Heir for the Holidays

Chapter One

‘Come in!’

Ella looked at her watch. It wasn’t yet nine, which was disappointing, because she’d hoped he would be late—very late. Late enough for her to tell him that, sadly, he would no longer qualify to shadow her, because the one thing Ella categorically refused to indulge was lack of punctuality.

This was not what she needed on a Monday morning, with summer drawing to an end and all the work involved in changing the store fronts, doing the end of season inventories and working out the various temporary placements that were needed to cover the Christmas season.

What Ella wanted was to have her routine down pat, as she always did.

She liked routine. She liked order. She’d had her whole week planned out until she’d opened her email at eight, when she’d arrived at Hailey’s, only to find that she’d been tasked with taking a lad under her wing to show him the ropes for the next fortnight.

Jose Rivero, there through personal recommendation by Sir Ron Brisk-Hailey, whose family had owned the department store on the outskirts of Dublin for nearly eighty years.

There was scant information on why this lad was interested in learning the ropes of a department store but, reading between the lines of Vera’s brief email, she’d concluded that he was probably a friend of one of Sir Ron’s kids—maybe on the last leg of work experience before hitting university.

It didn’t matter. What mattered was that she wasn’t in the best of moods when she heard that knock on the door.

Half-standing, reluctant, resigned and still resentful, Ella was smiling grimly as the office door was pushed open. She looked up slowly, schooling her expression so that she gave the message that she was a busy woman and wouldn’t tolerate anyone who wasn’t willing to do as told.

She froze as the guy strolled into her office, paused, looked at her in silence for a couple of seconds and then shut the door behind him with a little nudge of his foot.

She knew that she was gaping. She couldn’t help herself. This was so unlike her, so out of keeping with her usual calm, competent, unflappable, serious self. There was part of her that almost couldn’t believe she was standing here, staring at this man as though she’d never set eyes on a guy before.

He was…beautiful. Sinfully, crazily, stupidly beautiful.

He was tall and swarthy, with dark, dark hair that curled just a little at the collar of his black polo-shirt, and had eyes that were designed to demolish common sense, reason and sound judgement—three things on which she prided herself having in abundance.

‘I… I think you’ve got the wrong room.’ She was irritated by the breathlessness of her voice, so she cleared her throat and did her utmost to drag her eyes away from the guy who was still looking at her with his head tilted to one side.

‘Have I?’

‘Yes,’ Ella said sharply. She hurriedly tried to find Vera’s email, leaning over the computer, all too conscious of those dark eyes on her.

Then she frantically scanned it for details that weren’t there in the first place…

so why on earth had she thought that they would suddenly materialise out of thin air?

‘You’re Ella Campbell?’

Ella looked at the man who was now walking towards her.

‘I’m sorry but I was expecting… I wasn’t expecting someone…’

Was he going to help her out with this? Evidently not.

His amused silence was unnerving, and Ella was seldom unnerved.

A serious child who had become a serious adult, she had only ever been unnerved once, when her heart had let her down.

But everything makes one stronger, and she had toughened up.

So to be here, now, with her thoughts all over the place and her heart beating like a sledgehammer, wasn’t what she wanted. Not at all.

‘Please,’ she said curtly, ‘Sit.’

Ella watched as he sat. He moved with the economic, elegant grace of a panther. He was sleek, powerful and, sitting in front of her desk, he seemed to dominate the space around him.

‘I’m afraid I just found out this morning that you were showing up, Mr…

Rivero.’ She glanced again at her email, blinking at her screen because it saved her from having to look at his darkly beautiful face.

‘Vera didn’t send over many details about you and, like I said, I wasn’t expecting someone…

’ She sighed and linked her fingers together on her desk. ‘I thought you would be younger.’

‘My apologies for disappointing you.’

‘I see here that you were recommended by Sir Ron?’

‘I was.’

‘I presumed that you were perhaps one of his daughter’s friends over here to do a little work experience before starting university in Dublin.’

‘I am here for work experience, but I won’t be heading off to university, and I’m a little old to be mixing with Sir Ron’s daughters and their friends.’

‘How do you know Sir Ron?’

