Danielle Steel - 44 Charles Street

Everything is falling to pieces for Francesca Thayer. Her beautiful old house is full of leaks and in need of total restoration. Then her relationship with lawyer Todd collapses and he moves out. As the owner of a struggling art gallery she cant possibly manage the mortgage alone, so she is forced to do the one thing she never imagined she would: she advertises for lodgers.

First arrives Eileen a young, attractive schoolteacher who has just moved from LA.

Then comes Chris, a newly divorced father struggling with a difficult ex-wife and the challenges of parenting his seven-year-old son who visits every other weekend.

Last to arrive is Marya a famous cookery author who is hoping to rebuild her life after the death of her husband.

And so Francesca finds that her house has become a whole new world and as things begin to turn around, she realizes that her accidental tenants have become the most important people in her life. Over their year together, the house at 44 Charles Street fills with laughter, hope and heartbreak.

And Francesca discovers that she might be able to open her heart again after all

Danielle Steel is one of the world's most popular and highly acclaimed authors, with eighty international bestselling novels in print and 600 million copies sold. She is also the author of His Bright Light, the story of her son Nick Traina's life and death. She lives in California and Paris.

FRANCESCA THAYER SAT at her desk until the figures started to blur before her eyes. She had been over them a thousand times in the past two monthsand had just spent the entire weekend trying to crunch numbers. They always came out the same. It was three oclock in the morning and her long wavy blond hair was a tangled mess as she unconsciously ran her hands through it again. She was trying to save her business and her house, and so far she hadnt been able to come up with a solution. Her stomach turned over as she thought of losing both.

She and Todd had started the business together four years ago. Theyd opened an art gallery in New Yorks West Village where they specialized in showing the work of emerging artists at extremely reasonable prices. She had a deep commitment to the artists she represented. Her experience in the art world had been extensive, although Todd had none at all. Before that, she had run two other galleries, one uptown after she graduated, and the other in Tribeca. But this gallery that they had started together was her dream. She had a degree in fine arts, her father was a well-known artist who had become very successful in recent years, and the gallery she shared with Todd had gotten excellent reviews. Todd was an avid collector of contemporary work, and he thought that helping her start the gallery would be fun. At the time, Todd was tired of his own career on Wall Street as an attorney. He had a considerable amount of money saved and figured he could coast for a few years. The business plan he had developed for them showed them making money within three years. He hadnt counted on Francescas passion for less expensive work by entirely unknown artists, helping them whenever possible, nor had he realized that her main goal was showcasing the work, but not necessarily making a lot of money at it. Her hunger for financial success was far more limited than his. She was as much a patron of the arts as a gallerist. Todd was in it to make money. He thought it would be exciting and a welcome change of career for him after years of doing tax and estate work for an important law firm. But now he said he was tired of listening to their bleeding-heart artists, watching his nest egg dwindle to next to nothing, and being poor. As far as Todd was concerned, this was no longer fun. He was forty years old, and wanted to make real money again. When he talked to her about it he had already lined up a job at a Wall Street firm. They were promising him a partnership within a year. As far as selling art was concerned, he was done.

Francesca wanted to stick with it and make the gallery a success, whatever it took. And unlike Todd, she didnt mind being broke. But in the past year, their relationship had begun to unravel, which made their business even less appealing to him. They argued about everything, what they did, who they saw, what to do about the gallery. She found the artists, worked with them, and curated the shows. Todd handled the money end of things and paid the bills.

The worst of it was that their relationship was over now too. They had been together for five years. Francesca had just turned thirty when she met him, and Todd was thirty-five.

It was hard for her to believe that a relationship that had seemed so solid could fall apart so totally in a year. They had never wanted to get married and now they disagreed about that too. When Todd hit forty, he suddenly decided he wanted a conventional life. Marriage was sounding good to him and he didnt want to wait much longer to have kids. At thirty-five, she still wanted what she had when they met five years before. They had talked about maybe having kids one day, but she wanted to turn their gallery into a success first. Francesca had been very honest with him about marriage when they met, that she had an aversion to it. She had had a front-row seat all her life to her mothers obsession with getting marriedand she watched her screw it up five times. Francesca had spent her entire life trying not to make the same mistakes. Her mother had always been an embarrassment to her. And she had no desire whatsoever to start emulating her now.