Kitabı oxu: «Fortune's Just Desserts»

Wendy’s breath, soft and maddeningly enticing, seemed to whisper along his skin.

Temptation tightened his gut to the point that he had no breath of his own. The breath he drew in was hers.

The spoon—and dessert—were forgotten, as was decorum. Her eyes seemed to hypnotize him, turning him into someone he didn’t recognize. Someone with longings that were being unleashed.

Like a man trapped in a dream, Marcos saw himself sliding his fingers around her face, framing it.

Wanting nothing more in life than to kiss her.

His breath stopped again.

As did hers.

Dear Reader,

Welcome to the newest installment of the Fortunes saga. We’re back in Red Rock, Texas, where we get to meet another tall, dark and handsome member of the Mendoza family. Marcos Mendoza, once an exciting bad boy, has settled down to make something of his life and is running Red for his aunt and uncle, Maria and Jose Mendoza. Then Fate throws a monkey wrench into the works in the guise of Wendy Fortune, the youngest child of the Atlanta branch of the Fortune family. At first glance, Wendy comes across as a spoiled little rich girl, accustomed to getting her way and being indulged.

To his dismay, he finds that Wendy, left on her own to experiment in the kitchen, can create absolutely heavenly desserts, and more patrons are appearing at the restaurant’s door. But Wendy’s popularity is not the worst of Marcos’s problems. He finds himself strongly attracted to the woman, and as days go by, Marcos feels that his bachelor days are numbered.

I hope you enjoy this latest installment of the family saga. I thank you for taking the time to read it and, as always, from the bottom of my heart I wish you someone to love who loves you back.

Love,

Marie Ferrarella

About the Author

MARIE FERRARELLA, the USA TODAY bestselling and RITA^® Award-winning author has written more than two hundred books for Mills & Boon, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide. Visit her website at www.marieferrarella.com.

Fortune’s
Just Desserts
Marie Ferrarella

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To

Kate Ellie Conrad

Welcome to the world,

little one

Chapter One

March

Marcos Mendoza knew better than to allow his anger to show on his face. Especially in front of people who were more than family—they were his employers.

But there was no denying that he was angry. After proving over and over again to his aunt and uncle, María and José Mendoza, that he had the business savvy to run Red, their wildly successful restaurant in Red Rock, Texas, his opinion had been completely discounted. Worse, it had been ignored to the point that neither one of them had even asked him for it.

If they had, he would have gladly told them that hiring Wendy Fortune was as bad an idea as serving their loyal patrons five-day-old salmon.

Never mind that the twenty-one-year-old heiress was as beautiful as a Texas June sunrise, that she had long brown hair, sparkling brown eyes and a figure that could make a grown man babble like a two-year-old when it was set off to its best advantage. Marcos knew a flirt when he saw one, and this barely-out-of-her-teens woman was a flirt with a capital F-L. She was also trouble.

He was well acquainted with her type.

Marcos had to admit—silently—that a woman as attractive as Wendy would have definitely piqued his interest on an after-hours, social level. But as a non-productive member of his crew, well, that was an entirely different matter.

He’d been exposed to her type more than once and was well aware of the ingrained flaws that were as much a part of someone like Wendy Fortune as her high cheekbones and her expressive eyes.

The youngest sibling of the Atlanta branch of the Fortune family wasn’t born with a silver spoon in her mouth—she’d had an entire place setting.

He keenly resented being saddled with this fluff of an employee just because her parents were friends with his aunt and uncle and had asked the pair to indulge them with this one favor. The productive rhythm at Red was being threatened because the senior Fortunes were desperate to teach their college-dropout daughter some kind of work ethic.

Let her be a dead weight somewhere else. Not in my restaurant, he thought grudgingly.

It wasn’t as if the Fortunes didn’t have a great many other businesses scattered around the state and beyond. He’d heard via the grapevine that their darling daughter had already failed miserably at the Fortune Foundation’s office in Red Rock. But why didn’t they send her to one of their other places of business? He’d nurtured and babied Red for the last year as if it were a beloved extension of himself. His ultimate goal was to learn all he could about the business end of running a large restaurant and then, one day, to open up a place of his own.

