Playing for Keeps: A fun, flirty romantic comedy perfect for summer reading. Rosa Temple

dress I’d decided to wear.

      The shop fitting was close to completion and it was less than a month until the opening. I wanted the manager and sales assistant to be onboard quickly so they could stock the shop with me and put last-minute finishing touches to the overall appearance before the Grand Opening events I had lined up. The events would take place over three days beginning with the unveiling of the shop name on the Thursday afternoon followed by a celebrity evening bash on the Friday evening and then the official opening day on the Saturday in the shiny new shop.

      A lot of our followers were wondering what the shop would be called. I was keeping very quiet about the name but had lined up as much press to cover the unveiling event as I could. I’d also managed to arrange an interview with a local radio station just for good measure.

      The response to the advertisement for the posts of manager and sales assistant had completely blown my mind and I was pretty sure I’d shortlisted the best the long list had to offer. The tension was building as the shop opening drew nearer but I found I was coping perfectly fine not having Anthony around. Meanwhile he had broken the news to me that one month wasn’t going to be enough time for him to finish. His commission had spiralled into a much larger project and, when pressed, I gathered he was having the time of his life. Yet we still insisted over the phone that we missed the other terribly.

      He’d called me that morning from a clifftop in Salento to wish me luck with the interviews.

      The back office of the shop had been reinvented from the crumbled-down state it had been in, barely used by the last owner, I’d imagine. The new desk was large and slick, in walnut, and Riley had positioned two office chairs on one side and one for the interviewee on the other, just inside the office door. She’d arranged a supply of tea, coffee and water for me and Anya, and the application forms and curricula vitae were in a pile on the desk between our chairs as well as notepads and a camera for snapping each candidate to remind ourselves of who was who.

      Riley popped her head round the door.

      ‘The first of the interviewees have arrived. Three of them and they’re early. They must be eager to please.’

      ‘Thanks, Riley. Give us five minutes before you send in the first,’ I said, doing a quick rechecking of my make-up.

      It was a Tuesday morning. Autumn had kicked in with a bang. My quiet mews had been scattered with bronze and copper leaves when I’d set off earlier, as if we were in a rush to get to winter. I was in no hurry. As far as I was concerned I still had masses to do before the first customer crossed the threshold. I had shaken off images of the shop standing in the middle of King’s Road devoid of any passing trade, all the stock gathering dust until it withered away, untouched and unsold.

      ‘Ready for this, Madge?’ Anya asked. ‘How about a strategy? Good cop, bad cop? Who should I be?’

      I opened my mouth, about to say, ‘Well, what do you think?’ but Riley knocked on the door and introduced a woman called Babette Morrier for the position of manager.

      I smiled at the tall blonde who’d walked in on a wave of Calvin Klein Eternity. but before she reached the chair and could take a seat Anya bellowed, ‘Next!’

      ‘Sorry?’ Babette asked, looking from me to Anya. I screwed up my brow and turned to Anya for an explanation. Riley popped her head back inside.

      ‘Did you say something?’ she asked.

      ‘I said, "Next",’ said Anya. ‘This interview is terminated.’

      ‘Anya! What the…?’ I began, but there was no time to finish my sentence before a red-faced Babette barged past Riley and left without another word.

      Riley came in and closed the door.

      ‘What was that all about?’ I demanded of Anya.

      ‘Madge, please. You know better than I do that leggings are not trousers. No matter how slim your legs are, you don’t expose legging-clad legs in public. They are for indoors only, or lazy dressers and mothers whose children have vomited down their dungarees.’ She shuddered at the word ‘dungarees’. ‘Riley, bring in the next contestant.’

      Riley and I were speechless. She looked at me for assurance and I nodded for her to go ahead and call the next interviewee. Mind you, Anya was spot on. What was I thinking? I was blinded by Babette’s cute jacket and swishy hair. I hadn’t taken in the full picture.

      The next to enter the room was a short woman, reasonably decked out in high-end, high-street attire, perfectly acceptable. I waited a moment for Anya to bellow ‘Next’ but as she didn’t I offered the woman a seat.

      ‘Hi.’ I gave her my biggest ‘good cop’ smile. ‘You’re Pauline Bennet?’

      ‘Yes, nice to meet you and I wasn’t expecting you, Miss Stankovic.’ Pauline blushed a deep shade of crimson and couldn’t take her eyes off Anya for the whole time I tried to talk to her. Anya never opened her mouth. At the end of the interview, once Pauline had left, Anya grabbed her application form, screwed it into a tight ball and threw it over her shoulder.

      ‘Er …?’ I said, palms up to the ceiling.

      ‘Did you see how close together her eyes vere set? You seriously think I could trust her to be in my best friend’s shop?… All day?… You and I not here to keep an eye on her?’ Anya shook her head from side to side and got up.

      ‘Where are you going?’ I gasped as she walked to the door. For one moment I feared Anya was going to the front of the shop and was going to line up the candidates and do an inspection.

      ‘The toilet, Madge. This baby is pressing on my bladder like you can’t believe.’

      ‘See you in five.’ It was my turn to shake my head. I poured some coffee for me from the Thermos and filled Anya’s glass with water. It was going to be a long day.

      By the afternoon Anya and I had conducted sixteen interviews. We were tired and frazzled and even the perky Riley was a bit on the flat side.

      ‘That’s it,’ she said flopping into the interview seat. ‘That’s everyone. Do you think you found the right people?’

      I looked at Anya and we smiled at each other.

      ‘Pretty sure,’ I said.

      Though it was true that Anya had reduced at least two people to tears, had enraged an ex-employee from French Connection who was probably overqualified for the post of manager anyway, and had asked one interviewee if she wouldn’t mind lowering the actual tone of her voice because it was causing the baby to kick, we’d come to a mutual agreement about who would fit the bill.

      For the shop manager we would offer the post to Jaime Silverman, a twenty-seven-year-old manager from Warehouse in Kensington High Street who had three years experience of running the family shoe shop in Bethnal Green until it closed down a year ago.

      ‘I was as pleased as anything when that happened,’ Jaime had told us during the interview. ‘I didn’t want to get tied down by the family business so I had to put Dad right on that one. Dad decided to take early retirement, and we’d already moved from East London to West so Mum could be near her ageing family. It was time for me to move on. When I started at Warehouse my parents described it as the time I ran away from home. But I literally live around the corner from them now.’ She’d raised her eyebrows and tutted. ‘The Warehouse job is great but I feel I can put my own stamp on things at Shearman Bright. That is what you want, isn’t it?’

      I had nodded wholeheartedly.

      Jaime, a tall, elegant brunette, had a captivating smile. I think Anya liked her for her brusque, no-nonsense manner. I liked the fact that she was experienced and competent and seemed the ideal person to help me understand how a shop was supposed to operate, therefore taking away the amount of input I’d have in the day-to-day running.

      Our new shop assistant had breezed through the door, shoulders flung back and head held high. He was a five-foot-six-inch guy in a Hugo Boss suit,