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“Why should we respond at all? We certainly don’t want people thinking that whatever this woman posts online is true.”
Marty’s gaze had been ping-ponging back and forth between them. Ford narrowed his gaze at the other man, giving him a why-are-you-still-here look. Before Marty could respond to the unspoken question. Jonathon ushered both Casey and Marty out with such practiced ease, she couldn’t help wondering if he and Ford had orchestrated the move.
“Wow,” she murmured. “I’m impressed. Normally it’s impossible to get Marty out of my office when he’s got a bone to pick.” She gestured between Ford and the door through which Jonathon had just vanished. “Did you guys plan out that two-pronged approach? Not that I mind. If we have to talk about that blog, I’d much rather do it without an audience.”
“Damn right we have to talk about that blog. Was she right? Are you pregnant?”
“Does it matter?” Kitty countered smoothly.
Her lack of denial was all the confirmation he needed. Ford gritted his teeth against the questions he wanted to throw at her. As prickly as she was, it wouldn’t take much to push her into a full-fledged argument.
“I’d prefer a quiet wedding, but I’ll leave that up to you. We should—”
She spun to face him. “We’re not getting married.”
“Of course, we’re getting married.” A hard note crept into his voice. “I’m not going to desert my family.”
For a long moment, she seemed to be considering him. Then she patted her belly with exaggerated care. “Well, lucky for you, this baby and I aren’t your family.”
Kitty stood there, one hand propped on her hip, chin up, all defiant bravado.
“You’re saying it’s not mine?”
“I’m not saying it isn’t yours. It isn’t yours.”
“But you are pregnant?”
Her chin inched up a notch. “What I am is none of your business. Not your burden. Not your problem.”
“You couldn’t be more than a couple of months pregnant,” he pointed out.
“What’s your point?”
“The timing is perfect for me to be the father.”
She quirked an eyebrow, her expression full of arrogance. “What, you think I came back from Texas so satisfied that I couldn’t even imagine being with another man?”
“I suppose I would like to think that. But the truth is, you’re not the type to sleep around.”
“Oh, really?” she asked, her voice brimming with challenge. “And you’re such an expert on me? How long have you known me, Ford, really? A week? It’s less than that, isn’t it? The truth is, you have no idea what I’m capable of.”
If she was lying, she did a damn good job of it. There wasn’t so much as a sputter of doubt in her eyes to give her away.
He waited for the surge of relief. Pregnant or not, she was letting him off the hook. All he had to do was take her at her word and walk away.
He studied her standing there, taking in the defiant bump of her chin, the blazing independence in her eyes. She was dressed in slim-legged pants and a fuzzy sweater that made her look touchable. But that was the only hint of softness about her, otherwise she was all hard angles and bristly defenses.
Kitty was pregnant. There was a baby growing inside her belly. A tiny life. Maybe his. Maybe not.
But his gut said it was his. Every possessive, primitive cell in his body screamed that her child must be his.
Of course, that didn’t mean it was. “You’re right,” he said finally. “I don’t know you well, but I’m a good judge of character. I know you well enough to know you’re capable of lying to get what you want. The only thing I don’t know is what it is you want.”
She squared her shoulders and met his gaze. “What I want is to save Biedermann’s. If FMJ can do that, then we’ll have a deal. If not, I’ll find someone else who can.”
“Are you sure you don’t want Marty here?” Ford asked as he sat down at the conference table. “He is your CFO.”
“I’m sure.” They were working late, trying to get all the details of the acquisition hammered out before the press conference later in the week. Thanks to Suzy Snark, they needed to work much faster than they might have otherwise. Instead of sitting herself, she stood near the windows, staring out at the cityscape below. Marty made her so damn nervous. She’d asked Ford to set up this meeting between him, her and Jonathon precisely because she couldn’t ask the kinds of questions she needed to with Marty in the room.
Of course, Jonathon made her nervous, too, with his steady gaze and his brilliant head for numbers. He was exactly the kind of person who made her feel twitchy with fear. But Jonathon couldn’t be avoided. She no longer trusted herself to be alone with Ford.
Which was why she waited until Jonathon had settled into a chair at the conference table before speaking.
“If I’m going to hand my family’s company over to your tender care—” Kitty stressed the words tender care, letting them hear her doubts that their management of Biedermann’s was likely to be either tender or careful “—then I need assurances that you actually have a plan in place.”
