Who's Afraid of MR Wolfe?

by Hazel Osmond

  The fact that he was doing it all so slowly seemed to unnerve Gavin and he moved back a few steps.

  Jack started on the other shirt sleeve, his long fingers working deftly as he rolled the material back to reveal his forearm. The muscles in his other arm moved rhythmically as he worked.

  Then slowly Jack reached up and pulled the knot loose on his tie.

  Nobody was laughing now; the only movement was from Gavin as he unconsciously flexed one of his hands.

  Once the tie was off, Jack walked back over to the reception desk and coiled it on top of his jacket. Rachel followed his every movement, wide-eyed.

  Ellie could see tension now in the faces of the people watching. Even the women who had initially thought that all their birthdays were about to come at once were not so sure they wanted to witness this; the whole spectacle was too toe-curlingly embarrassing because Jack was so very, very calm. If he’d been exhibiting anger, it would have been understandable. This was like a small boy pulling the wings off a fly.

  As Ellie was thinking this, the word that she had been groping for to describe Jack plopped into her mind fully formed. It was ‘detached’ and it wasn’t at all the one she was expecting, but she knew it was perfect.

  It was what made him able to sit there naked in bed with Edith as if he were simply seeing where it would lead. Perhaps that was what enabled him to cut a swathe through all those women without seeming to feel a thing. And it was what was powering him now, long after anybody else would have said, ‘OK, joke over. Let’s sort this out in private.’

  Jack had started something without really caring how it would finish. If Gavin gave in or ended up naked, she guessed it was all the same to Jack. He didn’t give a stuff.

  It was almost as if there were a plate of glass between him and normal emotions.

  That thought made Ellie feel extremely sorry for Gavin. The idiot had no understanding of what he was dealing with.

  The level of tension hiked up again as Jack pulled his shirt free from his trousers.

  Gavin audibly gulped. Up until then he had, perhaps, been unable to comprehend that Jack would do exactly what he said he was going to do, but there was something so menacing about the way in which Jack executed the movement with his shirt that caused Gavin to twig that he was in deep trouble.

  Jack started to unbutton his shirt, very, very slowly, never letting his eyes move from Gavin’s. He reached his last button and now it was possible to glimpse his chest.

  The girl standing next to Ellie made a kind of ‘Gorr’ noise.

  Gavin took another step back, his once-smug expression replaced by dawning horror.

  For all she disliked Gavin, Ellie wanted this to stop now. It was probably already too late, though, because Jack gave a dry laugh and said, ‘Hang on, Gavin, what am I thinking? I’m getting too far ahead. You need to catch up.’

  Terror flooded Gavin’s face at about the same time as Jack’s hand shot out and grabbed his wrist.

  Gavin let out a bloodcurdling scream and flapped around trying to get free, but Jack had him fast. Panic and shock flashed across Gavin’s face.

  ‘I’ll go, I’ll go,’ he shouted, gulping in great mouthfuls of air.

  Jack pulled Gavin close. ‘Good decision,’ he hissed. Then he let go of Gavin’s wrist. ‘Shame, though. I was looking forward to throwing you on to your back.’

  That sent Gavin completely over the edge. With a little whimper he darted round Jack and stooped to pick up the box containing the contents of his office, the ones he hadn’t already squirrelled away at home. Jack’s hand shot out again, this time grabbing hold of the box.

  ‘Those design directories … yours or the agency’s?’ he said.

  Gavin scooped the large books out of the box and threw them on the floor. Stumbling over his feet, he headed for the door, but couldn’t get it open with his arms full. Jack strode across and pushed it open for him.

  ‘You’re a sick bastard,’ Gavin shouted back over his shoulder once he was safely down the steps. ‘You’ve got too much testosterone and you’re a sick bastard.’

  Jack didn’t reply and calmly buttoned his shirt back up, rolled down his sleeves and went and collected his tie and jacket from the reception desk. Within moments he had gone for his lunch.

  ‘Oh my God,’ Rachel said, standing up unsteadily, ‘I think one of my ovaries has just exploded.’

