Читать книгу Forgotten Honeymoon - Marie Ferrarella, Marie Ferrarella - Страница 11

K ristina Fortune hung up the telephone. A bittersweet smile played on her lips, a reflection of her ambivalent feelings. Grant was getting married. And while she felt happy for her older half brother, she couldn’t help feeling sad for herself. She doubted it would ever come to pass for her, that knock-your-shoes-off kind of love that left you tingling and wanting more.

Especially since she wasn’t about to let her guard down anymore. Not after David.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained, she thought. And nothing ripped apart.

With a sigh, she wandered over to the window. The view from the fourteenth floor of the Fortune Building was next to nonexistent today. Visibility, according to the radio, was zero. Air traffic was at a standstill. Looking out the window was like looking into the interior of a cloud. A dense fog was embracing the city, swirling its long tentacles around the tall Minneapolis skyline and smothering it like a white feather boa thrown about the shoulders of a call girl.

She remained standing there, staring, though there was nothing to see. Staring and thinking.

There was no doubt about it, she felt restless. Edgy. Grant’s phone call had just brought it to the fore. It was as if there was no place within the chrome-and-black-enamel office where she could comfortably alight. So she didn’t bother moving at all.

The feeling of restlessness, of dissatisfaction, was due largely to her grandmother’s sudden death.

Kristina still couldn’t believe it.

Death happened every day. The newspapers and the rest of the media were full of it. But it was always someone else’s family, not hers. Death wasn’t something that she wanted to think about at twenty-four. It had no place in her life.

Except that it had entered, hoary and unannounced, claiming someone she cared about a great deal.

Grandmother would have been happy for Grant.

Kristina smiled to herself. The sad curve of her mouth mocked her as she looked at her reflection. Funny, she’d just assumed that Kate Fortune would go on forever, like the sun, like the tides. Never once had her grandmother given any hint that she was actually mortal. She’d never been sick, and she’d worked long, endless hours tirelessly. She’d been more an institution than a flesh-and-blood woman.

Except that she could be warm and kind when a granddaughter was needy, Kristina thought sadly. She fingered the silver charm around her neck, the one shaped like a lace valentine. It had been specifically bequeathed to her, taken from her grandmother’s charm bracelet. It was the charm her late grandfather had given her grandmother the day Kristina was born. “Another valentine joins the lot,” Ben Fortune had told his wife, continuing the tradition of giving her a charm for each birth.

As she touched the charm, Kristina remembered the way Kate had held her and let her cry her heart out over David, the one and only time she’d allowed her heart to be vulnerable. David, who had turned out to be far more interested in the Fortune name and inheritance than he was in her love. David, who had gone on to marry well, ensconcing himself in a political dynasty. Breaking off her engagement, Kristina had spent the night at her grandmother’s house. They’d stayed up all night and talked. Kate had been the only one to ever see this softer, vulnerable side of her. Kate had understood how much it hurt to discover that you had been made a fool of.

She pressed her hand against the glass. Winter was just outside, harsh and unforgiving. Like life, she thought, if you let your guard down and made one mistake. Kristina blew out a long, tired breath. It didn’t help ease the tension.

David and politics deserved each other, she decided, her mouth hardening. But her grandmother didn’t deserve what had happened to her.

She thought of Kate as she had last seen her, her hand lightly resting on her lawyer’s arm as she inclined her head toward him, quietly commanding center stage, just by her presence. Kate Fortune had been a magnificent woman, even when approaching her seventh decade. She hadn’t aged the way other people did. There were no telltale wrinkles, none of the mocking badges that the passage of time awarded, like hands that shook, or a mind that became progressively more vague and enfeebled. Kate Fortune had embodied the very essence and vibrancy of life.

That was why having that life snuffed out in a plane crash seemed so highly impossible. The ultimate insult. Kristina could barely make herself believe it.

And yet, if her grandmother had picked a way to die, that was the way she would have chosen, Kristina was certain. She would have elected to go out in one astounding blaze of glory, crashing somewhere in the middle of a mysterious jungle.

Leaving the rest of her family to realize just how much they missed her. How much they needed her. Not to run Fortune Cosmetics, but just to be.

Kristina’s throat tightened with the swell of tears that insisted on forming. Tears she hadn’t allowed herself to release. Kate Fortune wouldn’t have wanted tears. She would have wanted them all to go on, to forge an even greater legacy than the one she had worked so hard over the years to give them. The Fortune success was due as much to Kate’s efforts as it was to Ben’s. Perhaps even more, for she had continued the expansion even after her husband died.

God, but she missed her.

