CHAPTER ONE

      THIS HAD TO be the most challenging party that Emma Carmichael had ever worked at.

      As fabulous as the setting was—a grand Chelsea town house that had been interior designed to within an inch of its life, presiding over the genteel glamour of Sloane Square—the party itself felt stilted and lifeless.

      The trouble was, Emma mused as she glided inconspicuously through the throng, handing out drinks to the primped and polished partygoers, it was full of people who attended parties for a living rather than for pleasure, in an attempt to rub shoulders with London’s great and good.

      She knew all about that type of party after being invited to a glut of them in her late teens, either with her parents or with friends from her private girls’ school in Cambridge. But she’d been a very different person then, pampered and carefree. Those privileged days were long gone now though, along with her darling late father’s reputation and all their family’s money.

      As if her thoughts had conjured up the demons that had plagued her for the six years following his death, her phone vibrated in her pocket and she discreetly slipped it out and glanced at it, only to see it was another text message from her last remaining creditor reminding her she was late with her final repayment. Stomach sinking, she shoved the phone back into her pocket and desperately tried to reinstate the cheerful smile that her boss, Jolyon Fitzherbert, expected his staff to wear at all times.

      ‘Emma, a word! Over here!’ came the peremptory tones of the man himself from the other side of the room.

      Darn. Busted.

      Turning, she met her boss’s narrowed eyes and swallowed hard as he beckoned her over to where he stood holding court to a small group of guests with one elbow propped jauntily against the vulgar marble fireplace.

      Emma had encountered the bunch of reprobates he was with a number of times since she’d begun working for Jolyon two months ago so she was well used to their contemptuous gazes that slid over her face as she approached now. They didn’t believe in fraternising with the hired help.

      If only Jolyon felt the same.

      It was becoming harder and harder to avoid his wandering hands and suggestive gaze, especially when she found herself alone with him. So far she’d been politely cool and it seemed to have held him at bay, but as soon as he got a couple of drinks into