  Upstairs in the ladies’ toilets, Ellie was in a cubicle leaning against the wall. She couldn’t breathe properly, she could feel her heart pounding in her ears, and she felt jittery. But more than that she was on fire between her legs and right up to where? Her stomach? Her womb? She didn’t know. All she knew was that as Jack had buttoned up his shirt, he had given her a dark and brooding sidelong glance that had knocked the wind right out of her and made her feel desired and dirty at the same time. He had been high on his victory and the look had only lasted a second or two, but it had been enough.

  Ellie realised she was gnawing at the skin down the side of her thumbnail and took her hand away from her mouth. Then she sat on the edge of the toilet seat and closed her eyes. She tried to get her breathing back under control and think straight. She could handle this. He probably wasn’t even looking at her.

  She needed to avoid him completely from now on.

  After a while she felt calmer and even able to replay the scene in her head as she set off back to her office.

  Who was she kidding? Moments later she was back in the toilet cubicle with her cheek pressed against the cool wall of the partition.

  By the time Ellie got back to her room, word had gone round that Gavin’s wouldn’t be the only departure.

  In offices throughout the building people waited for the phone call from Mrs MacEndry that would summon them into Jack’s office and then out on to the job market again.

  Lesley passed the time by arranging and rearranging her pencils; Ellie sat there and debated whether getting sacked would be such a bad thing. At least she wouldn’t have to see Jack every day.

  A knock on the door made them both jump and Juliette and Mike were in the room, faces lit up and so excited they could barely talk.

  ‘Jon and Zak—’

  ‘Just came out of Jack’s room—’

  ‘And a security guard—’

  ‘Big chap, built like a brick wall—’

  ‘Escorted them out of the building—’

  It felt wrong to jump up and down and punch the air, so they fought the urge for a couple of seconds and then did it anyway.

  As the afternoon wore on, the atmosphere became more hysterical. Nobody knew how long the culling was going to last.

  Ellie tried to apply herself to the ad she was writing for a new theme park ride. Lesley and she had been on it the previous week for research purposes. Afterwards they had both thrown up. Ellie wasn’t going to mention its vomit-inducing properties in the ad; best to concentrate on its other unique selling points.

  But her mind couldn’t leave the sackings. ‘The G-Force Phantom is designed to take you on the ultimate thrill experience,’ she wrote, ‘through P45 degrees of mind-blowing …’

  She balled up that bit of paper and tried again on a fresh sheet. This time her mind went back to that glittering, dark look Jack had cast her way as he had buttoned up his shirt. She took a deep breath, pushed the thought away and wrote, ‘Take your senses to the edge as you hurtle through forty-five degrees of mind-blowing, G-spot-punching excitement.’

  That piece of paper ended up in the bin as well, and then Juliette and Mike were back in the room.

  ‘That’s nine gone now, not counting Gavin.’

  Ellie didn’t like to say, ‘I told you so,’ but Jack was doing his usual fat-trimming exercise.

  ‘What happens to all of Zak and Jon’s accounts?’ Mike asked. ‘Will we be expected to do all their work and all Gavin’s work as well?’

  ‘Yes,’ Jack said from the doorway, ‘you’ll be working all the hours there are. In fact, I woul
dn’t bother going home most nights if I were you.’

  None of them was quite sure if he was joking. Even when he laughed, they still weren’t certain.

  He ducked his head and came into the room and sat on the edge of Ellie’s desk with his back to her. She was looking at an expanse of charcoal pinstripe and she knew that if she reached out, she would feel the heat of Jack’s skin under the material.

  She sat back in her chair. She was in trouble if even looking at his back made her feel light-headed. This had been creeping up on her ever since that night in her flat, ever since the Jubbitt Junior thing, and now what had happened down in reception had made it pounce on her.

  ‘Sorry I left you till last,’ Jack said. ‘It’s been a busy day.’ Ellie could picture his wry smile even though she couldn’t see it. ‘But now everything else has been sorted, I can tell you that you’re going to see some massive changes in the Creative Department over the coming weeks. The first one is the appointment of a new creative director. He starts on Monday.’ Jack gave a little laugh. ‘You might have heard of him. Ian Armstrong.’

