Page 1 of Hold My Heart

Chapter 1

She was in George Clooney’sarms. He held her close with his lips on her neck, alternating between kisses and whispering sweet things in her ear. Things like “you are the most beautiful woman in the world” and “I love voluptuous thighs on a woman. Please wrap yours around me.”

She was only too happy to oblige.

It was the best damn dream Olympia Trumbald had had in a long,longtime. Until George opened his mouth and a harsh screech came out. Worse when she realized it was the smoke alarm going off. At work. Again. And she was fully awake.

“Will someone shut that off?” Olympia called out. “Maintenance!”

It went off intermittently, a technological game the alarm played where it decided to screech at random and inopportune moments.

She held her hands over her ears until the piercing scream of the siren silenced minutes later. With her ears ringing, she thought longingly back to George and wondered if she had a free second to return to his arms.

“Are you listening to me?”

Nope, apparently not. Olympia turned around with a half groan, half growl, struggling to follow her assistant Ashleigh’s conversation. “Of course I am,” she answered tersely. “Go on.”

She spared a look at Ashleigh, with her punk-ish blond hair and blue crop top. It would have been better to spend time with George, she thought, following the girl—“girl” because Ashleigh was a scant twenty years old—through the main portion of the gallery. The girl looked like she would be better suited playing with dolls than helping Olympia handle the biggest gallery fundraiser of her career. The event that would make or break her promotion.

“We have a few more pieces from James Wilko to hang on the wall, and I was thinking the sculpture by Dryer would be perfect near the window in the corner,” Ashleigh was saying, pointing as if she was in feng shui tune with the space.

Olympia shook her head. “No. The light in that corner isn’t right. His work is too intricate, too detailed. It needs a center space. It needs to steal the show.”

“With all due respect, ma’am, the piece isn’t large enough for the center of the room.”

“Then we pair it with a second sculpture, at differing heights to showcase each.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” a trembling tenor voice called from across the room. “I kind of think it would look good by the window. The natural light would highlight the details, don’t you think?”

Olympia stiffened. Her boss had a nasty habit of popping up when he wasn’t wanted. She had serious reservations about his creative vision most days.

He strode forward, standing a scant five-foot-three, hands in his jacket pockets and black-rimmed glasses perched on a hawkish nose. His white hair looked more Bea Arthur than Warhol, and his voice was morePee-wee’s Playhousethan Clooney. Was she being bitter? Probably. Honest? You betcha.

“With all due respect, Carl,” Olympia said, finger impatiently tapping on the clipboard she carried, “we’re hammering out the last-minute bugs with the gallery layout for the fundraiser. This is the final crucial step of planning before we set everything in motion. If we move the sculpture again,” that part was said more to Ashleigh than to her boss, “then it causes a tidal wave of issues for the rest of the pieces. We only have a month left.”

She hated the way her last words cracked at the end because it meant she was stressed, and the last thing she wanted was to show off her nerves in front ofthosetwo. The show needed to go off without a hitch. If it did, it meant more money for the gallery, better artists coming in, and more media presence. It would mean the culmination of years of work.

If it failed? She’d be out. It was clear to her that young Ashleigh was after her position, and if the fundraiser was a bust...Carl would blame Olympia and she’d be out on her ass before she could tell him to shove it where the sun didn’t shine.

It was a risk she couldn’t allow.

Being the curator for the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill, New York, kept her busy most days and drowning in boredom others. But it was her passion. She loved being surrounded by the masters. Paintings and sculptures by some of the greatest artists, remembered by history, cared for by her and her team. If it wasn’t the greats, it was local artists wanting a foothold, a chance to display the pieces they’d worked so hard to create.

An exhibit was coming up the following month and they were getting in pieces from across the country. For the most part, her concentration was focused on the details that tied the whole picture together. This week, however, she was all over the map. Scattered in a way she hadn’t felt since she was a teenager and unsure of where she wanted her life to go. Scattered like how she’d felt after her parents died.

Carl studied the area in question, the bright corner currently occupied by another piece standing nearly nine feet toward the vaulted ceiling. “Ashleigh might have a point, Oly.”

Ugh, she hated when he called herOly. It was juvenile in the worst way.

“I mean, the piece in question—” he continued.

“Dryer’sMatriarch.”

“Yes, that one. Wouldn’t it be splendidly illuminated in the afternoon light? With the sun’s rays catching the red of the maple tree outside? I can see it now...”

“Sir, by the time the fundraiser starts, the leaves will be off the trees. The fundraiser is scheduled for November.”

And it wouldn’t matter whether the red light of afternoon hit the damn thing or not. It would be in the center of the room on full display, where it belonged. Because out of the three of them, Olympia was the only one with a degree in art history and had at least an educated instinct about these things. But even her seven years at the gallery didn’t seem to matter when Carl got an idea in his head.

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