Sophie Pembroke: The Kiss Before Christmas: A Christmas Romance Novella

Sophie Pembroke

A division of HarperCollins Publishers

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Copyright HarperImpulse an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 77–85 Fulham Palace Road Hammersmith, London W6 8JB www.harpercollins.co.uk First published in Great Britain by HarperImpulse 2013 Copyright © Sophie Pembroke 2013 Cover images © Shutterstock.com Sophie Pembroke asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins. Ebook Edition © December 2013 ISBN:9780007569526 Version 2014-10-01 Digital eFirst: Automatically produced by Atomik ePublisher from Easypress.

Dedication For Charlotte. I wouldn't be here without you.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Sophie Pembroke

About HarperImpulse

About the Publisher

HarperImpulse an imprint of

HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

77–85 Fulham Palace Road

Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperImpulse 2013

Copyright © Sophie Pembroke 2013

Cover images © Shutterstock.com

Sophie Pembroke asserts the moral right

to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is

available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction.

The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are

the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to

actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is

entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International

and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

By payment of the required fees, you have been granted

the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access

and read the text of this e-book on screen.

No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted,

downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or

stored in or introduced into any information storage and

retrieval system, in any form or by any means,

whether electronic or mechanical, now known or

hereinafter invented, without the express

written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © December 2013

ISBN:9780007569526

Version 2014-10-01

Digital eFirst: Automatically produced by Atomik ePublisher from Easypress.

For Charlotte.

I wouldn't be here without you.

Dorothea Mackenzie stared at the screen, willing the words to change. They didn’t. She tried blinking. Nope, still there, in all their guilt-trip-inducing glory.

My dearest Dory,

We went to choose the Christmas tree yesterday, sweetheart, but it wasn’t the same without you. I think Mum was a bit sad decorating it without any of you kids around, but Molly and Tim don’t get in until the 24 th , and she didn’t want to leave it that late. She had ‘Lonely This Christmas’ playing on a loop. A call from you would definitely cheer her up – especially if you happened to mention your flight times (hint hint!). I can come and collect you from the airport any time on Christmas Eve, just let me know. I’ve not taken any taxi bookings the whole day, just in case.

Love and mulled wine

Dad x

A definite two-pronged attack. Clever. First mentioning Mum being sad, which they all knew meant big eyes and deep sighs and very brave smiles, and which he knew Dory couldn’t stand. And then not taking any bookings on Christmas Eve, a night that promised time-and-a-half for a Liverpool cabbie, and usually some pretty good festive tips, too.

All this despite the fact she’d told him a month and a half ago she wouldn’t be home for Christmas. Hell, she’d already posted all their presents.

‘They’re bringing out the big guns now, then?’ Tyler said, reading over her shoulder in that way he knew she hated. ‘How are you going to get out of that one?’

Dory shifted her computer screen so he couldn’t see. There wasn’t a lot of point; she was pretty sure IT would send him up every email she’d ever received or sent if he asked. But it was the principle of the thing. ‘Aren’t bosses supposed to be less…’ She trailed off still in search of the right word to describe Tyler.

‘Charming? Handsome? Awesome?’ he guessed.

‘Intrusive.’

‘Hmm. And I thought assistants were supposed to be more fawning, generally.’ He wagged a finger at her, mock sternly. ‘Don’t think you can get away with anything, just because you’ve got that cute British accent thing going.’

Dory was starting to suspect that her accent was the only reason he’d hired her. It certainly wasn’t to fawn over him, since she’d made it painfully clear at the job interview that that wasn’t going to happen. In fact, the exact phrase she’d used was ‘I’m not the kind of assistant who fetches your dry-cleaning and straightens your tie. I’m the kind of assistant who makes your workload lighter.’

Dad always said she wasn’t great with subtle.

Of course, for the brief three-month period when she’d had an assistant of her own, back at her last job – her Dream Job – she hadn’t exactly been fawned over either. More insulted, actually.

Maybe her assistant hadn’t liked the accent. Liverpudlian was an acquired taste, Dory supposed.

‘Was there something you actually wanted?’ Dory asked. ‘A report that needs writing, or a meeting to set up?’

‘Yeah, I need you to pull up the publicity shots from that charity event in Washington D.C. last week. See what people are saying about the cause, the people involved, that sort of thing.’

‘You mean you want me to check that they caught your best side in the photos.’ She’d been Tyler’s assistant for six months now. She knew what really mattered to him, and it often had little to do with the multi-million-dollar restaurant chain he stood to inherit, or its subsidiaries – even if he was the CEO.

‘That too,’ he admitted with a grin. ‘Send them through when you’ve got them.’

He swept off back into his office and Dory turned to more important matters than whether or not Tyler’s eyes looked red in some photos surely no one really cared about. Like how to break it to Dad that she really, really wasn’t coming home for Christmas.

It wasn’t that she didn’t want to go back to good old Blighty. Her stomach rumbled at the very thought of Dad’s Christmas dinner and Mum’s mince pies. She was nostalgic about beating her siblings at Monopoly while they drank their way through a bucket of mulled wine until they all ended up writing each other IOUs for ridiculous sums of rent. She wanted a soggy Christmas-Day walk after the Queen’s speech and turkey sandwiches while watching the Doctor Who Christmas Special.