A/N Thanks again for all the lovely reviews! I so enjoy seeing what everyone thinks, they really make my day (or night, some of you guys are in really weird time zones!).

Disclaimer: Not mine.

EPOV

Friday morning I still wasn't getting anywhere fast with grabbing Andre's phone. I'd seen Sophie-Anne walk past a few times and look pointedly in Andre's direction, but there wasn't anything I could do but shake my head. Fuck it. If I couldn't get it by tonight I was done here and they were on their own.

I was slightly distracted anyway by trying to work out what to buy Sookie for Christmas. I had no fucking clue on that front. I went into the kitchen to get coffee and found a group of women discussing what they'd been buying. I decided that maybe they were my best bet.

"So, um, what do you think I should get my, um…wife?" I was pretty sure I thought the word girlfriend, but somehow that didn't come out. No one batted an eyelid though so I assumed I was safe.

"Nothing practical" said one of the women, "I once got a weed trimmer for Christmas."

"I got an iron!" another one shrieked and they all laughed for a bit. Boy, maybe Kiwi guys were absolutely fucking awful at buying presents. I might not have much to live up to.

Once the laughter had died down a third woman turned to me and said "Jewellery. Perfume maybe, but jewellery definitely."

"What kind of jewellery?" I asked. I had no idea what Sookie wanted. I tried to remember what jewellery I'd seen her wear. Not a lot, just some plain gold stuff that was it.

"The expensive kind" the same woman replied, to general laughter, before taking her mug and leaving the kitchen. Well that wasn't much fucking help.

I must have looked completely confused though because one of the women who were left looked at me and said "Just find a good jeweller, there's a nice one on High St you could go to, and see what they have. You're bound to see something."

Well, OK I guess I could do that. If I could figure out where High St was.

I was heading back to my desk, when I spied Sophie-Anne off down the other end of the office talking to someone. I went over to get her attention.

"Eric. Good news?"

"Not yet" I said, leading her away from the other desks. "I think we need a plan."

Sophie-Anne sighed. "I really don't like this 'we' business. I thought we agreed you would do it and I could keep out of it."

"Sorry, but no. I can't do anything without a distraction. So listen, I'll go back and sit down and try to knock the phone off his desk onto the floor, then you come by in a couple of minutes and tell him you need him to come with you right now. And then keep him busy for 15 minutes or so."

Sophie-Anne rolled her eyes. "And what am I supposed to talk to him about for 15 minutes?"

"I don't fucking know! Doesn't he work here? Don't you have something you could ask him to do?"

She sighed. "Well, I guess we could over some of the final budgets for next year…"

"Yep, whatever. Just keep him occupied. Right, I'm going back now, I'll see you shortly."

"Fine."

I went back to my desk to find Andre scowling at his fantasy football picks. Hopefully that would distract him. He made a point of ignoring me, which I hoped would work in my favour.

His phone was still in the same position it had been earlier, when he'd thrown it down in disgust after a whispered conversation with, I assumed, the girlfriend. Didn't sound as though things were going well there. No fucking surprise really. It was near enough to the edge of the desk I was using that I thought I could probably get away with this.

I started moving things around as though I was looking for something. Andre glanced my way briefly, gave me a look that said he thought I was a fucking idiot, then went back to what he was doing. I picked up a stack of papers and while pretending to look underneath it, used it to scoop the phone off the desk and onto the floor, where I trapped it with my foot. I then pretended to find what I was looking for in my laptop bag and went back to work.

Sure enough Sophie-Anne appeared at that point. "Andre" she barked, causing him to jump a bit and quickly minimise the screen he was looking at. "I need to check some numbers with you, can you come now?"

"I, uh…" he said, while looking around, obviously trying to locate his phone.

"Now Andre! Peter has a conference call with Sydney in half an hour and we need to get these sorted so he doesn't end up looking like a dick."

Andre made one last sweeping glance of his desk, and gave up, following Sophie-Anne in the direction of the meeting rooms. On their way out both of them glared at me, although for entirely different reasons. Fuck. At least it would be over soon.

I reached down and picked up Andre's phone. Luckily it wasn't a particularly sophisticated set-up and I could find the photos without too much difficulty. I started to scroll through them. There seemed to be a few of the girlfriend painting what I assumed was their new house. I don't think she ever smiled.

