“Ava will be pleased to see you.” She looked into his tired eyes and noticed the dark circles underneath. He’d had a lot to deal with recently and her heart ached for his loss. According to Ava, Nico had thrown himself into too much work. But it didn’t take a genius to see that all wasn’t well with him. Recent events appeared to have taken a heavy toll on him.
“Congratulations to the new hotel manager.” She said to Gina.
“Thank you,” Gina replied happily.
“I’m looking to put together a management team,” Nico explained. “You don’t happen to know of any ambitious, smart and clever people looking for work do you?” Nico asked, half serious.
“I hired the last one I met.” Andrea replied.
“How’s it working out?” Nico asked. She had discussed with him her idea of taking on a partner and Nico, who’d encouraged her, said it would be a good idea.
“He’s doing well. He’s been a great help, in fact. I even managed to go away for a few days because I knew he’d be looking after the warehouse.”
“It’s always better to have two heads than one,” advised Nico.
“It certainly is,” she agreed. “I’ll leave you two to get on. How’s Ava doing?”
“Hard at work, as usual.” Nico told her. “I can’t get her to slow down. She’s in my old office.”
Andrea walked away and headed straight to see Ava. As soon as she knocked Ava came to the door with the phone to her ear and waved her in. Andrea sat down and waited.
“I don’t want to cause any problems between you and Carlos.” Ava walked over and sat down in her chair. “Rona, you don’t have to come over. You don’t have to do anything. I will cope.” She rolled her eyes at Andrea who smiled in response. “So you do want to come over? Even if Carlos wants you in Denver?” Ava rested her forehand in her hand. “Okay, you do that. Bye.”
She hung up and looked at Andrea with a weary face. “Hey, stranger,” said Ava, as Andrea walked over to give her a hug.
“You look well,” Andrea commented, before her eyes settled on Ava’s stomach. If she didn’t know it, there was no way she would guess that her friend was four months pregnant.
They sat down again.
“Looks can be deceiving. I feel frustrated,” said Ava. ““I wonder if I did the right thing. With Rona.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m thinking of getting her over to help me out.”
Andrea lifted her chin. “With what?”
“I’m sure I could find her a few things to do here.”
Andrea wondered if there was more to it than that. Ava sounded vague but then she had a lot of things to deal with lately. “If you’re looking for things to keep her busy then it doesn’t sound as though you need her.”
“She and Kim aren’t seeing eye to eye exactly. Kim can manage the orders by herself now and I think it’s better to have Rona here where she can be out of Kim’s way and could benefit me more.”
“But what would you have her do?” Ava didn’t handle any of the shipping side of things—that was all done by Andrea. But she was always conducting product research and was always on the look out for new products to sell. It was Ava who had mentioned d’Este to her in the first place. She’d been looking around for a variety of cribs, since these were her bestselling items and had come across the company in a retail magazine.
“She could do lots of things such as updating the site, repricing, retouching images. Helping me source new products.”
“I guess you could do with some help, especially now.” The wedding was only a month and a half away.
“That’s what I thought. She’ll be here at the beginning of July, unless…” But she didn’t finish her sentence and Andrea didn’t push for an answer.
“You look the picture of health, Ava. You look all glowy and lush.” Andrea couldn’t help but comment.
“Apparently I will start to balloon in time for my wedding. I'm not huge now but I feel huge and Nico swears he can see the difference.” She looked away and blushed.
“You’re going to look as beautiful as ever on your big day.” Andrea told her.
Ava dismissed wedding talk as though it was an unnecessary waste of time. “It’s nice to see you again,” she said. “What brings you here and when am I going to meet your new assistant?”
“Don't call him an assistant,” said Andrea, putting a stray curl behind her ear. She had a feeling Leo wouldn’t take too well to it. “He’s actually invested a good chunk of money into my business and he’s the reason I can keep up with your growing orders.” Andrea joked.
“I have a feeling my crib orders are going to get bigger. The order Leo placed recently, I checked with Kim and it’s almost all accounted for. I can’t replenish the stock as fast as it’s selling out. I want to place a larger order, maybe a hundred cribs.”
“Leo told me.”
“The shipping costs are going to kill me, aren’t they?”
“Not necessarily. You can swallow them up by raising the cost slightly, unless it slows down your sales.”
Ava nodded. “I was going to do that. I’ve found that increasing the cost doesn’t seem to have a bad effect on sales volume, at least in my experience. I’m surprised that people still pay the high prices.”
“That’s the thing with new parents,” said Andrea. “The ones who can afford to, will pay the earth for the best things for their new babies.”
“Tell me more about this Leo,” said Ava. “I’ve only spoken to him on the phone and I must say, he’s very helpful. How long has he been working for you?”
“Working with me,” Andrea corrected. With the amount of money Leo had, and the business experience he had, he wasn’t working for her. In fact, if anything, she was hoping to learn from him. “It hasn’t been long,” she said, twirling her ankle around. She didn’t want to talk about Leo too much.
“Is he the reason you look so relaxed?” asked Ava, clearly not in the mood to talk about inventory and crib orders.
