Millionaire's Woman

“Let me help you,” he said, capturing a bag on the verge of blowing away. He swept several small boxes into it, his attention focused more on her than his task. She didn’t seem to recognize him—a rarity these days. He couldn’t see her figure, wrapped up as it was in a slightly shabby coat that was several sizes too big. But she was small, perhaps an inch or two over five feet, and he’d felt the fine bones of her hand through her mitten when he’d helped her up.

He picked up a tiny pair of pink, yellow and blue tennis shoes. He glanced at the woman again. Young—but not too young to have a child. “There’s mud on these shoes. I’ll replace them and anything else that’s damaged.”

“Oh, no!” she protested immediately. “It’ll wash off. And if it doesn’t, my niece won’t notice a few spots…oh!”

She hurried off to retrieve a baseball rolling slowly down the gutter toward a storm drain. He saw a magazine, its pages fluttering in the wind. “Is this yours?” he called to her as he bent to pick it up.

She glanced over her shoulder and nodded, before reaching for the baseball.

Garek picked up the magazine, then froze as he saw his own face staring up at him from the cover.

His jaw tightened. Ramming the tabloid into the sack, he stalked over to where she crouched in the gutter. As she stood up, he shoved the bag into her arms.

“Here,” he said curtly. “Watch where you’re going next time.”

He stomped away, only to step directly into a puddle. Icy water splashed into the top of his shoe. Cursing under his breath, he squelched down the street to the waiting limo and climbed inside. “Home, Hardeep.”

“Yes, sir,” the chauffeur replied.

The car purring down the street, Garek looked out the window. He saw the woman still standing in the gutter, clutching her bags and staring at the limo. She wore an expression of profound bewilderment.

Anger swept through him. She must have been lurking on the corner, waiting for him. If the magazine hadn’t given her away, he would’ve believed their collision was an accident. He’d even been about to offer her a ride home.

Oh, she was good, better than most. Innocent-looking—except for her mouth. He should have been warned by that mouth…

He sat in brooding silence until the chauffeur stopped in front of his apartment building. Not until he went inside and reached into his pocket did he realize that something was missing.

The emerald-and-ruby necklace was gone.

Cold, wet and tired, Ellie entered her apartment and dumped her bags on the small kitchenette table with a sigh of relief. “Hi, Martina,” she said to her cousin who was checking a large pot on the stove. “How’d you do on your final?”

“Fine. It was easier than I expected.” Martina lifted a steamer, laden with tamales, from the pot and set them on the counter. She glanced over her shoulder, her long, dark hair swinging. Her already well-arched brows rose. “What happened to you, chica?”

Ellie shook her head as she pulled off her coat and wet mittens and walked over to hold her cold hands next to the ancient but blessedly warm furnace. “It’s a long story. Suffice it to say I bumped into Mr. Grinch and missed my train.” She sniffed the air appreciatively. “Those tamales smell awfully good. Can I have one?”

“Well…okay, but just one. They’re for the party tomorrow night. Who’s this Mr. Grinch?”

“Nobody,” Ellie dismissed the unpleasant man. Although in truth, with his sleek leather gloves and expensive limo he’d obviously been somebody. Somebody rich and spoiled who’d suddenly decided she wasn’t worth the time and effort it took to be polite. Sinking into a chair, she peeled back the hot corn husk and bit into the tamale. The spiced meat inside burned her mouth, but she was too hungry to care. “Mmm, this is fantastic, Martina. Better than your father’s. You should sell these. You’d make a fortune.”

“I like cooking…but not that much.” Briskly, Martina piled the tamales into a glass dish. “How was business at the gallery today?”

“Not bad. A lot of people came in. I talked one couple into taking a painting home to try it out. And I sold a sculpture.” Carefully, Ellie broke a piece off the tamale and watched a thin wisp of steam rise into the air. “The woman loved it. She said it reminded her of the feeling she had when she first fell in love. She didn’t even look at the price tag. But when I told her how much it was, she said she couldn’t afford that much,and could I please give her a discount. I told her maybe a small one, but she said she could only pay half the price and so—”

“And so you ended up practically giving it away,” Martina finished for her, shaking her head. “You never could bargain worth a dime. A Hernandez without the haggle gene—it’s unnatural.”

Ellie made a face at her cousin. “I’m getting better.”

“Yeah, right. I thought you said Mr. Vogel was going to have to close the gallery if it didn’t start making a profit.”

Ellie bit her lip. She had said that—and it was the truth. The thought scared her. She’d worked hard, but the gallery had failed to meet its expenses the last three months in a row. If she didn’t figure something out soon, Mr. Vogel wouldn’t be able to afford to keep it open. And then what would Tom and Bertrice and all the other artists who showed their works at the gallery do? What would she do? She loved her job.

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?”