Then I found some of the drinks we'd all been at. More specifically, Sookie and I at the drinks. Fuck. Had he shown those to Sophie-Anne to let her know that he knew she was lying? It was pretty obvious from the way Sookie was leaning into me in the photos that there was something there. I got rid of those ones. And the ones which didn't so much show Sookie and me, as just Sookie's boobs. Fucker.

Eventually I got to the ones Sophie-Anne wanted gone. I didn't spend a lot of time looking at those, as there were just some things you didn't want to see. I deleted them pretty quickly, and then shoved the phone under some of the paper on Andre's desk, hoping he'd think he just misplaced it. Then I decided I was going to try to find High St.

SPOV

I wasn't entirely certain who had won the previous night's game of Scrabble, but I was glad that I'd heard the oven timer go off when the cake was supposed to be cooked. Although it took Eric a moment to figure out why I was trying to shove him off my chest, and it's really not easy to move him if he decides he's not going. It's worse than when Bob digs his claws in.

But having completed my baking projects for the week, Friday was proving to be a bit boring. And I had two other people to entertain. Although Felicia can usually be entertained by watching the dryer going round, Amelia had more sophisticated tastes these days.

"Mum, where are we going today?" she asked.

"Nowhere, we're staying home."

"But home's borin'!" It was hard to argue with her.

"Do you want to stick pasta shapes to paper again?" I asked her.

"No."

"Get the playdough out?"

"No."

"Well, what do you want to do?"

She sighed. "Something fun."

"What do you think is fun?"

She thought for a bit. "Driving in Eric's car" she said eventually. Well that was out of the question.

"Well we can't do that. Anything else?"

"Ummm, can we get some flowers?"

I thought for a bit. I guessed we could. "OK, yeah let's go to the garden centre and buy some stuff to plant." I was not a gardener. My mother had been really good at it, and when I was little going to the garden centre was like a torture. Literally, sometimes if Jason thought he could get away with administering Chinese burns behind the displays of ornamental fruit trees. But maybe Amelia would like gardening more.

So an hour later we had a large selection of 99 cent potted colour. Amelia had refuted the idea that we should stick to one particular type of flower, or a colour theme, or anything other than the random jumble of plants we'd ended up with. Felicia had sat in the trolley and made an attempt to eat some of the potting mix out of one of the plants. It was probably fairly nutritious.

I picked a neglected bit of the back garden and lugged all the plants over to it. Amelia skipped alongside; happy she was now getting her own garden. I wondered how long the enthusiasm would last.

Not that long. Unfortunately I had to weed and clear away the dead and neglected plants first and that was very boring for Amelia. She wandered off to find Bob. Felicia watched from the picnic rug until we broke for lunch and she went for a nap.

After lunch we could get to the bit Amelia really wanted to do which was plant the flowers. But I think that even that wasn't quite as exciting as she'd expected it to be. We put about three of the plants in and then she left me to it for a bit, coming back in time to criticise the way I'd positioned the rest of them. So we did the last few together and then I let Amelia enthusiastically water them in, which meant mostly my feet and all of Amelia got wet. I then put some slug pellets down, luckily I'd bought the animal-friendly ones because the rattle as they came out of the box piqued Bob's interest and I'm sure he thought they were a new kind of cat biscuit, and we were done. If a little wet. And muddy.

"Do you want me to put some water in the paddling pool?" I asked Amelia.

"Yep"

So I had to dig the paddling pool out of the back of the shed and clean it down, because there were 'yucky spiders' in it, before I could position it in the shade of the house. Then I had to lug several buckets of warm water out to make sure the temperature was OK. It wasn't quite warm enough yet to just use water straight from the hose. Amelia bounced around impatiently. I was just getting hot and tired, but there was no way I could fit in that pool.

When I had it filled I went back inside to get Amelia's tea-set, some towels, and the now-awake Felicia and got back out to find Amelia had stripped off all her clothes in readiness for getting in. I tipped in the tea-set and lifted her in, where she set about pretending to make cakes.

I then stripped Felicia off and put her in, much to Amelia's annoyance. "Why's Felicia in the pool?"

"Well, she's hot too."

"But it's my pool!"

"Well you have to share it with Felicia. That's only nice."

"I don't want to!"

"But it's the nice thing to do."

Amelia thought for a minute. "Is that why you share with Eric? Like, let him use your bed and stuff? Because you're being nice?"

