Kitabı oku: «The Millionaire's Reward»

Chapter One

The necklace was the gaudiest, ugliest piece of jewelry Garek Wisnewski had ever seen.

Rubies and emeralds vied for glittering supremacy in a bright yellow-gold setting decorated with enough curlicues and whorls to make a Russian czar blink. Any woman wearing this necklace risked blinding innocent bystanders—or being mistaken for a Christmas tree. This bauble had nothing to do with beauty or elegance—it was about money, pure and simple.

“It’s perfect,” he told the chignoned blonde behind the counter who’d been batting her eyelashes at him ever since he entered the store. “I’ll take it.”

“An excellent choice,” she congratulated him. “You have exquisite taste, Mr. Wisnewski.”

“Thank you.”

The young woman didn’t appear to notice the irony in his voice. Placing the necklace in a satin-lined case and ringing up the sale, she chatted vivaciously.“ Women adore rubies and emeralds. They’re so much more interesting than diamonds, don’t you think? I’m sure your girlfriend will love the necklace.”

She paused to check his reaction to her comment, and he recognized the look in her eyes. In the last hellish month, he’d been forced to deal with numerous women, all with similar predatory expressions. He’d devised several strategies to deal with them: attack, retreat and play dead.

He used the attack method only in extreme situations; the blond salesclerk didn’t qualify—at least not yet. Retreat was impossible until he got his credit card back. Which left only one option.

He didn’t offer either a confirmation or a denial of her guess about the necklace’s recipient.

She wasn’t deterred by his lack of response, however. Finishing the transaction, she slid the jewelry case across the glass counter—along with a business card.

“My home phone number’s on the back. If you ever want a private viewing of our…inventory, please call me.”

Garek shoved the box into his pocket, but left the card on the counter. “That won’t be necessary,” he growled.

He strode to the door, almost bumping into another customer who blew into the shop, along with a freezing gust of wind. Short and round, the man stood in the doorway, nose dripping, as he stared up at Garek.

“Hey, I know you!” The man’s Neanderthal forehead cleared and he winked at Garek. “I saw your picture in the Chicago Trumpeter this morning. Hank, right? Heh, heh, heh—”

“Excuse me,” Garek said icily. “You’re blocking the door.”

The man stopped sniggering and quickly stepped aside. Garek exited, shutting the shop door with a bang. He stood on the cold, dark sidewalk, sleet stinging his face and hands.

He yanked on his gloves and wrapped his muffler around the lower half of his face. Annoyance making his steps brisker than usual, he headed down the sidewalk, cursing himself for ever agreeing to talk to that damn reporter.

He’d broken his usual no-interview rule because she’d said she was doing an article on how businessmen had contributed to the revitalization of the city by providing jobs for displaced workers. If he’d known what she really intended, he would have shown her out of his office immediately. Now, because of lowering his guard for one moment, his life had become a living hell. Oh, he’d been mildly amused at first. The ribald jokes from the men. The fluttering glances from the women. But then, he’d started getting letters. Sacks of them. And women started showing up at his office. And his apartment. At restaurants where he was dining…

Lengthening his stride, he stepped over a puddle. Last night had been the final straw. He’d been about to close a deal with a prospective client over smoked pork tenderloin and Yukon Gold mashed potatoes when an enterprising young woman named Lilly Lade had shown up professing to be a singing-telegram girl—but she’d seemed more interested in stripping than singing. While horrified matrons looked on, he’d had to bundle the woman up and forcibly escort her from the restaurant.

Unfortunately, once outside, she’d thrown her arms around his neck and planted a kiss on his mouth. He’d thrust Lilly away, but not before a tabloid photographer had snapped several shots.

Trying to ignore the freezing wind, Garek hunched his shoulders and turned the corner to where his limousine waited. The situation was no longer amusing. In fact, he was damn well fed up—

“Oof!”

A woman made the small sound as she ran into him at full speed. The packages in her arms went flying. And so did she. She landed on her rear in the snow.

Instinctively, he crouched by her side. “Are you all right?”

Her blue eyes, framed by long black lashes, looked slightly dazed, but she nodded. “I’m fine….”

His gaze dropped to her mouth, watching her lips form the words. Her upper lip was long and perfectly straight, with no indentation at all, curling up slightly at the corners. The lower lip was shorter, and fuller, but not much. The effect was amazingly sensual.

He bent closer to hear her over the whistling wind.

“I’m so sorry—”

“It was my fault,” he interrupted, dragging his gaze away from her mouth. “I wasn’t looking where I was going.”

“No, no. I was running, trying to catch my train—oh, my things!”

With only slight support from his steadying arm, she scrambled to her feet and grabbed a box that had fallen onto the ground. A turquoise scarf and tissue paper peeping out from under the crushed lid, she stuffed the box back into her bag.

“Are you sure you’re all right?” He picked up her hat and she crammed it onto her head, the bright red yarn concealing all but a few short black curls.

“Yes, I’m sure.” She smiled ruefully, her teeth very white against the golden hue of her skin, a dimple appearing in her cheek. “My packages have suffered the most, I think.”

“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?”

“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.