LITMIR.BIZ

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perfume, spare batteries and dozens upon dozens of pens spilled out all over the floor. I was a strange creature sometimes. Didn’t like to be without a pen.

      ‘Hello?’ I answered after finally retrieving it from inside Nick’s abandoned boxer shorts. Eww. I fought the urge to hang up and give it a rub down with a wet wipe. This was not the time to relapse into my OCD issues.

      ‘Tess, it’s Paige. Where are you? I’ve called, like, ten times. I’ve been looking all over for you.’

      Brilliant. Paige. Couldn’t a girl get five minutes, post-shag peace and quiet?

      ‘I’m in my cottage,’ I hedged. ‘What’s up?’

      ‘No, you aren’t. I’ve just been there.’ She paused for a second. ‘Are you with Nick?’

      ‘God, yeah, that’s what I meant. Nick’s cottage,’ I looked up at Nick, who seemed to have got over the untimely death of his iPhone thanks to the comforting charms of my tits. ‘We were just going over the photos.’

      Nick raised an eyebrow and tossed his phone onto the floor. It was amazing how quickly a man could recover from a painful loss if he thought there was even a tiny chance he could put his penis in someone.

      ‘OK, I’m coming over. You need to do something. Stephanie called – she’s mega, mega pissed off. I’m going to get fired. What the fuck, Tess – what do we do?’

      ‘OK, don’t panic, but don’t come here,’ I said, trapping the phone between my cheek and my shoulder while slapping Nick’s hands away from my newly acquired knickers. ‘I’ve got loads of stuff to show you from yesterday – I left you messages. Seriously, calm down. I’ll come to you. Nick’s busy, but—’

      ‘Nick is busy,’ he said, thumbs hooking around the delicate silk I’d only just managed to get halfway round my arse. ‘And so are you.’

      He snatched the phone and threw it across the room. I watched it skitter across the shiny wooden floor and vanish underneath the bed, taking Paige’s panic attack with it.

      ‘You know, you are an incredibly sexy woman,’ he said, running his fingertips up and down my spine and pressing his face against my neck. ‘You cannot even begin to know how much I want you right now.’

      ‘I really want to play along with this,’ I whispered with my eyes closed and brow furrowed. I wasn’t used to being called sexy. Or a woman. Most men didn’t actually seem to notice I had a discernible gender at all and so hearing these things from such a ridiculously attractive man was very difficult to resist. ‘But this is just about the worst timing ever.’

      ‘Vanessa.’ He took my tiny fists and covered them with his huge hands. ‘You broke my phone. You owe me. Now shut up and do as you’re told.’

      Just as it had been since I’d first laid eyes on him, every word out of Nick’s mouth went straight to my vagina, but this time I had to resist. I could be strong. As long as I kept my knickers on.

      ‘I’m sorry, but I’ve really, really got to go,’ I insisted, swooping out of his arms and grabbing my bra from the floor in one surprisingly graceful move. ‘I’m so sorry.’

      ‘Don’t be sorry.’ He gave me a dark look and grabbed my wrist. ‘Just don’t go.’

      Before I could come back with an intelligent argument, there was a very loud knock at the door.

      ‘I am sorry and I do have to go.’ I shook off his hand and tried to discern what bits, in the tangled pile of material on the floor, had started out last night as my outfit. ‘Don’t answer it. It’s Paige.’

      Really, I was impossibly stupid. I had just told Nick Miller not to do something and then expected him not to do it.

      ‘What if it is?’ he asked, eyebrows raised. ‘We’re adults.’

      ‘Oh, don’t start!’ I had no time for this. He could be such a cock sometimes. Most of the time. In fact, any time when he wasn’t actually using his penis, he was behaving like one. ‘Just please don’t open that door.’

      And so, naked as the day he was born, Nick strode over to the door and flung it wide open. A very shocked blonde girl stood on the step and gaped.

      ‘Paige,’ Nick nodded. ‘Vanessa and I were just going over the plans for tomorrow.’

      The tiny blonde girl tried desperately to avert her eyes from Nick in all his naked glory. As it was, the only other thing for her to concentrate on was me in my knickers, and that was doing nothing to improve the situation.

      As she recovered herself and put two and two together to make a filthy four, Paige’s face fell. I took an ill-advised step forward and got my foot caught in Nick’s boxer shorts.

      ‘Paige.’ I looked at her.

      ‘Nick?’ She looked at him.

      Nick just looked very pleased with himself.

      ‘Oh, Tess.’ Paige started to laugh and it wasn’t very nice. ‘Tess, Tess, Tess.’

      ‘Paige, don’t,’ I begged. I was fully aware that pleading with women didn’t usually go very well when they caught you hanging out in your underwear with the man they had designs on. Especially when that man was naked. ‘Please.’

      ‘Tess?’ Despite how very clever he claimed to be, Nick wasn’t always the sharpest knife in the drawer. ‘Who’s Tess?’

      ‘She is,’ Paige said, nodding towards me. ‘Aren’t you?’

      ‘Vanessa?’ Nick placed a hand over his manparts, not looking nearly as smug as he had five minutes ago. If I hadn’t been ready for the ground to open up and swallow me whole, it might have been funny. ‘What’s going on?’

      ‘Nick, I can explain,’ I started, entirely unsure how I was going to do that. ‘It’s a long story. It’s a funny story. It’s, um, well. I don’t know where to start.’

      ‘I do,’ Paige chipped in. ‘This is Tess. She’s an irresponsible, selfish, evil, lying bitchface who’s been faking everything to everyone, and I didn’t grass her up because I’m an idiot.’

      Bit harsh, I thought. A bit harsh, but ultimately accurate. All of a sudden, my knees weren’t feeling terribly steady. Nick looked very confused. And also still very naked. Unfortunately, his supreme manliness wasn’t enough to slow Paige down now she’d started.

      ‘Long story short, her name isn’t Vanessa,’ my friend, mentor and confidante stated. She was on a roll. ‘Her name is Tess Brookes and she’s full of shit.’

      Well.

      It was a much more concise version of events than I had to offer.

       CHAPTER ONE

       Two Weeks Earlier

      It was more or less a day like any other when it all went wrong.

      My alarm went off, I got up, showered in silence and watched fifteen minutes of breakfast news with stuttering subtitles so as not to wake my flatmate. I got dressed, I checked my bag to make sure I had an adequate number of tampons even though my period was a good three weeks away, and after checking I’d turned my hair straighteners off twice, I left for the office. As usual, I was the first in. No one else made it in before ten on Mondays, but I was the kind of irritating person who got a lot more done without the clacking of everyone else’s keyboards to distract me. Early mornings and late nights were my friends. And given the frequency with which they occurred, they were pretty much my only friends. But on this particular Monday, I had good reason to be so bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. After seven years’ hard slog, I was getting the promotion I’d been dreaming of. I, Tess Brookes, was about to become the youngest creative director in the

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