Mail-Order Cinderella

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Three

Julie had never flown in an airplane. As she stood on the sunbaked tarmac Friday afternoon, staring doubtfully at the Fortune family’s private jet, she decided the expense of flying wasn’t the only good reason for keeping one’s feet on the ground. To her dismay, the plane was so small it looked almost like a toy. This seemed a risky means of introducing herself to air travel.

But the flight was deliciously smooth, and it wasn’t long before she sank comfortably into the rich leather seat the pilot had shown her to and released herself to drifting through billowy white clouds into a blue sky so clear and shockingly lovely she couldn’t help sighing. Julie found herself thinking of Tyler.

She remembered the finely drawn muscles visible in the backs of his hands as he’d laid them over hers. The corded line of his throat had risen above his crisp shirt collar. The rest of his body, she imagined, would be just as strong and lean and hard. Envisioning him without his clothes sent delicious chills through her. Her cheeks radiated heat as the plane began its descent.

“Get a grip,” Julie whispered to herself.

But in her heart, she knew that was impossible. She was being swept along on an exhilarating adventure, and she had no idea what to do except to let whatever might happen, happen.

This won’t last long, she reassured herself. You might as well enjoy yourself. Tyler or his parents would soon realize how terribly wrong she was for him. The Fortunes would pack her off to Houston by the end of the weekend, and that would be that.

But at least she’d have some pretty memories, if their evening at Van Gogh’s was a taste of what was in store for her. Maybe fate had intended Tyler as a gift to last her a lifetime? A taste of romance. A memory to make her simple existence bearable. Maybe she should stop being afraid and just accept the weekend for what it was, pure fantasy.

When Julie stepped off the plane, she looked around the lonely airstrip for Tyler, her heart pounding in her chest, but he wasn’t there. Instead, a short, middle-aged man wearing work clothes approached her. He smiled and held out a hand.

“Miss Parker? I’m Joe Dan White. I work for Mr. Fortune. He’s sent me to fetch you.”

“Oh,” she said, feeling vaguely disappointed. No expectations, she warned herself. If you have no dreams, you can’t feel cheated when they don’t come true.

They drove in a battered sport utility vehicle with a pile of blueprints bouncing on the seat between them. Joe Dan wasn’t a talkative man, but she didn’t mind the silence. If he’d asked her what she was doing in Pueblo, she couldn’t have given him an answer that made any sense.

Twenty minutes later, the truck stopped at a construction site beside a dusty silver trailer and Joe Dan jumped out of the cab. Julie hesitated before climbing down from the seat and took a moment to look around. Mountains rose on three sides, rough unforgiving crops of rock and scrub, but majestic in their own way.

“Mr. Fortune will be in the office over there,” Joe Dan said, nodding toward the trailer as he scooped the blueprints off the seat. “I have to drop these off with him. Come along, miss.”

It occurred to her that Tyler hadn’t explained who she was or why she was here. A second twinge of annoyance pinched at her. She set her shoulders and started toward the trailer.

But before Julie reached the metal steps, the door opened, and out stepped the man who had filled her mind for the past forty-eight hours. To her amazement, Tyler was even more striking in work clothes. Disturbingly so. His blue jeans molded smoothly around his lean hips and long legs. The top two pearl buttons of his western-style shirt were undone, and she could see a tuft of dark hair against a V of hard chest. Breathe, she told herself, feeling light-headed.

“How was your flight?” he asked, smiling down at her.

“Wonderful!” she blurted out. Suddenly, her annoyance with his lack of attention to her arrival seemed irrelevant. “The sky was so clear I was sure I could see California.”

Tyler combed the fingers of one hand through a healthy thatch of dark hair to move it off his forehead. He observed her conservative navy suit and pumps with concern.

“Is something wrong?” she asked.

“That outfit is going to pick up dust awful easy. I’d hoped to show you around town, a combination driving and walking tour. Did you bring anything more comfortable?”

Virtually all the clothes she owned were outfits suitable for the library, or for puttering around in her kitchen at home. Since she rarely went out socially, she didn’t need dress clothes or upscale casual wear.

“I do have a pair of flats with me and a pantsuit.”

“We’ll have to find you something more appropriate than that.”

She hoped he didn’t expect her to buy a new outfit for the weekend. She had only twenty dollars on her, in case of an emergency, and she didn’t want to blow her charge account any higher for clothing she wouldn’t be able to wear after the weekend.

“I need to speak to some of my men before I leave. You can wait in the office or come along.” He picked up a hard hat from a bench outside the trailer and offered it to her.

“I’d like to see the hospital,” she said quickly, accepting the brilliant-yellow shell and dropping it onto her head.

“Suit yourself.” He took a second hat for himself. “It will be difficult for you to imagine what the finished building will look like at this stage.”

But she could imagine it so very easily. As they walked past a huge billboard stating that this was the Fortune Memorial Children’s Hospital, she eyed the artist’s rendition of the completed structure. A fountain and trees were enclosed by a circular drive in front of a central tower. Off one end was a fenced playground, and to the rear an emergency entrance for ambulances. The highest point of the structure was fifteen floors and the whole of it rose out of the desert like an enormous flowering cactus.

“It’s going to be wonderful,” she murmured appreciatively.

“I sure hope so.” Tyler shook his head, thinking how far they’d come, yet how much further they had to go. “There are times I’ve worried it would never come together. But we’re getting there, slowly.”

“It must be wonderful, building a dream from the ground up. Making something out of nothing but hope.”

The pure enthusiasm in her voice forced Tyler to look at her. Julie’s eyes sparkled and her face glowed. That was how he felt on a good day. But those hadn’t come often enough since Mike Dodd’s death.

