Chapter Four
‘The Big Guy—and I mean Mr Big himself—wants to see you right now, in the boardroom. And, before you ask, he’s specifically asked for you.’
Ella was barely through the front doors of the department store, sodden, because she’d had to half-run from her car in lightly falling snow. She decided that her stress levels must surely have peaked with this.
‘Why?’
‘Believe me, I’m mystified as well—unplanned visit.
I took a call from whatever assistant he’s brought with him asking for you by name.
Now he has free rein of the store, the lawyers have been in.
He’s been here since seven this morning.
He’s yet to be seen by any of us lesser mortals. Easier to spot a leprechaun.’
‘Probably ashamed, turning the store into yet another office block and high-end apartments for yuppies who work in Dublin. And at Christmas too! What a time to tell everyone they’re being laid off so enjoy earning money while they can.’
‘It’s awful.’ Vera sighed. ‘But there’s nothing to be done and word has it that he’s been more than fair with everyone working here.
Generous redundancies or new jobs in what’s going up, if they’re qualified for the placement.
We all knew, even if we didn’t want to admit it, that things were going downhill. It’s not such a shock.’
‘So why does he want me? I’m not involved in the decision making. I’m not a lawyer or an accountant so what have I got to say to the man?’
Ella finally got her feet to move. She noticed how old and tired everything looked as she took off her waterproof and shook it out. None of this was Vera’s fault, but once again hormones had taken over and directed her responses.
She was right. Once a proud bastion of high-end glamour and luxury, the store had been declining slowly over the years.
There had been murmurings but nothing definite until, out of the blue, it was announced that the place had been taken over and would be restructured into a massive block of very expensive apartments, with the entire top floor given over to office space.
Maybe at any other time she could have dealt with it, but right now what Ella wanted more than anything else was continuity, and the store’s imminent closure had hit her like a hammer blow.
Vera was looking at her through shrewd, narrowed eyes and Ella smiled and sighed. ‘Okay, okay. I’m fine. I’ll go and see him just as soon as I get my act together. I’ve barely had time to take a breath.’
‘I know things are tough at the moment, Els…’
‘I don’t want to talk about it. You’ve been good enough already, listening to me on a loop.’
‘It’s what friends do.’
‘Tell Mr Big that I’ll be in the boardroom in fifteen minutes.
And Vera…?’ Ella grinned, for a moment the girl once again instead of the woman with the weight of the world on her shoulders.
‘You don’t have to worry. I’ll make sure the hormones are firmly under lock and key, whatever the man has to say. ’
Three floors up, Rocco was seated at the sprawling conference table, gazing at nothing, with his thoughts all over the place. Yet somewhere deep inside, for the first time in months, he felt at peace.
The last time he’d been here, the sun had been shining and the skies were the milky blue of fading summer.
Now, the onset of deep winter was making itself felt.
It was bitterly cold, and through the bank of windows he could see the lazy flurry of snow, not quite sufficient to collect but enough to signal worse to come.
There was no need to be here. When he and Ella had parted company, it had been for good.
They’d had a brief fling, nothing more. Towards the very end, he had felt the whisper of something just out of reach, emotions that could have led to an involvement that his practical side knew would never happen.
She had looked at him and he had seen something that had set the alarm bells ringing.
More than that, he had sensed something inside himself, something that wasn’t welcome, a pull that had begun to feel dangerously out of control. He had laid down his boundaries without hesitating, had reminded her that this was just a moment in time and then, on schedule, he had left.
By then, he’d known exactly what he would offer for the building and exactly how he would reconfigure it. He had seen the quality of the staff and acknowledged that he would be more than happy to offer alternative positions to some of them.
With everything nicely in motion, and planning permission smoothly progressing just as it should, there was absolutely no need for him to do anything more than sit back and oversee developments.
His vast empire, with all the responsibilities that entailed, barely allowed him time to surface, far less make an unnecessary trip back to where…
Back to where he had left behind a piece of himself he had never known existed.
That was the persistent thought that had nagged at him ever since he had left.
