“Stacy, please!” Ellie felt her cheeks heating up. The girl was too romantic…and too naive. “Garek Wisnewski isn’t in love with me. He and I are just friends.”
She bent over the miter box again, with another piece of molding. Friends…she tested the word in her head. How else to describe their relationship? It wasn’t just business, anymore, she couldn’t deny that. But they weren’t really dating, either. If they had been, surely he would have kissed her last night when she’d made no move to stop him.
But instead, he’d released her and headed for the door. She’d felt bereft, confused. Had she misread the look in his eyes when he looked at her mouth? She’d never liked her mouth. In school, the other kids had teased that her lips were “upside down.” Maybe he stared only because of their odd shape…
He’d paused by the door and looked down at her, frowning. “I’ll pick you up at seven on Saturday.” Then, as suddenly as he’d abandoned her, he’d pulled her to him and had pressed a hard, swift kiss against her mouth, before striding out the door.
That kiss…it had been so brief, over almost before she realized what he was doing. Even so, she couldn’t stop thinking about it. Rafe’s most passionate embraces had never affected her the way Garek’s fleeting kiss had.
“I didn’t even know about his birthday,” she said out loud to Stacy. “I don’t really know him that well. And he doesn’t know me.”
“He knows enough,” Stacy said. “And what else do you need to know about him except that he’s a hunk?”
What he was thinking. Feeling. What he thought about her. “This is a ridiculous conversation,” she told Stacy.
“I heard him tell his sister on the phone that he wanted to introduce you to her soon—”
Ellie’s heart skipped a beat. “You shouldn’t repeat things you overhear,” she reprimanded the girl, but not with as much conviction as she should have.
Stacy ignored her. “Garek’s sister is very important to him. I heard that the necklace he bought her for Christmas cost a fortune. Emeralds and rubies are very expensive.”
The girl nodded in a knowledgeable manner, but Ellie barely noticed. He’d bought that necklace for his sister? He hadn’t talked about Doreen Tarrington much, but he must care for her to buy her such an expensive piece of jewelry. Granted, he had terrible taste, but still, it had been kind of him.
Garek Wisnewski, kind?
“Technically, his sister is in charge of this art foundation,” Stacy continued. “But her health isn’t too good, so he won’t let her do any work. She loves art. He started the foundation for her.”
The piece of wood in Ellie’s hands splintered. “He did?”
“Yes, Mr. Wisnewski’s secretary, Mrs. Grist, told me all about it,” Stacy said. “His sister told him she wanted to start an art foundation and Mr. Wisnewski agreed to finance it for her.”
Ellie remembered her suspicion when Garek had proposed investing in the gallery. Why hadn’t he admitted it was for his sister?
She remembered something he’d said. You shouldn’t be so quick to judge me.
Ellie picked up a fresh piece of wood. “That was very…kind of him,” she said slowly.
Garek was hard at work late Friday afternoon when the phone rang. Impatiently, he glanced up, his eyes burning from reading the small, tight print of a contract. He had a stack of documents he needed to go through and sign in order to finalize the terms for financing the prospective buyout of Lachland, and he wanted to finish today.
“Yes?” he said curtly into the phone.
“Mrs. Tarrington’s here to see you,” his assistant told him.
Ah, Doreen. He looked down at the contract he’d just signed. The deal with Lachland hadn’t closed yet, but the financing was in place. Doreen didn’t know it yet, but her ace had been trumped.
Garek smiled. “Send her in, Mrs. Grist.”
Doreen came in, wearing a black designer dress with a black-and-white scarf pinned at her shoulder that had the unfortunate effect of making her look sallower than usual. She carried a flat, rectangular box in her blackgloved hands.
“Happy birthday, Garek,” she said, kissing the air by his cheek, then settling herself into the leather chair opposite him.
He sat back down and opened the box. “A tie,” he said. Mustard yellow, emblazoned with a coat of arms, it was uglier than the muddy green one embroidered with a well-known designer’s initials that she’d given him last year. It was even uglier than the putrid maroon-and-gold one she’d given him