Stand-In Bride

“But Cody is such an adorable little boy,” Julia murmured. She’d seen pictures of Jane’s six-year-old son.

“And my brother Kyle’s little girl, Caitlyn, is an adorable child, too. That doesn’t mean Mother wants to be Cody’s and Caitlyn’s—or anybody’s—grandmother.”

“Sheila Fortune isn’t exactly my idea of a grandmother,” Julia admitted quietly.

“She isn’t anyone’s idea of a grandmother, hers included. However, she does believe in carrying out what she calls her ‘maternal duty,’ and that included sending a picture of me to the magazine. Naturally, there is always an element of self-interest in Sheila’s maternal actions. For example, if that list happened to net me an heiress, I’m certain Mother would arrive at my door, demanding her cut.”

Julia’s lips quirked. “Sort of a finder’s fee.”

“Exactly.” Michael actually smiled—for a split second or two. Then he sighed heavily. “I just want all of this to be over. I’m sick and tired of feeling trapped. I want my privacy back. I want my life back!”

“The magazine comes out weekly, and a new issue will be on the stands in a couple of days,” Julia commented, her voice soothing. “I think you can expect the level of interest to drop then.”

“I hope you’re right,” Michael muttered, stepping deftly around a bulging sack. “Call maintainence and have them dispose of all these bags immediately. And instruct the mail room to stop using this office as a dumping ground. From now on, any superfluous correspondence addressed to me is to be taken directly to the garbage.” He retreated into his office, slamming the door behind him.

He’d begun slamming doors three days ago. Julia sank back in her chair, oddly unsettled by the long personal conversation she’d had with her boss.

It was apparent that this bachelors-list business was really taking its toll on him. The door-slamming, the personal revelations, even the brief flashes of dark humor—all were cracks in Michael’s previously impenetrable armor of control.

She thought of Denny and his cronies in the mail room, enjoying a vicarious thrill at the overwhelming attention that Michael found repugnant. A psychologist could have a field day analyzing the situation.

Maybe someday when she was a psychologist—Julia always thought when, never if—she would write a paper entitled “One Man’s Curse, Another Man’s Blessing,” exploring the topic in detail.

Someday. Julia allowed herself to daydream about the future for just a few moments—a future in which Joanna would be completely recovered. Though the doctors at the rehab center were cautious about Joanna’s prospective ability to attend college, Julia liked to picture her sister as a future student at the University of Minnesota, right here in town at the Twin Cities campus. Julia had earned her own undergraduate degree in psychology there and…had completed one year of graduate school, the first steps toward her goal of becoming a clinical psychologist and working with troubled children and adolescents. A goal Julia intended to achieve. Someday.

But she never lingered very long in the fantasy world of the future. She’d learned that it was far safer to live in the present than to dream of tomorrow. As a survivor of sudden devastating losses, she was well aware that everything could change in an instant, painfully and irrevocably altering one’s life in the most profound and unimaginable ways.

Her thoughts swung back to the past, and she silently thanked her mother for insisting that she take some courses at the local business school during her summer breaks from college. It had been hard at the time, working a forty-hour week to earn her next year’s tuition money while taking business courses. But it had been Julia’s office skills, not her degree in psychology, that had enabled her to land well-paying jobs, first at the Olson, Anderson & Lake Consulting Firm and now here at the Fortune Corporation.

The telephone rang, and Julia quickly answered it. Somehow an enterprising reporter had managed to slip through the receptionist’s call-screening and reach the desk of Michael Fortune’s executive assistant. She asked some intrusive and highly intimate questions about Michael’s sex life and responded to Julia’s terse “no comment” with snickers and not-so-sly innuendos.

Julia’s cheeks turned a ruby shade of red. “I repeat, no comment!” she said sternly and slammed down the phone. The action was oddly satisfying. No wonder Michael had taken to slamming doors.

Julia shared an apartment with three other young women— Jen, Debby and Kia, all students at the West Bank segment of the University of Minnesota, just west of the Mississippi River.

