Secrets of the Rich & Famous

‘I could do with a new approach, I’ll admit,’ she said slowly. ‘So how about we strike a deal?’

‘Go on,’ he said slowly.

‘What I need right now is an adviser. To help me get my article back on track. Someone who knows the world I’m writing about and can give me a few pointers.’

He stared at her.

‘You want me to help you trick some unsuspecting millionaire into thinking you’re a rich socialite?’

‘In a nutshell, yes. But not in a direct way. I just want to be able to ask your opinion on a few things, that’s all. Clothes, locations—that kind of thing.’

There was something so alluring about her—and it messed with his body, not just with his mind. Her upturned face was imploring, the blue eyes clear.

‘I’m no threat to you. I honestly have no interest in making trouble for you. And we’re not that different. You told me you started out with ideas above your station and that’s what I’ve got. I just need this chance.’

He looked into the pleading blue eyes. He must be mad.

CHARLOTTE PHILLIPS
has been reading romantic fiction since her teens, and she adores upbeat stories with happy endings. Writing them for Mills & Boon
^®
is her dream job.

She combines writing with looking after her fabulous husband, two teenagers, a four-year-old and a dachshund. When something has to give, it’s usually housework.

She lives in Wiltshire.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For my family, with love and thanks.

Cover

Exerpt

About Charlotte Phillips

Title Page

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

Copyright

J
EN
B
ROWN
stood rigid behind the bedroom door in the dark, arm raised, the vase in her hand poised to be broken over the intruder’s head the second he entered the room. As the door swung open one last thought dashed through her mind before cold panic set in and impulse took over. She wished, not for the first time this week, that she was back in her mother’s cottage in the country, where you could leave your door on the latch all night and still not be murdered in your bed.

A state-of-the-art security system and a massive front door was apparently not enough to guarantee that here in Chelsea.

As the door opened and the light snapped on she leapt with a yell from her hiding place and swung the vase with every ounce of her strength. If this were a movie she would have knocked him out with one crash and then waited smugly for the police to arrive and pat her on the back. But this was reality. And she wasn’t movie heroine material.

And so it was that before she could connect vase with scalp, before she had the chance so much as to kick the man in the shins, she was soaring backwards through the air to land with a thump on her own bed. Her wrists were immediately held in an iron grip on either side of her head, and as the intruder loomed above her she drew in a lungful of air and screamed as long and as loudly as she could.

She surprised herself with how loudly, in fact. He recoiled a little at the sound, his face catching the light, and she realised with a flash of disbelief just who she was staring at. Last seen yesterday morning on the front of her newspaper, in the flesh he looked even more gorgeous but a lot angrier.

She’d just tried to crack the skull of the most influential figure in British film-making.

‘Calm down, I’m not going to hurt you!’ he shouted over her, exasperation lacing the deep voice.

Famous or not, he had her pinned to the bed, so she ignored him and began to suck in another enormous breath.

He took advantage of the break. ‘Drop the damn vase and I’ll let you go!’

His dark green eyes were just a couple of inches above her own. The sharp woody scent of his expensive aftershave invaded her senses.
Hard muscle was contoured against her body as he used his legs to pin her down effortlessly. She struggled, trying everything to move her legs and kick the stuffing out of him, but she couldn’t move an inch. The eyes looking into her own were determined, and his breath was warm against her lips.

Drop the vase? She gave it a split-second’s consideration. If her hands were free and he tried anything she could grab something else and bash him with that. The place was full of heavy minimalist ornaments—she’d be spoilt for choice.

‘Let me go first,’ she countered. Her heart thundered as if she’d just done the hundred-metre dash. She held his gaze obstinately.

He made no move to release her but his voice dropped to a
let’s-be-reasonable
tone.

‘You’ve just tried to brain me with it. Let the vase go and then perhaps you’d like to tell me what the hell you think you’re doing in my house.’

Fear slipped another notch as her mind processed that last sentence.

She should have known the only person who could get past the Fort-Knox-style security system in this place would be the person who’d put it there. And if it had been daylight instead of the dark small hours she might have listened to
her common sense instead of turning the situation into a movie plot. No wonder the house-sitting agency kept their property owners’ details confidential. She could imagine women queuing up round the block to get this gig. It would be a stalker’s dream.

