LITMIR.BIZ

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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

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