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Okay, so occasionally she had to clean houses on the side to make ends meet—what was a little drudgery when she had the gallery to look forward to? At Vogel’s, a hundred exciting, unexpected things could happen. A sculptor could come in, eager to debate the merits of his latest creation. A scruffy college student could walk through the door, carrying a portfolio of the most amazing sketches she’d ever seen. Or a customer could come in, someone eager to escape their narrow existence and view the world through a different perspective—a perspective of shape and form and color….
“Sales will pick up,” she told Martina with more confidence than she felt.
“You need to advertise. Business is all about advertising.” Martina, majoring in marketing at a nearby college, considered herself—at age twenty-one—an expert in all things related to business. “And contacts. You need to cultivate the right people.”
Ellie grimaced. “You mean suck up to some rich business executives and their spouses?”
“It’s called networking. You’re such a snob, Ellie.”
“I am not!”
“When it comes to art, you are. My heart bleeds for that poor woman who came to the gallery yesterday—”
“Martina! I told you what she said—”
“Oh, yes, she wanted to know if the painting would be a good investment. It’s not a crime, Ellie, to want to make money.”
“If she wants to make money, she should invest in real estate.” Ellie glanced over her shoulder at the worn leather sofa in the living room—and the multihued artworks that covered every square inch of the wall above. “Art shouldn’t be about money.”
Martina rolled her eyes. “You’re missing the point, Ellie. It is about money—at least for now. You should have found something to sell that woman, not suggested she try another gallery.You need to think like a businessman.” Martina put the tamales in the refrigerator, then approached the bags on the table. “Did you get my magazine?”
“Yes, it’s in there somewhere.” Ellie nibbled her tamale absently. Was Martina right? Was she a snob when it came to art? Maybe. Well, okay, probably. An artist poured so much of himself into a piece, spent so much time and effort to get the composition, the colors, the textures and a thousand other details just exactly right. It seemed wrong somehow to let someone who cared nothing about the artist’s creative endeavor take a piece home.
Unfortunately, she couldn’t worry about right and wrong anymore.
She swallowed a bite of tamale with difficulty. She couldn’t allow the gallery to close because she didn’t like the fact that someone saw dollar signs instead of art when they looked at a painting. She couldn’t afford to demand that people appreciate a painting or a sculpture the way it deserved to be appreciated. “Okay, Martina. From now on, I’ll act like a businessman. I’ll be cold, hard, ruthless—”
“Maybe you can just be practical…what’s this?” Martina let out a low whistle.
Ellie glanced up to see her cousin staring down at the contents of a flat jeweler’s box.
“What’d you do, Ellie? Make a withdrawal at the bank?”
Brushing the soft masa crumbs off her fingers, Ellie got up to look in the box. She gasped when she saw its contents.
Emeralds and rubies flashed in the apartment’s dim light, their sparkle silent testimony to their authenticity.
“Good heavens,” Ellie said faintly. “It must belong to that man—Mr. Grinch.”
“He’s not going to be happy when he finds it missing,” Martina observed.
“No, I don’t think so,” Ellie agreed, wondering who on earth he’d bought such a hideous necklace for. His wife? She couldn’t imagine a snooty society maven ever wearing something so garish. A girlfriend on the side? Much more likely, she thought, wrinkling her nose.
She looked at the name of the jeweler on the white satin under the lid. “I guess I’ll have to take it to the jeweler’s tomorrow.” She sighed. Tomorrow was Christmas Eve—she had two houses to clean and her aunt’s and uncle’s party afterward. She really didn’t have time to make another trip up to Michigan Avenue.
It would serve him right if I didn’t return it until after Christmas, she thought, feeling just a little bit grinchy herself.
“This guy must be really rich.” Martina glanced sideways at Ellie. “I wonder who he is.”
“I have no idea.” And she didn’t want to know.
“Mmm.” Martina was still eyeing her. “Some old guy, I suppose.”
“Not really. Thirty, maybe.”
“Thirty! That’s not bad at all. Good-looking?”
“I didn’t think so,” Ellie lied. In fact, her first impression had been that he was very attractive. When she’d first looked up into his concerned face, her heart had given an odd little thump. He’d seemed so friendly, his greenish eyes smiling down at her…until suddenly, for no reason at all, they’d turned a frosty gray.
She’d fumed over his rudeness all the way home. She’d apologized automatically—but really, the collision had been his fault as much as hers. He hadn’t been looking where he was going and he’d been walking very fast. He’d knocked her off her feet, caused her to drop and damage some of her gifts and made her miss her train, as well. He could have at least offered her a ride. Not that she would have accepted, but still…He’d probably been worried that she’d get his fancy limo dirty.
No, he hadn’t been attractive at all, she realized now. “He was big with mean eyes,” she told her cousin.
“Fat?”
