A Fortune's Children's Christmas (12 page)

“McDonald’s is worldwide and I can say ‘Do you want fries with that?’ in six languages.” She had laughed, but Ryder had been amazed. A Fortune in-law behind the counter at McDonald’s?

The past two years she’d worked as an assistant to a film location scout, traipsing all over North America finding places for movies, TV shows and commercials to be filmed. “It was the perfect job for me because I couldn’t stand to be in one place for very long. I had a room in L.A. but was gone most of the time with Hal scouting for shoots.”

But eventually she had decided to return home to her family in Minneapolis, just as he had. They were both close to the legendary Fortune fame and wealth, yet apart from it. Employment history aside, there were oddly similar parallels in their lives that struck him.

Ryder watched Joanna as she talked on the phone to her sister. She was animated and expressive and in constant motion, swirling around on her chair, jiggling a pen between her fingers, standing up to perch on the
edge of the desk while swinging her leg back and forth. Sitting still was obviously a foreign concept to her.

She hung up the phone and slipped back into her chair, scooting it around as she rearranged her picture collection on the desktop. Watching her was never dull, and Ryder had logged a lot of time doing it during the past month she’d been working for him.

They’d had their share of ups and downs. Somewhat to his surprise, Joanna never complained about working long hours, and they often worked late into the evenings. They ate dinner in the office, trying all the take-out-and-delivery places in the vicinity. She was an entertaining conversationalist, friendly and pleasant, and all the employees liked her. Better than they liked him, Ryder noted without rancor. He didn’t mind her popularity within the company.

What he did mind were some of Joanna’s more maddening quirks. Though he found her hyperactivity amusing at times, other times it drove him crazy. She also tended to be absentminded, which he blamed on inattentiveness. She had to write
everything
down, and if she didn’t write it down immediately, she forgot all about it. When he admonished her, she’d made a few lame jokes about her short-term memory deficit. Ryder hadn’t laughed. He didn’t like glib excuses.

The truth was, Joanna didn’t work well under pressure, and he thrived on it. He enjoyed juggling five projects at once, but a fast pace inevitably caused her to lose focus and get things mixed up. Phone numbers, appointment times, names and addresses. He felt him
self growing impatient just thinking about some of her screwups. His eyes narrowed as he watched her.

And invariably his exasperation wavered and dissolved. He couldn’t seem to stay upset with Joanna. Bemused, Ryder wondered what made him willing, even eager, to excuse her for mistakes he wouldn’t tolerate from any other employee. Because she was likable and cute? Or because she was the beloved little sister of Michael Fortune’s wife?

Joanna looked up and caught Ryder looking at her. She paused, holding one picture frame in midair. He’d been staring at her again. She hated when he did that. It made her feel like a lab rat under the watchful eye of a scientist collecting data—or like a patient struggling to recover as therapists in every curative specialty observed and noted her every move.

“What?” She knew she sounded defensive. She was defensive! “Am I fidgeting too much?”

He made that observation at least once a day. Joanna knew she had to make a concentrated effort to stay still—and even that didn’t always work. It was one of the more annoying aftereffects of the accident, and she was certainly aware of her defect. She did not need him to continually point it out to her.

“No wonder you’re so skinny,” said Ryder. “You must burn up the caloric equivalent of a three-course meal just zooming around this office.”

That stung. “I am not skinny!”

She had little appetite, her sense of taste wasn’t what it ought to be, another permanent result of the
accident. She always had to remind herself to eat, and keeping on weight was a constant struggle.

“No,” he agreed. “You’re slender, but not skinny like some of those models who look like they haven’t had a decent meal in years. If ever.” His eyes traveled over her, perusing her carefully, lingering on her.

Joanna felt her cheeks flush. There were times when the way he looked at her thoroughly unnerved her. It wasn’t a sensation she was used to, but Ryder Fortune seemed to possess an uncanny expertise in inducing it.

“I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation.” He shrugged, unapologetic about his eavesdropping. “Since you’re going to your sister’s for dinner tomorrow night, I guess I’ll knock off early, too, and leave around seven.”

“Leaving at seven o’clock is not early, Ryder. This is probably going to come as a shock to you, but all over America people leave their offices promptly at five.”

“A shock? Not hardly. Almost everybody in this company leaves promptly at five, even Miss Volk who doesn’t get here till ten.”

“She finds it hard to get up and moving in the winter. The cold weather gives her bronchitis.” Joanna was sympathetic. “And migraines and lumbago and—”

“Maybe she should move to a warmer climate.”

Joanna shot him a look. “Better not say that around her.”

