Sure enough, Sakis’s guard dog was in place in the dark SUV, just like he’d been for the last three days. She didn’t bother looking out of her kitchen window because she knew there would be another SUV stationed in the back alley behind her building, should she get the notion of flinging herself out of her second-floor apartment window and making a run for it.
Forcing herself to enter her kitchen and turn on the kettle, she sagged against the counter and tried to breathe through the waves of pain that had become her endless reality since she’d been marched from Sakis’s Greek office.
She clamped her eyes shut to block out the look on his face after her confession.
You lied to me.
Such simple words, yet with those words her world had fallen apart. Because there was no going back. Sakis would always see her as the woman who’d worked her way into his bed only to betray him, especially when she’d known just how much betrayal and lies had ruined his childhood.
The kettle whistled. About to grab a mug from the cupboard, she heard the heavy slam of a car door, followed almost immediately by another. When several followed, she set the mug down and moved closer to the window.
The sight of a paparazzo clinging to the side of a cherry picker as it rose to her window was so comical, she almost laughed. When he raised his camera and aimed it towards her, Brianna dived for her kitchen floor. Through the window she’d opened to let in the non-existent summer breeze, she heard him shout her name.
‘Do you have a comment on the allegations against you, Miss Simpson?’
Crawling on her belly, she made her way to her hallway just as someone leaned on her doorbell.
The realisation that Sakis had truly thrown her to the wolves sent a lance of pain through her, holding her immobile for a full minute, until her pride kicked in.
She refused to hide away like a criminal. And she refused to be trapped in her own home.
If nothing else, she had a right to defend herself. Gritting her teeth for strength, and ignoring the incessant, maddening trill of her doorbell, she dashed into her room.
Grabbing the first set of clothes that came to hand, she pulled them on. Unfortunately, trainers and her suit didn’t go, so she forced her feet into four-inch heels, grabbed her bag and pulled a brush through her hair.
She opened the door and shot past Sakis’s shocked guards before they had a chance to stop her.
‘Miss Moneypenny, wait!’
She rounded on them as they caught up with her at the top of the stairs. ‘Lay a finger on me, and I’ll be the one calling the police. I’ll hit you with assault charges so fast, you’ll wonder what century it is.’ She felt a bolt of satisfaction when they gingerly stepped back.
She hurried down the stairs, noting that they gave hot pursuit but didn’t attempt to restrain her.
The glare of morning sunlight coupled with what seemed like a thousand camera flashes momentarily blinded her.
Questions similar to what the first cherry-picker-riding pap had flung at her came her way, but she’d been doing her job long enough to know never to answer tabloid questions.
With her sight adjusted, she plunged through the crowd and headed for the high street two hundred yards away. When she heard the soft whirr of an engine beside her, she didn’t turn around.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing, making yourself paparazzi bait?’ came the rough demand as rougher hands grasped her arms.