Having no choice, Jack was forced to agree.
Patrick sensed his son’s displeasure as the younger man left the office. He smiled to himself as he reached for the telephone.
The woman picked up on the first ring.
“He’s coming,” was all he said. Warm laughter filled his ear.
“You are an angel, Patrick,” Maria declared.
“No, just a hopeful grandfather,” Patrick contradicted. And then he hung up, wanting to call Lacey again to tease her about being a grandmother.
Chapter Fifteen
“I want you to think about relocating here. Permanently.”
His father’s words echoed within the limousine, taking Jack completely by surprise. A moment ago he’d been looking out at the darkened landscape as they drove to the Mendoza home just outside of Red Rock, thinking how much he missed the never-ending activity of New York. He definitely hadn’t seen this coming.
Jack shifted in his seat, looking at his father. For the first time it occurred to him that perhaps the man he had looked up to and respected all of his life really didn’t know him. How could he, if he’d just made him this offer?
“Dad, I really appreciate the offer but—”
Patrick raised his hand, forestalling the words that were coming. “Just think about it,” his father requested. “You don’t have to give me an answer right away.”
Jack saw no point in delaying the inevitable. “You know what my answer’s going to be whether I give it to you now or later.”
The smile on Patrick’s lips was enigmatic. “Nothing is ever a sure thing, son.”
He didn’t want to seem ungrateful or to buck some master plan his father had conceived, but the sooner he got out of San Antonio, the better. He missed New York, but far more important, he needed to put some space between himself and Gloria. She was what he missed most of all and being so close was playing havoc on his willpower.
“You don’t need me, Dad. You just transferred Derek here.”
But Patrick wouldn’t retract the offer. In his quiet, forceful way, he was adamant. “And he’s your best friend. You’re the one who brought him to me in the first place, remember? You two work well together.”
His few encounters with Derek out here had left him feeling very competitive with his friend. It had made him take a step back to reassess the situation.
He decided that honesty was the best way to go, at least about work. “Yes, we do, but I thought you were grooming him to take over operations.”
Patrick was silent for a moment, as if weighing his words carefully. Jack wondered if it was because his father was trying not to hurt him. “The bank’s gotten too big to hand off to just one man, Jack. And if it weren’t too big, I would have handed it over to you. You’re the one I’ve been grooming all these years.” A smile quirked his lips before it ruefully faded. “Maybe over-grooming. You need some fun in your life.”
Jack sighed and shook his head. “So you keep telling me.”
Patrick straightened in his seat as the limousine pulled into the Mendoza driveway. Jack noticed that his father looked oddly alert, the way he always did when he was on the verge of an important merger.
“All right, we’re here,” Patrick said, rubbing his hands together in anticipation. “No more talk about work for the duration of the evening, all right?”
Jack thought it pointless to remind his father that he was only staying for an hour. Less, if he could arrange it. “Whatever you say.”
The passenger door opened. The chauffeur stepped back, allowing them to get out. Patrick flashed a smile over his shoulder at his son as he disembarked. “That’s what I like to hear.”
She didn’t want to be at a party, much less a party being thrown in her honor. But there just didn’t seem to be any way to say no to her mother. For some reason, the woman seemed very excited about the idea of this party. Besides, Gloria thought, she’d said no to the woman far too often while she’d been a teenager and then in her early twenties. If having her here, rubbing her elbows with well-wishers, made her mother happy, Gloria supposed it was the least she could do.
And if she had to constantly force a smile to her face as one person and then another tried to get her attention, well, at least it kept her mind off her problems.
Off the baby that was growing inside of her.
Clutching a glass of ginger ale, she took a sip and nodded at something that a friend of her brother’s was saying to her. Her mind was miles away.
How in heaven’s name was she going to tell her parents that she was going to have a baby?
She knew they were hugely supportive and that she could rely on them for absolutely anything, but she also knew that this was going to hurt them. Times might have changed, but pride hadn’t. Bringing a child into the family without having a husband in tow was still going to be an embarrassment for them, no matter what they said to the contrary.
But they would deal with it, because they loved her. She was secure in that love, but she still didn’t look forward to that initial moment when she saw them trying to hide their surprise and disappointment.
As if materializing out of her thoughts, her mother came up behind her. The slender fingers that had knitted and sewn countless things for her over the years took hold of her shoulders.
Her mother’s hands felt unusually icy. Gloria shivered.
“Oh, you feel so warm,” Maria declared with a touch of envy in her voice and then she sighed. “My blood doesn’t seem to want to move through this tired old body very much.”
Gloria turned around to face her mother. Maria Mendoza was not anyone’s idea of “old.” Just what was she up to? Gloria wondered.
“That’s because the rest of you is flying around. Maybe your blood is just sitting back, preparing for the next explosion.” Then, because she did look somewhat chilled despite the warmth in the room, Gloria handed her glass to her mother and began to strip her shawl from her shoulders. “Here, you want my shawl?”
Maria stayed her hand immediately, shaking her dark head. “No, it looks so pretty on you, querida. Leave it on.”