Jonathon cleared his throat. “If you’ve read the proposal we sent, you’ll see your compensation package is—”
Ford interrupted him. “I don’t believe it’s her compensation package she’s worried about.”
She looked over her shoulder, surprised by his comment. He sat at the table, leaning back in his chair, one ankle propped up on the opposite knee. The posture was relaxed, but there was an intensity to his gaze that made her breath catch in her chest.
“Yes.” She forced fresh air into her lungs. “Exactly.”
Now, Ford sat forward, steepling his hands on the table before him. “Unless I’m mistaken, Kitty is the rare CEO who is less worried about what she’s going to get out of this settlement than how the company is going to be treated.” He pinned her with a stare that she felt all the way to her bones. “Am I right?”
In that instant, the intensity of his gaze laid her bare. All the artifice, all her defenses, the image she’d worked her whole life to build and maintain seemed to vanish like a whiff of smoke, leaving her with the disconcerting feeling that he could see straight through to her very soul.
“You are,” she said simply.
“I don’t understand.” Jonathon frowned, looking down at his laptop as if he expected it to sprout flowers. “Why did you ask to meet with us alone if you weren’t worried about your end of the deal?”
“I thought you’d be more honest in private.” Which was also true and was as good an excuse as any. “I don’t care how much money I walk away with. I don’t care what kind of golden parachutes you offer to the board members. I care about whether or not the stores themselves survive. When this is all over with, is there going to be a Biedermann’s in nearly every mall in America? Are there going to be any of them left?”
The question hung in the air between them. Since they seemed to be waiting for her to say something else, she continued.
“If FMJ gobbles us up, that may solve the immediate problem of our declining stock prices, but that’s only part of the problem.” She turned to Jonathon. “Our stock price wouldn’t be going down if we had strong retail performance. I want to know how you plan to improve that.”
She expected Jonathon to answer. After all, he was FMJ’s financial genius. However, it was Ford who spoke.
“You’re right. For too long, you’ve been relying on people shopping at your stores because they’re already at the mall. However—”
Ford broke off as his cell phone buzzed to life. Reaching into his pocket, he grimaced as he pulled out the phone. “Sorry.”
He turned off the volume on the phone, but left it sitting on the conference table by his elbow. “It’s not enough …”
Even though he continued talking, her attention wandered for a second. She’d seen the name displayed on the phone when it rang. Patrice. What were the names of his sisters? Chelsea, Beatrice and … some-thing else. Certainly not Patrice, though.
Not that it mattered in the least. He probably had the numbers of dozens of women stored in his phone. Hundreds maybe. It wasn’t her business.
She forced her attention back to his words.
“We don’t want shoppers to stop in at Biedermann’s because they’re at the mall. We want to attract them to the mall because there’s a Biedermann’s there. We need Biedermann’s to provide them with services and products that they can’t get anywhere else.”
“We have strong brand recognition,” she protested. “We offer more styles of engagement rings than any other store.”
“But engagement rings are a one-time purchase. You need something that will bring customers back again and again.”
The phone by his elbow began to vibrate silently. Again she glanced down. This time the name display read Suz.
“You can answer it if you need to,” she said.
He frowned as the phone stopped vibrating and the call rolled over to voice mail. “I don’t.”
“Are you sure? Second call in just a few minutes.”
Jonathon was scowling, clearly annoyed. He quirked an eyebrow in silent condemnation when the phone started vibrating again a few seconds later. Rosa this time.
Was that the third sister’s name? She couldn’t remember.
“Just answer it,” Jonathon snapped.
Frowning, Ford stood as he grabbed the phone. “Hey, miha. What’s up?” With a slight nod, he excused himself from the room.
For a long time, Kitty and Jonathon sat in silence, the tension taut between them. She suspected he didn’t like her any more than she liked him. With his frosty demeanor and calculating gaze, every time she glanced at him she half expected to see little dollar signs where his pupils were.
However, after a few minutes of drumming her nails against the armchair, her patience wore out. Or perhaps her curiosity got the better of her.
“Does he always get so many personal calls at work?”
Jonathon scowled, but she couldn’t tell if he was annoyed by the interruption or by her questions. “It’s after hours. But his family can be quite demanding.”
“Those were all family members?” Maybe she’d misremembered the names. Or perhaps misread them?
Jonathon’s scowl deepened. Ah, so he hadn’t meant to reveal that.
“I know he has three sisters, but—”
“If you’re curious about his family, you should really talk to Ford about it.”
