Love to Hate You: Ask Vicky...

Chapter Five - Back-up Plan

Xander was lying in bed, and - unusually for a Saturday night - he was its sole occupant. Ordinarily, he'd have gone out to meet "friends", and the evening might have ended in a harmless flirtation with a beautiful woman or - if he thought she wasn't going to get clingy - a gentleman's rendition of casual sex. Instead, he'd chosen to stay in and go through his summary report for Millennial magazine. He told himself that it was a work thing; that he was giving up his Saturday evening for the sake of his business, but it was impossible for him to think about Millennial without thinking about Vicky Wilkes.

When Xander had met Vicky one year three months, and two weeks ago, he'd taken an instant liking to her. She was very attractive, in a natural, effortless way, and as he'd got older, he'd come to appreciate that understated type of beauty even more than he did the immaculate, polished beauty of a jobbing swimwear model (and he'd had his fair share of those; his fair share being quite generous, because he was an incredibly attractive man). When he'd whisked Vicky away from Damien and cajoled her into sharing a hotel room with him, Xander had expected ten hours of good sex and good company, but Vicky hadn't simply been good company. She'd cracked jokes with him as though they'd long been friends. She'd teased him and laughed at herself, without taking anything too seriously. She'd been a temptation he'd been quite willing to give in to, so he'd put her number in his phone.

It was only in the cold light of the hotel room, at six A.M. the morning after, that Xander had looked down on a sleeping Vicky and realised how much he looked up to her. How there was no way he could see her again, because it wouldn't be fair on her; because he'd never be willing to give her what she really wanted. So, he'd quietly dressed and gone home, and then, the following weekend, found someone less agreeable to sleep with.

Now she was back in his life - or rather, he was in hers - because he was sequestered in the open-plan workspace outside her office, where Justin's obsession with safe spaces meant that through habit, one couldn't walk the length of the large, open-plan work area, without stopping at a sofa or water fountain, vending machine or empty patch of carpet, to think about important social issues. For Xander, who thought the safe spaces were seven kinds of crazy, and who had outlawed them on his first day - "important social issues" didn't equate to the gender pay gap, religious tolerance, gay rights or Jeremy Corbyn, but "What to do about Vicky Wilkes".

He'd instantly rebuilt a rapport with her, and he admired her for the way she'd handled his forgetting her. He enjoyed teasing her and flirting with her, and did genuinely hope that she'd give in and issue him with a gold leaf embossed invitation to her bedroom. He couldn't help but look at her when she walked past him, nor listen to her conversations when someone stopped her in a former safe space to ask her opinion on Scottish independence. He couldn't help liking her; as a friend, and not simply as a woman.

This was problematic for a determined bachelor like Alexander Sinclair, because friendship meant feelings, and he tried to avoid feelings at all cost. It was problematic, because he was a management consultant who had been called in to help restructure a business which was losing thousands of pounds each week. It was problematic, because Xander suspected he was going to have to rain all over Vicky's journalistic parade.

Setting aside his laptop, Xander picked up his phone and pressed it to his ear.

'Vicky?' he said, calling her at gone ten o'clock at night.

'Xander?' she asked, in surprise.

'You good to talk?'

'Sure.' He frowned at himself. He'd called her on a whim; the gratification of a sudden urge. He wasn't really certain what he wanted to say to her.