"Yes" I said. "It's nice to share with others. It's what we do. Now let Felicia have the purple cup she's trying to reach please, she just wants one thing to play with." Amelia reluctantly passed a cup, the unloved green one, to Felicia. She was rewarded with a giggle and a squeal.

Gee, I thought, Eric can even be useful when he's not here. Who knew I could use him to teach Amelia about sharing? Just then I heard Halleigh's voice behind me saying "Sookie?" Crap. I hope she didn't hear too much about the bed-sharing.

I turned around and she looked a bit embarrassed. Oh, she probably had heard Amelia. It was hard not to. "Hi Halleigh!" I said.

"Oh, hi. Hey, um, if it's not too much trouble, can Riley join in?" She gestured to where Riley was staring forlornly through the fence at the paddling pool. Maybe, I thought, she's just embarrassed about asking and didn't hear anything? I could hope.

"No, that's fine. If you want to watch for a bit, I'll get some more water to fill up the other half of the clam shell."

"Cool, thanks".

I lifted Riley over the fence and Halleigh motioned that she'd go down the side of the house and around. Yeah, her days of climbing fences were over. I felt sorry for her. Being pregnant in summer sucked, I'd done it twice and could really sympathise.

As I walked into the house to get another bucket of warm water I could hear Amelia talking to Halleigh. "I'm going to share with Riley" she said "because it's nice. Mummy says it's nice to be nice, like when she's nice to Eric and lets him share the shower with her…"

I wondered if I just stayed inside whether anyone would come looking for me.

EPOV

My lunchtime shopping trip had yielded some ideas, but I needed to do my research. Possibly even track down Tara. Still, I could always come back into the city I figured.

When I got back to my desk, Andre wasn't there, but it looked as though he'd taken the phone, so he must have been back at some stage. Hopefully he wasn't off somewhere discovering he was missing a few photos.

So I set about finishing the last things I had to do to revise the model the way Peter wanted it, because I really fucking did not want to have to come back here on Monday. Just a few more hours and I was out.

Sophie-Anne arrived before Andre did. "Did you do it?" she asked.

"Yeah, all done." She looked pleased with that.

"Thank you Eric, I knew you'd come through for me."

"Yeah…so do you want me to hand over what I've done?"

"Oh…sure. I'll round up Peter and we'll see you in one of the meeting rooms, the one by reception, at, say, 5 o'clock? You're staying for tonight, aren't you? So you don't have to rush of anywhere?"

"Yeah, I am."

"Excellent. I'll see you at 5 o'clock then." With that she walked off.

It was just before 5 when Andre appeared, looking murderous. Fucking great, I thought, here we go.

"Fuck you, Eric" he hissed, sitting down. "I might have known you'd do anything for her. You really are a fuckwit."

"Whatever Andre. I don't have time for this" I said, packing my stuff back into my bag.

"Arsehole."

"Bye Andre". With that I left to go and meet with Sophie-Anne and Peter.

At least with the two of them in the room I was pretty safe from Sophie-Anne, who did keep smiling at me rather disconcertingly. But at least my work was done and nobody wanted anything else from me in that regard. Peter checked that I was coming along to the function that night, and I said I was, although I really didn't fucking want to. But I didn't need them telling Victor I hadn't been co-operative, I might need a reference at some stage.

"You're coming tonight, aren't you Soph?" Peter said, turning to Sophie-Anne, who stopped smiling at me long enough to smile at him.

"Of course, but only after I've been out with the Area Managers from the Retail Bank who have all been in Auckland this week."

"Oh, that's right, how did the conference go?" The conversation turned to stuff I had no fucking clue about and I zoned out and watched the boats out the window. There seemed to be some sort of yachting contingent that went out every Friday night, so the harbour was filled with small white sails.

Eventually Peter stood up to leave and said his goodbyes. I hustled to follow him before Sophie-Anne could say anything else. As I reached the door though, she put a hand on my arm. "See you later on then, Eric" she said. I nodded and left as fast as I could.

The function went as well as could be expected. I hadn't been up to the boardroom on the 29th floor before and the view across the harbour was spectacular. The chief economist was pleasant enough to talk to, but delivered a speech that was as boring as fuck. Every fucking question put to him was basically just 'what will the interest rates do?' phrased about four hundred different ways.

