‘You think so? Then maybe this might help convince you that what I’m saying is genuine.’ Titus extracted a business card from the pocket of his cashmere overcoat and held it out towards her.
Removing her hand from the pocket of her jeans, Roxy took it, instantly aware of the expensive quality of the card—as expensive as everything else about him. Embossed black letters stood proud on the costly cream surface and as her eyes focused on it properly she experienced a strange, lurching feeling as the letters formed themselves into words.
Titus Alexander, Duke of Torchester.
The letters blurred again and suddenly her knees felt wobbly. It had been a long time since she’d eaten—she never liked to take food close to a performance—and in any other circumstances she might have slumped down in the chair, in shock. But some instinct told her that would be dangerous. That he would be dangerous if she showed any sign of weakness. She looked up into his cold eyes, her heart still racing. ‘You’re … you’re the Duke of Torchester?’
‘Yes, I’m the Duke of Torchester,’ he drawled. ‘And my late father employed your lover, Martin Murray, as his accountant. Starting to get your memory back are you, Miss Carmichael? Does my name ring a bell?’
Of course it rang a bell! Roxy nodded, willing her face to remain calm. It was imperative that she held onto her poise. To act as if she didn’t care—because she remembered everything she’d ever heard about the aristocratic young Duke.
He’s a ruthless bastard.
He was born with a silver spoon in his mouth.
Women love him.
Roxy’s eyes were drawn to the unsmiling perfection of his mouth and the grey ice of his eyes and thought that, yes, women probably did love him. She could imagine it would be easy to fall for someone who had the looks and lineage of Titus Alexander. And equally easy to imagine him inflicting pain and heartbreak on any female who was stupid enough to do so.
‘I don’t understand,’ she said flatly.
‘No?’ His tawny-dark eyebrows rose again in arrogant question. ‘What precisely is perplexing you?’
‘It’s Martin’s flat.’
‘Is that what he told you?’
Roxy nodded, but even as he asked the question she began to understand all the things which had never really added up before. Why Martin had always insisted she pay her rent in cash. And why he had instructed her to tell anyone who asked that she was simply ‘house-sitting’. She stared into Titus’s grim face and it came as a shock to realise that she believed the word of this arrogant aristocrat above a man she’d known for years. ‘That’s what he told me.’
‘Well, he was lying,’ he iced out. ‘A lying cheat of an accountant who my father made the mistake of trusting. Only my father is no longer around—and Martin Murray no longer works for my family. I’m in charge now and I intend clearing up the mess which your lover has made of the estate.’ His grey eyes glittered dangerously. ‘An estate which will no longer provide a refuge for wasters and chancers. So I want you out by the end of the week.’
Roxy felt a paralysing fear begin to well up inside her and she fought successfully to dampen it down. Because fear was an emotion she was familiar with and she’d learnt that the only way to conquer it was to face it head-on. She knew that the moment you gave into it, you would be lost and that was not going to happen. Not with this arrogant posh-boy who had just marched into her dressing room with his inbuilt sense of entitlement. Clearing her throat, she tried to make her voice sound as cool as his. ‘I don’t think it works quite like that. I think the law states that you’ll need to give me more notice than one week.’
Titus flattened his lips into an angry line as a slow rage began to flare up inside him. How dared she try to defy him? He thought about how his father had betrayed his mother, with a mistress as ruthless as this foxy-looking singer. He thought about the woeful state of the estate’s finances and the way her crooked accountant of a boyfriend had been creaming off huge amounts for himself. Her married boyfriend, he thought in disgust.
He knew that his rage was disproportionate to her crime of having questionable morals, but Titus didn’t care. Sometimes a person just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time—and Roxanne Carmichael was that person.
‘The law isn’t on your side,’ he said silkily. ‘Because you’ve been breaking it.’
She lifted her eyes up to his in genuine appeal. ‘But I didn’t know that.’
‘I don’t give a damn what you knew or what you didn’t know,’ he snapped, steeling himself against the brilliance of her gaze. ‘And I’m not sure I’d believe you no matter how much you protest. The word of a woman who can cold-bloodedly sleep with a married man doesn’t count for very much. So I want you—and every one of your tawdry possessions—out of my property by the end of the week. Do you understand that, Miss Carmichael?’
CHAPTER TWO
ALL the way home on the lurching night-bus, Titus Alexander’s words burned into Roxy’s memory. The wounding vitriol he had just directed against her had been bad enough but, unfortunately, there was an equally disturbing blot on her memory.
Despite the fear which was chewing her up inside, she couldn’t shift the image of his towering presence and the tawny, dark hair, which had made her think of a lion. All she could see was a pair of hard, sensual lips and the brooding gleam of his grey eyes and once again she felt the distracting shiver of desire.
Cursing herself for the shallow nature of her thoughts, she forced herself to concentrate on what really mattered.
That if Titus Alexander was true to his word—she would soon be out on the street with nowhere to go!
Did he really have the power to kick her out of the beautiful apartment which had felt like the first real home she’d ever had? Knotting her fingers tightly together, she stared out of the window as late-night London passed in a blur.
The bus rumbled through Soho, discharging various drunks along the way, and then it skirted Hyde Park and headed towards Holland Park. This was the point of the journey when Roxy usually heaved a huge sigh of relief and revelled in the peace which came from staring out at the wide open space which nestled so unexpectedly in the heart of the city. But not tonight. Tonight her head was full of unwanted thoughts and the memory of those judgmental pewter eyes as they had iced over her. He had looked at her as if he really despised her. As if she were something nasty that he had stepped in. And nobody had ever looked at her quite like that before, even though she had lived a life which had had more than its fair share of drama.
Stepping from the bus onto one of Notting Hill’s premier tree-lined streets, she let herself into the vast, six-storey stuccoed house and climbed the stairs to her top-floor apartment. She tried telling herself that the arrogant Duke had been bluffing—but she couldn’t keep up the pretence of believing that for long. Because deep down she knew he hadn’t been bluffing. Even worse, she recognised now that she had been a fool of the first order. She had believed Martin Murray when he’d come up with his unbelievably generous offer. She had believed him because it had suited her to do so. Because she had been left without a penny of the vast fortune she’d made during her days with The Lollipops.