A Night of Scandal

‘You cannot be serious.’

‘If I leave you here they’ll feed on you like sharks attacking raw meat.’

‘If I’m the raw meat in that analogy, then it isn’t a very flattering description. No woman wants to think her thighs would provide sufficient food for one shark, let alone sharks in the plural.’

‘Katie—’ he stifled his exasperation ‘—just get your passport. Move!’

She planted her feet firmly and straightened her shoulders as if ready to repel an invading army. ‘I’m not going anywhere with you. Apart from the fact I can’t relax around you, I have a job, friends, family—I have a life.’ She broke off as his phone rang. ‘Tell whoever it is that they need to pick you up right now and get you out of here.’

Nathaniel checked the identity of the caller. ‘It’s my agent. I need to take this. Don’t go anywhere. I’m going to arrange for us to be picked up.’

How long before the journalists made the connection with her famous sister?

How long before the comparisons started?

Katie paced up and down the bedroom, trying to stay calm.

Honestly, she was a grown woman, not a vulnerable teenager. She should have got over this by now.

She was who she was. Comparisons might hurt her feelings, but they wouldn’t actually damage her physically. She just needed to get on with her life and hope the fuss eventually died down. Maybe she could take a sleeping bag to the theatre and camp there until this all blew over. The security guys had always been really kind to her.

Through the open door she could hear Nathaniel’s cultured drawl as he issued a string of commands down the phone.

He found her sexy.

Gripped by a fit of shivering, Katie rubbed her hands up her arms.

‘Nathaniel Wolfe, screen god and global sex symbol.’

Did he really find her sexy? She’d convinced herself that the chemistry was all wishful thinking on her part….

‘Have you got your passport?’ He was standing in the doorway, and the way he watched her with those slanting blue eyes made it impossible to think of anything but sex. Wild, crazy, animal sex—the sort she’d read about but never experienced.

Seriously unsettled, Katie turned away. ‘I don’t need my passport. I’m going to go straight to the theatre and lock myself in the wardrobe department. They have security there, and—’

‘You’re not going back to the theatre.’

‘Of course I’m going back to the theatre. I have a job to do.’

‘I walked out on the opening night. The play has closed.’ He delivered the news bluntly and she felt her knees wobble.

Not her job.

No.

She had a plan. She had a dream.

‘You’re s-saying I’ve lost my job?’

‘Yes, and that’s my fault,’ Nathaniel growled, ‘and if you could try not to look as though I’ve just killed your favourite pet, I’d appreciate it because right now we have to get out of here and it isn’t going to help to be weighed down with guilt and recrimination.’

‘I—I’ve really lost my job?’

‘Yes.’ The word hissed through his teeth. ‘But I’ll fix it.’

‘How? Are you going to go back on that stage?’

‘No.’