Fairytale Christmas

She had to get off the ground floor and out of sight—now—and, giving up on the attempt to look casual, she kicked off her remaining shoe—after all, if she was four inches shorter she’d be less noticeable—and stuffed it, along with the file, in her bag.

As far as she could recall, the nearest powder room was on the third floor. If she made that without being discovered, she could hole up there for a while, lock herself in a cubicle and think. Something she should have done before barging into that press conference.

Avoiding the glass lifts and escalators—her red coat was too bright, too noticeable and the people following her had been close enough, smart enough to have figured out where she’d gone to earth—she hurried towards the stairs.

It was a good plan. The only problem with it was that by the time she’d reached the first floor she had a stitch in her side, her legs felt like jelly and her head was swimming from the crack on the temple.

For a moment she bent double as she tried to ease the pain.

‘Are you all right?’ A sweet lady was looking at her with concern.

‘Fine,’ she lied. ‘Just a stitch.’ But the minute the woman was out of sight she slithered behind a floor-to-ceiling arrangement of silver and white snowflakes that had been constructed in the corner where the stairs turned. Safely out of sight, she sank down onto the floor and used her free hand to massage her ankles, which were aching from the strain. She pulled a face as she saw the state of her foot. Her shredded tights. But there was nothing she could do about that now.

Instead, she leaned back against the wall to catch her breath, regarding the state-of-the-art all-singing, alldancing phone that had so quickly become a part of her new life with uncertainty.

It held all her contacts, appointments. She dictated her thoughts into it. Her private diary. The elation, the disbelief, the occasional doubt. And it was her connection to a world that seemed endlessly fascinated by her.

Her Facebook page, the YouTube videos, her Twitter account.

Rupert’s PR people hadn’t been happy when they’d discovered that she’d signed up to Twitter all by herself. Actually, it had been her hairdresser who’d told her that she was being tweeted about and showed her how to set up her own account while waiting for her highlights to take.

That had been the first warning that she wasn’t supposed to have a mind of her own, but keep to the script.

Once they’d realised how well it was working, though, they’d encouraged her to tweet her every thought, every action, using the Cinderella hashtag, to her hundreds of thousands of followers. Keep them up to date with her transformation from Cinderella into Rupert’s fairy tale princess.

Innocently selling the illusion. Doing their dirty work for them.

But it was a two-way thing.

Right now her in-box was filling up with messages from followers who had watched the web feed, seen the ruckus and, despite everything, she smiled as she read them.

@LucyB Nice bag work, Cinders! What’s occurring?

#Cinderella

WelshWitch, [+] Wed 1 Dec 16:08

@LucyB What’s the b*****d done, sweetie?

#Cinderella

jenpb, [+] Wed 1 Dec 16:09

@LucyB DM me a contact number. You’re going to

need help. #Cinderella

prguru, [+] Wed 1 Dec 16:12

Too true, she thought, the smile fading. But not from ‘prguru’, aka Mr Public Relations, the man famous for selling grubby secrets to grubby newspapers and gossip mags. It didn’t matter to him if you were a model in rehab, a politician having an affair with his PA or the victim of some terrible tragedy. He’d sell your story for hard cash and turn you into a celebrity overnight.

Nor any of the other public relations types lining up to jump in and feed off her story. As if she’d trust anyone in the PR business ever again.

She wasn’t sure how long the phone would function—Rupert would surely pull the plug the minute he thought of it—so she quickly thumbed in a message to her followers while she had the chance.

And maybe she should update her diary, too. Just in case anything happened to her. Something else her hairdresser had clued her up on. That she could set up a private web document, record her thoughts on her phone and then send it to be stored on her own private Internet space.

‘Think of it as your pension, princess,’ he’d said.

She’d thought him cynical, but she had started keeping a diary, mostly because there were some things she hadn’t been able to confide to anyone else.

