Читать книгу Stand-In Bride - Barbara Boswell, Barbara Boswell - Страница 11

“Another bag of mail for the eligible bachelor!” Denny, the clerk from the mail room, sang out, heaving an industrial-size plastic sack into Julia’s office. Three other sacks just like it took up most of the floor space. “There’s more coming in. We had to clear this out to make room.”

“Mr. Fortune will be thrilled to hear it,” Julia murmured wryly.

“Not!” Denny chuckled, pleased with his own joke. “We heard he’s furious about all this. But me and my buddies sure don’t know why. If I had hundreds and hundreds of letters from hot babes craving my bod, you can believe I’d be in paradise!”

Julia glanced at the short, perspiring overweight young man, who was somewhere in his twenties and looked ten years older. There would never be hundreds of letters from hot babes craving his body. Maybe not even one.

“Mr. Fortune doesn’t like the attention the magazine article has brought him,” Julia explained tactfully.

For the past five days, ever since the magazine had hit the stands listing Michael Fortune as one of the top-ten most eligible bachelors in the U.S.A., she’d had versions of this same conversation with Denny whenever he arrived with another sack of mail.

Usually the mail clerk shuffled out immediately afterward, but this morning he seemed to be in a chatty mood. He lingered by her desk.

“We had to bring two more people into the mail room to handle all this extra stuff.” Denny stared at the bulging sacks with a proprietary air. “I was put in charge of them, since I’ve been in the department for five years. We call ourselves the ‘Fortune bachelor team.’”

“Ah,” said Julia. Were congratulations in order? She wasn’t quite sure.

“Yep, we open every letter addressed to Mr. Fortune that don’t have the special company code on it.”

She nodded. To distinguish Michael’s usual business correspondence from the mountain of letters inspired by the eligible-bachelor list, Julia had notified all his colleagues and associates nationally and worldwide to use a special code.

“We even open the letters marked Personal. Mr. Fortune said to especially open those ones.” Denny leaned forward and lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Those are usually the ones with the really good stuff in ’em.”

Julia winced.

“You wouldn’t believe what we’ve been finding, Miss Chandler!” Denny exclaimed exuberantly. “Women send Mr. Fortune panties with their phone numbers written on them! And we’re not talking plain old underpants, either. These panties—”

“I hope you’re donating any suitable items of clothing to charity,” Julia interjected, before he could go into detail.

“Miss Chandler, no respectable charity would want them panties, I can tell you that,” Denny said with alacrity. “And then there’s the pictures being sent in! Wow!” His face reddened and he began to breathe heavily. “Mr. Fortune said we could have whatever is in the envelopes, so we divide up the pictures. Sometimes we trade ’em. Chuck actually bought one off of Jonesy for ten bucks! He offered me twenty for a really great one I got, but no way I’m selling!”

Julia’s forced smile became even harder to maintain. She glanced at her watch, a time-honored cue of dismissal. “Uh-oh, I’m running late and have to—”

“But my favorites are the videos the women send in!” Denny did not pick up on her cue. He was not interested in being dismissed. “Picture this, Miss Chandler. Women wearing these real sexy getups or else lying naked on rugs or on beds with candles lighted and music playing while they tell Mr. Fortune how and what they’re going to—”

“I really have to—to get this document to Mr. Fortune for his signature.” Julia jumped to her feet, almost knocking over her desk chair. “It’s extremely urgent.”

“Well, tell Mr. Fortune we followed his orders. There are only letters in the bags. We took care of the other stuff for him.” Smirking, Denny lumbered from the office.

The other stuff. Julia imagined Denny and his cronies slavering over their newfound panty, photo and video collections, and shuddered.

The door to Michael’s office opened, and he stood on the threshold, grim faced. His dark blue eyes focused immediately on the latest sack of mail. “Oh, Lord, not more!”

“Denny wanted me to assure you that he and his crew have removed, uh, any accompanying paraphernalia, and that these sacks contain only letters.”

“Only letters!” Michael echoed tightly. Exasperated, he ran his hand through his dark, thick hair, tousling it. “Do you have any idea of the content of those letters?”

