Page 27 of Awakened in Her Enemy's Palazzo

‘My sister and I were encouraged to think of ourselves as the ones who should be doing the rescuing.’

He fell into step beside her as she moved towards the path, the rocks they trod on worn smooth from years of use.

‘So you have a sister?’ he said casually, although he already knew the answer from that brief file he had scanned.

She nodded. ‘A sister and two brothers.’

She started, as the phone she was clutching beeped. She glanced at the screen automatically and then paused, gnawing down on her full lower lip as she threw out a hurried, ‘Sorry, I should check...’

There were three messages and a heap of missed calls.

Scanning the first message, she felt her heart take a lurching journey to her feet. Apparently a tabloid had run the story of her inheritance, and had produced a piece that was a mix of truth, lies and smutty innuendo.

Her parents were asking her, under the circumstances, not to come to an awards ceremony for her sister the next week. Her presence would be ‘a distraction’.

Grace correctly translated that as anembarrassment. But you could see their point.

Things did not get better.

The second message said that a hastily called family conference had decided it would be best for her to sell up and make a sizeable donation to charity with the proceeds, to mitigate the bad publicity. In other words she was not to fight the fact she had been found guilty in the court of public opinion.

The last message told her not to worry—they had put the case in the hands of Uncle Charlie,known to the world as Sir Charles Taverner KC, a lawyer who litigated for the great, the good and the famous. He would sort it all out for her.

They would all be pleased to see her, of course but actually it might be better for her to stay where she was, sit tight until things had died down, because two news channels had already picked up the story and dug out a picture of her in a bikini from somewhere...

Oh, well, abikini... That really made her a scarlet woman.

A one-line postscript telling her that maybe she should beef up her security made her glance over her shoulder nervously.

Theo watched her scroll through the messages, her face partially shielded by the wings of her lint-pale wet hair.

But even without being able to see the play of emotion across her face he could read her body language, the tension in her shoulders, and the white knuckles on her free hand made it clear that what she was reading was not good news.

‘A problem?’ he asked.

She compressed her lips over a snarled response. ‘Not one that would interest you,’ she replied tightly—and then thought it probably would, as seeing her reputation trashed in the tabloid press would only...

What...?

Would it help him?

She had no idea, but she knew that the idea of her life being trawled through made her feel sick, even though it would make pretty boring reading.

‘If you’re contacted by a lawyer claiming to work for me, don’t believe him,’ she told him grimly. ‘He doesn’t speak for me.’

Her parents, who had been unusually hands-off so far, had clearly reverted to type in response to the tabloid threat to the family name. They were staging a takeover bid.

In the past she had often given in for a quiet life, saving her resistance for the times when it really mattered to her.

This mattered to her.

‘Is that likely?’ he asked.

‘Oh, yes,’ she replied grimly, gently swatting away a bee disturbed when she’d brushed against the wild herbs growing along the pathway.

‘This person is not a lawyer?’

Her eyes widened as she responded bitterly. ‘He’s a veryexpensivelawyer, but notmylawyer. He’s my parents’ best friend and my godfather. However, even though I have no doubt he’ll say things you want to hear, he does not speak for me.’

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