Diary update: Day hit the skids after the photoshoot when I realised I’d forgotten the wedding file and went to the office to borrow R’s copy. His dragon of a personal assistant had gone with him to the Lucy B press launch and her assistant is on holiday so there was a temp holding the fort or I would never have been handed the key to his private filing cabinet.

I had my hand on the wedding file when I spotted the one next to it. The one labelled ‘The Cinderella Project’.

Well, of course I opened it. Wouldn’t you?

Now meeting with wedding planner off. Celebration off. Dinner at Ritz most definitely off. As for wedding…Off, off, off.

Time to Tweet the good news.

Thanks for concern, tweeps. Fairy tale fractured—kissed prince, got frog. HEA cancelled. End of story.

#Cinderella

LucyB, [+] Wed 1 Dec 16:41

The phone belted out the ghastly ringtone again just as she clicked ‘send’ and made her jump nearly out of her skin. It was a sharp reminder of the need to keep her head down and she switched it to silent, unable to cut herself off entirely.

There had to be someone she could ring. Someone she could trust. But not from here.

This was no haven.

She had to move before someone spotted her, but first she had to do something to change her appearance.

She’d felt so utterly Christmassy when she’d set off in her bright red coat that morning. Utterly full of the joys of a season that had never before felt so exciting, so full of promise.

Now she felt as conspicuous as Santa in a snowdrift.

She would have liked to abandon it. Abandon everything. Strip off, change back into who she was. Her real self, not this manufactured ‘princess’.

Easier said than done.

This morning she’d had everything a woman could possibly want. This afternoon she had nothing in the world except what she stood up in and it was going to be freezing tonight.

But she could manage without the coat for now and, easing it off in the cramped space, she folded it inside out so that only the black lining showed. Better, although she could have done with a hat to cover her head.

She didn’t even have a scarf. Why would she? Until half an hour ago she was being chauffeured everywhere, an umbrella held over her head at the slightest suggestion of anything damp descending from the sky whenever she stepped onto a pavement. Cosseted. Precious.

Very precious. A lot of time and money had been invested in her. And Rupert—not the fantasy figure of her dreams, but the real one—would expect, demand a profit for all that effort, cost.

Legs still a little shaky, she shouldered her bag, tucked her coat over her arm and, still clutching her phone in her hand, peered cautiously around the display.

No sign of any big scary men, or journalists, hunting her down, just shoppers preoccupied with what to wear at a Christmas party or buying gifts for their loved ones. Taking a deep breath and doing her best to look as if it was the most normal thing in the world, she eased herself back into the flow.

It took all her nerve to take one ladylike step after the other, matching her pace to those around her and trying to look as if walking barefoot through the poshest store in London in December was absolutely normal, when what she really wanted to do was take off, race up the stairs two at a time and get out of sight.

She kept her eyes straight ahead instead of looking about her to check for anything suspicious, doing absolutely nothing that might draw attention to herself.

Nat called down to his head of security to brief him on the fact that they might have a ‘situation’; something to keep an eye on. That done, he continued his afternoon walk through the store, conscientiously looking in on each department before heading for the stairs to the next floor.

Even at the height of the Christmas buying frenzy the H&H reputation for perfection had to be maintained. He might not want to be here, but no one would ever be able to accuse him of letting standards slip and he was alert for anything that jarred on the eye, anything out of place.

Why, for instance, had the woman ahead of him taken off her coat? Was the store too warm? It was essential that shoppers had both hands free, but it was a delicate balancing act keeping the store comfortable for both staff and customers who were dressed for outdoors.

Not that he was complaining about the view.

She had pale blonde hair cut in soft, corn silk layers that seemed to float around her head, stirring a thousand memories. Despite the fact that they were in the middle of the busiest shopping season of the year, he wanted to slow the world down, call out her name so that she’d turn to him with an unguarded smile…

He slammed the door on the thought but, even while his brain was urging him to pass her, move on, the rest of him refused to listen, hanging back so that he could hold on to the illusion for a moment longer.

