Harlequin Romance December 2020 Box Set

by Susan Meier, Sophie Pembroke, Jessica Gilmore

  Rachel gave a slow nod. ‘You’re right, I suppose.’

  ‘And you did tell me the other night that you’d like to go freelance one day, doing social media and marketing for other companies,’ Daman added, persuasively, he hoped. ‘This could be your first step. Help you start building your portfolio.’

  ‘Of course, we’d pay you fairly as well,’ Lady Cressingham put it. ‘I’m aware that we’re asking a lot here, but from what Damon has told me—and showed me, online—I think you’re the perfect person for this job.’

  Damon hid a smile. Even Lady Cressingham had been beyond charmed by the photos of Rachel’s window displays. She’d seen instantly what he was suggesting.

  ‘We need to bring the whole arcade together,’ Damon explained, remembering that reaction. ‘At the moment, they’re more of a mishmash of enterprises. We need to somehow make it feel cohesive, like they belong together.’

  ‘Like each shop is part of the bigger whole…’ Rachel mused. ‘You’re thinking about the window displays?’ she guessed.

  Damon grinned. ‘Of course! Between your incredible displays and your social media skills, plus my more traditional and modest abilities, I think we can have half of London begging to visit the Cressingham Arcade by the time we open.’

  ‘Only half?’ Lady Cressingham asked, over the rim of her teacup. ‘Dear boy, I don’t think you’re aiming high enough.’

  * * *

  By the time crumbs and tealeaves were all that was left of their afternoon tea, Rachel had worked her way through fear, doubt, uncertainty and at least some of her imposter-syndrome issues, and arrived at excitement. Despite all the courses she’d taken, all the work she’d put in at Hartbury’s, a part of her, deep down, had never really believed she’d be able to do this sort of thing for a real job, outside the family business.

  Today, Damon had shown her that she could.

  She was excited by this project, by the chance to put into practice all the ideas she’d been dreaming up that she knew her stepmother would never let her use. Excited to work towards Lady Cressingham’s dream of a shopping arcade that could be beautiful, a shopping destination, a helping hand for people changing their lives and a viable business, all at the same time.

  Excited, although she refused to admit it, even to herself, to work with Damon too.

  They’d hashed out a plan between them of all the work there was to do. Quite when she was going to fit it all in, between her shifts at the department store, work on Hartbury’s social media and her own Christmas preparations, Rachel wasn’t entirely sure. But she would. Because this mattered to her.

  She couldn’t remember the last time something other than her father had really, really mattered to her like this.

  Maybe this was what had been missing for so long. Maybe this was the push she needed to change her life.

  ‘So,’ Damon said as Lady Cressingham paid the bill. ‘Do you want to come and see the arcade now?’

  His smile was wicked, as if he were inviting her up to see his etchings. Maybe he was, in a way. This project, this opportunity, was the perfect way into her heart—or at least into her pants. Making her feel competent, talented even, and wanted. It didn’t take much, did it?

  ‘Yes. Definitely.’

  But Damon hadn’t even mentioned the kiss. Probably because he hadn’t thought of it since it happened—while it had consumed her every waking moment.

  She wasn’t the kind of girl that guys like Damon wanted. Her experience with Tobias should have taught her that.

  Rachel shook away her thoughts as she reached for her bag and coat. This was about more than a kiss, or an attraction anyway. This was a professional opportunity she wanted to take full advantage of.

  The chance to figure out her own path in life, not just the one her family expected her to walk.

  This was work. Not pleasure.

  But as she moved to put her coat on, Damon took it from her and held it out for her, like a proper, old-fashioned gentleman. Swallowing, she smiled her thanks and turned to ease her arms into the sleeves. Damon assisted, lifting the coat over her shoulders and smoothing it down over her arms.

  Rachel froze at the close contact. She could almost imagine he was about to wrap her up in his embrace. To hold her as close as he had when they’d danced.