He’d worked hard for his opportunities, Marcos thought dourly. Someone like Wendy, a young woman born to privilege and surely demanding more of the same, couldn’t possibly measure up to his standards. Every man had his breaking point—and he had this uneasy feeling that she was going to be his.

Struggling to keep his intense displeasure under wraps, Marcos faced his aunt and uncle. It wasn’t often that they both came in to deliver news—they obviously knew this was not going to be received well.

And they were so right, he thought.

He leveled his question at both of them. “What am I supposed to do with her?”

Other than the obvious, he couldn’t help adding silently. Wendy Fortune had “party girl” written all over her. He sincerely doubted that the woman even knew what it meant to do real work, which was probably why the foundation, created in the memory of the late Ryan Fortune, had sent her packing.

“You put her to work, of course, Marcos,” María answered, employing her sharp, no-nonsense voice. She was apparently not happy about this arrangement, either, but indicating as much to Marcos would not help. She’d always believed in making the best of any situation. Complaining about it never helped.

This time, Marcos couldn’t keep the frown from his lips. “No disrespect intended, Tía, but I do the paperwork on a regular basis and file it away. I have no need for a five-foot-two paperweight.”

María raised a sharp eyebrow in response to the sarcastic remark. “Very funny, Marcos. If your tío and I decide to have a comedy night at the restaurant, I will be sure to ask you to perform.” And then she softened, remembering what it was like to be young and feel that you had no say in anything that directly affected you. “I know we are asking a great deal of you. You have done a wonderful job here with the restaurant—”

Striking now was his only hope, Marcos thought. “And I’d like to keep it that way.”

“I am sure you do and you will,” José told his nephew, an understanding tone weaving through his words. “A man as good as you are at your job will find a way to turn a social butterfly into a hardworking ant,” he said with confidence as he placed a compassionate hand on Marcos’s shoulder.

Marcos knew a snow job when he encountered one. “Only saints can perform miracles, Tío. And I am not a saint.”

María laughed. “We are well aware of that, my dear.”

María looked at him knowingly. She knew all about Marcos’s reputation, both on and off the job. He had an excellent work ethic, but he was also a man who made no secret of the fact that he enjoyed the company of beautiful women. Many beautiful women.

“You might recall,” she continued, “that your tío and I once took a chance on an untried, handsome young man who was more than just a little wild. We were told we should be prepared to be disappointed, but we decided to follow our instincts and not listen to the advice from well-meaning friends.” She gently ran her hand along Marcos’s cheek. “And, I’m happy to say, we have not been disappointed.”

“We would like you to give Wendy the same chance,” José told him.

How could he turn them down after that? They had played him.

But before he could say anything, the teeth-jarring sound of a tray meeting a tile floor on the far side of the empty dining area had all three pairs of eyes looking in that direction.

The young woman in the short black pencil skirt and four-inch heels flashed an apologetic smile in response. With the grace of a ballerina, she bent down to pick up the tray.

“Sorry,” Wendy called.

“She’s sorry?” Marcos said under his breath, shaking his head. His dark eyes darted from his aunt to his uncle. “She’s not even working here yet and she’s already knocking things over. Think of the damage she could do if your hire her.”

“We already have hired her,” José corrected him. His tone, although sympathetic, left no room for argument. “She begins work this afternoon.”

The tiny kernel of hope Marcos had been nurturing—that he could talk his aunt and uncle out of hiring the flighty heiress—died an ignoble death. Forcing himself to swallow the bitter pill, Marcos inclined his head, resigned.

María couldn’t say that she was encouraged by the look in her nephew’s eyes. “I thought Wendy could begin as a waitress.”

“A waitress,” Marcos echoed. Why don’t I just throw all the glasses and plates on the floor and break them now? “Of course,” he acquiesced in an amiable tone that fooled neither of the two older people. “It’s your restaurant.”

“It will work out, Marcos,” María promised the young man she had become so fond of. “It will just take a little patience, that is all.”

There was patience, and then there was patience, he thought. But he did care a great deal for his aunt and uncle and they had been good to him. So he did his best to keep from giving voice to his extreme displeasure. Who knew? Maybe he was wrong about this Wendy Fortune.

