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

Chapter One

‘LIAR!’

The only sound in the room was the clatter of motor drives as tycoon, Rupert—just-call-me-Prince-Charming—Henshawe’s press conference was hijacked by his fiancée, Lucy—I-feel-like-Cinderella—Bright as she tugged off her engagement ring and flung it at him.

‘Cheat!’

Every lens in the room zoomed in on the bright splash of blood where the huge diamond found its mark on Henshawe’s cheek.

The gathered press pack—city newsmen, financial pundits, television news teams—held their collective breath.

They’d been summoned to a full dress press conference by the Henshawe Corporation. Whatever Henshawe did was news. Good news if you were one of his shareholders. Bad news if you happened to be on the receiving end of one of his corporate raids. At least until recently.

The news now was all about how he’d changed. How, having met his ‘Cinderella’, he had been redeemed by love and was no longer Mr Nasty, but had been transformed into Prince Charming.

Boring.

This was much more like it.

‘Why?’ Lucy demanded, ignoring the cameras, the mikes, dangled overhead, pushed towards her face. The larger than life-sized images of herself, wearing her own custom-made originals of the Lucy B fashions, being flashed across a screen. All she could see was the man on the podium. ‘Why did you do it?’

Stupid question. It was all there in the file she’d found. The one she was never meant to see. All laid out in black and white.

‘Lucy! Darling…’ Rupert’s voice was deceptively soft as, using the power of the microphone in front of him, he drowned out her demand to know why her? ‘These are busy people and they’ve got deadlines to meet. They’ve come to listen to the plans I’ve been making, we’ve been making, for the future of the company,’ he stressed. ‘Not a domestic tiff.’

His smile was tender, all concern for her. It was familiar, reassuring and even now it would be so easy to be sucked in…

‘I don’t know what’s upset you but it’s obvious that you’re tired. Let Gordon take you home and we’ll talk about it later, hmm?’

She had to fight the almost hypnotic softness of his voice. Her own weakness. Her longing for the fairy tale that had overtaken her life, transformed her into a celebrity, to be true.

She had a Lucy B fan page on Facebook, half a million people following her every word on Twitter. She was a modern day Cinderella, whisked from the hearth to a palace, her rags replaced with silken gowns. But Prince Charming’s ‘bride ball’ had been a palace-generated crowd-pleaser, too. There was nothing like a royal wedding to keep the masses happy.

It was exactly the kind of stunt to appeal to some super-smart PR woman with a name to make for herself.

‘Talk!’ she hurled back as someone obligingly stuck a microphone in front of her, giving her equal voice power. ‘I don’t want to talk to you, Rupert Henshawe! I never even want to see you again.’ She held up the file for him to see. So that he would know that there was no point in denying it. ‘I know what you’ve done. I know everything!’

Even as the words left her mouth, Lucy sensed the mood in the room change. No one was looking at the podium now. Or Rupert. She’d stolen his limelight. She’d stormed into this plush hotel, her head exploding with the discovery that her new and exciting life, their engagement, the whole shooting match, was nothing more than a brilliantly executed marketing plan. The focus was now on her as she put an end to a sham smoke-and-mirrors engagement that was as false as his ‘new man’ change of heart.

Rupert Henshawe had no heart.

But, as the attention of the room shifted to her, it belatedly occurred to Lucy that this might not have been her best move.

In the months following her whirlwind romance with her billionaire boss she had become used to the press, but this was different. Until now she’d been supported every step of the way, whether the interviews had been personal or about her new role as the face, and name, on his re-branded chain of fashion stores.

When she’d gate-crashed this press conference, she hadn’t had a thought in her but to confront the man who had so shamelessly used her.

Now the focus point of every lens, every eye in the room, she suddenly felt alone, vulnerable and all she wanted to do was escape. Escape from the lies, the cameras, the microphones. Disappear. But, as she stepped back, attempting to distance herself from Rupert, from everyone, she stumbled over someone’s foot.

She put out a hand to stop herself from falling, grabbing at someone’s lapel. There was the ominous sound of cloth ripping and, as she turned, instinctively, to apologise, she discovered that her retreat was blocked by a wall of bodies.

