The sensible answer, she knew, would be to contact one of them herself, let them take care of her. They’d stick her in a safe house so that no one else could get to her and they’d pay well for the story she had to tell. That was the reason they’d been grabbing at her, chasing after her. Why Rupert would be equally anxious to keep her away from them.
The problem with going down that route was that there would be no way back to her real life.
Once she’d taken their money she’d be their property. Would never be able to go back to being the person she had been six months ago.
Instead she’d become one of those pathetic Z-list celebrities who were forever doomed to live off their moment of infamy, relying on ever more sleazy stories to keep themselves in the public eye. Because no one would employ her in a nursery or day-care centre ever again.
But this reprieve was temporary. Out of time, she placed the teddy on the shelf and went to the office.
Frank looked up from his desk, where he was inputting figures into a computer. ‘Are you still here?’
‘Apparently. I was looking for Pam.’
He pulled a face. ‘She collapsed not long after you arrived,’ he said in an I-told-you-so tone of voice.
‘Oh, good grief. I’m so sorry. Is she going to be all right?’
‘It’s just a bug and an inability to accept that we can manage without her for a day or two. Mr Hart took her home a couple of hours ago. Why did you want her?’
‘Well…’
About to explain about the swipe card, it occurred to her that if Pam had collapsed not long after she’d mistaken her for an elf, she might not have had time to do the paperwork. Make her official. Log her in.
‘It’s nothing that won’t wait. Although…’
She couldn’t. Could she?
‘She didn’t mention what time I’m supposed to start tomorrow,’ she added, as casually as she could.
‘The store opens at ten. If you’re honouring us with your presence, you’ll need to be in your place, teddy at the ready at one minute to. Is that it?’
‘Er…yes. Ten. No problem.’
He nodded. ‘Goodnight.’ Then, as she reached the door, ‘You did a good job, Louise. I hope we’ll see you tomorrow.’
‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘Me, too.’
Nat switched on the radio as he drove back through thick swirling snowflakes that were beginning to pile up on the edges of the road. The footpaths were already white.
He’d hoped to catch an update about Henshawe’s missing fiancée—ex-fiancée—on the news, but it was all weather warnings and travel news and the bulletins focused on the mounting chaos as commuters tried to get home in weather that hadn’t been forecast.
She’d got lucky. But not as lucky as Henshawe. An embarrassing story was going to be buried under tomorrow’s headlines about drivers spending the night in their cars, complaints about incompetent weather forecasters and the lack of grit on the roads.
They’d probably be reunited and back on the front cover of some gossip magazine by next week, with whatever indiscretions she was accusing him of long forgotten, he told himself. Forget her.
By the time he returned to the store it was closing. The last few shoppers were being ushered through the doors, the cloakrooms and changing rooms thoroughly checked in a well rehearsed routine to flush out anyone who might harbour ideas of spending the night there.
He parked in the underground garage, removed the shoe from the glove compartment and walked through to the security office.
Bryan looked up as he entered.
‘Anything?’ he asked.
‘Not a sign. She probably slipped out under cover of the crowds. She’s certainly not in the store now.’
‘No.’ He looked at the shoe and, instead of dropping it in the lost property box, held onto it.
‘Are you going straight up to the tenth floor?’
He nodded. ‘I’ll be in the office for a while. You’re working late?’
‘We’re a couple of men down with some bug that’s going around.’
‘Let me know if it becomes a problem.’
But it wasn’t the likelihood of staff shortages at their busiest time of year that was nagging at him as he headed for the lifts. It was something he’d seen, something telling him that, despite all evidence to the contrary, his fugitive hadn’t gone anywhere. That she was still here.
It was stupid, he knew.
She’d undoubtedly used the phone she’d been clutching in the hand she’d flung around his neck to call a friend, someone to bring her a change of clothes and whatever else she needed.
He needed to put the incident out of his mind. Forget the impact of her eyes, the flawless skin, long lashes that had been burned into his brain like a photograph in that long moment when he’d held her.
What was it? What was he missing?
He walked through the electrical department, but the television screens that had been filled with her larger-than-life-size image were all blank now.
Her hair had been darker in that photograph. She’d been wearing less make-up. It was almost like seeing a before and after photograph. The original and the made-over version. Thinner, the image expensively finished, refined, everything except a tiny beauty spot above her lip that could not be airbrushed out of reality…
He stopped.
The beauty spot. That was what he’d seen. He scanned his memory, fast-forwarding through everything he’d seen and done in the hours since that moment on the stairs.
And came skidding to a halt on the elf.
The one who’d been standing so still by the drinks machine while he was talking to Frank. She was the right height, the right shape—filling out the elf costume in a way it hadn’t been designed for. And she’d had a beauty spot in exactly the same place as the girl on the stairs.
Coincidence? Maybe, but he spun around and headed into the grotto.
While everyone else raced to change, get away as quickly as possible, Lucy dawdled and it had taken remarkably little time for the locker room to empty.
It was a little eerie being there on her own, the motionsensitive lights shutting down all around her, leaving her in just a small area of light. And, while she was grateful to be off the streets, in the warm, she wasn’t entirely sure what to do next.
Where she would be safe.
While the locker rooms would be free of cameras—she was almost certain they would be free of cameras—there would undoubtedly be a security presence of some sort.
Would it be high-tech gadgetry? Motion sensors, that sort of thing. Patrols? Or just someone tucked up in an office with a flask of coffee, a pile of sandwiches and a good book while he monitored the store cameras?
At least she would be safe in here for a little while and she could use the time to take the shower she’d longed for. Wash off the whole hideous day. Wash off the last few months and reclaim herself.
And if someone did happen to come in, check that everyone had left, she could surely come up with some believable reason for staying behind to take a shower after work.
A hot date?
Actually, she did have one of those. Well, a date, anyway. Rupert didn’t do hot, but neither would he cancel the Lucy B launch dinner at The Ritz just because she’d caused him a little embarrassment.