The Art of Stealing Hearts

by Stella London

  Right?

  Everyone seems on edge at work, too. Stanford is wound so tight that even me yawning makes him snap. “If there is something you’d rather be doing, Grace, by all means, go ahead and do it.”

  “Sorry,” I apologize. “I’ll get back to work right away.”

  “We don’t need any attitude,” he says. “Not today.”

  “Did something else happen?” I’ve noticed lots of stressed out looking people running around here this week, plenty of hushed conversation in hallways that break up when someone passes. But even with the insurance spike, this seems like something bigger.

  “You mean on top of a robbery that’s left our international reputation in tatters?” he asks, sarcastic.

  I guess not. “Do the police have any leads yet?”

  “Nothing.” Stanford sighs. “And I’m sorry for snapping at you, it’s just the members of the board are seriously worked up over this theft, and they’re taking it out on Lydia, and guess who she’s taking it out on?”

  “You.”

  “Exactly. I’d stay out of her way, if I were you,” he adds, glancing around as if Lydia’s about to come striding through on the warpath. “She’s got that look in her eyes, like she hasn’t eaten carbs all week and is just itching to fire someone.”

  “Thanks, I’ll try.”

  I stay hidden down in the basement, cleaning for the rest of the day, but I can’t help check my phone every five seconds. St. Clair said he’d call before the weekend, but Friday afternoon is cutting it awfully close, isn’t it?

  Finally, my phone rings. I jump, heart racing, hoping it’s him, but it’s Paige instead, calling via a long-distance app from London. “Hey, you!” I exclaim happily, putting down my mop and sitting on a rolling crate.

  “She’s alive!” Paige laughs. “I’ve been waiting all week to talk, but you’re never online anymore.”

  I groan. “I know, sorry. This place has me working all hours, and then I’m pulling night shifts waitressing at the restaurant too.”

  “It’s okay, I just wanted to see how you’re doing at your shiny new job. Things must be crazy there after the robbery,” she adds.

  “How do you know about that?” I ask. No wonder everyone’s tense; they were trying to keep it hush-hush, but obviously the word’s gotten out.

  “The painting was insured with my company,” Paige explains. “They don’t want to have to take the hit and pay out.”

  “People are freaking out here, too,” I tell her, lowering my voice to a whisper.

  “Is St. Clair upset?” she asks.

  “No. He seems weirdly calm about the whole thing.”

  “I guess he didn’t actually lose any money on it, lucky bastard.”

  “He loved that painting, Paige. It’s not about the money. He’s…not like you think.”

  Something in my voice must have given me away, because she sucks in a breath and squeals. “What happened?” Paige demands. “Tell me everything!”

  “What? No!” I say, wondering how she knew. “Nothing happened!”

  “Oh my God, you little minx!” She laughs. “Don’t even try to deny it—you know you can’t keep anything from me. I want details.”

  I finally giggle. “Okay, something did happen. It was amazing—”

  I stop. Lydia is standing in the doorway, looking furious. Shit. “I have to go, Paige. Call you back.” I hang up and jump to my feet.

  “Taking personal calls at work?” Lydia gives me an icy glare.

  “I’m sorry,” I say pocketing my phone. “It won’t happen again.” I grab my mop. “I’ll get right back to work.” I’m realizing this is the second time I’ve been caught off my game at work today, and a wave of guilt washes over me.

  “Wait.” Lydia’s voice stops me. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  I pause. Is this a trick question? “Umm, mopping?”

  She sneers. “I can see that. The question is, with what?”

  I stare at her, totally confused. “A mop?”

  “These!” Lydia yells, kicking at the bottles of cleaning solution with her pointy-toe pumps. “Are you an idiot, using harsh chemicals in rooms where the art is stored? Do you know the kind of damage you can do? Even just releasing the toxins into the air can damage the canvas!”

  My heart races. “No, these are the supplies I was told to use.” By Stanford, I silently add, but I don’t want to get him in trouble too right now, so I just stay quiet.

