Strictly Confidential Read online

  ‘Sorry, babe. It’s just too bright in here,’ Tom said by way of explanation, then kissed her seductively on the neck. Anya creamed herself quietly while our host stalked out of the room and then re-emerged dragging a suitcase behind him.

  ‘Shades!’ he exclaimed in his best Broadway voice. As if that explained anything.

  I propped Anya upright.

  ‘Shades!’ he repeated louder, ringmaster style, before opening his suitcase to reveal hundreds of pairs of Ray-Ban sunglasses, in every colour, shape and design, stacked neatly in row upon UV-fighting row. Holy shit. This guy was the Imelda Marcos of eyewear. He could fit out every Stevie Wonder impersonator in the southern hemisphere with this stash and still have leftovers. Hell, you’d probably never have to see daylight again with that collection.

  Reynolds slipped on a pair of shiny aviators, turning his head from side to side as if sizing up his choice, before turning to me and Anya. ‘Ladies, be my guest,’ he invited suggestively, then gestured belatedly to the sunnies.

  Anya giggled from where I finally had her upright on the piano seat.

  ‘Eye care is no laughing matter, baby,’ he deadpanned, before brushing a strand of rogue GHD’d hair behind her ear as he sat back down beside her at the instrument.

  ‘Fly me to the moon . . .’ he began yet again and Anya joined in the singing this time. At least she could be confident of the words. We’d heard them ten fucking times already.

  At this point Ben returned with our drinks and interrupted our Ray Charles convention. ‘What the . . . ? Why the hell are you all wearing sunglasses?’ he asked.

  I flashed Ben my best everyone-else-here-is-crazy smile before patting the space on the lounge beside me.

  He returned my grin, plonking a bottle of whisky on the piano lid and another drink in Anya’s hand, before joining me on the couch where he chivalrously topped up my glass.

  ‘Wayfarer or Wings?’ I said to him dryly, offering up two pairs of sunnies.

  Ben slid closer, ignoring my question and pushing the sunnies out of the way before slipping his hand along my leg. ‘Bet you weren’t expecting this tonight?’ he asked, probably referring to the zaniness that engulfed us from every corner of the room. But I couldn’t think beyond his hand. Yes! I wanted to shout. Yes, this I was hoping for!

  ‘No,’ I replied instead, struggling to talk and breathe at the same time as Ben’s hand made its way up my thigh. And then: ‘I thought we’d at least cover off your sales plan for the new range.’ Shit, what did I go and say that for? The truth was, it had been a while and, much as I wanted Ben – had been wanting him all evening – now the opportunity was here I was surprising even myself by stalling.

  ‘Sales plan?’ Ben gave me the same look Emma had just hours earlier. ‘But this beats going back to the office like you were planning, right?’ His hand moved higher and he kissed me lightly on my exposed shoulder as if to distract me.

  In the corner, Anya and Tom were busily undressing one another, Tom fumbling to unhook her bra with one hand while still tickling the ivories with his other. This was hardly the romantic rendezvous I had hoped of for Ben and me.

  ‘Let’s move to another room,’ I said, hoping for seductive and not just instructive. I know most guys like a woman who takes charge but I am also aware that I don’t really need to amp up this side of my personality. Giving orders comes especially easy to me.

  Ben looked pleased. ‘Now that’s more like it,’ he added before planting those Gregory Peck lips on mine.

  As we stood to seek out some five-star privacy, with Ben’s arm wrapped agreeably around my waist, my handbag on the couch began to vibrate urgently. For the briefest of seconds I hesitated.

  Then my phone started to ring proper.

  I paused. Ben looked at me questioningly. I returned his gaze. Then glanced at my ringing phone. Then back at Ben.

  It was late. The only person ringing me now had to be calling from the Converse Hong Kong office. I needed to take this call.

  ‘It’s Converse in Honkers,’ I began, as if to appeal to the business branch of his brain.

  Ben’s eyes narrowed as he dragged them back from the bedroom where they’d been heading.

  ‘It’s got to be about the new store launch –’ I tried again.

  Ben’s hand gripped my waist. I could feel him leaning towards the bedroom.

  The phone continued to ring.

