He felt as if he’d just been pushed away. Rejected. It wasn’t a pretty feeling.
“There’s no need for you to leave—” Jack began to protest, only to have his father wave a hand at him. He didn’t notice the uneasiness on Gloria’s face.
Patrick gave his son a meaningful look. “Oh, but I think there is. I think there’s plenty of need.” And then he smiled again. “Until later, Gloria.” With that, Patrick began to take his leave. As he walked past his son, he paused to say, “Oh, by the way, she wanted me to give you this.” He thrust the dark-blue box into his son’s hand and walked out of the office.
Gloria couldn’t take her eyes off Jack. Pinpricks of anticipation ran along her body, jabbing at her. Jack was staring down at the box in his hand. And then, as he flipped it open to examine the contents, she saw anger crease his brow.
He looked up at her. “You didn’t have to come here to leave this.”
She was still feeling as though someone had borrowed her personality and left ashes in its wake. Hurt warred with anger and she let go of the temper she normally kept curbed.
“Why shouldn’t I come here to drop it off? You certainly weren’t going to stop by to pick it up anytime soon. You were stuck in ‘traffic.’ Just where was this mythical traffic, Jack? I got here without encountering any. I guess they must all have been following you around because they certainly weren’t out on the road when I got on it.”
Annoyed over being caught in the halfhearted lie he’d given her, Jack made an attempt at an explanation. “Gloria—”
But Gloria was on her feet, her hands raised in front of her, ready to bat away anything he said.
“No. I get it. I do,” she insisted. “You’re uncomfortable over what happened in the elevator.” Once she started, the words she’d been harboring in her heart just poured out. “I don’t know if you’re just ashamed of letting your guard down, or ashamed because you’d let it down with me—”
“Gloria—”
“But it doesn’t matter. The end result is that you’re ashamed, or unnerved, or whatever you want to call it. Bottom line, being around me makes you uncomfortable. Well, you don’t have to be around me any longer. I just took care of that for you.”
“I am not ashamed,” he finally managed to snap at her.
That gave her absolutely no solace. “But you are uncomfortable.”
He thought of lying, but she would probably know he was. “Yes.”
That hurt more than she’d expected, even though she’d been the one to say it first. “Fine, so we understand each other—” Turning on her heel, her stomach churning and her head pounding, she headed for the door.
Jack knew he should just let her go. In the long run, that would be easier and they’d both get a little peace. But something inside him wouldn’t allow it. He didn’t want her going, not like this. Not without some kind of an explanation. It was important that she understand why he was uncomfortable.
The thought almost made him laugh. Hell, how could she understand any of this when he was having trouble understanding it all himself?
But even so, he moved swiftly, catching up to her at the door. His arm went out across the opening, barring her way. “No, we don’t. We don’t understand each other—”
She gritted her teeth together. It occurred to him that he had never seen a woman look as magnificent as she did at this moment.
“Get out of my way.” When he made no move to lower his arm, she told him, “I warn you, my brother taught me a lot of self-defense moves.”
“Good for him.” Jack took a deep breath. If he didn’t say it now, he never would. “I was engaged once.”
“What?” The idea was utterly foreign to her. She just couldn’t picture him making any kind of an emotional commitment.
Couldn’t she?
When she’d made love with him, she’d made love with the man she’d discovered beneath the gruff exterior, the man who didn’t ridicule her fears, but held her and tried to make her feel safe. And she had. For a short time, she had felt safe.
Something told her she wasn’t going to want to hear what he had to tell her. Still, she couldn’t make herself push her way out. She had to hear what he was going to say. “Go on.”
Each word felt as if he was pulling it out of some deep abyss. “It was while I was in college. Her name was Ann Garrison and I loved her.”
Jealousy flashed through her like a pan fire. She clamped down a lid on it. “A lot?”
Why was she torturing herself like this?
Maybe it was because she needed him to say this to help her walk away, to make herself realize once and for all that there was no future with him.
“A lot,” he echoed. She watched his eyes soften as he spoke of the woman he’d wanted to share his name. “She had this zest for life, this way of plunging into things.” He looked at her. “A lot like you.”
The comparison both warmed her and chilled her heart. He’d loved someone. And it wasn’t her. Wouldn’t be her. “What happened?”
“Along with her zest, she liked to party.” He paused, looking for the right words. He didn’t find them. The words that emerged from his mouth were blunt. And so was the pain. “And drink. She said that drinking just made her feel even happier.” The shrug that accompanied the words was helpless. “I was young, I figured she could handle it. I did.” Although, looking back, he’d consumed a great deal less than Ann had. “She, um, wanted to go for a ride one evening after having more than her share of margaritas at a local restaurant.”
Each word was painful, filled with thorns that ripped at his throat as he uttered them. “At first, I told her no. I even tried to take the keys away from her, but she insisted she was fine and that I was worrying too much. I did worry when it came to her,” he admitted. He should have stuck to his guns instead of indulging her. That was always his mistake, indulging her. “So I went with her, thinking that my being there would somehow protect her.”
How stupid could he have been? Jack upbraided himself. But when you were twenty-two, you thought you were immortal. He learned differently.
