Beach Wedding

by Cruise, Bella

  Immediately, my sensible yet stylish heels feel like vice grips on my toes. My feet are used to day-long shifts in sneakers, and it’s hard to run in a skirt, but I can’t give up. My carefully blow-dried hair is getting wind-whipped and frizzy, and my bangs are sticking to the sweat beading on my forehead.

  “Sorry! ‘Scuse me! Coming through, please!” It’s like running an obstacle course in heels.

  I dodge through the crowd, trying not to think about the frazzled and sloppy impression I’m going to make. In the meantime, I force myself to focus on the beauty of this city: the long shadows of the tallest buildings, the modern architecture, the sunlight reflected and refracted off a thousand windows, the blue sky beyond. I love San Francisco, even though right now it is not loving me back.

  One. More. Block. So. Close. I can almost see the brass carvings and scrolled handles on the thick auction house doors as I cross Gold Street and round the corner…and smash right into the muscular chest of a man coming from the crosswalk.

  I shriek at the same time he says, “Whoa, there,” like he’s a cowboy, except he’s as posh and polished as can be. He holds his coffee cup out in front of him like a bomb and I see the brown liquid dripping down his blue tie and white shirt.

  “Oh my God!” I grab some clean tissues out of my bag. “Here, let me help,” I say, reaching for his tie, but he’s already shaking it out. Luckily, most of the drink seems to be splattered on the concrete.

  “It’s fine,” he says, catching my hand. “There was too much sugar in that latte anyway.” He looks at me as our fingers touch, his eyes flecked with shifting shades of blue like Van Gogh’s night sky and just as mesmerizing. I want to paint them, but then I remember my priorities.

  “I’m sorry about the spill, but I really have to go.” I check my watch. “I’m running late for an important meeting.” I start to turn away, feeling guilty, but his voice stops me.

  “So this is a run-by coffee-ing, then?” He has an accent. British. Sexy.

  I turn back, unable to keep from checking him out again. He has a mouth that looks like it was carved by Michelangelo, perfectly shaped lips that smile at me and highlight the sharp cheekbones as sculpted as the famous David’s. It’s like his face belongs in a museum. Whoa, there. “Should I call the police?” he asks.

  I smile despite my hurry, sure that my face is turning strawberry red. I’d love to stay and flirt with this gorgeous man, but there’s no time. “Look,” I say, backing away. “If you give me your card, I’ll happily pay for the cleaning bill, but I really do have to run.”

  He falls in step beside me like we’re old friends. “Oh, no,” he says, loosening his tie as he easily matches my sprint. “Don’t you worry about this old thing. I’ve been meaning to donate it.” He tosses it in a trash can as we speed down the sidewalk and I can’t help but notice the triangle of smooth chest showing now that he’s unbuttoned his collar.

  “It mostly missed my shirt, which is good because the public tends to frown on shirtless businessmen.”

  I imagine him shirtless and almost walk into a mailbox.

  “That was a joke,” he says, smiling.

  Over the smell of salty sea air and car exhaust I catch the fresh, soapy clean scent of him. “Oh,” I say, avoiding a pothole, and thinking that no one would frown at that body. “Funny.”

  “This meeting must be a big deal,” he says. “If you’re too distracted to converse with a handsome man.”

  “It really is,” I say, separating from him just long enough to weave around a woman walking a poodle. “Life-changing actually. It’s a job interview at Carringer’s.”

  “Ouch,” he says, putting a hand on his heart in mock anguish. “Not going to bite on the handsome line?”

  “Oh!” Flushed, party of one, please. Thank God for the cool air. “That’s not what I meant. It’s just—”

  “So you’re admitting you do think I’m handsome?”

  “I admit nothing,” I say, laughing.

  He grins. “My kind of girl.”

  I stop to catch my breath as we arrive at the gorgeous façade of the Carringer’s Auction House building. Time to bid farewell to Mr. Charming. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little disappointed to see him go.

  He smiles at me face-to-face and oh dear God, he has actual dimples. “Good luck with the interview.”

  “Thanks,” I say, my gaze flicking to my watch one last time. It’s 8:54.

  “You’ll knock ‘em dead,” he says. I nod, trying to paste a confident smile on my face.

  I face the doors I’ve been dreaming about opening for the last week—well really, for the last twenty years—and feel hopeful again. I have five minutes to get inside and pull my shit together so I can show these people what I’m made of.

