(2012) Evie Undercover (2 page)

Apparently
immune to the
panoply
of performances
being played out before him, Tom Hadleigh s
at down heavily on the edge of
he
r
bed and sighed wearily.

‘Just remind me why I employed you, will you?’

‘To
do some interpreting for you, a
nd to help you with paying bills and sorting things out in London – the sort of personal things you wouldn’t ask your work secretary to do.’

‘Exactly. You are meant to be helping me, not the other way round, and the best way you can help me at this precise moment is to let me get
some
sleep. Which I can’t do until you get back into bed. It’s not as if I’m miles away
–
I’m only in the room opposite. Y
ou shouted out for me before, so if necessary you could shout out again.’

What a man! She’d have one last shot at trying to find a streak of gallantry somewhere deep inside him, and if that failed, she’d
go to bed alone
and spend the night working o
n
a Plan B.

‘I know I’m being a
nuisance and I’m really sorry, b
ut I
know that I
won’t be able to get that scorpion out of my mind
.
I’m worried that if I don’t get some sleep, I’ll forget all the Italian I know. If you were next to me, I’d fall asleep at once.’

             
‘How hig
hly flattering,’ he murmured dry
ly.

             
A giggle escaped her and she quickly smothered it. ‘I didn’t mean it like that.’

She stared at him, wide
ning her eyes
with hope. Annoyingly, t
hey began to water and she was forced to blink.

             
‘Oh, a
l
l
right then. I suppose I’ll have to if I want to get any sleep before tomorrow
–
and I do
.
I don’t seem to have
much
choice in the matter.’

Eureka!
             

             
‘Thank you,’ she said, h
er voice shaking with relief. A
nd no wonder
–
she’d totally run out of ideas for simpering helplessly. She directed a heartfelt
smile of
gratitude towards her boss
for rescuing her plan from the
jaws of defeat at the eleventh
hour
.

             
He stood up
.
‘I’ll go and lock my
door
.’ He crossed the room in long strides and went out into the corridor.

She stared after him, h
er heart beat
ing
fast
. T
his could turn out to be the worst plan she’d ever had in her life
–
and she’d come up with some pretty dire plans in her time
–
or it could
turn out to
be the best.

Tom leaned back against the door of his room and slowly released his breath. How the hell had he let himself be manoeuvred into sharing a bed with Evie Shaw
?

He hadn’t often been lost for words in his life, but as he’d stared across the room at the girl he’d hired the week before, her white nightdress translucent in the moonlight,
it
had been one of those rare occasions.

And that had only been the start of the rapid downhill slope. Things had speedily gone from being downright awkward to bloody impossible, with the result that he was now about to spend the night in
an
employee
’s bedroom. Entirely her choice,
not his. For someone who prided himself on always being in control of the situation, he hadn’t managed things too well
just now
. Somehow or other, Evie Shaw had wrong-footed him.

             
M
uffled
by the thick stone walls, he heard the
sound of Evie moving around in her room
. H
e went quickly to his chair, picked up his boxer shorts and stepped into them. Sleeping naked as he usually did was not an option. He pulled his robe around him again and
tied
up
his belt as tightly as he could.

She’d seemed such a good secretary, too. Admittedly she’d only been with him for a week, but she’d
got to
his house on time every morning
, and she’
d always
succeeded in getting
through the list of things
he
’d
left her
to do whilst
he was
in his Chambers
. He
’d
swiftly seen how efficient she was
,
and had been able to
concentrate on
bringing his junior up to speed about his ongoing cases and making sure that the junior would be able to deal with anything that came up
in
his absence.

And her Italian was excellent. On her second morning, he’d asked her to phone the hotel in Italy to confirm their reservation, and he’d hung on
at the house
in case
there were
any problems. As soon as she’d started talking to the receptionist
at
Il Poggio,
the small hotel he used whenever he visited the Italian house he’d bought a few months earlier, he’d known that her Italian was as good as the agency had promised.

It had been a massive relief that the agency had been able to find an Italian speaker at such short notice. His regular interpreter had pulled out of the trip a week before they were due to leave
as
his wife
had had to
go into hospital. H
e’d thought at first that he might have to postpone his visit, which he was desperately anxious to avoid doing
.
He had a high-profile libel case beginning two weeks after his return from Italy, so he wouldn’t have been able to reschedule his trip for any time in the immediate future.

