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What else could he have done when Roxanne’s face was continuing to haunt him—appearing in his fractured dreams with alarming regularity? Sometimes he would waken, his body screaming with tension as he wondered whether the threat of some natural predator outside his tent had caused his senses to be so instantly alert. But no. The only threat was the turbulent nature of his thoughts and a sense of impatience that he couldn’t manage to rid himself of her seductive memory.
He walked over to the phone to see that the message box was completely full and he yawned. They could wait. He would take a long shower followed by a good night’s sleep and tomorrow he would tackle the work which had built up in his absence. He wanted to prolong his vacation by one more evening—because hadn’t one of the best things about it been the complete lack of modern amenities? No phone. No computer. No TV. Life was certainly simpler without the constant interruptions of modern life.
But habit made him switch on his mobile phone to see that it was also full of messages from numbers that he didn’t recognise. It started ringing immediately and he saw that it was Guy Chambers, who had treated Roxanne when she’d had pneumonia. Could Guy also wait until tomorrow?
Maybe not. He sighed, knowing that he couldn’t keep the world at bay for ever. He clicked the connection. ‘Hello?’
‘Titus?’
‘Funnily enough, I do usually answer my own phone.’
‘Where the hell have you been?’
‘I took a safari trip to Kenya. A kind of late birthday present to myself.’ Titus frowned. ‘Why, should I have checked with you first?’
There was a brief silence. ‘Have the press been in touch with you?’
‘No. Why would they?’
‘So you haven’t seen the Net?’
‘No, thank God. I’m happy to say that I haven’t been near a computer for an entire fortnight.’
‘I think perhaps you should.’ Guy’s voice sounded more than a little strained. ‘Try typing “Marilyn + Duke’s totty” into YouTube and see what happens.’
Titus froze. ‘What the hell’s going on, Guy?’
‘I think you should ask Roxanne,’ said the medic. ‘It seems that maybe she’s trying to resurrect her career on the back of her association with you.’
With an angry little snarl, Titus cut the connection and went immediately to his study, staring out of the window as the computer fired into life, barely noticing that the winter drabness had been broken by the monochrome splash of the snowdrops which carpeted the oak tree.
His mouth was dry as he tapped in the bizarre key words, until a rectangle appeared on the screen with the frozen image of Roxanne at its centre. He pressed on the arrow and the image began to move—all blonde hair and scarlet lips and that incredible glittering body looking almost as if it were naked as she sang. He heard the husky and very sexual inflection as her voice lingered on the words Duke of Torchester. With a growing feeling of nausea he watched the clip all the way through, registering that it had received over a million and a half hits. And then he clicked onto the search engine and typed in the words Roxy Carmichael + The Lollipops—and it all began to make sense.
There were thousands of items about Roxy singing at his party. There was speculation that they were lovers—confirmed by an unnamed guest at the party claiming to have seen the two of them disappearing into Titus’s bedroom. But most damning of all was the news that The Lollipops’ Sweetest Hits had shot up the charts and that there was now a very real possibility that the group would re-form.
Titus was so angry that he slammed his fist down on the sycamore surface of the desk, only just missing the inlaid Sèvres porcelain which had made his acquisition of this rare piece so difficult.
How dared she?
How dared she?
He wanted to blaze round and confront her, until he realised with a start that he had no idea where she lived or even where her father lived. That Roxanne Carmichael lived an itinerant life, which only reinforced her general unsuitability to be anything other than a member of his staff.
But the gypsy-like quality of her existence made him momentarily pause as he tried to get his head around the instability of her lifestyle. What must that be like? he wondered. To have known such fabulous wealth until the crackpot investments of her father had left her with nothing. No money and no real place to call home. Until he forced himself to remember how ruthlessly she had exploited th
eir relationship and his anger made him pick up the phone.
After speaking to someone at his club, he quickly hired a private investigator and by the following afternoon he had the information he needed. She had a live-in job, working as a chambermaid at the Granchester Hotel. Her hours were from six until midday and then she spent a further two hours, between four and six, turning down the guests’ beds for the night. Her room (537) could be found on the fifth floor of an anonymous-looking block at the back of the hotel complex.
It almost killed him but he forced himself to wait until she had finished work, damping down his natural inclination to storm round there and demand that she be removed from her shift and brought to see him immediately. That was what he would have done in the past, he realised. Been unable to wait. Used his status to have the rules bent for him. So what had changed?
In the grey and drizzly early evening, he drove to the back of the hotel and, shortly after six, saw a familiar figure appear through a side door and make her way through the car park. She was wearing some kind of hat, the brim shielding her strained features, and she hugged her jacket close to what looked like an alarmingly slender frame. He felt his heart leap in his chest but he sucked in a deep breath until he had composed himself, reminding himself that she had used him as ruthlessly as any woman could use a man.
He gave her ten minutes while he listened to the news—the stories of bombs and rebellion not really registering as the minute hand ticked slowly around his watch. And then he locked his car and made his way over to the tower-block, riding up in the utilitarian grey metal lift to the fifth floor.
His thumb paused over the doorbell of number 537 and he realised that a jumble of feelings was making him feel … angry. No, it was more than anger. It was uncertainty, too. What if she wasn’t alone? What if that pale and supple body was currently writhing underneath another man? Viciously, he jammed his finger hard on the bell and then had to wait so long for an answer that he began to wonder whether the investigator had got the right apartment.
And then she opened the door and Titus found that just seeing her again made his first snarled accusation die on his lips. And he couldn’t for the life of him work out why. She’d lost weight again. Far too much weight. And her eyes were looking at him with an expression he couldn’t make out. Was it guilt? he wondered grimly.