Actually, he’d felt like solid steel when she bumped into him. “I couldn’t tell—he had on an overcoat. But he had a Van Gogh sort of face.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Martina asked. “He only had one ear?”
Ellie laughed and shook her head, but didn’t say any more. It was too hard to explain. In her mind’s eye, she could see the man clearly, the heavy eyebrows, the penetrating eyes, the angular features just slightly asymmetrical….
“Hmmph. I don’t know why rich men all have to be ugly as dirt.” With a sigh, Martina reached into the bag again and pulled out the magazine she’d asked Ellie to buy. “Well, maybe not all rich men,” she amended, holding up the magazine to show Ellie the cover. “Garek Wisnewski is a doll, don’t you think?”
Ellie had grabbed the magazine at the store with barely a glance at the cover. Looking at it now, she stiffened.
Dominating the page was a picture of a half-dressed redhead and a man staring angrily at the camera—a man with familiar cold gray eyes below slashing black brows.
The expression on his face had been exactly the same a few hours ago when he’d left her standing in the gutter.
Ellie looked at the headline above the picture.
Main Course: Hanky Panky, it screamed in eye-popping red print. Dessert: Chicago’s Most Eligible Bachelor.
Chapter Two
Getting in to see Garek Wisnewski was like trying to get in to see the pope.
Ellie had been worried that the office building might be closed on Christmas Eve, but it wasn’t. Employees filled the marble foyer—at least the part Ellie could see from the security desk near the entrance while the guard inspected her ID. He looked at her license closely, as though he suspected it might be a forgery, before demanding to know her business. She told him, then waited, shivering every time someone opened the door and let a blast of cold air in, while the guard made a telephone call, casting suspicious glances at her the whole time.
As ten minutes stretched into twenty, Ellie began to be annoyed. She’d come straight here from cleaning the second house on her schedule and she felt grimy and sweaty. She needed to go home and wash and change for the party. She wanted to be at her uncle’s, not standing in this cold foyer waiting on Garek Wisnewski. She wished she hadn’t let Martina talk her into trying to contact him directly.
“Don’t you see, Ellie?” Martina had said. “This is your chance. Return the necklace and ask him if he needs any art for his office. Maybe he’ll buy something. And if you’re lucky, maybe he’ll ask you out on a date.”
Ellie rolled her eyes. “I doubt he would appreciate anything at Vogel’s. And if he asked me for a date—which he wouldn’t!—there’s no way I would agree to go anywhere with him. I told you how rude he was. Besides, what kind of man gets featured on the cover of tabloids with his ‘exotic dancer’ girlfriend?”
“Maybe that’s why he was rude—because he was embarrassed about the picture.”
Ellie glanced at the scowling face on the magazine cover—and at the redhead wearing a big smile and not much else. The caption identified her as Miss Lilly Lade and stated her occupation.
Embarrassed? Ellie didn’t think so. There’d been too much hard self-assurance in his bearing. Even if he had been, that still didn’t excuse his rudeness. Nor his execrable taste in women—and jewelry. Now the necklace made perfect sense.
But in the end, she hadn’t been able to outargue Martina or her own conscience, which told her that if she really wanted to help everyone who relied on the gallery, she would swallow her pride and go see Garek Wisnewski.
It was the logical thing to do. No matter how rude he’d been, he’d be grateful when she returned his tacky necklace.
After looking up Wisnewski Industries in the phone book and discovering its ritzy address on the Loop, she took the train from her last job into town. When she first saw the skyscraper, it reminded her of a fortress—all gray stone with narrow, impenetrable windows.
The overzealous security guard reinforced the impression.
He finally hung up the phone and turned to her, a clipboard in his hand, his eyes still suspicious. “Fill in your name and address, and I’ll give you a pass to go up. Leave your coat and things here.”
Did he think she had a weapon hidden in a pocket? Ellie shed her wet coat and took the clipboard, filling in the gallery’s address rather than her own. She clipped the plastic pass to the strap of her purse.
Upstairs, she had to run another gauntlet—of navy-suited, gimlet-eyed assistants. At the final desk sat a woman with shiny silver-gray hair cut like a helmet and piercing blue eyes who gazed disapprovingly at Ellie’s jeans and yellow sweater. She made a brief phone call, then escorted Ellie into the inner office.
Wood paneling, plush carpet and heavy furniture met Ellie’s gaze. Trite, but obviously expensive oil landscapes hung on the walls. Directly ahead, seated behind a carved mahogany desk in a thronelike chair, was Mr. Eligible Bachelor himself.
Dressed in a gray pinstripe suit, white shirt and black tie, he looked as conservative as his office, although not quite as elegant. His tie skewed slightly to one side as if he’d tugged at it, and his jacket looked a little tight across the shoulders. His clothes didn’t really suit his blunt features and muscular build.
“So you tracked me down,” he said.
