The Bodyguard In Her Room

By Sophie Pembroke

Step behind the hotel room doors of the Chatsfield, London…

In London for her latest Hollywood film's press junket, up and coming actress Bethany Lord is hiding from a storm of scandal that could threaten everything she's worked so hard to achieve. But little does she know that the biggest threat to her isn't the press outside the Chatsfield, London, it's the shocking sensual tension caused by man who has been sent to protect her!

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Australia
• Release date: Jun 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781488744273

Sophie Pembroke

Sophie Pembroke has been dreaming, reading and writing romance ever since she read her first Mills and Boon as part of her English Literature degree at Lancaster University, so getting to write romances for a living really is a dream come true! Sophie lives in a little Hertfordshire market town with her scientist husband and her incredibly imaginative four-year-old daughter. She writes stories about friends, family and falling in love, usually while drinking too much tea and eating homemade cakes. Or, when things are looking very bad for her heroes and heroines, white wine and dark chocolate.She keeps a blog at www.SophiePembroke.com which should be about romance and writing, but is usually about cake and castles instead.

Book preview

Chapter One

‘Bethany! Bethany! Ms Lord!’ The calls and shouts merged together in her brain, like there was only one voice screaming her name instead of hundreds. Bethany kept her head dipped, blinking every time a camera flash went off, until the red carpet under her feet turned into a kaleidoscope of twisting light and shade.

Not the right red carpet, though. Not the carpet that meant it was almost time to leave this godforsaken city. No, that red carpet was still two nights and about two hundred interviews away. As much as she just wanted to get through the premiere and get the hell out of town, she had to survive the press junket first. She owed it to Neil, for taking a chance on her and giving her a shot at a new kind of role. Hell, she’d even got to wear armour for a bit, which definitely made a change from short skirts and high heels.

She kind of wished she had the armour on now, actually.

But she didn’t. She didn’t even have Liam Hunter, her co-star, beside her. Perhaps his considerably higher celeb status would have attracted attention away from her. And Liam was nice, nicer than she’d expected such a big star to be. He’d been a good friend to her when she’d been finding her feet on set – and just a friend, whatever the press said!

She owed it to Neil and Liam to keep walking along the damn carpet and get on with her job. She couldn’t skip out on everyone now, just when the publicity machine for Time Could Wait was kicking into high gear.

Even if she really, really wanted to. And even if she knew that the reporters weren’t going to care about the film. They only had one subject they wanted to ask Bethany Lord questions on this week. And she needed to find out what the answers were, before she could figure out how much of them she could share.

I need to talk to Megan.

‘Bethany! Is it true? Did you arrange bail for your brother-in-law today?’

Bethany winced. On the bright side, at least they weren’t all asking her if she was sleeping with Liam anymore.

An arm hovered above her shoulder, not quite touching, but close enough that she could feel its presence. Dylan. The security guard Neil had insisted she take with her to London. She’d laughed at the idea when he’d first brought it up, but now it seemed like he’d had a better idea of how her week would go than she had.

She should be grateful to have him, shielding her from the shouting and the questions and the cameras, she supposed. But she wasn’t. And if that made her an ungrateful, spoilt little starlet, like the press would no doubt claim, well… she didn’t care. Not this week. This week, she’d earned some petty nastiness, even if it was only in her head.

She just wanted to be alone. She wanted to be able to visit London, see the sights, or even just veg out in her hotel suite without having a permanent shadow. Someone who told her with a look every time he thought she was doing something ‘inadvisable’.

‘What about the assault charges, Bethany?’ Another journalist, American this time, judging by the accent. God, had they chased her here on the next plane, the moment the Internet got