  “Those are for the lobby! For the offices!” Lydia’s face turns pink and she points a white-tipped nail at my face. “There are special products for these rooms. Everyone knows that.” She glowers at me. “Or everyone should.”

  I feel like the idiot she thinks I am, getting yelled at like I’m back in kindergarten and I accidentally took someone’s crayons. But this time I know she’s wrong. “Lydia, these are the correct chemicals,” I say quietly. “If you just check with—”

  “Do you think I don’t know the difference?” she cuts me off.

  “No, of course, not. I just think—”

  “You just think you know better than I do?” Her face is deep red now, her eyes squinted in anger, and this seems so overblown, I think something else must have happened to make everyone so jumpy, so upset. It’s probably best to keep my mouth shut until this all blows over.

  I bow my head, treat her like an angry animal: don’t look it in the eyes. “I’m sorry,” I mutter.

  “Sorry won’t re-clean all these storage rooms, will it?” she says, her voice icy. “We have a whole new shipment of artifacts coming in tomorrow. Where are we going to put them now?”

  “I’ll do them all over,” I say. “I can stay late and come in early.”

  Lydia scoffs. “You’ve already proven yourself incompetent.” She takes a deep breath and looks me up and down. “No, I’ve had enough of you. This is it. You’re fired.”

  My heart stops. What?

  “No, please Lydia, let me make it up to you.” This can’t be happening. It’s only been a week! “I’m better than this, I swear.” Tears are building up behind my eyes. This so isn’t fair.

  “Swearing isn’t a result, and your results, since the beginning, have been less than stellar.” She puts out her hand. “Your badge, please.”

  Slowly, I pull it from my pocket and hold it out to her. It wasn’t much, just a slip of laminated card with my photo and name, but to me, it represented so much more: my ticket to the career of my dreams.

  Lydia takes it and shoves it in her purse before giving me another snooty glare. “And don’t even think about asking for a reference. As far as I’m concerned, I was right the first time. You’re not the sort of person we want in the art world.”

  She stalks out, leaving me along with the mess of cleaning supplies and a half-mopped floor. A failure.

  My dream is over before it even began.

  CHAPTER 12

  I get off the bus early and walk a few extra blocks home to help clear my head, but it doesn’t help. I trudge through the streets, noticing all the garbage in the gutters, the graffiti on the walls. I love this neighborhood, but right now it feels like all beauty has been taken from the world.

  I walk past Giovanni’s and stop for a minute, peeking inside like a window shopper. I watch Carmella serve a family of eight, meatballs for almost everyone, and she smiles as she grates fresh parmesan over their plates. Jimmy opens a bottle of wine for a couple, and Fred sticks his head out of the kitchen window at the back to call an order I can’t hear. I don’t see Nona or Giovanni, but I know they’re in there, somewhere, their hearts full of love they never hesitate to share. If I go in there and break the bad news, they’ll surround me with love and support, but right now I just want to be alone.

  I move away from the window before anyone can see me and go around back, climbing the stairs past my apartment and onto the fire escape that leads up onto the roof. It’s a place where I go to think, and from up here I can see the top of Coit Tower
, its gray-white top sticking up through the fog like a sentry; the ocean in the distance, blanketed by banks of churning fog.The tears I’ve been holding back finally spill down my cheeks. Is it too late for me, Mom? Am I just never going to make it, either as an artist, or in the art world at all? Carringer’s was the only place that had even called me back in over a year. I’ve struck out at every gallery and auction house in the Bay Area, and then when I was given this gift, this huge opportunity at the most prestigious auction house in the area, I blew it.

  Maybe I’m just not cut out for that world. Maybe Lydia and Chelsea were right, and I’m not good enough, don’t have the right eye or credentials. Aren’t all the rejections a sign that I don’t have the chops, that I don’t belong? How much longer can I try to convince myself that someday I’ll make it, when the world keeps telling me to give up?

