Plain Jane and the Playboy

by Marie Ferrarella

  “Most of them,” Patrick corrected. Although his sister Cynthia’s children were here, Cynthia was conspicuously absent, despite the invitation to attend. It looked as if the estrangement between them was going to go on a little longer, he thought. “Look, I wanted to run something by you, Emmett.”

  “Business, Dad?” Jack asked. “I thought you were the one who finally said all work and no play—”

  “This is about family,” he explained to Jack, then turned back to Emmett. “Nothing worse than having your own son preach at you, especially when he’s throwing your own words back at you,” Patrick told Emmett. “I was hoping you might find positions at the Foundation for several of my brother William’s kids. It might help bring the rest of the clan closer together.”

  Emmett nodded, always open to anything the older man had to say. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  Patrick patted him on the shoulder. “Can’t ask for anything more than that.”

  Patrick Fortune and Jorge’s sisters were not the only ones observing the playboy’s progress from woman to willing woman. Jorge was also an object of awe for Emmett’s adopted son, Ricky, who was nursing a very serious case of envy. Envy that encompassed both the charming Jorge and his best friend, Josh Fredericks. Josh was a suave seventeen and had a steady girlfriend, Lindsey, on his arm, while he, Ricky, was a very unsure-of-himself fourteen.

  It seemed as if everyone here had someone but him—and that woman sitting over in the corner by herself, he noted. Jorge seemed to have not just one but a harem of women. Every single one who came up to the bar left with a smitten smile on her face.

  How did he do that?

  Working up his courage, Ricky finally made his way over to the bar, and Jorge. But when he reached the bar, all he could do was silently observe. Jorge was a master at work.

  It took Jorge a few minutes to notice the teenager. Wiping the counter down in front of him, Jorge flashed a grin as he shook his head.

  “Sorry, Ricky, afraid all I can offer you is a soda pop or a Virgin Mary.” The boy looked at him a little uncertainly. “That’s a Bloody Mary without the alcohol,” Jorge explained, lowering his voice so as not to embarrass the boy.

  Ricky shook his head. “Oh, no, no, I don’t want anything to drink,” he protested, stuttering a little. Tongue-tied, he got no further.

  Jorge threw the damp towel behind the bar and leaned forward, creating an aura of privacy despite the crowd. The boy looked like he wanted to talk, but didn’t know how to start. Jorge felt sorry for him. “Then what is it I can do for you?”

  Ricky felt more uncertain than ever, more awkward than he had in a very long time. But it was now or never. Clearing his throat nervously, he looked around to make sure that no one in the area was listening.

  “I want to know how you do it,” he finally said.

  But Jorge couldn’t hear him. “What?”

  Ricky repeated himself, this time a little more audibly. “I want to know how you do it.”

  Obviously hearing did not bring enlightenment with it. “Do what?”

  This was going to be harder than he thought. Ricky licked his lower lip, which had suddenly grown even drier than his upper one had.

  “How do you get all these ladies to flirt with you?” he blurted out. “I’ve been watching you work all night and there had to have been at least twenty of them.” Old and young, they all seemed to bloom in Jorge’s presence.

  “Twenty-six,” Jorge corrected with a quick conspiratorial wink, then said simply, “They’re thirsty.”

  “They’re not coming over to the bar for the drinks,” Ricky protested. He might not be a smooth operator, like Jorge, but he was bright enough to see that ordering a drink was just an excuse, not a reason. “They’re coming to talk to you.” He paused to work up his flagging courage. “How do I do that?” he wanted to know. “How do I get them to come to me?” And then he added more realistically, “Or, at least, get them not to run off when I come to them.”

  Jorge laughed gently, taking care not to sound as if he was laughing at the boy. He’d never had that problem himself. Women had always come on to him, even before he discovered the fine art of flirtation. But he could feel sympathy for the boy who seemed so painfully shy. “They don’t run off from you, Ricky.”

  Ricky knew the difference between truth and flattery. “Yes, they do. I asked a girl in my class to come with me tonight and she said she couldn’t. She said—” He paused for a second, working his way past the embarrassment. “She said her mother wouldn’t let her stay out that late.”

