A Vow of Obligation

Tawny fell back in her seat, pale blue eyes wide with disbelief as she stared back at the other woman in dismay. ‘You’ve got to be joking …’

‘There would be no risk. I’d tell you when he was out, you could go in and I could rush upstairs and wait next door in the storage room for you to bring the laptop out to me. Five minutes, that’s all it would take for me to delete those photos. You’ll replace it in his room and he’ll never know what happened to them!’ Julie argued forcefully. ‘Please, Tawny … it would mean so much to me. Haven’t you ever done something you regret?’

‘I’d like to help you but I can’t do something illegal,’ Tawny protested, pulling a face in the tense silence. ‘That laptop is his personal property and interfering with it would be a criminal offence—’

‘He’s never going to know that anyone’s even touched it! That possibility won’t even occur to him,’ Julie argued vehemently. ‘Please, Tawny. You’re the only person who can help me.’

‘I couldn’t—There’s just no way I could do something like that,’ Tawny muttered uneasily. ‘I’m sorry.’

Julie touched her hand to regain her attention. ‘We haven’t got much time—he’ll be checking out again the day after tomorrow. I’ll talk to you again at lunch time before you finish your shift.’

‘I won’t change my mind,’ Tawny warned, compressing her soft full mouth in discomfiture.

‘Think it over—it’s a foolproof plan,’ Julie insisted as she stood up, lowering her voice even more to add huskily, ‘And if it would make a difference, I’m willing to pay you to take that risk for me—’

‘Pay me?’ Tawny was very much taken aback by that offer.

‘What else can I do? You’re my only hope in this situation,’ Julie reasoned plaintively. ‘If a bit of money would make you feel better about doing this, of course I’m going to suggest it. I know how desperate you are to help your grandmother out.’

‘Look, money’s got nothing to do with the way I feel. Just leave it out of this,’ Tawny urged in considerable embarrassment. ‘If I was in a position to help out, it wouldn’t cost you a penny.’

Tawny returned to work with her thoughts in turmoil. Navarre Cazier, handsome, rich and privileged though he was, had cruelly used and abused Julie’s trust. Another rich four-letter word of a man was grinding an ordinary woman down. But that unfortunately was life, wasn’t it? The rich lived by different rules and enjoyed enormous power and influence. Hadn’t her own father taught her that? He had dumped her mother when she refused to have a termination and had paid her a legal pittance to raise his unwanted child to adulthood. There had been no extras in Tawny’s childhood and not much love on offer either from a mother who had bitterly regretted her decision to have her baby and a father who did not even pretend an interest in his illegitimate daughter. To be fair, her mother had paid a high price for choosing to bring her child into the world. Not only had her lover ditched her, but she had also found it impossible to continue her career.

Tawny suppressed those unproductive reflections and thought worriedly about Julie instead. She felt really bad about having refused to help her friend. Julie had been very good to her and had never asked her for anything in return. But why the heck had Julie offered her a financial bribe to get hold of that laptop? She was deeply embarrassed that Julie should be so aware of her financial constraints and regretted her honesty on that topic.

In truth, Tawny only worked at the hotel to earn enough money to ensure that her grandmother could continue to pay the rent on her tiny apartment in a private retirement village. Celestine, devastated by the combined death of her beloved husband and, with him, the loss of her marital home, had, against all the odds, contrived to make a happy new life and friends in the village, and there was little that Tawny would not do to safeguard the old lady’s tenure there. Unfortunately rising costs had quickly outstripped her grandmother’s ability to pay her bills. Tawny, having taken charge of Celestine’s financial affairs, had chosen to quietly supplement her grandmother’s income without her knowledge, which was why she was currently working as a chambermaid. Prior to the crisis in the old lady’s finances, Tawny had made her living by illustrating children’s books and designing greeting cards, but sadly there was insufficient work in that field during an economic crisis to stretch to shoring up Celestine’s income as well as covering Tawny’s own living costs. Now Tawny’s artistic projects took up evenings and weekends instead.

But, regardless of that situation, wasn’t it rather insulting that a friend should offer to pay you to do something for them? Tawny reasoned uneasily. On the other hand, wasn’t that inappropriate suggestion merely proof of Julie’s desperate need for her assistance?

