The Twelve Nights of Christmas (6 page)

Evie watched in disbelief as he talked into one phone while emailing from the other.

‘Sì—Sì—Ciao.'
He ended the conversation and frowned at her. ‘Why are you staring?'

‘How many phones do you have?'

‘Three. It makes me more efficient.'

‘What happens if they ring at the same time? Most men aren't that good at multi-tasking.'

He gave a cool smile. ‘I'm not most men. And I'm excellent at multi-tasking.' As if to test that theory, two of his three phones rang simultaneously and Evie moved to the window as he dealt swiftly with one call and then the other.

It was still dark outside, but the roads far beneath her were already busy as cars and taxis inched their way over snowy streets.

She leaned her cheek against the glass, watching people carrying on with their lives, wishing she could swap with them. Or put the clock back. She wished she'd never spent the night in the Penthouse.

Her eyes stung with tears and she blinked rapidly, determined not to cry. It was just because she was tired, she told herself fiercely.

What should she do? She couldn't decide whether it was better to ring her grandfather and warn him that he might see some very embarrassing pictures of her in the press, or say nothing and just hope that he didn't read that page in the paper.

But someone was bound to point it out, weren't they? She never ceased to be depressed by the enjoyment some people took from watching another's misfortune.

‘Move away from the windows. Your clothes have arrived—you can change in the bedroom.'

Evie turned, wondering how her colleagues in Housekeeping had managed to produce underwear and shoes so quickly. Then she looked at the elegant packaging on the boxes and realised they'd simply used the expensive store in the hotel foyer.

‘I can't afford to pay for those.'

He looked at her with ill-disguised impatience. ‘The price tag on your bra is surely the least of our worries at the moment.'

‘To you, maybe, but that's because you don't have to worry about money,' Evie said stubbornly. ‘I do. Particularly as I appear to have just lost my job.'

The phone rang in his pocket again but this time he ignored it. ‘Get dressed. Consider the clothes a gift.'

‘I can't accept a gift of underwear from you. It wouldn't be right.'

‘In that case, think of them as an essential part of our crisis management programme. The longer you continue to walk around naked, the more likely we are to find ourselves in even hotter water.'

He had a point.

Opening one of the boxes, Evie spotted a silky leopard-print bra and panties and crushed the lid back down, her face scarlet. ‘I can't wear something like that.' Hardly daring to look, she prised the lid off the other box and her eyes widened when she saw the contents. ‘I can't wear those, either—'

‘Why not? They're shoes. I realize they're not strictly uniform, but they will do until we can get you something else.'

‘But—' She stared down at the sexy shoe with the wicked heel. It was the most beautiful, extravagant, indulgent thing she'd ever seen. ‘I don't wear heels. I can't.'

‘You don't have to walk far in them.'

‘It isn't the walking.' Her face was almost the same shade of scarlet as the sole of the famous shoes. ‘You may not have noticed, but I'm already taller than the average woman. If I wear heels, I look like a freak. Everyone will stare.'

‘After last night, they're going to be staring anyway. They'll stare harder and longer if you're barefoot. Put them on.' Without giving her the opportunity to argue, he turned back to the phone, leaving Evie to stare at him in exasperation, wondering what day it was. Had December nineteenth been designated Humiliate Evie Day and someone had forgotten to tell her?

Juggling the throw with the boxes, she struggled into the master bedroom and closed the doors. At least she wouldn't be naked.

Feeling relieved to finally ditch the throw, Evie slung it back on the bed and slithered into the underwear. It fitted perfectly. Then she pushed her feet into the shoes, almost losing her balance as she teetered precariously on the vertiginous heels. She felt like a circus performer practising on stilts.

Risking a look in the mirror, she gave a moan of horror.

She
looked
like a circus performer.

She looked like a giant.

She was about to take them off when the door to the bedroom opened.

Rio's gaze swept her from head to foot.

‘Maledizione—'
His eyes went dark with shock and Evie wanted to fall through the floor as she intercepted his look of stunned astonishment.