Kia, a graduate student in social work, shared a room with Julia; they’d lived together for the past two years. Jen and Debby, both drama majors in their senior year, had moved into the apartment in August and occupied the other bedroom. All four used the common areas—kitchen and living room.

Lamentably, there was only one bathroom. During her rare flights of fancy, Julia visualized having a bathroom that was hers alone. It seemed like the ultimate luxury.

The apartment was no worse and a lot better than many of the rental units available to upper-level students who didn’t live in university-owned dorms. The building wasn’t too old and the rent wasn’t too high. Split four ways, it was downright cheap for Julia, which was exactly what she wanted.

And needed. Almost all of her salary went to pay Joanna’s expenses at the rehabilitation center. Though Medicaid had paid for Joanna’s eleven-month hospitalization, coverage stopped when she was discharged from the hospital.

Had Joanna gone to a nursing home, the government would have picked up the tab, but Julia didn’t consider it, not even for a moment. She’d spent the long months after her sister’s accident researching facilities, and the rehabilitation hospital on the outskirts of town was superior in every way. There Joanna could receive the intensive specialized therapy she required to eventually lead an independent, productive life.

The alternative—the nursing home—provided custodial care only. Julia viewed placing Joanna there as giving up hope, of resigning her little sister to a life of institutional dependency.

So Julia had sold the Chandler family’s house, used the money to fund Joanna at the rehab center and had moved back into cheaper living quarters in the university section of the city.

Though she was only twenty-six, sometimes she felt decades older than her student neighbors. “Greek Week,” when the fraternities and sororities took over the neighborhood, had certainly lost its charm for her, especially when drunken serenades and contests went on till dawn and she had to get up for work by six.

But both the apartment and the neighborhood were quiet when Julia arrived home a few minutes before eight-thirty. She didn’t know where her roommates were. The four seldom socialized together, although Julia and Kia occasionally ran or biked together in the evenings or on weekends when their schedules coincided. There were a number of suitable trails and paths around the many lakes and criss-crossing parks throughout the city.

Julia gazed longingly out the window into the darkness, wishing Kia were around now. Julia could use a brisk run to work off the frustrations of the long day.

For a few minutes, she stood by the window and debated whether or not to go out alone. The weather was warm for early October, perfect for an evening run, but the darkness concerned her. What woman anywhere wasn’t aware of the dangers of being out alone at night?

But tonight she felt confined and resented the restrictions. Tonight she wanted to be free of both risks and precautions. Two years ago she’d taken a self-defense class at the Y, and the neighborhood was considered safe, she rationalized. There were people around at all hours, especially since she lived so near the theater district, home of an incredible number of productions staged by the university drama department.

Julia vaguely recalled Jen and Debby mentioning a play they were both working in, Jen as an actress and Debby as a “techie” behind the scenes. A light satire, they’d said, and it sounded entertaining. Julia made a mental note to ask them about the dates and times of the show.

She would go see it, if she ever got out of the office in time to make the first act. The way things were going now, she had her doubts. Just thinking about the long and dreadful day at work stressed her all over again.

The events played through her mind like a tape in a VCR. She only wished she could fast-forward certain nerve-jangling scenes. Like when the voice-mail system had crashed again due to an overload of lovelorn messages to Michael Fortune. The mishap had been followed by an angry visit from Jake Fortune himself.

Unfortunately, Michael had been in a meeting and unavailable, so Julia had been the hapless recipient of Jake’s fury. In a steely, formidable tone, Fortune’s boss-of-bosses had ordered her to pass along his vituperative message to Michael, even making her repeat it back to him word for word, to prove she’d gotten it right!

Her palms had been sweating after that encounter. It was bad enough to get chewed out by the CEO of the entire corporation, but to be expected to spread the vitriol to her boss was ulcer inducing. Julia had not delivered Jake’s message to Michael, and she’d spent the rest of the day worrying that her crime of omission would be detected by Jake Fortune. To her great relief, he hadn’t checked back to find out if she had or hadn’t followed his orders.