Kristina sighed again. The weather was getting to her. It was so gloomy, so pervasive and disheartening.

She needed to get away for a few days, she thought. Kristina glanced at the official document on her desk, the one she’d been studying this morning. Maybe, she considered, for more than a few days.

She thought of Grant and Meredith and their pending marriage. And the honeymoon to follow. A gleam entered her eyes.

Why not?

With the enthusiasm that was the hallmark of everything she did, Kristina turned back to her desk and began making notes. The idea that had been born yesterday morning began to take on depth and breadth at a speed that would have astounded anyone who didn’t know her.

Those who did knew that Kristina never did anything slowly or in a small way.

At twenty-four, she was already successful and recognized as being insightfully creative, a definite asset to the advertising department she had joined. She was also driven. She took after her grandmother that way. A powerhouse who enjoyed making a difference, leaving her mark upon everything she came in contact with.

Buffered by inheritances, completely devoid of monetary concerns, Kristina could very well have done nothing with her life but attend parties from dusk till dawn.

That wasn’t her.

Kristina thumbed through the folder Sterling Foster, their family lawyer, had been thoughtful enough to send on to her. There was a very lackluster-looking brochure included in the packet. Four pages in total, it featured three rather homey, unflattering photographs of a bed-and-breakfast inn, one her grandmother had made a sentimental investment in so long ago. Every word she read within the brochure generated more notes on her pad. And sketches that she kept for future consideration.

The youngest in her large family, Kristina made certain that she would never have the adage “Last but not least” attached to her. She was never going to be last, in any manner, shape or form. She was too conscious of beinning first. Of being a winner.

If, in winning, it cost her a friendship or two, well, she rationalized, those people couldn’t have been such very good friends after all. Not if they didn’t understand what making her mark upon things meant to her. Being part of the Fortune family meant having to try harder to make an impression. She didn’t want to be just one of the Fortunes, an interchangeable entity. She wanted to be distinguished from the rest. To do things her way and stand out.

Like Grandmother.

This might just be her key, she mused, turning the brochure over to the back page—even though the inn looked tacky. Tacky could always be fixed.

Moving the brochure aside, she looked at the cover letter on her desk, the one Sterling had sent with the deed and the information on the inn.

How like her, Kristina thought. Even in death, Kate had seen to everyone’s needs, leaving each of them not only a monetary legacy, but something else, as well. In Kristina’s case, it was a half interest in a country inn located in southern California.

Until she was notified by Sterling, Kristina hadn’t even known her grandmother had the inn among her holdings. From what she’d gathered, it seemed Kate Fortune had remained a discreet silent partner in it for over twenty years.

Kristina smiled fondly now. It was hard to envision her grandmother being a silent partner in anything. They had that in common, too. Neither of them had ever believed in keeping her opinions to herself.

“The silent aren’t heard,” her grandmother had once said to her.

At the time, Kristina had thought that the line was just a quaint, self-evident homily, but now she understood the deeper meaning behind her grandmother’s words. You had to make yourself heard in order to get your own way. If you didn’t, no one would ever know what you had to offer.

And she had a lot to offer, especially to this tacky little place. Kristina tapped a well-manicured pink nail on the photo on the cover of the brochure for emphasis. In fact, she’d guess that the bequest had arrived here just in time. Just in time for the inn.

As a matter of habit, she’d requisitioned the tax information on it from their accountant. It had taken some doing to find the information for her, but it had wound up on her desk this morning, just as she had requested.

The statement wasn’t heartening, but that hadn’t been completely unexpected. There was a huge margin for improvement. As far as investments went, this hadn’t been a shrewd one for Kate.

Kristina decided that Kate must have kept her hand in for some sentimental reason. Maybe she had even met there with Grandfather Ben for a lovers’ tryst.

The thought pleased her. Kristina would have wished her grandmother that kind of heart-quickening happiness.

The kind that Grant now had. The kind that had completely eluded her.

Kristina banished the thought before it could make her maudlin again, and made up her mind. Her career was established and flourishing. She was a natural at creating ad campaigns that were simple yet sleek and caught the public’s attention. But after two years, it was a case of “Been there, done that.”

What she wanted now was a challenge, something new to try her hand at. Something that was hers alone, not an integral part of the Fortune dynasty. She looked at the paper on the desk. The place was begging for help.

And she was just the woman to give it.

With a nod of her head, Kristina swept together the papers on her desk and deposited them in their manila envelope. Her pensive, restless mood had vanished, now that her course had been established.

“Thanks, Grandmother. You always knew how to set things right for me.”

