Chapter One Noelle
‘But it’s Christmas!’ Eve’s whine comes through my phone speakers with perfect clarity. I don’t need to glance at the screen to know she’s giving me her best pout right now.
‘You know what I mean.’
I let my concentration slide away from the road ahead just long enough to confirm that, yes, my twin sister is holding her phone camera to her face, batting her long lashes and giving me puppy dog eyes that would put a cocker spaniel to shame.
It’s the kind of look that makes people melt like butter in the palm of her hand, and Eve has never had any trouble getting exactly what she wants.
From everyone except me.
‘I’ll be there tomorrow,’ I remind her. ‘Pretty sure you can survive without me for one day.’
Eve huffs out a frustrated breath. ‘Fine. But when you get here and Mum and Aunt Valerie are at each other’s throats, I will be accepting no blame whatsoever.’
‘You’re not completely alone,’ I point out. ‘Nathan can help.’
‘It’s not the same,’ Eve says with a dismissive eye-roll. ‘He’s still new to all of this, and he doesn’t get it the way we do.’
She’s got a point there. Our annual Christmas family reunion at my grandmother’s home is quite possibly my favourite time of the year, but even I don’t mind admitting that it can be a fraught affair.
My family is full of big personalities and trying to keep the peace long enough for the Christmas spirit to settle in, and for everyone – namely, our mother and her older sister – to forget their many, many issues with each other is a tough job.
Eve and I have been playing referee to their relationship each Christmas for as long as I can remember and that kind of dynamic just isn’t something you want to throw at a newcomer.
‘They never get really bad until day three, anyway,’ I say, trying to ease some of the guilt I’m suddenly feeling. ‘You’ll be fine.’
‘Or,’ Eve says with a pointed wiggle of her brows. ‘You could just ask your sexy boss to give you some time off. Appeal to his inner Christmas spirit or something.’
I bite back a snort of laughter and force a neutral facial expression. ‘He’s not my boss. He’s a client. And stop calling him that.’
‘That’s how you described him to me!’
That’s true.
Two years ago, when I first started working for Alexander Hoxton, his looks were just about the only thing I could think about and I’m woman enough to admit that I once allowed myself the occasional fleeting fantasy of something more.
Because Alexander Hoxton is the kind of man women daydream about.
He’s the person you conjure up as the placeholder in your mind when you’re reading a romance novel or spending some quality time with your favourite toy late at night.
The type of guy who looks like he’s just stepped right off the pages of Vogue and straight into your life.
Then he opens his mouth and the daydream is shattered.
To start with, he was late for our interview. 10am sharp, his assistant had made sure to include at the bottom of my confirmation email. Hoxton values punctuality.
You’d think a person who values punctuality wouldn’t leave an interviewee sitting on one of the uncomfortable plastic seats in his grey and sterile office lobby for forty-five minutes.
And yet.
Instead of apologising when he finally deigned to saunter in and summon me into his office, looking like he’d just strolled off a runway, he simply dropped into his chair and fixed me with a distant and unimpressed look in lieu of a proper greeting.
The urge to remind him that he was one who was interested in my services, and I hadn’t come crawling to him, was overwhelming.
It was like he’d forgotten all about his meal at The Avalon and thought I was some random person who’d managed to con her way into his office somehow. It was jarring to say the least.
But I smiled brightly, stuck my hand out to remind him that at least one of us was a professional, and tried to get us back on the right track. ‘It’s a pleasure to see you again, Mr Hoxton. I hope you had a lovely Christmas break.’
I still haven’t decided whether it was the manic smile on my face or the fact that I’d leaned over his desk, inching into his personal space to shove my hand out directly in front of him, but his facade cracked just a tiny bit then.
He looked genuinely startled for a moment before his features smoothed out again into that mask of carefully constructed disinterest, and he gingerly shook my hand.
‘Ms Jones,’ he said with a sharp nod before he dropped my hand.
I remember waiting awkwardly to see if he’d elaborate – perhaps ask about how my Christmas was – but only silence followed.