“A fairly good idea,” Julia admitted. She felt a totally unexpected, strange and disconcerting impulse to smooth his hair back into place, and she clasped her hands in her lap, as if to physically prevent herself from acting upon it. “From Denny. He’s extremely enthusiastic about your bachelor-list mail.”

Michael groaned. “This is a nightmare!”

He entered her office and began to pace. It wasn’t easy, since the big mail sacks took up most of the room. Nevertheless, Michael wound restlessly among them.

“Ever since that damnable magazine hit the stands, I haven’t had a moment’s peace. I’m hounded unmercifully day and night by women. I’ve had to get an unlisted phone number. I have to sneak out of my apartment at odd hours and go skulking in and out of the building like a criminal on the run. I don’t dare go to a restaurant or a store or—or anywhere. Women come up to me and tell me the most incredibly intimate things, like their bra size or what they’ll do if I—”

He broke off abruptly, a dark red flush staining his neck. Julia was both amazed and amused. Was Michael Fortune blushing?

“I guess it’s a good thing Denny and his pals have taken custody of the pictures and videos your, er, fans have sent,” she murmured. “According to Denny, who’s become something of an expert in the field, they’re way beyond an R rating.”

“Don’t be flippant, Julia!” Michael reprimanded sternly. “You have only to think about what has happened in the last five days to recognize what an upheaval that list has caused, not only to me personally but to the company!”

“There was definitely an upheaval when the company’s entire computer system had a seizure because all the voice-mail boxes were overloaded with messages for you,” Julia agreed.

“The whole system was down for hours on three separate days!” Michael was beside himself. “How can we possibly conduct business under those conditions? It’s a catastrophe!”

“It certainly isn’t business as usual,” Julia affirmed mildly.

Michael’s eyes glowed like blue flames. “When I told Kristina that having my name on that list constituted an atrocious invasion of privacy, I had no idea how bad it would actually be. The phones and fax machines are jammed with messages from women demanding to meet me. Every radio and TV station in Minneapolis and St. Paul calls at least once a day to schedule an interview with me. The newspapers—both in and out of state—want pictures and interviews, and those syndicated TV tabloid shows have actually sent people to try to get me to consent to appear on their programs. And then there are the talk shows who want to get the ten of us from that wretched list into their studios with an entire audience comprised of single women!”

“That could get ugly,” Julia said dryly. “I have visions of the ten of you being torn limb from limb by your overly enthusiastic prospective brides.”

“It’s not a far-fetched scene. After living through this, I can well believe that there are hundreds of women out there crazy enough to do anything to snare a man!”

“If it’s any consolation, I’m sure the other nine eligible bachelors are being harassed, too.”

“It isn’t any consolation at all!” Michael growled. “The situation is intolerable. I can’t live this way. Bad enough that I can hardly focus on my work with all the distractions and interruptions, but the entire company has been disrupted by this—this army of zealous women who—” Abruptly, he stopped talking, stopped walking and turned to face her. “I just don’t get it, Julia. Why are they doing this?”

“The magazine said the ten eligible-bachelor picks were the ‘Prince Charmings of the ’90s’,” Julia said thoughtfully. “I guess they tapped into all the fairy-tale magic that surrounds—”

“Fairy-tale magic!” Michael gave a derisive snort. “Prince Charming! Give me a break! What woman in her right mind wants to be a sniveling simp like Cinderella?”

“I agree the Prince Charming concept is outdated, and I’ve always thought Cinderella was passive to the point of being dysfunctional.” Julia grinned. “But these letter writers aren’t passive, they’re assertive, and they probably find the prospect of being Mrs. Michael Fortune—”

“There is never going to be a Mrs. Michael Fortune,” Michael promised fiercely. “But even if I did have the slightest inclination to marry, I would never choose a wife by drawing a letter out of a sack. What sane man would? So why do these women bombard us with mail?”

“Hope springs eternal, I guess.”

“There is hope and there is delusion, Julia. These letters fall firmly into the latter category.”