  It was a plausible enough excuse, Jorge thought, although the girls he’d known at Ricky’s age had bent rules, ignored parental limitations and come shinning down trees growing next to their bedroom windows just to see him for a few stolen hours.

  “How old are you again, Ricky?”

  The boy unconsciously squared his rather thin shoulders before answering. “Fourteen.”

  “Fourteen,” Jorge repeated thoughtfully. “Well, she was probably telling the truth, then.” He did his best to appear somber. “When my sisters were each fourteen, my father would have chained them in the stable to keep them from going out with a boy, much less staying out until midnight.”

  That didn’t seem like a good enough excuse to assuage his ego. “But it’s New Year’s Eve. Besides, times have changed,” Ricky pointed out.

  The boy had a lot to learn, Jorge thought. “Parents haven’t,” he assured the boy. “And, if you want some advice—”

  Ricky’s eyes widened and all but gleamed. “Please,” he encouraged enthusiastically.

  “First, you have to have confidence in yourself.” He saw the disappointed, skeptical look that entered the boy’s eyes. Expecting the secret of the ages, he was receiving an advice column platitude. “You can do it,” Jorge continued. “No girl is going to want to go out with you if you act like you don’t want to be around yourself. Understand?”

  A little of Ricky’s disappointment abated. “I think so.”

  Jorge nodded. Since no one was approaching the bar at the moment, he decided to be more generous with his advice. “And this next point is the most important thing you’ll ever learn about dealing with a woman.”

  “What?” Ricky asked breathlessly, Ponce DeLeon about to uncover the fountain of youth.

  Jorge lowered his voice. “When talking to a girl, always make her feel as if she’s the prettiest girl in the room.”

  Ricky swallowed and glanced over at Lizzie Fortune, the girl who made the very air back up in his lungs. Lizzie was a distant Fortune cousin, just in town for the holidays. His heart had melted the moment he laid eyes on her this evening.

  He didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell with someone who looked like that. And he doubted that Jorge’s magic formula would have any effect on Lizzie.

  “What if she already is the prettiest girl in the room?” he wanted to know.

  “Then it’s even easier,” Jorge told him. “You can handle any girl. Just have confidence in yourself, Ricky, and the rest will be a piece of cake.”

  Ricky was still more than a little uncertain. Just breathing was enough for someone who looked like Jorge. But for someone like him, it wasn’t that simple. “And this always works?”

  “Always,” Jorge said confidently.

  But he could see that Ricky still had his doubts. The boy definitely needed a demonstration, Jorge decided. “Tell you what,” he proposed. “You pick any girl in this room and I’ll have her eating out of my hand in no time.”

  Ricky’s eyes widened far enough to fall out. “Any girl?”

  “Any girl,” Jorge agreed. “Just make sure she’s not married. We don’t want to start any fights here in my parents’ restaurant.”

  Ricky was perfectly amendable to that. “Okay,” he agreed, bobbing his head up and down. He was already scanning the crowded room for a candidate.

  Ricky stopped looking when his line of vision returned to the woman he’d spotted earli
er, sitting by herself at a table. There was a frown on her face as she regarded her half-empty glass and she was very obviously alone. It was a table for two and there was no indication that anyone had recently vacated the other chair.

  There was even a book on the table in front of her. Was she reading? Whether she was or not, there seemed to be an air of melancholy about her, visible even at this distance.

  “Her,” Ricky announced, pointing to the woman. “I pick her.”

  Chapter Two

  Rising to the challenge, Jorge attempted to focus in the general direction that Ricky indicated.

  The woman was clearly the stereotypical wallflower. She was sitting at the corner table all by herself, twirling a lock of long curly brown hair around her finger, the festive lights shimmering off her shiny green dress.

  “Hey, man, I don’t want to get arrested just to prove a point,” Jorge protested. When Ricky looked at him quizzically, Jorge added, “She looks like a kid.”

