An Irresistible Bachelor(9)

Jack relaxed and leaned back against the leather seat. He told himself the only thing he had to worry about tonight was how to feign interest in a bunch of men with stuffing down the front of their tights.

As Jack Walker's limousine drove away, Callie stood in the lobby of her building, aware that she was trembling. She told herself that whatever was going through her body was not attraction. It just couldn't be.

People shivered in the cold, she thought. That had to be it.

Oh, hell, who was she kidding.

She glanced at his card. Jackson W. Walker CEO, The Walker Fund. There was a Boston address underneath his name and title.

Even the paper was expensive, she thought, testing its creamy stiffness.

Although she could still remember how good his cologne had smelled, it was hard to believe that he'd come looking for her. She couldn't have been more surprised if Bill Gates had been standing in front of her building and it had taken all of her self-control to walk up to him.

The man made her nervous, but then why wouldn't he? He was offering her something she wanted badly. He was rich and that meant he had power. And she sensed that he was the type who got whatever he wanted out of life—even if someone else paid for it. Which pretty much described her father in a nutshell.

Mostly, though, it was because when she was standing in front of him, she felt like someone had hooked a pair of jumper cables to her toes.

He was right. She wanted to work on his painting. Desperately.

But turning him down was the right thing to do. Her financial straits put her in a position of vulnerability, of wanting to believe in miracles because she was in need of one. Coming home to him and the job offer of a lifetime just seemed too good to be true.

Or maybe she was making excuses. Maybe she was a little scared to tackle something like that portrait on her own. And maybe her attraction to him was just one more hazard in a minefield of complications.

She put his card in her coat pocket, the one that didn't have the hole in it, and checked her mailbox. After taking out two overdue bills, she walked up the six flights to her apartment. The stairwell smelled of Indian cooking from the family who lived on the first floor, and turpentine from the artist who lived on the second. As she opened the door to her studio, the dog across the hall started yapping and its owner, a frail, older woman, chastised him in her surprisingly hardy voice.

Callie shut the door and leaned back against the wood. She could hear the shower dripping in the bathroom.

Taking off her coat, she went over to her bed and sat down at the foot of it. She looked at the bureau she'd bought for fifty bucks and painted herself, the carpet remnant she'd commandeered from Stanley when he'd redone his office, and the bedside table made of cement blocks and a piece of wood.


Where the old TV had been.

Then she glanced over to her closet, at the Chanel pantsuit hanging from the top of the door. From across the room, the jacket's buttons glowed gold in the light, the two linked C's on them clearly visible. The thing looked as out of place as that limousine had in front of her building.

The suit was Grace's. Callie had been soaked the day they'd first met and Grace had lent it to her. Letting herself flop back on the bed, she figured the cost of the thing could probably cover the gap in her rent and keep a roof over her head for two months.

After an hour, she grew cold and curled on her side, pulling her blanket over her legs. As she stared across the shallow expanse of her room, she hoped the solution to her problems would come.

And that it wouldn't involve Jack Walker.

It was sometime around 4 a.m. when she made up her mind to take the job. The deciding factor wasn't money, although that did play a role. The Walker portrait was just too enticing, and if she turned down the opportunity because of a lack of faith in her abilities or a hyperbolic reaction to some man, she'd never forgive herself.

Having come to a decision, she had plans to make. First of all, she'd need help. Fortunately, she still had good relationships with her professors at NYU, and if she got into trouble with the conservation, she could always turn to them. She was also willing to bet she could ask for some workspace and use one of their microscopes. Supplies would be covered in the cost of the project, so she wouldn't have to worry about out-of-pocket expenses, and she was pretty damn sure none of Jack Walker's checks would bounce.

As for him, she wasn't going to see him much at all, hopefully no more than once when he dropped the painting off and then again when he came to pick it up after she was finished. Maybe he'd show up for a visit in between to monitor her progress.