‘Is that relevant, would you say?’

Ella met his mild smile with pursed lips because somehow his response, though valid enough, was just a little too over-confident for her liking—borderline insolent.

A young lad she could deal with, even a young lad who wanted to fool around more than learn the ropes. She’d had two shadow her in the eighteen months since she’d been working at Hailey’s. But this guy…?

She was flustered. ‘Maybe you could tell me a little about yourself—your work experience and what you hope to get from being here for two weeks. Do you have any experience in retail?’

Their eyes tangled, and for a couple of seconds there was silence as Rocco thought about what he was going to tell her and what he wasn’t.

Jose Rivero. Jose Rivero was the owner of a small outlet somewhere in Spain who had pulled one or two strings with the owner of this once-prestigious, now down-on-its-luck department store, ostensibly to see how a big store was run.

Maybe his home was in London and he was hoping to open somewhere there.

How had he pulled those strings? What sort of place was he hoping to open?

The details didn’t matter. He was just an ordinary guy who would be temporarily staying at a one-bed rented flat somewhere close by.

An ordinary guy, a minnow who wanted to get in with the big boys, grateful to have cadged a favour.

Smart, ambitious but with a long road ahead of him.

Earlier, when Rocco had sat having his espresso in the café opposite Hailey’s, he had felt oddly free at the thought of his modest, unassuming alter ego.

He would have two weeks roaming through the store, under the guise of seeing how things were done, while casting his eye over everything and making sure that he knew just what would have to be done to the place when he bought it to convert into offices and high-end apartments.

For the first time in his life, in the guise of Jose Rivero, Rocco would cease to be the only heir to the great Mancini fortune. He would cease to be the billionaire who had grown up in a mansion, who owned multiple properties, a super-yacht and a fleet of eye-wateringly expensive cars.

It felt good. It felt good to be sitting opposite this small, sexy girl with the straight dark, shoulder-length hair with the big green eyes and skin that was as pale as milk and dusted with freckles.

It felt even better to be with a woman who wasn’t interested in making a favourable impression on him.

Rocco smiled. He liked the way she blushed and tried to hide it. She was in her twenties but trying hard to maintain the stern demeanour of someone older.

‘Where to begin?’ Rocco mused aloud, without any intention of telling her anything of significance. ‘I’m just an ordinary guy who’s been lucky enough to get some work experience here for a couple of weeks. To see how life in a big department store is lived.’

‘You won’t be seeing how life is lived here, Mr Rivero. You won’t be getting involved in a set of a soap opera. The email I received doesn’t specify a great deal but I’m presuming, from everything you’ve said, that you want to see how things are run?’

‘Correct, but please, for the record, my friends call me Jose.’

‘And please, for the record, I don’t believe we’re friends.’

‘Perhaps not yet, but I’ve always maintained the importance of good working relationships in an office setting. So, let’s start with my age. I’m thirty-two which, I gather from your reaction, wasn’t what you expected.’

‘The kids who come here are usually fresh out of school or earning money before they head off to university.’

‘And how often are kids shown around the store?’

‘I don’t believe that’s relevant, is it, Mr Rivero?’

‘It could be if I plan on opening something more ambitious than I currently have.’

‘Well, perhaps a handful a year. Summer time is popular and so is Christmas. We need the extra hands, and there are usually teenagers who want to earn a little money for the holidays.’

‘Can I say that you look remarkably young to be in charge of running a department here? Because you are, aren’t you?’

‘I…’

‘Not relevant. I know.’ He held up his hands up in mock-surrender. ‘Am I over-stepping my brief? I have a problem with that. So I’ve sometimes been told.’

‘I… I’m twenty-eight.’

Ella licked her lips. The harder she tried to be composed, the faster she could feel this man getting to her, getting under her skin.

He had walked through her office door, tall, dark and crazily different, bringing with him the enticing whiff of foreign shores and heady adventure.

He’d reminded her of where she was—in a job she had never anticipated, living a life that had never been on her wish list.

A broken heart, her mother dying, her dad needing her…everything had fed all at once into bringing her here, back to Hailey’s, where she had worked every summer as a teenager and then for several years between A-Levels and university.