Reawakened By His Christmas Kiss. Jessica Gilmore

her and her hands shook, but she fought to keep her voice even and her expression bland.

      Finn could never know the effect he had on her. She would never give him—or anyone—that kind of power again.

      ‘I think I’d better get started. Where shall I set up? I would usually arrive fully prepared, but I was told I’d be briefed when I got here.’

      She allowed the merest hint of accusation to hang in the air. Finn had deliberately allowed her to turn up unprepared and wrong-footed. Although, she allowed, if she hadn’t been too absorbed in her work to do the background check she’d promised herself, then she wouldn’t have been quite so unprepared. She couldn’t blame Finn for everything. Not this time.

      ‘I’ll take you to meet your team and brief you on the way. Leave your bags. One of the staff will take them to your rooms. The Hawk offices are in the stables. This way.’

      Finn indicated the freshly laid woodchip path which wound away from the car park into the small copse which separated the newly refurbished offices from the castle. Alexandra hefted her leather laptop bag onto her shoulder and followed him—as if she didn’t know the way to the stables just as well as he did.

      ‘Amber said you’re planning to open the castle up to the public and the launch is this week—is that right?’ She barely waited for his nod before continuing. ‘So, will you open all year round or just for Christmas? Seasonally? Weekends? What about the gardens? Will they have different opening hours and prices? Obviously I should have researched this before I started, but I only got off my flight a couple of hours ago.’

      Every question was direct and to the point. Information-gathering for her job, no more. She had to treat this like any other job, Finn like any other client. It was the only way she was going to get through this.

      ‘My apartments are in the top two floors of the west wing, and private, but the rest of the castle, including the grounds, will be open every day. Houses like this should be for everyone, not just for the privileged few.’

      Alex swallowed, tightening her hold on her bag. Finn was living in her home, her beloved castle. Once she had daydreamed of such a situation, only in her dreams she had been living there alongside him. Was there a woman living with him? He wasn’t wearing a wedding ring but that didn’t mean anything. Not that she cared. She just hoped he’d learnt loyalty in the last decade. How to love, not how to use.

      Although, judging by the way he was using her right now, she wouldn’t bet on it.

      ‘I assume all the paintings and furniture are still here? I know the castle was bought complete.’

      She fought to suppress a dangerously revealing wobble in her voice. This was a job, not personal. Blakeley and all its treasures meant nothing to her. She couldn’t think about the old oak furniture that dated back to Tudor times, or the famous collection of Pre-Raphaelite paintings. She couldn’t remember the old dolls’ house or Strawberry, her beloved pony.

      Finn nodded. ‘Luckily for me the castle was bought by an oligarch who never actually visited the place. Rumour in the village is that he wanted a hunting lodge and didn’t realise the estate wasn’t suitable for the kind of stag-hunting he’d planned. I don’t think he even set foot in the place. Blakeley hadn’t been touched since the day you left.’

      Alex allowed herself one dangerous moment of memory. One flashback to the desperate girl with tears streaming down her face, the police tape still flickering around the lake, the hardness on Finn’s face, the paparazzi pressed up against the gates. And the last look back before she had slipped out of the secret door in the wall and out of her life, leaving Lola in the headlines and her heart in Blakeley’s keeping.

      And then she pushed that memory firmly back down and picked up the pace. ‘So, Finn,’ she said as brightly as she could. ‘Tell me more about your plans and what you need me to do.’

      Work was the answer. Work had always been the answer. And for the next few weeks she suspected it was going to be her salvation.