The day hadn’t improved as morning dragged into afternoon. The voice-mail system took longer than usual to fix, and by the time it was running smoothly, and an exasperated group of buyers from department stores around the country were able to contact the Fortune Corporation about new orders, everybody’s tempers were frayed.

Next came word that a vital shipment of ingredients from overseas had been delayed at the docks in New York, which meant an even longer wait on the production line. That meant dealing with frustrated supervisors in production who were not pleased with the ensuing delays, as well as relaying the bad news to stores that would not be receiving their Fortune products when expected.

Julia had placed the calls for Michael and received a number of tongue-lashings in true shoot-the-messenger fashion. She could only imagine the wrath they would have expended on Michael.

Finally, Kristina had arrived to complain about her latest fight with the head honchos in advertising, whom she claimed lacked vision and guts and were hopeless prudes in the bargain. Julia had ushered her into Michael’s office and hadn’t been privy to Kristina’s latest campaign to “definitively capture the youth market,” but from the raised voices radiating from Michael’s office and Kristina’s stormy exit, she’d guessed the meeting had not gone well.

Neither had the flurry of calls Julia then had to place to the advertising department. Cast in the hapless-messenger role once again, she had been snarled and snapped at by world-class snappers and snarlers.

And, of course, she could say nothing back to any of them. That wasn’t in her job description. She had to grit her teeth and swallow any retort, however appropriate. Her jaws ached from all that gritting.

Julia decided she definitely was going to run. She was wired and edgy, filled with tension that needed to be discharged. In the mood she was in, God help any potential attacker if he dared to attack her!

Shedding her prim office wear, she pulled on a pair of bright gold running shorts and a purple-and-gold University of Minnesota T-shirt, laced up her running shoes and stepped out into the balmy October night. A slight breeze rustled through the branches of the trees. She ran along the sidewalk, moving to the street whenever she encountered pedestrians. Fallen leaves, the first of many more to come, crackled under her feet. Their brilliant red, orange and yellow hues were already beginning to fade as they lay drying on the ground.

She had run a full mile before the tensions of the day began to slowly drain from her. She turned onto a well-lit path that followed the river and glanced at the dark, swiftly-flowing waters.

Julia found herself wondering if Michael was unwinding right now and if so, where and how. She knew he sometimes used the gym in the downtown City Club, and he’d been known to enjoy beating his brother Kyle at racquetball.

But Kyle wasn’t living in Minneapolis anymore, he was at his ranch in Wyoming with his wife and daughter, so there would be no more friendly games on the racquetball court to help alleviate Michael’s stress. And the City Club gym closed at eight o’clock.

Of course, there were other ways to alleviate tension, other kinds of physical activity that didn’t involve leaving the bedroom. Julia felt heat suffuse her skin and knew it wasn’t completely due to the exertion of running.

She didn’t want to think of Michael and sex, but it was hard not to, considering the fact that hundreds of women had been innundating him with offers of sex all week long.

And he had spurned them all.

It wasn’t that he was bent on leading a life of celibacy. Julia knew very well that her boss had women companions from time to time. She ought to know; she was the one who made the dinner and theater reservations in the city and the travel arrangements when the couple took the occasional getaway weekend. She was the one who ordered the flowers to be sent—always roses; Michael was not cheap when it came to florist bills. She was also the one who either put through or refused to put through calls from his lady friend of the moment, depending on the instructions of Michael Fortune himself.

During her tenure as his faithful assistant, Julia had learned quite a bit about the ABC’s of courtship, Michael Fortune style:

A. Michael favored what he called “serial monogamy.” He dated only one woman at a time and expected his chosen candidate to limit herself strictly to him during that period.

B. None of his relationships seemed to last very long. Julia attributed that to his strong antimarriage bias. An involvement with no chance of becoming permanent, or even serious, was doomed to be self-limiting and short-term.

C. Once Michael decided to end the relationship, it was truly over, no matter how his current partner might feel about the matter. If the woman happened to be the one to call it quits, he accepted her decision without ever trying to change her mind. He just didn’t care enough to bother.