  For a long moment, he remained near enough that she could catch hints of his cologne, could almost feel his breath against her cheek. For that long moment, hope blossomed in her chest…

  And then he stepped away.

  ‘Come on, you two,’ Lady Cressingham said, either impatience or amusement colouring her voice, Rachel wasn’t entirely sure which. Maybe it was both. She didn’t seem like the sort of woman to waste precious minutes only having one emotion at a time. ‘I’ve had the car brought round.’

  * * *

  The Cressingham Arcade was everything Rachel had hoped it would be.

  From the elegantly curving iron gates to the vintage tiled floor between the shop fronts—which Damon assured her they’d be restoring rather than replacing—it screamed refined elegance, much like Lady Cressingham herself. The shop names were a mishmash of different styles, but Damon showed her the prototype for the new ones. Each shop face would have a matching wooden sign painted in the colours taken from the floor tiles—dark forest greens, creams, duck-egg blues and hints of blush pink—with the name of the shop in a scrolling vintage font.

  Between each shop rose sleek columns, tiled to match the floor, until they reached the ceiling and met as carved stone overhead, almost like a cathedral. Rachel tilted her head as far back as it would go, and imagined fairy lights illuminating every shadow up there.

  And then there were the windows. The beautiful, deep bay windows that jutted out from every storefront into the passageway that formed the arcade, each with a wooden display area inside just begging to be decorated. Standing there, Rachel felt a million ideas start to swirl inside her brain, and knew she’d never be short of ways to decorate or promote this magical place.

  ‘What do you think?’ Damon asked, his voice suddenly very close as he rested his chin on her shoulder to stare into the window with her.

  ‘It’s magical,’ she whispered, and felt him smile.

  ‘This is what your windows reminded me of. This place. And I just knew I had to get you involved over here, to make the arcade everything it can be.’

  Warmth flooded through her at his words. Damon Hunter thought she was a match for this wonderful, secret place. And suddenly, she could almost believe it too.

  Damon stepped away. ‘Come on. I want to introduce you to some of the shopkeepers here.’

  The next half an hour was a whirl of new people, more than Rachel thought she’d met in one go since university. Lady Cressingham was deep in conversation with an older gentleman at the end of the arcade so Damon started the introductions at the nearest occupied shop—a florist called Belinda, with incredible wreaths of ivy, holly, berries and such sitting on tables out front.

  ‘Technically we’re still open,’ Belinda explained. ‘Although you wouldn’t know it from all the cones and boards out front. But I had a wreath-making class booked for today and I wasn’t going to cancel it just because this one wants to spruce the place up a bit.’ She jerked her head towards Damon as she said ‘this one’, and he rolled his eyes in response. But they were both smiling, so Rachel assumed everyone was okay with what he had planned for the place, despite the disruption.

  ‘The wreaths are beautiful,’ she said to Belinda, who beamed proudly. ‘They’d be wonderful in a window display…’ She could envisage it already: a forest scene, with a wreath on every tree, lights throughout, Christmas tubs and pot plants at the base of the trees…

  ‘Belinda always keeps the window clear,’ the florist’s assistant, Ursula, said as she tidied away the wreath-making supplies. ‘She likes to be
able to see out.’

  ‘Oh. Right.’ Rachel shot a quick glance at Damon who shrugged, as if to say, This is what I’m dealing with. Why do you think I need you?

  Deciding to try a different tack, Rachel asked, ‘It looks like the wreath-making workshop was a great success. Did you promote it on social media?’

  ‘Oh, these are just the wreaths I made to show people what’s possible,’ Belinda explained. ‘The four people we had in took their wreaths home with them, of course.’

  ‘I did put the dates up on our new Facebook page,’ Ursula added. ‘But I don’t think many people saw it. You know how it is.’ She shrugged, and went back to clearing up.

  Rachel quickly learned that it was the same story throughout the arcade. People were focussed on their shops, on keeping their heads above water. They didn’t have time to learn the ins and outs of social media algorithms or how to build their fan base online.

  That was what they needed her for.

