Page 5 of Christmas Baby with Her Ultra-Rich Boss

That was all she was to him now, he reminded himself firmly. Just another employee. These strange feelings currently gripping him and making his insides feel hot and cold at the same time were solely because this was a novel situation he found himself in. A situation he wouldn’t be in if he hadn’t been so damned stupid as to sleep with her.

Clenching his teeth, he inhaled the frigid air into his tight lungs and forced his attention back to where it should be. On the jewel of his crown, the giant Igloo.

Off the vast main dome were the warrens of iced tunnels that led to the dozens of individual rooms, and they set off into the nearest one. The tunnels were higher than he remembered, the walls thicker.

The rooms they toured were each individually crafted and therefore unique, the majority containing nothing but a large bed made of ice and topped with a thick mattress that itself was topped with reindeer hide.

‘Have you spent a night here?’ he asked when they went down yet more ice steps and into a room carved into a forest scene with pine trees and reindeers, the bed having the effect of rising off the forest floor. The customer-facing staff was encouraged to sleep in the hotel during the window between completion—not that it was ever completed. Ongoing maintenance was needed for such a huge, complex structure—and the first guests’ arrival, but this was not mandatory.

‘Once. My first winter here.’

‘And?’

‘I found it too claustrophobic to want to do it again.’

Surprised, he gazed up at the high forest scene above his head then back at her with an expression that demanded explanation.

She shook her head. ‘When the lights are turned off...’

‘Explain,’ he commanded.

‘It’s the darkness,’ she said with a shrug.

‘It is always dark this time of year.’ As dark as it was cold.

‘Not like it is in here. It’s a completely different experience. In here, the walls are so thick that nothing penetrates it, no light or sound...you must hear it now, the absolute silence. And I stayed in a room with a door.’ Most of the ice rooms had fur curtains for doors, which let slivers of light in from the tunnel corridor LEDs that were kept on at all times for safety reasons, but a handful had real doors designed to cope with subzero temperatures. Those rooms were the largest and most spectacular of them all and guests paid a premium for them. Lena had hardly believed her luck when she’d been appointed one for the night. That was until the door closed, her room’s lights went off, and she’d been pitched into absolute blackness.

‘Outside there is always some form of light, whether from the moon and the stars or, if you’rereallylucky, from the aurora borealis, but in here...’ She rubbed her arms and shivered. ‘It’s like sleeping in a tomb.’

‘Be sure not to tell our guests that,’ he said sharply.

‘Of course I won’t,’ she said, stung at his tone. The vast majority of their guests loved the experience. ‘But you asked me to explain and I explained because that’s how it felt to me at the time, and it does say on all our literature and online information that staying in The Igloo isn’t suitable for claustrophobic guests. Those who suffer from it stay in the cabins.’

‘So why did you stay in it if you suffer from claustrophobia?’

‘I didn’t know I did until that night.’ Not until she’d been lying in the pitch-black and found herself thrown back to that terrible night when she’d been trapped in the dark with her sister, praying for Heidi to wake up, praying for help to come quickly. She’d imagined she could still smell her sister’s blood.

He contemplated her for another moment then indicated the fur-lined ice door. ‘I have seen enough of the rooms. Take me to the bar.’

The bar was to the back of The Igloo, close to the ice tunnel that took their guests to the permanent non-ice heated changing rooms, and reached by climbing a number of wide steps. Lena sat on a fur-lined ice booth and kept quiet while Konstantinos took it all in. She had the distinct feeling her confession of claustrophobia had irritated him. No doubt he wasn’t scared of anything at all.

In her opinion, the creator of the bar had surpassed himself this year. The craftsmanship and artistry were incredible. It was like being in a swish wine bar with wooden panelling and optics and pumps, except one made entirely of ice. Witty pictures hung on the walls; each table had beer mats carved into them...there was even a coat stand with coats hanging on it. All carved from ice. The only things in the bar that weren’t illusions were the fur lining on the chairs to prevent frostbite and the drinks they served. While Lena would never wish to spend another night in The Igloo, that didn’t stop her revelling in the sheer spectacle of it.

She watched Konstantinos examine a shot glass made of ice, real fascination in his expression.

‘Drink?’ he surprised her by asking.

She shook her head.

The semi-frozen vodka poured thickly and when the ice glass was filled, he drank the shot in one go. He gave an exaggerated blink as it slid down his throat then screwed the lid back on the bottle. ‘Too cold for my tastes. Let’s return to the lodge.’

Konstantinos’s arrogant assumption that he’d be able to conduct the tour with his business head on had proven a fallacy he rued darkly once they were back on the path to the main lodge. The longer they’d spent in The Igloo, the greater his awareness had grown that by his side was the woman who’d lingered in his head when she should have evaporated from it, and the greater his resentment. Whether his resentment was aimed at Lena or himself or both of them, he couldn’t say. He’d disliked watching her tentative movements in The Igloo and the way she’d touched the walls with every step she took, her movements much as if the ice beneath her feet scared her, which it couldn’t, not with her being a seasoned pro on it. Disliked it because there had been a vulnerability to her movements, which had disturbed him to even notice, but not half as disturbing as the compulsion to offer his hand for support, which in itself wasn’t half as disturbing as the extra ice that had slivered in his veins when she’d described her claustrophobia, and an image of Lena herself entombed had flashed in his mind.

He should have opted to take the snowmobiles. If he had, they’d be back at the lodge by now and the crowding memories of the night they’d spent together would already be dimming amidst the noise of other people.

‘How are you finding your role here?’ he asked abruptly. The way he was currently feeling, the idea of shutting himself away with Lena in her office was intolerable. Get the questions he wanted answered by her done now and over with, spend the night going through the books—alone—and then get out of this place.

‘Good, thanks.’

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