  I stood fixed to the spot, torn between the threat of letting the long-awaited call go to voicemail and letting go of the male standing beside me.

  ‘Jazz . . .’ said Ben, leaning in to kiss me.

  The phone wouldn’t ring much longer. Voicemail had to be about to kick in. Only my business sense kicked in first.

  Holding Ben back with one arm, I bent down and reefed my ringing phone from my clutch with the other.

  ‘Hello, Jasmine Lewis,’ I rushed down the line.

  ‘Jasmine? Sasha here from the Hong Kong office . . .’

  Got it in time. I breathed a sigh of relief. Ben, on the other hand, wasn’t so pleased. He ripped his arm away from my waist and stormed over to the piano to pour himself another whisky, clearly sore at losing out to my BlackBerry.

  Moments later, my conversation with Hong Kong all wrapped up, I ventured over to Ben to make it up to him. Only he didn’t give me a chance.

  ‘Do you come with an off switch, Jazzy Lou?’ he asked, heading back to the couch I’d just come from and forcing me to trail behind him.

  ‘Hell no,’ I said proudly.

  The look on his face told me this was not the answer he was hoping for. I was beginning to feel as welcome as a tweet at the Logies.

  In the corner Tom Reynolds was persisting in his wooing of Anya. ‘Fly me to the – I know what we need!’ he warbled, disappearing momentarily to rummage around in the bar.

  I turned to Ben. ‘Okay, this might be my cue to split. Much as I don’t want to leave Anya, it’s getting a little bit Alice in Wonderland in here and I’m late for a very important date with some sleep if I want to get up and work tomorrow.’ The sparkle of the suite that had so impressed me barely an hour ago was beginning to fade. Fast. What hurt a little was that Ben put up no argument.

  ‘Fine.’ He shrugged.

  Our host, however, chose that moment to return, inspiration in hand. ‘Apple bong!’ he announced triumphantly, holding a Granny Smith unsteadily in the air with a baseball mitt, before returning to his piano stool.

  ‘Fly me to the moon . . .’

  Here we go again.

  ‘Ooh, what’s that?’ Anya was now conscious. But barely.

  ‘This baby,’ said Reynolds, throwing the apple up in the air and catching it in his mitt while still playing the piano dexterously with the other hand, ‘is one fucking Granny Smith apple stuffed with the finest quality grass this side of Kingston Town.’

  Anya snuggled up closer.

  ‘Fly me to the moon . . .’ came the familiar refrain, getting faster and faster each time, like some dizzying merry-go-round that just wouldn’t stop.

  The air that had soured between me and Ben was now filled with the acrid scent of marijuana as our host sparked up. Here on the couch, however, sparks of an entirely different kind were beginning to fly as Ben had clearly decided not to go down without a fight.

  ‘What’s the deal, Jazz?’ he asked accusingly. ‘You act like you’re all interested and then, when faced with missing just one fucking phone call, you switch from the bedroom back to the boardroom in the blink of an eye.’

  I grimaced apologetically. ‘I’m sor—’ I began, ready to explain that it was his account that I had been looking after, but – ego clearly bruised – Ben was having none of it.

  ‘You’re all batting eyelashes one minute then business plans the next. I can’t be arsed wi
th that.’

  In the corner the apple bong was being thrown up and down and up and down, despite the fact it was lit. Just what I needed. An insurance bill from Merivale when the Canuck burned the place down.

  I turned to Ben. ‘Chill. It was just one phone call,’ I said.

  Up and down and up and down. The apple continued to soar through the air, miraculously landing with a dull thud back into the baseball mitt each time. The room was spinning and I couldn’t tell if it was the incessant music or all those caprioskas I’d been downing, but one thing was for sure: Anya was being flown to the moon over there in the corner.

  ‘One phone call,’ Ben mimicked, bringing me back down to earth. ‘At exactly the moment I thought we were getting somewhere. I didn’t hang around all night to watch you be a switchboard bitch.’

  Up and down and up and down. That apple just won’t stop.

  I stared into my cocktail glass, willing myself to keep calm. Ben was totally overreacting. It was just one stupid work call. I couldn’t afford to lose my cool – or the Converse account – just because Ben was being a douche.

  But why wouldn’t the damn music ever end?

