Page 1 of Christmas Baby with Her Ultra-Rich Boss

CHAPTER ONE

TWOHUNDREDANDten kilometres north of the Arctic Circle, adjacent to the Torne River, the main lodge of the Siopis Ice Hotel was filled with chattering staff. The wooden lodge, which served as the reception and administrative offices, and the cosy chalets surrounding it, were open all year round for guests to enjoy the changing of the seasons, but it was when November arrived and the river froze enough for the craftsmen and women to get to work, that the magic really happened. In the four years Lena Weir had worked there, she’d never failed to be awed by the talent and creativity and sheer hard work that went into creating what was known as The Igloo out of nothing but blocks of ice and snow; never failed, either, to sigh wistfully when spring arrived and the magical creation melted back into the river from which it was formed.

Today though, spring felt a world away. It was nearly 2 p.m. It could be midnight. The sun had made its last brief appearance three days ago. Lena, along with the rest of the staff and their guests, had stood outside and basked under its weak rays for the full twenty-six minutes it had graced them. It wouldn’t show its face again other than as a brief glimmer on the horizon for another three weeks.

The lack of sun had never bothered her during her previous winters here in Sweden. She enjoyed them, liked experiencing what her mother had lived through for the first twenty years of her life. She struggled far more in the summer months when the opposite happened and the stars rarely came out and the sun never slept.

In three days the first guests of the winter season would arrive. Those adventurous enough and rich enough would spend a night in The Igloo itself. The activity happening in the lodge was the final staff meeting before the official winter opening of The Igloo. Welcoming the first guests through its doors was always a thrill. The exterior of the design was always the same, basically a giant igloo, but the interior was always different. The only constant was the sparkle of the ice, translucent through the carefully woven lights.

As the staff layered themselves for the biting outdoors, the reception phone rang. Sven being the closest picked it up, and in perfect English said, ‘Siopis Ice Hotel, how can I help you?’

If he hadn’t immediately looked at her, Lena would have missed the flicker of panic that crossed Sven’s face as he listened to the caller. He nodded vigorously and ended the call saying, ‘Of course. I will get the housekeeping team on it immediately.’

‘What’s wrong?’ Lena asked. Everything at the Ice Hotel ran so smoothly that it was rare to see any of the staff flustered. Had one of the cabins’ coffee machines stopped working? A guest greeted with an unmade bed? It couldn’t be anything more serious than that if the housekeeping team was being called into action.

Turned out it could be.

‘That was Magda. The six-month inspection has been brought forward.’

She raised an eyebrow but was unperturbed. Lena had nothing to hide. She’d privately thought scheduling the inspection for three days before Christmas was bonkers timing. Bringing it forward made a heap of sense.

But Sven hadn’t finished. ‘Mr Siopis is coming himself to do it.’

Lena actually felt the blood drain from her head down to her toes in a whoosh.

Gripping hard to the reception desk, she forced air into her lungs and managed to croak, ‘When?’

Konstantinos Siopis only ever made one visit a year to the Ice Hotel and that was in the summer. He wasn’t due back for another seven months.

Unsurprised at her reaction—no doubt Sven thought it entirely reasonable—he said, ‘He will be here in four hours.’

Fighting her body’s determination to drop into a ball and rock back and forth, Lena tightened her grip on the reception desk and did her best to keep the panic from her voice. ‘You are going to tell housekeeping to sort a cabin out for him?’

Sven nodded.

‘Okay. I will arrange for the car to collect him from the airport.’ Sending their guests favourite mode of transport—the huskies and sledges—to collect him was out of the question. ‘Did Magda say how long he will be here for?’

‘No.’

She wouldn’t chide Sven for not asking. Magda was as terrifying a PA as it was possible for the owner of a luxury hotel chain and investor in cutting-edge technology to get. She was almost as terrifying as her boss. Who also happened to be Lena’s boss, too, and the ultimate boss of every member of staff there.

He also happened to be father of the secret baby growing inside her.

Konstantinos looked out at the unpitying darkness. Some people got a thrill out of endless nights and relentless cold but he wasn’t one of them. Sun-drenched islands like his birthplace Kos were his natural habitat. He never felt the need to escape to colder climates, and generally worked his annual diary so he would always be somewhere the sun beat down.

Where his pilot was currently preparing to land, almost as north of Sweden as it was possible to get, the only illumination came from a smattering of lit-up homes and research centres and small tourist areas. The sun wouldn’t show itself for weeks.

The landing went smoothly but the biting cold hit him the moment the cabin crew opened the door. A short walk later and he was in the back of a heated car and shaking his hat off. He supposed he should be grateful it wasn’t snowing. Konstantinos’s dark olive skin did not appreciate wet ice landing directly on it. His legs didn’t appreciate having to spend extra time walking through it. The rest of him didn’t appreciate having to wear layers of unstylish clothing to protect him from it.

As a child he’d watched Christmas movies with picture-perfect white settings and envied the children in them and the fun they had making snowballs and snowmen and sledging. His first personal experience of snow was aged twenty-one when he’d taken Cassia to New York for a long weekend. It had taken him all of five minutes to despise it. By the time he’d returned to Kos, he’d vowed to avoid the cold and snow for the rest of his life.

So why had he made the impulsive decision to delay his scheduled trip to Australia and instead head to a part of the world that currently provided none of the comforts he thought essential, namely sunshine?

It was standard practice in his organisation for each of his hospitality businesses to be inspected twice a year. Konstantinos’s aversion to the cold meant he entrusted all his cold-climate northern hemisphere winter inspections to his specialist team. Early that morning he’d been woken by a call informing him that Nicos, director of said inspection team, had been admitted to hospital with gallstones and was likely to be off work for six weeks. Nicos was scheduled to inspect the Ice Hotel three days before Christmas, less than a month away.

The Siopis Ice Hotel was the jewel in Konstantinos’s crown, a hotel complex that never failed to deliver year-round rave reviews. Each winter people from around the world flocked to stay the night in The Igloo, a magnificent structure built anew each autumn from ice and snow. Since its opening eight years ago, Konstantinos had deliberately timed his annual visits to the summer months when The Igloo had long melted in the spring thaw, and the permanent year-round log cabins were visited by wealthy adventurers seeking wilderness tours and rafting experiences.

Nicos’s being out of action and the rest of the inspection team’s schedules being full meant the Ice Hotel’s inspection would have to be delayed. This wouldn’t be a significant issue if Konstantinos hadn’t five months earlier entrusted the running of it to Lena Weir, the youngest and least qualified candidate to apply for the general manager’s role. Lena’s weekly reports were as succinct and thorough as he’d come to expect from the individual managers of his hotels, the reviews as glowing as he’d come to expect, too, but only a thorough inspection could determine if things were as shiny internally as were projected externally. He would have to suck up his loathing of the cold and dark, and make the inspection himself. Thinking quickly, he’d determined that as it was his turn to spend Christmas with his family in Kos, the timings of the scheduled inspection would be cutting things too fine, especially if unexpected issues were revealed, so had made the decision to undertake the inspection immediately.

---