Frank Gibson had been part of the advertising department at Fortune Industries for the last fifteen years. He had slowly worked his way up within the framework, losing a little more hair with each advancement. Now, as the senior VP, a title that he felt at times was more decorative than lucrative, he retained only a slight fringe of brown just above his ears. And even that was in danger of going.

Such as now.

He looked at the blond slip of a girl who had been all but foisted on him two years ago and digested what she was saying to him. He might have accepted her into the fold reluctantly, expecting nothing, but he had been more than just a little pleasantly surprised. He’d quickly discovered that Kristina Fortune pulled her own weight and then some. If at times that meant she ran over some toes, allowances could be made, not just because she was the boss’s daughter, but because she was damn good.

He didn’t like the idea of doing without her for any long extended period of time.

Frank rubbed his large palms along the edge of his desk, a sure sign that the news he was receiving was making him nervous.

“You want what?”

She knew she could do this without asking. No one’s opinion really mattered, when you came right down to it, except her father’s. And he would give her her head, as she was requesting, especially since it involved his mother’s bequest.

But, technically, Frank was her boss, and she got along with him a great deal better than she did with her father. So, to avoid any bad feelings, she went through the proper channels and put her request to him.

“A leave of absence.”

They were unveiling a new perfume in a little more than two months. There were still a thousand details to see to. It had been Kristina’s baby all the way.

“Now?” Frank asked. “In the middle of an ad campaign?”

Kristina laughed. She couldn’t remember a single day going by when Frank hadn’t behaved as if everything were a matter of life and death.

“Frank, we are always in the middle of an ad campaign.” Sitting down on the sofa against the wall, she crossed her legs and saw Frank’s eyes drift to her hemline before he quickly looked away. Frank’s romantic life began and ended in his mind. “It’s nothing you can’t handle.” She genuinely liked the mousy little man. He was kind to her without being obsequious. She tucked her tongue into her cheek. “Maybe not with my flair, but at least with my notes.” She nodded in the general direction of her office. “I left everything organized for you. It’s under Redemption.” Which was the name she had given to the new scent.

Kristina had made her mind up to handle the inn herself a week ago, when she first received Sterling’s letter. But she had taken the extra time to do her homework on bed-and-breakfast inns. She never ventured into anything unarmed.

Frank frowned. After years of trying, he could finally find his way around a keyboard, as long as it was attached to a typewriter. Word-processing and spreadsheet programs were completely beyond him. You might as well ask him to pilot a starship.

“You know I hate computers. That’s what I have you for.” Finally comfortable with her, he was not above putting a teasing spin on their working relationship.

She laughed as she leaned forward. “You have me for a lot more reasons than that, Frank.”

In actuality, at this point, Frank was content to let Kristina head most of their campaigns. The TV spot she’d come up with for Hidden Sin had single-handedly upped sales a full ten percent across the board.

“All right,” he agreed. “Rub my nose in it, but don’t leave.”

“Leave of absence, Frank. Leave of absence.” Kristina enunciated the words slowly. “That doesn’t mean forever.” She knew how quickly Frank could come to rely on something. It was flattering, but right now, it was getting in the way of the new pair of wings she wanted to try.

Kristina rose, giving the appearance of being taller than she actually was. “I’ll only be gone for about two months.” She thought of the photographs of the inn. “Two and a half, tops.”

He knew it was useless to argue with her. She would do what she wanted to do. She was a Fortune and could afford to, unlike the rest of the world. “And what is it that you want to accomplish in those two months?”

“Something new.” She couldn’t quite put it into words, but something was calling to her, telling her that this was right. That she had to do this. Maybe it was even her grandmother, whispering in her ear. She wasn’t certain. She just knew she had to go. “Grandmother left me her share in a bed-and-breakfast inn in California.”

“California?” he echoed, horrified at the thought of the place. “They have earthquakes.”

She laughed at the expression on his face. Frank was one of those people who were content never to try anything new in their lives. He ascribed the feeling to everyone. “And we have fog and tornadoes.”

Frank snorted shortly. Nothing in the world could get him to travel to California, even on business. He would delegate trips if he had to. “A fog can’t kill you.”

She looked out the window. The gauzy texture of the fog hadn’t changed since this morning. “No, but it can depress you to death.” She knew she didn’t have to explain herself, but because she liked him, she wanted Frank to understand. “I don’t know, Frank, I just feel that I want to try my hand at something that doesn’t have the Fortune stamp all over it.”

“It will when you get through with it,” he pointed out, in case the fact had escaped her.

She turned to look at him, her smile wide, satisfied, as if he’d gotten the point. “Exactly, but it’ll be my own stamp.”