Andrea almost laughed out loud and uncrossed her leg. “Do you think I look relaxed?”
Ava nodded. “And I’m hoping it’s down to Leo. He reminds me of Nico.”
“He’s nothing like Nico.”
“He seems extremely knowledgeable. He knew all about the products and seemed to go out of his way to answer my questions.”
“That’s because you are our biggest client now and I’ve told him we have to keep you happy. And anyway, I hired Leo precisely for his business skills. He’s had experience with selling products before.”
“I think he’ll be good for you.”
Andrea knew who’d be good for her, and it wasn’t Leo. “I’m finding it difficult to hunker down to work lately. That’s why I thought I’d come and see you.”
“Why? What’s going on?” asked Ava, clasping her hands together on the desk. “Leo said you’d gone away for a few days.”
Andrea felt excitement bubble up in her stomach. “I’ve had the most amazing few days in Bellagio. I went with a couple of my friends from college for one of my friend’s thirtieth birthday.”
Ava made all the appropriate cooing noises. “That’s near Lake Como isn’t it? It’s supposed to be beautiful. Nico often says he wants to take me there—but of course neither of us has any time at the moment. Was it a romantic getaway?” She asked, looking hopeful.
Andrea liked the way the conversation was going. “To start with it was me and my two friends from college. They live near Milan so Bellagio seemed the perfect location.”
“A girlie weekend,” said Ava, dreamily. “I could do with one of those.”
“You should go. We should go, or you and Rona,” she added quickly, not wanting to presume too much. “Anyway, the place we stayed at had the amazing views. It was on its own small island, you should have seen the views, and there was a floating swimming pool.” She stopped. “I forgot to tell Nico about it. He would so want one of those at the new hotel.”
“Please, don�
��t give him any more ideas,” groaned Ava. “He’s already taken too much on.”
“How’s he doing?” she asked, becoming serious again.
“He’s throwing himself into more work than he can handle.”
“I noticed he looks tired.”
“I can’t get him to slow down.”
Andrea shook her head, smiling. “He said the same thing about you.”
“He did?” Ava’s eyes shone. “It’s strange,” she said. “It’s like he knows me. It’s like we are two parts of the same whole. I can’t explain it. Sometimes I think he knows me better than I know myself.”
“Aaaaw,” said Andrea and wondered if she would ever be able to talk about a partner with that same dreamy expression that Ava just had.
Ava continued. “I can’t wait for the wedding to be over with. I know I’m not supposed to say that. I know it’s supposed to be a big thing. But my big thing was meeting Nico. My life has changed and I’ve never been happier. The wedding is adding stress I don’t need.”
“I thought you said everything was taken care of?”
“It is, the arrangements and service and the food and the invites. But we have this pressure hanging over us. His main focus is the baby, me and the hotel, and my main focus is the baby, him and the business. The wedding is an extra thing we’d rather do without. I want to be Mrs. Cazale and get on with my life.”
“I understand that,” said Andrea, wistfully. With the right man, the future would look rosy for anyone. Sometimes she sat at her desk and thought about Riley. The feelings he had invoked spread like fire all over her body and she relived his kisses all over again. What she imagined in her mind—and lately she had been imagining quite a few wild things—went far beyond the kissing that had taken place. Having someone in her life would add the light that was lacking. She could see that now. Maybe Talia and Caprice had a point.
“What did you mean, ‘to start with?’” asked Ava, “you were talking about your weekend away.” She obviously never missed a thing.
Andrea stretched out her legs as if buying herself some time to think of how to start her story. “I met someone,” she said slowly, watching Ava’s reaction. “He looked like sex on legs.”
Ava’s eyes widened. “Tell me more.”
Andrea felt the heat of desire warm her body as memories of Riley came back to her. “Nothing happened.” Her voice dampened with disappointment.
“Nothing?”
“We kissed.”
Ava made an encouraging noise. “That’s something.”
“And that was it.” Although, it was the way he kissed her, and touched her, that had left her wanting.
“You sound disappointed that nothing more happened.”
“I am.”
“But I don’t see you as the type of person to jump into bed with someone you’ve just met. Even if he was, as you say, sex on legs.”
“I’m not that type of person,” she said, agreeing with Ava. “But with him… I wanted to be.”
“I can tell.”
“How?”
“I might not have known you for long, Andrea Brunelli but I have come to know your moods and your mannerisms quite well by now. There was something different about you from the moment you sat down. And I don’t believe that nothing happened.”
“I didn’t sleep with him, if that’s what you mean.” This time she really was disappointed.
Ava gave her a penetrating stare.
“But we kind of kissed and I thought it might lead to more but …”
“But?”
“He said it would be wrong to start something and that it wouldn’t be fair on either one of us.”
“He’s either a very good liar, or he’s an absolute gentleman.”
Andrea knew exactly what he was to her.
“What are you going to do?” Ava asked.
“There’s nothing I can do. Like you, he’s American and he’s traveling around; it’s temporary and he says he’ll return at some point. We didn’t even exchange numbers.”
“Then in that case,” said Ava, resting her arms on the desk. “It’s probably better that you didn’t exchange bodily fluids either.”