And, on that same note, maybe pigs would fly. By tonight.

Resigned to making the best of a bad situation, he looked across the room at his newly acquired albatross. His expression was restrained and though he tried, he couldn’t keep his displeasure from reaching his dark eyes.

Wendy Fortune stood reading the current menu posted behind the hostess desk. She shifted from foot to foot, waiting for this conference that rudely—in her opinion—excluded her to finally be over.

What was taking them so long? This was already supposed to have been settled.

She wasn’t accustomed to being kept out of things—at least, not deliberately and knowingly left out.

The fact that Channing Hurston had lied to her had left her incredibly shell-shocked. She was still trying, in her own way, to recover.

And to regain her ability to trust people. He’d robbed her of that, as well.

Prior to that miserable day, she had gone about her life, blissful in her ignorance that anything was wrong. She had just assumed that Channing, the blond, handsome, Ivy League young man whom she had known forever and had been her escort since before her debutant ball, would someday be her husband and the father of her children. It was just the way things were supposed to be.

Until the day he’d told her that he was marrying Cynthia Hayes.

What a surprise that had turned out to be, she thought bitterly. Cynthia Hayes. The unimaginative dolt couldn’t even pick a woman with initials that were different from his own.

She could just see it all now. Channing and Cynthia would have bland, bland children and a bland, bland existence, hobnobbing with equally bland people and calling it life.

Or some dull facsimile thereof.

It wasn’t that Channing had broken her heart with his sudden, unexpected about-face. She’d never been wildly in love with him. What she had been in love with, quite honestly, was the idea of living happily ever after with a Prince Charming type. And Channing Hurston, somewhat empty-headed though he was, had filled that bill. But she wasn’t devastated by this unforeseen turn of events.

What she was, she willingly admitted, if only to herself, was humiliated.

It was humiliating to be so publicly dumped. In the circles she traveled in, nothing was ever private, everything happened before some sort of an audience, no matter how small at the time. And word always spread—especially when it was embarrassing.

After suffering such a humiliation, she couldn’t seem to keep her mind on her studies—so she’d quit college. There seemed to be no point in getting a degree she never intended to use. Her parents, instead of being sympathetic and understanding, announced that they intended to ship her off, sending her from one set of relatives to another because they wanted her to “apply” herself.

They wanted her to “focus.”

Just what did they think she was, a digital camera?

The whole idea was absurd. She didn’t need focus—she was a Fortune. Which meant she had one. Well, okay, not exactly her own private fortune, but the family had money, which, in turn, meant that she had money.

And, since she did, why did she need to focus herself and work?

Wendy sighed, frustrated.

Still, she supposed she was better off here, in Red Rock, Texas, than back in Atlanta, where everyone would be talking about Channing and Cynthia’s upcoming wedding. And how Channing had dumped that poor little rich girl, Wendy Fortune.

There would be no escaping that kind of talk if she was back home right now.

Still, her parents could have let her go on that world cruise, or sent her off to spend a season in Europe. Paris, perhaps.

Yes, Paris, she decided, warming up to the idea. Paris, where she could buy the latest fashions and arrive back home just in time to attend the wedding. Dressed to the nines to let Channing—and the rest of their society crowd—see that he had settled for second best.

But instead of Paris, she was here, in Red Rock, for God’s sake. Who names their town after a colored stone?

Wendy set her mouth hard. Her parents were decent people who meant well, she supposed, but they just didn’t have a clue when it came to the needs of someone with her tastes and sensibilities.

How was she supposed to educate them when she was stuck in this town by their decree?

Wendy abruptly terminated her silent complaints when she saw the tall, dark and gorgeous man the Mendozas were talking to look in her direction and beckon for her to join them.

She wasn’t exactly sure why, but for just a second, her breath caught in her throat. The next moment, she came into her own again. The little skip in her pulse was forgotten.

About time they called her over, she thought.

Wendy debated pretending that she hadn’t seen the younger Mendoza’s gesture in order to keep him waiting. She didn’t want the man thinking he could just snap his fingers and she would come running, no matter how incredibly sexy he looked.

With an inward sigh, Wendy slowly made her way over to the three people. As she drew closer, she nodded politely at the older couple.