  Ricky shook his head. “She’s not. I heard her talking to someone earlier. She works for some kids’ literacy foundation, tutoring them and sometimes holding fund-raisers to buy extra books. I think it’s called Red Rock ReadingWorks,” Ricky volunteered. He looked at Jorge expectantly. “She’s gotta be at least twenty.”

  Jorge grinned at the boy’s tone. He was thirty-eight himself, but he doubted Ricky knew that. “Then she’s ancient, huh?”

  “Hey, I’m fourteen. Everybody’s ancient to me.” Feeling as if he’d just put one foot in his mouth, Ricky quickly added, “Except you, of course.”

  Jorge’s grin widened. “Nice save,” he commented.

  Ricky glanced back toward the girl at the table before looking up at his hero again. Jorge hadn’t made a move yet.

  “Backing down?” he wanted to know.

  Nothing he liked better than a challenge, although, given his experience, the young woman at the table didn’t look as if she’d put up much resistance.

  “Not a chance,” Jorge told him. He looked around and then saw one of the restaurant’s employees at the far end of the bar. Perfect. “Hey, Angel,” he called over the din. The man looked in his direction and raised a brow. “Mind taking over for me for a few minutes? I haven’t had a break all night.”

  Jorge was the owners’ son and what he wanted, he would have gotten without question even if he wasn’t so affable. Angel nodded and came around to the other side of the bar.

  “No problem.”

  Untying the half black apron secured around his slim waist, Jorge surrendered it to Angel. He felt invigorated. He was back in hunting mode.

  Jane Gilliam had really hoped that coming to the party tonight would help her shake off the dark mood that had all but enshrouded her these last few days. Three days to be exact.

  Three days since Eddie Gibbs had unceremoniously, and without prior warning, dumped her.

  She probably wouldn’t have even known she was being dumped, at least not for a few more days, if it wasn’t for New Year’s Eve. She’d impulsively asked the man she’d been seeing for the last six months to this New Year’s Eve extravaganza that her close friend, Isabella Mendoza, had invited her to.

  Eddie had listened to her impatiently and then he’d turned her down. She hadn’t been prepared for that and when she’d asked him why, Eddie had bluntly told her that he would be spending New Year’s Eve with someone else.

  With his new girlfriend.

  Jane could feel the sting of tears starting again and she passed her hand over her eyes, wiping them away. Up until that point, she’d thought that she was Eddie’s girlfriend. But somewhere along the line in the last month, a month in which Eddie had been making himself increasingly scarce, he had decided that he “could do better”—his very words, each tipped in heart-piercing titanium—and found himself someone else.

  The only trouble with that was that he’d forgotten to tell her.

  Jane let out a long, shaky breath. She supposed she should have seen it coming. After all, it wasn’t as if she was a knockout. And cute guys like Eddie Gibbs didn’t stay with mousy girls like her, at least not for long.

  Women, Jane silently corrected herself. Women. She was twenty-five years old. At twenty-five, you weren’t a girl anymore; you were a woman.

  A very lonely woman, Jane thought glumly, looking into the bottom of her glass. The drink had long since become watered down, the ice cubes melting into what had once been a fruity piña colada. It had turned the liquid into an exceedingly pale shade of yellow.

  She needed to get out of here, she told herself. At this point, she didn’t know what she could have been thinking, agreeing to come here with Isabella. Seeing all these couples, whispering into each other’s ear, clearly enjoying themselves, was just making her feel more hopeless.

  More alone.

  Besides, it was getting pretty close to midnight, when the New Year was ushered in with heartfelt, soulful, passionate kisses. Seeing all these couples wrapped in each other’s arms, kissing in the New Year was much more than she was going to be able to stand.

  Up until three days ago, she thought she’d be kissing Eddie at the stroke of midnight. Now, she thought dejectedly, she’d probably be the only one here who had no one to turn to as the glittering silver ball on the wide-screen, flat-panel television reached the bottom of the pole and sent off an array of wild, blinding sparklers to greet the incoming year.

  She didn’t need to see that.

  Didn’t need to feel like a loser.

