‘It was a two-way street, Ella. We were attracted to one another.’
‘I was attracted to Jose Rivero—who never existed, as it turns out. I wasn’t attracted to Rocco Mancini, a billionaire who was here to spy on everyone.’
‘You’re upset. I get that.’
‘Do you? That’s very big of you.’ Her hand stole to her stomach and she balled it into a clenched fist because right now she had to think about what she was going to do and how she was going to do it. She felt sick at the thought of what happened next in a situation she had never banked on. Telling Jose Rivero thatshe was pregnant had seemed daunting enough. Breaking the news to this stranger in front of her, a billionaire with an agenda that had never included her, was terrifying.
‘I understand why you’re angry with me, but in actual fact I didn’t have to make this trip. I came because I wanted to see you. And, yes, I didn’t reveal my true identity…what happened between us was one hundred percent genuine.’
‘In the grip of a guilty conscience? Why?’ She tried and failed to mesh the Jose she’d given her heart to, the carefree, sexy man who had held her in his arms, with this powerful, wealthy stranger, looking at her with his head tilted to one side, dark eyes revealing nothing.
It was hopeless.
‘Do you feel guilty about pretending to be someone you weren’t? Or because you knew what an awful upheaval it would be for the department store to be sold to the highest bidder only interested in making even more money for himself?’
‘I know the place means a lot to you, Ella. I know you worked here as a teenager. I know your mother worked here. There’s an affection for it.’
‘I wish I’d never told you any of that.’More confidences thrown back in her face—yet another reminder of how gullible she’d been.
‘But you did.’ Rocco raked his fingers through his hair and sighed. He sat forward, leaning towards her. ‘Look, I didn’t come here to explain away the decision to replace this store with something that actually makes sense. You know as well as I do that the place is losing money hand over fist and has been for a long time. The edifice will remain the same and it will be renovated to the highest of sustainable environmental standards. It will be the gold standard for other properties I plan to develop. As someone who wanted to explore climate changeand sustainable lifestyles, you should approve of what I’m doing here.’
‘Please don’t remind me of all the things I told you that I shouldn’t have,’ Ella retorted with ice in her voice. ‘Vera said that you explicitly asked to see me. Why, if not to give me weasly excuses for what you did?’
‘Weasly?’Rocco’s dark eyes flashed with outrage and in return Ella shot him a sneering look.
‘That’s right.’
‘No one’s ever called me “weasly” before!’
‘You’re a billionaire,’ she snapped scornfully. ‘Everyone’s probably scared stiff of you.’
‘Except you.’
Ella bristled in silence at this rejoinder. Their eyes met and tangled, and she felt the slow burn of something unwanted and intrusive. The memory of how he’d touched her seared through her anger. It was debilitating and unwelcome because it flew in the face of her bitter disillusionment at how things had turned out. How could she possibly feel anything for this stranger? But there was still this jarring, disturbing pull. She hated it.
‘You asked me why I came back here, came back to see you. I returned because I couldn’t get you out of my mind. I don’t have a guilty conscience about my plans for the store because it’ll be the best thing that could happen to the town. It’ll bring people in, and they will be a motor for reviving the shops that haven’t been doing well over the years. Hailey’s isn’t the only place that’s been failing for some time.’
That all made sense, which was infuriating. The man she’d known had been hot, charming and passionate. The one sitting here in this boardroom was cool, logical and controlled.
But here was the inescapable link: he said that he hadn’t been able to get her out of his mind…
Had he returned to tell her that—that he’d been thinking of her? Or, more likely, had he come so that they could reconnect—continue what they’d shared even though he hadn’t had a problem walking out on her four months ago?
Had it turned out to be more difficult than he’d thought to airbrush her out? He was a very physical man. Whether he was Jose or Rocco, he was still the guy with a red-hot libido. Ella killed dead the warm swoop of pleasure at the thought that he might have missed her. There was so much more at stake than a simple case of a fling that hadn’t worked out. He had deceived her. A man who deliberately withheld the truth about who he really was didn’t qualify to be a responsible father, did he? If she turned him away now, would he shrug and disappear, having given it a go?
Ella knew that she could withhold the truth of the situation from him, just as he had withheld the truth of who he really was from her, and she was tempted. But a child deserved the best of both parents, for better or worse. She had had that luxury while he…had not. She remembered what he had said about Christmas, about how little it had meant to him. Another lie? Her gut feeling was that he’d been telling the truth when he’d said there had been some genuine connection between them, even though listening to her gut feelings hadn’t done much for her in the past.
She needed to respond now and not react. She needed to know if her gut feeling was right, if he was a decent guy. If he’d felt he’d truly had no option but to keep the truth of his identity to himself, even after they’d become lovers, then he could still be prepared to stay for a bit to see how the bombshell of his buyout would affect everyone in the store.
It was Christmas. Whether it made sense for the store to be turned into flats or not, it had still been a body blow to staff lower down the pecking order who hadn’t seen it coming. Theywould be compensated, but they’d been left shaken. If there was nothing in it for him, would he still stick around to find out how the people whose lives would change because of him might be feeling? Was there a shred of real caring in him or had she utterly misjudged him?
It was a stupid test. Ella knew that, but she was clinging to something that might shine a light on the crossroads at which she now was, stuck and helpless. She desperately wanted him to prove himself because there was a baby inside her and she needed to know the measure of him.
‘If you came here to see if you could get me back into bed, then you can forget it,Señor Mancini. I have better things to do than re-visit a relationship with someone who didn’t care enough to tell me the truth about himself.’ It was clear from the lowering of his eyes that she had struck the jackpot in correctly assessing why he’d suddenly felt a need to connect. ‘But…’
‘But?’
‘If you’re here to show me that there’s a side to you that’s actuallycaring…that you bear some sort of resemblance to the man I thought you were…’ She drew in a swift breath because she felt herself weaken at her own foolishness in falling for him. ‘Then you would show that you cared about the people here.’