  There was a stunned silence in the room and then somebody said, ‘The Ian Armstrong?’

  ‘Yup. I’ve poached him from McWhirters, who are mightily hacked off about it, but Ian and I worked together years ago. He’s looking for a new challenge.’

  Still nobody said anything. The thought of actually working with Ian Armstrong was too big a concept to take in. Would someone that good really join their agency? Since he’d come down from Manchester, he’d had a meteoric rise. Ellie had been to award ceremonies where Ian seemed to wear a path in the carpet because he was called up to collect so many awards. More intriguing than that, though, was his attitude. He didn’t do the tantrums or the keeping all the glory to himself. He had a reputation for bringing his staff on along with him and fostering new talent. Sure, he was a hard-nut Geordie who called a spade a ‘fucking shovel’, but if he liked you, the sky was the limit.

  Lesley was the first to speak. ‘Ian Armstrong is coming here?’

  ‘Ian Armstrong is coming here,’ Jack said again, very slowly as if he understood that they were finding it hard to believe.

  Suddenly everyone was talking at once, except for Ellie, who had stopped looking at Jack’s back and was now concentrating on the hand he was resting on her desk. Long fingers, a smattering of hair, neat nails. Her own hand had gone to her mouth and she was punishing that little strip of skin again. She put her hands in her lap.

  Jack swivelled round to face her. ‘You’re very quiet. Not like you to miss an opportunity to make a couple of wisecracks. Anything wrong?’

  Ellie’s heart gave a huge thud and she found her eyes drawn to the way Jack’s choppy black hair sat on his collar. She wondered if it would feel soft or wiry if she ran her fingers through it.

  ‘No, everything’s fine. It’s just a big surprise,’ she said, focusing on a point somewhere above Jack’s head. ‘I’m a bit shell-shocked.’

  It wasn’t a lie. She was. Completely.

  CHAPTER 17

  ‘It takes hundreds of individual movements to create one minute of film,’ Craig the model-maker said, while demonstrating what he meant by moving Ellie’s hand almost imperceptibly, finger by finger.

  Ellie marvelled that a man could have such soft hands.

  She worried vaguely whether anyone needed her, but a quick look round confirmed that Lesley was deep in conversation with Ian Armstrong and the director of animation filming. On the first day of the shoot everything was a flurry. The studio was full of people either huddled together in intense discussions or rushing about with lights and cables. Everyone’s ultimate focus was on a little section of the studio where a small garden had been created, complete with a plasticine clay model of the career girl’s knickers pegged on a line. Ellie had spent a long time looking at it; everything was so beautifully executed. The garden even had a patch of worn-out grass and a tiny dandelion.

  Ellie turned back to Craig. He had moved a little nearer, his blue eyes concentrating on her hand, and Ellie found herself enjoying the attention. There was something hypnotic about the way Craig was moving her fingers and she wondered if he made love that slowly. Was animation sex like tantric sex: hours and hours of delicate little movements?

  She felt quite hot.

  ‘Perhaps I ought to go and pay some attention to what’s going on, Craig?’

  ‘Oh, don’t bother, Ellie. Everyone starts off thinking this stop-motion animation is going to be fascinating, but after eight hours watching someone make the tiniest changes to the position of a knicker leg, you’ll be begging to escape.’

  Craig had put quite a bit of stress on that word ‘begging’, Ellie noticed, and also seemed to be getting even closer. At one point she saw him look down the front of her dress. She waited for the usual wave of embarrassment to roll over her, but instead felt eerily calm as Craig continued to rub and manipulate her hand. It really was hard to drag her eyes away from his long, tapering fingers.

  Jack held open the door of the studio for Pauline Kennedy and her team. They’d been keen to see at least part of the ad being filmed and Jack was always happy to involve the clients as much as possible. Pauline was good company, a bright cookie; he knew she wouldn’t get in the way or change the brief halfway through. He spent some time introducing people to each other and was congratulating the director on his last piece of work when he spotted Ellie on the far side of the studio.