“I know, I know. Still, I can dream, can’t I?”

“Of what? A glamorous young receptionist? Let me guess—she’d be about five foot eight with a platinum blond mane and bright scarlet lipstick. Spike heels, spandex miniskirts and tight sweaters. Thirty-six, twenty-two, thirty-six. Am I on target?”

Ryder flashed a salacious grin. “I can already picture her sitting out there.” He inclined his head toward the closed door leading to the reception area.

“I bet you would keep the office door open all the time so you could keep a close eye on her,” Joanna said, continuing the joke. “You wouldn’t mind sharing an office with
her,
would you?”

“I don’t mind sharing an office with you, Joanna.” His voice was husky.

The sound of it, along with his own admission, surprised him. “I don’t mind sharing an office with you, Joanna.” His voice echoed in his ears. Good night, he sounded as if he really meant that! He thought of the architect’s drawings for the executive suites. Those plans were right in his desk drawer, and he could afford to implement them. But he kept putting off the remodeling.

Because he hated the thought of trying to work amidst the noise and dust of construction, Ryder assured himself. Who wouldn’t want to postpone that ordeal? Even if it meant sharing the office with his assistant.

His eyes met Joanna’s, and their gazes held for a long moment.

Joanna’s breath caught in her chest as a surge of heat flooded her body. She moistened her suddenly
dry lips with the tip of her tongue. There was a pleasant throb deep in her abdomen and her nipples tingled.

She blinked. If she didn’t know better, she’d think she was getting aroused gazing at Ryder Fortune. And when he smiled at her, those enticing sensations rippling through her intensified.

Joanna was alarmed.
I can’t be getting aroused gazing at Ryder Fortune!

That would be both futile and foolish because Ryder was actively uninterested in becoming involved with anyone. He had made that fact clear to the women who called him, and there seemed to be plenty of them ready and eager to snare a Fortune. Joanna heard Ryder tell his would-be lovers that he was too busy establishing his business, that his personal life was currently on hold. Since she’d been working for him, she was fairly certain that he hadn’t had a single date.

Two days ago had been Valentine’s Day, a surefire date night, but she knew he hadn’t gone out. She hadn’t, either. They had worked till past 9:00 p.m., dining on take-out pizza, and Ryder hadn’t even acknowledged the holiday. Neither had she.

During the past month she had heard him turn down invitation after invitation. Though she tried not to listen, she couldn’t help but overhear his personal conversations. After all, they shared this office. And there were times when she eagerly, blatantly eavesdropped. Times when listening to him brush off those overeager females made her positively gleeful.

That couldn’t mean anything! It didn’t mean any
thing!
she told herself. Developing a crush on Ryder would be incredibly stupid, because on a good day she merely drove him crazy. On a bad day he wanted to dismember her. She could just tell.

Joanna suddenly felt the need for tension-reducing action. She busied herself by fiddling with the blinds, wiping down the already spotless coffee area, transferring her pens from one container to another.

“You’re flitting around the office like a fly on speed,” Ryder observed. “You’d better cut back on the coffee, Joanna.”

Joanna suppressed a sigh. She didn’t drink coffee. She wouldn’t dare add caffeine to her already super-charged nervous system. “I’ve been here a month and you still haven’t noticed that I drink tea?” Herbal tea. Decaffeinated.

Impulsively she picked up a wet, used tea bag and tossed it at him. Quick as a flash Ryder extended his arm and caught the soggy missile.

Joanna was horrified by her impulsiveness.
“You have to remember to always stop and think before you act, Joanna”
—the voices of every rehab therapist she’d ever worked with chorused in her head. Too bad she’d remembered their advice after she hadn’t followed it.

“I can’t believe I threw that!” She clasped her hands to her cheeks, dismayed. “I’m sorry. It was really unprofessional of me.”

“I agree.” Ryder’s lips twitched. “But I made a fine catch.” He tossed the tea bag back at her before she realized what was coming. It hit her arm, leaving
a blotch on the sleeve of her blouse. “You, on the other hand, missed.”

“I withdraw my apology. You’re as unprofessional as I am,” she scolded.

“Maybe even worse,” agreed Ryder. “After all, I’m the boss. I should be above such—such—”

“Juvenile antics?” Joanna suggested.

“Kindergarten level,” Ryder agreed. “Now, let’s get back to work.”

He leaned forward and picked up a document, his expression, his body language and tone shifting abruptly from playful to seriously business. “I need you to take this new product development plan back to marketing. Tell them I want to see more details.”

