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‘Interesting question,’ the man murmured, positioning himself directly in front of her.
The look in her eyes seemed to amuse him.
‘Are you looking for make-up?’ Maddie asked bluntly. ‘Because if so you’re in the wrong department. I could always point you in the right direction.’
In response, the man randomly picked up a jar from the precarious display she had been fiddling with earlier and twirled it in his hand.
‘What’s this if not make-up?’
Maddie removed it from him and swivelled it so that the label was facing him. ‘Regenerating night cream, targeting a woman in her sixties,’ she said crisply. ‘Are you interested in buying it?’
‘Oh, I’m interested,’ he said, in a tone laced with innuendo.
‘Well, that’s all I’m selling, so if it’s not what you’re interested in you should probably keep moving.’
Maddie folded her arms. She knew she was blushing. She also knew that her body was misbehaving. Once upon a time, it had misbehaved before, and she still had the scars to show for that. A repeat performance wasn’t on the cards—especially not with some arrogant guy too good-looking for his own good.
‘Are we cutting to the chase, here?’ Leo purred, rising to the challenge and liking it. ‘Who’s to say I’m not...interested...in that very expensive pot of cream for my mother?’
‘Oh!’ Maddie flushed. She’d misread the situation.
At this rate, sampling how things worked on the shop floor was going to get her precisely nowhere—because she clearly had no idea about effective salesmanship. But then she’d never stood behind a counter selling anything in her entire life.
Yet again she wondered whether she was doing the right thing. Was she? Three and a half weeks ago she’d received the startling news that she was the sole beneficiary of a bequest that included a department store, a house, and various assorted paraphernalia—courtesy of a grandfather she had never seen, nor met, and never really known existed.
Having been struggling to make ends meet, and living the sort of disastrous life she had never imagined possible, she had already been asking herself what direction she needed to take to wipe away the past couple of years of her life, or at least to put it all in perspective, and wham—just like that, she’d received her answer.
She’d arrived in Ireland still barely able to believe her good fortune, with big plans to sell the store, the house and whatever else there was to sell, so that she could buy herself the dream that had eluded her for so many years.
An education.
With money in the bank she would be able to get to university, an ambition she had had to abandon when her mother had become ill four years previously. She would be able to throw herself into the art course she had always wanted to do without fear of finding herself begging on street corners to pay for the privilege.
She would be able to make something of herself—and that meant a lot, because she felt that she’d spent much of her life being buffeted by the winds of fate, carried this way and that with no discernible goal propelling her forward.
But she’d taken one look at the store and one look at the house she had inherited—full of charm despite the fact that it was practically falling down—and she’d dumped all her plans to sell faster than a rocket leaving earth. Art school could wait—the store needed her love and her help now.
Anthony Grey, the lawyer who had arranged to see her so that he could go over every single disadvantage of hanging on to what, apparently, was a business on its last legs and a house that was being propped up only by the ivy growing around it, had talked to her for three hours. She had listened with her head tilted to one side, hands on her knees, and had then promptly informed him that she was going to try and make a go of it.
And that, first and foremost, entailed getting to know what it was she intended making a go of. Which, in turn, necessitated her working on the shop floor so that she could see where the cracks were and also hopefully pick up what was being said by the loyal staff who suspected that their jobs might be hanging in the balance.
A couple of weeks under cover and Maddie was sure she would be able to get a feel for things.
Optimism hadn’t been her companion for a very long time and she had been enjoying it.
Until now. She’d jumped to all sorts of conclusions and screwed up. She pinned a smile to her face, because the way too good-looking man staring down at her, with the most incredible navy blue eyes she had ever seen in her life, looked rich and influential, even though he was kitted out in a pair of faded black jeans and a polo shirt.
There was something about his lazy, loose-limbed stance, the way he oozed self-confidence, the latent strength of his body...
She felt it again—that treacherous quiver in the pit of her stomach and the tickling between her thighs—and she furiously stamped it down.
‘Your mother...’ She picked up the pot and squinted at it. ‘She’d love this. It’s thick, creamy, and excellent at smoothing out wrinkles.’
‘Are you just reading what’s written on the label?’
‘I’m afraid I’ve only been here a short while, so I’m just getting the hang of things.’
‘Shouldn’t you have a supervisor working with you in that case? Showing you the ropes?’
The man looked around, as though expecting said person to materialise in front of him. He was enjoying himself. It was clear this stranger was so accustomed to women fawning over him that the novel experience of a woman not caring who he was or how much he was worth was tickling him pink.
He rested flattened palms on the glass counter and Maddie shifted back just a little.
‘Dereliction of duty,’ he murmured.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘You need to tell your boss that it gives the customer a poor impression if the people working on the sales floor don’t really know what they’re talking about.’