He took a deep breath, then released it. “It didn’t. It didn’t protect her, or the driver in the truck she hit.” His voice quavered. “I doubt if she even saw it coming.” He remembered shouting a warning, but it had been too late. “She slammed into the truck head-on. I was knocked out.” As he spoke he relived the moment. Jack felt as if someone was sitting on his chest.
“When I came to, the paramedics were putting her in a body bag. They put me in an ambulance. I was too hurt to stand up. I couldn’t get to her, couldn’t hold her one last time.” His voice threatened to crack and he paused, trying to gather himself together. He looked at Gloria. Were those tears in her eyes? He couldn’t tell. “Something died inside of me with Ann that night.” This was what he wanted her to understand. What couldn’t happen between them wasn’t her fault, it was his. “I can’t feel anything.”
He was lying to her, she thought. She heard what he wasn’t saying. That the woman he loved had had a drinking problem. Just like her. Having her tell him that she’d had one, too, had brought back all his fears. In his own way, he probably hated her for stirring them all up again. For making him think of Ann.
“I see.”
Her words were almost inaudible. And strained. “I’m not sure you do,” Jack countered. He tried again. “I want to care about you, but—”
“You’re afraid I’m going to get drunk and plow my car into someone.” She forced herself to freeze the anger she felt, afraid that it might spill out, red-hot, burning them both.
“No,” he protested.
She shook her head, stopping him from continuing. “I could always spot a liar, Jack. Maybe because I told so many lies myself while I was bingeing. Lies to spare other people. Lies to spare myself. In the end, they all come back to haunt you.”
She looked at Jack, wishing he could see inside of her. Wishing she could make him believe what she was sayi
ng.
“I’ve been sober for two years now and I have it under control. Cured? No. Tempted? Yes. When I’m stressed, upset, the craving comes back, whispering that if I just have this one drink, everything’s going to be all right, going to be rosy. But I know it’s not. And if I have that one drink, I know that I’m going to have to start all over again. I’m going to have to start counting again from day one. That’s too hard, too demeaning.” A small, sad smile curved her lips. “I’m a very competitive person, Jack. Ask anyone in my family. I don’t like starting all over again.”
He caught her in a lie. It didn’t make him happy. “But you relocated your shop—”
Gloria shook her head. Was he trying to trip her up? The thought stung.
“Not the same thing. Relocating doesn’t mean starting from scratch. I’ve got my clientele via the Internet and all those customers out in Hollywood. They’d do business with me if I relocated to the moon.”
She knew they had no future, but she wanted him to understand this much about her. About the woman his father was backing.
“I’m not going to drink again because I didn’t like myself then. I was weak, unable to handle things. Unable to stand up without a crutch. That wasn’t really standing, it was leaning.” Her eyes held his. “I like myself sober a lot better.”
She believed what she was saying, he thought. He wanted to believe her, as well. But he couldn’t. Couldn’t risk being burned again. “Still, you could slip—”
“And tomorrow might never come,” she countered. “We live in dangerous times, Jack. Everything we see around us might be gone in a matter of hours, you never know. It’s up to us to take our happiness where we find it.” She wasn’t getting through, she realized. The armor plating around his heart was too thick. She had to stop beating her head against it.
“I’m sorry you lost Ann, really sorry you went through all that, but I’m not about to spend each day trying to convince you that I’m not Ann. That’s not a battle I’m ready to take on.”
His face hardened. “I’m not asking you to.”
“Good, then we understand each other—finally,” she added. She looked at the arm that was still barring her way. “Now, are you going to lower your arm or do I have to crouch to get under it?”
He said nothing for a moment that stretched out so long she thought it was going to snap like a thin thread. In her heart, she kept hoping that Jack would pick a third alternative to the ones she’d given him. That he’d tell her she was right, that he was wrong and that he wanted to try again. That she meant enough to him for him to want to try again.
When he dropped his arm, allowing her to leave, she thought her heart was going to drop into her stomach. She could feel it tying itself up into a huge, unmanageable knot.
With her head held high, she walked out. Biting her lip to keep the tears back.
Chapter Fourteen
Gloria had been carrying around the small, innocuous-looking box in her purse for almost a week now, unable to open it and put it to use. Unable to face what might be the possible results.
But it was time to face things now.
Yesterday had marked the grand opening of her store and Jack hadn’t come by. Not at all. He hadn’t even bothered to call. Oh, he’d sent her flowers, big, beautiful pink roses, two dozen in an overwhelming arrangement. They’d been accompanied by a generic note that read “Good luck” and could have been sent to his shoemaker with the same amount of warmth it generated.
A single flower with a handwritten note would have meant infinitely more.
Everyone else she knew had stopped by. Her parents, her sisters and brother, old friends, even Patrick Fortune—and she knew his schedule was packed to the limit.
So when Jack didn’t even bother to pick up the phone to call her with some lame excuse as to why he couldn’t make it, she knew she had to face the fact that whatever was between them was over before it had ever had a chance to really take root.
Except, perhaps, for one thing.