Joanna thought of the groans her appearance was going to elicit from the marketing department, who’d already revised and detailed the proposal three previous times. But Ryder was a perfectionist and expected nothing less from others. Too bad she was fated to be the messenger whom marketing most wanted to shoot.

She was on her way back to her desk when she remembered that she’d forgotten to make Ryder’s plane reservations for a conference in Washington, D.C., next month. She had been about to do it when little Phoebe’s phone call distracted her. She would have to do it right now, Joanna reminded herself. The moment she sat back down at her desk, she would pick up the phone and—

“Joanna, dear, would you run across the street to the drugstore and pick me up some vitamin-C tablets?” Miss Volk intercepted her before she could
reenter the office. “And some St. John’s Wort, too. And nasal spray. I’d do it myself but it’s so cold and windy out there, and every bone and joint in my body is aching.”

“Of course, Miss Volk.” Joanna was instantly solicitous. She knew how awful it was to ache all over. Others had helped her, and she understood the necessity of helping others in kind. “I’ll get my coat and go right now.”

“C
’mon, Ryder, come with us tonight,” Charlotte Fortune half whined, half pleaded in the kid-sister tone she’d used for years to wheedle her two older brothers into doing or getting what she wanted.

Matthew, the stolid middle-born, had always been better able to hold out against her. Ryder, eight years her senior, succumbed to her wheedling more often than he cared to admit.

But this time he was determined not to give in. “Look, Charlotte, I just got back from the airport after hopscotching all over the eastern half of the country, because my idiot assistant forgot to make my plane reservations and didn’t bother to tell me until the very morning I was to leave for the conference. I could only get to D.C. via—”

“All the more reason for you to kick back and relax,” Charlotte interjected, clearly not interested in his airline woes. “You’ll love Surf City, Ry.”

“No, I won’t. The name alone puts me off. I’m going to turn on CNN to see what’s happening in the rest of the world and then go to bed.”

“You’re beginning to sound more and more like Daddy every day!” Even over the phone, Ryder could tell she was pouting. “He’s in bed every night by
eleven, but at least he and Mommy have a life down there in the desert. Think about that depressing fact, Ryder. Residents in a retirement community are way livelier than
you!
”

“I have a life,” protested Ryder

“No, you don’t. You go to work, you go home and go to bed. You’re a boring workaholic, Ry, a total social recluse!” Charlotte’s voice rose. “And to think that all these years I’ve been telling my friends how much fun you are, how adventuresome and cool!” She sounded personally betrayed.

“Char, I did the club scene in South Africa back when I was—”

“But I wasn’t there to hang out with you, Ryder. For the past nine years I’ve only been able to see you for a few days every Christmas. Now you’re finally living in town, and I want to show off my big brother to my friends.
Please
come with us tonight! I promise we’ll have fun.”

Guilt, flattery, cajolery. Charlotte was adept at all of them. Unfortunately, she had made some valid points. Ryder sighed. He knew he was going to acquiesce, but he attempted to set some conditions. “Okay, I’ll meet you there. But I have no intentions of staying more than an—”

“Cool!” exclaimed Charlotte. “See you around eleven at Surf City. Do you need directions?”

“I’ll find the place,” Ryder grated through his teeth.

“Oh, and Ryder?
Please
don’t dress like some stuffed-shirt executive tonight. Most people wear
shorts and bathing suits to Surf City, but jeans are okay for you conservative types.”

“I am not venturing out in Minneapolis in a bathing suit on the first day of March, which has come roaring in like the proverbial lion. If that makes me stuffy and conservative, so be it, Charlotte.” Ryder hung up.

A stuffed shirt—
him?
He trudged to his closet for his jeans and a striped rugby shirt that he hoped wouldn’t embarrass his eternally cool sister and her ultrahip friends.

A combination of crusty snow and road salt crunched beneath his tires as he drove from his apartment to the club a half hour later. When he had decided it was time to return home to Minneapolis—his epiphany as Joanna had called it—he’d considered establishing closer relationships with both his brother and his sister to be a main priority. But so far his new company took so much of his time and energy that he really hadn’t seen much of his siblings. Matthew, fourteen months his junior and a research pathologist at the University of Minnesota Medical Center didn’t mind, but baby sister, Charlotte, made it clear that she felt slighted.

So here he was—at Surf City on Charlotte’s demand.

Standing just inside the cavernous warehouse that housed the club, Ryder checked out the scene. The place was packed, loud and wild, with live music and uninhibited dancing, dim lighting, and an anything-goes atmosphere. There was a faux boardwalk setting with games and refreshment stands, there were
mounds of sand and vibrating surfboards that simulated the movement of riding the waves. Ryder watched people try to stay on the boards and saw them, inevitably, get thrown off.

