but I thought you would want me to be honest.’

She looked at him for a moment, then turned for the door.


‘Alice, I love you,’ he called after her, hearing the crack in his own voice.

She paused. A faint shred of hope lifted his heart. Maybe she would change her mind, give him the chance to talk her round properly.

Then she turned back to face him. Her face was pale and blotchy from the tears she’d shed but her expression was utterly resolute.

‘I never want to see you again,’ she said, and slammed the office door so hard on her way out that he almost felt the building shudder.