Fairytale Christmas: Mistletoe and the Lost Stiletto / Her Holiday Prince Charming / A Princess by Christmas

So innocent that he’d insisted on waiting until they were married before they moved their relationship beyond a few kisses.

How many women would have been dumb enough to fall for that fairy tale?

Forget the still small voice in the back of her head. The fact that he found it so easy to resist temptation, the fact that she was perfectly happy to go along with it, wasn’t panting with frustration, should have sent not just warning bells clanging but klaxons wailing an ear-splitting warning.

It was so obvious, faced with reality, that she was in love with the idea of being in love, the fairy tale, rather than the man. While Rupert…

Well, his motives were clear enough.

He could have paid a celebrity to be the face, the figure to relaunch his fashion chain, but he wanted a real woman who he would transform with his new ‘look’. An ordinary woman.

Apparently she was a breath of fresh air. Real. That was how the PR people had described her in their report. Not a model or a star, but someone who every women in their sales demographic would instantly relate to, aspire to be. Would believe.

So far, so simple. And the rest of it had started as a throwaway line scribbled in the margins of a report.

And she’d fallen for it, believed him, because it had never once occurred to her that it was all a big fat lie. What, for heaven’s sake, would be the point of that?

Innocent was right.

The point, of course, was money. A lot of money. Now she knew the truth, she could bring the whole edifice crashing down. It would cost him millions and he wasn’t about to let that happen.

She dug out her phone and with shaky fingers she keyed in a tweet while she had a chance.

Lies, lies, lies…

She stopped. There was no signal. Had she been cut off? Or was it just because she was in the deepest part of the basement, surrounded by concrete? She’d had one a couple of hours ago by the coffee machine…

It didn’t matter. Whatever the cause, she was, for the moment at least, totally on her own.

Nothing new there. She’d been on her own for most of her life. And if she was trembling by the time she tugged a comb through her damp hair it was with anger rather than fear.

She was absolutely furious with Rupert for lying to her, with Nathaniel Hart for making her want to believe him, but most of all with herself for being so gullible, so stupid.

Diary update: Everything was going so well. I was safe for the night. All I had to do was keep my head down, stay out of the way of security patrols and I was home dry. Well, wet, actually, because I couldn’t resist taking a shower…

Oh, for goodness’ sake, she thought, closing the phone. What was the point?

She was up the creek without a paddle and going nowhere. At least not for the moment. Once she was out of the basement all bets were off, but for now the best she could do was get dressed and be ready to take advantage of the slightest opportunity.

She lifted the towel from her shoulders and began vigorously rubbing at her hair. The last thing she needed was pneumonia. In fact…She gave up on the hair and sorted through the pile of discarded elf clothes, picking out the tights, bootees and even the hat, pushing them into the depths of her bag.

The bootees weren’t going to be snow-proof, but they would be a lot better than bare feet.

Guilt warred with a sense of triumph as she finished towelling herself off. Triumph won as she stepped into fragile lacy underwear which would do nothing to keep the cold out. She fastened her bra and then reached for her dress.

Her hand met the bare slats of the bench and she turned to look.

Her dress, along with the towel tossed aside by Nathaniel Hart, had slipped to the floor.

She made a wild grab for it but both dress and towel had been lying there quite long enough to soak up water like a sponge and, as she lifted it from the floor, it dripped icy-cold water down her legs.

In desperation she squeezed it. Rolled it up in a dry towel. The towel got wet. The dress did not get noticeably drier.

It was the elf costume or nothing.

She groaned. She might be in a mess but the dress did things to her figure that the elf costume could never hope to achieve. She knew what effect the dress had on Nathaniel Hart. Wearing that, she had a chance of distracting him but, while her underwear would have undoubtedly done the job with bells on, she could hardly make her escape in a couple of scraps of lace.

Too late to do any good, she moved to the far end of the bench where it was dry and climbed back into the only warm clothes she possessed. The elf suit. The gorgeous stripy green tights. The tunic that was a little too tight. The neat little belt with the pouch to keep her acorns in. Or whatever it was that elves ate. The flat, floppy around the ankles bootees.

Terrific.

At least she could put on some make-up. And she wasn’t talking about freckles.

Five minutes later, lips pink, eyes smudgy, blusher discreetly applied and her damp hair released from the iron grip of hair straighteners and curling ridiculously around her head, she tugged on the tunic and sighed.

This was so not a good look. Her only hope was that some persistent paparazzo would snatch a snap of her leaving the store, being bundled into Rupert’s car.

Or did that come under the realms of fantasy, too? There was an underground car park and that was where he’d pick her up, out of sight. Drive her away in a car with blackedout windows. Or just shoved to the floor out of sight. No need for pretence.

She gathered her coat and bag, scared but determined not to let it show. Then, with her hand on the door, she paused. She still had the file and that gave her an edge. Bargaining power. Removing it from her bag, she stowed it in an empty locker, then looked around for a place to hide the key.

Once that was done, there was nothing more she could do but face the music—or, more accurately, the deliciously elegant Nathaniel Hart.

She gave one more tug on the hem of the tunic, reminding herself that it could be worse—at least she was wearing more than a damp towel. Actually, come to think of it, that might not be…

No. Telling herself to behave, be brave—she had more to worry about than how she looked—she took a deep breath and opened the door.

No poker face this time.

Between the elf costume and her wet hair sticking out at all angles, it was not her finest fashion hour, at least if the eyebrow gymnastics were anything to go by.

Making the most of a bad job, she pasted on a bright smile and gave him a twirl. ‘What do you think?’ she asked. ‘Does my bum look big in this?’

There was a long moment—too long-while he considered the matter and her smile began to wobble. What kind of idiot drew attention to her worst bits?

‘What happened to your dress?’ he finally asked, avoiding her question.

‘Are you referring to the world’s most expensive floor cloth?’ she responded, giving herself a mental slap for asking a question to which she already knew the answer.

‘I don’t know. Am I?’

‘The dress that some idiot man managed to knock into a freezing puddle with a badly tossed towel?’ She didn’t wait for him to answer that one. ‘You don’t think I’d be wearing this if there was any choice, do you?’

‘You were happy enough to grab it this afternoon,’ he reminded her, ‘although I have admit that it is rather—’

She glared at him, daring him to say the word tight.

‘—green.’ He opened the door that led into the electrical department. ‘It goes with your eyes,’ he added, taking her elbow as he fell in beside her. Not in a frog-marching way. Just a touch, a guiding hand, rather like a gentleman escorting a lady in to dinner in some Jane Austen movie, but she wasn’t fooled by that. Or his attempt at gallantry. She knew he was simply keeping contact so that if she decided to make a run for it all he had to do was tighten his grip.