In jeans and dark-red-and-blue rugby shirt—not to mention wearing shoes—he was definitely one of the more overdressed patrons. Mostly everybody else wore summer attire, shorts and sandals, sundresses, even shorter shorts and, worst of all, bathing suits and bare feet.

He glanced around at the patrons, searching for a glimpse of Charlotte. His little sister and her pals liked to frequent this place? He was not pleased. It was obvious the customers could do just about anything here, though a warning was posted that having sex on the tables was prohibited by management.

Pushed deeper into the interior of the club by the burgeoning crowd, Ryder found himself perilously near several couples who seemed bent on flaunting management’s lone rule. He tried not to be scandalized but…

Ryder sucked in his cheeks. He felt like a stuffed shirt, very old and very uncool.

“Joanna, come on! You gotta try surfing!” exclaimed Jenny, one of Joanna’s roommates. “It’s so-o-o-o much fun!”

Joanna watched the wanna-be surfers being pitched to the floor by the bouncing surfboards. Most hit the ground hard and would undoubtedly be bruised.
Jenny, that is like getting beat up. Not my idea of fun.”

Jenny didn’t hear her because shouting was necessary to be heard, and Joanna didn’t feel like using that much energy. She felt a little dizzy. Her ears were ringing, the drums seemed to be pounding in her head.

The consequences for succumbing to peer pressure? Jenny and their other roommate, Wendi, had been insisting that she join them for a “girls’ night out” for weeks, but until tonight she’d successfully resisted. Jenny and Wendi led extremely active social lives and worried about Joanna, who did not.

Tonight she’d had no excuse. She was home before six, because Ryder hadn’t been in the office. He was in Washington, D.C., attending the conference she’d forgotten to make his plane reservations for. Joanna flinched, remembering how infuriated he’d been with her when he left town two days ago. He was due back tonight, and she wondered if he would still be mad at her tomorrow.

If so, he would glower at her all day while making sarcastic remarks about her flaky absentmindedness. Joanna thought of the architect’s plans for the private executive suite and wished mightily that Ryder would give the go-ahead for the project. If there were four walls between them, the tension wouldn’t be so omnipresent, so unavoidable, whenever they were on the outs.

“Aren’t you glad you came with us tonight, Joanna?” Jenny squealed happily.

Joanna sighed. Going out on a cold night with
Jenny and Wendi had been the last thing she’d wanted to do tonight, but she couldn’t even use visiting Julia and Michael as a reason to refuse because they were out of town with the children, vacationing in the Florida Keys.

So here she was at Surf City, feeling overdressed in a short, gauzy, embroidered dress.

Joanna watched one young woman—lithe and tall and tanned, in a bright red bikini—hop onto the surfboard. A group gathered around to cheer her on. “Charlotte! Charlotte!” they chanted. She stayed on longer than most of the previous candidates, before being flung off.

Joanna grimaced as the young woman picked herself up amidst much laughter and shrieking.
“Are we having fun yet?”

She began to wind her way through the frenetic horde the moment Jenny jumped on the surfboard to try her luck. Surf City was as overcrowded as any beach resort on a holiday weekend, and it was easy to get lost in here. Joanna intended to do just that, to lose Jenny and Wendi and escape. She was glad she’d insisted on driving her own car here, glad that Jenny and Wendi had already arranged transportation home with some other friends.

There had been a time when she would’ve loved this place, Joanna realized. The pulsing music and raucous crowd and over-the-top craziness would’ve thrilled her. She’d gone a bit wild after all those years in hospitals, feeling like she’d lost too much time and
had to make up for it, but now it seemed that she had finally gotten all of that out of her system.

Joanna was both relieved and a little forlorn. It was good to know she was maturing, but she really didn’t want to turn into a withdrawn hermit, either. She couldn’t even argue when Jenny and Wendi—and even Julia—pointed out that her social life was nonexistent.

It truly was. Sometimes Joanna wondered why that didn’t bother her more. She supposed it should, yet it didn’t.

For some reason she was content to spend hours working overtime for a boss who took her presence for granted. Except when she did something to try his patience—like not making plane reservations for an important conference, among other mishaps—and then he was quick to take her to task.

Of course, she didn’t always screw up and he wasn’t always annoyed with her. Warmth surged through her. There were times when she and Ryder Fortune got along superbly well, when they were very much in sync, talking and laughing and—

“Joanna!” A big hand fastened around her upper arm. “I thought it was you.”