“My dad’s favorite part of putting up a new building is breaking ground,” Tyler murmured. “He says he feels something mystical when the first shovel of dirt is lifted. But I like this part—building the frame that shapes and supports the whole thing.” He pointed. “We intentionally move some parts along more quickly. We’re putting some glass into the lower floors of the west wing this week. It helps people visualize how it will turn out.”

She smiled up at him. “That’s nice, to think of folks that way.”

“We have practical reasons, too,” he said solemnly. “As important as this project is to the children of the region, we’ve had to fight to get it approved.”

And Tyler Fortune was clearly a fighter. She could see his determination and courage sketched in the strong slashes of cheek and jawbone and the firm line of his lips. Astride a pinto, a lance raised in one hand, reins in the other, he’d have been a warrior worthy of any opponent.

Which brought to mind the question of how she might hope to survive the partnership he proposed. He’d suggested a simple business relationship. That was what she’d envisioned, too. But that was before she’d met Tyler. The husband she had been looking for was a quiet, undemanding man whose personality matched hers. Tyler was used to getting his way, and he was anything but retiring.

On the other hand, if he was serious about his proposition, and if she didn’t take the risk now…she’d probably never have another chance at marriage or an honest-to-goodness adventure.

Tyler walked away from her to speak with several of his crew. Julie weighed her options while she pretended to study the sketch of the hospital. When he returned, nodding toward the trailer to indicate they could leave now, she stopped him with a timid touch on his forearm.

“What?”

“You’re really serious about doing this—marrying me?”

“I wouldn’t have asked you to come out here if I wasn’t.”

She sighed. “Tyler, you live in the center of an empire.” He snorted and opened his mouth to object, but she held up a hand. “No, listen. Maybe that’s not the right word, but this place, your employees, the children who will come here and your family—they all have a lot at stake in you. When you marry, you have to consider everyone, particularly your parents. It won’t take them long to figure out I’m not part of their social network. You’re using me to ensure your inheritance. They’ll suspect I’m after your money. They’ll hate me.”

“Are you?”

“Am I what?”

He grinned. “After my money?”

Her mouth dropped open. Being with a man who said exactly what was on his mind took some getting used to. She forced herself to meet his steady gaze. “No. All I want is a family. I was ready to accept any decent, hardworking man.”

“Then you’re not after my body either?” His smile barely lifted the corners of his mouth.

He was teasing her, and she bridled. “Sex is overrated.”

Now he looked intrigued, challenged. And that was far worse. That was dangerous. “Really,” he drawled. “And you’ve made an in-depth study of the topic, Miss Parker?”

Julie shifted from one foot to the other then back to the first. She looked away from him, unable to meet his wolfish gray eyes. “I—I don’t know how we got on to this subject,” she stammered, hoping none of his crew was close enough to hear their words.

“Forgive me, but I tend to connect the two—marriage and intimate relations. If we’re going to live together it’s only right that I give up dating other women. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“Well, I—”

“In which case, I’d say that you, as my legal wife, will have an obligation—” He lifted one dark brow heavy with meaning “—to satisfy me.”

Her throat was suddenly so parched she couldn’t get a word out for several seconds.

“I, um…I thought we agreed that intimacy would be necessary to create our family, but we wouldn’t sleep together otherwise.”

“I don’t believe I agreed to any such thing,” he said calmly, watching her with an intensity that unnerved her even more.

“And I don’t believe I mentioned at any time playing the role of your…your love slave!” she exclaimed.

He laughed gustily and long, and kept on laughing until he had to wipe tears from his eyes. Several burly men nearby turned to watch them. Julie felt her cheeks flush with heat. “Well, it sounds as if that’s what you expect,” she hissed at him, and spun toward the trailer.

“Slave. Love slave…” He couldn’t stop the aftershocks of chuckles as he followed her. “Is that how you view your role in a relationship with a man? You’d be expected to do unpleasant things to please him as a price for being given children?”

She squeezed her eyes shut, still walking. “Please don’t make a scene.”

“Make a scene?”

Julie felt close to tears. Her head felt so clogged with confusing emotions, she couldn’t think straight. All she knew was that she wanted to escape from Tyler Fortune and the feelings he churned up inside her.

“I think,” Tyler said in a firm voice, “we had better get a few things straight before either of us makes a decision about this arrangement.” He took her firmly by the arm and pulled her the rest of the way across the raw stretch of ground and up the metal steps.

Tyler had no clue what he’d do or say once he got Julie out of sight of his obviously amused crew. Did this woman expect him to marry her but live the life of a celibate? On the one hand he couldn’t help feeling sorry for her, as naive as she was. On the other, he didn’t feel sorry enough to let her dictate a passionless future for him.

“The only way this might…just might work,” he said, and forced himself to release her, “is if we’re honest with each other. Completely honest. Can you agree to that much?”

She nodded meekly.

“Good, that’s a beginning.” Tyler paced the narrow office while she stood trembling near the door, her eyes darting wistfully toward it as he spoke.

“I’ll start,” he said, then took a long breath. “My personal choice would be to remain single. Seeing as that’s not possible, I’m dealing with the situation. The problem is, I take marriage seriously. If I didn’t, I could marry anyone, work my twelve-hour days, sleep with other women and hardly ever have to see Mrs. Tyler Fortune.”

“I see,” she murmured, her eyes enormous.

“But that’s not me, Julie. I know I’ll have to make some sacrifices—spend a little less time on the job to be with my kids and treat the woman I marry honorably. I couldn’t do otherwise. Understand so far?”

She nodded, allowing him a faint smile.

Now came the hard part, the part that might send her scurrying out the door and out of his life. The part he hadn’t intended to tell her. “I didn’t choose you randomly from Soulmate’s videotapes. I saw something in you I felt I could live with, a quality of womanhood that appealed to me.”