An Irresistible Bachelor (An Unforgettable Lady #2)(5)

2


CALLIE BURKE stepped out into the brisk October wind and pulled up her collar, feeling the rough scratch of it on her neck. The old wool coat had been her protection against cold, windy New York winters for years, just one more thing in her life that she needed to replace and couldn’t afford to.

She glanced back at the art gallery she’d worked in for the past eighteen months and put her hands into her pockets, feeling her last paycheck through her mittens. Stanley, her boss, her former boss, hadn’t wanted to let her go. Business, however, was slow because of the bad economy and he hadn’t had much choice. People just weren’t buying like they had during the dot-com years, and financial reality had to prevail over all the interpersonal stuff.

She sure could have used more notice, though. Just this morning, she’d gone in assuming her job was secure.

Stepping forward, she joined the grim rush of pedestrians.

The gallery had been a good place to work. It put a roof, however modest, over her head and kept her in the art racket, even if she wasn’t doing conservation projects. The place was also located in the Chelsea section of Manhattan, only blocks away from her apartment.

And she’d liked Stanley in spite of his theatrics and his codependent relationship with Ralph, his teacup poodle. She hadn’t been all that fond of Ralphie. Four pounds of bad attitude backed up with a bark that could shatter glass just wasn’t endearing—no matter what Stanley said.

Callie grimaced, thinking she would miss the place, and then pushed the temptation to sink into self-pity aside. She had real financial problems. Even with the check, she had only about seven hundred dollars to her name and rent was due in a week.

She thought about what she had to sell. There wasn’t much back at her apartment. Her mother’s jewelry had been used long ago to pay off medical bills. Callie’s furniture, which had come from thrift stores and flea markets, wasn’t going to bring more than two cents. And her old TV had been stolen months ago when her apartment was broken into.

The fact that the thieves hadn’t taken anything else showed how little the rest of her stuff was worth.

She tried to think about her options. The thing she knew for sure was that she didn’t want to go back to that depressing little hole in the wall she lived in just yet. There was no way to find strength or courage there. What she needed to do was walk around for a while and hope her head cleared.

As she marched through the chilly air and thought about employment opportunities, she wondered why she couldn’t have gone to school for something a little more lucrative. Art conservation, however passionate she was about it, however good she was at it, was hardly a run-of-the-mill career to support yourself with. Accounting, law, medicine. At least in those fields, you could get work almost anywhere and be pretty well paid.

Landing a conservation job, however, was like getting struck by lightning, and this was why she’d ended up at Stanley’s gallery. While going through NYU’s conservation program, she’d interned at MoMA and received some great experience working under experts in the field, but with her mother so sick, she hadn’t wanted to move out of the city when she got her degree. The field was competitive enough to begin with, but because she needed to stay where she was, her prospects were even more limited.

Callie stopped in front of one of the more prominent galleries, thinking they might need help. Maybe a receptionist. Or someone to empty the trash. She didn’t care. Aside from her very real financial imperative, she just wanted to be around the art. She went inside, but was told that they had laid off their receptionist two weeks before. When she asked, halfheartedly, if they knew anyone who was hiring, the shake of the head and lowered eyes told her that many of the galleries were in the same shape as Stanley’s.

Just keep going, she thought as she reemerged into the cold. At least if she wore herself out, she’d sleep tonight.

She was strolling past a newspaper stand when she saw a picture that stopped her. Picking up the paper, she looked at the face of Grace Woodward Hall.

Her half sister.

The stunning blonde was in a gown at a podium, addressing a crowd of the city’s most influential people. According to the caption, the picture had been taken at the Hall Foundation’s annual gala, and Callie was shocked when she read the article. A killer had tried to attack Grace in her office and she’d been saved when her bodyguard had taken him down. Also, it appeared that her marriage to the Count von Sharone was over and her soon-to-be ex-husband was shopping around a tell-all book about her.

Focusing on the picture, Callie was glad she’d finally introduced herself to Grace and sorry that the woman’s life was in such turmoil. After years of reading about her half sister in the society pages, Callie had never expected to meet her, but things changed when their father died. She’d become determined to see her next of kin up close. Just once.

Grace was Cornelius Woodward Hall’s daughter. Callie was his dirty little secret. At birth, she’d been given Burke, her mother’s name, and the lies that began with her first breath had followed her into adulthood, creating a wild disparity between the kind of life her half sister lived and the kind Callie struggled through. Despite the fact that Cornelius was worth close to a billion dollars, lavish financial support for his illegitimate daughter was out of the question. When he was alive, he could barely stand to be in the same room with her, as if she were too obvious a reminder of the double life he was leading. Anything that would have increased her profile was to be strictly avoided.