Midnight At Tiffany's

At the moment he was living in the penthouse of the apartment block his company had built, but not for one moment would he have called it home. The media had salivated over that particular project, and every unit had been sold before hitting the open market.

Chase was ready to sell but hadn’t yet decided where he was going to live once he did. His day was so busy it left him no time to think about it.

Taking advantage of the commotion, he turned and strode out of the room without looking back.

One phone call would have summoned his driver, but that would have meant being trapped inside a car. Tonight he was going to walk. Walking would clear his head.

Better to be alone and be himself than be someone else with a bunch of strangers.

Because that’s what they were. All of them. Even Victoria. Strangers. They didn’t know who he was and they weren’t interested.

Unobserved, he walked out of his own party without looking back.

MATILDA FOUND HER BAG, pulled out the emergency dress she always carried and dragged it over her soaking wet legs. It was nothing more than a long T-shirt, but it rolled into small spaces and was perfect for situations such as this.

The champagne had been vintage, apparently, so expensive that she was tempted to bend over and lick her own legs. It was the only way she was ever going to get close to champagne of this quality again.

Fired.

She’d been fired.

Crap.

It was bad enough that she’d lost her job, but worst of all she’d lost her chance to meet Chase Adams and engineer a way of sliding her manuscript onto his brother’s desk.

Maybe if she’d paid more attention to her surroundings and less to exactly what Lara would have been doing to Chase Adams in the bedroom, she might have seen the woman with the huge feathers sticking out of her dress. They’d caught the edge of a champagne glass and toppled the lot, like dominoes, only a great deal wetter.