Lessons in Rule-Breaking. Christy McKellen

overwhelming urge to pack up and go home, where she didn’t have to deal with these weird and disturbing feelings he provoked in her, besieged her. But she wasn’t going to leave. She was determined to keep her job at the magazine, no matter what it took. She was going to brazen it out here and ignore the blatant innuendos he seemed so keen to tease her into a jittery mess with.

      He was a player all right, but she wasn’t about to let him play her.

      * * *

      In total contrast to the villa where Xander was staying, her hotel was the most run-down, sleazy-looking pit Jess had ever had the misfortune to set eyes on. She could have sworn she saw a rat run around the corner of the building as she parked her hire car in the tiny, litter-strewn parking lot. The thought of it made her shudder. She wasn’t good with rodents. Or spiders. Or any type of insect if she was totally honest.

      It looked as if they were doing building works on the place, too, judging by the mess of rubble and steel piled haphazardly against the peeling walls of the hotel, but there didn’t seem to be anyone doing any actual work out there. Jess prayed she wasn’t going to be woken up in the early hours by workmen banging the hell out of the wall next to her head.

      A disgruntled receptionist with long, lank hair and a sweat-stained blouse checked her in and handed over her key, motioning her to walk through the rather run-down reception to a door on the ground floor, next to what appeared to be a kitchen.

      The Ritz it was not.

      Her room wasn’t in a much better state than the reception, but at least it had a decent-sized bed and its own en-suite bathroom—even if she did have to turn sideways when in it to get the door closed.

      Okay, well, it was all she needed. She was only going to put up with it for two nights. Surely it wouldn’t take longer than that to get enough info to write a decent piece on Xander?

      Kicking off her shoes, she flopped down onto the bed, ignoring the unnerving sway of the bed frame, and pulled her mobile out of her back pocket. Time to do some more research on the man himself.

      She’d already had a cursory look through the search engines for his name, but not much of any use had come up, mostly gossip pieces about the women he’d dated and the parties he’d made a scene at. In fact he seemed to have been in a constant state of drunken debauchery for an entire year. There were a handful of articles about his last couple of exhibitions as she trawled lower, though, the last of which had been a bit of a critical flop, as Pam had mentioned.

      She wondered how his colossal ego had dealt with that. Judging by the press reports on him between now and then, not very well. He’d become belligerent and withdrawn with the press and, instead of producing more work to shut his critics up, he’d thrown himself into partying and womanising instead. In fact he didn’t seem to have produced a single thing since that exhibition.

      Interesting.

      It was a soothing distraction focusing on work after the nerve-jangling meeting with Xander and her eyelids grew heavy as she relaxed into the soft mattress. Perhaps she could get forty winks in now to power herself up before having dinner with Xander tonight? She wanted to be at her sharpest when she faced him again. She had a sneaking suspicion he was deliberately trying to unsettle her so he could avoid having to answer any of her probing questions.

      If he thought it was going to be that easy to get around her he had another think coming.

      A loud scuttling sound—which seemed to be emanating from under the bed—made her sit bolt upright in alarm.

      What the hell was that?

      Out of the corner of her eye she thought she saw something dart from under the bed and disappear behind the vanity unit on the other side of the room.

      Goosebumps pricked her skin as all the hairs on her body stood up as one in disgust. Ugh! Bugs! Quite possibly cockroaches.

      Her spirits sank to the floor. How was she supposed to sleep with large indeterminate creatures running around under her bed?

      Taking care not to step on any of the little blighters, she dashed out of the room and back over to the reception and tried to persuade the woman to move her into a different room.

      Denied.

      It appeared—incredibly—that the hotel was fully booked.

      Jess sighed and went back to her room, feeling frustrated and discombobulated. She couldn’t afford to move out of this hovel—her savings wouldn’t stand it—and she wasn’t about to leave, not when the fate of her career was in the balance.

      She was just going to have to grit her teeth and suck it up.