She’d built up a mental picture over the last two days of the person who owned this beautiful apartment:
rich, clearly
. You couldn’t rent so much as a shed in Chelsea unless you were
über
-rich and/or famous. Preferably both.
Male, definitely
. Everything in the place was pared-down and masculine. Exposed brickwork, black leather sofas, expensive spotlights, vast flatscreen TVs. No task was left ungadgeted.
And single
. In her opinion there was a serious over-use of art featuring the naked female form. Jen couldn’t walk past the huge painting in the hallway without being reminded that her breasts were on the small side and she had no curves to speak of. No, the only women who passed through this apartment were overnight guests with no say in the décor. She was sure of it.

She congratulated herself on her powers of deduction. She was in the wrong profession. Perhaps she should swap journalism for the police force.

Alexander Hammond. Film producer. Award-winner. Millionaire playboy.

She let the vase drop from her fingers. He
followed it with his eyes as it rolled away, the look on his face thunderous, and the next moment she was free as he released her hands and stood up.

He straightened the jacket of his impeccably cut dark suit. A pristine white shirt was underneath, open at the collar and devoid of a tie. His thick dark hair was cut short. Faint stubble against a light tan highlighted a strong jaw. He looked as if he’d just stepped off the set of an aftershave commercial. One of those ones filmed in black and white, showing the hero on his way home at sunrise, a glass of champagne in one hand and the perfect woman in the other.

She suddenly realised how she must look, staring at him with her mouth gaping open from her position on the bed. Warmth rose in her cheeks and she snapped her gaze away from him, concentrating on scrambling to her feet with some measure of dignity. Unfortunately on the way up she caught sight of her appearance in the gilt mirror on the wall. One side of her hair was plastered against her face and neck and the other side resembled a bird’s nest. Terrific. Add in the greying old shorts and vest she’d been wearing in bed and she wasn’t sure she could feel any more insignificant in the face of his gorgeousness.

She made up for it by drawing herself up to
her full height and fixing him with a defiant stare. After all, he was the one at fault here. There was a two-day-old signed contract on the massive kitchen table, detailing her right to be here.

‘You’re paying for me to be here,’ she told him.

She suddenly caught herself running her fingers through the tangled side of her hair and folded her arms grimly. What was the point? It would take a damn sight more than a hairbrush to turn small-town Jen Brown into the kind of woman who would impress Alex Hammond.

‘I’m what?’ he snapped.

‘Executivehousesitters.com? I’m here to provide that extra level of security against intruders.’

She searched his face and saw his sudden understanding in the exasperated roll of his eyes.

‘By crowning me with my own vase? That was your best effort at security?’

So an apology was too much to expect, then. Typical arty type. Everything had to be about him. Never mind that he’d scared her half to death.

‘What did you expect, creeping around the place when you’re meant to be out of the country indefinitely?’ She could hear the beginning of temper in her own voice. ‘I’m not meant to be some kind of vigilante security guard, you
know. I’m just meant to make the place look occupied, that’s all.’

Apparently he could hear her temper, too, because he held up a placating hand.

‘About grabbing you like that,’ he said. ‘You were just on me before I had a second to think. I could tell as soon as I got through the door there was someone here, I just assumed I’d had a break-in.’ He leaned over the bed and picked up the vase, turned to replace it on the dresser. ‘Thank God you’re just a house-sitter. My PA booked it up. She must have forgotten to cancel.’

‘Cancel?’ Her heart plummeted.

He glanced at her. ‘There’s obviously been some mix-up,’ he said. ‘Something’s come up and I need to use this place at the last minute.’

No kidding, something had come up. Jen had seen the news coverage. She knew instantly where this was heading for her—right out through the door and back to her day job at the
Littleford Gazette
—and she wasn’t about to take it.

The
Gazette
, from which she was currently on unpaid leave, was great as far as rural local newspapers went, but she didn’t want to be reporting on welly-throwing contests and duck pond vandalism for the rest of her career. She had big plans. Everything was riding on them. And they started right here, in the Chelsea apartment she was passing off as her own.