Once, one of his exes, bitter over “being dumped just before I was going to dump him,” had given Julia an earful. “Michael Fortune has to be the one in control,” the woman had griped, while Julia maintained a discreet silence. “He demands that the power he holds as an executive in his office be extended to his personal life, and that makes him a lousy candidate for a romance. I’m sure it’s better to work for him than to be in love with him.”

Julia wholeheartedly agreed. Michael was a considerate, even thoughtful boss, but as a lover… She didn’t pursue that line of thought, steering clear of the dangers of an impossible romantic fantasy.

All those eager women in hot pursuit of Michael should’ve done the same, but they couldn’t have known that being placed on the magazine’s “most eligible” list would render him totally ineligible to them. Michael would never consent to being sought after. He had to be the one in charge of a relationship, which meant beginning it himself. He was the proud hunter, not the hunted.

As she ran, Julia passed a number of other joggers and several strolling couples as well. A great many people had opted for outdoor exercise tonight. When she saw a tall, very familiar masculine form running along the path toward her, she blinked in astonishment.

It couldn’t be! Her imagination was playing tricks on her.

She’d spent so many hours working with him and so many of her off-duty hours thinking about him that now she was conjuring up images of Michael Fortune.

Except that the dark-haired man in the blue running shorts and white T-shirt who was approaching her was no figment of her imagination.

It was Michael Fortune himself, and he looked as startled to see Julia as she was to see him.

Three

“Julia?” Michael stared at her as they met on the path.

He could hardly believe his eyes. This young woman, whose face was glowing with perspiration and whose clothes were damp with sweat, seemed the antithesis of the always impeccable, unruffled Julia Chandler whom he worked with day in and day out.

He had never seen the office Julia with a hair out of place, but right now strands of her brown hair were escaping from the confines of her usually tight French braid. She quickly, self-consciously, brushed them back with her hand.

His eyes followed her gesture, and he was suddenly struck by the sight of her small, perfectly shaped ears. Earrings in the shape of small golden balls pierced the dainty flesh of her earlobes.

Michael stared, more than a little disconcerted by his inability to tear his eyes away from her. After all, it wasn’t as if he’d never seen her ears before. Julia wore her hair in that braided style almost every day. But he had never noticed the pink, shell-shaped perfection of her ears. And if asked, he wouldn’t have known whether or not her lobes were pierced or if she ever wore earrings.

Nor did he have any prior recollection of how slender and graceful the curve of her neck was. Now, suddenly, he couldn’t stop looking at it.

Julia touched the side of her neck in a decidedly nervous gesture.

Michael frowned. Her anxiety was understandable; he was staring at her with the avidity of a hungry vampire! What on earth was the matter with him tonight?

He decided to blame that cursed list. Lately he blamed everything on the stresses of being hounded by all those avaricious Mrs. Mike Fortune wanna-bes.

“Hello, Michael.” Julia smiled uncertainly. Her pulse rate, accelerated by her running, continued to beat just as rapidly though she was standing still.

She recognized the encounter as a singularly odd and awkward one. Until now, she and her boss had never seen each other anywhere but their workplace. The protocol there was familiar and well-defined, but it didn’t seem to apply out here on the moonlit trail.

Their apparel tonight was stunningly different from their office clothes, too. In the fourteen months they’d worked together, she had never seen Michael in such decidedly brief attire.

The short sleeves of his T-shirt emphasized bare muscled arms that had always been concealed by his crisply starched shirts and custom-tailored suit jackets. Her eyes darted to a pair of hard, muscular thighs that had never been revealed beneath the trousers of his conservative suits.

Julia quickly averted her gaze. Her mouth felt dry. She wished she had brought along her portable water bottle, but until this very moment, she hadn’t given a thought to being thirsty.

“You’re out here running?” Michael said at last, as the silence stretched uncomfortably between them. He instantly mocked himself for his inanely obvious observation. No, she wasn’t out here running, on the running trail in running clothes, sweating from the exertion of running. She was waiting for a bus!