The restoration of his house was almost complete. He was going to be free for the whole of August and he wanted to spend the month at the house. What’s more, he hadn’t seen his parents for a while and he’d invited them to come for a couple of the weeks that he
would be
there. If he left it any longer to order the furniture, it would be impossible for any of them to stay there.

Finding Evie had been a godsend as it meant that the planned trip could go ahead.

Ideally, she could have been easier on the eye – thick-rimmed glasses and a severe hairstyle, along with downright dowdy clothes, didn’t really do her any favours. But her appearance was irrelevant. What mattered was that on his first visit to Umbria he’d fallen in love with the
place
and
had
bought a house on a whim. N
o one in the area spoke English, and he didn’t speak Italian
.
Evie did.

And there was another good thing about her
–
she wasn’t the sort of woman who spoke merely for the sake of saying something. She hadn’t attempted to force a conversation during the
flight
from
Heathrow to Rome Fiumicino
,
nor
on the
journey
from the airport to Umbria
. Instead,
she’d been content to stare out of the window
,
occasionally exclaim
ing
in delight at the views.

Admittedly he hadn’t tried to start up a conversation with her. If he remembered rightly, ‘Lunatic drivers!’ was about the only thing he’d said during their one
-
and
-
a
-
half
-
hour drive to
the hotel
. Nevertheless,
unlike Evie,
a lot of women would have found it
virtually impossible
to hold their tongues in check. Uncontrolled tongues made him a great deal of money every year, but he wouldn’t have wanted one in the car with him.

             
They’d reached
Il Poggio
w
ith time
only to
wash their hands before the evening meal
,
and although she’d made one or two general comments while they were waiting for their food to be served, she’d soon fallen silent, respecting his unspoken need to check his emails.

When he’d wished her goodnight after dinner, he’d gone to his room
and
congratulat
ed
himself on having hired a female who wasn’t totally superficial and self-obsessed. She was a plain, but pleasant, woman, who wouldn’t make a fuss about a broken nail, and who’d be an excellent interpreter for the week.

So where had the other Evie come from!

The Evie who’d screamed in fear
at the sight of
a tiny insect halfway up her wall; the Evie without glasses, whose hair
hung
gloriously
about her face; the Evie who’d stood on her bed looking …

He stopped himself
. H
e wasn’t going to go there. H
e didn’t wa
nt to remember how she
’d
looked. Suffice it to say, h
er behaviour over the scorpion had shown a very different side of her, and he’d been p
ut in an impossible position
.
He
must
keep that in the back of his mind
and be more alert in the future
, but for the moment, a
ll
he was going
to
think about was getting through the night as quickly as possible,
or what was left of the night.

He picked up his watch from the wrought-iron bedside table, walked out of his room and closed the door firmly behind him.

Evie was lying in the middle of the bed, holding the sheet up to her chin
,
when Tom came
back into her room
. There was
a look of grim determination on his face.

             
‘You can have whichever side you want,’ she offered.

             
‘I’m usually on the left,’ he said, and h
e walked
to the far
end of the large iron bed, his eyes firmly on the floor in front of him.

             
‘I
didn’t realise you were married,
’ she
said
,
shift
ing to the right
-
hand side
of the bed
.

             
‘I’m not.’

‘Oh.’
She stared up at the ceiling, h
er heart thumping. This was m
ore
embarrassing
than she’d
thought it would be. Much more
.
Plan A hadn’t gone into
trivial
details like
the
sides of the bed and what it’d actually be like when he lay down next to
her.

And
suppose she
reach
ed
out
unconsciously
for him
during the night, forgetting in her sleep that this was strictly a non-sex thing
.
Aargh
!
Just thinking about it was scary. She slid deeper into the bed and fervently wish
ed it was morning. And b
y the look on his face
when he’d come in
, so did he.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him
drop
his towelling robe on the
floor
and pull back the
corner
of the sheet, making sure that he didn’t uncover
so much as
an inch of her body.
She turned
her head
and looked towards the door.
The mattress moved beneath her as he slid into the bed and imme
diately
rolled
on to his side. She
surreptitiously
glanced
at
him
–
h
is back
was
towards her
and she could only see the side of his face
.