  As Damon led her out of the florist’s, they discovered that most of the other shopkeepers had come out to meet her too. Rachel smiled politely, and tried hard to affix names to faces and shops in her brain, knowing that the odds of her remembering them all were slim. She’d have to get Damon to write them all down for her later. He was the people person, after all, not her.

  And that had never been more evident than here. With every new arrival Damon was able to introduce them without hesitation, and tell her the basics of their work there. But more than that, he interacted with each person on a level that showed he knew their circumstances, their opinions, and remembered everything they’d ever said to him.

  Rachel could barely remember her own computer password most days. Or the names of some of her seasonal co-workers. She didn’t do people, not the way Damon did.

  And with every introduction, he managed to lead the conversation around to exactly where she needed it.

  ‘Jasmine’s bridal boutique is one of the newest shops in the arcade, isn’t it, Jasmine?’ he said, motioning over a petite blonde woman in a pastel-pink jumper. ‘She’s keen to convince London’s brides that she’s got the perfect dress for them—which means getting the message out to the world that her boutique has the unique dresses that others just don’t.’

  ‘We only stock smaller designers,’ Jasmine explained. ‘And I design bespoke gowns for brides too.’

  ‘So this is where to come if you want a wedding dress that doesn’t look like everyone else’s?’

  ‘Exactly!’ Jasmine said, beaming.

  Rachel filed that information away in the part of her brain that was already planning everything she could do for the shopping arcade. Information, she could remember. It was people she struggled with.

  But the people were what was going to make Cressingham Arcade special, she could feel it.

  CHAPTER SIX

  BY THE TIME Damon had finished introducing Rachel to all the occupants of the Cressingham Arcade—right down to the ornery Mr Jenkins, who grumbled through the whole meeting about not agreeing with all this modern stuff—the sun had long gone down. The shops were all shut up and the shopkeepers departed for home. Even Lady Cressingham had left. Apart from a few sad-looking fairy lights outside the florist’s shop, the arcade was almost in darkness, the glow of the moon and the streetlights outside only just penetrating the gloom.

  ‘I should probably get going,’ Rachel said, glancing at the backlit screen of her phone and checking the time. ‘It’s getting late.’

  He should let her go, Damon knew. She was right, it was late. And it wasn’t as if he didn’t have more work to do. And yet…

  ‘Wait here a moment.’ Dashing back into the small office at the far end of the arcade, Damon pulled out two torches from the well-stocked emergency drawer, then shut and locked the office behind him.

  ‘We couldn’t just turn some lights on?’ Rachel asked as he handed her the torch.

  He grinned. ‘It’s more fun this way.’

  The arcade looked so different at night, something he’d discovered over late nights working in the office, planning out the renovations and scheduling the work. Without the modern lighting, and with the streets outside quietening, it was almost as if they’d travelled back in time—back two hundred years or more, to when the arcade was first built.

  ‘So where are we going?’ Rachel asked, turning on her torch and shining it around the tiled floors.

  ‘We’re staying right here,’ Damon explained. ‘I want to show you the other side of the arcade. Not the everyday shopping one that everyone sees. The magical, after-hours one.’

  ‘I’d like to see that.’ Even in the pale torchlight, her smile was unmissable. It warmed Damon’s heart, despite the chill of the winter air. There was mischief in that smile, and a love of life that he had rarely ever seen from Rachel before.

  Apart from when I kissed her.

  He pushed down the memory. ‘Come on, then.’ Grabbing her hand, he led her to the far end of the arcade, to start his after-hours tour.

  ‘Down here, we have one of my favourite details of the whole arcade,’ he announced grandly. Then he shone his torchlight on the spot in question, a bit of wall just above the floor.

  Rachel crouched down to get a closer look, jumped back a little, then laughed—just as Damon had hoped she would.

  ‘Someone painted a mouse and a mouse hole on the wall?’ She stood up again, and he moved his light so he could see her face. She looked utterly charmed by the detail.