The rest of the interview went well enough. I took him through my sample menus, dutifully reeled off my culinary résumé, and then sat back and waited for him to do his part and ask me some questions. But only one question came, eventually.
‘Ms Jones, I’m a busy man.’
I remember biting the inside of my cheek to stop a laugh from slipping out. I’m a busy man. No shit, Sherlock.
‘I don’t have time for culinary… theatrics or pretentious menus.’ He waved a dismissive hand over the sample menus I’d laid out in front of him and I swear a small part of me nearly shrivelled up and died.
Culinary theatrics.
Pretentious menus.
Ouch.
‘Your meal last Christ—’ He grimaced as if tasting something vile on the tip of his tongue, and then shook his head.
‘Your meal last year showcased your talents well, but I really don’t need that every day.
I just want someone who can whip up something that’s nutritious, tastes good, and isn’t going to make extra work for me every day.
Bonus points if you can tidy up after yourself and know what discretion means.
’ For the first time since I’d walked into his sterile office, he met my gaze with something other than thinly veiled boredom with a dash of contempt, and asked, ‘Can you do that, or should I continue to look elsewhere?’
I should’ve laughed in his face.
Should’ve jumped straight out of my seat and stormed right out of there. Because who the hell talks to someone like that without expecting an immediate fist in the face? Alexander Hoxton, that’s who.
But I knew in my heart of hearts that I couldn’t return to The Avalon after an opportunity like this.
I couldn’t get a job at any restaurant after this.
As much as I still hate to admit it to this day, getting that email from Hoxton’s assistant on Christmas Day was the best gift anyone could have ever given me.
For the first time since I allowed myself to dream of a culinary career, I felt like I had an actual plan that would allow me to get to my end goal: a restaurant of my own.
I’d never be able to save up enough working for someone else but, as a personal chef, I could make my own hours, charge my own rates and specifically seek out the ridiculously rich as clients.
I’d be doing something I love and finally, finally, be earning what I deserve for it.
And it all started with him.
That’s why, two years on from quite possibly the worst interview I’ve ever had, with a roster of other clients to cater for, Alexander Hoxton is still one of them.
His only redeeming quality – aside from being a literal Adonis – is the fact that he only really communicates via email, and even those are a rarity.
I’ve taken to leaving sticky notes around his kitchen if I need to ask something of him and, since the day he hired me, I don’t think we’ve shared more than ten actual words between us.
It’s a strange working dynamic for sure, but it works for us and I’d like to keep it that way.
Eve, as the main recipient of all my Hoxton-related complaints, knows this just as well as I do, so I can’t exactly blame her for being confused as to why I’ve chosen him over driving to Nan’s house together like we’d planned.
‘First off, I’d be surprised if Hoxton even knows the meaning of Christmas spirit,’ I say, glancing away from the phone screen as I turn down a familiar side road.
The large houses on either side of the street are decked out in glittering lights and artful decorations that send a warm jolt of Christmas joy shooting through me.
You just don’t get this kind of festive fun in the city where we’re all crammed into dull, grey tower blocks and nobody wants to make eye contact with their neighbours.
The houses out here, in Hoxton’s rich Surrey suburb, are like something out of a film.
Almost every home is covered in twinkling lights and more than a handful have doused their sprawling front lawns in fake snow.
‘And secondly,’ I continue, a wry smile playing on my lips as I crawl past an elegant reindeer sculpture outside a particularly grand house, ‘you remember how much he’s paying me for tonight, don’t you?’
‘Money isn’t everything, Noelle,’ Eve says loftily, but I can hear the grin in her voice.
I suppose that’s one more good thing about Hoxton: he pays ridiculously well.
So well, I thought there had been a mistake the first time he paid one of my invoices and added a tip so large, I was convinced my bank would shut down my account on suspicion of fraud.
I still haven’t quite managed to shake that fear every time he pays me.
The tech company Hoxton founded, almost a decade ago, has a reputation for paying some of the highest salaries in the field and it seems that this admittedly admirable generosity filters down to his other expenditures too.