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A sly look crossed her face. “He’s definitely suave. But he has an edge about him, too. Just enough to keep a woman guessing. Without making him too complex, that is.”
Thom Nichols. Damn it! She was talking about that phony, two-timing womanizer who ate women for breakfast and spit their bones to his Doberman pinscher. But Mason could hardly express his opinion about the man to Sophie. He’d learned long ago that putting down a boyfriend was not the way to score points with a woman.
Clearing his throat, he asked, “Do you really think any man could be as perfect as you’re making this one out to be?”
The long sigh she released troubled Mason greatly. Even if he didn’t have a chance in a million with this woman, he’d hate to see her hurt by lothario Thom.
“Well, I think he’s perfect for me,” she reasoned. “And Valentine’s Day will be here in a couple of weeks. By then I plan to have Mr. Right exactly where I want him.”
She patted the side of her hip, but rather than envisioning Thom standing next to Sophie, Mason was visualizing himself at her side. And suddenly he was determined to make the image come true. She might be thinking of Thom as her Mr. Right, but Mason was going to do everything possible to make her see she was all wrong about the plastic marketing strategist. And that Mason was her real Mr. Right.
Placing the amethyst back on a neat stack of legal papers, Mason straightened away from the desk. “Well, it’s getting really late and I still have a few things to do at home before the morning gets here and everything starts over.”
“You should get yourself a maid,” Sophie suggested. “You’d be surprised by how much she’d ease your workload.”
Mason was thinking he’d much rather have a woman to warm his bed than a maid to clean his house. Preferably one with long brown hair, killer legs and a waist that would fit right between his two hands.
Grinning, he winked at her and started out of the cubicle. “No thanks,” he tossed over his shoulder. “I’ll just eat more spinach.”
* * *
“Have you lost your mind, Sophie? You, of all people, chasing after a man! I just don’t get it.”
She glared at her sister Olivia, who’d made herself comfortable in one of the matching wingchairs in the sitting area of Sophie’s enormous bedroom suite. Even though Olivia had recently moved into a place of her own, she often stopped by the Robinson estate to visit. Sophie had always admired her older sister and often sought her advice on personal matters. Only moments earlier, Sophie had confided her plans to snare Thom Nichols and much to her chagrin, Olivia had immediately exploded with protests.
“No. You wouldn’t understand,” Sophie said, trying to keep the bite of sarcasm from her voice. “You don’t have the same dreams that I do. You don’t care if you ever have a man in your life.”
Sighing, Olivia crossed her legs, as though talking sense to her younger sister was going to be a long, arduous endeavor. “We’re not talking about me, Sophie. This is about you. You making a fool of yourself by chasing after a man.”
Hadn’t their own mother made a fool of herself by living with a man who’d cheated on her for years? Sophie felt like flinging the nasty question at Olivia, but bit it back instead. It wasn’t her place to judge either of her parents for the artificial state of their marriage. For some reason Sophie couldn’t fathom, the two remained steadfastly together. Even so, the connection between her mother and father was about as warm as a trip to Antarctica. And Sophie was determined that she would never settle for such a cold relationship with a man.
“I’m not actually going to chase him,” Sophie corrected as she walked over to the double doors that opened to an enormous walk-in closet. “I’m just going to give him a little nudge—a reminder that I’m in the building and available.”
Olivia snorted. “Thom Nichols believes every woman in the building is available to him. I just don’t see the attraction you have for the man.”
Gasping, Sophie shot a look of disbelief at her sister. “Are you joking? He has to be the sexiest man alive! Well, at least in the state of Texas!”
“We live in a mighty big state, Sophie. Just how would you describe a sexy man? Would you know one if you saw one?”
Momentarily ignoring Olivia’s barbed questions, Sophie snatched several pieces of clothing from the closet and carried them over to a king-sized bed.
“Apparently you need a lesson in identifying a sexy hunk from the regular crowd,” Sophie told her. “He’s tall, dark haired, has a killer smile and walks with just enough swag to let a woman know he’s full of confidence.”
“Hmmp. You mean with just enough conceit to let us know he’s struck on himself.”
Sophie glanced over to see Olivia shaking her head with disgust. Her sister’s cynical attitude irked her and saddened her at the same time. With gently waving hair that was a much darker brown than Sophie’s and beautiful features to match, her older sister could attract any man she wanted, but so far she viewed men and marriage as something worse than a chronic disease.
“Why do you have to be so jaded?” Sophie asked. “I wish now I’d never told you about my plans to go after Thom. It’s obvious you don’t understand how I feel.”
