Her Good Fortune

by Marie Ferrarella

  Making a right at the corner, Jack snorted. “Well, your ego’s alive and well.”

  “No thanks to you.” The words had come out before she could stop herself.

  He looked at her, surprised. “What do I have to do with it?”

  “You’ve done nothing but talk down to me since the elevator encounter.”

  “I asked you to press the thirtieth floor.” How could she possibly see that as talking down to her? Was she paranoid?

  “No,” she pointed out, her voice steely, “you snapped out the number.”

  “Oh, for pity’s sake—” He got hold of his temper. Even so, he snapped the next words out. “I was fighting jet lag.”

  It had obviously not been much of a fight from what she’d seen. “Sounds like the jet lag won.” Turning her face forward again, her eyes widened as she saw a maroon Chevy coming from the right, running the light. She braced her feet hard against the floor. “Watch out!”

  But it was already too late.

  A half second after the warning was out of her mouth, the front of Jack’s silver Jaguar made contact with the side of the car that had flown out of nowhere. The Chevy, at least fifteen years old, dented and its paint peeling in half a dozen places, was the heavier of the two vehicles. The impact sent the silver Jaguar spinning in a full circle, winding up exactly at the original point of contact.

  The next moment, a sound like rushing water filled the interior of the car. Jack’s vision was completely blocked by a wall of white fabric.

  The air bags had deployed.

  Along with what remained of his already frayed patience.

  Chapter Six

  T here was white everywhere.

  Panic clawed sharply at Gloria’s throat. She felt as if she had been plunged into the center of a marshmallow.

  Claustrophobia, a failing she hadn’t managed to conquer that accompanied her into every elevator, every small space she found herself in since she’d been six years old, rose up on its hoary hind legs to grab her by the throat and threaten to block out the very air into her lungs.

  The fact that the air bag had her pressed back against her seat with no room for movement and the seat belt was biting into her shoulder and lap, holding her fast, only added to the tidal wave of panic that was building up inside her.

  She couldn’t help her next reaction. It came without thinking, without warning. Gloria started to scream. Not a small gasp or a yelp, but a full-bodied, blood-curdling scream that could have shattered water glasses within a one-mile radius.

  Jolted, Jack’s senses alert and at their peak, the scream ripped right through him. Heart pounding, he could only imagine what could have prompted that sort of a reaction from the woman who was completely blocked from his sight. Memories of the car accident with Ann came bursting back into his brain.

  Ann screaming.

  Just before she died.

  Terror seized his heart. Struggling, pushing against the deployed air bag, Jack managed to unbuckle his seat belt and get the harness off his shoulder. Adrenaline running high, convinced that Gloria had to be severely hurt, possibly even dying, he groped for the door handle on his side. Locating it seemed to take forever. Finally successful, Jack yanked on it and applied his shoulder to the door, shoving his way out.

  “Hang on!” he yelled to Gloria as he rounded the trunk.

  Operating on two very distinct planes, he saw the offending driver and glared at him. Jack could just barely make out the man’s face. The other car engine was still running and the driver looked ready to make a break for it. Now.

  “Don’t even think it!” Jack barked. Making his way to the passenger side of the Jaguar, he glanced quickly at the other car’s license plate, committing it to memory. A photographic memory allowed him to absorb and retain everything he had ever seen. “I’ve got your plate number and I swear I’ll hunt you down.”

  The man behind the wheel of the dented Chevy froze and raised his hands in surrender. He began to babble an apology. His words were just so much noise in the background. Jack barely heard him.

  All of his attention was focused on Gloria.

  If she could scream like that, at least she was alive, he thought, taking comfort in that. The very hair on the back of his neck was standing on end as the sound skewered its way through his system.

  Jack yanked open her door. He groped around the air bag, trying to find Gloria’s hand. “It’s okay, I’ve got you. It’s okay,” he told her over and over again.

  The panic wouldn’t leave even as she heard his voice. Her terror was too huge to overcome. In saner times, it bothered her no end, reacting this way, but right now, all she could do was shriek.

  “Pull me out,” she pleaded. “Pull me out!”

  And then she felt a hand reaching across her waist, brushing against her lap. The next moment, the belt that was holding her prisoner was released and she was being pulled out of her living tomb.

  The second she was clear of the car, she began gasping for air, sucking it in as if there wasn’t even an ounce of it within her lungs. Her legs weak, her body a heavy liquid, she clung to the man who had pulled her free.

  Shaking, she was still aware of the soft feel of suede against her cheek and the infinite comfort of the arms that had locked around her. She fought to regulate her breathing.

  “Where are you hurt?” Jack demanded. Had she hit her head? Broken something in the split second before the air bag had cocooned her?

  When Gloria didn’t answer, Jack tried to move her back and hold her at arm’s length to see her injuries for himself. At first she wouldn’t let go of him, her arms locked around his neck in a death grip. Finally he managed to gently but firmly push her from him.

