Reawakened By His Christmas Kiss. Jessica Gilmore

      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.