  Again.

  Jane glanced at her watch. Less than ten minutes left before midnight. That didn’t give her much time to make her escape.

  As if anyone would notice her leaving, she thought mockingly. She’d come here with Isabella, but there had to be a taxicab out there somewhere, didn’t there? This was a big night for inebriated people. Cab drivers made their money on nights like New Year’s Eve.

  “Freshen that up for you?” asked a deep, melodic voice directly above her.

  Jane realized that the voice—and the question—belonged to one of the waiters. He was obviously asking about the drink she’d been pretending to nurse for the last two hours. She’d already set the glass aside. The colorful little umbrella was drooping badly, mirroring the way she felt inside.

  “No,” she replied politely, “I was just…”

  The rest of her thought vanished, as did, just for a moment, her entire thinking process. All because she’d made the mistake of looking up at the owner of the low, rumbling, sexy voice.

  The man who had asked the question was, in a word, beautiful. Not just handsome—although he was quite possibly the handsomest man, up close or on the movie screen, that she had ever seen in her life—but actually teeth-jarringly heart-stoppingly beautiful.

  He had soulful brown eyes that she could have gotten lost in for at least the next ten years, and straight black hair that was just a little on the long side. Tall, lean, muscular, with jeans that emphasized his slender hips—and every move he made—whoever this man was, he made her think of a young lion.

  On the other hand, his smile made her think of nothing at all, because just seeing it effectively turned her very intelligent and active brain to the consistency of last week’s mush.

  Struggling to collect herself and retrieve whatever might still be left of her composure, Jane did her best not to sound as if she was currently understudying the part of the head idiot of a very large village.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Your drink,” Jorge prodded, nodding at the glass next to her elbow on the table. “May I freshen it up for you?” Lifting it to his nose, he took a sniff. “Piña colada, right?” he guessed. And then, when she said nothing at all, he smiled again, completing the transformation of the organ that was in her chest from a functioning heart to a puddle of red liquid. “My parents have me tending the bar,” he explained, “and making sure that lovely ladies like you don’t have to wait too long to have their requests granted.”

  Lov
ely ladies. How could someone so beautiful be so blind? she wondered. She wasn’t lovely, she was plain and she knew it.

  The ball on the TV panel on the back wall looked as if it was going to begin its descent at any moment.

  Get out of here, her survival streak ordered urgently.

  Coming to, Jane shook her head. “No, that’s all right,” she told him as he reached for her glass. “I was just about to leave anyway.”

  He looked at her in surprise. “Leave? Before midnight?” He made it sound as if she were doing something revolutionary.

  Jane lifted her shoulders in a vague shrug. The left strap of her dress slipped off, sliding down her upper arm.

  Jorge, his eyes on hers, reached out and very slowly slid the strap back into place.

  Jane felt as if her skin had just caught on fire. She was rather surprised that she didn’t actually spontaneously combust. The puddle in the middle of her chest became a heart again and instantly went into triple time, hammering so hard she was having trouble just catching her breath.

  “Doesn’t seem to be much point in staying,” she heard herself saying, although she wasn’t conscious of forming the words.

  “And why is that?” he asked gently.

  Just the sound of his voice made her feel warm all over. It took her a moment to realize that he’d asked her a question and another moment to focus on the words, making sense out of them.

  “People always kiss someone at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve…”

  Not sure how to end this sentence without sounding like a loser, Jane just let her voice trail off, hoping he’d silently fill in the rest of it himself. And have the decency to leave.

  “And you have no one to kiss?” Jorge asked incredulously. His eyes swept over her. She could almost feel them. “A pretty lady like you?”

  Jane could feel heat traveling up her cheeks and down her throat until all of her felt as if it were glowing pink.

  “I just broke up with someone,” she finally told him.

  Breaking up sounded a great deal better than saying she’d just been dumped, Jane thought. But even so, the lie weighed heavily on her tongue. She didn’t like lies, no matter what the reason, and here she was, hiding behind one so that she didn’t come across like the ultimate loser to a man she didn’t even know.