  One last thing first. “Are you sure I can’t replace that tie I ruined?”

  “Tell you what,” he says, his eyes twinkling. “I’ll swing by here next week and if you’re working, you can buy me a coffee.”

  Because he’s gorgeous and he made me feel better and I’ll probably never see him again, I’m suddenly brave. I say, “Off the record, I would definitely call you handsome.” I wink at him and enjoy the surprise on his so-totally-more-than-handsome face as I stride away from him and toward my waiting future.

  Inside, my bravery falters: this place is seriously impressive. A huge lobby with a polished marble floor, white marble columns reaching to the ceiling, and holy crap, an actual Rodin sculpture in the middle of the room. I stare at it, awed, until I notice a short, brisk-looking woman holding a clipboard. I nervously approach. “Hi, I’m Grace—”

  “Bennett? You’re the last to arrive.” She guides me out of the lobby and pulls me toward the main auction hall as I fiddle with my skirt and make sure my blazer is on straight.

  “Do I look okay?” I ask but she ignores me and opens the doors.

  She shoos me inside where a woman in a sharp black two-piece business suit is speaking to the dozens of men and women my age already standing behind tables stacked with papers and glossy photo spreads. She stops and glares at me as I make my way to the only empty table, closest to her.

  I whisper, “Sorry,” but she ignores me. The Armani-clad dude next to me who has enough gel in his hair to grease a wheel rolls his eyes.

  “As I was saying,” the woman in charge continues, pausing to glare at me again, “I am Lydia Forbes, head of personnel. As far as you’re concerned, that makes me lady fate herself. For one of you, this internship will change the course of your entire life.” Thanks for the reminder. “The rest of you will continue searching for the elusive pearl to launch your career.” I think I might hyperventilate, but the rest of the candidates in their expensive clothes nod along as cool as robots.

  Lydia continues as she paces the room. “In front of you, you’ll find descriptions and photographs of ten objects that represent the types of fine and decorative arts typically auctioned off here at Carringer’s. You have exactly thirty minutes to identify and appraise each piece, and then you will be interviewed.”

  My pulse races like I’m still jogging, but there is excitement mixed in with my extreme anxiety. I get to look at beautiful art. And even though I’m nervous, I also know that all those years I spent studying my brains out in order to get my arts degree (while still holding down a full time job) are finally going to pay off.

  Lydia stops in front of me, drums her French-tipped nails along the edge of my table. “Each of you has an excellent resume, but only one can be the best.” She gives me a little sneer as she walks away, and I feel like my heart might pound out of my chest, but I know I can do this. Mom would tell me take three deep breaths and then go. I hear her voice in my head: “Everything slows down; you can focus.”

  Lydia’s sharp heels sound like cat claws on the floor. “Your time starts now.”

  This is your dream, Grace. I take three deep breaths and dive in.

  “Last summer I went to Italy for six weeks, but now Rome
feels so provincial, you know?” a snooty-looking brunette with perfectly straight, shiny hair sitting next to me says.

  I’ve been in the salon—too luxurious to be called a waiting room—outside Lydia’s office for nearly an hour. Art adorns the walls, each piece worth at least a hundred years of my salary. Worry knots in my stomach as I hear more and more of the other candidates talk about their family compounds on Cape Cod, and all their mutual friends from boarding school and Ivy League colleges.

  It’s like a window onto a completely different world. They even use the word summer as a verb, as in “Where did you summer?” which is how this conversation next to me got started. The only places I’ve ever “summered” were on the patio with my mom, lemon juice in our hair for highlights, with the occasional trip to the community pool.

  “Oh, Chelsea,” girl number two says. “Just because the guy you laid in Florence never called you back doesn’t mean Italy has been ruined.”

  “Please, Angelica, you’re only going abroad because your daddy said you couldn’t laze around his Hamptons house again this year.”

  “He forced me to apply for this internship too,” Angelica pouts. “Some old buddy of his knew someone here, blah, blah.” Blah blah is how this girl refers to connections I would kill to have. She has no idea how lucky she is. “Daddy thinks my Yale degree makes me a genius, but I know I failed that assessment just now.” She pats her blonde hair-sprayed bun. “I didn’t even know what that rod thingy was! It looked like a broken curling tong to me.”

