“Natalie!” someone shouted behind her. “Is it true you’re having an affair with Rhys Gordon?”
Suddenly she was surrounded by paparazzi, jostling one another as they thrust microphones and cameras in her face. “How long have you two been seeing each other?”
“Will Rhys turn the company round, or is Dashwood and James past redemption?”
“Tell us, Natalie – is Gordon as hard-driving in bed as he is in the boardroom?”
“No comment,” she managed, flustered. She began to tremble. Thank God she had sunglasses on; if they saw her tears, they’d probably say she’d had a lovers’ spat with Rhys!
“What does Dominic Heath think of your new boyfriend?”
“Rhys Gordon is not my new boyfriend!” Natalie sputtered. “He’s not my boyfriend at all!”
Suddenly Rhys appeared, thrusting his way through the crowd of reporters, and took possession of her arm.
“Is it true, Rhys?” a female reporter for the Mirror called out. “Are you and Natalie an item, or not?”
“What does Miss Dashwood say?” he countered, unperturbed.
“She says you’re not.”
He glanced at Natalie, his expression unreadable. “Then we’re not.” He turned back to the reporters. “Now bugger off, the lot of you.”
Shaken, she let Rhys draw her away. “Thanks,” she murmured, and cast a hunted look over her shoulder as the media hounds dispersed to return to their cars and news vans to sniff out a story elsewhere. “They came out of nowhere. Even after two years with Dom, I still hate it.”
Reporters had often waited outside Dom’s townhouse in Primrose Hill, hoping for a quote or a photograph. It was a nuisance; but it went with the territory when you dated a pop star.
No, far worse was the débâcle with her father when she was a child. Journalists had loitered at the gates to her family’s Warwickshire home for days, bristling with microphones and cameras, and shouted rapid-fire questions at the car as mum drove past, questions ten-year-old Natalie hadn’t understood.
But at least mum had shielded her and her sister Caro from the worst of it…
Natalie realised that Mr. Gordon had spoken. She looked up at him with a guilty start. “I’m sorry, what?”
He raised a brow. “You were a million miles away. Are you all right?”
She nodded. “A bit shaken, that’s all. I’m fine.”
“You never really get used to it,” he observed, and walked beside her as they headed back to Sloane Street. “The media, that is. You learn to handle them,” Rhys said, “and you learn to be firm. That’s the only thing they understand.”
She gave him a sidewise glance. “Spoken like someone who’s been there.”
“I have, more than once.” A shadow passed over his face, gone as quickly as it came. “I’m sorry if I was a bit hard on you in the restaurant.”
“It’s all right.” She added, “It won’t be easy to turn Dashwood and James around, you know.”
“Believe me, I know.” His words were grim. “The store’s finances are a bloody mess, and I’ve a lot of work ahead to get things sorted. But I shouldn’t take my frustration out on you. I apologise.”
“Sorry I told you to fuck off.”
Rhys smiled briefly. “Forget it. If you’ve time when we get back, Miss Dashwood, I’ll show you a couple of spreadsheets to demonstrate how bad things really are.”
Natalie groaned. “I despise spreadsheets, truly. But I suppose I could fit it in. I haven’t any ships to christen at the moment.”
As they rounded the corner onto Sloane Street, Natalie was conscious of his hand at her back. She realised that her headache was gone.
“Shit.” Rhys slowed his pace. Several reporters waited outside the store. “Normally I’d deal with them, but I haven’t time today. Come on, we’ll slip in the back entrance.”
But they’d been spotted. With a couple of shouts, the journos abandoned the front steps and pelted after them.
Natalie, her hand gripped tightly in Rhys’s, ran with him around the corner and gasped, “This is crazy!”
As they ducked into the store’s service lift, Rhys glanced back at her. “You’re not upset?”
“Why would I be upset?”
“Well, we’re being chased by the paparazzi…your famous ex-boyfriend is engaged to his ex-wife…and you and I are the featured story in every red-top in London.”
Nat shrugged. “Oh, well – being papped goes with the territory when you date a celebrity. And Keeley and Dominic? They deserve each other. He never got over her, you know.” She smirked. “Or losing access to the masses of money she makes.”
As they stepped off the service lift to the fourth floor, Natalie checked her mobile. There were four messages from her mum, one from her sister Caro, and one from…Ian Clarkson? How did he get her number? “I’ve got to check my messages,” she told Rhys with a frown. “You go ahead. I’ll be right there.”
“Don’t be long,” he cautioned. “My meeting’s in twenty minutes.”
She nodded, already listening to her messages.
Bleep. “It’s mum. Why don’t you come for dinner tonight? I’ve hardly seen you lately.”
Bleep. “I don’t know what’s going on,” her mother began ominously, “but reporters are outside, armed with cameras and microphones. I can’t leave the house! Please call me.”
Bleep. “Sarah Hadley called to say you and Rhys Gordon are all over the tabloids! You’re not sleeping with that man…? I don’t care what you’re doing, Natalie, call me at once!”
Bleep. “I’m turning the hose on those reporters. This is insufferable! The answer machine is clogged with messages from every tabloid in London.” Natalie heard the hissing sound of spraying water, and a chorus of muffled shouts, then her mum cried triumphantly, “Take that, you lot!”
Natalie groaned. Poor mum. There was no time to call and explain now; she’d call back after the meeting with Rhys. Bleep. “I’m on my way to fetch Nigella,” Caro chirped. “Thanks, Natty! Love you.”
Finally, she scrolled to the last message. Ian Clarkson.
Bleep. “Natalie, Ian here.” He paused. “Call me. I need to speak with you. It’s important.”
Ian was married, his wife Alexa expecting their first child, yet each time he saw Natalie, he asked her, in that suggestive, smarmy way of his, to lunch or drinks. She always turned him down. She had no doubt that his message was more of the same. Without hesitation, she deleted it.
Ian was trouble she didn’t need. Or want.
She hurried back to Rhys’s office. Just outside his door, she paused. He was talking to someone on the phone.
“—the tabloids? No, there’s no affair, just media speculation. Not that I’m complaining, mind. It’s great publicity for Dashwood and James.”
Natalie blinked. Every tabloid in Britain was running the story of her ‘affair’ with Rhys; reporters had badgered her, and brought up bad memories, and besieged her mum’s house; and Rhys Gordon thought it made for ‘great publicity?’ Her fingers tightened on her mobile.
“The stores need every ounce of attention they