“You want to see me?” Wendy asked the older pair brightly.

María decided to impress Marcos’s position upon Wendy’s young soul. “Marcos has decided to start you out as a waitress, dear.”

The idea terrified her. She hadn’t a clue how to wait tables. Were they pulling her leg?

“A waitress,” Wendy repeated, looking from one face to the next and then back again.

They had to be kidding, right? She wasn’t cut out for that kind of job. And it looked like Marcos Mendoza thought the same thing.

Well, she’d be damned if she let herself prove him right.

Unable to hold it in any longer, Marcos threw up his hands in complete exasperation. He leaned in closer to his aunt, whispering into her ear, “I told you this wasn’t going to work.”

But rather than finally agree, as he’d fully expected, María Mendoza patted his arm reassuringly with a look brimming with complete trust.

“And I told you, you just have to give it enough time, Marcos.”

Marcos frowned and shook his head. “I doubt there’s that much time in the universe,” he informed his aunt.

“Think of it as a challenge, then,” María coaxed softly. And firmly.

The look in the older woman’s eyes told him that his aunt wasn’t about to change her mind. He was stuck with this. Stuck with Little Miss The-World-Owes-Me-a-Living and there was no getting out of it, short of quitting. And he wasn’t about to cut off his nose to spite his face.

Marcos studied Wendy for a long moment. The young woman probably had no idea what it was like to be hungry, or to want something so badly you put aside every penny you earned in order to save up for it. Looking at her, he figured it was safe to say that she probably hadn’t known anything but instant gratification all her life.

The word gratification shimmered in his mind’s eye, suggesting other things, things that had nothing to do with Red. Gratification of a completely different variety.

Marcos shook off the thought and silently ordered himself to get back on track.

When he was at Red, nothing existed beyond its doors. And there was nothing more important than keeping the place running well and its patrons happy.

And if he had to bend Miss Rich-and-Doesn’t-Give-a-Damn into a pretzel to keep accomplishing that, then Marcos sincerely hoped for her sake that she was flexible because he intended to do just that.

“Come with me,” Marcos said crisply. “I’ll show you where your locker is and then we’ll see about getting you a uniform.”

Although, glancing at her up close and personal, he doubted whether a uniform that would fit the particular requirements of her figure was anywhere on the premises. He was going to have to put in a special order.

It was starting already.

Wendy fell into place beside him. “So I’m definitely going to be a waitress?”

“Yes,” he answered tersely, “You’re still going to be a waitress.”

But, with any luck, you won’t be one for long, he added silently, for once tapping into his rather limited supply of optimism.

Chapter Two

April

“Hell of a mess, isn’t it?” Andrew Fortune commented to his older brother, Jeremy, who was throwing a travel bag with a few essentials into the back of the car they were taking on their rather abbreviated road trip. It was a trip born of necessity, not pleasure.

Drew, Jeremy knew, was referring to the situation their entire family found themselves in. He laughed shortly, getting into the passenger seat.

“Hey, just because our last name’s Fortune doesn’t necessarily mean that the kind of fortune we’re going to run into is always going to be good.”

“I’d settle for half-good,” his newlywed brother said. “As a matter of fact, thinking back on things, I don’t know about you, but I’d settle for just some peace and quiet for a change.”

Drew was anxious to get started—and even more anxious to get back. He was also afraid that this trip might not turn out the way they hoped that it would.

“If that happened, you’d probably go stir crazy in a week,” Jeremy predicted with a short laugh. And then he grew serious. Their father was seventy-five. When last seen, he’d been in great shape. Maybe he still was. In any event, it wasn’t going to take two of them to bring him back. If that was their father the sheriff in Haggerty had found. “Listen, I can make this trip alone. You can stay behind and keep your blushing new bride company. You’ve only been married for a couple of months. These are the good times, or so they tell me. For all we know, this trip might just be a wild-goose chase. No need to drag you away.”

Drew wasn’t about to be swayed. “Deanna understands,” he assured Jeremy, referring to his wife. “She wants to see the old man back where he belongs as much as I do. As much as we all do,” he amended.

“You’ve got a good woman there,” Jeremy commended, then murmured under his breath, “And with any luck, so will I. Soon.”