She’d had unsettled stomachs before, for a whole myriad of reasons, but this…this felt different. This didn’t feel like nerves the way she was desperately trying to convince herself it was. This felt strange. And mornings were the worst.
And none worse than this morning.
Her parents had insisted on having the five of them, her brother, sisters and her, over to dinner to celebrate the store’s grand opening. At first she’d begged off, wanting to be alone with her hurt. But her mother had insisted and, eventually, Gloria had decided that maybe it was better to have people she loved around her. She’d hoped that they would take her mind off the pain of being ignored by the one man she’d thought would make a difference in her life.
The man she realized she was in love with, no good rotten so-and-so that he was.
Maria Mendoza had seemed so thrilled to have almost all of her children under one roof again that when she suggested they all remain for the night, no one had the heart to turn her down. After all, it was only for the one night.
But alone in her old room, Gloria found that her thoughts wouldn’t leave her alone. Her thoughts and her unhappy stomach.
Morning found her throwing up.
She had to face the music. So she dug out the box that had all but become a permanent companion and set it on the bathroom counter. She stared at it for close to ten minutes before she finally opened the box and followed the directions she had already committed to memory.
Waiting was agony.
Discovery was worse.
The stick was blue. She was pregnant.
Pregnant with the baby of a man who was going to be flying out of her life any day now. She strained her eyes, hoping to see the color fade into pink. But it didn’t.
Her knees buckled beneath her and she sank down onto the closed commode, feeling numb all over, a numbness that was climbing up into her throat, threatening to gag her.
Damn it, what had she been thinking to allow this to happen?
She hadn’t been thinking, that was the problem. Instead of being logical, she’d been feeling. For the first time in a long, long time, she’d let her feelings loose and it had been wonderful.
Looking back, she had to admit that the wild rush of being in love had been nothing short of exhilarating. But she had to squelch it now. That part of the wild ride was over. She had to think about what was ahead. And the baby she was going to have.
She covered her face with one hand. Oh, God, she couldn’t deal with this. Her hormones in flux, she felt absolutely lost and alone. The sensation threatened to swallow her up whole.
Still holding the stick as disbelief ricocheted through her, Gloria began to sob. Huge, racking sobs that shook her whole body.
She wasn’t exactly sure when she realized she wasn’t alone. Looking up, she saw that Sierra was standing in the doorway. Her younger sister looked confused.
Gloria realized that Sierra was looking at the stick she was still clutching in her hand as if it was a wand that had malfunctioned. Belatedly, she tossed it into the wastepaper basket. It fell into the box that had previously housed it.
Coming to life, Sierra quickly closed the door behind her, locked it and knelt beside her sister. “Gloria, what’s wrong?”
Gloria pressed her lips together. A sprinkling of the loneliness ebbed away for a second. She tried to smile, but couldn’t. “It’s just like me to forget to lock the door.”
Sierra clearly wasn’t about to be diverted by any flip remarks. She honed in on the source of her sister’s distress. “The stick was blue.”
“Yes,” Gloria acknowledged quietly, “the stick was blue.” The words, as she said them, felt like a death sentence.
Sierra’s shapely brows pulled together in abject confusion. “How can the stick be blue if you’re not dating anyone?” And then her eyes opened wide. “You broke the pact.”
“No, I didn’t. Not exactly. Technically, I’m not dating anyone.” She was clutching at straws, trying to sav
e face. Looking for excuses she knew were less than flimsy.
Sierra looked down at the light-blue wastebasket, nodding at the box. “Then this is what, the Angel Gabriel making another middle-of-the-night visit, this time to your old room?”
Gloria dragged a hand through her hair, at a loss as to how to explain. “It happened in the elevator.”
Sierra stared at her, struggling to find a plausible explanation. This wasn’t it. “The Angel Gabriel appeared to you in an elevator?”
“No,” Gloria snapped, then looked at Sierra contritely. Emotions storm-trooped through her, making her want to laugh and cry at the same time. “It was Jack Fortune.”
This made almost as little sense. “He appeared in the elevator?”
She shook her head. She’d told her sister about the blackout, leaving out a few salient details. “No, he was in the elevator with me when the power went out.”
Sierra frowned. “Obviously not all the power.” Her sister paused and then her jaw dropped open. “Did he force himself on you?”
If anything, the man had tried to restrain himself, she thought. “It was more like mutual spontaneous combustion.” She tried to compose herself.
Sierra asked the million-dollar question. “Does he know?”
Gloria rolled her eyes. “I didn’t even know until this morning.”
“So what are you going to do?” This was her big sister, the one she’d always admired even when she’d sided with Christina. Gloria always had all the answers, even if some of them had been wrong. But this was an entirely new ball field they found themselves playing on.
“I don’t know.” Gloria stifled another sob, not wanting to cry in front of her sister. Her shoulders shook from the effort and she pretended to shrug them. “Have the baby.” That much she was sure of. It was the steps afterward that were so uncertain.
“And?” Sierra prodded.
Gloria tried to think, to channel the new person she had become, that of a confident businesswoman. It wasn’t easy. Right now she felt like a lost child who just wanted someone to take care of her.
Fortune's Heirs: Reunion Page 15