Stand-In Bride. Barbara Boswell

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СКАЧАТЬ had hoped her selections were acceptable. The nice thank-you notes written to Michael by the brides had given her a warm glow. She sincerely hoped that all three couples would live the proverbial “happily ever after.”

      Michael did not share her optimism. Each time, before signing his name to the wedding cards she’d purchased with the gifts, he’d made a sound that was something between a sarcastic laugh and a growl.

      “I guess if this is what they really want to do…” he’d said all three times, his tone disapproving. Julia had once heard someone make a similar statement in a similar tone when commenting on a family of acrobats who insisted on working without a safety net.

      “Personally, I’d rather be dead than married,” Michael had added all three times, while handing the cards back to her.

      “Do you really believe it’s better to be dead than wed?” Julia had paraphrased wryly the third time he’d expressed the sentiment.

      “Better dead than wed,” Michael repeated glibly. “Hmm, not bad. I think it has potential as a slogan. Maybe I’ll run it by my cousin Caroline in marketing.”

      “Caroline would rather be wed,” Julia murmured. “You bought her a pair of lovely, antique silver candlesticks and signed a wedding card for her a few months ago, remember?”

      “I remember signing the card. I have no knowledge of the candlesticks, nor do I care to.”

      “Well, Caroline said that she loves them.”

      “Good. Since you’re in sync with her tastes, I’ll put you in charge of buying Baby Valkov its welcome-to-the-world gift when the time comes.”

      “I’d heard that Caroline was expecting a baby,” Julia murmured.

      Everyone in the company knew, because Caroline Fortune Valkov was visibly pregnant. From what Julia heard through the company grapevine, Fortune’s vice president of marketing and her research-chemist husband were as blissfully happy as the card Michael had signed wished them to be.

      “That seems to be the way it goes.” Michael looked grim. “Get married and then have a kid, for all the wrong reasons. Of course, some people do it backward—get pregnant and then get married—but the part about the kid being conceived for all the wrong reasons still applies. Doubly so in the shotgun-wedding cases.”

      Julia was nonplussed. They’d never had a discussion like this one. And while she had been uncomfortable discussing his family members, she was even more unsettled by his starkly pessimistic views regarding their future. “You don’t believe your cousin and her husband are having a child because they love each other and want to create a family together?”

      He’d given her an almost pitying glance, as if she’d just confessed that, as a twenty-six-year-old, she still firmly believed in the existence of Santa Claus.

      “Love has nothing to do with it, Julia. The kid could be an accident, the result of a night of too much wine and an overload of hormones. Or if the pregnancy was actually planned, maybe Caroline believes a child will give Nick more incentive to stay with her—and the Fortune Corporation, of course. He is a valuable asset to the company, and Caroline is too good a businesswoman not to realize it. As for Nick, perhaps he sees a child as a way for him to stake a permanent claim on the Fortune money.”

      “I think you’re wrong,” Julia said rather boldly. She’d seen the couple together, and their love for each other was obvious, even to an outsider like herself.

      Michael shrugged. “Couples have been using children to serve their own agendas from time immemorial, Julia.”

      “It’s not always that way. Don’t you think anybody has a baby for the right reasons?” Julia had been unable to keep herself from asking.

      Michael had given that cynical laugh-growl and turned his attention back to the papers on his desk, not bothering to dignify such a naive question with an answer.

      Having heard about Sheila Fortune, who according to Kristina had produced three children for monetary gain, Julia better understood Michael’s scornful pessimism.

      Understood, but did not accept. Julia believed in love and marriage and the children who resulted from such a union. She’d been one herself, and she intended someday to have a loving union like the one her parents had shared. To have children who were loved and wanted by two parents who cherished each other.

      She thought back to those wonderful days when her family had been together—Mom and Dad, she and her younger sister, Joanna. A lump lodged in Julia’s throat, and she blinked away the tears that suddenly filled her eyes.

      The Chandler family’s time together had been brief, making the happy memories particularly poignant and bittersweet. Her father’s unexpected death from the complications of appendicitis had occurred when she was seventeen. Tragedy had struck again three years ago when a car accident claimed her mother’s life and grievously injured poor Joanna.

      Thinking of her younger sister rallied Julia, and she forcefully shook off the aura of gloom threatening to envelop her. Joanna was twenty years old now and in a superior rehabilitation center, working hard to overcome the effects of her devastating injuries from the crash.

      Julia was filled with a quiet pride as she visualized her little sister fighting to overcome the odds stacked against her. With the help of a program tailored specifically for her recovery, consisting of grueling regimes of physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, music therapy and recreational therapy, Joanna never wasted time feeling sorry for herself.

      And until Joanna was well again and able to live an independent life, Julia had put her own hopes and dreams on hold. Her job at the Fortune Corporation was all-important because her generous salary enabled her to pay Joanna’s considerable expenses at the rehab center. Julia didn’t protest about the long hours that workaholic Michael Fortune demanded because there was nothing and no one in her life as important as Joanna and their daily phone calls and weekend visits.

      A happy marriage to a man who loved her as much as she loved him, and their much-wanted, much-loved children, had to wait. But when the time was finally right, Julia was certain she would find him. Or maybe he would find her.

      Two

      “Another bag of mail for the eligible bachelor!” Denny, the clerk from the mail room, sang out, heaving an industrial-size plastic sack into Julia’s office. Three other sacks just like it took up most of the floor space. “There’s more coming in. We had to clear this out to make room.”

      “Mr. Fortune will be thrilled to hear it,” Julia murmured wryly.

      “Not!” Denny chuckled, pleased with his own joke. “We heard he’s furious about all this. But me and my buddies sure don’t know why. If I had hundreds and hundreds of letters from hot babes craving my bod, you can believe I’d be in paradise!”

      Julia glanced at the short, perspiring overweight young man, who was somewhere in his twenties and looked ten years older. There would never be hundreds of letters from hot babes craving his body. Maybe not even one.

      “Mr. Fortune doesn’t like the attention the magazine article has brought him,” Julia explained tactfully.

      For the past five days, ever since the magazine had hit the stands listing СКАЧАТЬ