Embarrassment got her moving. ‘Get out,' she shrieked, grabbing the throw again. ‘I'm getting changed.'

‘Does the phrase “shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted” mean anything to you? I've already seen you naked.' Displaying not the slightest consideration for her feelings, he allowed his gaze to travel slowly down every centimetre of her body. ‘I've never seen a woman who looks like you.'

For Evie, already sensitive about her looks, his comment delivered the final blow to her crumbling self-esteem.

‘It's your fault for getting me those stupid shoes when anyone with half a brain could have guessed they'd make me look ridiculous. And that's before I put on the uniform. I always wear flats, OK? Ballet pumps. Court shoes with no heel. Get out of here! I'm fed up with being a laughing stock, although I suppose I ought to get used to it because it's nothing to how I'm going to feel tomorrow when that photo is
published—' Pushed to the limit, she flopped onto the bed, buried her face in the pillow and sobbed her heart out.

Everyone was going to see her naked and her grandfather was going to be horribly, hideously ashamed of her. She'd wanted to make him proud, but the truth was all he really wanted was to bounce a great-grandchild on his knee and that was never going to happen.

She was a big, fat disappointment.

Lost in the nightmare of the moment, she gasped in shock as strong hands closed over her shoulders and Rio flipped her onto her back.

‘Stop crying!' He sounded exasperated. ‘You'll make your eyes red and that could ruin everything.'

‘Ruin what? Just go away. Stop mocking me.'

Astonishment lit his dark eyes. ‘When have I ever mocked you?'

‘You said you'd never seen anyone who l-looked like me,' Evie hiccupped, ‘and I think it's horribly mean of you to poke fun of me, even if it is partly my fault we're in this mess. We're not all supermodels and wearing supermodel labels doesn't change that. I can push my feet into designer shoes just like Kate Moss but that doesn't give me Kate Moss's legs.'

‘Which is a good thing,' he drawled, ‘because Kate would find it extremely hard to strut her stuff on the runway if you had her legs. For the record, I wasn't mocking you. I was complimenting you.'

Evie, who had never been complimented on her looks in her life before, looked at him through eyelashes welded together with tears. ‘Pardon?'

His jaw tensed. ‘I find you attractive. Why the hell do you think I kissed you in the first place?'

‘Because you have an abnormal sex drive and you can't resist anyone naked?'

‘I have a healthy sex drive.' His dark gaze was unmistakably
sexual. ‘I
definitely
don't kiss women who try and pick me up. That's a first for me.'

‘I wasn't trying to pick you up—' Still struggling to accept the unlikely fact that he actually did find her attractive, Evie sat up. ‘You don't think I'm too tall?'

‘Too tall for what?' That silky tone turned her insides into a quivering mass.

‘For…a woman.' Evie licked her lips. ‘I make most men feel small and insignificant. They usually don't want to stand next to me. But I guess you're pretty tall yourself.'

‘Six four,' he breathed, his eyes scanning the length of her legs. ‘And I've never had a problem with a woman's height.'

That was because he was unlikely to meet a woman taller than him, Evie thought weakly. ‘Most people think I'm a freak.'

Without giving her a chance to argue, he scooped her off the bed and dumped her on her feet in front of the mirror. ‘Look at yourself. Tell me what you see.'

Evie closed her eyes. ‘I don't see anything.'

‘Look!'

Evie flinched and opened one eye cautiously. ‘Evie the elephant,' she said immediately and his brows met in an impatient frown.

‘If that title is a throwback to your childhood, then you'd better let it go now. You're stunning and that gives us a major problem.'

Stunning?

Evie, who couldn't even for a single moment think why being considered stunning would present a major problem to anyone, looked at him dizzily. ‘Even if that was true, which it isn't, I don't see how that could be a problem. How can being stunning be a problem? People judge by appearances. I've never been a member of the “oh, it's such a bore to be beautiful” camp.'

‘It's a problem because you need to look wholesome.'