Would it be so very bad of her to do what she could to help Julie delete those distasteful photos? While Tawny could not even imagine trusting a man enough to take pictures of her naked body, she could understand Julie’s cringing reluctance to continue featuring in some sort of X-rated scalp gallery on the guy’s laptop. That was a downright demeaning and extremely offensive prospect to have to live with. Would he let other men access those pictures? Tawny grimaced in disgust, incensed that a guy she had believed was attractive could turn out to be such a creep.

‘All right, I’ll have a go at getting hold of it for you,’ she told Julie at lunchtime.

Her friend’s face lit up immediately and a wide smile of satisfaction formed on her lips. ‘I’ll make sure you don’t regret it!’

Tawny was unconvinced by that assurance but concealed her fear of the consequences, feeling that she ought to be more courageous. She wore colourful vintage clothing, held strong opinions and her ultimate ambition was to become a cartoonist with a strip of her own in a magazine or newspaper. In short she liked to think of herself as an individual rather than a follower. But sometimes, she suspected that deep down inside she was more of a conventional person than she liked to admit because she longed for a supportive family and had never broken the law by even the smallest margin.

‘We’ll do it this afternoon. As soon as his room is empty, if there’s no sign of him having the laptop with him I’ll ring up and you can go straight in and get it. Just leave it in the storage room. I’ll be there within two minutes,’ Julie told her eagerly.

‘You’re absolutely sure that you want to do this?’ Tawny pressed worriedly. ‘Perhaps you should speak to him again. If we get caught—’

‘We’re not going to get caught!’ Julie declared with cutting conviction. ‘Stop making such a fuss.’

Tawny went pink, assumed that Julie’s outburst was the result of nervous tension and fell silent, but that tart response had set her own fiery temper on edge.

‘Just go back to work and act normally,’ Julie advised, shooting Tawny an apologetic look. ‘I’ll call you.’

Tawny returned with relief to changing beds, vacuuming and scrubbing bathrooms. She kept so busy she didn’t allow herself to think about that call coming and yet on some level she was on hyper alert for when she heard the faint ping of the lift doors opening down the corridor she jumped almost a foot in the air. Julie’s call telling her that his assistant had just left and the room was empty came barely a minute after that. Her heart beating very fast, Tawny sped down the passage with her trolley. Arming herself with a change of bedding as an excuse she used her pass key to let herself into Navarre Cazier’s spacious suite. She set the fresh sheets down on the arm of a sofa as her eyes did a frantic sweep of the reception room and zoomed in on the laptop sitting conveniently on the table by the window. Although it was the work of a moment to cross the room, unplug the computer from its charger and tuck it below her arm, her skin dampened with perspiration and her stomach churned. Turning on her heel, she literally raced back to the exit door, eager to hand over the laptop to Julie and refusing to even think about having to sneak back in again to return it.

Without the slightest warning, however, there was a click and the door of the suite snapped open. Eyes huge with fright, Tawny clutched the laptop and froze into stillness. Navarre Cazier appeared and it was not a good time for her to realise that he was much bigger than he had seemed at a distance. He towered over her five and a half feet by well over six inches, his shoulders wide as axe handles in his formal dark suit. He was much more of an athlete in build than the average businessman. She clashed in dismay with frowning chartreuse-green eyes, startlingly bright and unexpected in that olive-skinned face. Close up he was quite breathtakingly handsome.

‘Is that my laptop?’ he asked immediately, his attention flying beyond her to the empty table. ‘Has there been an accident? What are you doing with it?’

‘I … I er …’ Her heart was beating so fast it felt as if it were thumping at the foot of her throat and her mind was a punishing blank.

There was a burst of French from behind him and he moved deeper into the room to make way for the bodyguards that accompanied him virtually everywhere he went.

‘I will call the police, Navarre,’ his security chief, Jacques, a well-built older man, said decisively in French.

‘No, no … no need to bring the police in!’ Tawny exclaimed, now ready to kick herself for not having grabbed at the excuse that she had accidentally knocked the laptop off the table while cleaning.

‘You speak French?’ Navarre studied her with growing disquiet, taking in the uniform of blue tunic and trousers she wore with flat heels. Evidently she worked for the hotel in a menial capacity: there was an unattended cleaning trolley parked directly outside the suite. Of medium height and slender build, she had a delicate pointed face dominated by pale blue eyes the colour of an Alpine glacier set in porcelain-perfect skin, the combination enlivened by a mop of vivid auburn curls escaping from a ponytail. Navarre had always liked redheads and her hair was as bright as a tropical sunset.

‘My grandmother is French,’ Tawny muttered, deciding that honesty might now be her only hope of escaping a criminal charge.

