Catch a Falling Star
Jessica Starre
Avon, Massachusetts
This edition published by
Crimson Romance
an imprint of F+W Media, Inc.
10151 Carver Road, Suite 200
Blue Ash, Ohio 45242
Copyright © 2013 by Jessica Starre
eISBN 10: 1-4405-6663-1
eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-6663-9
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.
Cover art © 123rf.com
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Someday, Brianna’s ship was going to come in. Maybe not today or this week, but someday. And then …
And then she would probably be bored out of her skull, so never mind.
Brianna sighed and looked at the stack of beautifully embossed invitations on her desk. Speaking of boring. Mrs. Curtin required that all of the invitations be addressed in handwriting even though the job of spewing out address labels would have taken a computer about seventy-two seconds. There was even a font that looked like handwriting, but when Brianna had suggested it, she thought Mrs. Curtin might have a heart attack.
She picked up a thick, cream-colored envelope and a ballpoint pen (she had drawn the line at using a fountain pen) and cursed herself for having neat handwriting. She noticed Heidi, the receptionist, wasn’t being enlisted in the envelope-addressing corps. Heidi had the world’s sloppiest handwriting. There, a life lesson.
Must learn to be sloppier.
“Ms. Daniels?” That was Heidi now, peeking her head around the doorway of Brianna’s cubicle. “Mr. G’s on line one.” She spoke reverently, as people tended to do when referring to Mr. G. G for Gorgeous, G for Gentlemanly, G for Generous, G for Get Real, Brianna.
She gave Heidi a thumbs-up and picked up line one. “Mr. Gustafson?” She sounded breathless, like she’d run up a flight of stairs. He couldn’t help it that he had this effect on her, and surely he noticed, but fortunately he never commented.
“Brianna? Good. How are you?”
Mr. G had an insatiable appetite for small talk. There, see, a flaw. If only it were enough to crush her infatuation. Unfortunately, she found it endearing.
“Fine,” she said. “And yourself?”
“Very well, thank you.” That went on for a few minutes, while Mr. G asked after her younger sister (“I would love to meet her some day; she is such an inspiring young lady.”), her two dogs (“Dakota is the, er, rambunctious one, yes? And Jasmine is the little one. How is Jasmine?”), and her ancient Ford Escort (“Did you get the brake pads replaced? And the brakes stopped their squeaking?”). She wondered if he had all that noted in his smartphone or if he just naturally remembered minute details about everyone he met.
Her hopeful heart suggested
maybe he likes you
but she squelched that speck of naiveté immediately. Matthias Gustafson, a well-respected patent attorney, had inherited enough family wealth to run a small country. He did not think about kissing Mrs. Curtin’s administrative assistant, no matter how much Brianna might wish he would.
Once he had been assured that all was well, he worked his way around to the point of his call. “I believe Mrs. Curtin has been in touch with you regarding my donation for the silent auction?”
The Cooper-Renfield Museum’s annual fundraising gala — for which Brianna was now addressing invitations — had a silent auction component that caused their benefactors to compete viciously to donate the most expensive item and thus get top billing on the program. The things rich people dreamed of. She liked Mr. G but he was definitely one of those unfathomable rich people.
She reached across to her computer and joggled the mouse, clicking on the folder titled M. Gustafson.
Let’s discuss this over coffee
, she could say.
Let me buy you a drink after work.
But those words would stay firmly unspoken because she really couldn’t deal with rejection right now. And reality being what it was, rejection was what she’d get. It would be nice, it would be kind, it would be gentle, but it would be rejection.
“Got it right here,” she said. “Let me see … wow.” She hadn’t had a chance to review the file before and was just now seeing what he was planning to donate. Not a Ming dynasty vase like the social climbing riff-raff, but a Yuan dynasty porcelain plate with lotus design. Much rarer and more important. “Oh, look at that photo! It’s beautiful. I can’t believe you’re getting rid of it!” Which was not what you said to someone Mrs. Curtin had just spent six months softening up in order to put the touch on him. Oops.
“It doesn’t match the new decor,” he said blandly, which she thought might be a joke but she didn’t dare laugh in case she was wrong.