With a rueful sigh, Olivia pushed herself out of the chair and walked over to Sophie. “You’re right, I don’t understand. So why don’t you tell me how you feel about Thom?”
In an effort to gauge her sister’s sincerity, Sophie looked into Olivia’s brown eyes that were incredibly similar to her own.
“Do you honestly want to know?” Sophie asked. “Or are you just patronizing me?”
“I honestly want to know.” She reached over and plucked a black knit dress from the pile of clothing on the bed. “I need to understand why a young, beautiful woman like you feels the need to change yourself just to snag a man. If you have to be someone you’re not in order to make him like you, then you’re deluding yourself that it will ever work.”
Deflated by Olivia’s negative viewpoint, Sophie sank onto the bed. “I’ve had my eye on him for a long time,” Sophie told her. “And the more I’ve watched him, the more I’m sure he was put on this earth to be my one true love.”
Olivia let out a loud, mocking groan, then immediately plopped a hand over her mouth. “Sorry. I couldn’t help it.”
Sophie turned her misty gaze on a far corner of the room and swallowed hard. Not one of her seven legitimate siblings believed she was mature enough to take on a serious relationship with a man, much less think about marriage or a family. They all viewed her as the baby, the one offspring of Charlotte and Gerald Robinson who had been so sheltered, it would take years for her to grow up and acquire a head full of wisdom. Sometimes she even wondered how she’d gotten her job at Robinson Tech. Was it because she was well trained for the job, or because her father was the boss?
“Sure. I know. It all sounds silly to you,” Sophie mumbled.
“Oh, Sophie, don’t be so defensive.” Easing down next to her, Olivia wrapped an arm around Sophie’s shoulders. “I’m sorry. It’s just that I don’t think you grasp yet what love is. And I don’t want you to get hurt while you’re learning.”
Blinking at the tears stinging her eyes, Sophie looked directly at her sister. “I’ll tell you one thing. I know what love isn’t,” she said in a brittle tone. “It isn’t like this sham between our parents! Furthermore, I’d stay a spinster for the rest of my life if it meant avoiding the sort of marriage our mother has endured over the years.”
“Sophie!” Olivia scolded. “How can you say that? Dad has given Mother and all of us kids anything and everything we could possibly want.”
“So in other words, you’re saying Mother stays with Dad because of his money and this.” Sophie waved her arm, indicating the spacious room with its extravagant furnishings. “This high-class lifestyle he can provide her.”
Frowning, Olivia tossed the black dress back onto the bed, then looked toward the door as though she feared their mother might walk in at any moment. “That’s an awful thing to say, Sophie!” she said in a hushed tone. “Mother stays with Dad because she loves him!”
“Really? How could that be when she and the whole world know that Dad has had numerous affairs? You’re telling me that love can actually exist under those conditions?”
“Of course I am,” Olivia insisted. “Why else would she stay if she didn’t love him?”
Sophie had been asking herself that very question for some time now, and the more she did, the more she considered the idea that their mother might be hiding something from the whole family. But since that was only speculation, she was hardly going to mention her suspicions to Olivia. And she definitely wasn’t going to comment about their father anymore tonight. In Olivia’s eyes, Gerald Robinson could do little wrong. She’d chosen to forgive and forget about his philandering. Probably because Olivia happened to be one of their father’s favorites and he doted on her even more than he did Sophie.
Instead she switched the conversation back to her dream man.
“Thom is handsome and dynamic,” Sophie told her. “And I plan to make him mine by Valentine’s Day.”
“Exactly what does your plan entail?”
Sophie walked over to the cheval mirror and twisted her hair into a loose knot atop her head. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to change who I am. I’m only going to tweak the outside a bit. Maybe some highlights in my hair or some new clothes. Some sexy knee-high boots might do the trick.”
“And when you do catch his attention? Then what?”
Sophie smiled confidently at Olivia’s image in the mirror. “Then he’ll begin to look at all of me. Not just the outside.”
With a rueful shake of her head, Olivia warned, “You are headed for disaster, my dear sister. Thom Nichols wants two things from a woman. Sex and money. He’s hardly interested in finding the love of a lifetime.”
Sophie’s lips pressed into an angry line as she turned to face her sister. “Go ahead and be cynical and negative. Do your best to make me look foolish just because I want a man to love and for him to love me!”
Olivia threw up her hands in a gesture of surrender. “I give up. I can see this is something you’re going to have to figure out for yourself. And far be it from me to ruin your quest for love.”
“You’ll see,” Sophie countered with conviction. “By Valentine’s Day I’m going to have my man.”
“I hope you do get the right man—for you, that is. And I hope by Valentine’s Day you’ll begin to see the whole picture. Presently, this crush you have on Thom is giving you tunnel vision.”