“Well, all those women who wrote in can’t be delusional, so maybe it’s, uh, ambition that is motivating them,” Julia suggested gamely.

“I’m quite familiar with that particular ambition.” Michael’s lips twisted in a cynical grimace. “This entire debacle simply proves what I’ve always known—that women are obsessed with money and will do just about anything to get it.”

“That’s a very depressing point of view, not to mention a vast over-generalization,” Julia said, in defense of every member of the female sex who was not a money-grubbing fortune hunter. Or Fortune hunter.

“Sure.” He laughed coldly. “Whatever, Julia.”

He leaned against the wall and folded his arms in front of his chest. “Did you hear that my mother was the one who sent in that picture of me? She admitted it and didn’t even apologize for doing it. The magazine contacted her, told her about the article, and she express-mailed the photo the next day. Charged the mailing expenses to my dad, of course.”

Julia nodded. She’d heard. She also knew that Nate Fortune had refused to pay and had sent the bill back to Sheila, prompting a visit by her to company headquarters.

Julia knew all about it because Sheila and Nate Fortune had had a screaming match in the corridor of the legal department. Everybody who worked there had heard every word, and news of the scene quickly spread throughout the company.

“Kristina was also right about my mother’s reason for sending my picture into the magazine.” Michael stared broodingly at the floor. “Mother actually said she hoped that the daughter of a ‘sinfully rich billionaire’ would become aware of my existence and contact me.”

His piercing blue eyes met Julia’s, and she shifted uneasily under his gaze. He seemed to be waiting for her to comment.

“I don’t know very much about the daughters of sinfully rich billionaires.” She chose her words carefully, determined to be tactful. “But I don’t think choosing a husband from a magazine list is, uh, quite their style.”

“As if that would deter Mother! She also delivered her standard lecture on the importance of acquiring one’s own immense personal fortune, by whatever means possible. I’ve been hearing that one since I was in kindergarten.” He gave Julia a hard stare. “Did your mother talk to you like that?”

“When I was in kindergarten, my mother and I talked about my dolls and the Easter Bunny and things like that. I can’t remember any advice about financial planning for the future.”

“What? No counsel on how to land a rich husband? No advice on ways to hold out against a prenuptial agreement or on the number of carats requisite in the diamond engagement ring to be purchased by the sucker on the hook? I thought all mothers indoctrinated their daughters about the necessity of marrying into wealth, from the time they were in the cradle.”

“Did your mother have discussions like that with your sister?” Julia asked curiously.

“Of course. For all the good it did. Poor idealistic Janie! She was determined to find true love without money and only succeeded in getting abandoned by the father of her child when he learned she was pregnant. I don’t know what upset our mother more—the fact that Jane slept with a man who wasn’t wealthy enough to be sued for a seven-figure child-support settlement or the fact that Sheila was going to be a grandmother. She still finds it difficult to admit her grandmother status.”

“But Cody is such an adorable little boy,” Julia murmured. She’d seen pictures of Jane’s six-year-old son.

“And my brother Kyle’s little girl, Caitlyn, is an adorable child, too. That doesn’t mean Mother wants to be Cody’s and Caitlyn’s—or anybody’s—grandmother.”

“Sheila Fortune isn’t exactly my idea of a grandmother,” Julia admitted quietly.

“She isn’t anyone’s idea of a grandmother, hers included. However, she does believe in carrying out what she calls her ‘maternal duty,’ and that included sending a picture of me to the magazine. Naturally, there is always an element of self-interest in Sheila’s maternal actions. For example, if that list happened to net me an heiress, I’m certain Mother would arrive at my door, demanding her cut.”

Julia’s lips quirked. “Sort of a finder’s fee.”

“Exactly.” Michael actually smiled—for a split second or two. Then he sighed heavily. “I just want all of this to be over. I’m sick and tired of feeling trapped. I want my privacy back. I want my life back!”

“The magazine comes out weekly, and a new issue will be on the stands in a couple of days,” Julia commented, her voice soothing. “I think you can expect the level of interest to drop then.”