“I don’t mind,” Gloria insisted. “If you’re cold—”
Maria gave her what Gloria always thought of as her “mothering” look. “You can be a dear and go get mine for me.” Her mother slipped her arm through hers, gently tugging her toward the stairs. “It’s in my bedroom. In the bureau. Bottom drawer. On the left.” Each additional instruction was given as she pushed her daughter off in the right direction.
At the bottom of the stairs, Gloria nodded. At least it would give her a little respite from the crowd, she thought. She grasped the spiral, light-maple wood banister. “Sure, be right back.”
Maria smiled to herself as she watched Gloria go up the stairs.
Jack roamed around the master bedroom, feeling restless. The king-size four-poster that dominated the room was laden with coats and jackets. The scent of old wood and fresh polish subtly wafted through the air, mingling lightly with the cologne that Maria Mendoza favored.
It seemed like a strange place for a meeting.
A strange place for a man who had been acting strangely.
Jack shoved his hands into his pockets. There were no two ways about it, his father had been acting very strangely of late. They’d had all that time to talk in the limousine as they were coming up here and instead the man had asked him to meet with him in the Mendoza’s master bedroom.
Rolling it over in his mind now, it sounded a little clandestine to Jack, especially since his father had said earlier that they were tabling all talk about business while they were at the party.
But the fact that he did want to talk about work heartened Jack. Maybe his father was coming back to his senses. Maybe there was something about work that couldn’t wait until tomorrow.
A fond smile lifted the corners of his mouth. There was a time when his father worked every party, every event they went into, staking out potential future clients for the bank.<
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But why here?
Jack heard the bedroom door opening behind him. He turned, questions sprouting on his lips.
“Why all the secrecy?” The next question died before it saw the artificial light of the evening as he watched Gloria walk into the room.
She stopped dead just a few steps past the doorway, looking as surprised to see him as he was to see her.
He’d spent the better part of his allotted time at the party avoiding her. When he’d seen her coming in his direction, he’d turned away, taking a deep interest in the huge variety of hors d’oeuvres that Jose Mendoza had put out for his guests. He’d noted that she had done two U-turns on the two occasions when she’d seen him. Clearly, they were avoiding each other.
Gloria stared at him. What was Jack doing up here?
“Excuse me?” she said coldly.
“Sorry.” He lifted and dropped his shoulders carelessly. “I thought you were my father.”
Her eyes narrowed. That was an odd thing to say. “Why? Do I look like your father?”
Why did she have to look so damn desirable? He could feel everything inside him responding, just as it always did around her. He needed to get out.
He remained where he was. “He said he’d meet me here.”
She heard the words, but they made no sense to her. “Here, in my parents’ bedroom.”
A humorless smile filtered over his lips for a brief second. “Yeah, does sound rather fishy, doesn’t it?” Jack started for the door, but to do that, he had to get past her. He stopped short of his goal. And her. “What are you doing here?”
“Getting a shawl for my mother.”
But even as she moved toward the bureau, she realized that she’d been had. If she hadn’t been so wrapped up in her own thoughts, she would have seen this coming a mile away. Especially since her mother had already done this to her once before to get her to resolve things with her sisters.
She laughed shortly and shook her head. “I smell a conspiracy.” Unable to help herself, she smiled. “Your father.”
Jack could get lost in that smile. “Your mother.”
Could get lost in her eyes, he added.
“What the hell are they thinking?” Gloria asked, the tolerance beginning to ebb from her voice.
She jumped as the door behind her suddenly slammed shut.
The next moment her mother’s voice came through the closed door. “They’re thinking that maybe you should talk about the baby.”
Gloria spun around, staring at the door, visualizing her mother behind it. Had Sierra talked? “You know about the baby?”
The next moment all thoughts of her mother vanished as she heard Jack demand, “What baby?”
Angry at being set up this way and cornered by her own flesh and blood, angry that this had even happened to her, Gloria turned to face him and retorted, “Your baby. Our baby.” And, ultimately, her baby, she thought. Because it would be. Hers alone.
Jack’s eyes shifted to her stomach. She was wearing a clingy turquoise dress that breathed with her. Her stomach was flat. “We have a baby?” he asked incredulously.
Did he think she was making this up? “In about eight months we will.”
His eyes were open so wide as he stared at her, he looked like a deer caught in the headlights, she thought disdainfully.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
His voice was dangerously low. Any second, he was going to explode, she just knew it. She tried the door, but it was locked. There was no escaping this confrontation.
Damn it, Mama, why are you humiliating me like this?
“Because I just found out. And besides, it doesn’t concern you.”
“The hell it doesn’t!”
His voice almost rattled the overhead light fixture. Taking a deep breath, Jack tried to compose himself. But there were at least a dozen emotions whirling through him, each trying to take their turn at him. And all the while, a strange sort of joy was weaving itself in and out, lighting up the darkness inside.
He looked at her stomach again. It hardly looked large enough to harbor a grape, much less the beginnings of a human being. “Are you sure?”
Because becoming defensive was a lot easier for her, she took shelter in that emotion. “What? That I’m pregnant or that it’s yours?”
