“I know,” groaned Flora, staring at some spreadsheets that were swimming in front of her eyes. “Innes says this should be easy to read, but I don’t think Fintan even opened the message.”

There was a silence.

“I mean, I can’t sack him,” said Flora. “It’s his hotel.”

“But you’re doing everything! It’s not right! You should be enjoying your baby!”

A bolt of fear went through Flora’s heart. Did he know?

“I am!” protested Flora, even as Douglas was tugging on Joel’s fingers. “I do! I love the baby.”

“Uh, yeah, I know,” said Joel, baffled.

Flora’s eyes strayed back to her email. “I’ll get him in tomorrow. If he can pull the old Fintan charm on the old ladies, that will be good for business.”

The old Fintan charm hadn’t shown itself for quite some time, but you could live in hope.

“Have I told you,” said Joel, “how absolutely amazing and fabulous you’ve been and how proud of you I am?”

“For opening ‘the worst hotel in the world’?” grumbled Flora.

“Oh, that’s all over and done with now,” said Joel, putting Douglas to bed and pulling her close to him.

He was completely and absolutely wrong.

Chapter 56

C andace couldn’t believe it. Sometimes life depended on luck, she knew, and in this case, she liked to think that she’d made the luck on her own.

She stared at it again. Amazing. She’d talked to her friend on the picture desk, who was just as obsessive a reader of Hello! magazine as she was, and they’d tracked back through the pictures, knowing he was Norwegian, and—ta-da! With a bit of help from Google Translate they’d been able to easily put together “Tragedy of Young Norwegian of Noble Descent” with lots of pictures of his amazing castle and stories of the death of his beautiful mother.

Then, under his real name, racy stories of his dating models, pictures of him falling out of nightclubs, and a tabloid nickname, the Party Prince. There was also a small gossip item about him, speculating at his missing Christmas parties and wondering whether he was in rehab, as well as links to his social media accounts that proved the matter beyond doubt and were also full of ridiculous pictures she could easily pull, with him shooting deer and posing next to Ferraris. It was absolute gold. It was patently clear he’d been banished.

She had his quotes about Mure and how he couldn’t wait to go; she had pictures—as well as the freeze-frame pulls from the video—and now it was absolutely up and ready to go. This was brilliant. She was going to get promoted for sure. It had absolutely everything: money, good-looking people, nobility, tragedy, shame, and, her readers’ favorite thing, someone being punished ferociously. It couldn’t fail. They’d have it up by the evening, clickbait of the finest order.

She emailed off the final copy for the page mock-ups with satisfaction. Then she headed out to get the last flight of the evening. God, she’d be pleased to shuck off this crap hole and get back to London. How could they handle being so far away and stuck in the middle of nowhere? It was absolutely freezing all the bloody time and there was nothing going on. Although to be fair, that statue wasn’t bad.