  Jack stopped in mid-word and felt something twist in his guts. Some bloke was stroking Ellie’s hand and she didn’t look particularly unhappy about it. Jack looked away and tried to concentrate on his conversation, but very soon his gaze had travelled back to the other side of the studio.

  Now the little sod was looking down the front of her dress.

  ‘Who’s the guy with Ellie?’ Jack asked, pretending to find something riveting on the sleeve of his jacket.

  The director turned to look. ‘Oh, that’s Craig, one of our best model-makers.’

  Jack nodded and wondered how good a model-maker Craig would be with two broken hands. He stood there a little longer and then made an excuse about needing to check something and started to walk across the studio.

  What was going on with this bloody woman? He’d heard Rachel chuntering on about that musician guy trying to get hold of Ellie’s number, then there was Jubbitt Junior pawing her, and now this Craig was sniffing around.

  He slowed down. Why was it any of his business if men found her attractive? Where was all this anger coming from? He should turn round, go back and talk to Pauline and Ian, and leave Ellie to get on with it. Jack took another look at the way Craig was manipulating Ellie’s fingers and speeded up again.

  As he walked, he spied the model for the sex kitten’s knickers laid out on a bench not far from where Craig and Ellie were standing. He drew level and bent down, hands on his thighs, and looked as though he was inspecting the knickers closely. He let a disturbed look settle on his face.

  ‘Something wrong?’ Craig asked, dropping Ellie’s hand quickly.

  Jack sucked in a breath noisily. ‘Well, I’m not sure. These look slightly weird to me. Aren’t they going to be a bit out of proportion to the stiletto you’re planning to lie them on?’

  Jack saw Craig’s calm demeanour change into one of irritation, the kind of irritation felt by a man who had spent a whole week on the gusset of the knickers alone.

  ‘I don’t think so, Mr Wolfe,’ he said, coming closer. ‘I think they’re perfectly fine.’ He got down level with the model and peered at it. ‘I have been doing this an awfully long time, you know,’ he said with a patronising laugh.

  ‘Yes, of course, I realise that. I realise I’m only a layman with something like this.’ Jack flooded his speech with smiles and reasonableness. ‘I’m sorry. I know you’re intending to shoot these later, but I do think there is something wrong here.’

  Craig still looked unconvinced, so Jack said, ‘What do you t
hink, Ellie?’

  ‘I think they look fine, Jack. Perhaps it was the angle you were seeing them from?’

  Jack pretended to be assessing the model again before shaking his head. ‘No. Look, Craig, mate, I know it’s a sickener and it’s going to be a bit of extra work, but can you go and do something about them?’

  Jack guessed that Craig probably wanted to tell him where to shove the knickers; he was eyeing him up and down as if trying to pluck up the courage to insist once again that the model was fine.

  Then Jack saw all the fight go out of Craig. ‘You know, you might be right, Mr Wolfe. I’ll … I’ll just go and do some more measurements.’ Craig lifted the board on which the model knickers were sitting as carefully as if they had been made of glass. He gave Ellie a regretful look. ‘See you later, Ellie, yeah?’

  He wandered off and Jack ignored the look Ellie was giving him.

  ‘Seems a nice boy, that Gromit.’

  ‘He’s called Craig.’

  ‘Ah, yes. Gromit’s that other, furry one.’

  ‘That’s not even funny, Jack,’ Ellie said, but Jack could see she was struggling not to laugh. He tried not to think about the beautiful effect that had on her cleavage.

  He gave a businesslike cough. ‘Right, well, sorry to drag you away, but we’ve got to get back.’

  ‘Back? I’ve only just arrived.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Jack said unconvincingly.

  ‘Why do I have to go? I’ve been looking forward to this for ages. Why can’t I stay?’

  Jack considered saying, ‘Because I don’t want you anywhere near Craig’s hands,’ but settled for, ‘Look, Ellie, you can come back later in the week or even next week. You must see that we don’t need Ian, Lesley and you all here now. Not on the first day. And with the clients here too it’s swamping the place.’

  Ellie crossed her arms and Jack sensed the start of a fight and decided to play the ‘trouble back at the agency that only you can sort out’ card.