‘Look, Luke, I’m sure we will be having a briefing session soon so please can you leave my office now so I can prepare for it?’ I snapped.
‘Ooh, I already love it when you’re angry,’ he said, grinning at me. ‘I look forward to receiving further lashes of your tongue.’
‘I don’t want to get off on the wrong foot with you,’ I told him. ‘So I’d advise you to focus less on my tongue and more on keeping a civil tongue in your head.’
‘No need to be so buttoned-up, Geri,’ he said. ‘You’ll find out I’m a laid-back kind of guy really. I like to get laid back at my place …’
‘Right, out of my office, now!’ I ordered, still keeping that headmistress tone, like this was all Carry On and nothing to get worked up about, while tipping him forward out of my chair, ‘and it’s Geraldine to you.’
‘You’re no fun,’ he said, reluctantly getting up and walking towards the door. ‘I’m just having a little joke with you.’
‘Well, Luke, I can share a good joke with the best of them,’ I said. ‘Let’s just hope we share the same work ethic.’
‘I’m not afraid to burn the midnight oil, Geri,’ he said, ignoring my request to address me by my full name, ‘as you will no doubt discover. See you later, Miss Sourpuss.’
And with that, Luke Cotterill moved his wise ass out of my space and back into his domain.
I closed the door behind him and felt like fumigating the place. I was rattled by his rudeness but I knew he wanted to provoke a reaction in me.
It didn’t help that he was tall and lean as an Olympic rower, with the good looks to go with the physique.
And boy did he know it. He was clearly accustomed to women falling for his charms on a regular basis. This one was a dangerous beast, and I could not afford to give him the slightest ammunition.
Just as I was pondering how to deal with him, a young woman with long red hair came to sit down at the desk outside my office. So this was my new PA, Tania Peck.
I scrutinised her for a good few minutes. She had a great body, with legs up to her armpits and a ballet dancer’s posture that thrust her boobs out in front of her like heat-seeking missiles.
Everything about her shrieked ‘Look at me, boys!’ and I guessed it had been Daryll Sidebottom’s idea to hire her, probably to ‘cheer up the office’ or some such nonsense, but there was no point in arguing with the head of the investment team.
It pissed me off that she was flaunting herself in such an obvious way. I had the seemingly unpopular idea that hard work, intelligence and talent might actually get you places, so I had always been careful to cover myself up.
I felt like giving Tania a good talking-to but knew I’d be wasting my time. She was only 20, and she wouldn’t listen to a 28-year-old like me.
My face was a studied mask of indifference when she stood up and walked into my office, proffering her hand.
‘Miss Carson, it’s really nice to meet you at last. I hope you had a fun stay in New York,’ she said, speaking in an accent that was pure Sarf London, flashing a set of perfect white teeth.
‘Yes, it was a valuable experience,’ I told her, making eye contact but not accepting the handshake. ‘And please, call me Geri.’
‘OK, thanks Geri,’ she replied sweetly, flicking her long, flowing red hair off her face. ‘Give me a shout when you want to go through your correspondence.’
I nodded and closed my office door, making sure she realised I wanted a boundary between us. She was being too nice – a sure sign of a hidden agenda.
I sat down to check my emails and at the top of my inbox was a message from Ryan Buxton, the best-looking guy on the team and also my occasional fuck buddy.
Now please don’t pre-judge me. The ‘work hard, play hard’ adage didn’t really apply at Sloane Brothers. It was all work. My social life consisted of keeping up with college friends via facebook. I ate, breathed and dreamed the job. Had done for four years now. That was my world. Ryan was good for a no-strings shag when the fancy took me.
In the subject line were the words: Watch out, there’s a mole about! I opened it up and read the contents:
Welcome back, Geri – see you’ve met your hot new PA! Don’t be fooled by that cute exterior, she’s a smart cookie. Guess who she’s shagging? Only Luke Cotterill!
I rolled my eyes in disbelief. Tania probably thought it was a great career move; I thought it was career suicide.
In six short weeks, Luke had managed to put his alpha male stamp in every corner of the company like a dog marking its territory.
Luke had also sent me an email.
Guess you’ve heard the big horizontal merger has just gone through. Are we hot or what? Well, I am anyway!
Of course I knew about the deal; I’d been an integral part of the team that pulled it off for the company. I didn’t dignify his email with a response and spent a few moments quietly observing Tania before calling her in.
‘OK, here are a few ground rules,’ I said. ‘First, everything that passes between us in this office is confidential. Second, I expect you to show some initiative, but not to put anything into action unless I’ve approved it first. Understood?’
‘Oh, of course, Geri. Deffo,’ she replied, without a crack appearing in her smile.
Looking beyond Tania I could see that Luke was gathering some of the team around him.
I walked out into the main office to drop a document on a colleague’s desk. As I did, Luke made sure I heard him inviting the guys – or ‘the Brothers’, as he insisted on calling them – out to celebrate the big merger deal. I wasn’t having that, obviously, and went to have a quiet word with him.
‘Luke, I don’t care if the Sisters are not officially invited, I’m not missing out on this Brothers’ party,’ I said. ‘I had as much to do with this deal as anyone else.’
‘Ahh, it’s Geri Boy,’ he sneered, loudly enough so that half the office could hear him. ‘She who wears the trousers and wants to be one of the lads.’
‘As I said before, it’s Geraldine to you,’ I said, grinning at the other guys on the team. ‘The first Jeroboam is on me, OK?’
‘Ooh, that’s a big bottle for a little lady,’ laughed Luke, surrounded by giggling cronies. ‘Will you need a man to help you with that?’
I bit my lip while trying to think of a decent comeback but thought better of it and marched purposefully back to my office. Tania was blocking the doorway. Was that a sympathetic smile or a smirk on her face? I couldn’t be bothered to work it out.
‘Tania, if you’ve got something to say, then say it.’
‘Oh Geri, don’t let them get to you,’ she said. ‘I’m coming tonight as well, we’ll have some fun, you’ll see.’
‘Right, fine,’ I said, incensed that Luke had invited her and not me. I’d only been out of the office for six weeks but I felt like I’d already lost my place in the team. ‘You’d better be prepared to buy your round, though.’ I immediately regretted that – there was no way a legal PA would be able to keep up with the spending.
I asked her to phone ahead to Corney & Barrow to make sure they were well stocked with Bollinger and Krug before the Sloane Brothers’ wrecking crew arrived, and went back to work.
The rest of the day passed without much incident, with Luke postponing our briefing meeting, apparently in a gesture of kindness to let me properly