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Izzy groaned out loud when she checked her watch. She was late, she was so late and if the cleaning agency she worked for learned that she had missed a regular booking, she would be sacked without question. And she couldn’t afford to be sacked, not with thousands of pounds of student loan debt already stacked up behind her and certainly not with parents who were always in need of a financial helping hand.
In truth, her twin sister Maya did most of the helping out, but then Maya didn’t need to get down on her hands and knees to scrub floors to make money. No, Maya was a real brainbox in the mathematics field, so bright she was off the scale and had started university at the age of sixteen. Maya had qualified for scholarships and grants and had won awards throughout her education and if she needed to make some extra cash on the side there was always some special project keen to hire Maya to juggle numbers and work her special magic. Unfortunately, Izzy had none of those advantages and had to do menial jobs so that she could chip in with much smaller amounts to help keep their family afloat.
Izzy didn’t mind though because she adored her family, especially her little brother, Matt, who was disabled and in a wheelchair. Her father, Rory Campbell, was a jovial, optimistic Scotsman with a shock of red hair and a lifelong habit of focusing all his hopes on get-rich-quick schemes and then borrowing money when things went wrong, as they invariably did. Her mother, Lucia, was Italian and had grown up in a very wealthy family, who had disowned her after she fell in love with Rory, got pregnant and ran off with him, turning her back on a far more profitable and socially acceptable marriage to another rich Italian.
In truth, Izzy could not remember a time when money and debt had not been serious issues in her family. Had it not been for her parents’ insistence that she and Maya further their education both girls would have gone straight out to find a job after finishing school. But in the light of that parental insistence, the twins had concentrated hard on getting good educations and focusing on goals that promised decent graduate jobs. After all, the main reason why their parents were so often in a financial bind was that neither one had had the benefit of the kind of education that equipped them for steady employment.
And while there was no doubt whatsoever that the twins’ ambitious plans had been perfect for Maya, Izzy had found reaching her own goals much more of a struggle. Maya had gained entry to Oxford University, but Izzy was completing her studies at a local college in the same town, which enabled the sisters to share accommodation. She wasn’t super clever like her twin and academic study didn’t come naturally to her. Even worse, exams freaked her out and she didn’t do her best work in that state. The need to sit the first of her final exams that very morning had been the reason she’d missed cleaning the penthouse apartment and in the aftermath of that daunting experience, she was wrung out and panicking that she had failed. Losing her job on top of that would be even worse.
When she walked into the elegant apartment block, the security guard looked surprised to see her. ‘What are you doing here at this time of day? It’s almost lunch time,’ he pointed out.
‘I had an exam this morning. I’m running late.’
‘I’ve just come on duty,’ he replied, smiling at her because she was a very pretty girl, but particularly because she was also a very small girl and she was one of the very few women whom he could look down on. ‘I’ll have to check if the guests have arrived yet. I’m not supposed to give out the key for maintenance after eleven.’
‘Please give me the key,’ Izzy begged in desperation. ‘If the guests arrive to an uncleaned apartment, I’m toast!’
‘Just this once,’ he conceded, stepping back to reach for the key and passing it across the desk, catching her hand in his to add, ‘Fancy a drink some night?’
‘Sorry, I’m seeing someone,’ she lied, rather than turn him down cold when he was doing her a favour in turning a blind eye to her late arrival.
‘Let me know when you’re free again,’ he urged with a wink as she stepped into the service lift that ran up to the rear entrance of the apartment.
In the lift, Izzy dug her pink uniform tabard out of her bag and donned it, smoothing a hand through her mane of tumbled red curls to prevent them from standing on end. She sighed, thinking she couldn’t remember when she had last had a date. Keeping up with her studies, working several cleaning shifts a week and visiting her family at weekends left her with little free time. Indeed, a free night was a big enough treat and usually given over to curling up with a good book or watching a movie with Maya, with whom she shared a small dingy flat. Yet there was her father always telling her that the years of youth were the most fun-filled years of her life! So much for that, she thought wryly, wishing she had at least fancied the security guard because she had yet to meet any man who sparked her interest in that field.
Maya was the beauty in the family with her straight blonde hair, long legs and flawless face. Izzy was red-haired, five feet nothing in height and curvier than she liked. In the street men turned their heads to look at Maya and rarely even noticed Izzy by her side. The sisters might be twins but they were far from identical.
Inserting the pass key in the lock of the rear entrance, Izzy hurried into the apartment and extracted her cleaning box and the fresh linen from a storage cupboard. She spared the kitchen only a quick assessing glance. Although she would clean it before she left, the cooking facilities rarely required much attention because the tourists and business people who normally used the apartment either dined out or ordered in takeout food. As a rule, she spent most of her visit ensuring that the bathrooms were immaculate and, that objective in mind, she headed straight for the en suite bathroom off the main bedroom to start there.
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Rafiq had suffered a very trying morning. An accident leaving the airport in the early hours of the morning had put two thirds of his protection team and his cook into hospital. Fortunately, none of his staff had been badly hurt but Rafiq had spent hours at the hospital and he was tired and hungry. He had been in no mood to deal with his uncle’s panic at the mere idea that his nephew was abroad with only two men left to watch over him. The Regent had insisted that outside security be hired as a precaution even though Rafiq was only in Oxford to open the research facility he had funded at the university and would be flying home the following day.
A strange woman walking into the bathroom at the exact moment he stepped out of the shower was just about the last straw and he erupted into an angry tirade in his own language, demanding to know who she was, how she had gained entrance to the apartment and what she thought she was playing at.
And then he focused on her as he furiously secured the towel round his lean hips and fell abruptly silent, because she looked more like a child than a woman and her tiny body was rigid with fright and surprise, her face telegraphing her concern at the blunder she had made.
Izzy came to a dead halt as she registered too late that the bathroom was actually occupied and a huge bronzed guy in a very small white towel was stalking out of the shower to confront her for her impertinence. She stared at him in shock, her stomach turning over, and she couldn’t stop staring because he was—literally—the most beautiful man she had ever seen. A shock of black tousled hair enhanced his extraordinary dark deep-set amber-gold eyes. He had lashes long enough for a woman to trip on, blade-sharp cheekbones that rivalled a supermodel’s and a five o’clock shadow that huskily accentuated his strong masculine jaw line and wide sensual mouth. He was gorgeous. Even as that inappropriate thought occurred to her, hard hands were clamping into her shoulders from behind and pulling her backwards and her face was burning up with embarrassment.
‘I’m so sorry!’ she began apologising. ‘I thought the apartment was empty.’
‘Who are you?’ Rafiq demanded impatiently.
‘The cleaning and changeover service,’ Izzy confided, shooting a glance to either side of her at the man mountains holding her fast. ‘Steady on, guys. I’m not about to attack anyone!’
‘How did you get in?’ Rafiq shot at her while also directing the overzealous guards to loosen their grip on her. She reminded him of a doll with her white porcelain skin, bright blue eyes and that strangely coloured hair that brought to mind highly polished copper, a wild mop of curls spiralling around her heart-shaped face like question marks and tumbling to her shoulders. But she was not the child he had initially assumed, he registered, scanning the ripe full curve of her breasts and hips with a hunger that he struggled to master because it had been way too long since he had had company in his bed.
‘W-with the pass key.’
An exchange in a foreign language took place over her head.
‘You could not have come through the front door without being seen,’ Rafiq countered.
‘I’m not supposed to use the front door,’ Izzy argued. ‘I used the service entrance off the kitchen—’
Another incomprehensible vocal exchange took place.