  “Where are you hurt?” he asked again. Scanning her face, he saw nothing. There were no scratches, no cuts, no marks at all except for what appeared to be the beginning of a slight bruise along her forehead. That could have come from the air bag itself, he judged. But one thing was abundantly clear. The dark-haired woman he’d been verbally sparring with not a few minutes earlier was clearly shaken.

  That made two of them, he thought.

  And then, suddenly, there were people crowding all around them in the intersection.

  “I saw the whole thing,” one man behind him volunteered.

  A woman in a flaming-red scarf that was wrapped around her neck pointed to the other driver. “It was his fault.” The accusation was made in a high-pitched voice.

  A businessman craned his neck as he leaned out of his car window. His vehicle was directly behind the bruised Jaguar. “Need a witness?”

  Voices were coming from all sides, swelling in volume. Gloria tried to block them all out as she struggled to regain her composure. She was only vaguely aware of Jack leading her to the sidewalk. She followed him like some docile child, hating this role she’d been forced to play. Hating the way she’d reacted. Still unable to do anything else.

  She’d completely lost it back there and she was ashamed of that. But it had felt as if she was being buried alive.

  Jack was taking her face in his hands, examining it closely. Was he trying to figure out what kind of a lunatic his father was lending money and support to?

  Gloria felt like an idiot but her heart refused to stop racing.

  “You okay?” he asked gruffly.

  The gruff voice helped to center her, pulling her out of crisis mode. But still, she didn’t trust her voice to answer so she merely nodded in response.

  “Okay, stay right here,” he instructed her before glancing over his shoulder at the other driver, “while I get some insurance information out of Mario Andretti over there.”

  A ring of Good Samaritans and people looking for some excitement had surrounded the offending driver. No one seemed inclined to allow the man to leave. Jack quickly got the necessary information from the driver, who kept babbling his apology, claiming the sun had gotten into his eyes and could they please keep this off the record so his insurance wouldn’t
go through the roof?

  From the way the other man was talking, Jack got the impression that this wasn’t the man’s first offense.

  It made his blood boil. Someone so careless should be kept off the road.

  Maybe if you’d kept Ann off the road, she’d still be here today.

  Jack blocked out the thought even as it echoed in his brain. He couldn’t go there yet. He suspected that he probably never fully could.

  Jack looked at the other man coldly, feeling not even an ounce of pity. He hated recklessness and the man had clearly run the light. “My insurance agent will be in touch.”

  Flipping open his phone, he called for roadside assistance. He wasn’t about to go anywhere with the air bags deployed, even if they were now in the process of deflating. Besides, who knew the kind of damage his car had sustained? There was no way he was about to take the road with an unsafe vehicle.

  Pocketing the cell phone, he took a few names from the bystanders in case the insurance adjuster would require the testimony of witnesses. He’d learned a long time ago to cover as many bases as was humanly possible. The other driver was sitting moodily in his vehicle, muttering something about hard-nosed businessmen who thought they owned the road. Jack could feel his temper flaring, but he ignored him. There was nothing to be gained by stooping to the driver’s level.

  What counted was that no one was hurt.

  Gloria had given him one hell of a scare, he thought, looking over at her. Finished taking information, he tucked his Palm Pilot into his pocket and crossed back to the woman standing on the curb.

  She looked calmer now. That wild look he’d seen in her eyes was gone. Still, he wasn’t completely at ease about her. The sound of a siren began to cut through the din. Someone had either called the paramedics or the police. Probably both.

  “You want to go to the hospital?” he asked Gloria. Funny, he hadn’t thought of her as fragile until now. Like fine china about to crack.

  She shook her head, trying to regain her self-esteem. It was at times like this, when everything felt so out of control, that she reverted back to who and what she’d been just two years ago. A woman too weak-willed to make it from one end of the day to the other without help.

  You’re a whole new person since then. Remember that.

  She shook her head as she squared her shoulders. “No, I’m all right.”

  He appeared not to believe her as his eyes seemed to bore holes right through her. “Are you sure? You were screaming back there as if you were being filleted.”

  That was a pretty apt description of it, she thought. Not that she had any control over her reaction. Lord knew, she wished she had.

  Gloria took a deep breath and looked away, avoiding his probing eyes. She supposed she owed him some kind of an explanation. She kept it at a minimum. Her voice was hardly above a whisper as she said, “I have claustrophobia.”

  Jack cocked his head as if he hadn’t heard her. “What?”

  Frustrated, Gloria pressed her lips together. She’d managed to put everything else in her life in order, but this was a failing, a shortcoming from her childhood, and she hated it because there was no way she had ever managed to exercise any control over it. For the most part, she tried to think of other things when she couldn’t avoid a situation such as riding up in elevators to floors that were too high up to walk to.

  But with this accident there had been no time to prepare. It had stripped her of all her little mind-diverting tricks and left her naked and vulnerable.

  “I have claustrophobia,” she repeated more clearly. Her teeth were clenched as she strained the admission through them.

  He passed his hands lightly along her arms and shoulders, as if her word was not enough. “So nothing’s damaged or broken,” he pressed.

  “Nothing’s damaged or broken,” Gloria confirmed. And then she added in a less audible voice, “Except maybe my self-esteem.”