  I hear the metal of the fire escape scraping against the brick of the building and I know someone is coming up. “Give it up Eddie,” I start, but it’s St. Clair’s head that appears.

  I stare at him in shock. “What are you doing here?”

  “Well, hello to you, too,” he says, climbing up to join me on the roof. He grins. “Miss me?”

  He leans in for a kiss, but my head is still too cluttered to respond.

  “They told me downstairs where to find you. What’s her name—Nona, she seemed particularly happy to see me. I could hardly get away. She said something about her eggplant parmigiana…”

  I smile, shaking my head. That woman knows everything. “She likes to feed everyone who steps through those doors.”

  “She clearly loves you,” he says, smiling. “They all do.”

  I nod, fighting my tears again. They’ve been so supportive and now I have to tell them I failed. St. Clair’s smile slips as he sees my face. He gently brushes my tears away.

  “Grace, what’s wrong?”

  I take a breath, willing my voice to come out steady. “I lost my job at Carringer’s today.”

  “What?” He looks surprised. “What happened?”

  I tell him about Lydia yelling at me, and telling me I wasn’t good enough. He looks furious, like he wants to march right back to the auction house and give her a piece of his mind. “That’s ridiculous. I’ll call in the morning, there’s no way she can behave like that.”

  “No!” I yelp. “You can’t. And she can. She’s the boss.” I give a sad sigh. “Thank you for wanting to help, but I’m done there.”

  “Maybe this is a good thing, then. You’ll find something else,” St. Clair insists.

  I shake my head. “What if I’m just not good enough for a job in the art world?”

  “That’s ridiculous,” he argues. “You spotted a forgery last weekend!”

  “And your fancy art dealers didn’t believe me.”

  “You are more than good enough, Grace,” he says, taking my hand. “Those guys, Lydia, all those people who dismissed your talents, they’re too jaded by image and status—they can’t see what really matters underneath.”

  He means it too, I can see it in his eyes. I wonder how he can believe in me like this, when he barely knows me at all.

  “You have an incredible eye, Grace, and passion, which is the most important thing.”

  “Hiring committees don’t seem to agree with you.”

  “Well this hiring committee is ready to offer you a job.”

  I blink. What is he talking about? “What job?”

  “As my personal art consultant.” St. Clair smiles.

  I back away. He’s crazy. Art consultant gigs are the most prized jobs of all: to advise private clients on their purchases, help build collections and work with museums. You have to have years of experience, the best connections…I shake my head. “Please, don’t joke.”

  St. Clair frowns. “I mean it. I need someone advising me, and I trust your judgment more than anyone when it comes to art. You don’t have an agenda, you’re not swayed by status or trends. What do you say?”

  I gape at him, his words finally sinking in. “You’re serious?”

  “As serious as a German painting.” St. Clair grins, boyish and charming. “Think about it. You’d travel the world, helping to curate my collection and expand my holdings. Paris, Rome, Prague…didn’t you say you always wanted to travel?”

  “Well, yes,” I stammer, “I just never thought…”

  “What, that you could have everything you wanted?” St. Clair smiles. “Why not?

  Why not…? He doesn’t realize, the world doesn’t work like that, not for people like me.

  Except he’s offering it, isn’t he? The most amazing opportunity, better than any gallery job or internship by far. This would be real, the chance of a lifetime, and my heart races just thinking about it. “I don’t know what to say,” I whisper, overwhelmed.

  “I haven’t even told you the starting salary yet.” St. Clair winks and names a six-figure number that’s more money than I can even imagine in one place, much less in my possession. “Plus, of course, you’d have access to a business expense account and the use of my private jet while you traveled.”

  “Wow,” I say, too stunned to say anything else. I’m about to accept when it occurs to me that maybe this is some way to make me a kept woman, the kind of mistress who follows him around and is waiting obediently in the hotel whenever he gets back from work.

