‘It’s j-just a mole,’ she said quickly, taking a step back, putting an arm’s length between them before straightening her shoulders, lifting her chin. ‘Rupert wanted me to have it removed. Just a little bit too warts-and-all ordinary for him, apparently.’
‘If Henshawe thinks you’re ordinary he needs to get his eyes tested.’
‘Does he?’ she asked, for a moment distracted by the unexpected compliment. But only for a moment. ‘Well, green striped tights do tend to make you stand out from the crowd,’ she said in an attempt at carelessness that she was a long way from feeling. And then wished she hadn’t as he gave her legs the kind of attention that they could do without at the moment.
‘True,’ he said, finally dragging his gaze away from them, ‘but I noticed you before you morphed into an elf,’ he reminded her as he retrieved her elbow and headed briskly for the stairs.
‘It’s hard to miss someone falling over their own feet right in front of you,’ she said, stumbling a little in the soft boots as she struggled to keep up with him.
He slowed, a consideration that she was sure neither Rupert nor his men would show her.
‘Of course I have spent the last few months being buffed and polished and waxed,’ she rushed on, trying not to think about how much ‘notice’ he’d taken of her. How close he’d just come to ‘noticing’ her again—this time in an empty store with none of the constraints of shoppers pounding past them. He was the enemy, for heaven’s sake, and while she wanted to throw him off the scent, she wasn’t entirely sure who would be distracting who…‘My hair has been streaked, my eyelashes dyed, my eyebrows threaded and I’ve lost weight, too.’
‘Don’t tell me. You had a personal trainer.’
‘Good grief, no. I’ve just been too busy to snack between meals.’ She gave him an arch look, ran a finger over one of her well-tended brows. ‘You have no idea how much time it takes to look this groomed.’
He glanced at her, taking a long look at her messy hair and clothes that not even a catwalk model could make look good.
‘Forget I said that,’ she said hurriedly. ‘I’ve been deprived of chocolate for too long and it’s affecting my brain.’
Suddenly desperate for the instant gratification of chocolate melting on the tongue, she stopped, forcing him to do the same, dug the chocolate finger biscuit out of her elf pouch—so much more satisfying than acorns—and unwrapped it. As she raised it to her mouth she realised that she had an audience and she snapped it in half, offering one of the fingers to Nathaniel Hart.
He shook his head, not bothering to hide a smile. And she was right. The distraction was mutual. ‘Your need is greater.’
She wasn’t arguing and she bit into it, struggling to contain a groan of sheer pleasure.
‘Better?’
‘Marginally. Don’t get me wrong,’ she said, licking her fingers—she’d been carrying the chocolate next to her body and it was soft. ‘I enjoyed it all. The gorgeous clothes. Being made over, every single bit of me being made as perfect as humanly possible without the intervention of surgery. Who wouldn’t?’
That, after all, was the dream she was selling. Buy your clothes from this store and you too can have all this.
‘Surgery?’
‘I drew the line at the boob job. And the spray tan. I like my orange in a glass. Or chocolate-flavoured.’
She tossed a glance in his direction, but he shook his head. ‘No comment.’
‘Oh, please. Everyone has an opinion.’ From the editor of a magazine who was desperate to do a step-by-step photo feature of a silicone implant—and had really struggled to hide her annoyance when she’d refused to play along—to the woman who did her nails. Everyone, apparently, wanted a bigger cup size. Everyone except her. She put her hands to her waist and pushed out her chest, straining the buttons to the limit. ‘Apparently my naturalness and lack of guile wasn’t, when push came to shove, quite enough. But that’s the Cinderella story, isn’t it? She had to be transformed before she was fit for the prince. All imperfections disappearing with a wave of a magic wand. Or the modern equivalent.’
He lifted an eyebrow.
‘Photoshop.’
‘But he still wanted her when he saw her as she really was. In her rags and covered with ashes from the hearth.’
‘Oh, please! He didn’t even recognise her.’ She looked at the elegant red suede shoe he was still carrying, then up at Nathaniel Hart. ‘Do you want to risk it?’ she asked. ‘If the shoe doesn’t fit, will you let me go?’
‘The shoe fell out of your bag, Lucy.’
‘Did you see it fall?’
‘Well, no…’
‘Then I believe that is what’s known in legal circles as circumstantial evidence.’
‘Not if I find the matching one in there.’
‘The matching one is jammed in a grating two streets away.’ Then, unable to bear the suspense, the teasing pretence a moment longer, ‘Shall we cut the pretence? How long have I got?’
His dark brows drew together in a puzzled frown. ‘I’m sorry? How long have you got for what?’
‘There’s no need to pretend. I know you’ve called him. Rupert,’ she added when his frown only deepened. ‘I saw you. As you left the locker room.’
‘The only person I’ve spoken to in the last twenty minutes—apart from you—is my chief security officer. To inform him that, rather than going straight to my office, I was still in the store.’
They’d reached the Food Hall and he released her elbow, snagged a trolley and headed down the nearest aisle.
Not Rupert?
Lucy firmly smothered the little flicker of hope that he was for real, ate the second finger of biscuit for comfort and went after him.
‘Nice try,’ she said when she caught up, ‘but you were following me. On the stairs.’
‘We were going in the same direction,’ he conceded, picking up a box of eggs, glancing back at her. ‘What made you look back?’
‘Sheer paranoia? When I ran out of that hotel I had a dozen or so people on my tail. I knew I wasn’t far enough ahead to have evaded all of them. I was trying not to draw attention to myself,’ she said. ‘Waiting for the hand on my shoulder.’
‘And you thought I was the hand?’
‘Aren’t you? I heard you tell Frank Alyson to keep a look out…’ She faltered as he stopped by a shelf containing breakfast cereals. She was beginning to sound paranoid. Could she have got it wrong? That he didn’t have a clue what she was talking about…‘You will tell me if I’m making a total idiot of myself, won’t you?’
‘YOU’RE making a total idiot of yourself,’ Nathaniel said obligingly, ‘but it’s okay. You’re scared. I don’t know why and you don’t have to tell me. And I had the people following you escorted from the store.’
‘You did? But how did you know?’
‘They weren’t discreet.’ The muscles in his jaw tightened momentarily. ‘Of course it’s likely they were replaced but you should be safe enough now that the store is closed. They’ll have to accept that you aren’t inside and go away.’