Foolish.

She was nothing like the fragile woman whose memory she’d evoked. On the contrary, the black cashmere sweaterdress she was wearing clung enticingly to a figure that curved rather more than was fashionable. No snow queen, this. Inches shorter, she was an altogether earthier armful. Not the kind of woman you worshipped from afar, but the kind built for long, dark winter nights in front of an open fire.

Then, as his gaze followed the pleasing curve of her hip to the hem of her short skirt and he found himself enjoying the fact that her legs lived up to the rest of the package, he realised that she wasn’t wearing any shoes.

She might have taken them off for a moment’s relief. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d seen a woman walking barefoot through the store carrying shoes that were pinching after a hard day’s shopping. But she wasn’t laden with glossy carriers. The only bag she was carrying was a soft leather tote clutched close to her side beneath the coat, heavy, but with the weight of a protruding file rather than parcels, gift-wrapped by his staff.

But what really jarred, jolting him out of the firelight fantasy, was the fact that one foot of the ultra-fine black tights she was wearing had all but disintegrated. That her slender ankles had been splashed with dirt thrown up from the wet pavements.

As if sensing him staring, she turned, still moving, and almost in slow motion he saw her foot miss the step and she flung out her arm, grabbing for him as she stumbled backwards.

He caught her before she hit the stairs and for a moment they seemed to hang there, suspended above them, his hand beneath her as she peered up at him with startled kitten eyes, her arm flung around his neck.

His head filled with the jarringly familiar scent of warm skin overlaid with some subtle, expensive perfume that jumped to his senses, intensified colour, sound, touch…the softness of the cashmere, the curve of her back, her weight against his palm as he supported her, kissing close to full, soft lips, slightly parted as she caught her breath.

His world was reduced to the pounding of his heart, her breath against his cheek, her gold-green eyes peering up at him over a voluptuous cowl collar that was sliding, seductively, off one shoulder.

She smelled like a summer garden, of apples and spice and, as he held her, a rare, forgotten warmth rippled through him.

Chapter Two

LUCY was drowning in raw sensation. Lying in the arms of a total stranger, drowning in the quicksilver heat of his eyes, his touch, parting her lips to gasp in air, struggling to breathe as she went under for the third time.

What was she thinking? What was she doing?

For a moment her brain, its buffer overloaded with more information, more emotion, more of just about everything than a body was built to handle, had backed up, was refusing to compute.

On some distant level she knew she had to move, run, but here, now, only the most primitive sensations were getting through. Touch, warmth, confusion…

‘The bedroom department is on the fifth floor,’ someone said with a chuckle as she passed and Nat felt, rather than saw the sudden realisation hit her.

The sheer madness of it. But her reaction was not the same dazed feeling that had him staring at her like an idiot. Not even an embarrassed laugh.

Instead she emitted a little squeak of alarm and squirmed away from him, using her hands and feet to scrabble backwards up the steps before she got far enough away to turn, push herself to her feet and run.

‘No!’

It wasn’t a command, it was the cry of a man bereft.

‘Stop!’

But the urgency of his words spurred her on, giving her feet wings as she bolted, dodging through slower moving shoppers, taking the stairs two at a time, fear driving her escape.

Leaving him shaking, frozen to the spot while visitors to the store flowed around him. Not surprise, or pleasure, or even amusement at an unexpectedly close encounter with a stranger. Raw fear that dredged up the memory of another woman who’d run from his arms. Who, just for a moment, he’d forgotten.

Fear, and the bruise darkening her temple.

Someone tutted irritably at him for blocking the stairs and he forced himself to move, pick up the shoe that had tumbled, unnoticed, from her bag.

He turned it in his hand.

It bore an expensive high-end designer label at odds with the damp edge around the platform sole, splashes of pavement dirt on the slender and very high stiletto heel. This was not a shoe for walking in the rain. It had been made to ride in limousines, walk along red carpets, to be worn by the consort of a very rich man. The kind who employed bodyguards.