And the man whose lapel she was clinging to was now hanging onto her, pulling her towards him, shouting something into her ear as she was jostled, pushed by other newsmen trying to get closer, photographers shouting to attract her attention.

She forgot all about apologising, instead yanking her arm free. Someone tried to grab the file she was carrying. She used it to beat him off, swinging the tote bag she was carrying to clear a space, provoking a blinding series of flashes as the photographers caught the action.

Another hand made a grab for her in the scrum, catching the back of her coat. One of the buttons flew off and she nearly went down again, but the sight of two of Rupert’s bodyguards elbowing aside journalists and cameramen alike as they made their way towards her sent a shot of adrenalin surging through her veins.

Until now she’d only seen the gentle side of Rupert Henshawe, had believed that he was truly her Prince Charming. But she was carrying proof of just how ruthless the man could be in pursuit of his ends and he wasn’t going to let her leave with that.

Of course they would make it look as if they were rescuing her from the press scrum, but denouncing him in public, on camera, had put her on the other side.

She’d seen his eyes, the truth behind the soft words, the smile, and she knew that he’d do whatever it took to keep her quiet.

Swinging her tote again in an attempt to batter her way through the enclosing wall of bodies, she managed to make a little headway but then someone grabbed her wrist, a camera lens caught her a sharp blow on the temple and, head spinning, she staggered back.

There was a yelp loud enough to be heard over the bedlam as her stiletto heel encountered something soft and yielding.

As the man behind her backed off, swearing creatively, an apology was the furthest thing from her mind. A gap opened up and she didn’t hesitate. She dived through it.

Christmas.

‘Twas the season to make money.

Nathaniel Hart paused at the brushed stainless steel rail of the department store founded two hundred years earlier by another Nathaniel Hart, looking back down into the swirling mayhem of spend, spend, spend.

It was a scene being replicated in Hastings & Hart stores in major cities throughout the country as money was poured out on those small luxury items that made such easy and portable gifts. Scent, jewellery, silk scarves, all perfectly placed on the ground floor to be within easy reach for the desperate shop-and-run male.

Women, fortunately, were prepared to put real effort into shopping. They thronged the glass escalators that rose into the atrium as if ascending to the sky. An architectural illusion created by light, glass, mirrors.

He knew it was an illusion because he’d created it, just as he knew it to be a cage. One he was trapped inside.

Lucy’s shoulder hurt where she’d charged the emergency exit, setting off a barrage of alarms that lent wind to her heels as she raced down the narrow, darkening streets behind the hotel.

She had no idea where she was heading, only that there were men on her heels, all of them wanting her, all of them with their own agendas. But she was done with being used.

‘Aaargh!’ She let out a wail of fury as her heel caught and snapped in a grating, bringing her up with a painful jerk. Someone yelled behind her, closing fast, and she paused only long enough to kick her foot free of the grating, leaving the shoe behind, and race on, casting around desperately for a cruising cab. But there was never one when you were desperate!

Idiot, idiot, idiot…

The words hammered in her head in time to the jarring of her feet on the freezing wet pavement as she ran, dot-and-carry-one lopsidedly on one heel.

She’d just made the biggest mistake of her life. Make that the second biggest. She’d made the first when she’d fallen into the fairy tale trap.

In retrospect, she could see that calling her erstwhile Prince Charming a liar and cheat in front of the nation’s assembled press pack had not been her brightest move. But what was a girl to do when her magic castle-in-the-air had just turned into one of those blow-up bouncy things they had at kids’ parties?

Stop and think?

Stand back, line up her allies before firing her ammunition from a safe distance? Hardly the action of the girl Rupert had proclaimed to love for her spontaneity, her passion.

That was the difference between them.

The woman who’d appeared on the cover of Celebrity wasn’t some figment of a PR man’s imagination. She was real. Capable of feeling not just joy but pain. Which was why she’d leapt in with both feet, puncturing the fake castle with the four-inch heels of her Louboutins, letting out the hot air and bringing it down around her.

Idiot was right but who, having just discovered that she was the victim of the most cynical, manipulative, emotional fraud imaginable, would be thinking rationally?