Evie was about to say that she'd been trying to escape from the ‘wholesome' image for most of her life, when he took her hair in his hands and twisted it, assessing the effect with narrowed eyes. ‘You have good skin.'

‘And freckles.'

‘Freckles are good. They suggest a healthy outdoor life. Wholesome.'

Why did he keep saying wholesome?

‘I'm not with you—'

‘Unfortunately, you
are
with me and that is why we have a problem.'

‘We wouldn't have a problem if you hadn't kissed me.'

‘I'm fully aware of that fact.' He paced over to the window, keeping his back to her. ‘Get dressed.'

Wriggling into the housekeeper uniform, Evie stared at his broad shoulders. ‘I don't understand why you're so stressed about this. You celebrities are always in the newspapers. You may be the reason they want that photo, but it's going to damage me far more than you.'

He turned, and the expression on his face was all it took to silence her. His eyes were haunted and there was a tension in his body that was unmistakably real.

‘The damage to me could be incalculable,' he said coldly and Evie thought back to the exchange he'd had earlier with Carlos.

Whatever the ‘deal' was, he was obviously prepared to stop at nothing to make sure it went through. It had to be about more than money, she thought. It had to be something to do with ego. Winning. The addictive quality of power.

‘And creepy Carlos did this to you on purpose and I got caught in the middle, is that right?'

‘So it would seem.'

She wondered what Carlos had against Rio Zaccarelli. What was he trying to achieve with that photograph? If it
hadn't been her, would he have used someone else? ‘If there is no way you can stop that photograph being published then I'd better make a phone call.'

His eyes narrowed. ‘You're calling a lover?'

Evie gave a hysterical laugh. ‘Oh, yes—I have loads of those—' Catching the dangerous gleam in his eyes, her laughter faded. ‘Not a lover. I'm calling my grandfather, if you must know.'

Bold black eyebrows met in a fierce frown. ‘How old are you?'

‘Twenty-three, but, like most people of his generation, he doesn't believe in public displays of affection,' Evie said wearily, ‘and he absolutely doesn't believe in one-night stands. Neither do I, for that matter.' She tried to sound casual, as if talking about sex was something she did all the time, rather than something she never did.

She stared at Rio Zaccarelli, the epitome of male sophistication, and felt her face grow scarlet.

Her grandfather definitely would have classed him as a real man.

It was the ultimate irony, she thought, to have been caught naked with him.

As if—

‘So you don't have a lover at the moment.' His slumberous gaze rested on her mouth. ‘That's good.'

‘Well, that depends on where you're standing,' Evie muttered, wishing she wasn't standing quite so close to him. She was getting hotter and hotter. ‘If you must know, I was supposed to be getting married yesterday but my fiancé dumped me. If that hadn't happened I'd be in Bali now, not London. I wouldn't have lost my job and my flat and generally had a completely awful six weeks and there might have been the smallest, remotest chance that my grandfather might be bouncing a baby on his knee next Christmas. As it is, there's no chance. None. I don't expect you to understand. You look
like the sort of person whose life always goes according to plan.'

‘My plan,' he said tightly, ‘wasn't to find a strange woman lying naked in my bed. Fortunately, I've always considered adaptability to be an asset. I can turn this situation around.'

‘You can?' Evie's gaze drifted to the neck of his shirt. Dark hairs tangled at the base of his throat and disappeared inside the snowy-white shirt. She imagined the hair hazing his chest and narrowing over his abdomen, which was no doubt as muscular as the rest of him. Shocked by her own thoughts, she lifted her eyes back to his and discovered that he was watching her with an unsettling degree of sexual interest.

‘
Why
did he dump you?'

‘Why does it matter?'
Was she supposed to read him a list?
Evie chewed the corner of her fingernail and then gave an embarrassed shrug. ‘Because he met someone more exciting. Because I'm the girl next door and he's known me since I was three years old. Because I was taller than him and I made him feel less of a man—' She stared at him with exasperation, wondering why she was having to spell this out. ‘Because I'm
me
. He sent me a text, dumping me.'