Could she be the one the two men on the ground floor were seeking? That might explain her fear, because she hadn’t run from his touch. On the contrary, she’d been equally lost, wrapped up in a sizzling moment of discovery until a crass comment had jolted her back to reality.

He didn’t know who she was or why they were looking for her, only that she was afraid, running perhaps for her life, and the last thing he wanted was to draw more attention to her. No one hunted a frightened woman in his store, not even him, and he clamped down on the swamping need to race after her, reassure her, know her.

Not that there was any need to hunt.

If she was looking for a hiding place, common sense suggested that she was heading for the nearest Ladies cloakroom, looking for somewhere to clean up, hide out for a while.

But why?

His jaw tightened as he continued up the stairs with rather more speed, fighting to hold back the memories of another frightened woman. Vowing to himself that, whoever she was, she’d find sanctuary within his walls. That history wouldn’t repeat itself.

He’d ask one of the senior floor managers to check on her, return her shoe, offer whatever assistance she felt appropriate. A new pair of tights with the compliments of the store. A discreet exit. A car, if necessary, to take her wherever she needed to go.

But his hand was shaking as he called Security again, wanting to know where the two men were now.

Before he could speak, he was practically knocked off his feet by one of them, racing up the stairs, heedless of the safety of the women and children in his way, running through, rather than around them, scattering bags, toys.

His first reaction was to go after him, toss him bodily out of the store, but a child was crying and he had no choice but to stop and ensure that no one was hurt, pick up scattered belongings and summon one of his staff to offer the courtesy of afternoon tea in the Garden Restaurant. Deal with the complaints before they were voiced. It was a point of honour that no one left Hastings & Hart unhappy.

But, all the time he was doing that, the questions were pounding at his brain.

Whose bodyguards? Who was her husband, lover? More to the point, who was she?

And why was she so scared?

While her face—what had been visible over the big, enveloping collar—had seemed vaguely familiar, she wasn’t some instantly recognizable celebrity or minor royal. If she had been, her bodyguards wouldn’t have wasted time scouring the store for her but would have gone straight to his security staff to enlist their help using CCTV. Keeping it low-key. No drama.

There was something very wrong about this and, moving with considerably more urgency now, he ordered Security to find and remove the two men from the store. He didn’t care who they worked for, or who they’d lost, they had worn out their welcome.

‘Hold the lift!’ Lucy, trembling more now than when she’d run from the press conference, heart pounding beyond anything she’d ever experienced, sprinted for the closing doors. ‘Thanks,’ she gasped as someone held them and she dived in, squeezing into a corner, her back to the door where she wouldn’t be instantly visible when they opened again. Her brain working logically on one level, while everything else was saying, no…Go back…

‘Doors closing. Going down…’

She snapped out of the mental dream state in which she was floating above the stairs, her whole world contained in a stranger’s eyes.

Nooooo! Up, up…

The recorded announcement listed the departments as, despairing, she was carried back down to the ground floor. ‘Perfumery, accessories, leather goods, stationery. Ground floor. Doors opening.’

As the doors slid open, she risked a glance, then froze as she caught sight of one of Rupert’s bodyguards scanning the surge of passengers making a beeline for the exit.

She pressed herself back into the corner of the lift, keeping her head down, drawing a curious glance from a child who looked up at her as the lift rapidly filled. Holding her breath until the doors finally closed, aware that it wasn’t just the people she recognized who would be searching for her.

She’d got used to the front page—she’d been booked for a photoshoot this afternoon just to show off her new haircut, for heaven’s sake—but this was different.

She’d announced to the world that she had the goods on Rupert Henshawe and it wouldn’t be just the gossip magazines who’d want to know where she was.

Within hours there would be a press-orchestrated manhunt. It was probably already underway. And there was the risk that any minute now someone was going to say Excuse me, but aren’t you, Lucy B?

