Charlotte Phillips – Secrets of the Rich & Famous (страница 2)

She suddenly realised how she must look, staring at him with her mouth gaping open from her position on the bed. Warmth rose in her cheeks and she snapped her gaze away from him, concentrating on scrambling to her feet with some measure of dignity. Unfortunately on the way up she caught sight of her appearance in the gilt mirror on the wall. One side of her hair was plastered against her face and neck and the other side resembled a bird’s nest. Terrific. Add in the greying old shorts and vest she’d been wearing in bed and she wasn’t sure she could feel any more insignificant in the face of his gorgeousness.

She made up for it by drawing herself up to her full height and fixing him with a defiant stare. After all, he was the one at fault here. There was a two-day-old signed contract on the massive kitchen table, detailing her right to be here.

‘You’re paying for me to be here,’ she told him.

She suddenly caught herself running her fingers through the tangled side of her hair and folded her arms grimly. What was the point? It would take a damn sight more than a hairbrush to turn small-town Jen Brown into the kind of woman who would impress Alex Hammond.

‘I’m what?’ he snapped.

‘Executivehousesitters.com? I’m here to provide that extra level of security against intruders.’

She searched his face and saw his sudden understanding in the exasperated roll of his eyes.

‘By crowning me with my own vase? That was your best effort at security?’

So an apology was too much to expect, then. Typical arty type. Everything had to be about him. Never mind that he’d scared her half to death.

‘What did you expect, creeping around the place when you’re meant to be out of the country indefinitely?’ She could hear the beginning of temper in her own voice. ‘I’m not meant to be some kind of vigilante security guard, you know. I’m just meant to make the place look occupied, that’s all.’

Apparently he could hear her temper, too, because he held up a placating hand.

‘About grabbing you like that,’ he said. ‘You were just on me before I had a second to think. I could tell as soon as I got through the door there was someone here, I just assumed I’d had a break-in.’ He leaned over the bed and picked up the vase, turned to replace it on the dresser. ‘Thank God you’re just a house-sitter. My PA booked it up. She must have forgotten to cancel.’

‘Cancel?’ Her heart plummeted.

He glanced at her. ‘There’s obviously been some mix-up,’ he said. ‘Something’s come up and I need to use this place at the last minute.’

No kidding, something had come up. Jen had seen the news coverage. She knew instantly where this was heading for her—right out through the door and back to her day job at the Littleford Gazette—and she wasn’t about to take it.

The Gazette, from which she was currently on unpaid leave, was great as far as rural local newspapers went, but she didn’t want to be reporting on welly-throwing contests and duck pond vandalism for the rest of her career. She had big plans. Everything was riding on them. And they started right here, in the Chelsea apartment she was passing off as her own.

Having somehow managed to land an internship at Gossip!, a huge-selling women’s magazine, she’d spent the last three months there, working herself into the ground, soaking up every piece of information she could lay her hands on, living on a pittance in a Hackney bedsit and loving every second of it. As the three months had come to an end she’d pitched an article idea to the Features Editor and got the go-ahead.

An investigation into the millionaire lifestyle from the angle of an ordinary girl. With a twist. This article was her ticket to a permanent job—a job that could change her life—if she could just come up with the goods.

For years she’d had a nagging curiosity about the lifestyle of the rich and beautiful. Who wouldn’t, with a father who fulfilled both of those things in spades? Unfortunately he was severely lacking in other qualities, namely those needed to be any kind of parent—although perhaps he reserved that ability for his legitimate children. Pitching an article whose main requirement would be to infiltrate that elusive opulent world had been a natural choice. She’d been wondering what her parallel life might be like since she was a kid. Now she had the chance to find out, and take a huge step forward in her career at the same time.

A career with a top-selling UK women’s glossy, living in London, living the dream, or back to covering dog shows at the Littleford Gazette, circulation five thousand.

No contest.

She intended—needed—to do whatever it took to nail this opportunity, and no man was going to stop her. Even if he was Alex Hammond. And even if it meant fighting a little dirty. The only advantage of having a waste-of-space millionaire for a father was that she wasn’t the least bit intimidated by rich men. Although rich, gorgeous men were slightly more nerve-racking …

‘It’s too late to sort it all out now,’ he was saying. ‘You can stay the rest of the night, then get your things together in the morning and be on your way. I’ll get my PA to smooth things over with the agency. No need to worry. I’m sure they’ll find you something else quickly.’

He spoke with the air of someone conferring a great favour. To add to the effect he gave her a lopsided winning smile that creased the corners of his eyes and made her traitorous belly perform a backflip. She wrapped her arms defensively across her body. Just because it worked on the rest of the female population—didn’t mean she’d let it work on her.

He made a move towards the door, his back already turned. No need to wait for her response, of course, because what he said always went. How kind of him to let her stay the rest of the night. A whole extra four hours. The bitter taste of contempt flooded her mouth, quickly followed by sheer panic. How could she complete her article if she got kicked out? She had to stay in this flat.

‘I don’t think you understand,’ she called after him, working hard to stop desperation creeping into her voice. ‘I have a contract. You have to give me a month’s notice to move out.’

He paused at the door. She waited. He turned back to face her, a frown touching his eyebrows. There was only one thing for it—she was simply going to have to brazen the situation out.

‘This house-sitting thing—it’s not completely one-sided, you know,’ she said. ‘I’m still paying rent. I’m here until New Years. I’ve even put up the Christmas tree. You can’t just barge in and throw me out because the mood takes you. I don’t care who you are.’

She saw coldness slip into the green eyes, and a slight inclination of his head acknowledged that she’d recognised him. Good. Then he’d know she wasn’t about to be starstruck into doing what he wanted. This was her big break, and not even his dazzling looks and reputation could stand in the way of her dreams.

‘I see,’ he said. ‘Of course I’ll compensate you for any inconvenience, if that’s what you’re worried about.’

He thought she was after his cash? She shook her head at him in disgust. ‘I don’t want your money.’

Why was she even surprised? She knew the type of man he was. She’d known that type her whole life. And not one cell in her body would submit to his insulting assumption that he could simply swan through life buying whatever and whoever he chose, throwing money at anything that stood in his way. As if a man like him could ever understand her desperate need to prove herself on her own terms.

She sat down obstinately on the bed.

He looked down at her for a moment.

‘We’ll talk about this in the kitchen,’ he said.

Alex Hammond glanced through the house-sitting contract which he’d found in full view on the kitchen table. It seemed she had a point. Two minutes later she walked in, barefooted, tying a dressing gown around her. It was short, and he couldn’t help but notice the long, long legs and the dishevelled bed-hair that made her look as if she’d been doing something other than sleeping. He felt a spark of heat deep in his abdomen. A couple of weeks earlier and the surprise discovery of a scantily dressed woman in his apartment would probably have led to him trying to talk her back into the bedroom and giving her the one-night stand of her life. That wasn’t an option now. As of this week, he needed to be a changed man.

That resolution would be a whole lot easier to stick to without those legs under the same roof as him.

She didn’t sit down. Instead she lingered in the doorway watching him, leaning against the jamb.

‘I don’t want your money,’ she reiterated. ‘Not everyone can be bought, you know.’

He shrugged.

‘In my experience they can,’ he said. ‘It’s just a matter of finding the right price. Tell me yours and we can skip all this tedium, sort the whole thing out, and you can get on your way. Everyone can do with a bit of extra cash at this time of year.’

She shook her head stubbornly.

‘I’m staying put. You’re welcome to serve me notice, if you like. In fact, let’s assume that’s what you’ve just done, shall we? So I’ve got a month before I need to move out and at the end of that time I’ll go. No arguments.’