Sophie frowned with confusion. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“The only man you see in front of you is Thom. You might allow yourself to look around a bit. You might find out that Mr. Right is someone else.”
Sophie scoffed. “I’m not shopping for high heels. I know what I want when I see it. I don’t have to keep looking for another man. Thom is perfect for me.”
A wan smile on her face, Olivia leaned forward and kissed Sophie’s cheek. “It’s getting late. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
As Sophie watched her sister leave the bedroom, a tinge of sadness began to push her frustration aside. A few kind words of encouragement from Olivia would have been far nicer than a prediction of failure. She’d made it sound like Sophie didn’t have enough sense to differentiate between a skirt chaser and a gentleman.
Sighing, Sophie sank onto the edge of the bed and plucked a family photo from the nightstand. The framed image was one of the few pictures that included all her brothers and sisters. With their busy lives taking them in all directions her whole family wasn’t often together. But this particular photo had been taken at their parents’ twenty-fifth wedding anniversary and everyone, including Charlotte and Gerald, looked happy. Yet that had been eleven years ago, long before anyone knew about Gerald’s hidden identity or his affairs.
A year ago, her older brother, Ben, had been instrumental in uncovering the truth. Their forceful father, one of the most famous tech moguls in the world, wasn’t really Gerald Robinson. He was Jerome Fortune, a member of the famous Fortune family. As if that wasn’t enough of a stunner, during the investigation, Ben had found a thirty-three-year-old illegitimate son of Gerald’s named Keaton Whitfield living in London.
Since that time, their newly discovered half brother had moved to Austin and started building a rapport with all his siblings. Sophie had to admit she liked Keaton and didn’t begrudge his place in the family. Yet the whole revelation of her father’s other life had shaken her to the core.
All at once she’d had to accept the fact that her father had never been the man she’d believed him to be. And as for her mother, who could possibly know why Charlotte had hung around for all these years? It sure as heck wasn’t for love as Olivia had suggested.
Face it, Sophie, your parents are phonies and so are you! The only reason you have an important position at Robinson Tech, or anything else for that matter, is because of your name. It certainly hasn’t come from your brains, or beauty, or hard work. The sooner you realize the truth, the better off you’ll be.
Disgusted with the degrading voice in her head, she put the photo back and squeezed her eyes shut.
If her parents were shams, then their marriage was even more of a joke, Sophie miserably concluded. So what did that make their children? Mere symbols of a fake love? Moreover, what did it make Sophie?
Her lips pressed into a determined line, Sophie looked over at the clothes she’d tossed onto the bed. In one aspect, Olivia had been correct. The outside of her wasn’t nearly as important as the inside. Yes, she wanted to look just as attractive as her sisters and all the other beautiful women of Austin. But she also wanted everyone to see she was more than just the youngest child of a famous and wealthy family. And she was hardly a fool for wanting the same genuine sort of love that her siblings Ben, Wes, Graham, Rachel and Zoe had found, she thought.
By Valentine’s Day, Thom was going to see she was worthy of him. And then everything she’d ever wanted in her life was going to fall into place.
Chapter Two (#ulink_e85cedb5-163f-50bb-9893-dc0cddcd0b7d)
“They make a nice-looking couple. The office heartthrob and the boss’s daughter. Can you think of a more perfect pairing than that?”
“Yeah, about a million of them,” Mason muttered under his breath.
“What did you say?”
Mason forced his gaze away from Sophie and Thom, who were sitting together at the far end of a long utility table. In the past year he could count on one hand the times he’d seen Thom taking midafternoon coffee in the second floor breakroom. Which could only mean that Sophie had gone to work on her plan and persuaded him to join her.
Mason looked over at the platinum-haired woman sitting next to him. Nadine had been working in the programming department for many years, long before Mason had ever taken a job at Robinson Tech. Divorced and somewhere in her forties, she pushed the envelope of the company’s dress code, but her flamboyant appearance belied her shrewd mind. Even though Mason had graduated in the top half of his college class, he didn’t possess half the knowledge about programming that Nadine held in that sassy head of hers.
“I said they’re all wrong for each other. Totally wrong.”
Nadine turned a frown on Mason. “You don’t say? How did you come to that conclusion?”
Mason squeezed the foam cup of cold coffee so hard it nearly collapsed in his hand. “It should be obvious,” he said. “Everyone in this building knows he’s a player.”
Nadine shrugged. “So? Maybe that doesn’t bother Sophie. Besides, when I called them a couple I didn’t mean it literally. Geez, Mason, lighten up. The two of them are merely having coffee together. Not discussing their marriage vows.”