Drew knew that Jeremy was referring to Kirsten Allen, the woman who had managed to wedge herself into his physician brother’s heart. They had recently gotten engaged. “Maybe you should be the one to stay here,” he suggested.

“You’re not getting rid of me that easily,” Jeremy told him. If this man they were going to check out turned out to be their missing father, they would most likely need a doctor, and that would be him.

“You ready?” Drew asked, his hand poised to turn the key in the ignition.

“Let’s go,” Jeremy gestured toward the open road.

The sheriff had responded to the missing person bulletin they had posted and said that he might have found their father in town. They’d almost given up hope when they’d found their father’s sedan, abandoned and smashed, so this was definitely a turn for the better.

“Think that homeless man really is Dad?” Jeremy did his best not to sound as nervous as he felt.

Drew hated getting his hopes up, but at the same time, he needed to be optimistic. “Sure looked like it might be from that photo the sheriff emailed. A lot less dapper and pretty disheveled, but that definitely looked like Dad’s face to me. Anyway, Lily’s sure it’s him,” he added, referring to the woman his father was supposed to have married the day he disappeared, leaving a churchful of confused and concerned people in his wake.

Formerly married to Ryan Fortune, their father’s cousin, the still exceedingly attractive Lily Cassidy Fortune had turned to William in her grief when her husband died of a brain tumor six years ago. Their friendship slowly blossomed into something more. But now the wedding was on hold—indefinitely.

Drew glanced at his older brother, looking for some insight. The sheriff had said that the homeless man was distraught, saying over and over again that he needed to find his baby. “What do you think all that talk about looking for his baby might mean?”

Jeremy hadn’t a clue, although, he reasoned, it might have something to do with his amnesia. Maybe the last thing William Fortune had seen before he lost his memory was the baby they had since discovered. A baby whose origins was shrouded in as much mystery as their father’s sudden disappearance.

“The only baby we’ve seen recently is the one that was found by the groundskeeper at the church around the same time Dad disappeared,” Jeremy commented. Currently, he and his fiancée, Kirsten, had temporary custody until the baby’s parents could be located. There was talk that one of the Fortune men might have fathered the child, but he couldn’t see how that actually connected to his father. Right now, there were far more questions floating around than answers.

Shaking his head, Jeremy laughed shortly. “Wouldn’t it be something if the baby turned out to be Dad’s?”

Drew frowned. “Don’t be an idiot, Jer. Dad’s a one-woman man and he picked Lily. There’s no way he would have fathered another woman’s baby.”

Jeremy inclined his head, conceding the point. But there was still a glaring question left. “So why did he disappear?”

“Hell if I know.” Out of town now, he stepped down on the accelerator, picking up speed. “When he gets his memory back, we’ll ask him.”

“If he gets him memory back,” Jeremy cautiously qualified.

Trust Jeremy to ground him in reality. “Yeah, there’s that, too,” Drew conceded. “For Lily’s sake, I hope this guy does turn out to be Dad and that his memory loss is just temporary.”

Amnesia was a tricky condition, and if William was in fact suffering from it, there was no knowing how long it would last—or if it would ever clear up.

“Amen to that.”

Drew gave him a long glance, surprised. “You turning religious on me, Jeremy?”

Jeremy’s shoulders rose and fell in a dismissive shrug. “Everyone needs a little help every now and then,” he allowed. “In our family’s case, I think we could stand to use an extra dose of it.”

This is more like it. Wendy wove her way around the tables, heading toward the ones that comprised her station. Working at Red had turned out to be a far better fit for her than she’d initially expected.

Her parents had first sent her to work at the Fortune Foundation, located right here in Red Rock. It had taken her only a couple of weeks to discover that she was psychologically allergic to claustrophobic-size offices. She felt too confined, too hemmed in. She just didn’t belong in a nine-to-five job inside a building whose windows didn’t open.

Granted, out here in the spacious dining area there weren’t any windows to speak of, either, but the windows in the front of the restaurant kept the space bright and airy as did the ones in Marcos’s office.

That room was actually smaller than her office at the Foundation, but somehow, it still felt a lot more airy.