He saw the anger in her eyes, saw the hurt that lay beneath it. Saw echoes of himself in her defensiveness. He’d been like that, he realized. Ever since Ann had died, he’d barred every hand that reached out to him. All these years, he’d gone out of his way to keep everyone at bay.
Maybe it was time for a change.
“That you’re pregnant,” he answered her question tersely. “Because I know that if you are, it has to be mine.”
No, she wasn’t going to lower her guard, wasn’t going to take solace in his words. She was going to throw them back at him. Her chin shot up as though daring him to hit her.
“And why is that?”
His eyes met hers. He wanted to hug her, to hold her in his arms and to just revel in the news she had thrown at him. A baby. They were going to have a baby. That feeling of ultimately being alone had disappeared, just like that. “Because you’re not the kind of woman who fools around with a lot of guys.”
The fact that he said it, that he even thought it, warmed her heart.
She struggled not to let it.
In her opinion she was way too vulnerable here and she couldn’t afford to be. “And how would you know that?”
He spelled it out for her. “Logically, if you were the kind of woman who slept around, you would have been prepared. You would have offered me a condom, or been on the pill.”
Jack paused, knowing if he said the next thing out loud, he would be taking a huge step. A step that, once taken, might not allow him to go back.
Making up his mind, he took it anyway. “And emotionally, I just know.”
He was telling her that he felt things when it came to her. Gloria pressed her lips together, telling herself not to cry. What he said didn’t change anything. In the long run, he was going to back away. Maybe offer her some financial help, but that was it. And even if he was half responsible for the condition she found herself in, she wasn’t about to ask for anything. Or take anything.
“You don’t have to worry,” she told him quietly. “I don’t expect anything.”
He caught her arm before she could turn away. He didn’t want to talk to her back. She needed to look him in the eye, to see that he was serious. “But I do. I expect to see my son or daughter every day.”
The man was just full of surprises. “You want custody?”
“Yes.” He looked at her pointedly. “Of the baby and of you.”
“I’m too old for someone to have custody of me.”
He looked annoyed that she was playing with semantics. “You know what I mean.”
Happiness leaped inside her. He wanted her. But the next moment, logic came along to snuff out the joy. “No.”
He stared at her, shaking his head slightly as if to clear his ears. “What?”
She could feel herself turning to jelly inside, not knowing how much longer she could stand firm. Gloria struggled to sound distant. “It’s not a big word, Jack. I said no.”
He wasn’t about to let it go at that. Having made up his mind about the matter, about her, he was digging in for the duration. He had no other choice. He loved her and the baby whose existence he hadn’t known about fifteen minutes ago.
“Why not?”
She fisted her hands on her hips. Was he dense? “What do you mean, why not? I’m not going to have you marry me out of pity or some misguided sense of obligation. Until you found out about the baby, you weren’t even talking to me. You were going to go back to New York without so much as a goodbye. And now you want to marry me?” She was no one’s charity case. “No way. Now I’m sorry if that offends your sense of pride, or honor or whatever, but—”
“Enough!” he yelled. Then, as she stare
d at him, stunned, he demanded, “Can you stop talking for just one damn minute?” As if to underline his request, he pointed to his watch.
He was wearing the watch she’d repaired.
Did that mean something?
God, she had to stop searching for hidden meanings in everything. If he was wearing the watch, it just meant that he liked it, not that he was wearing it because she’d fixed it for him.
“Why?” Gloria demanded hotly. “Why should I stop talking?”
“So I can tell you I love you,” he shouted back at her.
She wanted to believe him. Rising up on her toes, her hands still on her hips, she jeered, “Oh, just like that.”
“Yes.” He was still shouting. “Just like that. From the first moment I saw you, damn it.”
She felt as if she’d just taken a torpedo to her hull. His words sank in. Was he serious? One look at his face told her that he was. Her heart turned over in her chest. “You’re going to need a little schooling in being romantic.”
“I don’t want schooling, I want you.” It was time to make a clean confession. She wasn’t going to believe him otherwise and he needed her to believe him. And to understand. “That’s what I was afraid of.”
She heard him, but she couldn’t believe him. How could that possibly be true? “You were afraid of me?”
Nodding, he took her hands from her waist, one at a time, and then took her into his arms. “Afraid to admit what I was feeling. Afraid that if I did, fate would pull the rug out from under me the way it did with Ann.”
And just like that, her heart went out to him. “Jack, there’re no guarantees in life.”
“Yes, and I’m logical enough to know that.” His eyes caressed her face as they washed over her. “I’m also human enough to be afraid of losing you.”
She tilted her head, as if trying to find a way to fit the thought in. “So if you never get me, you can’t lose me?”
It did sound pretty stupid when she said it out loud. “Something like that. But now there’s a third person to consider.” He pulled her closer, the baby a tiny seed between them. “I can’t be selfish. I’m going to be a father.” Feeling more love than he could ever put into words, he looked at her for a long moment. “I’d like to be a husband, as well.”
Her Good Fortune Page 17