It had happened before when she’d been shopping and the result tended to be mayhem. It was as if everyone wanted to touch her, capture a little of the magic.

Rupert’s marketing men had got that right, but it was the last thing she wanted now so she kept her head tucked well down, desperate not to catch anyone’s eye.

Not all eyes were over five feet from the ground, however, and she found herself being scrutinised by the little girl, who continued to stare at her as the recorded announcement said, ‘Going down…Sporting goods, gardening and recreation, electrical. And…’ there was a pause. ’…The North Pole…’

The rest was drowned out by whoops of excitement.

‘Are you going to see Santa?’ the child asked her as the doors closed.

Santa?

Well, that explained why the North Pole had been relocated to a department store basement.

‘We’re going on a sleigh ride to see him at the North Pole,’ she confided.

‘Well, golly…What a treat.’

Right now a sleigh ride to the North Pole was exactly what she could do with. She’d planned to clean herself up, certain she’d be safe for a while in the Ladies. She didn’t know what had made her look back. Just a feeling, a prickle on the back of her neck…

The man following her hadn’t been a bodyguard. She knew them all and that wasn’t a face she would have forgotten.

Eyes grey as granite, with just a spark of silver to lighten an overall sense of darkness; a reflection from the store’s silver and white decorations, no doubt. That moment of magic was all in her imagination. It had to be. Whoever he was, he’d oozed the kind of power and arrogance she’d come to associate with Rupert’s most intimate circle.

He was a power broker, the kind of man who took orders rather than giving them. She’d learned to recognise the type. Mostly they ignored her and she was happy about that, but there had been an intensity in his look as he’d caught her, held her, that had turned her bones to putty. And not with fear.

A déjà vu moment if ever there was one, the difference being that whatever Rupert had been feeling on the day he’d picked her up, dusted her off, all concern and charm, her heart rate hadn’t gone through the roof. The air hadn’t crackled, sizzled, fried her brains. He’d taken his time, wooed her so gently, so…so damn sweetly that she’d fallen for every scummy lie. Hook, link and sinker.

She’d thought he was the genuine article, a real Prince Charming, when the truth was he hadn’t actually fancied her enough to jump her bones.

The grey-eyed stranger, on the other hand, had made her forget everything with a look. It was as if his touch had fired up some deep, untapped sexual charge and she felt her skin flush with heat from head to toe at the memory, the promise of the kiss that she’d been waiting for all her life. The real thing.

Maybe.

She shivered. Shook her head. She’d been drawn into a web of lies and deceit and she would never be able to trust anyone ever again. Never be able to take anyone at face value.

Mortified as she’d been at being discovered as good as kissing a total stranger on the stairs, that remark had jolted her back to reality. Common sense and self-preservation had kicked in and she’d run because there were some mistakes a smart woman didn’t make twice.

Some she didn’t make once.

She’d thought the Ladies room would provide a safe haven but, even as she’d bolted, she’d realised her mistake. It would be obvious to anyone with half a brain cell that was where she’d take cover and in the nick of time she’d seen the trap. That it was a dead end with only one exit.

It was several hours until the store closed, but Rupert was a patient man. He’d wait, call up female reinforcements to keep an eye on her until she had no choice but to emerge.

He had enough of them.

All those women in his office who’d collaborated with him in the make-believe.

What she needed was somewhere to hide, a bolt-hole where no one would ever think of looking for her while she considered her options. Easier said than done.

All she possessed in the world was what she currently wore. She’d been too shocked to plan anything. To even think of going back to the little apartment at the top of Rupert’s London house. Packing the gorgeous wardrobe that was all part of the fantasy. Always supposing she’d got out with a suitcase.

No doubt someone would have delayed her while the alarm was raised and Rupert was warned that the game was up.

And she’d bet the farm that the platinum credit cards Rupert had showered on her would go uh-uh if she attempted to use them.

Or maybe not. Could he use them to track her movements? Or was that just something they did in TV thrillers?