The Billionaire's Trophy Read Free Page B

don’t ?’ A winged ebony brow climbed as though she had surprised him and when he bent his head over the laptop on the desk, it was a relief for her to have a moment to catch her breath again while watching the light from the window behind her gleam over the glossy sheen of his luxuriant black hair.
    Catching herself on that thought, she didn’t know what was wrong with her and only wished she could kick her brain back into gear. Yes, he was a good-looking guy but that didn’t impress her, it being her experience that handsome men were usually very aware that they were handsome and invariably offended if a woman didn’t react with admiration. Not that Bastian Christou struck her as belonging to that category, she acknowledged grudgingly. She was of such minuscule importance on his scale that she was sure he couldn’t care less how she reacted to him. No, it was her own self and her pride that were affronted by her breathless, nervous state in his presence. A grown woman didn’t lose her ability to reason around an attractive man, at least not if she expected to be taken seriously as an employee in an executive office that was still very much a man’s world.
    ‘No, I don’t use that name...never have,’ Emmie proclaimed with a strained smile, recalling that he could only have got that name from her job application because she only employed it when officialdom required it. Perhaps it had lingered on his mind because it was unusual.
    Bastian Christou looked up with a slight smile and inexplicably that smile of his suddenly chilled Emmie to her bone marrow. ‘But that’s not quite true, is it?’
    Frozen there in front of his desk, Emmie blinked rapidly, unnerved by the ESP promptings that were warning her of a threat when there was no possible threat that she could see. ‘Sorry?’ she questioned uncertainly, having lost the thread of the conversation.
    ‘It’s untrue that you don’t use the name Emerald,’ Bastian declared, swivelling his laptop round for her to view what was on the screen.
    Emmie’s soft mouth fell wide when she saw the picture he was referring to, shock and disbelief vibrating through her from head to toe because she could not imagine how a personal photograph of hers could have ended up on the Internet for anyone to see. It had been taken at her graduation party on one of the very rare occasions when she dressed up and threw caution to the wind and the photo was still in her digital camera...or at least she had thought it was. ‘What’s this? Where did you find that photo?’ she gasped strickenly.
    ‘On the website belonging to the Exclusive Companions escort agency,’ Bastian confided, noting that she had turned as white as a sheet at his admission and experiencing an entirely unexpected pang of conscience because she contrived to appear genuinely shattered by his discovery. Of course, he reasoned, that merely proved that she had the useful skill of being a good actress in a challenging situation.
    ‘Exclusive C-Companions?’ Emmie stammered, for it was her mother’s business and she knew that her photograph could not have been uploaded to that website without her mother’s involvement. She was absolutely appalled and stared fixedly at that colourful image with a sinking heart. How on earth could Odette do that to her? Her mother knew she wanted no involvement with her business. ‘How did you find this?’
    ‘ Not because I was visiting the website,’ Bastian asserted with dry emphasis. ‘Someone else who works here drew it to my attention.’
    Nausea curled in her sensitive tummy. Who else knew? How many people? Inwardly she cringed in embarrassment. Who else was now convinced that she worked as an escort outside office hours? My goodness, was everyone she worked with talking about this behind her back? Humiliation clawed at her and she cursed the day she had moved in with her mother. What on earth was her picture doing on the website when she didn’t work as an escort? But