  He nodded. ‘Nobody knows when—could have been decades ago, to be honest, or possibly even when the place was built, although I suspect the paint would need to have been touched up from time to time.’

  ‘But why would they do it?’ she asked. ‘I mean, is it vandalism or whimsy?’

  ‘I figured it was like the mice in your window, actually,’ Damon replied. ‘A little surprise for those who look deeper. That’s not the only one, either.’

  ‘There are more?’ Rachel’s eyes were wide in the torchlight. ‘Can we see them all?’

  How could he refuse her when she looked so delighted at the prospect? ‘Of course. Come this way, milady.’

  They found four more mice at ground level and Rachel was so thrilled he probably could have stopped there. But he wanted to keep that smile on her face, that wonder in her eyes. She was falling for this arcade the same way he had. Well, maybe not quite the same way—he’d been more enamoured by the business potential first, then the people, then the whimsical discoveries he’d made as he’d explored the place. He could tell that Rachel had seen the potential this afternoon, talking with the shopkeepers, seen how much of a difference she could make here. This creature treasure hunt was only cementing that.

  ‘Is that all of them?’ she asked as he led her back to where they’d started.

  ‘Not quite.’ He was holding her hand again, Damon realised. When had that happened? Or had he never let it go? No, he must have done, because she’d moved away to trace the outlines of the mice they’d found right by the front gate. Which meant he’d reached out and taken her hand again—or she’d taken his.

  It made sense, in the darkness. It was practical, that was all. But still, now he was aware of it, he couldn’t ignore the tingling sensation her fingers, intertwined in his, gave him. Or how natural it felt.

  He wasn’t a hand-holding kind of guy, never had been. The women he tended to take out might hold onto his arm, more for balance or support in their uncomfortable shoes than anything else, he suspected. But they never held hands. That was too…intimate. Somehow more so than taking a woman home to bed.

  But Rachel was holding his hand as if it was the most natural thing in the world. And weirdly, it felt as if it was.

  ‘Where are we going?’ she asked as he opened a door that was hidden between two tiled pillars, and painted to look like an extension of the walls.

/>   ‘Up,’ he replied, cryptically.

  The curving metal staircase clanked under their feet, the sound echoing off the walls of the silent arcade. At the top, Damon fiddled with the latch on a second hidden door, pushed it open, then stepped back to let Rachel through first.

  He could sense her nerves, her uncertainty of walking into the unknown, but he knew it would be worth it for her. Squeezing her hand, he let go, and she stepped out onto the small wrought-iron balcony. Shining the torch out beyond her, to the ceiling of the arcade, he waited.

  ‘Oh!’ Rachel gasped, and turned back to face him, her hand over her mouth and delight in her eyes. ‘Look at them!’ She grasped the metal rail of the balcony and leant out, just a little, her chin tilted upwards as she stared at the ceiling. ‘How did I not see them from the ground?’

  ‘They’re hidden in the pattern.’ Damon stepped closer behind her, looking upwards to take in the painted butterflies scattered around the ceiling. ‘From the floor, it just looks like an attractively painted ceiling. But from here…’

  ‘It comes to life,’ she breathed, finishing his sentence for him. Above them, intricately decorated butterflies almost seemed to flutter around the archways and shadows of the arcade. ‘It’s like the houses in my window.’

  ‘Exactly.’ It was what had made him think of Rachel, of bringing her in. The moment he’d seen the tiny mice living their secret lives in her window displays, out of sight of the adults hurrying past, he’d known that she was meant to be here at the Cressingham Arcade, with the mice and the butterflies. And him.

  She spun around suddenly, catching him by surprise, and he wrapped an arm around her waist instinctively, in case she lost her balance on the narrow balcony. She didn’t, of course, but now she was pressed almost against him, so close he could feel the warmth of her breath against his neck as she looked up at him. Her eyes were luminous in the faint light from the torch he now held at the small of her back, and her lips were slightly parted. They looked soft and inviting and… He was thinking about kissing her. Again.