These Magic Moments excerpt

Here is an excerpt from These Magic Moments on Amazon. I am working on book two in the Bluebell series currently!

She was relieved when her one o’clock lunch break came around, and she made her way up to the staff cafeteria where she made a cup of tea, took out her lunch, and picked up a copy of the Bartley’s staff newsletter. There were five Bartley’s stores in England but the one here in Knightsbridge was the original store that had grown to become one of the most esteemed in London. She turned the page and her gaze zeroed in on the photograph of Nicholas Bartley with his sister, Clarissa. They were both in their thirties, both insanely attractive, and both talked about by the staff with varying degrees of admiration, awe, and fear. Clarissa, it seemed, had a hands-on approach to the store, whereas Nicholas was corporate and rarely ever stepped foot in it.

There was an editorial from Nicholas and she wondered if he’d written it himself. There was a lightness to the prose that seemed at odds with the man she’d heard about: a warm reminder they were heading into the busiest season of the year and planning had been going on for eighteen months for this Christmas. Julia studied the photo some more.

Nicholas Bartley was the great-grandson of the store’s founder, Charles Bartley, but it was Charles’ son, George, later Sir George, who had changed the focus to the high-end department store it was today. Nicholas’s father, Edward, had run the store with his brother, Lawrence, but Lawrence had died in his fifties, with no children, and so Nicholas and Clarissa were at the helm. Their father, Edward, had semi-retired to Italy and had left the store in what seemed the very capable hands of his two children.

Clarissa, she knew, was married with children. Nicholas, however, was famously single.

Single as in not having made the trip down the aisle, she amended. He was seen out with women and there had been relationships in the past but none had appeared to be serious.

She focused on his face. His hair was dark, he possessed a strong although not obtrusive nose, and lips that were neither too full nor too thin. And those beautiful, dark eyes. She could imagine the photographer instructing him how to look, and Nicholas giving a wry, “Will this do?” and having the moment captured. Her heart gave a flutter and she swiftly turned the page.

Although he was rarely seen in the store, he lived in the penthouse apartment and worked on the floor below that. In the weeks she’d been here, she’d heard murmurings of his being spotted but had yet to see him in the flesh.

She finished her lunch and stopped in at the staff bathrooms to reapply lipstick and wipe away smudges of mascara. She arranged her hair into a tighter ponytail and smoothed her hands over her black jacket and skirt. Presentable, she sighed. She’d always thought of herself as average. She had charming grey eyes, or so Joe had told her, but there was nothing terribly startling about her. Not like Clarissa and Nicholas Bartley who had clearly inherited impressive genes.

She vaguely wondered if Nicholas Bartley was as fine looking in the flesh as he was in the photographs, slung her bag over her shoulder, checked her teeth one last time, and headed back down to menswear.

(end)