Stand-In Bride

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.”

“I didn’t expect you to, I just wanted to tell you how much I admired her,” Julia murmured. “You must miss her terribly.”

“I don’t let myself dwell on it,” Michael said curtly, uncomfortable at the turn their conversation had taken. “Keeping busy is the best antidote for…” He cleared his throat and shrugged. “For…” He couldn’t bring himself to say the word.

“Grief.” Julia supplied it for him. Her heart swelled with sympathy. “Yes, work does help.”

She wasn’t about to add that talking about the lost loved one helped even more. Obviously, Michael’s style of mourning forbade such an open display of emotion. “I guess working has helped everybody in your family cope,” she added softly.

“That’s true. But unfortunately for my uncle Jake, he is currently facing another crisis that has nothing to do with losing Grandmother.”

Though Michael was rarely this forthcoming, it was a relief to talk about things that had been roiling in his mind for weeks. He felt secure in confiding in Julia. She had a proven track record of loyalty to the company and to the Fortunes.

“I’ve heard from my cousins that Jake’s marriage to Erica is on shaky ground. Their girls, Caroline and Natalie and the twins, are worried sick about their parents. Apparently, Jake’s schedule and his demands are finally taking their toll on Erica, and to make matters worse, she is suffering from a major case of the empty-nest syndrome.”

“Many women have a difficult time adjusting when their children grow up and leave home,” Julia said sympathetically.

“Not my mother. She was only too happy to have her nest all to herself. But Erica is feeling her years without them. Plus she’s spouting all this midlife-crisis stuff about not fulfilling her career ambitions, blaming Uncle Jake for her decision to drop out of college to marry him and stay home to raise children. Like he put a loaded gun to her head and made her do it!” Michael’s disparaging laugh made it very clear whose side he was on in this particular Fortune war.

“Has your aunt Erica ever considered going back to college?” Julia’s psychologist leanings made it impossible for her not to offer help. “Lots of people return to complete their education these days. I’ve read about grandparents in their seventies going for their degrees.”

“Maybe you should give Erica this pep talk,” Michael suggested drolly. “She’s fifty-two, old and fading by her standards, but still full of zest by yours.”

Julia visualized Erica Fortune, who’d always struck her as the quintessential expensively kept, country-club-executive wife. Erica was an elegant blond beauty whose classic looks were ageless. She was married to one of the wealthiest men in the state. She was a mother and grandmother, with strong and healthy progeny.

“It’s hard to imagine a woman with so much not being happy,” Julia murmured.

Michael’s lips curved into a sardonic smile. “Surely you’ve heard the famous maxim, ‘money doesn’t buy happiness’? Not to mention that other old chesnut, ‘there’s more to life than money.’ Of course, all that is heresy to my mother, who staunchly holds the opposing view.”

“There are maxims and chesnuts for that viewpoint, too. How about ‘money isn’t everything, but it sure is far ahead of whatever is in second place’?” Julia cast him a quick, bright smile.