The champagne had been vintage, apparently, so expensive that she was tempted to bend over and lick her own legs. It was the only way she was ever going to get close to champagne of this quality again.
Fired.
She’d been fired.
Crap.
It was bad enough that she’d lost her job, but worst of all she’d lost her chance to meet Chase Adams and engineer a way of sliding her manuscript onto his brother’s desk.
Maybe if she’d paid more attention to her surroundings and less to exactly what Lara would have been doing to Chase Adams in the bedroom, she might have seen the woman with the huge feathers sticking out of her dress. They’d caught the edge of a champagne glass and toppled the lot, like dominoes, only a great deal wetter.
The woman’s rage had been almost as great as Cynthia’s, not least because being showered in champagne had turned her dress see-through, exposing support underwear. If the woman’s wrath was anything to go by, the need to wear support underwear wasn’t something she’d wanted broadcast.
Matilda tugged the stretchy dress over her damp body, stuffed her uniform into a bag and left it for Cynthia. It was an ignominious end to her time with Star Events.
She knew Paige and the others would be looking for her, but she couldn’t face seeing them. Couldn’t face the fact that she’d let Paige down. She’d recruited her when no one else would give her a chance, and now she’d screwed up. And all because she was clumsy and dreamy.
Dragging her damp, miserable, humiliated self to the elevator, Matilda stepped inside, relieved to be on her own.
But it seemed she wasn’t going to be granted even a moment of respite.
As the doors started to close, a strong male hand clamped the edge of the door and it slid open again.
Matilda watched gloomily, reflecting on the fact that if she’d done the same thing, the doors would have snapped shut on her hand. There would have been a hideous crunching of bones and she would have spent the night in the emergency room.
It seemed the doors had an inbuilt ability to sense authority, because they slid back meekly, allowing him access.
He strolled into the elevator and her idle glance turned to a disbelieving stare. His hair was midnight black, his eyes the color of the ocean. The expensive fabric of his tux fitted perfectly, highlighting powerful thighs and wide shoulders.
He was stunning.
He was also perfect hero material.
Matilda wanted to grab her notebook and scribble frantically.
Chiseled jaw, check. Razor-sharp cheekbones, check. Firm mouth, check. Muscles—everywhere.
Could she take a surreptitious photo? No. Too risky.
As if the gods hadn’t already heaped enough good fortune on him with striking looks and great coordination, he was also tall. A whole head taller than her, which was unusual. She was used to looking down on men or, at the very least, being eye to eye. It made her feel clumsy and awkward even when she wasn’t knocking into anything.
This man topped six feet, and his formal dress told her he’d come from the party she’d just left. Was he one of the unlucky few she’d drenched by accident?
She slunk back against the wall and kept her head down, conscious that even her hair was damp and curling from the splashes of champagne. Please don’t let him recognize me.
Even without looking at him, she sensed his simmering tension. Trapped in the confined space, it was impossible not to notice that he was in a very bad mood. She sneaked another look and saw what she’d failed to notice at first glance. Strong brows pulled together in a frown, and a slim mouth set in a grim line that even an optimist couldn’t have pretended was a smile. He probably was one of the people she’d tried to drown in champagne, and judging from the look on his face it wasn’t top of his list of favored ways to die.
He lifted his hand and yanked his bow tie away from his throat as if it were strangling him. Then he opened his top button and—
Matilda’s thoughts came to an emergency stop.
Confronted by a tantalizing glimpse of bronzed skin and a hint of dark, masculine body hair she was incapable of doing anything but stare. Everything inside her shifted and tumbled.
Oh, my—
Who cared if he was moody? With a body like that he could go through life with a face like thunder and still be forgiven.
Lara would have closed the gap between them, ripped open his shirt and taken a long, close look at