Fortune's Mergers. Bronwyn Jameson
to Sunday and her outing with Case, she hadn’t known him personally, and what she had known, she hadn’t particularly liked. As far as she was concerned, he was cut from the same pin-stripe-cloth as her father, which was reason enough to dislike him—or, at the very least, distrust him. Businessmen like Case and her father were incapable of maintaining personal relationships. Not the kind of relationship Gina wanted and needed from a man. Men like them devoted all their time, energy and emotions to the companies they ran. Company first, family somewhere way down the line. That was the motto they lived by.
Hadn’t Gina witnessed enough of her own mother’s frustrations and disappointments married to a man obsessed with his business to know she wanted no part of that life? Hadn’t she purposely chosen a career on the opposite end of the spectrum from her father’s for that same reason? Hadn’t she shut her father out of her life because he’d always chosen business over family? It hadn’t been a decision she’d made rashly or without proper justification.
It had been a means of survival.
As a young girl, troubled by the tension and unhappiness in her home, she’d created a fairy tale world to retreat to, a safe and happy place filled with the characters she created in her mind. After her mother’s suicide, when her father had packed her up and shipped her off to boarding school, she’d taken those fairy tale characters with her, relying on them for the emotional support and comfort her father was incapable of supplying. As an adult, she’d taken those same characters and the stories she’d made up about them and spun them into a cash cow that currently paid the bills, which had given her the ability to sever her financial dependence on her father and, in a sense, thumb her nose at him and his way of life.
And now she was considering sleeping with a man from her father’s world? The world she hated, despised, shunned?
She dropped her elbows to her desk and her head to her hands. “Oh, God,” she moaned miserably. “What was I thinking?”
She needed to forget Case Fortune and focus her mind on toads. Timothy Toad, specifically. Timothy Toad was her friend, her redeemer. He was the only male she could count on, the only one who had never let her down. He had no faults, no ulterior motives, no hidden agendas. He was perfect in every way.
There was only one problem. Two, actually, if she considered the fact that Timothy Toad was a figment of her imagination.
Timothy might be a male, but he wasn’t a man.
Yawning, Gina rubbed her fists against her eyes, trying to scrub away the webs of weariness. It was pushing midnight on day eight of her deadline and she wanted nothing more than to go to bed. But sleep was out of the question until she’d made the requested changes on the illustrations.
Glum, she poked a toe at the wads of paper littering the floor around her feet. Each represented a failed attempt at giving the art director what he wanted. She’d been at it for a week and she was no closer to capturing on paper the art director’s concept than she had been when she had started.
Firming her jaw, she snatched up the pencil again and held it over the blank piece of paper.
“It’s because you’re not concentrating hard enough,” she lectured sternly. “You know the story. Heck, you wrote it! Just draw the images and emotions that are in your head.”
Hoping to jumpstart her creative juices, she pressed the lead to the paper, drew a circle, then leaned back and studied it, waiting for the image hiding inside to reveal itself. Something flashed by the window, catching her eye, and she glanced up in alarm.
But the only thing she saw was her own image reflected in the dark glass.
“Now you’re seeing things,” she muttered under her breath. “Next thing you know you’ll be talking to yourself.”
She clapped a hand over her mouth, realizing it was too late. She already was.
Something struck the glass and she snapped her head up in time to see a flash of white, before it dropped beneath the ledge and disappeared from sight. Her heart thudding wildly, she stood and leaned to peer out. Frustrated by the drafting table that stood between her and the window, she shifted around to its end and pushed it out of her way.
Another flash of white streaked past her peripheral vision and she whirled to the window to look out, watching as the white object drifted slowly down. Paper? she asked herself. Whatever it was it couldn’t be anything more substantial than paper or it would have made a more of a sound when it hit the window.
She shifted her gaze to the sidewalk directly below her window and saw a man standing beneath the street light. A vandal, she thought, her anger surging. Prepared to give the guy apiece of her mind, she shoved up the window. “What do you think you’re doing down there?” she shouted furiously. “If you don’t leave this instant, I’m calling the police.”
The man tipped his head back and looked up.
She gaped. “Case?”
“Stay right there!” he shouted, then darted over to pick up the paper from the ground.
“What are you doing?” she cried.
“Sending you an airmail message.” He reared his arm back and sent the white object flying.
When she saw that the paper airplane was going to come short of making it to her window, she leaned out and grabbed it, managing to catch it by the tip of a wing. Ducking back inside, she read the message scrawled inside.
It’s been a week. No calls. Toad lovers need hugs, too.
She pressed her fingers against her lips, her heart melting at the last line, then let out a laugh and leaned out the window and called down to him, “You’re crazy.”
“No I’m not. I’m lonely. Can I come up? It’s freezing out here.”
She winced, remembering her earlier decision to forget Case Fortune. “It’s kind of late,” she hedged.
“It’s not like you’re asleep or anything,” he pointed out. “Come on, Gina. At least give me a chance to warm up.”
She vacillated a moment longer, then caved, telling herself it was cold outside and he probably was freezing. “Okay. But just for a minute.”
She closed the window, then stooped to scoop up the wadded balls of paper and stuff them into the waste basket. She didn’t want him to see the evidence of her creative block.
She heard the muffled sound of the elevator making its ascent and hurried to the door, combing her fingers through her straggly hair.
When she opened the door, Case was stepping off the elevator. He was dressed casually for a change. Boots, jeans, a black sweater beneath a leather jacket. His hair was mussed—probably from the watch cap he’d dragged off his head and shoved into a pocket of his jacket—and his cheeks were ruddy from the cold. If possible, he looked even more handsome than he did when wearing a business suit.
She groaned inwardly, remembering her ragged sweats and the lime green fuzzy socks that covered her feet.
A slow smile spread across his face. “Hi, gorgeous.”
She ducked her head and wound a strand of hair behind her ear. “I look a mess.”
“You look wonderful to me.”
Before she could call him the liar he was, he put his hands on her shoulders and backed her into her loft.
“Seven days, three hours and thirty-two minutes,” he said, as he kicked the door closed behind him.
She blinked at him in confusion. “What?”
“That’s how long I’ve been wanting to do this.”
Before she realized his intent, he covered her mouth with his. She didn’t want to kiss him, she told herself. And she didn’t want him kissing her.
Or did she?
She