When I didn’t respond, he looked up from it. “I’m to believe that an author who has sold several million copies of her series continues to work as a housekeeper?”
The idea that I might lie about my secret career made me clench my hands into fists at my sides. I didn’t inform him that today was my last day on the job. What was the point if he wasn’t going to believe me, anyway?
However, his eyes narrowed at whatever he saw in my expression. “No, you’re not lying, are you?” He stood, gazing down at my book again. “You really are S. M. Brodie. How surprising.”
I swallowed nervously. “Like I said, I’ve had two producers contact my agent about buying the film rights. I can show you the emails.”
Cavendish shook his head and held out the book for me to take.
I waved him off. “Keep it.”
To my irritation and hurt, he sighed and threw it on the bed as if it was an inconvenience. “Sorry, little mouse. I don’t do adaptations. I write my own stories.”
Even though I’d known there was a good chance he’d tell me that, I fought through the crushing disappointment. “You won’t say anything to anyone?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Who would believe me? I barely believe it.”
I huffed, disheartened but not surprised by his carelessly hurtful attitude. “Right. I am used to people underestimating me, Mr. Cavendish. Sorry for taking up your time.”
“No apologies necessary,” he said to my back. “And congratulations on your secret success.”
The mocking tone made me stop at the door. I glanced over my shoulder at him, holding his gaze. “Congratulations on your wonderful work,” I told him sincerely. “I suppose as surprising it is that a ‘little mouse’ such as me is aSunday Timesbest-selling writer, it’s astonishing that such a cliché of entitled aristocracy with your pathetic ennui and cynicism … is capable of writing television characters with such complexity and depth.” I strode out of Cavendish’s room, legs trembling from my daring insult, heart racing, skin flushed.
However, as I reached the staff elevator, a smile tugged at my lips as I remembered the way Cavendish’s expression slackened with furious shock at my volleying his mockery back at him.
One
THEO
Iloved women. The silk of their skin beneath my hands. Their breathy gasps. The bite of their nails on my back, my arse. The way they can be pliant and submissive beneath me or ride me like there’s no tomorrow, mindless to everything but their passion and need. I loved their laughter, their easy affection. Give me soft, hard, voluptuous, slender, short, tall, redhead, blond, brunette, black, brown, white … I had no type.Womanwas my type.
The only kind of woman I avoided like the plague was the innocent kind. The ones who didn’t know how to play the game. Because as much as I loved women, I would never fall in love again. I’d made that decision long ago, and once I made up my mind about something, I was the most stubborn bastard a person did meet.
I’d encountered enchanting, intelligent, funny, beautiful women from all over the world. I’d even fucked a fair few of them. And in the last fifteen years, I hadn’t fallen in love with a single one. If they couldn’t do it for me, no one could.
I was immune to the emotion.
Which was why I sought out women like actor Angeline Potter when I needed a distraction. Angeline would most likely talk my ear off about the minutiae of her day at the spa, all the while bitching about everyone in her life, but she would offer me a small reprieve from my concerns.
My writer’s block was still very much in force. It was driving me up the wall. It was scaring the shit out of me.
And I remembered seeing Angeline arrive at the estate for the weekend. I might have gone down on her at the last Ardnoch Christmas party. She seemed open to another recurrence of my head between her toned thighs, so I’d thought, why not?
I’d gone to her room and part of me admired her honesty when she agreed to fuck under the condition that she was a selfish lover and I wasn’t to expect reciprocation.
Thinking she meant she expected to receive head but not give it, I agreed. I went down on her, she came, and then when I was inside her, she came again. I did not expect her to then hurry me up to orgasm like an impatient harpy.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, just fucking come already,” she’d snapped multiple times, lying there with a bored expression beneath me.
I’m afraid it rather killed my urgency to climax.
On the contrary, I pulled out of her and fell onto my back, staring at the ceiling, balls blue, wishing like hell I’d just stayed in my room and masturbated my boredom away. Limpid jade eyes that darkened with an unexpected fire filled my vision, and I scrubbed my hand over my face in frustration.
Sarah McCulloch had entered my thoughts far too often these past few days since her clandestine visit to my room.
Long, elegant fingers smoothed over my chest. I turned to stare stonily into Angeline Potter’s now soft countenance.
“Stay. Cuddle.”