“I hope you’re right,” Michael muttered, stepping deftly around a bulging sack. “Call maintainence and have them dispose of all these bags immediately. And instruct the mail room to stop using this office as a dumping ground. From now on, any superfluous correspondence addressed to me is to be taken directly to the garbage.” He retreated into his office, slamming the door behind him.

He’d begun slamming doors three days ago. Julia sank back in her chair, oddly unsettled by the long personal conversation she’d had with her boss.

It was apparent that this bachelors-list business was really taking its toll on him. The door-slamming, the personal revelations, even the brief flashes of dark humor—all were cracks in Michael’s previously impenetrable armor of control.

She thought of Denny and his cronies in the mail room, enjoying a vicarious thrill at the overwhelming attention that Michael found repugnant. A psychologist could have a field day analyzing the situation.

Maybe someday when she was a psychologist—Julia always thought when, never if—she would write a paper entitled “One Man’s Curse, Another Man’s Blessing,” exploring the topic in detail.

Someday. Julia allowed herself to daydream about the future for just a few moments—a future in which Joanna would be completely recovered. Though the doctors at the rehab center were cautious about Joanna’s prospective ability to attend college, Julia liked to picture her sister as a future student at the University of Minnesota, right here in town at the Twin Cities campus. Julia had earned her own undergraduate degree in psychology there and…had completed one year of graduate school, the first steps toward her goal of becoming a clinical psychologist and working with troubled children and adolescents. A goal Julia intended to achieve. Someday.

But she never lingered very long in the fantasy world of the future. She’d learned that it was far safer to live in the present than to dream of tomorrow. As a survivor of sudden devastating losses, she was well aware that everything could change in an instant, painfully and irrevocably altering one’s life in the most profound and unimaginable ways.

Her thoughts swung back to the past, and she silently thanked her mother for insisting that she take some courses at the local business school during her summer breaks from college. It had been hard at the time, working a forty-hour week to earn her next year’s tuition money while taking business courses. But it had been Julia’s office skills, not her degree in psychology, that had enabled her to land well-paying jobs, first at the Olson, Anderson & Lake Consulting Firm and now here at the Fortune Corporation.

The telephone rang, and Julia quickly answered it. Somehow an enterprising reporter had managed to slip through the receptionist’s call-screening and reach the desk of Michael Fortune’s executive assistant. She asked some intrusive and highly intimate questions about Michael’s sex life and responded to Julia’s terse “no comment” with snickers and not-so-sly innuendos.

Julia’s cheeks turned a ruby shade of red. “I repeat, no comment!” she said sternly and slammed down the phone. The action was oddly satisfying. No wonder Michael had taken to slamming doors.

Julia shared an apartment with three other young women— Jen, Debby and Kia, all students at the West Bank segment of the University of Minnesota, just west of the Mississippi River.

Kia, a graduate student in social work, shared a room with Julia; they’d lived together for the past two years. Jen and Debby, both drama majors in their senior year, had moved into the apartment in August and occupied the other bedroom. All four used the common areas—kitchen and living room.

Lamentably, there was only one bathroom. During her rare flights of fancy, Julia visualized having a bathroom that was hers alone. It seemed like the ultimate luxury.

The apartment was no worse and a lot better than many of the rental units available to upper-level students who didn’t live in university-owned dorms. The building wasn’t too old and the rent wasn’t too high. Split four ways, it was downright cheap for Julia, which was exactly what she wanted.

And needed. Almost all of her salary went to pay Joanna’s expenses at the rehabilitation center. Though Medicaid had paid for Joanna’s eleven-month hospitalization, coverage stopped when she was discharged from the hospital.

Had Joanna gone to a nursing home, the government would have picked up the tab, but Julia didn’t consider it, not even for a moment. She’d spent the long months after her sister’s accident researching facilities, and the rehabilitation hospital on the outskirts of town was superior in every way. There Joanna could receive the intensive specialized therapy she required to eventually lead an independent, productive life.

The alternative—the nursing home—provided custodial care only. Julia viewed placing Joanna there as giving up hope, of resigning her little sister to a life of institutional dependency.

