Fortune's Mergers. Bronwyn Jameson

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СКАЧАТЬ you should go,” she said miserably.

      Nodding thoughtfully, he gathered his coat from the chair where he’d dropped it. At the door, he stopped and glanced back. “Gina?”

      “What?”

      “What kind do you want?”

      “What kind of what?” she asked in frustration.

      “Engagement ring.”

      “He was kidding,” Gina told Zoie the next morning over coffee. “I mean, there was no dropping to one knee, no proposal. He just asked what kind of ring I wanted.”

      Zoie rolled her eyes. “Girl, you’re dumb as a board. If it’d been me, I’d’ve told him I’d accept nothing less than four carats set in platinum.”

      “I’m not you,” Gina reminded her dryly.

      “What’s so wrong with marrying Case Fortune?” Zoie asked. “He’s easy on the eye, rich as sin. You could do a lot worse, you know.”

      “I won’t marry a man I’m not in love with,” Gina stated firmly.

      “Why not? Women do it all the time. Who knows? You might even grow to love him over time.”

      “And I might not,” Gina argued, then tossed up her hands. “I don’t know why we’re even having this conversation. He wasn’t serious. It was just a joke.”

      “How do you know it was? Did he laugh? Crack a smile? Did he say ‘gotcha, jokes on you’?”

      Gina squirmed uncomfortably in her chair. “Well, no.”

      “What did he do?”

      “He just … left.”

      “Just like that,” Zoie said, with a snap of her fingers. “He proposes, then leaves without waiting for an answer?”

      Gina slid her spine down the chair, wishing she’d never told Zoie what Case had said. “Well, he kind of hesitated a minute, like he was waiting for me to say something, then he left.”

      Zoie thumped the heel of her hand against her forehead. “Girl, you are undoubtedly the slowest, most naive woman to ever walk this earth. When a man like Case Fortune even hints at marriage, you clamp a ball and chain around his ankle and get him to swear to it in blood, before he can change his mind.”

      Scowling, Gina rose to dump her coffee down the drain. “I wish I’d never brought it up.”

      “Who’s going to keep you from screwing up your life, if you don’t confide in me?”

      Gina shot Zoie a frown over her shoulder. “I’m not screwing up my life. I’m merely being cautious.”

      “Same thing. You’ve got to learn to take a few risks. Step out on a limb every now and then. That bubble you’ve been living in might be safe, but it’s got to be lonely as hell in there.”

      “I don’t live in a bubble,” Gina stated indignantly. “And I’m not lonely. I go out. I have friends.”

      “Name two,” Zoie challenged.

      Gina opened her mouth to reply, then closed it, unable to name a single friend, other than Zoie.

      “See?” Zoie said smugly. “If I had a good, strong hat pin, I’d pop that bubble and force you out into the real world and out of that make-believe one you hide yourself in.”

      Gina pushed the vacuum around her loft, chasing the dust bunnies that had collected during her weeklong creative block. Thankfully, the revisions were now complete and on their way to New York, via Federal Express.

      She wished she could pack Zoie up and deal with her as easily.

      Flattening her lips, she thrust the vacuum head under the sofa with a little more force than necessary.

      “I don’t live in a bubble,” she grumbled under her breath. Just because her lifestyle was different than Zoie’s didn’t mean there was anything wrong with it or her. Zoie was a free spirit, an adventuress, while Gina enjoyed a quieter, calmer existence.

      And she wasn’t lonely, she told herself. She wasn’t like Zoie, who constantly needed to be surrounded with noise and color, in order to be happy. Gina was perfectly content with her life just the way it was.

      Or she had been, until Case came along.

      Giving the vacuum an angry shove, she fisted her hands on her hips, as the upright machine went careening across the room and crashed into her dining table. He was the problem. Case Fortune. He’d dropped into her world like the proverbial Prince Charming and started making her question everything she’d once held dear.

      Mainly, her virginity.

      Groaning, she snatched up the stuffed toad from the sofa and flopped down, burying her face in its soft fabric. She’d never considered sex a sport, as did many of her peers. To her, sex was special, sacred, an act two people in love shared exclusively with one another.

      If that was true, then why was she always thinking about having sex with Case? she asked herself. She didn’t love him. Heck, she barely knew him! So what if his kisses turned her insides to warm butter? Big deal. And who cared if he was drop-dead handsome? In today’s world, pretty faces were a dime a dozen. And so what if he did the sweetest, most romantic things? Any man with a finger could punch in a florist’s number and order a shipload of flowers. And it certainly didn’t take a genius to fold a piece of paper into an airplane and sail it through a window.

      But few men did those kinds of things. It took someone special to even think of doing them. Someone thoughtful, kind, generous. Someone with a heart.

      She slowly drew the stuffed toad from her face, her eyes wide. Was Case truly the kind of man she’d just described? She racked her brain, trying to think of instances where he’d displayed the traits she’d once attributed to him—cold, heartless, driven.

      He had to be all of those things, she told herself. A businessman like Case didn’t climb to the position he was currently in without stepping on a few people along the way. Her own father had sacrificed family in favor of business. Surely Case had done the same.

      But then she remembered the loving comments he’d made about his mother, while gazing at the portrait of her that hung in his room; his concern for his step-mother when she’d appeared about to faint; the easy camaraderie she’d witnessed between he and his siblings the night he’d invited her to have dinner with his family.

      Had she misjudged him? she asked herself honestly. Had she blown any future she might’ve had with him by refusing to have sex with him?

      She firmed her jaw. If so, that was just too bad. Her virginity was important to her, a gift she intended to give to her husband, to the man she loved. If Case wrote her off just because she wouldn’t have sex with him, then he wasn’t the man for her.

      A knock on the door jerked her from her thoughts. Sure that it was Zoie coming to apologize for all the mean things she’d said that morning, she pushed to her feet, thinking СКАЧАТЬ