He felt like a fool, and it was not a pleasant sensation for a man who seldom made a mistake in any area. He wouldn’t blame Julia if she zinged him with a caustic response. Kristina would undoubtedly look at him, roll her eyes and say, “Duh!”

Being Julia, his diplomatic assistant, she merely smiled that pleasant, detached smile of hers and replied politely, “Yes. After today, I felt like I really needed the exercise to unwind.”

“Believe me, I know exactly how you feel!” Michael said, his relief heartfelt. The ice was broken. Julia’s remark had placed them back in their familiar Fortune Corporation roles.

By tacit agreement, they resumed their run, side by side and at a more leisurely pace. They discussed the horrors of the day, even managed a bit of gallows humor about the misfortunes at Fortune.

Julia actually found herself confessing that Jake Fortune had visited her office to vent his frustration about the voice-mail mess, though she refrained from repeating his irate message or even mentioning the fury he’d expressed toward his nephew and toward herself.

But Michael guessed. “Poor Julia. You got caught in the blitzkrieg meant for me, didn’t you? I hope you didn’t take it personally.”

“Oh no,” Julia assured him. “I would never take being called an idiotic sycophant personally.”

“He called you that?” Michael felt anger flare through him. “No matter how angry Jake was at me, there was no reason for him to verbally abuse you.”

“He was upset. I understood,” Julia said quickly.

She was on shaky ground here, discussing the CEO with her boss! The last place she wanted to be was in the crossfire of a Fortune-to-Fortune battle. She never should’ve mentioned Jake Fortune at all, but running with Michael under the relative cover of darkness had provided the illusion of confidentiality and companionability. Somehow the words had slipped out, as if she were talking to a friend from work instead of Michael Fortune, her employer.

She strove to rectify the situation. “In fact, until now, I’d forgotten all about that conversation with Mr. Fortune.”

“Now why don’t I believe you?” Michael arched his dark brows. “I know from experience that my uncle’s verbal jabs have a way of searing your brain like a brand, at least for a while. And if Jake called you an idiotic sycophant simply because you work for me, I can imagine the choice words he had to say about me. Are you going to tell me?”

She shook her head. “You don’t want to hear.”

“You’re right, I don’t.” Michael stared ahead at the starry expanse of the sky. “I’m not condoning his actions, but Uncle Jake has been under a tremendous amount of pressure since my grandmother’s death. Not only does he have to deal with losing his mother, but as you know, the reorganization at the company has caused stock values to fall. Jake feels responsible, and unfortunately, my father is more than willing to let him shoulder the blame alone.”

Julia nodded her understanding. Everybody who worked for the company knew that Nate Fortune was fiercely competitive with his older brother, Jake, and that the brothers’ relationship had long been strained as a result. Sadly, their mother’s death had driven them further apart, rather than bringing them closer in mourning.

The sudden death of Kate Fortune, the seventy-one-year-old matriarch, had impacted sharply on everybody connected to either the Fortune family or the company. In the public arena, Kate’s unexpected death and the subsequent reorganization of the company had caused stock prices to tip alarmingly, and privately, the Fortunes were devastated by their loss.

Julia had learned some of the details from newspapers, some from employee gossip and a few from the various Fortunes who passed through her office on their way to Michael’s.

She knew that Kate had been flying one of the family planes solo in Brazil when it crashed and burned in the rain forest. The charred remains of the wreckage had yielded one body, naturally presumed to be the pilot, Kate Fortune.

As someone intimately acquainted with the stunning grief resulting from sudden death, Julia understood exactly how the members of the Fortune family must’ve felt upon hearing that terrible news. How they still must be feeling as they struggled to reconcile themselves to life without Kate.

“I had the pleasure of meeting your grandmother several times when she came to your office,” Julia said quietly. “She was a delightful person, so warm and witty and dynamic. And what a memory she had! I think she knew the names of everybody who worked for the company, and she always had time to say something nice to us.”

“That was my grandmother, all right.” Michael smiled in reminiscence. “I, uh, I got the card you sent right after she…was lost. I appreciated the note you wrote, but I don’t think I ever thanked you for it.”