LITMIR.BIZ

       CHAPTER TWO

      ALL the way home on the lurching night-bus, Titus Alexander’s words burned into Roxy’s memory. The wounding vitriol he had just directed against her had been bad enough but, unfortunately, there was an equally disturbing blot on her memory.

      Despite the fear which was chewing her up inside, she couldn’t shift the image of his towering presence and the tawny, dark hair, which had made her think of a lion. All she could see was a pair of hard, sensual lips and the brooding gleam of his grey eyes and once again she felt the distracting shiver of desire.

      Cursing herself for the shallow nature of her thoughts, she forced herself to concentrate on what really mattered.

      That if Titus Alexander was true to his word—she would soon be out on the street with nowhere to go!

      Did he really have the power to kick her out of the beautiful apartment which had felt like the first real home she’d ever had? Knotting her fingers tightly together, she stared out of the window as late-night London passed in a blur.

      The bus rumbled through Soho, discharging various drunks along the way, and then it skirted Hyde Park and headed towards Holland Park. This was the point of the journey when Roxy usually heaved a huge sigh of relief and revelled in the peace which came from staring out at the wide open space which nestled so unexpectedly in the heart of the city. But not tonight. Tonight her head was full of unwanted thoughts and the memory of those judgmental pewter eyes as they had iced over her. He had looked at her as if he really despised her. As if she were something nasty that he had stepped in. And nobody had ever looked at her quite like that before, even though she had lived a life which had had more than its fair share of drama.

      Stepping from the bus onto one of Notting Hill’s premier tree-lined streets, she let herself into the vast, six-storey stuccoed house and climbed the stairs to her top-floor apartment. She tried telling herself that the arrogant Duke had been bluffing—but she couldn’t keep up the pretence of believing that for long. Because deep down she knew he hadn’t been bluffing. Even worse, she recognised now that she had been a fool of the first order. She had believed Martin Murray when he’d come up with his unbelievably generous offer. She had believed him because it had suited her to do so. Because she had been left without a penny of the vast fortune she’d made during her days with The Lollipops.

      Yet if she’d stopped to think about it for more than a second, she would have realised that none of this had ever really made sense. As if Martin would own a huge apartment like this and then rent it out to her for such a ridiculously low rent. But she had let him, hadn’t she? She’d closed her mind as to why he’d chosen to be so ‘generous’ and, instead, she had buried her head in the sand and just got on with it, because it had seemed like a lifeline thrown to her in an increasingly turbulent world.

      It had been the first decent place she’d lived in since the fortune she’d acquired during her girl-band days had been lost in such spectacular style by her father. She’d gone from a six-bedroomed house in Surrey on glitzy St George’s Hill—with its obligatory swimming pool and the cachet of knowing that John Lennon had once lived two streets away—to a series of ever-more shabby apartments. She’d downsized and downsized until all her worldly goods had been reduced to little more than the contents of a single suitcase. And hadn’t her battered spirit found a blissful kind of refuge here in this glorious tree-lined street? Somewhere where she could just close the door on the rest of the world and lose herself in dreams of a brighter future.

      Her last place had been a horrible bedsit above a dry-cleaning shop and she’d been paranoid that the fumes would affect her voice. But she hadn’t had a lot of choice. She needed to be in London because that was where the work was—but living in London was prohibitively expensive. And lonely. Though maybe her other job contributed to the loneliness. Cleaning people’s houses didn’t provide colleagues and it didn’t pay particularly well—but at least it gave her the flexibility to be able to carry on with her singing. And singing was her life. It was all she had left. The only real thing she had to hang onto.

      She closed the door behind her and went into the bathroom to start running a bath, telling herself that she had come through things much worse than this. She had to keep positive and keep going—and by morning she would have discovered a solution to this particular problem.

      But after a sleepless night the morning presented her with more than the worry of whether Titus Alexander would be as ruthless as he had implied. Her throat was tickly and sore—and felt as if someone had coated it with sandpaper. It was the professional singer’s nightmare and when she tried a practice note, she heard the terrifying sound of her voice cracking. Roxy shivered. There were things she could put up with and things she could not—and losing her voice came in the latter category. In a panic she prepared a concoction of lemon and honey and hot water, which she cradled as she sat by the big window and dialled Martin Murray’s number.

      She never called him these days—although sometimes he rang her with that whiny note in his voice as he tried to get her to have dinner with him. But there was no whininess in his voice now—just an oddly furtive tone as he picked it up on the second ring.

      Gone was the teasing flirtation which usually edged his words. ‘Roxy,’ he said warily. ‘This is a surprise.’

      ‘I’ve had a visitor,’ she said flatly.

      There was a pause. ‘Go on.’

      ‘Titus Alexander came to my dressing room.’

      An odd, ugly note entered his voice. ‘And?’

      Roxy swallowed. ‘And not only did he inform me that I was illegally subletting his apartment—he also told me that I had to be out by the end of the week.’

      She waited. And waited. But what had she expected? That Martin Murray would tell her that the Duke was lying through his teeth? That she was safe and nothing was going to change? No, she hadn’t thought that for a minute, though maybe she had hoped—a foolish hope which withered the moment she heard the accountant’s answer.

      ‘Not my problem, I’m afraid, Roxy. I’m having to deal with my own stuff—like finding myself unemployed for the first time in fifteen years. Made “redundant” by that arrogant young upstart Torchester.’

      Roxy didn’t waste words by asking why he had lied to her. She knew exactly why he had lied to her—and exactly why she had turned a blind eye to it. There was only one question she needed to ask and deep down she had known the answer all along.

      ‘Do you think he means it?’

      At this he gave a laugh she’d never heard before. It was the sound of bitter cynicism cloaked with a kind of hollow resignation. ‘You bet your sweet ass he means it. The man is ruthless. I’d start looking round for a new place if I were you.’

      Her hand was trembling as she put the phone down, knowing that she had no right

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