Andrea’s head jerked back, startled. “You make it sound cheap and awful.”
“No, honey. I’m being pragmatic and I don’t want to see you hurt.”
“I can’t believe he had such an impact on me,” Andrea confessed, “I’ve been thinking of him the entire week.”
“Probably because you’ve had such a dry spell.”
“You sound like my friends,” Andrea retorted and decided that there was nothing more to say about Riley. Ava was right. Nothing could come of it. She changed the subject completely.
“I was hoping to meet with the supplier of those cribs that you liked but they have a fault in their factory and the cribs weren’t ready.”
“Will you follow it up?” Ava asked, “I liked the designs.”
“I will.”
“That wasn’t the real reason you came here, was it?” asked Ava. “To talk about cribs?”
“I wanted to talk to someone. I wanted to talk to you. Was it that obvious?”
Ava laughed and rested her hand on her stomach. “You’ve had a silly grin on your face from the moment you walked in.” Andrea rested her cheek against her hand.
“I thought I left my schoolgirl crushes behind fifteen years ago.”
“You’ve got it bad, honey,” said Ava. “We just need you to meet someone who sees you for who you are.”
10
“A latte?” Leo turned and asked her, with his hand on the door.
“Please, and no—”
“Sugar,” he said. “Got it.” He disappeared out of the door leaving Andrea to look around at the mess that was her warehouse.
Boxes and ripped boards of corrugated cardboard decorated the floor. A new delivery of products had arrived. Mostly they kept the products boxed up but a few products came in huge boxes and they reboxed these into smaller boxes which were easier for her to ship out. She always put the newest products on display but despite her best efforts her warehouse looked more like an industrial storage unit and less of the walk-in-and-take-a-look-around cosy environment she wanted.
She tried to keep the main area in the middle of her warehouse for displaying her items. Neat rows and clusters of cribs, toys and accessories showed off her merchandise. Around the perimeter, boxes were piled high with the same products. It wasn’t ideal. This wasn’t a fancy shop—none of the shops here were the type that would be found on the high road or in shopping malls. But it would be nice to have a separate area—not visible to customers, where they could store the boxes and only have the shop floor for display.
Most of her customers were eager parents, both first-time and experienced, and they would look checking things off their lists as they bought them. She supplied to a few small bricks and mortar stores too, for discerning parents who wanted quality wood, carved and old-fashioned style toys and accessories. But it was mainly Ava with her online store and with sales exploding in the US, who had quickly become her main customer.
As the days passed swiftly, she got back into the swing of things. It helped that Leo was around for most of the week too. He had some good ideas going forward and had mentioned that maybe it was time to look for bigger premises given the speed with which Ava’s store was growing and their inability to stock everything easily. It was specifically Ava’s crib orders that were causing concern because they took up a lot of space.
With Ava going quickly from ordering around ten to forty and now one hundred cribs, storage space was going to become an issue. It was her aim to find a supplier who would deliver straight from the factory to Denver without the need for the products to come to her warehouse. From her phone conversations with d’Este, they would be one such supplier. Less shipping for her to handle already made them more attractive, now if only they would have the cribs ready for inspection.
Her busines
s worked well and she was doing fine but she wanted to get to the next level up. She sold top quality items that weren’t so easily available in the more commercial places and this had been the appeal for Ava when she’d first seen Andrea’s products. She surveyed ‘Ava’s corner’ as she had nicknamed it. It was a large area on the left hand side of the warehouse on entering. Right now it was piled high with boxes and crates of the items her friend had ordered. Andrea usually waited until it was significantly large enough to warrant a shipment to the States. A few more orders, she thought, heading back into her office to check her emails, and then she would send Ava’s shipment off.
The tinkle of the bell and the sound of the front door opening reminded her that coffee was on its way. She needed her mid-morning injection of caffeine since it enabled her to function. Running her hand through her hair she grimaced when she saw her greasy fingers. She should have washed it last night but she’d been so tired after leaving late, that she had fallen in front of the TV.
“Is anybody here?”
The voice didn’t belong to Leo.
Ignoring her email, she picked up a hair-tie and threw her wild mane into a ponytail as she walked out ready to greet her customer.
But her hands froze in mid-air and she stopped in surprise as she saw the man who stood before her.
“An-dr-ea.” Three syllables, slow and easy and spoken in an accent that made her name sound sexier than it truly deserved to.
Riley. Here. Now. Drinking in her appearance slowly.
His American drawl sent signals of familiarity through her veins and jolted her into alertness. She instantly regretted putting her hair up.
“Riley?” She took in a deep breath and, self-conscious, put a hand to her hair. She felt ready to burst into a wide smile. “It’s really you!” She tried to stifle the giggle that danced at the back of her throat. Happiness burst out of her uncontained and she felt like a child at a fair ground. The desire to run up to him with the same wonder and excitement of a child briefly overwhelmed her but she forced herself to stay put.
“It’s really me. I was in the area and I had to come and see you.”
Hearts on Fire: Romance Multi-Author Box Set Anthology Page 78