As for allies, there was no one she could turn to. The press had already bought everyone who’d known her since she was a baby—anyone who had a photograph or a story to tell. Every moment of her life was now public property and what they didn’t know they’d made up.

And Rupert owned the rest.

All those people who had fawned over her, pretended to be her friend, there wasn’t one she could trust or be sure was genuine rather than someone on his PR company’s payroll.

As for her mother…

She had no one and, run as hard as she might, nowhere to go. Her legs were buckling beneath her, lungs straining as she headed instinctively for the sparkle of Christmas lights and crowds of shoppers in which to lose herself, but she couldn’t stop.

In moments her pursuers would be on her and she didn’t need the dropping temperature, the huge white flakes that had begun to swirl from a leaden sky, to send a shiver up her spine. Then, as she rounded a corner seeking the safety of the crowds of Christmas shoppers, she saw the soaring asymmetrical glass pyramid of Hastings & Hart lighting up the winter gloom like a beacon.

She’d been in the store just the day before on a mission from Rupert to choose luscious Christmas gifts for his staff. Giving the gossip mag photographers who followed her everywhere their photo opportunities. It was all there in the files.

The plan to keep her fully occupied. Too busy to think.

The store seemed to mock her now and yet inside were nine warm and welcoming floors, each offering a hundred places to hide. Within its walls she would be off the street, safe for a while, and she flew across the street, dodging through the snarled-up traffic, heading towards the main entrance, slithering to a halt as she saw the doorman guarding the entrance.

Only yesterday he’d tipped his top hat to her in deference to her chauffeur-driven status.

He wouldn’t be so impressed by her arrival today but, dishevelled and limping, he would certainly remember her and, pulling her coat tidily around her and shouldering her bag, she teetered precariously on her bare toe as she slowed down to saunter past him, doing her best to look as if she was out for a little shopping.

‘You’ll find footwear on the ground floor, ma’am,’ he said, face absolutely straight, as he opened the door. And tipped his hat.

Scanning the ground floor from his bird’s-eye view, Nat’s attention was caught by two burly men in dark suits who’d paused in the entrance. They were looking about them, but not in the baffled, slightly desperate way of men trying to decide what gift would make their Christmas a memorable one.

Men didn’t shop in pairs and he could tell at a glance that these two weren’t here to pick out scents for the women in their life.

He’d seen the type often enough to recognise them as either close protection officers or bodyguards.

The doorman, well used to welcoming anyone from a royal to a pop star, would have alerted the store’s security staff to the arrival of a celebrity, but curiosity held him for the moment, interested to see who would follow them through the doors.

No one.

At least no one requiring a bodyguard, just the usual stream of visitors to the store, excited or harassed, who broke around the pair and joined the throng in the main hall.

Frowning now, he remained where he was, watching as the two men exchanged a word, then split up and began to work their way around the glittering counters, eyes everywhere, clearly looking for someone.

Make that a charge who had given her bodyguards the slip.

In the main hall, mobbed in the run-up to Christmas as shoppers desperately tried to tick names off their gift lists and stocked up on exotic, once-a-year luxuries, Lucy had hoped that no one would notice her. That once she was inside the store she’d be safe.

She’d been fooling herself.

She did her best to style it out, but she hadn’t fooled the doorman and several people turned to look as she tried—and failed—to keep herself on an even keel. And then looked again, trying to think where they’d seen her before.

The answer was everywhere.

Rupert was Celebrity magazine’s new best friend and his and her—mostly her—faces had been plastered over it for weeks. Their romance was news and cameras had followed her every move.

Everything she’d done, everywhere she’d been was a story and, as she tried to ease through the crowd, eyes down, she knew she was being stared at.

Then, from somewhere at the bottom of her bag, her phone began to belt out her I’m In Love With a Wonderful Guy ringtone.

Could anything be any less appropriate?

Or loud.

She might as well put a great big sign over her head, lit up and flashing ‘Dumb blonde here!’

Hampered by the file, she hunted for the wretched thing but, by the time she’d dug it out of the bottom of the bag, it had gone to voicemail. Not for the first time.

There had been half a dozen missed calls while she’d been making her escape and, as she looked at it, it beeped at her, warning that she now had a text, adding to her sense of being hunted.

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.