“Your mind’s made up?” It was a rhetorical question, uttered for form’s sake. He already knew the answer.

“When have you known me to waver?”

Never. She was the most self-assured woman he’d ever encountered, next to her grandmother. Frank sighed. “All right.” Cocking his head so that he resembled a sparrow eyeing an early-morning worm, he gave it one last shot. “I suppose there isn’t anything I can say to make you change your mind?”

Kristina slowly moved her head from side to side, her amused eyes on his.

Frank spread his hands wide, helplessly. Surrendering, since he’d never had a chance of winning. “Then there’s nothing for me to say except yes.” He frowned as he sighed, resigned. “When has a man ever said no to you?”

She grinned. “Hasn’t happened yet.” Even with David, she’d been the one to say no. But that had only been after she discovered that his one and only love was the Fortune money. “And I don’t see it happening anytime soon.”

He had no reason to disagree with her. “When it does, let me know.”

She patted his face affectionately, with the camaraderie that had arisen in the trenches over the past two years. “You’ll be the first, I promise.”

She’d begun to leave when he called out after her, “Really, what are you going to do there in…” His voice drifted off as he waited for her to tell him the name of the city.

“La Jolla,” she supplied.

“La Ho-ya,” he repeated incredulously. What kind of a name was that for a place? “You don’t belong in a place like that,” he insisted, “With all those laid-back, surf-obsessed weirdos running around. You’ll go stir-crazy inside a week.”

Spoken like a man who had never traveled outside of Minneapolis. “You’re getting your information from some bad movies made in the seventies, Frank.” She knew that, in his own way, he was concerned about her. That touched her. “I’ll be fine,” she assured him. After debating with herself, she decided to confide in him, at least partially. “I want to turn this little side holding of Grandmother’s into something she would have been proud of.”

Not everything needed to be tampered with, Frank thought. He didn’t want to see her fail. God only knew what sort of repercussions that would have on her work when she returned. Not to mention on her. “Seems to me that if Kate Fortune would have wanted to change it, she would have done it herself.”

Maybe. And maybe there was a reason she hadn’t. “Not necessarily. She might have been too busy.”

He thought of the mountain of details still waiting to be tended to before the campaign was launched. “And you’re not?”

It was time to go. If she let him, Frank could go on like this all afternoon. And she had packing to do. “You can handle it, Frank.”

He rose behind his desk, his voice rising with him. “How will I reach you?”

“You won’t.” She tossed her reply over her shoulder. “I’ll call you.”

When I feel like it, she thought.

She had left everything in her customary meticulous order. Frank had all her notes on the new ad campaign and though she knew for a fact that she was the new blood that had been pumped into the veins of the stodgy department, she also knew that there wasn’t anything here that couldn’t keep, or be handled by someone else, until she returned. She’d done all the preliminary work. All that remained now were the uninspiring details that had to be overseen and implemented.

Kristina placed all thoughts about the department and the pending ad campaign on the back burner and turned her attention to the future.

A new future.

Who knew? This could be the start of something big. She had a feeling…

“Hey, Max!” Paul Henning cupped his mouth with one hand as he shouted above the noise of the crane. “It’s for you.”

He held up the portable telephone and waved it above his head, in case Max couldn’t hear what he was saying.

Max Cooper turned toward the trailer. He’d thought he heard his name being called. The rest of the men were too far away for him to hear one of them. Then he saw his partner waving the telephone receiver.

With a sigh, he took off his hard hat and ran his hand through his unruly dark brown hair. He sincerely hoped that this wasn’t from someone calling about yet another delay. The construction of the new housing development was already behind schedule. The December mudslides had set them all back at least a month. He had his people and the subcontractors working double shifts to try to catch up. The last thing he wanted was to pay the penalty for bringing the project in late.

Every time the phone rang, he mentally winced, anticipating another disaster in the making. Nature didn’t use a telephone, but errant suppliers and subcontractors did, and they could wreak almost the same amount of havoc Mother Nature could.

Replacing his hard hat, he waved at Paul. The latter retreated into the trailer that, at the moment, housed their entire operation. Max followed.

He made his way into the cluttered space, hoping that by the next job they could see about getting something larger. Right now, a new trailer was the least of their priorities.

Paul, a tall, wiry man, was as thin-framed as Max was muscular. He pressed himself against the wall to allow Max access to the telephone.

“We’ve built closets larger than this,” he muttered, still holding the telephone aloft.

Max indicated the receiver. “Who?” he mouthed.

