Fortune's Proposal. Allison Leigh
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Year’s Eve,” she reminded. “People had plans that didn’t necessarily include hanging around here.” Including him, because he was supposed to have been on the company jet hours ago.
He lost interest in the phone and picked up her stapler instead. “Did you have plans?”
She sighed, set down her red pen and folded her hands on top of the draft. “Yes, as a matter of fact.”
“A date, I suppose.” His dark, level brows were barely visible beneath his pulled-low cap. “What was his name? Mike?”
She kept her expression calm. It was easy enough. She’d had plenty of practice staying calm in the four years she’d worked for him. And before that, a lifetime of being Gigi’s daughter. “It was Mark, actually.” Which Drew knew very well because he’d met the man several times during the nine months she’d dated him. “And we broke up.”
His brows pulled together. “Since when?”
Since my mother. The caustic answer leaped into her brain, but she held it back. The problems that she had with Gigi had nothing to do with her work. “A few months ago.”
Drew’s lips twisted. “Nothing like true love,” he muttered. He set down her stapler and pushed off the desk. “So who is the date, then?”
She couldn’t imagine what was spurring his sudden interest in her love life, but then she couldn’t imagine what had put that hard, grim look on his face either, or this sudden, unusual … hovering … while she worked.
“Dates. Plural.” She smiled slightly, wryly enjoying the novelty of the speculative look from him that she earned. “Three of my girlfriends,” she added. “So stop looking so impressed. We’re planning a spa weekend, as it happens.”
Her phone vibrated again and she pressed a button, silencing it. “No men at all,” she concluded. And no frantic calls from Gigi, she vowed silently.
Her mother had made it very clear that she’d expected her little Deedee to drop everything and come sit by her side in her latest hour of need, even if it was New Year’s Eve. And she’d made it abundantly plain how she considered Deanna’s refusal to do so an utter betrayal.
But then, Gigi was nothing if not melodramatic.
It didn’t matter to her mother that Deanna had spent most of her life rearranging her life to accommodate Gigi’s needs.
“Where at?”
“Up in La Jolla.” She named the resort. “I was supposed to meet them two hours ago so we could all drive up together. Instead, I’ll have to meet them there.” She knew better than to expect Drew to apologize, though. That wasn’t exactly his method. And it wasn’t as if La Jolla was far. A handful of miles only.
It just was not what they’d planned.
And all because Drew was in a clearly bad temper.
He was pressing the end of the bat into the thick carpet, his expression still black, and she chewed the inside of her lip as she tried not to watch him.
But it was hard.
He was a man made to be watched. Thick brown hair that was usually just this side of rumpled—unless he had an important meeting and then he’d slick it back and look even more devastating. Wide shoulders and a lean build that looked just as good beneath his custom-made suits as they did when he was shirtless and entertaining clients on the beach.
Yes, Drew Fortune was certainly watchable.
But not touchable, her mind whispered.
She knew better than to mix business with pleasure. She’d learned that well simply by watching the messes that her mother made. That her mother was continuing to make.
Not that Deanna had to worry that Drew might think of her in that way anyway. She did her job and she did it well, and that was the only thing he cared about.
Which was exactly how she wanted it. Give her professional respect over a romantic dalliance every day of the week and twice on Sundays.
She enjoyed her work with Fortune Forecasting, and ordinarily, she liked working for Drew Fortune. And right now, given Gigi’s latest exit from reality, Deanna needed the distraction of her work more than ever.
She picked up her pen and forced her attention back to the page. “I’ll be done with this in ten minutes,” she promised. “Then you can get out of here, too.” So could she. She’d join her girlfriends and try to forget for a few days that her mother—still jobless since her last one ended in its usual emotional meltdown—was on the verge of financial ruin and blamed Deanna for not wanting to save her.
She couldn’t understand at all that Deanna simply couldn’t save her.
“Hallelujah,” Drew was saying, his tone flat, almost as if he were answering her own silent thoughts. “Just get the article done.”
Her jaw tightened a little with annoyance. What did he think she was doing?
Once again, her cell phone softly buzzed against the surface of the desk and she opened the top drawer of her desk, tossed it inside and closed the drawer again.
She still imagined she could hear it silently vibrating against the collection of pens and paper clips inside.
“Why don’t you just turn the damn thing off if you’re not going to answer it?”
Good question. “She’d just start calling the office line, then.”
He lifted the baseball bat and rested it over his shoulder. “She?”
“Gigi.”
“Your mom must be pretty anxious to talk to you. Six calls from her at least.”
Which he knew because he’d looked at her cell phone. “She’s annoyed that I didn’t include her in my little New Year’s vacation.” At the mammoth understatement, her pen nearly went right through the paper as she struck out another phrase. “Did you know that you repeated yourself twice here about the Decker rebound?”
He sat again on the edge of her desk and slid the paper out from beneath her pen. He glanced at it, then handed it back. “That’s what I’ve got you for.”
Misspellings were usual for him. Repetitive phrasing was not.
She quickly continued reading, but for some reason it was harder than it usually was ignoring the bulge of his very well-shaped thigh beneath his charcoal-gray trousers.
And there was at least a yard of space between them.
“I, um, I hope you’re already packed for your trip to Texas.” She realized she was skimming the last paragraph and made herself slow down. The last thing she wanted to do was disseminate something with an error that she should have caught just because she was feeling particularly distracted by her boss. “Because you’re supposed to meet the jet at the airfield in two hours.” She’d arranged, then rearranged the corporate jet for him, when it became clear earlier that day that he was not going to make the first flight as she’d scheduled it, nor the second.
He was supposed to be in Red Rock by morning where his father, William, was to be married. And even though Drew had a jet at his disposal, the earliest he’d be arriving now would be the middle of the night.
“What’s the weather supposed to be like there at this time of year anyway?” She knew Red Rock was about twenty miles outside of San Antonio, but only because she’d looked for it on the map.
“Breezy with a scent of hell,” he muttered.
She lifted her eyebrows a little, giving him a quick glance. “I know you’re no fan of marriage—” he made that abundantly clear to every woman who passed through his revolving door “—but this is your father’s wedding. Aren’t you happy for him?” William Fortune had lost his wife—Drew’s mother—four years earlier.
She