Fortune's Heirs: Reunion. Marie Ferrarella
had hiked up during her little impromptu dance-of-the-shoes, Gloria took a deep breath and braced herself as she placed her hand on the doorknob.
“Right on time,” she announced brightly as she opened the door.
Jack sailed across the threshold, an emperor taking possession of all he surveyed. “I usually am.” Was that a snide remark about his being five minutes late for their first meeting?
Warm as ever, she thought. “Nice to know,” she commented. “Let me get my purse.” She hurried back to the bar in the kitchen. For the time being, it was the only flat surface available.
Jack took a good long look around the apartment. It was actually a large loft with what appeared to be a couple of cubbyholes off to the side. He imagined that one of them was probably her bedroom. He was standing in what was the combined living room, kitchen, dining room area. The only piece of furniture in the space was a stool against the bar in the kitchen. Otherwise, there wasn’t even a spot to sit.
Was her bedroom as barren?
The thought came out of nowhere and he banished it back to the same place. “Furniture not arrive yet?”
“What?” And then his words played back in her head and she realized what he was referring to. “No, it hasn’t.” Wearing a winter-white pullover sweater and skirt that, together, gave the impression of forming a dress, she shrugged carelessly. “Not that there’s that much to arrive.”
“Minimalist?”
“Something like that.”
She saw him scrutinizing her face. The man should have been an interrogator for the CIA. “I thought you said your business was doing well.”
She resisted the urge to tell him that none of this was his business. Ordinarily, that wasn’t her style. She liked talking, liked learning about other people and didn’t mind them learning about her. But there was something about this man that just seemed to bring out her worst side. She forced herself to be more than civil. She didn’t want Jack to have anything to use against her when he reported back to his father as she assumed he was going to do.
“It is,” she retorted proudly. A defensive note entered her voice. “It was my marriage that didn’t go well.”
He looked at her hand. There wasn’t even a hint of a tan line where her ring would have once been. Which meant that her divorce was not a recent thing.
She saw where he was looking and wondered what was going through his head. Gloria made a calculated guess and decided to set the record straight. “I bought him off with furniture. He was more attached to it than I was, anyway. I do miss the TV, though.”
“You don’t have a TV?” He didn’t watch much himself, other than CNN on occasion and then only to stay abreast of what was going on in the world, but he thought that all women were hooked on talk shows and daytime drama, taping it if they couldn’t be there to watch the episode being aired.
“I do.” Right now, it was on a crate in the bedroom. Right at the foot of the bedroll she’d borrowed from her brother. “But not like the one I gave up. Cost more than the first car I ever owned. Plasma,” she told him since Jack had temporarily ceased to ask questions. Watching anything on the set was like actually being there. Even commercials were fun.
Gloria paused by the small closet just at the front door and took out her coat. Holding her sleeve with the same hand, she began to slip her arm into a coat sleeve. She felt Jack come up behind her and hold her coat so that she could get her other arm in more easily.
The close proximity brought another by-now-familiar wave of warmth up along her spine. She pulled back, stepping to the side and nearly bumping into the wall. Her heart skipped a beat. She raised her eyes to his, feeling amazingly clumsy.
“Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.” He followed her out the door, waiting as she locked up. Her three-quarter-length coat called his attention to her legs.
As if she needed help in having someone notice them, Jack thought, annoyed that his eyes had lingered there longer than should have been warranted.
“Let’s get going,” he snapped, taking the stairs down. There was, he’d discovered, no elevator to the fourthfloor apartment.
Gloria followed him down. “I thought that was what we were doing.”
He said nothing. Reaching the first floor, he held the door for her only long enough for her to reach it, then strode outside. Jack led the way to his car.
Stopping by the passenger side, he opened the door and held it. This time he didn’t abandon his post; he waited until she got in before closing the door and rounding the hood.
“Why are you doing this?” Gloria asked him as he got in behind the steering wheel.
Putting the key into the ignition, he turned it. The Jaguar purred to life. Right now, it was giving him a lot less grief than she was. “Because it’s too far and too cold to walk to the address you gave me.”
She’d given him the location of the store, which was in the midst of renovations, when he’d called early this morning to confirm their meeting. She’d had the same impression then as when she’d first met him.
As she had now.
“No, I’m not talking about driving to the jewelry store, I’m talking about becoming my business adviser in the first place.”
Like a man comfortable with who and what he was, he answered simply and with no apology. “Because my father asked me to.”
That wasn’t good enough as far as she was concerned. She was accustomed to doing things alone and while she welcomed the Fortune stamp of approval and any leverage that association gave her in this highly competitive business, it wasn’t going to be at the sake of her pride. She didn’t need this man talking down to her, looking at her critically.
It was her shaky self-esteem that had been the culprit for her sliding down the slippery slope that had ultimately led to rehab in the first place.
“Look, it’s very evident that you’d rather be running barefoot over hot coals, on your way to get a root canal, than helping me, so why don’t we just call it a day? You can tell your father everything’s all right and I’ll just go about my business the way I did when I first got started in Denver.”
Most people vied for the Fortune’s backing. What was her angle? “Just like that?”
She faced forward and stared straight ahead, aware that he was looking at her. “Pretty much.”
It made no sense. “I thought you asked for my father’s help.”
She wanted the record set straight. “No, my mother asked for your father’s help.” She knew that her mother had had only good intentions. She also knew it was futile to tell her mother to back off and stop worrying. Worrying, Maria Mendoza had told her time and again, was part of a mother’s job description. “I guess she still worries about me. According to my mother, I am going to be her ‘little girl’ even when I blow out eighty-nine candles on my birthday cake.”
He laughed dryly, doing his damnedest not to pay attention to the way her mouth curved fondly as she spoke of her mother. “I know how that is. Although my father does pretty much stay out of my business.”
Was he talking about private or professional? “I thought it was his business—”
“It is, but lately I’ve been running the New York office according to my guidelines. In a way, that makes it mine.” He stopped himself, realizing that he’d just admitted something to a woman he knew next to nothing about. A veritable stranger. That wasn’t a habit with him.
“And you’re dying to get back.” It wasn’t a guess, she could tell by the look in his eyes despite the restraint he was attempting to exercise. The New York office was his baby.
“‘Dying’