stood there, one hand propped on her hip, chin up, all defiant bravado.
“You’re saying it’s not mine?”
“I’m not saying it isn’t yours. It isn’t yours.”
“But you are pregnant?”
Her chin inched up a notch. “What I am is none of your business. Not your burden. Not your problem.”
“You couldn’t be more than a couple of months pregnant,” he pointed out.
“What’s your point?”
“The timing is perfect for me to be the father.”
She quirked an eyebrow, her expression full of arrogance. “What, you think I came back from Texas so satisfied that I couldn’t even imagine being with another man?”
“I suppose I would like to think that. But the truth is, you’re not the type to sleep around.”
“Oh, really?” she asked, her voice brimming with challenge. “And you’re such an expert on me? How long have you known me, Ford, really? A week? It’s less than that, isn’t it? The truth is, you have no idea what I’m capable of.”
If she was lying, she did a damn good job of it. There wasn’t so much as a sputter of doubt in her eyes to give her away.
He waited for the surge of relief. Pregnant or not, she was letting him off the hook. All he had to do was take her at her word and walk away.
He studied her standing there, taking in the defiant bump of her chin, the blazing independence in her eyes. She was dressed in slim-legged pants and a fuzzy sweater that made her look touchable. But that was the only hint of softness about her, otherwise she was all hard angles and bristly defenses.
Kitty was pregnant. There was a baby growing inside her belly. A tiny life. Maybe his. Maybe not.
But his gut said it was his. Every possessive, primitive cell in his body screamed that her child must be his.
Of course, that didn’t mean it was. “You’re right,” he said finally. “I don’t know you well, but I’m a good judge of character. I know you well enough to know you’re capable of lying to get what you want. The only thing I don’t know is what it is you want.”
She squared her shoulders and met his gaze. “What I want is to save Biedermann’s. If FMJ can do that, then we’ll have a deal. If not, I’ll find someone else who can.”
“Are you sure you don’t want Marty here?” Ford asked as he sat down at the conference table. “He is your CFO.”
“I’m sure.” They were working late, trying to get all the details of the acquisition hammered out before the press conference later in the week. Thanks to Suzy Snark, they needed to work much faster than they might have otherwise. Instead of sitting herself, she stood near the windows, staring out at the cityscape below. Marty made her so damn nervous. She’d asked Ford to set up this meeting between him, her and Jonathon precisely because she couldn’t ask the kinds of questions she needed to with Marty in the room.
Of course, Jonathon made her nervous, too, with his steady gaze and his brilliant head for numbers. He was exactly the kind of person who made her feel twitchy with fear. But Jonathon couldn’t be avoided. She no longer trusted herself to be alone with Ford.
Which was why she waited until Jonathon had settled into a chair at the conference table before speaking.
“If I’m going to hand my family’s company over to your tender care—” Kitty stressed the words tender care, letting them hear her doubts that their management of Biedermann’s was likely to be either tender or careful “—then I need assurances that you actually have a plan in place.”
Jonathon cleared his throat. “If you’ve read the proposal we sent, you’ll see your compensation package is—”
Ford interrupted him. “I don’t believe it’s her compensation package she’s worried about.”
She looked over her shoulder, surprised by his comment. He sat at the table, leaning back in his chair, one ankle propped up on the opposite knee. The posture was relaxed, but there was an intensity to his gaze that made her breath catch in her chest.
“Yes.” She forced fresh air into her lungs. “Exactly.”
Now, Ford sat forward, steepling his hands on the table before him. “Unless I’m mistaken, Kitty is the rare CEO who is less worried about what she’s going to get out of this settlement than how the company is going to be treated.” He pinned her with a stare that she felt all the way to her bones. “Am I right?”
In that instant, the intensity of his gaze laid her bare. All the artifice, all her defenses, the image she’d worked her whole life to build and maintain seemed to vanish like a whiff of smoke, leaving her with the disconcerting feeling that he could see straight through to her very soul.
“You are,” she said simply.
“I don’t understand.” Jonathon frowned, looking down at his laptop as if he expected it to sprout flowers. “Why did you ask to meet with us alone if you weren’t worried about your end of the deal?”
“I thought you’d be more honest in private.” Which was also true and was as good an excuse as any. “I don’t care how much money I walk away with. I don’t care what kind of golden parachutes you offer to the board members. I care about whether or not the stores themselves survive. When this is all over with, is there going to be a Biedermann’s in nearly every mall in America? Are there going to be any of them left?”
The question hung in the air between them. Since they seemed to be waiting for her to say something else, she continued.
“If FMJ gobbles us up, that may solve the immediate problem of our declining stock prices, but that’s only part of the problem.” She turned to Jonathon. “Our stock price wouldn’t be going down if we had strong retail performance. I want to know how you plan to improve that.”
She expected Jonathon to answer. After all, he was FMJ’s financial genius. However, it was Ford who spoke.
“You’re right. For too long, you’ve been relying on people shopping at your stores because they’re already at the mall. However—”
Ford broke off as his cell phone buzzed to life. Reaching into his pocket, he grimaced as he pulled out the phone. “Sorry.”
He turned off the volume on the phone, but left it sitting on the conference table by his elbow. “It’s not enough …”
Even though he continued talking, her attention wandered for a second. She’d seen the name displayed on the phone when it rang. Patrice. What were the names of his sisters? Chelsea, Beatrice and … some-thing else. Certainly not Patrice, though.
Not that it mattered in the least. He probably had the numbers of dozens of women stored in his phone. Hundreds maybe. It wasn’t her business.
She forced her attention back to his words.
“We don’t