That probably had something to do with the man in it.

If the word gorgeous in the dictionary had a photo next to it, she had no doubts that it would be Marcos’s.

Especially if he was smiling.

She’d seen Marcos smiling—not at her, of course. For some reason, she only seemed to elicit frowns from the man whenever he turned his attention to her. But when he was mingling with Red’s patrons, he always had a wide, sexier-than-sin smile on his lips.

Despite the hectic pace during business hours, she’d managed to observe him with the customers—in particular the female patrons—and Marcos was nothing if not charismatic. He even smiled at the kitchen help and some of the other staff.

Smiled, she thought, at everyone but her.

Boss or not, she was determined to find out what it was about her that seemed to coax those dour looks from him.

Wendy wasn’t used to a man deliberately scowling at her instead of going out of his way to curry her favor and approval. All of her life she’d been the recipient of admiring looks, wide grins, broad winks and a great deal of fawning.

A lot more fawning than she actually cared for. But that was predominantly because she was her father’s daughter and the fawning person usually thought that he could flatter her into getting an audience with the famous Fortune.

As if, she thought with a toss of her head that managed to loosen her bound-up hair a little.

Wendy paused and sighed. That was the part she didn’t care for. She liked having her hair loose, flowing. But those were the rules. Customers, Marcos had told her when he’d handed her a barrette, didn’t like finding hair in their meals.

When she’d asked, “Even if it’s mine?” it had been meant as a joke, but Marcos had snapped no at her, and the look in his eyes told her that he thought she was genuinely a few cards short of an actual deck.

Obviously when God had given the man an extra dose of sexiness, He had subtracted any and all fragments of humor. From their interactions, she’d come away with the feeling that Marcos Mendoza was born without a funny bone.

Too bad, because, aside from that, the man was practically perfect in every way. But he fell short of the mark to ever have a serious chance at entering her daydreams.

A man without a sense of humor was like a day without sunshine. Not really too pleasant.

Reaching her station, Wendy smiled warmly at the people the hostess had just seated. After working here for a little more than a month, she was beginning to recognize familiar faces and learn their names.

This particular table seated six and each chair was filled by a virile, rugged-looking wrangler who appeared as if he’d ridden up to the restaurant’s doors on a horse rather the extra-wide truck that was now parked in the front lot.

Her brown eyes traveled from one member of the group to another, silently greeting them even before she said, “Hi, boys, what’ll it be?”

The tallest of the men held his unopened menu before him, his eyes slowly drifting over the length of her torso. “Dunno about my friends, but I’m suddenly in the mood for a little Georgia peach,” he told her.

Word must have gotten around that she was from Atlanta. Either that, she thought, or her accent gave her away. In any case, this certainly wasn’t the first time she’d been hit on, although it was the first time she’d been hit on at Red.

Unfazed, Wendy’s eyes sparkled as she laughed. “Sorry, but that’s not on the menu.”

“Wasn’t thinking of having it here,” the wrangler answered. His grin grew wider. “What are you doing later, after you get off?”

“Not being with you,” Wendy answered, her smile just as wide, her tone just as friendly as it had been before. But there was no mistaking the fact that she had no intention of getting together with the insistent patron.

“Looks like the little lady’s got your number, Dave,” one of his friends hooted, tickled. “She’s a feisty one, this one.” There was admiration in the other man’s voice.

Dave, apparently, wasn’t quite ready to give up just yet.

“You sure?” he asked, catching Wendy by the wrist to draw her attention away from the others at the table and back to him. “You really don’t know what you’re missing out on.”

“Guess that’ll just have to be my loss,” Wendy replied, fisting her hand as she began to yank her wrist free.

“C’mon, Dave, settle down,” another one of his tablemates urged.

Before anyone else could chime in, Wendy suddenly found herself being physically moved aside and manually separated from the overzealous cowboy. To her surprise, Marcos had placed himself between them, facing the amorous customer. His rigid posture told her he was none too happy about this situation, even before she heard his voice.

“Is there some kind of problem here?” Marcos asked the man, keeping his voice even and the edge of his anger visible but under wraps.

“No, no problem,” the cowboy assured him, raising his hands up in the universal symbol indicating complete surrender.