Welcome Me to Willoughby Close
A Return to Willoughby Close Romance
Kate Hewitt
Welcome Me to Willoughby Close
Copyright© 2020 Kate Hewitt
Kindle Edition
The Tule Publishing, Inc.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
First Publication by Tule Publishing 2019
Cover design by Rhian
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
ISBN: 978-1-952560-20-0
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Epilogue
The Return to Willoughby Close series
More books by Kate Hewitt
About the Author
Chapter One
It wasn’t London. Emily David stood in the doorway of the cottage, part of a converted stables, and told herself to keep calm. The place was clean, everything bright and sparkling and looking quite new. That was something, at least.
She took a step inside, doing her best to admire the wood-burning stove, the granite counters and chrome fixtures in the kitchen, the French windows overlooking an overgrown postage stamp of garden, a tangle of wood beyond. Really, it was all wonderfully quaint.
So what if it wasn’t London? It wasn’t her flat in a modern, anonymous building where no one knew her name and she preferred it that way. It wasn’t London, where people kept their heads down, mobiles clamped to their ears, and did their best not to make eye contact. It wasn’t London, where she could melt into a crowd, where her office environment was safe and controlled, where she’d developed a routine that worked.
She could deal with all of that. She’d have to. It wasn’t as if her boss, Henry Trent, now Earl of Stokeley, had given her that much choice. He was leaving his high-powered position at Ellis Investments to live at Willoughby Manor in Wychwood-on-Lea here in the Cotswolds to run a charity he and his wife had recently set up for children in care. He wanted Emily, as his executive assistant for the last four years, to accompany him.
Emily had balked at the idea at first; she didn’t like change, and she wasn’t keen on being so far away from the city, although admittedly it was only an hour by train. Still, this felt like another world—the cluster of four cottages around a little courtyard hidden from the narrow road by a dark wood, the crenelated towers of the manor house visible over the tops of the trees.
Henry had done his best to sweeten the offer, giving her a pay rise and free accommodation in the form of this cottage. Eventually, Emily had agreed; Ellis Investments’s HR had said there were no other positions in the firm suitable for her and, truth be told, she actually liked working for Henry. Blunt and often terse to the point of rudeness, he never pried, never engaged in idle chitchat, and was almost as briskly efficient as she was. Together, as boss banker and executive assistant, they’d clicked.
But she had no idea if that positive dynamic would continue here, while Henry ran a charitable foundation out in the sticks, and she was meant to help him.
A careful breath in and out and Emily made herself start to relax. At least the place was clean, she told herself again. It felt like the one positive thing she could hold on to. The moving truck would be arriving any moment, and then she could start putting things in their place. She ran her fingers along the granite counter in the kitchen, frowning slightly. Maybe she’d give everything a quick spritz, just in case.
“Hello?”
Emily turned around to see Henry’s wife, Alice, standing in the doorway with a bright smile on her face.
Her boss had married Alice James eighteen months ago, and Emily still didn’t quite know what to make of her. She was ridiculously young, a couple of years younger than her own twenty-six, with a halo of white-blonde hair and an angelic smile to match.
She’d certainly started to soften the usually taciturn Henry, turned him into a man who actually whistled as he walked, or so Emily had noticed when Henry had come into London for work. She didn’t know what to make of that, either.
She hadn’t had much interaction with Alice since the wedding, as she’d been in London and Alice had stayed here, in Wychwood-on-Lea, a chocolate-box village in the lovely Cotswolds with all the thatch, charm, and golden stone you could possibly wish for. She’d met her only three or four times, and the interactions had been brief, as Emily had been working and Alice had only stopped by the office to see Henry. Now she forced a smile to her stiff lips as Alice came into the cottage.
“What do you think? Will it do? Henry said you had a nice flat in Earl’s Court—”
“Oh, yes, it’s fine.” Emily spoke a little too quickly. She wasn’t in the right frame of mind to rhapsodise about the cosiness of the cottage, the quaintness of the village. Everything still felt new and uncertain and alarmingly fragile. She held on to her smile as she added, a bit belatedly, “Thank you so much.”
“Oh okay.” Alice was still smiling, but in a puzzled sort of way. Did she think they were going to be instant best friends now that Emily would be living here? Emily couldn’t see that happening.
She’d had plenty of colleagues and acquaintances, people she passed the time of day with, or chatted to
