Arabella || Peaky Blinders [Michael Gray]

eleven

Chapter Eleven
"Not fucking jealous!"

Arabella had a splitting headache, and Michael's constant pen tapping was slowly driving her insane.

"Do you have to keep doing that?" She eventually snapped, looking up at him through her reading glasses.

Michael paused for a moment, meeting her stare with clueless eyes. "Doing what?"

"Tapping your pen," she replied exasperatedly, fingers pinching the bridge of her nose. "I'm trying to finish these sums and all I can bloody hear is that."

"Sorry," Michael mumbled, though his tone suggested otherwise. Arabella released a sigh, turning her attention back to the papers in front of her. He shifted his gaze back up, watching her silently for a short while, still coming to terms with actually having her back in the office after being apart for so long.

A few minutes of silence passed, until Arabella suddenly slammed her pen down, startling Michael from his thoughts. "Michael, are you sure you've done these papers right?" She asked, looking up at him once more.

Michael's eyebrows drew together in confusion. "What do you mean?"

"None of this is adding up," she replied, holding up the papers in front of her. "Look," she pointed to one of the sums with her pen, tapping it against the paper. "This isn't right."

"Well, maybe you're not doing the sums correctly," Michael countered with a shrug, glancing back down at his own work.

Arabella inhaled sharply, her jaw clenching at his words. "Pretty sure I'm not the one that's been distracted this past week."

Michael lifted his head again, eyes narrowing at her. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing," Arabella muttered, shaking her head as she tried to focus her attention back on her work again.

Michael exhaled heavily to make his irritation clear, whilst Arabella gripped tightly onto her pen, desperately trying not to snap at him again. It was no secret that Michael had been getting on Arabella's nerves the past week, leaving her to finish up a lot of the work so he could meet his posh London girlfriend, Charlotte, or spending most of the day distracted on the phone to her, making mistakes on his work that Arabella had to clean up.

So when Michael picked up the phone for the fifth time that day, she'd had enough. "I swear to God, Michael–"

"What?" He snapped, slamming the phone back onto the receiver. "Am I being too loud for you again?"

"Just do some bloody work for once!" She shouted, Michael unable to retort anything back as the door flung open, Tommy Shelby stepping inside the overwhelmingly tense room.

"Everything alright?"

"Fine," Arabella and Michael both snapped in unison, burying their heads back in their work.

"Arabella," Tommy nodded his head in the direction of the door. "A word?"

The chair legs scraped loudly against the floor as she pushed her seat back. She moved out from behind her desk, giving Michael a cold glare as she passed him. His eyes followed her and Tommy out the room, until the door was closed shut behind them.

Arabella stepped into the corridor, pressing her back against the wall as she looked at Tommy with a scowl. "Things been tense in the office?" He asked her, lighting up a cigarette.

"How'd you guess?" She responded sarcastically. Tommy studied her firm expression for a few moments, hiding his growing amusement about Arabella and Michael's bickering. It hadn't affected their work, as of yet – mostly he assumed because Arabella was always very thorough in getting things finished – so Tommy decided to let it play out for a while rather than reprimanding them.