(2012) Evie Undercover

Copyright © 2012 Liz Harris

Published 2012 by Choc Lit Limited

Penrose House, Crawley Drive, Camberley, Surrey GU15 2AB, UK

www.choclitpublishing.com

The right of Liz Harris to be identified as the Author of this Work has
 
been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents
 
Act
 
1988

All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the
 
public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying. In the UK such licences are issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90
 
Tottenham Court Road, London, W1P 9HE

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library

ISBN-978-1-
78189-025-7

Chapter 1

A hotel bedroom in Umbria, Italy

‘Will you sleep with me?’ Evie Shaw stood on her dishevelled bed, spotlit by a sliver of moonlight that fell from the unshuttered window above her. The man who’d just started to walk out of her bedroom stopped sharply. He turned to face her. ‘Please sleep with me,’ she repeated
,
wriggl
ing
toes that
were tipped with scarlet and h
o
ld
ing
clenched fists in front of her mouth.

She lo
wer
ed
her head
to
let her
long
auburn hair fall across her face. Strands of hair drifted across eyelashes caked with thick black mascara, and stuck there. Damn! That wasn’t meant to happen. She raised a hand and tug
ged lightly
on the wayward strands. A second, more forceful, tug freed the hair. The sharp pain made it easy to work a tremor into her lower lip.

Leaving the bedroom door wide open, Tom Hadleigh took two or three steps back into the dimly lit room
. He p
ull
ed
the belt of his white towelling robe more tightly around him
and
cleared his throat.

‘I’m sorry, Evie,’ he began, his voice firm but edged with embarrassment. ‘Attractive though you are, I don’t sleep with the people who work for me. It’s just not a good idea
. I
n fact it’s a bloody awful idea and I’
m sure you can appreciate that.
Though of course I’m flattered you asked me,’ he added quickly.
             

She
opened her eyes wide, her face a picture of astonishment. She wrinkled her nose questioningly at him, then startled surprise
gave
way to dimpled amusement. Cute, dimpled amusement, she hoped.

‘Oh, I don’t mean sleep with me, as in
sleep
with me. I certainly don’t want to sleep with you like that. God forbid!’ She threw back her head and laughed. ‘No, I just want you to lie next to me. Nothing more than that. Good Lord, no.’ She let the smile fade from her face. ‘It’s the scorpions.’ She made an exaggerated show of looking nervously around the hotel room. ‘There might be more of them hiding in here.’ She managed a theatrical shudder.

One of the shoestring straps of her short nightdress slipped off her shoulder. Result! She left it there.

Tom Hadleigh took another step into the room.

‘The scorpion’s gone, Evie, and I’m sure there aren’t any more.’ He gestured around the room. ‘You saw the staff thoroughly search the
place
before they left. There’s nothing for you to worry about, so
why don’t
you get down from the be
d and let me go back to my room?
’

What was wrong with the man!

OK, she was being a bit full on – well, maybe a little more than a bit
,
and t
hat could be seen as a turn-off
–
but in the circumstances she was entitled to expect
that she’d get
more of
a macho
response to her quivering plea for help. So much for last week’s article in
Glamour Puss
which said that no man on earth could resist a damsel in distress
;
she seemed to have found the one man who could.

She gave an inward sigh
. S
he was just going to have to work harder to break down the barrier he seemed determined to keep between them.
Their
four days
in Italy
didn’t give her
much time
in which
to fin
d out what she needed to know
, and although she’d
be working for him for two more weeks
once
they
were
back
in
London
, th
ose
two
weeks
would be a dead loss
–
he’d be in his Chambers all day and she’d be
alone
in his house. No, it was now or never, and the best way to make it now was to get him into her bed.

Just between the sheets:
nothing more.

Him being next to her when they woke up in the
morning would get them talking
conversationally, and that was when tongues
were more likely
to loosen.
His tongue, to be more precise. That was Plan A, and it had to work
–
there was no Plan B.

Rearranging her features into fearful anxiety, she stared intently at the wooden beams of the roof rafters, which were throwing long
,
dark shadows across the whitewashed walls.

‘They’re in those beams.’ She shivered and hugged her arms across her chest. ‘I know I’ll never get to sleep – I’ll keep on thinking that something horrible’s going to fall from the
ceiling and land on my head.’ She turned f
rightened eyes
back to her boss
, pleading with him. She’d audition for the National Theatre when she got back to England, she decided.

             
‘You’ll be fine, really you will.’ He sounded weary. ‘It’s past midnight and all good scorpions are in bed by now. As we should be. But not together,’ he added hastily. ‘No
w, won’t you let me help you
get down?’

             
He moved closer to the be
d an
d held his hand up to her. I
gnor
ing
the outstretched hand,
she
jumped down
and
land
ed
lightly on the stone floor, her short nightdress flying up. The second shoestring strap slipped down.

             
‘I’m not worried about the goo
d scorpions,
Mr
Hadleigh,
’
she said,
inch
ing
one
strap back over her shoulder. ‘It’s the bad ones that frighten me, the ones that curl their little black tails in my direction, thinking evil thoughts. If you were next to me, I wouldn’t feel afraid.’

             
If ever there was
a time for a tear, this was it.

In her head, she frantically conjured up the last few moments of
Ghost
, when the yummy dead hero said a final goodbye to the
distraught
wife he adored and left her forever, slowly walking into the glittering stars that were leading him into the heaven for good guys. Her eyes filled with tears. Success!

‘How can you be so scared of them?’ he asked,
his
amazement unmistakably tinged with irritation. ‘You must be used to them
–
the agency said you were part Italian.’

So much for chivalry and damsels in fear and distress
. T
he man had a heart of stone. She was going to have to try another tack
, and fast
.

‘Only a tiny part,’ she said
. She followed her words with a slight smile.
‘My grandmother was Italian. It’s the English bit of me that’s scared of scorpions.’ The smile became stronger, more
cajoling. ‘Please,
Mr
Hadleigh,
or I’ll never get to sleep.’

He gave a loud sigh:
loud and frustr
ated. ‘I suppose I could stay in here
unti
l you fell asleep
–
if you didn’t take too long about it, that is.’ He glanced around the room. ‘Look
,
there’s a chair over there. I c
an
sit
there
til
l
you
’ve
dropped off.’
He raised his arm
and
point
ed
to a cane chair in the corner of the room. His towelling robe fell open above his belt and Evie saw a line of d
ark hair snaking into the belt.

A
rush of adrenaline shot through her
, and her stomach jumped
.

Fuck! she thought. She tore her eyes away and fixed them on the chair. Being turned on b
y him wasn’t part of the plan. H
e was a job and no
thing more. Fuck. No, not fuck.
T
hat definitely wasn’t
on the cards
.

Biting her lower lip
–
a sure sign of deep concentration
–
she fixed her eyes on the chair and
tried to look as if she was considering his suggestion.

‘No,’ she said at last. ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t think that would help. Deep down, I’d know
that
you were going back to your room as soon as I fell asleep, and that’d kill any chance of me dropping off.’

God, what a wimp she sounded
–
she couldn’t keep this up for much longer.
If she didn’t
get a result
soon,
she’d have to
give up
.
In desperation, she tried out a range of different expressions, hoping that one of them would strike a chivalric nerve.