Men at Work [Quick Read] Read Online Free

temping here for a little while is such a huge deal.”
    “Because she’s my girlfriend.”
    “And?”
    “Well I already live with her. So if I start working with her too it’ll mean I’ll be spending twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week with her.”
    “So what?” said Amar, shrugging. “People do that all the time. Look at Steve and Annette in Bought Ledger. They live and work together.”
    “That’s different. Steve and Annette met at work. The only version of Steve that Annette knew was Work Steve but Emma and I met out in the real world. She has no idea what Work Ian is like. She only knows Home Ian who is kind and lovely and all that.”
    “Well, maybe she’d like Work Ian if she met him.”
    Ian shook his head sadly. “No, mate, Emma can never meet Work Ian. She’d hate him. She’d think he was a boorish, show-off boozer who spends too much money and a little too much time flirting with his boss’s PA.”
    “So ditch Work Ian then.”
    “But I love Work Ian. Work Ian makes me happy. And anyway Home Ian only exists because I get to be Work Ian from Monday to Friday. If I have to spend the whole week being Home Ian, I’ll die.”
    “Come off it, mate,” snorted Amar. “It can’t be that bad! Look, you need the money don’t you?”
    Ian nodded.
    “And it’s only for a bit, isn’t it?”
    Ian nodded again.
    “And it’s not like you can even stop her is it?”
    Ian looked at the crisp packet in his hand. Could he stop her coming to work in his office by locking her in the bathroom? It was not a bad idea and, of course, he wouldn’t leave her there. Even so, Ian was pretty sure that Emma would go mental. And if there was one thing worse than working with Emma, it was living with Emma when she was angry at him.
    “No,” he said, looking up at Amar, “it’s not like I can actually stop her from doing anything.”
    “So the choice is she comes to work here and you make the best of it, or she comes to work here and you make the worst of it?”
    “Yeah,” sighed Ian, “it’s pretty much like that.”
    “So what’s it going to be?”
    “That,” said Ian, “is a good question.” He looked at his crisps and lost his appetite. “I don’t know the answer. But I do know that the best thing right now is to go back to work.”

Chapter 7
    In the end, Ian decided to be as upbeat about Emma’s new temp job as possible and hang on to the fact that she’d only be at Holling House for a month. Over the next few days he managed to convince himself that it wasn’t such a big deal. He told himself it was a small deal, a very small deal indeed and before he knew it the whole thing would be over and he could go back to normal life. But then at ten minutes past eight on the following Monday morning, just as he had sat down on the loo for his usual ten minute thinking time, his mood was broken by Emma shouting up the stairs.
    “Ian!”
    Ian ignored her. It was an unwritten rule that he should never be disturbed whenever ten minutes past eight came and he headed to the loo for his ten minute “thinking time’. Up until now Emma had seemed to understand his need for both silence and regular bowel movements but now Ian wasn’t so sure. Maybe in the excitement of her new job she had forgotten the rule. He decided to ignore her in the hope that she might realise her mistake on her own.
    “Ian!”
    One more chance.
    “Iaaaaaaaaaaaannnnnnn!”
    Ian had no choice but to stop what he was doing, pull up his trousers and find out what she wanted.
    “About time,” said Emma, from the bottom of the stairs, with her coat on and her bag over her shoulder. “I thought you were never going to come out of there! Come on, slow coach, we need to get going.”
    “Going?” said Ian. “Going where?”
    “Are you joking?” snapped Emma. “It’s my first day at work, you idiot, and I don’t want to be late.”
    “So?”
    “So I want you to hurry up.”
    “But why?” As the words left his lips he saw