Mail-Order Cinderella. Kathryn Jensen
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nodded. “Plenty of local gals. But I don’t want anyone choosing a wife for me. And no one I’ve dated is the kind of woman I could live with for the rest of my life.”
“But I am?” she asked incredulously.
He let his eyes drift over her soft features. “I think you might be. Your needs are simple, and as long as we understand one another from the start, we should be able to come to some sort of agreement that’s beneficial to both of us. If it helps, consider this purely a business relationship.”
She nodded slowly. “It sounds terribly cold, but I think I could do that. I had already come to terms with fairy tales when I contacted Soulmate Search.”
“Fairy tales?” he asked.
“You know…finding my true love, if such a thing exists. I’m a realist, Tyler.”
She looked him dead in the eyes and he felt an unexpected jolt down low in his gut. Something akin to arousal. She isn’t my type, he reminded himself. Not my type at all.
“About the sex,” she whispered.
“What?” Had he heard her right? He looked around but no one at the nearby tables seemed to have heard.
“You know—intercourse.” She blushed at her own breathy words.
He stopped himself from smiling at her embarrassment and tried to look serious. “Yes?”
“You’ll need to sleep with me if I’m to conceive.”
“I expect so.”
“Well, since we’re being up front about everything…I just want you to know that you don’t have to…that is, you don’t have to do it any more often than is necessary.”
“I see.” Did she think he’d be relieved to hear this? Her words had the opposite effect on him. He suddenly wanted to know how she’d look stripped of her pert sweater set and tidy wool skirt. He felt himself move and shifted in his chair to compensate for the tightness across his lap.
Time to change topics.
“We’ll deal with that when the time comes,” he said quickly. “Meanwhile, I want you to meet my family and see Pueblo, my hometown, before you make a decision.”
“You should be sure of me, too,” she insisted.
“I will be soon enough. I don’t take long to make up my mind about things.”
She took a last bite of her seafood and pushed away her plate, even though it was still half full of shrimp, scallops and delicate lumps of white crabmeat swimming in its buttery sauce. “I’m 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