A Night of No Return

Which was why she was now, late on a miserable Friday night when no one else with any sense would be on the roads, heading west out of London towards his rural country house.

Emma squinted through the white haze. She didn’t mind hard work. Her only rule was that she didn’t work at weekends. And for some reason—maybe her references, maybe her calm demeanour, or just the fact that he’d lost six PAs in as many months—Lucas Jackson had accepted that one caveat, although he had once made a caustic comment about her ‘wild social life’.

If he’d taken the trouble to find out about her, he would have known that there wasn’t room for ‘wild’ in her life. He would know that the nearest she’d got to a party was through the pages of the celebrity magazines her sister occasionally bought. He would have known that after working a punishing week at Jackson and Partners her idea of a perfect weekend was just sleeping late and spending time with Jamie. Lucas would have known all that, but he didn’t because he’d never asked.

She glanced briefly at the offending file on the passenger seat next to her, as if by simply glaring at it she might somehow manage to teleport the contents to its owner.

Unfortunately there was no chance of that. Her only choice was to take it to him. Never let it be said that she didn’t do her job properly.

This launch was the most talked about event for a decade and the party itself would be a glittering gathering of everyone important. Emma had felt a wistful pang as she’d liaised with Avery Scott, the dynamic owner of Dance and Dine, the company in charge of organising the launch event. From her conversations with Avery, she knew that the international celebrity guest list would be indulging in vintage champagne in the glamour of a marquee designed as a Bedouin tent. Then they would enjoy a traditional Zubrani banquet under the stars and have the opportunity to explore the specially constructed ‘souk’, tempting the guests with various local delicacies and entertainment. To showcase the best of Zubran as a holiday destination there would be belly dancers, fortune tellers, falconry and the evening would conclude with what promised to be the most spectacular firework display ever witnessed.

This was probably how Cinderella had felt when she’d learned she would not be going to the ball, Emma thought gloomily.

Shivering in the freezing air that her inadequate heater didn’t manage to warm, she sank deeper inside her coat and allowed herself a brief fantasy involving sunshine and palm trees. Just for a moment she felt envious. Right now this minute, the women on the guest list were probably deciding what to wear and packing for a break in the sun where all they were expected to do was look glamorous.

Emma pushed her hair away from her face with her gloved hand. She didn’t need to look in the mirror to know she didn’t look glamorous. She looked wrecked.

Forget celebrity parties. She’d be thrilled just to be able to get to bed before midnight. And if the weather carried on like this, she and Jamie would be spending their precious holiday trapped indoors.

She was struggling to keep the car on the icy road when her phone rang.

She thought it might be Lucas finally returning one of her many frantic messages, but it wasn’t. It was Jamie.

Of course it was Jamie. He’d expected her over an hour ago.

‘Where are you, Emma?’ His concern was audible in his voice and she suddenly felt horribly disloyal for wishing she could have gone to Zubran and partied under the stars.

Not daring to drive and talk with the road conditions so bad, she pulled over, squashing down the guilt. ‘I had to work late. I’m so sorry. I left you a message.’

‘When will you be home?’

‘Soon. I hope.’ She stared doubtfully at the falling snow. ‘But it might take me a while because the roads are terrible. Don’t wait up.’

He didn’t say anything and she knew he was upset with her.

His silence made her guilt worse. While he’d been worrying, she’d been imagining the perfect dress to wear to the party of the decade. ‘We have the whole weekend to be together and next week,’ she reasoned. When there was still no answer, she gave a sigh. ‘Jamie, don’t be upset. I have to work tonight. It’s never happened before. You know I normally keep the weekends free but this is an emergency. Lucas left some really important papers and I have to take them to him.’

It was a difficult conversation and by the time she hung up she was cursing Lucas Jackson with words she never normally allowed herself to use. Why couldn’t he have remembered the stupid file? Or why couldn’t he at least get off the phone and pick up her calls? At least then she could have met him halfway or something.

Knowing that the only thing that was going to make her feel better was getting the job done and going home, she eased the car back onto the road. Her eyes felt gritty and her head throbbed. She couldn’t wait to just crawl into bed and sleep and sleep.

She’d make it up to Jamie. They had two weeks together—the whole of the Christmas holidays. Two whole weeks while her high-flying boss was in Zubran, locked in business meetings with the Sultan and partying the night away under the stars. And she wasn’t jealous. Absolutely not.

Visibility was down to virtually zero. She lost her way twice in the maze of country lanes that all looked the same and defeated her satnav. The only car on the road, she crawled her way along a snowy lane and finally found herself at the entrance to Chigworth Castle.

Two huge stone lions snarled down at her from either side of the open gates and she glared back at them, thinking that the house was about as friendly and welcoming as the man who owned it.

