CHAPTER ONE

      WEDNESDAY MORNINGS WERE always quiet in the gallery, so any newcomer was bound to catch Charlie’s eye as she sat patiently at the reception desk. This morning, her attention was certainly caught by the tall, dark-haired fellow who came striding through the arched doorway as if he owned the place. He was gobsmackingly handsome, but it was his commanding manner that made Charlie almost forget to offer him her customary, sunny and welcoming smile.

      A serious mistake. The cut of this fellow’s charcoal-grey suit suggested that he actually had the means to purchase one of the gallery’s paintings.

      And, boy, Charlie needed to sell a painting. Fast. Her father, Michael Morisset, was the artist most represented on these gallery walls and his finances were in dire straits. Again. Always.

      Sadly, her charming and talented, but vague and impractical parent was hopeless with money. His finances had always been precarious, but until recently he and Charlie—actually, it had mostly been Charlie who’d struggled with this—had managed to make ends meet. Just. But now, her father had remarried and his new wife had produced a brand-new baby daughter, and his situation was even more desperate.

      Charlie was thinking of Isla, her new, too fragile and tiny half-sister, as she flashed the newcomer a bright smile and lifted a catalogue brochure from the pile on the counter.

      ‘Good morning,’ she said warmly.

      ‘Morning.’