Maddie stiffened at the criticism. ‘You’ll find that everyone else on the shop floor has worked here for a very long time. If you like, I can fetch someone over here to help you in your...your quest for the perfect face cream for your mother.’
‘I’ll let you in on a little secret,’ the man said with a tinge of regret, his navy blue eyes never once leaving her face. ‘I lied about wanting the cream for my mother. My mother died when I was a boy.’ Sincere regret seeped into his voice. ‘Both my parents, in actual fact,’ he added in a roughened undertone.
‘I’m so sorry.’
Maddie still felt the loss of her own mother, but she had had her around for a great deal longer than the man standing in front of her had had his. Her father had never been in the picture. He’d done a runner before she was old enough to walk.
Maddie knew scraps of the story that had brought her mother from Italy to the other side of the world. There had been an argument between her mother and the grandfather Maddie hadn’t ever known which had never been resolved. Harsh words exchanged and then too much pride on both sides for any resolution until time took over, making reconciliation an impossibility.
Her mother had been a strong woman—someone who had planted both feet and stood her ground. Stubborn... But then she’d had to fight her way in Australia with a young baby to take care of. Maddie felt that her grandfather might have had the same traits—although she had no real idea because she’d never been told. Secretly she wondered if the grandfather she’d never met might have attempted to contact her mother, only to have his efforts spurned. Parents were often more forgiving with their children than the other way around.
Her eyes misted over and she reached out and impulsively circled the man’s wrist with her fingers—and then yanked her hand back because the charge of electricity that shot through her was downright frightening.
He raised his eyebrows, and for a second she felt that he could read every thought that had flashed through her head.
‘No need,’ he murmured. ‘Have dinner with me.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘I’ll pass on the face cream. Frankly, all those wild claims can’t possibly be true. But have dinner with me. Name the place, name the time...’
‘You’re not interested in buying anything in this store, are you?’
Maddie’s voice cooled by several degrees, because he was just another example of a cocky guy who wanted to get her into bed. She’d been spot-on first time round.
‘And as for a dinner date... That’ll be a no.’
Dinner with this man? How arrogant was he?
Her eyes slid surreptitiously over him and she understood very well why he was as arrogant as he was. The guy was drop-dead gorgeous.
Lean, perfectly chiselled features, dark hair worn slightly too long, which emphasised his powerful masculinity rather than detracting from it, a tightly honed body that testified to time spent working out, even though he didn’t look like the sort of man who spent much time preening in front of mirrors and flexing his muscles. And those eyes... Sexy, bedroom eyes that made her skin burn and made her thoughts wander to what a dinner date with him might be like...
She forced herself to conjure up the hateful memory of her ex—Adam. He’d been good-looking too. Plus charming, charismatic, and from the sort of family that had spent generations looking down on people like her. Well, that whole experience had been a learning curve for Maddie, and she wasn’t about to put those valuable lessons to waste by succumbing to the phoney charm of the man in front of her with his sinful good looks and his I could make your body sing bedroom eyes.
‘Should I be?’
Maddie frowned. ‘What do you mean? What are you talking about?’
‘Should I be interested in buying anything here? Look around you. This is a department store that’s gone to rack and ruin. I’m staggered that you would even have contemplated working here in the first place. The job situation in Dublin must be dire for you to have settled on this—and you’ve obviously had no on-the-job training because there isn’t enough money to go round for such essentials as training programmes. I’m pretty sure that if I looked I’d find an array of out-of-date merchandise and demotivated sales assistants.’
‘Who are you?’
Maddie looked at him narrowly. Was she missing something?
* * *
Leo met her stare and held it. He’d planned on a little incognito surveillance and he was going to stick to the plan—bar this little detour which, he thought, he could very well use to his advantage. She’d turned down his dinner date but he wasn’t fazed by that. Women never said noto him for very long.
Although...
He frowned, because this particular woman didn’t seem to fit the mould.
‘Just someone browsing,’ Leo said smoothly, and then he added, truthfully, ‘I don’t get to this part of the world very often and I wanted to see this store everyone seems to know about.’ He looked around him. ‘I’m less than impressed.’
The woman followed his gaze and said nothing, perhaps because she’d noticed those very same signs of disrepair. She seemed to suddenly realise that he was still watching her, his eyes narrowed.
‘I can see that you agree with me.’
‘Like I said, I haven’t been here for very long—but if you’re looking for something to buy as a souvenir of the store, there’s an excellent selection on the second floor. Mugs, tote bags, lots of stuff...’
Leo suppressed a shudder at the image of tackiness created in his head. Had the place moved with the times at all? Or had progress being quietly sidelined as Gallo’s money ran out?
He had a satisfying vision of what the place would look like under his dominion. High-tech, white glossy counters and open, uncluttered spaces, glass and mirrors, ranks of computers and accessories waiting to be explored—no irritating background elevator music and salespeople who actually knew what they were talking about.
