Moonlight in the Morning (Edilean 6)

Mr. Preston was staring at her. Andrea said that as far as she knew her father had never smiled in his life. He’d recently divorced his fourth wife, and Andrea said he was now looking for a younger one.

“Red eyes. Sleeping on a bench,” Mr. Preston said. “Boyfriend breakup?”

“Yes,” Jecca said and felt tears welling in her eyes. She hadn’t yet fully realized what had happened in her life, couldn’t believe Tristan wasn’t going to walk through the door.

Mr. Preston saw the unshed tears and turned away. “How about some work to take your mind off your troubles?”

“I’d like that,” she said.

“My daughter has decided she wants me to buy her a house in—” He glanced at his secretary.

“Tuscany,” she said.

“Right,” Mr. Preston said. “Andrea saw a movie, read a book, something. So she and that guy she married are going to stay there. I can sell this gallery, or Jecca, you can run it. Which do you want to do?”

“Run it,” Jecca said, but there wasn’t much conviction in her voice.

He turned back to look at her. “You do any painting while you were in . . . wherever you were?” He nodded toward the art box she’d brought in last night.

“Some, not a lot,” she said. “I worked on other things.” She didn’t elaborate, as she didn’t want to bore him, but she thought of Kim’s ad campaign and all the children’s clothes she’d designed.

“Hang your pictures up,” he said as he headed toward the door. He turned to his secretary. “Call Boswell and tell him

to work out the contracts.”

The bodyguard opened the door for Mr. Preston, who paused. “Welcome back, Jecca,” he said, then left, his entourage behind him.

Jecca sat down hard on the bench. “One door closes, another one openotht,Rs,” she mumbled. Her first impulse was to fall down on the bench and start crying.

But she couldn’t allow herself to give in to that. She’d leaped into Tristan’s arms with her eyes open. From the beginning she’d told him—told herself—that it couldn’t work between them. She’d warned him that at the end of the summer she would leave. He’d said he could take the pain. In her naïveté, Jecca hadn’t thought about her own pain.

She dug into her bag for her phone. How many messages had Tristan left her? What about her father? Would he call to apologize for conspiring with Tristan behind her back?

When she saw that there were no messages from either of them, she was shocked. No voice mail, no e-mail, no text messages. She checked the phone listing. No calls with hang-ups from either of them.

She was sitting there blinking, unable to decide what this meant when the gallery phone rang. It was Mr. Boswell, the lawyer who handled anything to do with Andrea, and he wanted to come by with new contracts. “And there’s an apartment you can use until you get your own back.”

“All right,” Jecca said.

He hesitated. “Forget your old apartment. I think we should get you something in a Preston building. There’ll be a substantial pay raise for you.”

“Good,” she said, but without feeling.

Mr. Boswell paused. “I hear you had a bad breakup.”

Jecca couldn’t say anything. If she did, she’d start crying. She could not believe that Tris hadn’t at least called.

“How about if I give you so much to do you don’t have time to think?” Mr. Boswell said.

“I need that.”

“All right,” he said, “I’ll have someone call the artists and tell them you’re reopening. They’ll bombard you with sob stories of how miserable their lives have been because you closed the gallery.”

Jecca didn’t even defend herself by pointing out that she hadn’t been the one to close it.

“You are in a very bad way,” Mr. Boswell said. “I have to clean up some paperwork, then I’ll be there to take you out to lunch. And Jecca?”

“Yes?”