So Julia had sold the Chandler family’s house, used the money to fund Joanna at the rehab center and had moved back into cheaper living quarters in the university section of the city.

Though she was only twenty-six, sometimes she felt decades older than her student neighbors. “Greek Week,” when the fraternities and sororities took over the neighborhood, had certainly lost its charm for her, especially when drunken serenades and contests went on till dawn and she had to get up for work by six.

But both the apartment and the neighborhood were quiet when Julia arrived home a few minutes before eight-thirty. She didn’t know where her roommates were. The four seldom socialized together, although Julia and Kia occasionally ran or biked together in the evenings or on weekends when their schedules coincided. There were a number of suitable trails and paths around the many lakes and criss-crossing parks throughout the city.

Julia gazed longingly out the window into the darkness, wishing Kia were around now. Julia could use a brisk run to work off the frustrations of the long day.

For a few minutes, she stood by the window and debated whether or not to go out alone. The weather was warm for early October, perfect for an evening run, but the darkness concerned her. What woman anywhere wasn’t aware of the dangers of being out alone at night?

But tonight she felt confined and resented the restrictions. Tonight she wanted to be free of both risks and precautions. Two years ago she’d taken a self-defense class at the Y, and the neighborhood was considered safe, she rationalized. There were people around at all hours, especially since she lived so near the theater district, home of an incredible number of productions staged by the university drama department.

Julia vaguely recalled Jen and Debby mentioning a play they were both working in, Jen as an actress and Debby as a “techie” behind the scenes. A light satire, they’d said, and it sounded entertaining. Julia made a mental note to ask them about the dates and times of the show.

She would go see it, if she ever got out of the office in time to make the first act. The way things were going now, she had her doubts. Just thinking about the long and dreadful day at work stressed her all over again.

The events played through her mind like a tape in a VCR. She only wished she could fast-forward certain nerve-jangling scenes. Like when the voice-mail system had crashed again due to an overload of lovelorn messages to Michael Fortune. The mishap had been followed by an angry visit from Jake Fortune himself.

Unfortunately, Michael had been in a meeting and unavailable, so Julia had been the hapless recipient of Jake’s fury. In a steely, formidable tone, Fortune’s boss-of-bosses had ordered her to pass along his vituperative message to Michael, even making her repeat it back to him word for word, to prove she’d gotten it right!

Her palms had been sweating after that encounter. It was bad enough to get chewed out by the CEO of the entire corporation, but to be expected to spread the vitriol to her boss was ulcer inducing. Julia had not delivered Jake’s message to Michael, and she’d spent the rest of the day worrying that her crime of omission would be detected by Jake Fortune. To her great relief, he hadn’t checked back to find out if she had or hadn’t followed his orders.

The day hadn’t improved as morning dragged into afternoon. The voice-mail system took longer than usual to fix, and by the time it was running smoothly, and an exasperated group of buyers from department stores around the country were able to contact the Fortune Corporation about new orders, everybody’s tempers were frayed.

Next came word that a vital shipment of ingredients from overseas had been delayed at the docks in New York, which meant an even longer wait on the production line. That meant dealing with frustrated supervisors in production who were not pleased with the ensuing delays, as well as relaying the bad news to stores that would not be receiving their Fortune products when expected.

Julia had placed the calls for Michael and received a number of tongue-lashings in true shoot-the-messenger fashion. She could only imagine the wrath they would have expended on Michael.

Finally, Kristina had arrived to complain about her latest fight with the head honchos in advertising, whom she claimed lacked vision and guts and were hopeless prudes in the bargain. Julia had ushered her into Michael’s office and hadn’t been privy to Kristina’s latest campaign to “definitively capture the youth market,” but from the raised voices radiating from Michael’s office and Kristina’s stormy exit, she’d guessed the meeting had not gone well.

Neither had the flurry of calls Julia then had to place to the advertising department. Cast in the hapless-messenger role once again, she had been snarled and snapped at by world-class snappers and snarlers.

And, of course, she could say nothing back to any of them. That wasn’t in her job description. She had to grit her teeth and swallow any retort, however appropriate. Her jaws ached from all that gritting.

