left pretty much everything else behind when the constant presence of the media on the doorstep of the tiny flat she’d shared with two other girls had made it impossible to do even the simplest thing. When even a trip to the corner shop for a bottle of milk had become a media scrum.
Her kettle, radio, her crocks and pots. The bits and pieces she’d accumulated since she’d left the care system.
She was now worse off than she’d ever been. No job, nowhere to live. She was going to have to start again from scratch.
How much did she have left in her old account? Enough for the deposit on a room in a flat share?
There had been a time when she’d have known to the last penny.
‘I didn’t plan this very well, did I?’ she said, trying to keep the panic out of her voice.
‘I’ve no idea what you’ve done, Lucy.’
Nothing. She hadn’t done a thing…
‘I missed the start of the news bulletin but you wield a mean handbag.’
‘That man grabbed me,’ she protested. ‘He wouldn’t let me go.’
‘I wasn’t criticising. It must have been terrifying to be caught up in that kind of media mayhem. I didn’t catch the wrap up,’ he prompted. ‘As you’re aware, Pam collapsed and I was called away.’
‘Is she going to be okay?’ Lucy asked.
‘Just a seasonal bug. She should have stayed at home, but it tends to get hectic at this time of year.’
She glanced at him. ‘You saw me, didn’t you? When you were talking to Mr Alyson.’
‘I saw the costume,’ he said. ‘Not you. I was looking for a girl in a very sexy black dress.’
At least he didn’t deny that he’d been looking for her.
‘It was only later,’ he added, glancing down at her, ‘when I remembered your beauty spot, that I realised it was you.’
‘My what?’
‘Your beauty spot,’ he repeated, pausing, turning to face her. ‘Here.’
‘That’s not…’
Her voice dried as he touched his fingertip to the corner of her lip. He was close, his eyes were dark, slumberous as he looked down at her, and for a moment she thought he was going to kiss her, finish what he’d started on the stairs.
Her heart rate picked up, hammering in her throat; all she could see was his mouth, bracketed by a pair of deep lines and, as his lower lip softened, she finally understood the depth of Rupert’s betrayal. Just how shockingly she had been fooled. Because this was how it should be. The entire body engaged, every cell focused on the desire for the touch, the taste of that mouth against hers. Nothing else. And, as a finger of heat spiralled through her, a tiny, urgent gasp escaped her lips.
The sound, barely audible, was enough to shatter the spell. He raised heavy lids, lifting his gaze from her mouth to her eyes and dropped his hand.
‘It’s j-just a mole,’ she said quickly, taking a step back, putting an arm’s length between them before straightening her shoulders, lifting her chin. ‘Rupert wanted me to have it removed. Just a little bit too warts-and-all ordinary for him, apparently.’
‘If Henshawe thinks you’re ordinary he needs to get his eyes tested.’
‘Does he?’ she asked, for a moment distracted by the unexpected compliment. But only for a moment. ‘Well, green striped tights do tend to make you stand out from the crowd,’ she said in an attempt at carelessness that she was a long way from feeling. And then wished she hadn’t as he gave her legs the kind of attention that they could do without at the moment.
‘True,’ he said, finally dragging his gaze away from them, ‘but I noticed you before you morphed into an elf,’ he reminded her as he retrieved her elbow and headed briskly for the stairs.
‘It’s hard to miss someone falling over their own feet right in front of you,’ she said, stumbling a little in the soft boots as she struggled to keep up with him.
He slowed, a consideration that she was sure neither Rupert nor his men would show her.
‘Of course I have spent the last few months being buffed and polished and waxed,’ she rushed on, trying not to think about how much ‘notice’ he’d taken of her. How close he’d just come to ‘noticing’ her again—this time in an empty store with none of the constraints of shoppers pounding past them. He was the enemy, for heaven’s sake, and while she wanted to throw him off the scent, she wasn’t entirely sure who would be distracting who…‘My hair has been streaked, my eyelashes dyed, my eyebrows threaded and I’ve lost weight, too.’
‘Don’t tell me. You had a personal trainer.’
‘Good grief, no. I’ve just been too busy to snack between meals.’ She gave him an arch look, ran a finger over one of her well-tended brows. ‘You have no idea how much time it takes to look this groomed.’
He glanced at her, taking a long look at her messy hair and clothes that not even a catwalk model could make look good.
‘Forget I said that,’ she said hurriedly. ‘I’ve been deprived of chocolate for too long and it’s affecting my brain.’
Suddenly desperate for the instant gratification of chocolate melting on the tongue, she stopped, forcing him to do the same, dug the chocolate finger biscuit out of her elf pouch—so much more satisfying than acorns—and unwrapped it. As she raised it to her mouth she realised that she had an audience and she snapped it in half, offering one of the fingers to Nathaniel Hart.
He shook his head, not bothering to hide a smile. And she was right. The distraction was mutual. ‘Your need is greater.’
She wasn’t arguing and she bit into it, struggling to contain a groan of sheer pleasure.
‘Better?’
‘Marginally. Don’t get me wrong,’ she said, licking her fingers—she’d been carrying the chocolate next to her body and it was soft. ‘I enjoyed it all. The gorgeous clothes. Being made over, every single bit of me being made as perfect as humanly possible without the intervention of surgery. Who wouldn’t?’
That, after all, was the dream she was selling. Buy your clothes from this store and you too can have all this.
‘Surgery?’
‘I drew the line at the boob job. And the spray tan. I like my orange in a glass. Or chocolate-flavoured.’
She tossed a glance in his direction, but he shook his head. ‘No comment.’
‘Oh, please. Everyone has an opinion.’ From the editor of a magazine who was desperate to do a step-by-step photo feature of a silicone implant—and had really struggled to hide her annoyance when she’d refused to play along—to the woman who did her nails. Everyone, apparently, wanted a bigger cup size. Everyone except her. She put her hands to her waist and pushed