Paul knew who it was, but he thought he’d string Max along for a minute. It appealed to his sense of humor, which hadn’t been getting much of a workout lately.

“She said it was personal,” he whispered.

He was between “personals” right now, Max thought as he took the receiver from Paul. He and Rita had come to a mutual agreement to go their separate ways. Actually, the word agreement was stretching it a little. She’d been screaming something about his “freaking fear of commitment” at the time. Those had been her parting words to him, ending what had otherwise been a rather pleasant, albeit short, interlude.

Warily Max put the receiver to his ear, wondering if Rita had decided to try to make another go of it. He hoped not. He’d kept his relationships short and predominantly sweet—the former fact being responsible for the latter—ever since Alexis.

But then, no one had touched him, or hurt him, like Alexis. And no one ever would.

“Hello?”

“Max? It’s June,” the voice on the other end of the line said. Normally pleasant, June’s voice was anxious and uncertain. “I hate bothering you at work, but I think you’d better come out here. You’re going to want to see this.”

June Cunningham, sixtyish, even-tempered and efficient, was the receptionist at the Dew Drop Inn, the small bed-and-breakfast inn that Max had found himself the unwilling half owner of. He would have sold his share in it long ago, if it wouldn’t have hurt his foster parents’ feelings. John and Sylvia Murphy were the only parents he had ever known, taking in a scared, cocky thirteen-year-old and turning him into a man, when everyone else had elected to pass on him. He owed them more than he could ever hope to repay.

So if they wanted him to take over their half of the inn, he couldn’t very well toss the gift they offered back at them. He left the management in June’s hands and stopped by on Fridays after six to look in on everything. Right now, knee-deep in construction hassles, the inn was the last thing on his mind. When he thought of it at all, it was in terms of it being an albatross about his neck.

He couldn’t imagine anything that would prompt the unflappable June to telephone him here, of all places, and request his presence at the inn. She’d never asked him to come by. What the hell was wrong?

“This?” he repeated. “Exactly what do you mean by ‘this’?”

“Ms. Fortune.”

It was a minute before he reacted. “Kate? She’s dead. She’s been gone for nearly two years.” He remembered seeing an article in the paper saying that the woman’s plane had gone down in some isolated part of Africa or South America, someplace like that. Her lawyer, Sterling Foster, had sent him a letter saying probate would take a long time, considering the size of Kate’s estate, so he should just continue to run it as always. But now it seemed there would be some changes.

“Not Kate,” June quickly corrected. “Her heir. Kristina Fortune.”

This was all news to him, although he had to admit that he’d been rather lax as far as things at the inn were concerned. It hadn’t even occurred to him, when he read about Kate, that whoever inherited her half would be coming by to look the place over.

“She’s there?”

“She’s here, all right.” He heard June stifle a sigh. “And she wants to meet with you. Immediately.”

June took everything in stride. He couldn’t remember ever seeing her hurry. “Immediately?” It was a strange word for her to use. “Immediately?”

There was no humor in the small, dry laugh. June lowered her voice, as if she were afraid of being overheard. “Her word, not mine. But I really think you should get here, Max. I heard her murmuring something to herself about knocking walls out.”

That caught his attention. Just who the hell did this Kristina Fortune think she was? He didn’t particularly want the inn, but he didn’t want to see it destroyed, either. It was part of his childhood. The best part, if he didn’t count John and Sylvia.

Covering the receiver, he turned to Paul. “Would you mind if I left you with all this for a few hours?”

Paul grinned as if he’d just hit the mother lode. “Hell, no, I was just wondering how to get rid of you. I love playing boss man.”

Max knew Paul meant it. He took his hand off the mouthpiece. “I’ll be there as soon as I can, June.” He cut the connection.

“Must be great to have a piece of so many different enterprises,” Paul joked. When Max didn’t return his grin, he asked, “What’s up?”

I don’t need this, Max thought. He liked things uncomplicated and this was probably the worse possible time to have problems rear their pointy heads. “Seems that the new partner at the inn has some fancy ideas about what to do with the place.”

Paul poured himself another cup of coffee. “New partner?”

Max nodded, hanging up his hard hat. “Kate Fortune owned the inn with my foster parents. She was killed in a plane crash a while back. June just called to say her ‘heir’ arrived. She thinks I’d better get over there immediately.”

“Doesn’t sound like June.”

Max pulled his jacket on. “She was quoting Kristina Fortune.”

“Oh.” He got the picture. “Better you than me, pal.” Paul saluted Max and then walked out of the trailer, back to the construction site.

“Yeah.” Max bit off the word as he strode out. He wasn’t looking forward to this.