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

‘It’s just one of the cleaning crews,’ he said quickly, seizing her wrist as panic flared in her face and she turned, hunting for the nearest escape route. ‘Good grief, you’re shaking like a leaf. What the hell has he done to you? Do you need the police?’

‘No!’ Her throat moved as she swallowed.

‘Are you sure? What about this?’ he demanded, releasing her wrist, lifting his hand to skim his fingertips lightly over the bruise darkening at her temple.

She stared at him. ‘What? No! A photographer caught me with his camera. It was an accident. Nothing to do with Rupert.’ She looked anxiously towards the archway, the voices were getting nearer. ‘Please…’

‘Okay.’ He wasn’t convinced—he’d heard every variation of the bruise excuse going—but this wasn’t the moment to press it. ‘We’re done here,’ he said, heading for the nearest lift.

‘You can’t take the trolley out of the food hall,’ she protested as the doors opened.

‘You want to stay and pack the groceries into carriers?’ he asked, stopping them from closing with his foot.

A burst of song propelled her into the lift. ‘No, you’re all right.’

‘Doors closing. Going up…’

‘What?’ She turned on him. ‘Where are you taking me?’

‘Believe me, you’ll be a lot safer on the top floor than the bottom one,’ he said quickly. ‘There’ll be no security staff. No curious cleaners wondering why you look familiar. Where they’ve seen you before.’

She opened her mouth, closed it again, her jaw tightening as she swallowed down whatever she was going to say.

‘You’d never have got away with it, Lucy.’

‘You don’t know that,’ she declared, staring straight ahead. ‘And it would test your security staff. If they found me you’d know they’re as good as you think they are.’

‘Believe me, they are. And you’d spend the night in a police cell.’

‘Oh, but—’

‘They don’t call me when they find intruders, Lucy. They call the local police station and then the game would be up. If you’re so sure that the cleaners would recognise you, I think it’s a fair bet to assume that whoever turned up to arrest you would, too.’

She slumped back against the side of the lift. ‘You’re right, of course. And the elf costume would confirm everything that Rupert was saying about me. That I’m one sandwich short of a picnic.’

‘It wouldn’t look good,’ he agreed. ‘But if you really do have your heart set on spending the night in a tent, I’ll go and fetch one of those pop-up ones. You can set it up on the bedroom floor.’

The lift came to a halt. ‘Tenth floor…Customer services. Accounts. Doors opening…’

‘Bedroom floor?’ She frowned. ‘I thought the bedroom department was on the fifth…’

She stopped, blushing, remembering too late how she knew that.

‘Forget the bedroom department,’ he said, leading the way past the customer services department, down a corridor past empty offices. ‘Have you never heard of living over the shop?’

‘Over the corner shop, maybe,’ she said as he used a swipe card to open a door that led to an internal lobby containing a private lift from the car park and a pair of wide double doors. ‘But not…’

He keyed a number into a security pad, opened the door and, as he stood back to allow her to precede him, her protest died away.

Ahead of her was the most striking room Lucy had ever seen. Acres of limed floor. A pair of huge square black leather sofas. Starkly modern black and steel furniture. Dove-grey walls. No paintings, no colour, not a single thing to distract from the view through the soaring wall of glass in front of her. Constant movement, the ever-changing vibrant colour of the cityscape against the monochrome room.

‘Wow!’ she exclaimed, gazing out over a London lit up and laid out at her feet like fairyland. ‘You actually live here?’ she asked, moving closer.

There were lights everywhere.

Not just the Christmas lights, but every famous landmark floodlit to show it at its best. There was traffic crossing bridges, strings of lights along the Thames. Even the aircraft coming into land, navigation lights winking, added to the drama.

And Christmas trees, everywhere there were Christmas trees.

Big ones in squares, rows of small ones atop buildings, every shape and size in gardens and shining out of windows. The colours reflected in the big soft flakes of snow falling like feathers over the city, settling on parks, covering trees, rooftops. Wiping the world clean.

He hadn’t answered and she turned to him, expecting to see him smiling, amused by her totally uncool reaction.

But his face was expressionless.

‘When I’m in London,’ he said. ‘There are stores all over the country, as well as abroad. I seem to spend a lot of time in hotels.’

‘They don’t all have apartments like this on the top floor?’

‘No. I can say with confidence that this is unique. It was commissioned by my cousin, Christopher Hart, as part of the refurbishment of the Hastings & Hart flagship store.’

‘It’s amazing. I bet you can’t wait to get home.’

‘This isn’t home…’ He bit off the words as if they’d escaped before he could stop them. And when she waited for him to tell her why, ‘It’s a long story.’

‘Is it? Well, here’s the deal. You tell me yours and I’ll tell you mine.’

‘Long and very boring. Make yourself at…’

‘Home?’ she offered, filling the gap.

He managed a smile. He had an entire repertoire of them, she discovered. Sardonic. Amused. The one that lit up her insides, fizz, whoosh, bang, like a New Year firework display.

And then there was this one. The blank-eyed kind you cranked up when you didn’t want anyone to know how you were really feeling. The shutters had come down so fast she almost heard them clang, excluding her. And now they were down she knew how much she wanted to go back two minutes.

‘Or not,’ she said when the silence had gone on for far too long.

‘My problem, not yours, Lucy. Look around. Find yourself a room—there are plenty to choose from. I’ll be in the kitchen.’

He didn’t wait to see if she accepted his invitation, but returned to the trolley, disappeared through a door. Something had touched a raw nerve and while every instinct was urging her to go after him, put her arms around him, kiss it better, he might as well have painted a sign saying keep out on his back.

Instead, she took him at his word and looked around. The small flat she’d occupied at the top of Rupert’s townhouse had been elegant, comfortably furnished, but this was real estate on an entirely different level.

It was the kind of apartment that she’d seen featured in the ‘at home’ features in Celebrity. So tidy that it looked as if no one lived there.

This was a somewhat extreme example, she decided. There was no Christmas tree here, no decorations. Not so much as a trace of tinsel.

Maybe, she decided, when you worked with it all day, you needed to escape. Maybe.