  I try not to think about how unfair it is. The art world is like this everywhere, all about who you know and which circles you run in and how rich your family is. I don’t have a celebrity neighbor or a trust fund so girls like this will never take me seriously, but hopefully that won’t matter in my final interview. I know I aced those test materials. That “rod thingy” was a 17th century German scepter, not a salon accessory, I have to force myself from saying out loud.

  Lydia’s assistant with the clipboard appears as the Armani asshole from earlier exits her office. “Grace Bennett?”

  I stand up and enter the room. My hands are sweaty, my throat tight. I sit down in one of the chairs across from Lydia’s glass-topped desk. Unlike the rest of the building, this room is all high-tech and glossy-looking, with only a pair of antique Chinese cloisonné vases as decor.

  “Ms. Bennett,” Lydia says, leaning back in her white leather chair. Her perfectly coiffed hair doesn’t move as she looks me up and down. “It says here on your resume that you studied at… Montclair Community College.” She drawls the last two words with clear amusement. “I was unaware that one could receive a fine arts degree from a community college.”

  “Not all of them offer the program,” I say, my heart sinking at this immediate obstacle. “I was lucky to find Montclair Community College after I had to drop out of Tufts.”

  “You got into Tufts?” She looks surprised.

  “I attended for a year on a full scholarship before…a family emergency called me back home.”

  Lydia waits for an explanation, but I don’t tell her anything more. Mom getting sick, her death, it still hurts too much to talk about, and soon enough Lydia slides her reading glasses to the tip of her pointed nose and looks at the next paper in her folder. “You did very well on the assessment.”

  I let out a breath I’d been holding since entering the auction house. “Oh, that’s so great to hear.” I knew it! “I just love art so much—the Baroque era is my favorite, the movement in the paintings, the energy and life in such dramatic, vivid detail—but any true masterpiece hits me, right here, you know?” I touch my heart. “It’s like a real physical response, and I just want to be around the beauty, the craft, the history of the art you have here.”

  Lydia removes her glasses, almost smiles at me. Maybe this isn’t such a long shot after all. “Many of the other applicants also did well,” she says. “Tell me why you deserve this.”

  I take another breath. Where do I even begin? “I would work so hard if you give me this opportunity, Ms. Forbes, harder than anyone else. I understand what an opportunity this is, and I don’t take that for granted.” Not like the trust-fund kids outside, I silently add. “Day or night, whatever Carringer’s needs. I want this job, and…honestly, it’s everything I ever wanted. I know I would be really good at it, and if you just let me—”

  “Thank you, Miss Bennett,” she says, cutting me off. She stands abruptly, so I stand, too, my skirt sticking to the back of my legs. “That will be all.” She gestures to the door, where I see her assistant has been standing still as a statue during the entire interview. My cheeks burn.

  A little flustered, I thank her as I walk across the room. “We’ll be in touch,” Lydia says as I exit and am flung back into the sea of rich kids and their designer duds and college connections, feeling like the biggest fish out of water ever. What just happened?

  Chelsea and Angelica still sit in the same place, chatting and laughing. They’re not nervous at all, and I wonder what it must be like to not have to try so hard. To have daddy pull strings for an interview, and have your life served to you on a silver platter. As I walk past, Lydia’s assistant calls a ridiculous name that sounds like “Grandelwile Brandyblerg” and Angelica says, “Oh, he’s supposed to be really good. And his mother is on the Board of Directors here.”

  “I’m not worried,” Chelsea says breezily. “You know my dad is one of their biggest clients. My name is already on the paperwork.”

  Angelica rolls her eyes. “Why did I even bother?”

  Chelsea sees me watching them and smirks. “None of you should have bothered. This whole thing is for appearances.” She looks me up and down and clears her throat loudly. “Speaking of appearances…” Next to her, Angelica giggles.

  My heart sinks. Tears begin to burn behind my eyes and I wFalk away fast, quickening my pace even though my feet are blistered and sore. I have to hope that that spoiled, shiny-haired, smug girl is wrong. That this whole day wasn’t just a formality like she thinks, that I have a chance. Mom, I did my best. I cross my fingers as I head back out into the city streets.

  What happens next? Grace and St. Clair’s story continues in THE ART OF STEALING HEARTS by Stella London – available September 30th!