“So generous of you,” she said, trying to backtrack from her mistake, and that made him laugh, so maybe she didn’t do it as smoothly as Mrs. Curtin did. “It’s for the tax deduction, isn’t it?” she added, because what the hell. She was never going to be Mrs. Curtin so why bother trying?
“I get a tax deduction?” he asked, like Matthias Gustafson might not know that. Ha. He might be generous but he knew all the angles. He’d probably invented some of them. Nothing got past Mr. G.
“We’ll send you the paperwork after the auction,” she said. “Now, let’s just see … looks like Anne Trainor — do you know her? She’s one of our assistant curators. Anyway, she’s scheduled to pick it up on Tuesday at your home. Ten
A.M.
Will that work?”
“That’ll do. Someone will be here.”
Someone will be here.
A minion. Brianna wished
she
had a minion. As far as she knew, and she knew pretty far, Mr. G did not have a wife and lived alone in that giant mansion on the outskirts of town. Not in the Hanover section with all the nouveau riche, their McMansions squatting on tiny lawns. He possessed an estate with extensive grounds. Just the thought of how much maintenance must be involved made Brianna lightheaded. But of course Mr. G had minions for the maintenance.
“Wonderful. Then we’re all set?” she asked. Not that she was in a hurry to hang up. She could listen to his whiskey voice all day. But then she would never get any work done. Although maybe work was overrated as a source of personal fulfillment.
“Very good. Thank you, Brianna.”
Her heart fluttered the way it always did when she heard her name on his lips, and she hung up the phone before she did something stupid, like ask him if he enjoyed Bogart movies and did he know the art house theater was sponsoring a retrospective this weekend?
• • •
Natalie Johnson sat on the front porch swing and rubbed Jasmine’s head. Jasmine was their little mutt, a black dog with short legs and an indolent attitude. People always thought she was the best-behaved dog ever but the truth was she was just too lazy to get into any trouble. Natalie and Brianna had gotten her when their malamute, Dakota, turned out to be more high-spirited than two busy women could deal with. (“Dakota needs her own dog,” Brianna had said.) Dakota was in the fenced backyard, probably plotting ways to take over the world, and almost certainly digging up the azaleas, but Jasmine had wanted to come out front with Natalie. Jasmine had always liked Natalie best and Natalie had felt the same about her, just the way Dakota and Brianna were bonded. And it was a good thing for Dakota that Brianna was sappy over her, because Brianna really, really hated having to replant the azaleas.
Natalie lifted her face to the breeze. September was one of her favorite times of year; it held the crisp promise of fall after the heat of summer. Then came fall itself, which she adored. Although she also loved spring. Summer and winter, too. All of them, really, the rainy days and the sunny ones, windy ones and calm. Every morning she walked to the bus stop on the corner to wait for the bus that would bring her to campus, and she just stood there taking in the day, whatever kind of day it was.
For a long time she had not known if there would be another fall or another spring. And now they came, one after the other, a gift, a great gift. Maybe there would be a lot of them. Maybe so many she would get tired of them.
But she didn’t think she would.
A textbook lay open on her lap. She should be studying because she needed to graduate and get a job and help Brianna with the bills. Brianna was her stepsister, though they never thought of each other that way, sisters through and through they were, after what they’d endured together. But this afternoon, Natalie was having a hard time focusing on advanced accounting practices.
Every time Natalie came out to the porch swing, like now, she saw the peeling paint on the front porch rails. She hadn’t said anything to Brianna because then Brianna would get out the paint scraper instead of working on her plans for Once in a Lifetime. And if
Natalie
got out the paint scraper, it would result in the same thing. Brianna wouldn’t let her do it by herself and it wasn’t like she could do it on the sly. It was a big porch. It would take a lot of time. And there was no question of hiring it done; the budget didn’t run to that.
And then there was the lawn, looking ragged, and every time Natalie said, “Why don’t you show me how to use the mower?” Brianna always said, “Don’t worry, I’ll do it this evening.” So Natalie had stopped asking because she didn’t mean Brianna should drop everything and do it, but that was how Brianna took it.
And not to mention the notice from the bank, which Brianna did not know that Natalie had seen.