Ellie stared into eyes as cold as the storm outside. “I beg your pardon?”
The cynical lines around his eyes and mouth deepened. “Do you think you’re the first woman to engineer a meeting and come chasing after me?”
She stiffened. He thought she’d bumped into him on purpose in order to meet “Chicago’s Most Eligible Bachelor?” Was that why he’d so abruptly abandoned her on the sidewalk yesterday?
What an ego!
Trying to control her temper, she walked forward and held out the jewelry case. “I came to return this.”
He took the case and flipped up the lid. He stared at the necklace a moment, his expression inscrutable, then closed the box. Leaning back in his chair, he looked at her.
She expected him to thank her, express his gratitude, perhaps even apologize for his rudeness. But he did none of these things.
“I suppose you expect a reward,” he said.
In that instant, Ellie realized she would prefer to scrub Mrs. Petrie’s toilets every day for the rest of her life rather than sell anything from the gallery to this man. He sat there, making no effort to stand or invite her to sit, offering her money instead of thanks, his every action, his every word an insult. She knew this kind of man—one who cared nothing about people or their feelings, one who cared only about money and what it could buy. He would never spend his cold hard cash on something as frivolous as art. Contemporary art especially would be incomprehensible to him.
Ellie clenched her fists. Her first impulse was to refuse with icy politeness, then turn and walk out. But just yesterday she’d promised herself she would think like a businessman. Businessmen weren’t polite—as Garek Wisnewski had just so unpleasantly demonstrated—and they weren’t squeamish about money.
“Yes, I do expect a reward,” she said with all the poise she could muster. She met his gaze directly, calmly, not blinking even when his eyebrows rose.
The corner of his mouth curled upward. “At least you’re honest about it.” He pulled a checkbook from his coat pocket. “How much?”
“Five thousand.” She named the first figure that came into her head.
He stared at her for a long, silent moment.
Putting up her chin, she waited.
She didn’t have to wait very long. With a shrug, he picked up a pen, wrote a check and held it out to her.
Taken off guard, she stared at the slip of paper. She might not have inherited the Hernandez haggle gene, but she’d thought he would know how to negotiate. What kind of businessman handed over five thousand dollars so easily?
“Well?”
Glancing up, she saw him watching her, his eyes narrowed. Quickly, she stepped forward and took the check. She glanced at it, seeing a five followed by the requisite number of zeros. She hesitated again, struggling with her conscience. She was about to give him the check back, when the phone rang.
Garek Wisnewski pressed a button and his assistant’s voice came over the line.
“There’s a delivery here from marketing,” she said.
“Send it in.” His gaze flickered toward Ellie.
Clearly, she was dismissed. His rudeness made her spine stiffen—and subverted her conscience. “Thanks for the check,” she said airily. Stuffing the slip of paper in her purse, she headed for the door.
It opened before she reached it, and a skinny young man—a boy, really—entered, carrying a large, flat, cloth-covered rectangle. Setting it on a cherrywood table, he mumbled, “Mr. Johnson told me to bring this straight up,” then bolted from the room, slamming the door behind him.
Ellie blinked at the boy’s behavior. But probably all of Garek Wisnewski’s employees were terrified of him, she decided, moving toward the door again.
A flutter caught her eye as the cloth slipped from the rectangle. She stopped, her eyes widening at the revealed portrait.
Or rather, at the revealing portrait.
Lilly Lade, in full-breasted, bare-buttocked, dimplethighed glory, rose from a large white clamshell, her red hair contrasting vividly with the bright blue ocean behind her. Two leering “wind gods” hovered at one side, their expressions as crude as the artist’s brushwork.
“Was there something else?”
Ellie jumped at the sound of his harsh voice. “No, not at all.” But she couldn’t resist adding, “I was just thinking this is exactly the kind of painting I would expect you to have.” She smiled sweetly.
His stony gaze dropped to her mouth, then lifted. “You object to nude portraits?”
“No, I object to bad art.”
“Ah. An expert.”
The sarcasm in his voice annoyed her almost as much as his rude stare. “I work in a gallery.”
“The poster store at the mall?”
“Vogel’s in Pilsen,” she snapped. “Specializing in contemporary art. Feel free to stop by if you ever want to buy something with a little higher concept.” Turning on her heel, she grabbed the doorknob and twisted it.
A large hand reached over her shoulder and rested against the door, preventing it from opening. Scowling, she glared over her shoulder. A broad expanse of male chest met her gaze. Quickly she looked up—a long way up. He was bigger than she remembered. How had he managed to cross the room so quickly and silently?
He loomed over her, staring down at her with narrowed eyes. “I’ve already paid—I’m not paying any more. Anything else you want to offer me will have to be for free.”
Outrage stiffened her spine. “There’s nothing I want to offer you,” she said, yanking at the doorknob. It didn’t budge. “Will you please take your hand off the door?”
