Frank gave her a weary look and she remembered, too late, that he didn’t like inquisitive elves.

‘That, Miss Mop and Bucket,’ he replied, ‘was Nathaniel Hart.’

‘Hart?’ She blinked. ‘As in…’ She pointed up at the building soaring above them.

‘As in Hastings & Hart,’ he confirmed.

‘No…’ Or, to put it another way, Nooooooo!

‘Are you arguing with me?’

‘No!’ And she shook her head, to make sure. ‘I just hadn’t realised there was a real Mr Hart.’ It certainly explained the air of authority. If he looked as if he owned the place it was because, well, he did. ‘I thought that most of these big stores were owned by big chains.’

‘Hastings & Hart is not most stores.’

About to ask if there was a Mr Hastings, or even a Mrs Hart, she thought better of it. She was having a bad enough day without feeling guilty about lusting after some woman’s husband.

‘Is that all?’ Frank asked with a sardonic lift of the brow. ‘Or are you prepared to honour us with another teddy-dressing class for the under fives?’

‘I’m sorry. It got a bit out of hand,’ she said, fairly sure that was sarcasm rather than praise. ‘I won’t do it again.’

‘Oh, please don’t let me stop you. You are a hit with the children, if not with their mothers.’

Definitely sarcasm and she had been feeling rather guilty since several of the children had refused point-blank to surrender their bears to the rigours of a freezing sleigh ride and insisted they come home with them in a nice warm taxi. Not that it should worry Frank Alyson. It was all the more profit for Nathaniel Hart, wasn’t it? Which was all men like him cared about.

But all the practice she’d had smiling in the last few months stood her in good stead and she gave him one of her best.

He looked somewhat startled, as well he might-she didn’t imagine he got too many of those-and, satisfied with the effect, she returned to her stool, where she would be safely out of sight of Mr Nathaniel Hart, unless he borrowed Frank Alyson’s Chief Elf robes.