Julia decided she definitely was going to run. She was wired and edgy, filled with tension that needed to be discharged. In the mood she was in, God help any potential attacker if he dared to attack her!

Shedding her prim office wear, she pulled on a pair of bright gold running shorts and a purple-and-gold University of Minnesota T-shirt, laced up her running shoes and stepped out into the balmy October night. A slight breeze rustled through the branches of the trees. She ran along the sidewalk, moving to the street whenever she encountered pedestrians. Fallen leaves, the first of many more to come, crackled under her feet. Their brilliant red, orange and yellow hues were already beginning to fade as they lay drying on the ground.

She had run a full mile before the tensions of the day began to slowly drain from her. She turned onto a well-lit path that followed the river and glanced at the dark, swiftly-flowing waters.

Julia found herself wondering if Michael was unwinding right now and if so, where and how. She knew he sometimes used the gym in the downtown City Club, and he’d been known to enjoy beating his brother Kyle at racquetball.

But Kyle wasn’t living in Minneapolis anymore, he was at his ranch in Wyoming with his wife and daughter, so there would be no more friendly games on the racquetball court to help alleviate Michael’s stress. And the City Club gym closed at eight o’clock.

Of course, there were other ways to alleviate tension, other kinds of physical activity that didn’t involve leaving the bedroom. Julia felt heat suffuse her skin and knew it wasn’t completely due to the exertion of running.

She didn’t want to think of Michael and sex, but it was hard not to, considering the fact that hundreds of women had been innundating him with offers of sex all week long.

And he had spurned them all.

It wasn’t that he was bent on leading a life of celibacy. Julia knew very well that her boss had women companions from time to time. She ought to know; she was the one who made the dinner and theater reservations in the city and the travel arrangements when the couple took the occasional getaway weekend. She was the one who ordered the flowers to be sent—always roses; Michael was not cheap when it came to florist bills. She was also the one who either put through or refused to put through calls from his lady friend of the moment, depending on the instructions of Michael Fortune himself.

During her tenure as his faithful assistant, Julia had learned quite a bit about the ABC’s of courtship, Michael Fortune style:

A. Michael favored what he called “serial monogamy.” He dated only one woman at a time and expected his chosen candidate to limit herself strictly to him during that period.

B. None of his relationships seemed to last very long. Julia attributed that to his strong antimarriage bias. An involvement with no chance of becoming permanent, or even serious, was doomed to be self-limiting and short-term.

C. Once Michael decided to end the relationship, it was truly over, no matter how his current partner might feel about the matter. If the woman happened to be the one to call it quits, he accepted her decision without ever trying to change her mind. He just didn’t care enough to bother.

Once, one of his exes, bitter over “being dumped just before I was going to dump him,” had given Julia an earful. “Michael Fortune has to be the one in control,” the woman had griped, while Julia maintained a discreet silence. “He demands that the power he holds as an executive in his office be extended to his personal life, and that makes him a lousy candidate for a romance. I’m sure it’s better to work for him than to be in love with him.”

Julia wholeheartedly agreed. Michael was a considerate, even thoughtful boss, but as a lover… She didn’t pursue that line of thought, steering clear of the dangers of an impossible romantic fantasy.

All those eager women in hot pursuit of Michael should’ve done the same, but they couldn’t have known that being placed on the magazine’s “most eligible” list would render him totally ineligible to them. Michael would never consent to being sought after. He had to be the one in charge of a relationship, which meant beginning it himself. He was the proud hunter, not the hunted.

As she ran, Julia passed a number of other joggers and several strolling couples as well. A great many people had opted for outdoor exercise tonight. When she saw a tall, very familiar masculine form running along the path toward her, she blinked in astonishment.

It couldn’t be! Her imagination was playing tricks on her.

She’d spent so many hours working with him and so many of her off-duty hours thinking about him that now she was conjuring up images of Michael Fortune.

Except that the dark-haired man in the blue running shorts and white T-shirt who was approaching her was no figment of her imagination.

It was Michael Fortune himself, and he looked as startled to see Julia as she was to see him.