After the official bit I got to mingle and finally have something to eat. The food was nice, but it was only finger food. Several of the customers came to talk to me and seemed to be impressed I was American, for some unknown reason. I don't remember it fucking impressing Sookie in quite the same way. Maybe she was an anomaly?

Peter introduced me to a few other clients he wanted me to meet, and they asked a few questions. A few people asked if they could maybe contact me for some consulting work in the New Year, and asked for contact details. Given I was technically unemployed I didn't exactly have cards to hand out but I scribbled my phone number down for them. I guess I might need something to do.

Eventually the numbers were thinning and I thought I could probably make a break for it. Seeing Sophie-Anne arrive really made my decision so I said goodbye to Peter, and walked out the door, intending to take a lift back down to collect my stuff.

But before I got too far I saw Andre. Fuck. I really just wanted to go home to Sookie.

"Eric, can I have a word?" he said, gesturing into an empty, and dark, meeting room.

"No, I'm going. Goodbye." I tried to keep walking but he stood in front of me, blocking my path. It was tempting to push him out of the way, it was actually really fucking tempting to punch him, given some of the photos he'd had of Sookie, but I didn't want to do anything I'd regret. Sookie's tirade about deportation loomed over me.

"What do you want Andre?" I asked.

"In here" he said, and stepped into the meeting room. I followed.

"So spit it out so I can get on with my life" I said, in no mood for any more of this shit.

"Which life Eric? The one where you play happy families with Sookie, or the one where you're fucking Sophie-Anne?"

I wasn't sure which part of that statement I fucking objected to the most. "I don't know what you're talking about Andre" I said, hoping like fuck he'd just shut up.

"Yes, you do. I saw you. In the foodcourt. With Sookie and her kids. Pretending that you're all one big happy family."

I'd had enough of this shit. "Fuck you Andre! Don't you dare bring Sookie into this. You know nothing, nothing about her and I. You are a fucking slimy little shit who couldn't get someone as wonderful as that if you paid her. Don't forget I've seen the photos you had on your camera." Andre paled a bit at that. "You're nothing but a fucking sex pest. I do not want to hear you say Sookie's name ever again, you hear me? I'm marrying her and you and Sophie-Anne can do whatever the fuck you want to each other, or not, after today, but it has nothing to do with what I have with Sookie!"

Andre was quite pale now. At some point during that I'd stepped closer to him and he glanced towards the door, obviously worried about what I'd do next. Fuck, I thought, I hope the people in the boardroom didn't hear that.

"But…but…" Andre stammered. "But it's all just for show. Sophie-Anne said that you were shacking up with Sookie to get residency…"

"Andre, haven't you figured out by now that Sophie-Anne is a fucking nutjob? How the hell did you get involved with her in the first place? Haven't you got a girlfriend?"

Andre shrugged. "Thalia isn't that…warm…"

"And that bitch Sophie-Anne is?"

Andre just shrugged again. I was starting to think I could probably leave when the bitch herself appeared. "Not fighting over me, I hope?" she said, in a voice which said she very much hoped that was what was happening.

I snorted. "Not hardly. Andre here was just explaining to me all the lies you've been spreading."

"What lies, Eric? I've been perfectly honest with Andre. I no longer appreciate his attentions because I've moved on. I'm entitled to that."

"Yes" I said "but not to fucking tell him you've moved on with me!"

Sophie-Anne didn't even look ashamed at being caught out. Probably because she wasn't backing down from her lie. "He had to know sometime" she said.

"I don't believe you! You can't even fucking admit it when you've been caught out in a lie."

"Oh Eric" she said, stepping closer and attempting to grab my arm, which I rapidly pulled back. "Don't keep pretending for Andre's sake. He might as well know."

Andre had been silent all this time, just watching us as this exchange took place. He'd been getting paler and paler, but all of sudden he turned a weird fucking purple colour and just exploded. "You bitch!" he practically screamed at Sophie-Anne, causing her to flinch and turn her attention away from me. "You've done nothing back fucking lie to me! It was never his baby, was it?"

"Andre!" Sophie-Anne exclaimed, "I never meant to hurt you this way…"

I realised I had a clear path to the door and neither of them were watching me. I took that as my cue to make an escape, figuring it might be a few minutes before they noticed. Fuck. They were seriously fucked up. Good luck to them. I just couldn't wait to get home and pretend all of this had never fucking happened. I was probably going to need a shower just to feel clean again. Maybe Sookie could be persuaded to join me.

Thanks for reading!