“And how often do you find a straight man who’s into historical costuming, I mean really—”
Had I really thought this would be an escape? It was a commuted sentence at best.
Mom hadn’t stopped congratulating herself since she sat down. It was the same old song: I was a huge disappointment, but Paige was perfect and so was her new man, whoever this latest one was who was joining us for dinner soon, and he was going to be the one to make an honest woman of her, and we would all just pretend that Mom hadn’t said the same thing about every other man she’d set Paige up with since junior prom.
I swear, you’d need an archive to keep track of the polite fictions we keep current in my family.
“And so successful, why, Paige will be set for life—”
I wasn’t in the mood for this; not now when I was so heartbroken it was taking all the energy I had to keep from sobbing. I was sure this guy was like all the rest: blandly handsome, a mid-level job in a forgettable corporation, golf on the weekends and a second girlfriend in the Keys. For Paige’s sake, I would smile and pretend to believe that he could really be the one. Inside, my heart would be breaking for her, as well as me.
“I think Paige should go for an off-the-shoulder wedding gown, and daylilies will make excellent center pieces—oh look, there they are!”
The bell rang, and my mother sprang up to answer it.
In the silence that followed, my father topped up my mashed potatoes. I topped up his greens. We gave each other matching looks of resignation, prisoners with extreme cases of Stockholm Syndrome.
Mom bustled back in, grinning fit to burst. She gestured behind her.
“Darlings, let’s extend our warmest welcome to Paige’s new beau!”
I looked up, expecting Bland McForgettable—
And my heart turned to ice, and then smashed into a million pieces.
My beaming sister had come in arm-in-arm with Hunter Knox.
TO BE CONTINUED...
What happens next? Hunter and Ally’s story continues in BILLIONAIRE WITH A TWIST: PART TWO, available September 16, 2015
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Do you enjoy fun, romantic reads? Read on for a sneak chapter of THE ART OF STEALING HEARTS by Stella London, available September 30, 2015.
Meet Grace and St. Clair: she’s an aspiring gallery girl, he’s the sexy billionaire art collector. Together, they’ll discover a world of romance in the hot new series by Stella London!
THE ART OF STEALING HEARTS available September 30th!
CHAPTER 1
My mom taught me that art is everywhere; you just have to look. “Keep your eyes open, Grace, and you can always find the beauty,” she said, filling our small apartments with gorgeous paintings and bright colors, pointing out shapes and compositions as we walked city streets. Her love of art inspired mine, but right now my heart and head are pounding under the stress of running late, so it’s hard for me to notice anything pretty about the traffic literally standing between me and the chance of a lifetime.
“Um, excuse me?” I pipe up from the back seat of the immobile taxi cab, anxiously looking at the driver slumped in his seat. He ignores me.
I check my watch again: 8:41 am. Crap! I bite my lip to keep from yelling. Crapcrapcrap. I’m supposed to be at Carringer’s Auction House in nineteen—make that eighteen—minutes. First BART was late, and now I’m spending the last of this week’s tips to be trapped in this smelly cab, sweating under my best business outfit. My only business outfit.
After a year of dropping off resumes and talking up gallery owners and museum directors, I’d nearly given up hope of finding a job in the art world until last week when the best auction house in San Francisco called me. Carringer’s deals in the most sought-after and highly-valued art and antiquities in the world: French Impressionist paintings, Chinese ceramics, Native American head masks, Greek sculptures…I get chills just imagining the masterpieces that flow in and out of those vaults. If I’m late to this interview, the first opportunity I’ve had in months might slip away and I’ll be serving spaghetti and meatballs at my waitress gig until I permanently smell like marinara and am too old to remember the specials.
“Sir?” This time I rap insistently on the plexiglass separating me from the driver. He eyes me in the rearview mirror. “I’m super late. Is there a short cut or something you could use?”
The minute hand on the watch my mother gave me jerks forward again and we’ve gone less than a block. Why aren’t we moving?! As if the obvious answer wasn’t right outside my window, honking and spewing fumes and inching along like snails on their way into the financial district’s high rise office buildings.
The driver just laughs at me. “What do you think?”
I think you smell like someone Febreezed over a cigar shop. But it’s the number one rule of waitressing: rudeness never pays. “How much further is Gold Street?”
The cabbie shrugs. It’s 8:43.
“Is it close enough to walk?” I press him.
“Sure,” he says. “Everywhere is close enough to walk to eventually.”
Screw this. There is no possible way for me to arrive looking cool and collected as planned anyway since my makeup probably already looks like a Jackson Pollock, and I’m not going to let some stupid traffic keep me from my dream. “Here,” I say, tossing a pile of ones onto the front seat and scooting out the door. “I’ll take my chances.”
The cab driver rolls his eyes. “Maybe ten blocks,” he says. I inhale a deep breath of crisp ocean air, steady my purse on my shoulder, and start jogging.