Because I Need You

Chapter 1

“I’m telling you, Liz, it’s a damn good job I love your face.” I laughed when Liz told me who it was that I would be working for.

“I know, I know. He has a reputation.” She shook her head.

I groaned. “That’s putting it mildly, chick. He’s a fucking nightmare. Even I know he’s been through more PAs than we both care to think about. I don’t know how you deal with that shit.”

She shrugged. “He’s a well-paying bastard?”

“Fine. But I don’t want you holding it against me for any other work that comes up after this when he sacks me.”

Liz agreed and said she would email me over the details; I’d start in the morning at 8 a.m. I left the agency office and headed out onto the busy London streets for Victoria Station.

Now, when I said I knew what this guy was like, I didn’t actually know the man, I merely knew his reputation, and from that reputation, I knew that he was a tyrant.

A lot of the London PAs I knew were all in a secret group on Facebook; we talked about the bosses we had, we talked about who was a nightmare to work for, who was hiring at the minute, all of it.

And one name that regularly came up for being a complete and utter wanker was Aiden Munroe.

I remembered one girl about six months ago who had come into the group to post about him.

Her grandmother had died and she had needed a few days off to help with the funeral arrangements and the funeral itself.

He had started with an email and text here and there to ask her about the work he had expected her to be doing at home while grieving.

Apparently, by the time her grandmother’s funeral arrived, he was calling her five or six times an hour and went ape shit when she didn’t answer while she had been in church for the service.

Poor girl quit the next day. Liz told me off the record that he had actually called her to see if she would fire the girl anyway, because he ‘found her level of tardy completely unacceptable in a professional capacity’.

Without a doubt, Aiden Munroe was a top-class knob.

* * *

Forty-five minutes later, I got off the train in Sutton and started to walk the short distance to the house I shared with my daughter and mother-in-law on Grove Road.

“Honeys, I’m home!” I called out as I opened the door. I heard a little voice gasp and run out of the living room at high speed into my arms.

“Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!” She yelped as she jumped up and I grabbed her for a big squeeze.

“Hello, monster. Did you have a good day at school today?” I asked my four-year-old, giving her a big kiss on the cheek before carrying her into the living room.

“Hey, Sylvie.” I smiled and set my daughter onto the sofa beside her nan, kissing the older woman on the cheek.

“Hello, son. How was your day?”

I rolled my eyes. “New assignment in the morning. I’ll tell you about it when the little walls with big ears aren’t around.”

“Nanna, what’s a walrus with big ears?” Addison asked.

Sylvie scooped up her granddaughter and laughed.

“I’ll tell you all about it later. Let’s go make dinner while Daddy gets cleaned up.

” She winked at me and hustled into the kitchen with my little monster following along behind.

I headed upstairs to jump in the shower and wash away the grime of the day.

* * *

“Is she asleep?”

Sylvie nodded. “Only took two readings of The Last Noo Noo .”

“Bloody Marlon the Monster .” I laughed as Sylvie nodded to the kettle.

“Want a cuppa, love?” she offered.

“Yes, please.” I smiled.

“Is that research on the new job?” She nodded in the direction of my laptop where I sat with it at the breakfast bar.

I grumbled, and she laughed. I read over the pages of information that I could on Munroe Holdings PLC.

They owned property, a lot of property, and had since Aiden Munroe’s great great grandfather set up the company in 1912.

Jackie Munroe moved to London from Edinburgh in 1898 at the tender age of twenty-three.

By the time he was thirty, he owned three properties.

Rumour has it, old Jackie was a bit of a gambler, and a good one at that.

So good, in fact, that, so the story goes, Jackie won those properties in a game of poker.

He appears to have been shrewd as hell and an amazing reader of people; he spotted their bluffs, poker faces, and tells.

The man was a machine. By the time 1912 arrived, Jackie owned sixteen properties, and thought that the best way to protect them was to put them into a holding company.

By then, he had also attracted the attention of a younger woman called Estelle.

He went on to have six children with her, and was a millionaire by the age of fifty.

After that, the company was passed down the family from father to son, until it had been passed just three years ago from Carter Munroe to Aiden.

I was staring at several photos of Aiden when Sylvie came over and set the mug of tea beside me. Looking over my shoulder, she gasped.

“Bloody hell, Ellis. Who is the hotty?!”

I rolled my eyes. “That would be the new boss. Aiden Munroe.”

“That the one who wouldn’t let the girl go to her mum’s funeral?”

I laughed. “Yes, him, but no, it was her grandmother’s funeral, and he let her go, but then harassed her for work while she was off.”

“Bit of a knob then, love?” she scoffed. “Good luck with that one. I hope Liz isn’t going to hold it against you when you can’t work with him anymore.”

I pulled her against my hip and kissed her cheek, laughing. “Sylvie, my darling, I would be lost without you, you know that, right?”

“Oh, I know that, son.” She couldn’t take her eyes off the photos of Aiden. “Shame he’s with a woman in all of them. Mustn’t bat for your team. I wonder if he likes older women.”

I burst out laughing again and slapped her backside, and she walked off to the living room with her cup.

I sat there for a minute, looking at the pics on the screen.

Sylvie was right; Aiden Munroe was a beautiful man.

But, as she had pointed out, in almost every single image, he had some gorgeous woman hanging off his arm.

That was going to make for an interesting distraction, if his behaviour didn’t make me want to kill him first.