Ethan is thrilled when he bags an excellent job as a PA straight out of university. He's less thrilled to discover that the job entails putting up with his boss, Vincent Berk. Vincent is intent on pushing Ethan to his limits and when he does, Ethan finds that a bit of push-back is exactly what Vincent is looking for.
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Fair Play Extract
It constantly amazed Ethan how often he managed to screw up and what exactly constituted screwing up. Turning up fifteen minutes early for work instead of twenty was screwing up. A minor spelling mistake in the first draft of a letter he hadn't even sent out yet was screwing up. Using shorthand when trying to take the minutes of a busy meeting with a dozen different speakers rather than fully-constructed sentences in the Queen's English was screwing up. Arriving for work out of breath because the lift was broken and he'd run up the stairs to avoid the aforementioned only turning up fifteen minutes early conundrum was still screwing up. In fact, anything he did that didn't involve him preempting the rapidly shifting moods of a sadistic madman was screwing up.
Said sadistic madman was Mr. Berk. Ethan knew he'd screwed up because he'd appeared in front of Ethan’s desk.
When Ethan had received the phone call to say he'd gotten the job as a Personal Assistant to the head of a small firm of accountants, he'd thought all his Christmases had come at once. It was practically unheard of for a twenty-year-old graduate with no prior experience to land a job with a thirty-grand-a-year salary, company car, company phone, and opportunities for promotion. Now, after a mere four days in the company of Mr. Berk, he was beginning to suspect rather than impressing the interviewer, he'd been the only applicant.
Ethan had been quite taken by Mr. Berk at first. For one thing, he was the head of the company even though he didn't look much older than Ethan himself. For another, he was gorgeous. He was at least six feet tall with pale skin, slick, black hair, and black-rimmed glasses over bright green eyes. Mr. Berk was all neatness and tailoring, a far cry from Ethan, who could possibly pass for cute; he worked out just enough to have a good body, but was really just sort of big, awkward, and freckled. Old ladies tended to smile at him, and other men tended to size him up, as if he might decide at any point to slam one of his big, awkward hands into their faces.
Mr. Berk, however, didn't seem to care how big Ethan was. He waved a coffee cup in front of Ethan's face.
"You over-sweetened the coffee," he said.
How he'd over-sweetened the coffee, Ethan didn't know. He'd made it to the exact specifications he'd been given, strong but milky, a dash of cream and half a sugar. He'd measured the half by digging out a set of scales from the cupboard and practically counting out every single grain. Even so, apparently what he'd managed to produce, by the sound of Mr. Berk's tone, was a cup of over-sweetened coffee that tasted of failure. Sugary failure.
Mr. Berk was wearing a green silk tie that danced across the top of Ethan's desk as he continued to wave the coffee cup. Ethan concentrated on that tie. He imagined wrapping it in his fist and pulling Mr. Berk into him for a rough kiss. That would shut him up.
"When I give you an instruction," Mr. Berk said, "I expect you to follow it to the letter."
It constantly amazed Ethan how often he managed to screw up and what exactly constituted screwing up. Turning up fifteen minutes early for work instead of twenty was screwing up. A minor spelling mistake in the first draft of a letter he hadn't even sent out yet was screwing up. Using shorthand when trying to take the minutes of a busy meeting with a dozen different speakers rather than fully-constructed sentences in the Queen's English was screwing up. Arriving for work out of breath because the lift was broken and he'd run up the stairs to avoid the aforementioned only turning up fifteen minutes early conundrum was still screwing up. In fact, anything he did that didn't involve him preempting the rapidly shifting moods of a sadistic madman was screwing up.
Said sadistic madman was Mr. Berk. Ethan knew he'd screwed up because he'd appeared in front of Ethan’s desk.
When Ethan had received the phone call to say he'd gotten the job as a Personal Assistant to the head of a small firm of accountants, he'd thought all his Christmases had come at once. It was practically unheard of for a twenty-year-old graduate with no prior experience to land a job with a thirty-grand-a-year salary, company car, company phone, and opportunities for promotion. Now, after a mere four days in the company of Mr. Berk, he was beginning to suspect rather than impressing the interviewer, he'd been the only applicant.
Ethan had been quite taken by Mr. Berk at first. For one thing, he was the head of the company even though he didn't look much older than Ethan himself. For another, he was gorgeous. He was at least six feet tall with pale skin, slick, black hair, and black-rimmed glasses over bright green eyes. Mr. Berk was all neatness and tailoring, a far cry from Ethan, who could possibly pass for cute; he worked out just enough to have a good body, but was really just sort of big, awkward, and freckled. Old ladies tended to smile at him, and other men tended to size him up, as if he might decide at any point to slam one of his big, awkward hands into their faces.
Mr. Berk, however, didn't seem to care how big Ethan was. He waved a coffee cup in front of Ethan's face.
"You over-sweetened the coffee," he said.
How he'd over-sweetened the coffee, Ethan didn't know. He'd made it to the exact specifications he'd been given, strong but milky, a dash of cream and half a sugar. He'd measured the half by digging out a set of scales from the cupboard and practically counting out every single grain. Even so, apparently what he'd managed to produce, by the sound of Mr. Berk's tone, was a cup of over-sweetened coffee that tasted of failure. Sugary failure.
Mr. Berk was wearing a green silk tie that danced across the top of Ethan's desk as he continued to wave the coffee cup. Ethan concentrated on that tie. He imagined wrapping it in his fist and pulling Mr. Berk into him for a rough kiss. That would shut him up.
"When I give you an instruction," Mr. Berk said, "I expect you to follow it to the letter."
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