  He surprised her by shrugging away her admission. If she didn’t know any better, she would have said he was being kind.

  “Hey, everyone’s got something.” The crowd around them was dispersing. The siren grew louder. This was going to take a while. “If you won’t go to the hospital, want me to call a cab to take you home?”

  She was getting her wind back. And with it, her determination. “No, I still have to show you the store location.”

  He looked at her, surprised that she could think of that after what had just happened. She could have been killed. She needed time to process that. And he needed time to put it out of his mind. “We can postpone the trip.”

  She squared her shoulders again, reminding him of a soldier on the battlefield determined to face his fears. And his enemy. He wondered if he fell under that category and why that seemed to bother him.

  “I don’t want to,” she informed him crisply.

  There were several strands of hair hanging in her face. Jack had no idea what possessed him to gently brush them back. Or why the simple gesture brought a wave of heat surging through him, beginning with his loins and radiating out. The day was inordinately cold.

  Maybe he was suffering from shock and didn’t realize it. The scenario that had just transpired was chillingly similar to the one that had taken place nearly twenty years ago.

  Except that then it had been Ann who was driving. Ann who had insisted on taking a joyride while still feeling the effects of an afternoon’s worth of partying. He’d gone with her when he hadn’t been able to get her to surrender her car keys. Maybe it had been the brashness of youth, the brashness that convinced every one of them that they were immortal, that nothing could happen to them because they were young and full of promise. Whatever it was, he felt she’d be safe if he went with her.

  A lot he knew.

  Running a light, just as this man had, she’d hit a driver. He remembered the horror that had spiked through him, the awful noise of metal crashing against metal. And most of all, he remembered Ann’s scream. The last sound she’d ever made. She and the driver were both dead at the scene. And him? He’d gotten a cluster of minor injuries that had landed him in the hospital for a couple of weeks.

  Physically, the injuries had been minor. Emotionally was another story. He’d wanted to die, to be with Ann for all eternity. But all he’d sustained were things that could heal.

  Other than his heart.

  He had absolutely no patience with people who drank to the point that the alcohol controlled them instead of the other way around. And although there’d been no alcohol on the breath of the other driver, the man had still been reckless and run the light.

  Gloria was looking at him almost defiantly. He made up his mind. “All right. Once the guy from roadside assistance gets here and we’re finished giving our statements to the police, I’ll call a cab and we can go see about the location. If you’re sure you’re all right,” he added again.

  Exasperation filled her voice as a policeman got out of his patrol vehicle. “You don’t have to keep asking that. I’m not going to change my story.”

  Stubborn. He supposed that was a good sign. Jack cupped his ear as he tilted his head toward hers. “’Fraid you’re going to have to speak up. You blew out my ears in the car.”

  Gloria looked at him sharply. She could make out a hint of a smile on his lips.

  He was making a joke.

  That stunned her almost as much as his gentleness had. “I didn’t know you had a sense of humor.”

  He leaned in even closer to her, his hand still cupped around his ear. “What?”

  She laughed, the tension finally beginning to leave her. Just in time to give her statement to the policeman approaching them.

  Forty minutes later, after renting a car, they were finally standing inside a shop on the second floor of the Big T Mall. Until a month ago, the space had been occupied by a trendy baby clothing store. Doing well, the owner had decided to move on to a better location. The pink and blue lettering on the glass door had been scraped off just that morning
. There was scaffolding on either side of the entrance and the modest interior was in a complete state of chaos.

  In the three days since she had begun leasing the space, thanks to Patrick Fortune backing her bank loan, she’d had to forward ten different bewildered customers on to the store’s new location. Each had said something about thinking the store would remain at that location forever. One woman had obviously made good use of the place. She’d had four children with her. Two in stroller, two hanging off the stroller. And if that bulge Gloria had noted was any indication, a fifth on the way.

  She hoped that someday her customers would come looking for her store like that, loyally searching for her only to be told of a more high-end address.

  She wondered if any of her clients in Denver would make the trip out, or try to get in touch with her via the store’s Web site.

  Right now, what seemed to matter most—and she really didn’t understand why it meant anything to her one way or another—was the stamp of approval from the man roaming the unfinished store.

  She held her breath as she watched Jack look around. All signs of the previous store were gone, except for one two-dimensional cardboard rendition of a crawling baby the owner had decided to leave behind. It was leaning off to the side. She thought of it as her good-luck charm, a leftover from a successful business.

  Nerves danced through her, a parent watching her child being judged, as she watched Jack survey the area. So far, there was no indication of what the store was planning to evolve into. But it was still early days.

  Finally, his feet firmly planted on a drop cloth, he glanced at her over his shoulder. “This the best location you could find?”

  All traces of the man who had rescued her from her marshmallow grave seemed to have vanished in smoke. They were back in their individual sparring corners, she thought.

  Maybe it was better this way. For a few minutes back there, she’d actually liked him. Coupling that with the physical attraction that seemed to insist on existing, refusing to disappear, made for a dangerous combination. This overly critical version of Jack Fortune, JF Version 1.0 she thought with a smile, was one she could more easily resist.