Reawakened By His Christmas Kiss

But she could. She had no choice. Stay and deal with it or leave and run the risk of exposure.

She was stronger than this. Nothing and no one could hurt her now. Blakeley was just a place, Christmas Eve was just a date, her birthday would go unremarked. She would show Finn that he hadn’t won. Not then, not now. And she would do so by making sure his planned launch ran absolutely perfectly.

Gradually her pulse returned to normal, her emotions stilled, and she calmly made another note.

Check the invite list for the Christmas party.

‘Okay,’ she said, her voice as steady as ever. ‘What’s next?’

The conversation with Kaitlin was illuminating in several ways, taking up the rest of the morning and lunch. It had been a long time since her airline breakfast, and Alex had had no chance to get anything to eat, but Kaitlin ordered a working lunch, which the two ate at the desk as they finished going through the notes. Alex’s to-do list was getting satisfactorily ever longer.

At some point in the afternoon the younger woman finally returned to her own desk and Alex sank thankfully into work. There she could forget that Christmas Eve had once meant something, meant everything, deep in the absorption that working out how to craft and manipulate a story gave her.

As always, she lost track of time, and when she finally stretched and looked up she realised it was now dark outside, the office lights bright against the gloom. The room was almost deserted. Just a few people were left at their desks and they seemed to be packing up. Alex leaned back and stretched again, glad that the weeks ahead looked interesting but achievable.

She would give Finn no reason, no excuse to find fault with a single thing she did. He had the power and the influence now. With one word he could tell everyone who she was—who she’d used to be—and trash her fledgling agency’s reputation. She wouldn’t have thought him capable once. She knew better now.

‘Alex?’ Kaitlin hovered by her desk, her bag already on her shoulder. ‘I’m off now. Is there anything you need before I leave?’

‘No, I’m fine. Thank you. You’ve been so helpful.’

‘I hope so.’ The younger woman looked pleased, brushing her thick dark hair away from her face as her cheeks turned a little pink.

Alex looked around at the gleaming new office. ‘I guess you haven’t been based here very long?’

‘No, Finn’s been here since the summer, but the rest of us moved in October. There’s still a London office, but the plan is to scale it right back. For now some people are splitting their time between there and here. It’s easier for those of us without families, I guess. Finn has converted an old mill into flats and a few rent there. One or two rent in the village and quite a lot of us are in Reading—we’re not ready for a totally rural life just yet!’

‘It’s impressive that so many of you were ready to uproot yourselves.’

‘Finn’s so inspiring...his whole ethos. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.’

‘That’s reassuring to hear. I hope I’ll feel the same way.’

‘I hope so too.’

The deep masculine tones made both Alex and Kaitlin jump, the latter’s cheeks going even redder as Finn sauntered towards them.

‘Loyalty is very important here at Hawk.’

But it wasn’t Finn’s unexpected appearance that made Alex’s pulse speed up, and nor was it the sardonic gleam in his eye as he looked at her. It was the two small girls holding on to his hands. Finn had children? He had security, money, her old home and a family? Everything she had lost. Everything she would never have.

The oldest girl looked, to Alex’s inexperienced eye, to be about nine, the other around five. They were both in school uniform, their dark hair so like Finn’s own in messy plaits, and the same dark, dark eyes fixed on Alex.

‘It’s the Sleeping Princess,’ the younger one said, pointing at Alex. ‘Look, Saffy, it’s the Princess from the painting.’

Finn suppressed a grin as Alexandra’s startled gaze flew to his. Turned out the lady could show surprise after all.

‘Alex...’ The name felt clumsy on his tongue. ‘I’d like you to meet my nieces. Saffron, Scarlett, this is Alex. She’s working here for a little while.’

‘No, Uncle Finn.’ Scarlett tugged at his hand. ‘She’s a princess in disguise.’

Wasn’t that the truth?

‘Nice to meet you.’ Alex smiled uncertainly at the girls. ‘But I’m afraid it’s a case of mistaken identity. I’m not a princess, although it’s lovely to be thought one.’

‘You are,’ Scarlett insisted.

Kaitlin nodded. ‘I see what you mean, Scarlett. You’re thinking of that painting, aren’t you? The one of Blakeley Castle and the Sleeping Beauty? She does look a little like Alex.’

Alex’s cheeks reddened, just slightly. Finn was certain she knew exactly which painting Scarlett was referring to; it was a Rossetti, part of the castle’s famed Pre-Raphaelite collection. Alex’s great-great-grandmother was the model: a woman who in her youth had been as scandalous as her granddaughter several times removed.

What would the Pre-Raphaelite muse and late-Victorian It Girl think of her descendant? Would she recognise this poised, apparently emotion-free woman sitting in an office chair as if she were made for it, the very model of efficiency? Finn barely recognised her himself. It was all too easy to think her who she claimed to be.

‘If you say so, but I can’t see it myself,’ he said, taking pity on Alex, even though her resemblance to the woman in the painting had been notable when she was younger and was still remarkable, despite her decidedly un-Pre-Raphaelite appearance. ‘I’ll take it from here, Kaitlin.’ He nodded at the dark-haired girl. ‘You get off now or you’ll miss the last bus.’

‘Bus?’ Alex watched Kaitlin leave before swivelling back to face him. ‘Since when was there a bus?’

‘If I want my employees to come and bury themselves in the depths of the Chilterns then I have to make it manageable for them,’ Finn pointed out. ‘Some live on the estate in the Old Corn Mill, but that didn’t suit everyone, so a mini-bus goes between here and Reading several times a day. It picks up at the train station too. Not everyone is ready to leave London just yet. And when the employees don’t use it, the villagers do.’

‘How very Sir Galahad of you...riding to the rescue with your jobs and renovations and buses.’

Alex’s voice and face were bland, but Finn felt the barb, hidden as it was. The situation was getting to her more than she was letting on, and he had to admit he was relieved. It didn’t seem normal for anyone to be so serene when confronted with their past in the way she had been.

‘The village must be very grateful.’

He shrugged. ‘Relieved more than grateful. Goodness knows it needed a Sir Galahad to swoop in after the Beaumonts’ reign of benign neglect, followed by a decade of an indifferent and absent landlord.’

His barb wasn’t hidden at all, and he saw her flinch with some satisfaction. The Beaumonts had adored being the Lord and Lady of the Manor but they hadn’t been so interested in the people who lived and worked on the estate.

Blakeley might be situated in a wealthy commuter county, but the village itself was very rural, its twisty roads and the Chiltern Hills making even a short journey as the crow flew lengthy. Plus, it was a place where more than half the houses were owned by the castle, but where the jobs that had used to come with the houses had disappeared over the years.

Picturesque as Blakeley village was, not everyone wanted to rent a home where the colour of their front door and guttering was prescribed by the estate, public transport was non-existent and the nearest town a long, windy ten miles away.

‘The locals are just happy to see new life breathed into the place, and enough staff are renting to make the local businesses and the school viable. My village is breathing again.’

‘Your village? You wear Lord of the Manor pretty well.’

Another barb. Interesting.

Finn didn’t react, simply nodded towards the door. ‘Are you done here? The girls are ready for their dinner and I need to show you where you’re staying.’