  My phone buzzed again: Has the Rodarte worked its magic yet, babe? Shelley texted.

  I hit delete.

  ‘You know you’re more impossible princess than queen bee,’ Ben goaded me again.

  I bit my tongue. You’ve got to work with this guy, you’ve got to work with this guy, I repeated over and over in my head. All thoughts of romance were now well and truly banished. Having seen Ben’s temper, I was suddenly not keen on seeing anything else he wanted to reveal tonight.

  Up and down and up and down.

  Anya was now sitting on Reynolds’ lap with her tongue down his throat and the piano was still playing the same damned refrain.

  ‘Am I wrong?’ Ben tried again. ‘Tell me I’m wrong, Jazzy Lou.’

  Oh God, someone flip the record.

  Up and down and up and down. Why wouldn’t the spinning stop?

  And then the crash of shattering glass splintered the air and the spinning room came immediately to a halt. A half-full bottle of Kentucky whisky lay in a million pieces on the floor and golden liquid seeped away in all directions while Anya looked up in sleepy surprise, as if unable to connect her and Reynolds’ grabbing arms with the smashed bottle at her feet.

  ‘I think that’s our cue to exit stage left, babe,’ our star drawled drunkenly, before dragging Anya off in the direction of the sprawling bedroom. I raised my eyebrows at Anya on her way past but she flashed me a victorious smile and so I merely watched her go.

  ‘Well, now, haven’t you got a spreadsheet or a media list to update?’ Ben asked me, slurring ever so slightly. That last, fast glass of whisky had clearly kicked in. ‘I’d hate to get between you and your profit margin. Surely there’s some overtime you could be doing?’

  Finally, this was too much. I felt fury rise in my throat. Sure, I’d chosen business over pleasure, electing not to drag Ben off to bed at the very moment it looked like I would. And sure, I’d taken a work call when he was trying to work me in other ways. But that didn’t mean we couldn’t have continued once I’d hung up. If only he hadn’t been such a dick about it all.

  For a minute, silence hung over the room as we sat sans serenade. Then slowly, deliberately, as if watching myself moving in slow motion, I reached for my cocktail glass, lifted it as if to my mouth and then changed direction at the last minute and instead poured the entire sticky contents all over Ben’s crotch.

  ‘Faaaark!’ Ben swore. ‘What the hell did you do that for?’ Getting up, he stormed into the bar for towels.

  I sat and contemplated my empty glass. Well, Jazzy Lou, you may have finally done it this time, I thought. No man cops a caprioska to the crotch and takes it lying down.

  And yet I can’t say I was entirely sorry. Even though the Converse account would surely walk out the door, even though my fling with Ben was over before it had begun, I’d do the same all over again. Because dismissing someone’s profit margin just ain’t funny.

  I felt my fury rise again. ‘You know what your problem is, Ben Gorman?’ I shouted after him, summoning the very worst insult I could think of. ‘Your problem is you don’t appreciate the value of doing a little overtime.’

  And with that I stalked out of the room.

  I was jerked awake from a groggy, drunken sleep the next morning by the sound of my BlackBerry ringing. Throwing an arm out wildly, I knocked my copy of Nice Girls Just Don’t Get It from the bedside table before laying my hand on the phone.

  ‘Jasmine Lewis, hello?’ I managed, hauling myself awake.

  ‘Jazz?’ a voice whispered down the line.

  WTF?

  ‘Jazz, it’s Anya,’ whispered the voice again.

  ‘Anya?’ I repeated, slowly coming around. ‘Sorry, I didn’t recognise you without your theme music. Where the hell are you, babe?’

  ‘I’m still at the Ivy,’ Anya whispered and then I heard that all-too-familiar warble somewhere in the background.

  ‘You’re still at the Ivy?’ I choked.

  ‘Uh, yeah. Tommy’s in the shower,’ she added unnecessarily. ‘Um, Jazz, what do I do now?’

  OMG. ‘Do you think he’s waiting to invite you to breakfast?’ I asked incredulously. ‘PR 101, love: don’t sleep with the client. But if you fail that course, here’s what they’ll teach you at summer school: don’t hang around in the morning!’

  ‘Er, right,’ Anya said, sounding simultaneously disappointed and relieved at being given an out.