Because of the pressing crowd, Joanna couldn’t turn around, but she didn’t have to. She recognized the voice. It was downright spooky, as if her thoughts had somehow conjured up Ryder Fortune in the flesh, right in back of her.

“I was watching those nitwits on the surfboards and saw my own sister hit the floor. And then I spotted
you.” Ryder sounded both astonished and disapproving. “What are you doing here?”

“I could ask you the same thing. I’d’ve never pegged you as a Surf City regular.”

“Because I’m not one.” Ryder had to lower his head for her to hear him over the din. “My sister used emotional blackmail to get me here. What’s your excuse?”

“Nothing dramatic like emotional blackmail. My roommates nagged me into coming. They claimed it would be fun.”

“So did Charlotte. Which leads me to wonder—what exactly is ‘fun’ anyway?”

“Not Surf City.” Joanna took a deep breath. “How was Washington?”

“Oh, the city was great, the conference was great. It was the journey to and from that was a living hell. Three takeoffs and landings in three separate cities, layovers in crowded airports…Need I go on?”

“I’m sorry, Ryder.”

She sounded contrite, Ryder thought as he cast a sidelong glance down at her. She looked it, too. Oversights happen, he reasoned. It wasn’t as if she’d deliberately planned not to book his flight.

“I accept your apology, Joanna. Just don’t let it happen again,” he felt obliged to add.

Joanna heaved an exaggerated sigh. “Ah, the trenchant qualifier,” she mocked lightly, tilting her head. “A Ryder Fortune specialty.”

“I was not being
trenchant.
”

“Censorious, then?”

“No.” She was baiting him, and Ryder knew it. Yet he leaped like a fish lunging at a shiny lure. “You might keep in mind that I am attempting to accept your apology, Joanna. Which was barely adequate, at best. Not even approaching anything similar to heartfelt or sincere.”

Despite the ear-splitting din of Surf City, Ryder was startled by his own tone of voice. He sounded trenchant. And censorious. He was taken aback. Why was he giving Joanna a hard time? Why did seeing her here in her diaphanous little dress and slim bare legs, her cheeks flushed and eyes bright, make him want to—to—
to scold her and drag her out of here?

Joanna couldn’t see Ryder’s face, but she could well imagine his expression. A mixture of self-righteousness and annoyance. She’d seen it often enough directed at her. All at once a devilish impulse to drive him to sheer outrage was impossible to resist.

“You know, if you ever decide to follow in the footsteps of all those other CEOs who’ve written bestsellers, you’d be a natural for a how-to book, Ryder. Something along the lines of
How To Accept an Apology without Really Meaning It.
You could do an audiotape version too, demonstrating your trenchant and cen—”

“I would like to know why you are attempting to make
me
feel guilty for
your
oversight. Remember that I was the one inconvenienced by your negligence when you forgot to book my flight, Joanna.”

“See, you threw my apology right back in my face, and so completely, too,” Joanna said gleefully.

A trifle too gleefully, Ryder decided. He eyed her intently. “Exactly how much have you had to drink tonight, Joanna?”

“If you’re implying that I’m drunk, I most certainly am not!” Joanna said indignantly.

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“Just one drink. A Surf City citrus slush. I have no idea what it was, but it tasted pretty good.”

“Well, judging from the lack of inhibitions in this crowd, I’d say the drinks they serve here are about six hundred proof. Just one would have an effect on a little thing like you.” He frowned. “And it has. You can be something of a smart aleck at times, but you’ve never been quite this—outspoken.”

“I’m not a smart aleck,” she defended herself. “Or a little thing, either.”

“I said you were
something
of a smart aleck. And I’ll amend little thing to—uh—person of small stature and slender frame. Is that more acceptable?”

Before Joanna could answer, a swell of people surged, nearly knocking her off her feet. She was forcefully propelled into him, and Joanna heard Ryder expel a gasp as she impacted against him. Another shove, and her knees buckled from the pressure.

His arm came around her waist to steady her. “Aside from nearly being trampled, are you all right?”

“Yes.” She managed to turn her head halfway and look up at him. His light brown eyes seemed to be boring into her. And she’d thought her brother-in-law had a laser stare! Suddenly, it was imperative that she
get out of here, well away from Ryder Fortune. “I—I’ve had enough of this place. I’m leaving.”

“You took the words right out of my mouth. Let’s go.”

But they couldn’t move. Everybody around them had begun to slow dance, though the dance floor was—actually, it was anywhere the crowd decided it to be. Right now, it was right here.