He squeezed his eyes shut and when he opened them again the pain was gone. There was nothing there but ice. “I want nothing more to do with you. Pack your bags and leave.”
TO BE CONTINUED...
What happens next? Hunter and Ally’s story continues in BILLIONAIRE WITH A TWIST: PART THREE, available September 30, 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.
Immediately, my sensible yet stylish heels feel like vice grips on my toes. My feet are used to day-long shifts in sneakers, and it’s hard to run in a skirt, but I can’t give up. My carefully blow-dried hair is getting wind-whipped and frizzy, and my bangs are sticking to the sweat beading on my forehead.
“Sorry! ‘Scuse me! Coming through, please!” It’s like running an obstacle course in heels.
I dodge through the crowd, trying not to think about the frazzled and sloppy impression I’m going to make. In the meantime, I force myself to focus on the beauty of this city: the long shadows of the tallest buildings, the modern architecture, the sunlight reflected and refracted off a thousand windows, the blue sky beyond. I love San Francisco, even though right now it is not loving me back.