A Business Engagement. Merline Lovelace

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СКАЧАТЬ gleam entered her eyes, one that made Sarah swallow a groan. Pit bulls had nothing on Alexis when she locked her jaws on a story.

      “We could do a follow-up,” she said. “How making Beguile’s Top Ten list has impacted our sexy single’s life. Hunter’s pretty much a workaholic, isn’t he?”

      Frantic to get to the phone, Sarah gave a distracted nod. “That’s how we portrayed him.”

      “I’m guessing he can’t take a step now without tripping over a half-dozen panting females. Gina certainly smoked him out fast enough. I want details, Sarah. Details!”

      She did her best to hide her agitation behind her usual calm facade. “Let me talk to my sister first. See what’s going on.”

      “Do that. And get me details!”

      Alexis strode off and Sarah barely reached the chair at her worktable before her knees gave out. She snatched up her iPhone and hit the speed-dial number for her sister. Of course, the call went to voice mail.

      “Gina! I need to talk to you! Call me.”

      She also tapped out a text message and zinged off an email. None of which would do any good if her sister had forgotten to turn on her phone. Again. Knowing the odds of that were better than fifty-fifty, she tried Gina’s current place of employment. She was put through to her sister’s distinctly irate boss, who informed her that Gina hadn’t shown up for work. Again.

      “She called in yesterday morning. We’d catered a business dinner at the home of one our most important clients the night before. She said she was tired and was taking the day off. I haven’t heard from her since.”

      Sarah had to ask. “Was that client Devon Hunter, by any chance?”

      “Yes, it was. Look, Ms. St. Sebastian, your sister has a flair for presentation but she’s completely unreliable. If you speak to her before I do, tell her not to bother coming in at all.”

      Despite the other, far more pressing problem that needed to be dealt with, Sarah hated that Gina had lost yet another job. She’d really seemed to enjoy this one.

      “I’ll tell her,” she promised the irate supervisor. “And if she contacts you first, please tell her to call me.”

      * * *

      She got through the working lunch somehow. Alexis, of course, demanded a laundry list of changes to the ski-resort layout. Drop shadows on the headline font. Less white space between the photos. Ascenders, not descenders, for the first letter of each lead paragraph.

      Sarah made the fixes and shot the new layout from her computer to Alexis’s for review. She then tried to frame another article describing the latest body-toning techniques. In between, she made repeated calls to Gina. They went unanswered, as did her emails and text messages.

      Her concentration in shreds, she quit earlier than usual and hurried out into the April evening. A half block away, Times Square glowed in a rainbow of white, blue and brilliant-red lights. Tourists were out in full force, crowding the sidewalks and snapping pictures. Ordinarily Sarah took the subway to and from work, but a driving sense of urgency made her decide to splurge on a cab. Unbelievably, one cruised up just when she hit the curb. She slid in as soon as the previous passenger climbed out.

      “The Dakota, please.”

      The turbaned driver nodded and gave her an assessing glance in the rearview mirror. Whatever their nationality, New York cabbies were every bit as savvy as any of Beguile’s fashion-conscious editors. This one might not get the label on Sarah’s suit jacket exactly right but he knew quality when he saw it. He also knew a drop-off at one of New York City’s most famous landmarks spelled big tips.

      Usually. Sarah tried not to think how little of this month’s check would be left after paying the utilities and maintenance fees for the seven-room apartment she shared with her grandmother. She also tried not to cringe when the cabbie scowled at the tip she gave him. Muttering something in his native language, he shoved his cab in gear.

      Sarah hurried toward the entrance to the domed and turreted apartment building constructed in the 1880s and nodded to the doorman who stepped out of his niche to greet her.

      “Good evening, Jerome.”

      “Good evening, Lady Sarah.”

      She’d long ago given up trying to get him to drop the empty title. Jerome felt it added to the luster of “his” building.

      Not that the Dakota needed additional burnishing. Now a National Historic Landmark, its ornate exterior had been featured in dozens of films. Fictional characters in a host of novels claimed the Dakota as home. Real-life celebrities like Judy Garland, Lauren Bacall and Leonard Bernstein had lived there. And, sadly, John Lennon. He’d been shot just a short distance away. His widow, Yoko Ono, still owned several apartments in the building.

      “The Duchess returned from her afternoon constitutional about an hour ago,” Jerome volunteered. The merest hint of a shadow crossed his lean face. “She was leaning rather heavily on her cane.”

      Sharp, swift fear pushed aside Sarah’s worry about her sister. “She didn’t overdo it, did she?”

      “She said not. But then, she wouldn’t say otherwise, would she?”

      “No,” Sarah agreed in a hollow voice, “she wouldn’t.

      Charlotte St. Sebastian had witnessed the brutal execution of her husband and endured near-starvation before she’d escaped her war-ravaged country with her baby in her arms and a king’s ransom in jewels hidden inside her daughter’s teddy bear. She’d fled first to Vienna, then New York, where she’d slipped easily into the city’s intellectual and social elite. The discreet, carefully timed sale of her jewels had allowed her to purchase an apartment at the Dakota and maintain a gracious lifestyle.

      Tragedy struck again when she lost both her daughter and son-in-law in a boating accident. Sarah was just four and Gina still in diapers at the time. Not long after that, an unscrupulous Wall Street type sank the savings the duchess had managed to accrue into a Ponzi scheme that blew up in his and his clients’ faces.

      Those horrific events might have crushed a lesser woman. With two small girls to raise, Charlotte St. Sebastian wasted little time on self-pity. Once again she was forced to sell her heritage. The remaining jewels were discreetly disposed of over the years to provide her granddaughters with the education and lifestyle she insisted was their birthright. Private schools. Music tutors. Coming-out balls at the Waldorf. Smith College and a year at the Sorbonne for Sarah, Barnard for Gina.

      Neither sister had a clue how desperate the financial situation had become, however, until Grandmama’s heart attack. It was a mild one, quickly dismissed by the iron-spined duchess as a trifling bout of angina. The hospital charges weren’t trifling, though. Nor was the stack of bills Sarah had found stuffed in Grandmama’s desk when she sat down to pay what she’d thought were merely recurring monthly expenses. She’d nearly had a heart attack herself when she’d totaled up the amount.

      Sarah had depleted her own savings account to pay that daunting stack of bills. Most of them, anyway. She still had to settle the charges for Grandmama’s last echocardiogram. In the meantime, her single most important goal in life was to avoid stressing out the woman she loved with all her heart.

      She let СКАЧАТЬ