Page 2 of The Naughty List

“There’s no need to be bitter just because we’ve broken up, Holly,” Kyle responded, his tone gratingly haughty.

Seriously?

Holly didn’t bother dignifying that with a response. If that made her petty, so be it. Instead, she turned on her heel and went back to work.

That had been ten weeks ago. Ten of the most excruciating weeks of her life.

Kyle had taken a malicious pleasure in making everything about her working day a struggle. Finding fault with everything she did. Bribing her to continue doing his job by telling her he wouldn’t report them and blemish her permanent record … and generally making her life a misery.

Holly had gritted her teeth and kept quiet as she’d searched high and low for a new job. She hadn’t expected it to be so difficult, but Holly had a sneaking suspicion that Kyle had made sure she was blacklisted with his underhanded lies. Because her record and experience were exemplary, and yet she’d been rejected for every single position she’d applied for, without even so much as an interview.

She glowered at him through the window of her office as she filled out the staff roster he was supposed to be dealing with, her scowl deepening as she watched him flirt with one of the receptionists, who was giggling coyly in response.

Don’t fall for it, girl.

Just this morning, Kyle had appealed to Holly again. “It doesn’t need to be like this,” he’d told her. “If you were just a little more cooperative, everything could go back to how it used to be.”

In his dreams.

A quick check of the vacation calendar while she scheduled next week’s rota showed Kyle himself hadn’t bothered canceling his own vacation time, even though he was the one who no longer had a vacation booked. Did he really believe she’d cave? Was she so much of a sap he thought she was a sure thing?

Well, fuck him.

Her vacation time couldn’t come fast enough.

She needed to get away from Kyle and the vitriol he’d created in her workspace, if nothing else.

She’d work on the fallout next year.

CHAPTER ONE

The quaint Bavarian-themed town of Leavenworth was like nothing Holly had ever seen before… and nothing like a prison.

Draped in a blanket of pristine snow, its stylized alpine buildings were encrusted with twinkling fairy lights that shone like jewels and cast enough glow that it never seemed to get dark.

The crisp winter air rang with laughter and cheer as couples and families reveled in the holiday spirit that permeated every corner of the picturesque town.

She had always wanted to come here. It had been one of those dreams she’d had since she was a little girl with a mother who was mad about Christmas, enough that she’d called her daughters Holly and Ivy. It had been a childhood promise, one that was cruelly snatched away when Holly’s mother had become sick and died at an unexpectedly young age. While her father and older sister had withdrawn, turning their backs on the festive period her mother had loved so much, Holly had doubled down and silently promised she would live out her mother’s dreams, and her own, for both of them.

But it was ironic, after everything that had transpired, how she’d fought and endured so much crap to preserve this break, that now Holly had finally gotten here, she wasn’t really feeling it.

She traipsed along the sidewalk, pulling along her heavy suitcase filled with warm winter woolens, and tried to absorb the unique ambiance as she made the half-mile walk from the coach station to the hotel she was booked into. She was late. There had been a problem with her ticket, and by the time she’d sorted it out, she’d had to catch the last transport of the day, which meant she didn’t have the nice, relaxed journey she’d expected with plenty of time to settle into her surroundings for the next two weeks. When she’d finally arrived in Leavenworth, all the taxis were fully booked, hence the walk. Well, it wasn’t far. Just cumbersome.

Holly’s case bumped over a pothole that was obscured by the snow, jamming itself, and in the next second, she almost wrenched her arm out of its socket, pulling on its dead weight.

Cursing under her breath, she stopped to pull it out, only to find one of the wheels on the case had buckled and bent, making it impossible for her to wheel it smoothly.

She huffed out a breath. It felt like everything was conspiring against her. How was it that she was getting the bad karma? Wasn’t that supposed to work the other way around?

Maybe you’re on the naughty list. It almost sounded like her mother’s voice saying that, like she so often had when Holly was a child.

Resisting the urge to curse out loud and remonstrate again the unfairness of it all, Holly resorted to dragging her case with both hands and praying that the fabric didn’t rip and soak through all her clothing.

“Here, let me help you with that…” A smooth, deep voice, which Holly might have found sexy if she wasn’t quite so irritated, broke into her silent disgruntlement. And then the case was being effortlessly lifted away from her.

Holly looked up to find a tall, distinguished-looking man with dark hair and smoldering bedroom eyes, which crinkled at the corners as he smiled.

He wore a thick coat, a matching hat and scarf, and his hands were gloved.

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