If she spoke fluent French the potential for damage was even greater, Navarre reckoned furiously. How long had she had his laptop for? He had been out for an hour. Unfortunately it would only take minutes for her to copy the hard drive, gaining access not only to highly confidential business negotiations but also to even more personal and theoretically damaging emails. How many indiscreet emails of Tia’s might she have seen? He was appalled by the breach in his security. ‘What are you doing with my laptop?’

Tawny lifted her chin. ‘I’m willing to explain but I don’t think you’ll want an audience while we have that conversation,’ she dared.

His strong jawline clenched at that impertinent challenge as he read the name on her badge. Tawny Baxter, an apt label for a woman with such spectacular hair. ‘There is no reason why you should not speak in front of my security staff,’ he replied impatiently.

‘Julie—the receptionist you spent the night with on your last visit,’ Tawny specified curtly, surrendering the laptop as one of his security team put out his hands to reclaim the item. ‘Julie just wants the photos you took of her posing wiped from your laptop.’

His ebony brows drawing together, Navarre subjected her to an incredulous scrutiny while absently noting the full pouting curve of her pink lips. She was in possession of what had to be the most temptingly sultry mouth he had ever seen on a woman. Exasperated by that abstracted thought, he straightened his broad shoulders and declared, ‘I have never spent the night with a receptionist in this hotel. What kind of a scam are you trying to pull?’

‘Don’t waste your breath on this dialogue, Navarre. Let me contact the police,’ the older man urged impatiently.

‘Her name is Julie Chivers, she works on reception and right now she’s waiting in the storage room next door for the laptop,’ Tawny extended in a feverish rush. ‘All she wants is to delete the photos you took of her!’

With an almost imperceptible movement of his arrogant dark head, Navarre directed Jacques to check out that location and the older man ducked back out of the room. Tawny sucked in a lungful of air and tilted her chin. ‘Why wouldn’t you wipe the photos when Julie asked you to?’

‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ he countered with a chilly gravity that sank like an icicle deep into her tender flesh. ‘There was no night with a receptionist, no photos. Ditch the silly story. What have you done with my laptop?’

‘Absolutely nothing. I’d only just lifted it when you appeared,’ Tawny replied tightly, wondering why he was still lying and eagerly watching the door for Julie’s appearance. She was sure that once he recognised her friend as a former lover there would be no more talk of calling the police. But didn’t he even recognise Julie’s name? It occurred to her that she never wanted to become intimate with a man who didn’t care enough even to take note of her name.

‘It’s unfortunate for you that I came back unexpectedly,’ Navarre shot back at her, wholly unconvinced by her plea.

Of course she would try to tell him that she had not had enough time to do any real damage. But he was too conscious that she could have copied his hard drive within minutes and might even be concealing a flash drive beneath her clothing. He was in the act of doubting that the police would agree to have her strip-searched for the sake of his security and peace of mind so his attention quite naturally rested on her slender coltish shape.

She had a gloriously tiny waist. He could not help wondering if the skin of her body was as pearly and perfect as that of her face. When almost every woman he knew practically bathed in fake tan it was a novelty to see a woman so pale he could see the faint tracery of blue veins beneath her skin. Indeed the more he studied her, the more aware he became of her unusual delicate beauty and the tightening fullness at his groin was his natural masculine reaction to her allure. She had that leggy pure-bred look but those big pale eyes and that wickedly suggestive mouth etched buckets of raw sex appeal into her fragile features. That she could look that good even without make-up was unparalleled in his experience of her sex. In the right clothes with that amazing hair loose she would probably be a complete knockout. What a shame she was a humble chambermaid about to be charged with petty theft, he reflected impatiently, returning his thoughts to reality while marvelling at the detour into fantasy that they had briefly and bizarrely taken.

Jacques reappeared and shook his head in response to his employer’s enquiring glance. Something akin to panic gripped Tawny. Evidently Julie wasn’t still in the storage room ready and able to make an explanation. Until that instant Tawny had not appreciated just how much she had been depending on her friend coming through that door and immediately sorting out the misunderstanding.

‘Julie must have heard you come back and she’s gone back downstairs to Reception,’ Tawny reasoned in dismay.

‘I’m calling the police,’ Navarre breathed, turning to lift the phone.

‘No, let me call Reception and ask Julie to come up and explain first,’ Tawny urged in a frantic rush. ‘Please, Mr Cazier!’