Having somehow managed to land an internship at
Gossip!
, a huge-selling women’s magazine, she’d spent the last three months there, working herself into the ground, soaking up every piece of information she could lay her hands on, living on a pittance in a Hackney bedsit and loving every second of it. As the three months had come to an end she’d pitched an article idea to the Features Editor and got the go-ahead.

An investigation into the millionaire lifestyle from the angle of an ordinary girl. With a twist. This article was her ticket to a permanent job—a job that could change her life—if she could just come up with the goods.

For years she’d had a nagging curiosity about the lifestyle of the rich and beautiful. Who wouldn’t, with a father who fulfilled both of those things in spades? Unfortunately he was severely lacking in other qualities, namely those needed to be any kind of parent—although perhaps he reserved that ability for his legitimate children. Pitching an article whose main requirement would be to infiltrate that elusive opulent world had been a natural choice. She’d been wondering what her parallel life might be like since she was a kid. Now she had the chance to find out, and take a huge step forward in her career at the same time.

A career with a top-selling UK women’s
glossy, living in London, living the dream, or back to covering dog shows at the
Littleford Gazette
, circulation five thousand.

No contest.

She intended—
needed
—to do whatever it took to nail this opportunity, and no man was going to stop her. Even if he was Alex Hammond. And even if it meant fighting a little dirty. The only advantage of having a waste-of-space millionaire for a father was that she wasn’t the least bit intimidated by rich men. Although rich,
gorgeous
men were slightly more nerve-racking …

‘It’s too late to sort it all out now,’ he was saying. ‘You can stay the rest of the night, then get your things together in the morning and be on your way. I’ll get my PA to smooth things over with the agency. No need to worry. I’m sure they’ll find you something else quickly.’

He spoke with the air of someone conferring a great favour. To add to the effect he gave her a lopsided winning smile that creased the corners of his eyes and made her traitorous belly perform a backflip. She wrapped her arms defensively across her body. Just because it worked on the rest of the female population—didn’t mean she’d let it work on her.

He made a move towards the door, his back already turned. No need to wait for her response, of course, because what he said always
went. How kind of him to let her stay the rest of the night. A whole extra four hours. The bitter taste of contempt flooded her mouth, quickly followed by sheer panic. How could she complete her article if she got kicked out? She
had
to stay in this flat.

‘I don’t think you understand,’ she called after him, working hard to stop desperation creeping into her voice. ‘I have a contract. You have to give me a month’s notice to move out.’

He paused at the door. She waited. He turned back to face her, a frown touching his eyebrows. There was only one thing for it—she was simply going to have to brazen the situation out.

‘This house-sitting thing—it’s not completely one-sided, you know,’ she said. ‘I’m still paying rent. I’m here until New Years. I’ve even put up the Christmas tree. You can’t just barge in and throw me out because the mood takes you. I don’t care who you are.’

She saw coldness slip into the green eyes, and a slight inclination of his head acknowledged that she’d recognised him. Good. Then he’d know she wasn’t about to be starstruck into doing what he wanted. This was her big break, and not even his dazzling looks and reputation could stand in the way of her dreams.

‘I see,’ he said. ‘Of course I’ll compensate you for any inconvenience, if that’s what you’re worried about.’

He thought she was after his cash? She shook her head at him in disgust. ‘I don’t want your money.’

Why was she even surprised? She knew the type of man he was. She’d known that type her whole life. And not one cell in her body would submit to his insulting assumption that he could simply swan through life buying whatever and whoever he chose, throwing money at anything that stood in his way. As if a man like him could ever understand her desperate need to prove herself on her own terms.

She sat down obstinately on the bed.

He looked down at her for a moment.

‘We’ll talk about this in the kitchen,’ he said.

Alex Hammond glanced through the house-sitting contract which he’d found in full view on the kitchen table. It seemed she had a point. Two minutes later she walked in, barefooted, tying a dressing gown around her. It was short, and he couldn’t help but notice the long, long legs and the dishevelled bed-hair that made her look as if she’d been doing something other than sleeping. He felt a spark of heat deep in his abdomen. A couple of weeks earlier and the surprise discovery of a scantily dressed woman in his apartment would probably have led to him trying to talk her back into the bedroom and giving her the one-night stand of her life. That wasn’t an
option now. As of this week, he needed to be a changed man.