That had always been the plan.
But damn it, he’d turned up outside my final exam and swept me off my feet like the perfect gentleman I knew he wasn’t.
I wasn’t prepared for that. I don’t think any woman ever could be.
CHAPTER 10
Elizabeth
On the weekend, Pierce had brunch booked with his agent, Sandra, somewhere expensive sounding near St Paul’s. The Cathedral, with the blue dome, not my school. Thank God.
It had been on his schedule for weeks. I’d learnt to sneak onto his office computer and check his appointments so that I could avoid being in the house at the same time as him as often as possible. So far, it absolutely paid off.
Usually avoiding him involved me being out of the house, but that morning was the first time in months I’d have it all to myself and I couldn’t wait for him to leave. Especially because I was due to attend some grand publicity event with him, tagging along playing the role of the adoring step-daughter, in the evening.
All I wanted to do was moon about the house reliving what Maxim had done to me, how his lips felt on mine, and his tongue flickering on my body.
I stayed up in my room until I heard the front door slam, and watched him get into a shiny black cab. No Uber for Pierce. He liked it all the old fashioned way. Black cabbies had to learn all the streets in London, and take a test. You couldn’t just roll up with a GPS, and why would he want an inferior driver taking him all of fifteen minutes, on a journey that the one-way system meant couldn’t be navigated any other way?
Whatever. I had the house to myself. I didn’t care what the old fart got up to.
I trailed downstairs in my dressing gown. The one I pilfered from the hotel laundry room. Cassie and I had matching ones. She reckoned it was a perk of the job, especially since they didn’t seem to believe in pay rises. I reckoned she was dead right about that.
I made myself a coffee and used his full cream organic milk, then spat in the little plastic and shook it hard to mix it in. Small, juvenile little things like that weren’t going to get me far, but they bloody well felt good.
I was making eggs when the doorbell rang. Usually I’d have ignored it, but I peered out of the kitchen window, up to the street, intrigued to see a delivery van outside.
With an irritated sigh, I jogged up the stairs and pulled the door open, not giving the smallest shit that my hair was messed up, pulling my dressing gown tighter around me.
“Package for Elizabeth Harrington.”
I frowned at the man as he held out a little electronic device for my signature, and attempted to thrust a wide, narrow box at me.
“That’s me, but I don’t think-”
“Listen Luv, if you don’t want it, return it like everybody else does.”
Glare still fixed on my face I signed, and yanked the package out of his hand.
“The hell’s your problem? Got out of bed on the wrong side, darlin’?”
It took all I had in me to slam the door in his face instead of putting my fist through his face. Appropriate force was a concept I was struggling with.
Especially before breakfast.
At the kitchen table, I found myself with a plateful of scrambled eggs, frowning down at a white, solid lace dress sitting amongst a layer of tissue paper. It was beautiful.
Who the hell had sent this to me?
It had come from an expensive little boutique around the corner that sometimes I spent too long looking in the window of. I knew, because I recognised it immediately. Pierce would never know to go there. He would never buy me anything like this and the idea that he might made me shudder with revulsion.
It was going straight back if he had anything at all to do with it. What alternative was there? It wasn’t like I had a long line of people just waiting for the excuse to buy me dresses. There wasn’t anybody else who would do this. Which meant it didn’t matter how much I liked it, the dress was going back.
“Jesus Christ, you’ve got to get out of here, Elizabeth.”
I didn’t want to think about what it meant if he was sending me things to wear. Hopefully nothing. Hopefully this was from his publicist, who’d seen the clothes I usually wore and probably wanted me in something classier than sportswear.
It was definitely that.
Wiping my hands off to make sure I didn’t smear grease all over it, I pulled the dress out of the box to hold it against me. Just to have a look, before I packed it up again. The hem came to the middle of my thighs and the cut was perfect. I could tell that even without a mirror.