  I pause. No matter how sexy and charming he is, I won’t put a price on myself like that.

  “Is it too much?” St. Clair asks, frowning.

  “No,” I say. “I just…I wonder about mixing business with pleasure, that’s all. I mean, the two of us, what happened in Napa…” I feel myself flush. “Because if you’re only giving me the job because we’re involved, or if you’ll be expecting me to—”

  “Grace, please,” he stops me. “This isn’t about us. I mean, I would absolutely like to keep seeing you,” he adds, intertwining his fingers in mine. “Getting to know you, all of you…” His gaze turns suggestive for a moment, and I feel the heat between us all over again. “But I would want you to be my art consultant even if you had no interest in our being romantically involved. Please believe me. You’re exactly the right person for this job.”

  “Really?” A weight lifts from my mind.

  “Really. You are knowledgeable and passionate, with an amazing eye and a gut instinct that can’t be bought, and I want you to help make my art collection the envy of the world.”

  I laugh, relieved. “That won’t be hard. You already have some brilliant pieces.”

  “But art is everywhere,” he says, and I catch my breath at hearing my mom’s words come out of his mouth. It’s like a sign. “And I want us to find it together.”

  A flock of seagulls flies past us, heading out toward the horizon, where there seems to be no limit, no end as the blue of the sky meets the blue of the ocean in a blur of shading, a painter’s study of color.

  Moments like this, I realize, don’t come around often. I have to seize the chance: jump without looking, without hesitation, and see where the fall takes me.

  “Then I’ll do it,” I tell him. “I’ll take the job.”

  Charles clasps my hands and smiles into my eyes, and as I smile back at him I realize that all my dreams are finally within reach.

  TO BE CONTINUED …

  What happens next? Grace and St. Clair’s whirlwind romance continues in THE ART OF STEALING KISSES - Available October 14, 2015

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  ONE

  So a girl walked into a bar.

  It wasn’t a joke, it was my life.

  Which, actually, now that I think about it, sometimes feels like the same thing. No comments, please.

  Besides, tonight was the beginning of my new life. It was the first step in a direction I’d wanted to go for a long damn time. So where was I? Ah, yes. I walked into a bar.

  It was a nice bar, at least. In fact, it was really a lot nicer than any bar at a mid-range hotel—the only one my supervisors were willing to spring for—in a mid-range part of Charleston had any right to be.

  The lighting was soft, but not so much so that I couldn’t read the print on the bottles, glowing yellow and orange lamps bringing out the warmth of the polished walnut bar and booths, as well as the striking red brick of the walls and the paintings that adorned them. Some kind of mournful violin music was piping over the sound system, just loud enough to make itself felt and give the chatting patrons a bit of privacy.

  A profile caught my eye, a man silhouetted by the soft golden light, facing away from me. I admired the strong lines of his shoulders and the way that his auburn hair caught slivers of light even in the semi-darkness, throwing out glints of gold like sparks in a low-burning fire. Perhaps feeling my eyes on him, he turned. Before I could look away, our eyes met, and a shock of electricity pierced through the distance between us.

  Those eyes…deep and knowing, traveling across my face before wandering down my body and back up again, slow and leisurely as if he could feel every inch of me through his gaze alone. I felt my body heat up under his stare, my blood singing in anticipation at the offer his eyes were making. A smile began to stretch across his face, as if he could read the eager acceptance in mine.

  I looked away quickly. Research, Ally! I reminded myself. Not banging hot guys. Research is why you’re here tonight.

  I hurried away to the other side of the bar before I could give into temptation.

  The bartender—a wizened old guy with kind brown eyes and a face that looked like it had been there to meet Mark Twain—didn’t bat an eye when I told him what I was after, and after a brief chat with the waitress he got me a corner booth, tucked away behind a stuffed cougar that looked like it had time-traveled directly from the print ads for a 1950s Boy’s Adventure magazine.