The Twelve Nights of Christmas. Sarah Morgan
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but naked—?
‘I’ve already warned you—I’m not in the mood.’ There was no mistaking the deadly warning in his tone or the tension in his body language. He was a man no one was likely to mess with and Evie felt her mouth dry as her gaze clashed with pitch-black eyes.
‘I’m not in the mood, either,’ she squeaked. ‘And I’m not playing games. How did a photographer get in here? Why would he want to take a photograph of me? What’s he going to do with it?’ Anxiety set her tongue loose but he silenced her with a single searing glance.
‘If you utter one more ingenuous question I just might drop you naked on the street outside. How much did he pay you?’
Struggling to keep up with his thought process, Evie opened her mouth and closed it again. ‘You honestly think anyone would pay to take a picture of my body? Are you mad?’ Her voice rose. ‘Presumably, you’ve already noticed that I’m not exactly a supermodel! The only way anyone would be interested in looking at me naked is one of those hideous before and after photos. You know—“and this is Evie before she went on the wonder diet and lost twenty kilos.”’
His eyes blazed dark with incredulity. ‘Is that all you can think about? Whether the photographer took your good side?’
‘No, because I don’t have a good side! I look the same from every angle, which is why I never let anyone take my photo!’ She’d never before met a man she wanted to kiss and slap at the same time and it was such a shockingly confusing sensation that her head spun. She wanted to defend herself. She wanted to protest that she wasn’t superficial and that having a photograph taken of her naked was right up there with her worst nightmares. It was like being back in the playground.
Evie the elephant—
‘Wh…what’s he going to do with that photograph?’ She tried to calm herself down with logic and reason. This wasn’t the playground. ‘No one is going to want to look at a picture of me naked. There is no reason anyone would want to publish a picture of me…’ as she stared into his taut, handsome face, her voice faded to a horrified whisper ‘…but there’s every reason why they’d publish a picture of you.’ And she was in that picture. Suddenly, everything was clear. She thought of all the vile, degrading ‘kiss and tell’ stories she’d read. ‘Oh, my God—’
Rio was watching her, his mouth tight. ‘How much did he pay you?’
‘Nothing! I don’t know anything about this! I’m as innocent as you are.’ But she could tell he didn’t believe her and what she saw in those glittering black eyes was so terrifying that she wanted to confess everything on the spot. Because his expression was so scary, she looked at his mouth instead and suddenly all she was thinking about was that scorching kiss. Where had he learned to kiss like that?
‘Innocent girls don’t lie in wait, naked, on a guy’s bed.’
‘I wasn’t lying in wait! How could you even think that? I’ve been kicked out of my flat and I had nowhere to go last night and—’ Evie thought about the sequence of events. Carlos had offered her the use of the room. When she’d refused, he’d insisted. It was Carlos who had encouraged her to take a shower and dry her wet clothes on the radiator. Appalled, she looked up at Rio Zaccarelli and saw his mouth tighten as he read her mind.
‘Your face is very revealing, so don’t even think of telling me you have no idea what’s going on.’ The menacing chill in his voice confirmed just how much trouble she was in and she felt the colour drain out of her cheeks as he turned up the pressure.
‘I’ve been set up.’
A dangerous glint shone in his eyes. ‘I’m listening.’
He didn’t believe her. ‘Carlos gave me instructions to sleep here tonight—’ Evie clutched at the silk throw, her mind racing forward with possible scenarios, all of which sickened her. No matter what she said, Rio Zaccarelli wasn’t going to believe that she had nothing to do with this. ‘I was really, really stupid—what are they going to do with that photograph?’
For a moment he didn’t answer. He simply stared at her, as if he were making a decision about something. A slight frown touched his brows and he strolled around her, looking at her from the front, the back and the sides. When he finally spoke, his voice was hard. ‘They’re going to publish it. By tomorrow, that photograph will be plastered all over the Internet and the newspapers.’
The bodyguard cleared his throat. ‘Boss—’
Rio turned on him and said something in Italian that silenced the other man immediately.
Evie felt faint with horror. ‘What?’ That was by far the worst scenario on her list and she gave a low moan of horror as she contemplated exactly what that would mean. ‘I thought maybe they’d just use it to blackmail you or something—’
‘Is that what they told you?’ His tone was dangerously soft. ‘Is that what you agreed?’
‘No! I didn’t agree anything. I was thinking aloud—’ Flustered, realising that she was digging herself deeper and deeper into a hole, Evie sank her hand into her hair, trying to think straight so that she could be more articulate. ‘What I mean is, at least if it’s blackmail they could be persuaded not to publish it. Of all the things they could do with that photo, publishing it would be the worst. Do you have any idea how embarrassing that would be? I’d never be able to go anywhere ever again.’
‘Embarrassing? Do you think I care about being embarrassed? ‘ The lethal cocktail of physical height and powerful personality left her shaking and intimidated but all those emotions were eclipsed by the prospect of being exposed physically to the mocking eyes of the world.
‘No, you probably don’t care—’ Evie’s voice rose ‘—because you’re not the one who was lying there naked with your bottom on full view! And stop trying to scare me! This whole thing is bad enough without having to wonder whether you’re going to explode any minute.’ She covered her face with her free hand—the other was still clutching the throw, holding it in place. ‘Oh, my God—if that photo goes in the papers—everyone I know will see it—Grandpa will see it—he’ll be mortified—’ Melting with embarrassment, she looked at him helplessly. ‘You have to do something. You have to stop it. You’re completely loaded—can’t you pay them or something? Do whatever it is they want you to do.’ The thought of being seen naked in public was the most hideous thing that had ever happened to her. Worse than being demoted. Worse than losing her job. Worse than being dumped by Jeff.
Evie cringed with horror as she tried to work out what angle the flash had come from and remember exactly how she’d been lying.
It took her right back to the nightmare days of hiding in the corner of the girls’ changing rooms trying to wriggle into her gym kit with no one noticing.
‘If you genuinely care, then perhaps you should have thought of the consequences before you agreed to lie on the bed.’
Evie ground her teeth. ‘I lay on the bed because I didn’t have anywhere else to lie, OK? I told you—I lost my flat. I was in a fix and when Carlos made that offer—’ she licked her lips ‘—it just seemed too good to be true. Turned out it was too good to be true. Look, it doesn’t really matter whether you believe me or not. What’s important is stopping that photograph. Please pay them off.’
His gaze was steady. ‘They don’t want money.’
‘Then what do they want?’
He turned away from her but not before she’d seen the dark shadow flicker across his face. ‘They want to make my life…difficult.’
‘What about my life?’
‘They’re not interested in you. You’ve played your part. You’re expendable. I’m sure you can find some lucrative way to use your five minutes of fame.’
‘Do you honestly think I want to be famous