free this weekend.” She looked up at him guilelessly. “That is, if you want me to come to Pueblo then.”
“Perfect.”
“What will you tell your parents about me? Do they know about Soulmate?”
“Hell, no.” He chuckled at the thought. “And they don’t need to know. They’ll be shocked as it is if we go through with this.” He thought for a moment. “I’ll have to tell them we’ve known each other for a while, if you don’t mind.”
“I’m not a very good liar,” she warned.
“You don’t have to lie. I’ll cover for us with some simple excuse. You just be yourself.”
She drew a deep breath that brought his gaze to her sweater again, stretched tightly where she pressed forward against the edge of the table. She had very nice breasts.
“Are you sure this arrangement of ours will be fair to them?”
“Huh?” He quickly looked up to connect with her concerned hazel eyes. “Why shouldn’t it be?”
“I’m probably not what they’re expecting.”
“You’re right, you’re not.” He leaned across the table, somehow avoiding plates and crystal. Before she had a chance to pull away, he’d kissed her on the mouth. “You’re a damn sight better, Miss Julie Parker.”
Julie thought about Tyler’s kiss as she drove away from Van Gogh’s that evening, and all of the next day at work. She figured it for a kind of good-luck kiss. Not much more than a friendly peck, a handshake, a deal-sealer.
Yet the warmth of his lips lingered on hers, making her think of a longer, deeper, more satisfying kiss that might be waiting for her. Some day.
But even such a pleasant thing as a kiss worried her. Tyler Fortune was a man whose entire life had been determined by his family from the day of his birth. This she had learned on her lunch hour.
She’d found several revealing newspaper articles. Tyler’s grandfather, Ben, had moved to Arizona while separated from his wife, Kate. He must have believed their marriage was over, for he’d lived with a Native American woman for several years and they’d had twin boys together—Devlin and Hunter. Devlin was Tyler’s father, Hunter was his uncle. It wasn’t until Natasha Lightfoot, Ben’s mistress, died that Kate recognized Devlin and Hunter as Ben’s children and agreed to give control of Ben’s construction company to them when they turned twenty-five. Ben died soon thereafter.
Julie found photos of the family in the society pages of the Arizona newspapers. Articles in the business section traced the Fortunes’ climb to power, year after year. Their most recent project was the multi-million Fortune Memorial Children’s Hospital, situated between the Papago Indian Reservation and the smaller San Xavier Reservation. Julie gradually built for herself an image of a modern dynasty-in-the-making that took her breath away.
This man had so much to give her—a proud heritage, wealth, the babies she longed for. But what did she have to offer him?
That was the question that haunted her. Why me? She’d asked him that question, but he hadn’t really given her a satisfactory answer. Everyone had a reason for the things they did. What was Tyler’s?
Yet, as the day wore on and her question remained unanswered, she found she didn’t want to dwell on it. Dining with Tyler at the trendiest restaurant in the city had been the most exciting evening of her life. As a child, the only restaurants she’d set foot in were fast-food joints. In high school she’d kept pretty much to herself. In college she’d dated a few young men who had sprung for a meal at a steak house.
But oh…how she’d loved sitting across a table from Tyler. When she’d left Van Gogh’s her head had been reeling with the richness of the place. She’d felt such a pale daisy beside the rose-and-poppy opulence of the people sitting at the other tables in the intimate dining room.
And Tyler was the most amazing of them all. He had a rough-and-tumble physique that had let her easily assume he drove a forklift for a living until he’d told her otherwise. His face was tanned and sun-leathered, but strong and full of laughter when she said something that amused him. She liked amusing him. She bathed in the glow of his smiles.
“What do you want from me, Tyler Fortune?” she whispered as she climbed into her bed that night. She yawned and closed her eyes. “And what will you make me pay to get what I want from you?”
Three
Julie had never flown in an airplane. As she stood on the sunbaked tarmac Friday afternoon, staring doubtfully at the Fortune family’s private jet, she decided the expense of flying wasn’t the only good reason for keeping one’s feet on the ground. To her dismay, the plane was so small it looked almost like a toy. This seemed a risky means of introducing herself to air travel.
But the flight was deliciously smooth, and it wasn’t long before she sank comfortably into the rich leather seat the pilot had shown her to and released herself to drifting through billowy white clouds into a blue sky so clear and shockingly lovely she couldn’t help sighing. Julie found herself thinking of Tyler.
She remembered the finely drawn muscles visible in the backs of his hands as he’d laid them over hers. The corded line of his throat had risen above his crisp shirt collar. The rest of his body, she imagined, would be just as strong and lean and hard. Envisioning him without his clothes sent delicious chills through her. Her cheeks radiated heat as the plane began its descent.
“Get a grip,” Julie whispered to herself.
But in her heart, she knew that was impossible. She was being swept along on an exhilarating adventure, and she had no idea what to do except to let whatever might happen, happen.
This won’t last long, she reassured herself. You might as well enjoy yourself. Tyler or his parents would soon realize how terribly wrong she was for him. The Fortunes would pack her off to Houston by the end of the weekend, and that would be that.
But at least she’d have some pretty memories, if their evening at Van Gogh’s was a taste of what was in store for her. Maybe fate had intended Tyler as a gift to last her a lifetime? A taste of romance. A memory to make her simple existence bearable. Maybe she should stop being afraid and just accept the weekend for what it was, pure fantasy.
When Julie stepped off the plane, she looked around the lonely airstrip for Tyler, her heart pounding in her chest, but he wasn’t there. Instead, a short, middle-aged man wearing work clothes approached her. He smiled and held out a hand.
“Miss Parker? I’m Joe Dan White. I work for Mr. Fortune. He’s sent me to fetch you.”
“Oh,” she said, feeling vaguely disappointed. No expectations, she warned herself. If you have no dreams, you can’t feel cheated when they don’t come true.
They drove in a battered sport utility vehicle with a pile of blueprints bouncing on the seat between them. Joe Dan wasn’t a talkative man, but she didn’t mind the silence. If he’d asked her what she was doing in Pueblo, she couldn’t have given him an answer that made any sense.
Twenty minutes later, the truck stopped at a construction site beside a dusty silver trailer and Joe Dan jumped out of the cab. Julie hesitated before climbing down from the seat and took a moment to look around.