Rocco had papered that over by telling himself that an uneasy conscience at withholding the truth from Ella was at the root of his restlessness since he’d returned to normal life. He’d get past it.
He hadn’t. She’d played in his head like the refrain of a song he couldn’t quite manage to forget.
Why? He was always so adept when it came to women, always so controlled with what he gave and what he didn’t.
Emotions had never impacted on his behaviour but he’d found it impossible not to think about her.
So here he was. The chemistry between them had obviously been more powerful than he’d anticipated.
What they’d shared hadn’t burnt out and maybe it needed to be re-visited.
It didn’t mean there was anything serious between them.
It just meant that an itch remained that needed to be scratched, and the choice was either to confront that by returning to face her or to pretend it didn’t exist, which ran the risk of making the whole situation even more insupportable.
Reduced to the most basic level, Rocco reckoned that if something hadn’t reached burnout, living in a state of denial wouldn’t get it there any time soon. If he still felt this peculiar craving then chances were high that she did as well.
But he still felt ridiculously nervous as he waited for the knock on the door that would signal her arrival.
And ridiculously excited at the prospect of how she would react when she saw him.
Surprised? Dismayed? And, underneath whatever those initial reactions might be, excited at seeing him again?
Bone-deep self-confidence settled on excitement.
He strolled towards the window, gazed down at the street below and then tensed as he heard the soft push of the door being opened.
Ella made it to the boardroom several minutes late but, frankly, she couldn’t care.
When she’d first been told about the sale of Hailey’s she’d been more devastated than she’d thought possible.
She’d known that the place needed an injection of cash, and that there had been chatter about it being sold for a while, but the reality of it had hit her for six.
It was as if a tidal wave of memories and nostalgia had crashed into her with full force, sweeping her off her feet.
She’d wanted to confront whoever it was that had bought the store and tell him just how important it was for the town.
But that outraged feeling hadn’t lasted long because she’d known that whatever she had to say on the matter would fall on deaf ears.
They’d been presented with a fait accompli and they would all have to live with it.
She pushed open the door and it took her a couple of seconds to focus on the figure standing with his back to her, staring out of the window in dark charcoal-grey trousers and white shirt cuffed to the elbows, and she noticed a jacket slung over the back of a chair.
He was very tall and dark-haired and, if something about him felt familiar, then she subconsciously dismissed the feeling because it was evident from the calibre of his clothing that this was the billionaire at the helm of the buyout.
She was curious as to why he’d asked to see her but not nervous.
Nothing the man said or did could possibly have any impact on her whatsoever.
‘You asked to see me?’
Her voice echoed in the cavernous boardroom. She was standing by the door, focusing on the towering figure as he slowly turned to look at her.
Reality took a hundred years to catch up with disbelief and, even when her brain screamed that the guy now looking at her was the same guy who had disappeared without a trace, she still froze in shock, finding it impossible to believe.
It was impossible to believe because it just couldn’t be happening.
‘Ella…’
That voice…deep, dark and seductive…
Ella closed her eyes and every bone in her body went limp as she felt herself falling, falling, falling…in a desperate attempt to escape the reality she had just been confronted with.
She came to groggily, lying on the uncomfortable sofa against the wall with a cushion propped under her head.
‘Here. Drink this. It should be something stronger,’ that sexy, familiar voice said. ‘My preference would be a shot of brandy but unfortunately this is all on offer.’
‘No,’ Ella whispered. ‘This can’t be happening.’
‘You’re in shock. Drink some water. You need a couple of seconds to gather your thoughts.’
‘Who are you? Jose? I don’t understand. What are you doing here? No. No, no, no…’ She closed her eyes and heard her shallow breathing whilst feeling his gaze on her. He was still there when she opened her eyes a moment later.
‘I’m Rocco Mancini. I’m going to pull a chair over. Don’t try and stand; you’ll probably fall over. You’re still weak. There’s some food on the sideboard, so I’ll bring you something to eat.’
‘You…you can’t be. You…’
‘Wait. Don’t move a muscle.’
‘I’m not hungry!’
‘You need to get some strength up. Stay right there.’