hovered nearby while Tawny changed out of her uniform into her own clothes and cleared her locker. The Frenchwoman’s mobile phone rang and she dug it out, glancing awkwardly at Tawny, who was busily packing a carrier bag full of belongings before moving to the other side of the room to talk in a low-pitched voice. That it was a man Elise cared about at the other end of the line was obvious, and Tawny reckoned that at that instant she could have smuggled an elephant past the Frenchwoman without attracting her attention.
‘What’s going on?’ another voice enquired tautly of Tawny.
Tawny glanced up and focused on Julie, who stood only a couple of feet away from her. ‘I’m quitting my job.’
‘I heard that but why didn’t he report you?’
Tawny shrugged non-committally. ‘You didn’t spent the night with him, did you? What’s the real story?’
‘A journalist offered me a lot of money to dig out some personal information for him. Accessing Cazier’s laptop was worth a try. I’ve got credit cards to clear,’ Julie admitted calmly, shockingly unembarrassed at having her lies exposed.
‘Mademoiselle Baxter?’ Elise queried anxiously, her attention suddenly closely trained on the two women.
Tawny lifted her laden bags and walked away without another word or look. So much for friendship! She was furious but also very hurt by her former friend’s treachery. She had liked Julie, she had automatically trusted her, but she could now see her whole relationship with the other woman in quite a different light. It was likely that Julie had deliberately targeted her once she realised that Tawny would be the new maid in charge of Navarre Cazier’s usual suite. Having befriended Tawny and put her under obligation by helping her to move into her bedsit, Julie had then conned the younger woman into trying to take Navarre’s laptop. What a stupid, trusting fool Tawny now felt like! How could she have been dumb enough to swallow that improbable tale of sex and compromising photos? Julie had known exactly which buttons to press to engage Tawny’s sympathies and it would have worked a treat had Navarre Cazier not returned unexpectedly to catch her in the act.
‘You have an appointment with a stylist,’ Navarre informed Tawny when she reappeared in his suite and set down her bags.
‘Where?’
He named a famous department store. He scanned the jeans and checked shirt she wore with faded blue plimsolls and his wide sensual mouth twisted, for in such casual clothing she looked little older than a teenager. ‘What age are you?’
‘Twenty-three … you?’
‘Thirty.’
‘Speak French,’ he urged.
‘I’m a little rusty. I only get to see my grandmother about once a month now,’ Tawny told him.
‘Give me your mobile phone,’ he instructed.
‘My phone?’ Tawny exclaimed in dismay.
‘I can’t trust you with access to a phone when I need to ensure that you don’t pass information to anyone,’ he retorted levelly and extended a slim brown hand. ‘Your phone, please …’
The silence simmered. Tawny worried at her lower lip, reckoned that she could not fault his reasoning and reluctantly dug her phone out of her pocket. ‘You’re not allowed to go through it. There’s private stuff on there.’
‘Just like my laptop,’ Navarre quipped with a hard look, watching her redden and marvelling that she could still blush so easily.
He ushered her out of the suite and into the lift. She leant back against the wall.
‘Don’t slouch,’ he told her immediately.
With an exaggerated sigh, Tawny straightened. ‘We mix like oil and water.’
‘We only have to impress as a couple in company. Practise looking adoring,’ Navarre advised witheringly.
Tawny wrinkled her nose. ‘That’s not really my style—’
‘Try,’ he told her.
She preceded him out into the foyer, striving not to notice the heads craning at the reception desk to follow their progress out of the hotel. A limousine was waiting by the kerb and she climbed in, noting Elise’s neat blonde head behind the steering wheel.
‘Tell me about yourself … a potted history,’ Navarre instructed.
‘I’m an only child although I have two half-sisters through my father’s two marriages. He didn’t marry my mother, though, and he has never been involved in my life. I got my degree at art college and for a couple of years managed to make a living designing greeting cards. Unfortunately that wasn’t lucrative enough to pay the bills and I signed up as a maid so that I would have a regular wage coming in,’ she told him grudgingly. ‘I want to be a cartoonist but so far I haven’t managed to sell a single cartoon.’
‘A cartoonist,’ Navarre repeated, his interest caught by that unexpected ambition.
‘What about you? Were you born rich?’
‘No. I grew up in the back streets of Paris but I acquired a first-class degree at the Sorbonne. I was an investment banker until I became interested in telecommunications and set up my first business.’
‘Parents?’ she pressed.
His face tensed. ‘I was a foster child and lived in many homes. I have no relatives that I acknowledge.’
‘I know how we can tell people we met,’ Tawny said with a playful light in her eyes. ‘I was changing your bed when—’
Navarre was not amused by the suggestion but his attention lingered on her astonishingly vivid little face in which every expression was easily read. ‘I don’t think we need to admit that you were working as a hotel maid.’
‘Honesty is always the best policy.’
‘Says the woman whom I caught thieving.’
Her face froze as though he had slapped her, reality biting again. ‘I wasn’t thieving,’ she muttered tightly.
‘It really doesn’t matter as long as you keep your light fingers strictly to your own belongings while you’re with me,’ Navarre responded drily. ‘I hope the desire to steal is an impulse that you can resist as we will be mingling with some very wealthy people.’
Mortified by the comment, Tawny bent her bright head. ‘Yes, you don’t have to worry on that score.’
While Navarre took a comfortable seat in a private room in the store, Tawny was ushered off to try on evening gowns, and each one seemed more elaborate than the last. When the selection had been reduced to two she was propelled out to the waiting area, where Navarre was perusing the financial papers, for a second opinion.
‘That’s too old for her,’ he commented of the purple ball gown that she felt would not have looked out of place on Marie Antoinette.
When she walked out in the grey lace that fitted like a glove to below hip line before flaring out in a romantic arc of fullness round her