  ‘Get out of there now, babe! And Anya?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Down with love,’ I declared, raiding Reynolds’ back catalogue one last time before hanging up.

  Later that morning, Shelley popped up in my inbox with the postcoital post-mortem I knew was coming my way:

  From: Shelley Shapiro

  Title: Best friend

  Time: 10.23 am

  Dah-ling? Where are you? Still lying in bed somewhere, I hope . . . S x

  PS Did that Rodarte number pinch around the neck?

  Popping a bunch of Nurofen to erase the final traces of last night, I smiled ruefully at Shelley’s message. I wasn’t sure what surprised me less, Shell’s unswerving faith in my love life or her complete inability to grasp the concept of a working week. Did she really think I might be sprawled out on a Sealy Posturepedic somewhere, my sexual conquest feeding me grapes and politely ignoring the fact it was 10.30 am on a weekday?

  I tried not to dwell on the fact I’d been at my desk for over three hours already as I banged out a reply.

  Hey Babe,

  Um, I’d be lying if I said I was still lying in bed. In fact, I’d be lying if I said we ever made it there at all. Long story. Suffice to say, I thought Tom Reynolds would make for the perfect soundtrack to our romantic evening. Turns out The Kills would have been better. Don’t think I’ll be hearing from Ben again. But at least the Rodarte fits, right? And there’s always the Coco Man of the Year Awards kicking off tomorrow to cheer me up. Nothing says ‘I’m over him’ like parading around town with twenty semi-naked men! JL xxx

  Persuading twenty of Australia’s hottest bachelors to take off their shirts and preen, pose and play up to the Sydney media should have been the easiest job in the world. My goodness, if you wander down to Bondi Park any day of the week, you’d have a hard time finding a guy with his shirt on. It’s not our glistening harbour that earned Sydney its nickname the Emerald City. More like the sun’s blinding rays bouncing off all those well-oiled, hairless metrosexuals standing round admiring themselves in their budgie-smugglers. So organising the PR for the Coco Man of the Year Awards should have been a walk in the, ahem, park. Right?

  Wrong. So, so wrong.

  Day one o
f the two-day Man of the Year Awards media juggernaut dawned wet and soggy, rather than hot and steamy like our guys. Still, us Bees weren’t going to let a little tropical monsoon rain on our parade. First order of business was to issue the press release announcing the finalists. But this was not just any presser. This was a laminated media release, meticulously placed underneath a decadent one-kilogram ‘bed’ of chocolate cake, complete with icing sugar bedsheets discreetly covering our pièce de résistance: a (never-nude) miniature Coast model in the form of a doll. This was sure to win over the hearts and stomachs of newsrooms all across Sydney. As long as we could deliver them in one piece. And that’s where things began to get tricky.

  Launching myself through the doors at QB HQ I was greeted by an army of worker Bees, hair styled to perfection and stilettos sky high. Today was Coco Man of the Year day and these girls were taking no prisoners. The ever-reliable Em was leading the charge, ticking items off a checklist as I jumped into the fray and began shouting to be heard over the rain thundering on the roof.

  ‘Alice, you and Anya will cover the magazines at CCP media group. I’ll head there in a separate car too. Lulu, you and Holly look after the opposition at Media Central Magazines. And Lulu, did you double-triple-confirm with the Smart car delivery guy this morning? I’ve heard from Planet Cake that the cakes are on their way here now.’

  On cue, a courier van beeped its horn out the front and I ran back out into the rain.

  Despite the courier parking right out the front of our building, there was still a median strip, a footpath and a flight of outdoor stairs to be traversed in order to get twenty very delicate hand-crafted cakes safely into the building. And all during a flash flood. It was time to rally the troops.

  ‘Okay, loves, your country needs you!’ I announced, equipping each Bee with a Queen Bee-branded umbrella before grabbing one for myself and leading the way to the door. ‘And be careful in those shoes,’ I fussed before I could stop myself. Then added, ‘I can’t afford your workers’ comp bill.’ The last thing I needed was for someone to slip and break more than a heel. In fact, that’s why I always carry my trusty Chanel flats in my handbag. Sure, stilettos are required for my look when I’m with clients but who can run in heels all day?