If Nadine had heard Sophie talking last night about snaring Mr. Right, she wouldn’t be making light of the situation. Couldn’t Nadine see how Sophie was leaning her head toward Thom’s and smiling at him like he was the last male on earth? It was more than obvious that she was on a serious mission to catch Thom Nichols. And what was even clearer was that Mason couldn’t just sit around and watch himself lose the lady of his dreams to a no-good womanizer.
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Mason muttered as he studied Sophie from the corner of his eye. Today she was wearing a short black dress that resembled a sweater. The fabric outlined her petite curves while black suede boots with chunky heels fit snugly around her shapely calves. A pink-and-black printed scarf hung around her neck, as did dangling jet bead earrings. She looked more than lovely, he decided. She looked downright sexy. And the fact that it was Thom who, at the moment, was receiving her undivided attention clawed jealously at Mason.
“Why, Mason Montgomery, I do believe I hear a green streak in your voice,” Nadine declared. “Are you interested in Sophie Robinson?”
“Fortune Robinson,” he corrected. “Remember? The family discovered they’re actually a part of Kate Fortune’s bunch. You know—the famous cosmetic heiress.”
Nadine nodded. “I remember about a year ago when the news came out about Gerald. But I keep forgetting about the kids tacking on the Fortune name.” Pausing, she clicked her tongue. “Poor little Sophie. She’s such a sweet girl. It must’ve been hard on her—learning all that scandalous stuff about her father.”
Mason could hardly imagine how it would feel to learn your father was actually someone you never knew. His own dad was a hard working pipeline technician for a gas and oil company in San Antonio. Hadley Montgomery had always been a strong anchor for Mason and his two older brothers. Finding out he’d had a secret life would shake the very ground Mason walked on.
“I imagine Sophie and her siblings have tried to keep a stiff upper lip through all of it,” Mason replied. “After all, they can’t help what their father has done.”
Mason suddenly heard Sophie’s light laugh at the far end of the table. The happy sound cut straight through him and he wondered if he was destined to become a fool over women. It hadn’t been that long ago that Melody had broken his heart by deserting him for another man. He was an idiot for thinking things could be different with Sophie. She was already so besotted with Thom Nichols it was like she was wearing blinders.
Nadine’s shrewd chuckle momentarily distracted him. “Well, the revelation about Gerald most likely made all the siblings richer than they were already. Can you imagine how it must feel to have that sort of wealth? They’ll never have to worry about paying a utility bill or wondering if they can afford to eat more than macaroni and cheese for supper.”
Along with her crush on Thom Nichols, Sophie’s wealth was one more wall standing between them. But Mason was determined to knock down those obstacles and clear the path for a chance with her.
“Sophie might be filthy rich, but she’s not a snob. She works very hard.”
Nadine shot him an impish smile. “How would you know? I never see you cross the hall to HR. You always have your head buried in your own work.”
If Mason explained to Nadine that he often spotted Sophie working late at night, then he’d also be admitting he had a habit of staying long after quitting time, too. And Nadine might misconstrue things and get the idea that Mason put in overtime just for a chance to see Sophie alone. Which was completely untrue. Until last night, he thought sheepishly.
“For your information,” Mason said matter-of-factly, “the state bird of Texas is the mockingbird and we have plenty of them flying around the building. They tell me lots of things.”
“Pertaining to Sophie, I presume.” Nadine picked up her smartphone and pretended to swipe. “I’m going to find the best psychiatrist in the city of Austin. Hopefully a doctor can help you with this bird disorder you’ve developed.”
Shaking his head, Mason shoved back his chair. “My coffee is cold. I’m going back to work. Are you ready?”
Groaning, Nadine ran a hand through her wispy blonde hair and glanced around the room. “Sure, I’m ready. There’s no men around here giving me the goo-goo eye anyway.”
Mason smirked. “If a man was, you’d promptly tell him to go stick his head in a garbage can.”
Nadine laughed. “Not if he was the right man.”
Mr. Right. Mason was sick of hearing that term and even sicker of picturing Thom Nichols as the definition.
He rose to his feet and started to follow Nadine out of the breakroom, when behind them, Sophie suddenly called out to him.
“Here’s your chance,” Nadine whispered. “Better go say hello. I’ll see you later.”
Feeling like a nervous teenager, but trying to be cool, Mason walked to the end of the table where his dream lady and Mr. Heartthrob were chatting as though they’d been friends forever. To say this was a fast turn of events would be putting it mildly.
“Hi, Mason!” she said cheerfully. “I saw you leaving and wanted to say hello before you got away.”
