Robyn Donald - The Billionaire's Passion by Anja

Author:Anja
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2012-05-07T17:55:02+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

Tui bustled into the kitchen, her expression a mixture of sly humour and surprise. ‘You’re a close-mouthed one,’ she accused, slapping a newspaper down on the table in front of Alli. ‘You haven’t said a word about last weekend in town with the handsome hunk. Not even about being hounded by the paparazzi!’

Swallowing the final mouthful of delectable chicken pie, Alli turned a startled face to her. ‘What?’

Tui flattened the paper out and pointed triumphantly. ‘There you are—and it’s easy to see it’s you! Not like the other one on the beach.’

Sure enough, someone had taken a photograph of Slade’s car as he’d driven out of the car park under his apartment building. Stomach roiling, Alli noticed a smile on her photographed face. She couldn’t remember smiling—especially not a satisfied smirk like that, hinting at a long night of well-sated passion.

Beneath the photograph the gossip columnist had written, Who is the woman leaving Slade Hawkings’s apartment early— very early—

one morning?

‘Didn’t you see the photographer?’ Tui asked, her curiosity palpable.

‘No.’

‘Can’t say I blame you—if I were sitting beside Slade Hawkings I wouldn’t be looking for paparazzi.’ Tui pushed the newspaper closer. ‘Go on, take it. That’s the second time you’ve hit the headlines— you’d better start a scrapbook.’

‘I don’t want it,’ Alli said defiantly, averting her eyes from the photograph.

‘Well, want it or not, you’d better get ready to go out, because that’s Slade Hawkings’s car coming up the drive right now.’

A bewildering mixture of apprehension and awareness churned through Alli. Leaping to her feet, she muttered, ‘Damn! Oh, damn!’ and cast a hunted look through the window.

‘Probably the first time a woman’s reacted like that to his arrival,’ Tui said knowledgeably. ‘I’ll go and meet him—you change into something that looks a bit more upmarket. Those jeans fit nicely, but your sweatshirt isn’t ageing gracefully.’

‘He won’t notice.’ Not true, she knew.

Her employer knew it too. ‘That one notices everything. Go on. What about your nice mossy green jersey? It looks great with your skin. And put some lipstick on.’

Alli cast another harried glance through the window before fleeing. Once in her small bedroom she shrugged into the jersey, but rebelled at lipstick.

He’d come about the photograph, of course. No doubt he was angry. Well, so was she. Who the heck had staked out his apartment so early in the morning? And why? They wouldn’t have done it for plain Alli Pierce, so they must have been tracking Slade.

Head erect and shoulders painfully squared, she walked back to the Lodge, flinching when a wood pigeon swooped across her path at eye level about two feet in front of her, its white breast gleaming in the sun.

Her pulse raced from flutter to jungle beat when she saw Slade in the office. Her first involuntary thought was that lipstick wouldn’t have helped anyway. Darkly dominant, he turned to examine her, his displeasure like an icy cloud.

‘Come for a drive,’ he said, and forestalled her automatic refusal by saying, ‘Tui says she can manage without you for half an hour.

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