And let him know she was scoping out his potential as a father? Not likely.
She met Jonathon’s gaze and smiled slowly. “The problem, Mr. Bagdon, is that whenever Ford and I are alone, we end up doing one of two things. Neither of them is conducive to talking about his family.”
Mr. Cold-As-Ice Jonathon didn’t stammer or blush. Instead, he held her gaze, his lips twisting in an expression that she might have imagined was amusement in a man less dour.
“Interesting,” he murmured.
“What?”
“You expected me to be either embarrassed or distracted by your honesty.”
“But you’re neither?” she asked. What was it with these guys from FMJ that none of them reacted the way normal men did?
“Certainly not enough to be tricked into telling you the information you’re fishing for.”
Well, if her motives were going to be so transparent, then she might as well be honest. “Very well, then. Let’s be frank. I am curious about Ford, but I don’t want to ask him about his family.”
“Because …” Jonathon prodded.
She smiled. “If there’s one thing you and I can both agree upon, it’s that the relationship between Ford and I is complicated enough as it is. Yes, I could talk to him about it, but I wasn’t merely being provocative with my earlier comment. Every time Ford and I are alone we’re either fighting or having sex. I don’t see any reason to add emotional confidences into an already volatile mix merely to satisfy my curiosity.”
Jonathon studied her for a moment, his expression as nonplussed as it always was. Finally he nodded. “Very well. What do you want to know?”
What didn’t she want to know might have been a better question. Ford seemed such a dichotomy. She thought of the easygoing charmer she’d met back in that bar in Texas. He’d seemed such a simple man. Not stupid by any means, but uncomplicated. It was that quality that had drawn her to him in the first place. With his laid-back charisma and magnetic smile, he’d coaxed his way past her defenses as easily as he’d mollified Dale.
That alone should have made her suspicious. A man that could assess and defuse a tense situation like that was no mere cowboy. Far more telling was the way he’d charmed her. She never let down her defenses. Never let anyone close. She should have known that any man who could tempt her into a quickie in the parking lot was a man to be reckoned with.
What was that saying? Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.
Well, she was suitably shamed.
Regardless of all that, Ford—this chameleon of a man, whom she barely knew and couldn’t possibly hope to understand—was the father of her child. She had no way of anticipating how he would react if he were to learn the truth.
She clearly took too long to formulate her question, because Jonathon leaned forward. “If you’ve got a question, you should ask now. He might not be on the phone with his family much longer.”
Suddenly, she was struck by an awful thought. Her skin went clammy as panic washed over her. Dear God, what if the reason Jonathon didn’t want to talk about Ford was because he was married? Choking down her dread, she asked, “By family, you don’t mean wife, do you?”
Jonathon laughed, a rusty uncomfortable snort of derision. “Ford? Married? Hell, no. He’s that last man on earth who would cheat on a wife.”
She clenched her jaw against her innate dislike of being laughed at. “Well, I hardly know him. How am I supposed to know that?”
Jonathon’s smile faded. “Ford’s father kept a mistress for the last fifteen years of his life. He had a whole other family he had set up in a house one town over. While he was alive, he kept all those balls in the air himself. But when he passed away, he’d named Ford executor of his will. All of sudden Ford had to find a way to make peace between these two families.”
“My goodness. What did Ford do?” She asked the question almost without realizing she’d done it.
“Ford did what he always does.” Jonathon’s expression had turned from icy to grim. “He smoothed things over.”
Okay, so she wasn’t exactly an expert on women, seeing as how most of her friends were men. She could only imagine how she would feel if she found out that the man she’d loved had had another family secreted away somewhere. She’d be pissed. No amount of “smoothing things over” would make that all right. And yet, if anyone could do it, she believed Ford could.
“They must just hate each other,” she murmured.
“Surprisingly, they don’t.” Jonathon shrugged as if to say he didn’t get it, either. “They resented each other for a long time, but now they’re friends, strange as that sounds. Ford’s younger sister—his full sister, that is— Chelsea is about the same age as Beatrice. Ford managed to convince both Suzanne and Patrice that the girls all needed each other. Of course, it helped matters that his dad had died practically broke. So Ford was pretty much supporting everyone.”
“How old was he?”
“Twenty-three or so.”
She’d read somewhere that he’d made his first million by the time he was twenty-two. If he was supporting five women not long after that, he must have been highly motivated indeed to keep making money. From what he’d told her, his sisters were only now in college.