By the time she’d slithered and skidded her way down a drive that seemed as long as the road to London, the throb in her head was worse and she’d convinced herself she’d taken a wrong turn. This couldn’t possibly be right. It was leading nowhere.

Where on earth was the actual house? Did one person really need this much land?

Her headlights picked out a wood and a lake and she drove over a bridge, tyres skidding, turned a corner and saw it. Floodlit with warm beams of light that illuminated honey-coloured stone and tall, beautiful windows, a small castle stood as it had no doubt stood for centuries, surrounded by a moat.

‘Battlements,’ Emma breathed, enchanted. ‘It even has battlements.’

Snow clung to those battlements and smoke twirled from a chimney into the cold air. Lights shone from a tower in one corner of the building and her mouth literally fell open because she’d had no idea that he owned something like this. He was all about modern, cutting-edge design and yet this—this imposing, beautiful building was part of history.

It really was a castle. A small, but perfectly formed castle.

Small? Emma gave a choked laugh. Small was her rented room in one of the less salubrious areas of London. She had a single window that overlooked a train line and was woken every morning at five a.m. by the aeroplanes landing at Heathrow Airport. Idyllic living it was not. This, however, was. So much space, she thought enviously. Acres of gardens, now cloaked in white but easy enough to imagine them in the spring—carpets of bluebells stretching endlessly into the wood where currently there was nothing but layers of soft, unmarked snow.

It was truly beautiful.

For a moment her eyes stung and she wondered how a house could possibly make her want to cry.

It wasn’t that perfect, was it?

For a start it was isolated. Realising just how isolated, Emma gave a shiver as she coaxed her little car forward over the bridge that spanned the moat. She might have been the only person on the planet.

And then through the archway she saw the sleek, familiar lines of Lucas’s car, already almost obscured by the falling snow. So he’d made it, but he still wasn’t answering his phone.

Resolving to buy him a phone that only she used and relieved to still be in one piece, she sat for a moment, waiting for her heart rate to slow down. When she was sufficiently recovered, she reached for the offending file.

Two minutes, Emma promised herself as she switched off the engine and stepped carefully out of the car. This was going to take her two minutes. As soon as she’d handed over the file, she’d get back on the road.

The moment her feet touched the ground, she slipped. Crashing down awkwardly in her attempt to protect the file, she bumped her elbow and her head. For a moment she lay there, winded, and then she rolled onto her knees and struggled back to her feet. Bruised, damp and angry, she picked her way gingerly towards the door, the snow seeping through her shoes.

She stabbed the bell with her finger and held it there, taking small comfort from that minor rebellion. There was no answer.

Snow trickled down from her hair to her neck and from there inside her shirt.

Emma shivered and rang the bell again, surprised that someone hadn’t immediately opened the door. She’d assumed the place would be crawling with staff and Lucas was notoriously intolerant of inefficiency of any kind.

Someone, she thought, was going to be in trouble.

Having rung the bell for a third time and still received no response, she tried the door with no expectation that it would open.

When it did, she hesitated on the threshold. Walking into someone else’s home uninvited wasn’t a habit of hers, but she had a file he needed and she wasn’t about to drive it all the way back to the office.

‘Hello?’ Cautiously, she peeped her head in through the door, bracing herself to set off an alarm. But there was no sound and she opened the door further. She saw dark wood panelling, tapestries, huge oil paintings and a sweeping staircase so romantic that it made a girl long for Rhett Butler to stride into the house and sweep her off her feet. When there was still no sign of life, she stepped inside.

‘Hello?’ She closed the door to keep the heat in—how much did it cost to heat somewhere like this?—and then noticed the open champagne bottles, the balloons and the streamers. And a cake. Something about the cake didn’t quite seem right, but she couldn’t work out what it was. Clearly a party was going on somewhere, except there was no sign of any guests, just an overpowering silence that was almost creepy. She half expected someone to jump out from behind the heavy velvet curtains and shout boo!

An uneasy feeling crept down her spine. For goodness’ sake, it was just a house! A big house, admittedly, but there was nothing threatening about a house. And she wasn’t alone. She couldn’t possibly be alone. Lucas had to be here somewhere and a whole load of other people judging from the number of champagne bottles.

Hoping that an enormous guard dog wasn’t about to bound out and close its jaws on a sensitive part of her anatomy, Emma walked over to a large oak door and pushed it open. It was a library, the walls lined with tall bookshelves stacked with books bound in various faded shades of old leather.

‘Lucas?’ She tentatively explored all the obvious rooms on the ground floor and then walked up the staircase. This was ridiculous. She couldn’t search the whole house. Remembering the light she’d seen shining from the tower, she decided to just try there.