‘If you have lots of money to spend, then we offer a range of leather handbags which we manufacture ourselves to the highest possible standard. They’re Italian, and really beautiful quality.’
‘Sadly,’ Leo said, easily giving voice to the lie, ‘my finances would struggle to stretch to one of your leather handbags.’
She nodded. He didn’t seem like the sort of broke, wrong-side-of-the-tracks kind of guy she had encountered during her life, but it was a fact that a good-looking man could look expensive in anything.
‘But I could probably stretch to one of those tote things you mentioned...’
‘Second floor.’
‘Take me.’
‘Come again?’
‘I want you to do your sales pitch on me.’
‘I’ll be honest with you,’ she said flatly, ‘if this is another way of trying to get me to have dinner with you, then you can forget it. I won’t be doing that.’
Leo wondered whether she would have had a change of heart had she known his true worth. Most definitely, he thought, with his usual healthy dose of cynicism. That said, he was a man accustomed to getting what he wanted—and the more he talked to her, looked at her, felt the pleasurable race of his pulses and the hard throb of his libido, the more he wanted to rise to the challenge of breaking down whatever walls she felt she had to erect.
For once, work and the reason he was in this sad excuse of a store had been put on the back burner.
‘You’re very arrogant, aren’t you?’ he murmured, watching her carefully as the slow burn of anger turned her cheeks a healthy pink. ‘Do you think that you have what it takes to make a man keep banging on a door that’s been firmly shut in his face?’
‘How dare you?’
‘You forget—I’m the customer and the customer is always right.’
His grin was meant to take the sting out of his words and make her realise that he’d been teasing her.
‘That’s better,’ Leo said as her anger appeared to fade, then glanced at his watch to find that time had flown by. ‘Now, why don’t you show me this souvenir section of yours?’ He raised both hands in mock surrender. ‘And you can breathe safe in the knowledge that there’ll be no more dinner invitations. You say you’re new here... You can practise your sales patter on me. I’m just passing through, so you won’t have to worry that I’ll be gossiping behind your back with the locals, telling them that the new girl at the big store doesn’t seem to know the ropes.’
* * *
Maddie looked down, but she wanted to smile.
So far she’d made no friends. It would take time for her to integrate. This interaction almost felt like a breath of fresh air. Naturally she wasn’t going to be an idiot and go on any dates with any strangers—especially good-looking ones who obviously knew how to say the right things to get a woman’s pulse racing. But he had valid criticisms of the store, and she would need those—would need to find out what customers thought when they entered. Customers would look at the place through different eyes from hers. It might actually be a good idea to encourage his opinions.
So he’d asked her out... Maddie didn’t spend time staring at her reflection in mirrors, but she knew that she was attractive. It was something that had dogged her, for better or for worse. Certainly for worse when it had come to Adam, but she couldn’t let the memory of that determine every single response to every single guy who happened to look in her direction. Could she?
Besides, setting aside the killer looks, the man still staring at her wasn’t a rich creep—like Adam had been, had she only had the wisdom to see that from the very start. This guy was more tote bagsthan soft Italian leather.
Maddie felt a thrilling little frisson as she breathed in deeply and said, ‘Well, I guess I could get someone to cover for me just for a little while.’
Brian Walsh was in charge of the store temporarily, and he was the only one who knew who she really was. He had worked there for over twenty years and was keen to see the store become again the place it had once been, so he was fully on board with her decision to evaluate the store undercover for a short period of time while she worked out a way forward.
‘My...er...my boss is just over there. I’ll ask his...er...permission...’
‘Your boss?’ he asked, his interest clearly pricked by the knowledge.
‘Mr Walsh. If you don’t mind waiting...?’
‘I have all the time in the world,’ he said expansively, deciding on the spot to tell James to head back to the hotel, just in case he found himself staying longer than anticipated. ‘I’ll be right here when you return.’
CHAPTER TWO (#u5b852c1a-dbd4-5a82-8750-74f4d2653396)
LEO COULD HAVE taken the opportunity to probe her about her boss—the man Leo would soon be putting through the wringer—but that, he decided as he watched her heading back towards him, could wait. His grandfather wanted the store yesterday, but tomorrow or the day after was just fine with Leo. There was no doubt in his mind that he would secure the store—so what was the harm in letting himself be temporarily distracted?
She moved like a dancer, her body erect, looking neither right nor left as she walked gracefully across the department store floor. He suddenly realised he didn’t even know her name, and he put that right the minute she was standing in front of him again, her fresh, floral scent filling his nostrils and turning him on.
‘Shouldn’t you be wearing a name tag? Something discreetly pinned to your nice white outfit so that I know exactly who to complain about if you sell me overpriced face cream that makes my girlfriend’s skin break out in spots?’
‘You have a girlfriend?’
